Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 22, 2019

… “There’s a mutual love, respect and work ethic, and I think that’s actually really special,” [Heather] O’Reilly said after the semifinal win. “I’ve been part of a lot of really special teams, in terms of the intangibles. But I think that this group kind of beats all, in terms of everybody works for each other. There’s no egos. It’s all about accountability and doing your part for the team. It’s really a nice environment to be part of.”

The trophies don’t hurt, either. NWSL Shield winners three years running as regular-season champions, the Courage now face the Chicago Red Stars in next Sunday’s title game with a chance to add a second consecutive playoff trophy to the haul of hardware.

… “We will manage him appropriately,” Boylen said. “He will not play over 30 minutes in anything we do to get going here. We’ll manage him on the off days in a real respectful way. Obviously, he’s a big piece. He’s our starting 3, a big wing. And we need him.”

The Bulls have a set of back-to-back games in this first week of the regular season, with their home opener against the defending NBA champion Raptors coming Saturday following a game at the Grizzlies Friday.

“We’ll see how he feels,” Boylen said. “It might be a situation where we manage him the first night in order to play him the second night. Or manage him the first night and the second night he feels maybe a night he doesn’t play. But we have a plan. It’s rough because it’s depending on how he feels.”

… George Brooks, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley published “The Science and Translation of Lactate Shuttle Theory” in the journal Cell Metabolism last year. The work is a review of our previous understanding of lactic acid and pokes several holes in said knowledge.

He contends that, while lactic acid is typically labeled as ‘waste’ produced by muscles because blood lactate levels rise during extreme exercise, the substance isn’t the cause of but actually an attempt to prevent fatigue.

“It’s a historic mistake,” Brooks said, according to Robert Sanders (Futurity). “It was thought that lactate is made in muscles when there is not enough oxygen. It has been thought to be a fatigue agent, a metabolic waste product, a metabolic poison.”

“But the classic mistake was to note that when a cell was under stress, there was a lot of lactate, then blame it on lactate. The proper interpretation is that lactate production is a strain response; it’s there to compensate for metabolic stress. It is the way cells push back on deficits in metabolism.”

… The important take-home message is this. Extras like stretching, taking supplements or having an ice bath typically only infer between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of an advantage, if any at all.

‘The three Rs’: rest, rehydration and replenishment should make up 99 per cent of your recovery.

… Mexican clubs and even the Mexican men’s national team have routinely recruited players promoted by Alianza de Futbol, a San Francisco Bay Area–based organization dedicated to the development of Hispanic amateur soccer. They include Edwin Lara, a US-born player who played for Mexico’s under-17 Mexican national team (before later making a nationality switch to the US team), and Jonathan Gonzalez, another Mexican-American player who was recruited by the Liga MX club Monterrey and played for the US men’s U-15 team.

US Soccer Hall of Famer Hugo Pérez watched the players intently from the sidelines. He was impressed. There players “have good qualities and potential to play at a higher level,” Pérez told me. “Alianza is the best organization in the country for helping all the soccer communities, especially the Latinos.”

Background

Hormonal physiology in athletes, dysfunctional paths leading to overtraining syndrome (OTS), and clinical and biochemical behaviors that are independently modified by the presence of OTS remain unclear. Although multiple markers of OTS have recently been identified, the independent influence of OTS on hormones and metabolism have not been assessed. Hence, the objective of the present study was to uncover the previously unrecognized independent predictors of OTS and understand how OTS independently modifies the behaviors of clinical and biochemical parameters.
Methods

In a total of 39 athletes (OTS-affected athletes (OTS) = 14 and healthy athletes (ATL) = 25), we performed two clusters of statistical analyses using the full data of the Endocrine and Metabolic Responses on Overtraining Syndrome (EROS) study, in a total of 117 markers. We first used logistic regression to analyze five modifiable parameters (carbohydrate, protein, and overall caloric intake, sleep quality, and concurrent cognitive effort) as potential additional independent risk factors for OTS, and OTS as the outcome. We then used multivariate linear regression to analyze OTS as the independent variable and 38 dependent variables. Training patterns were found to be similar between OTS and ATL, and therefore excessive training was not a risk, and consequently not a predictor, for OTS.
Results

Each of the three dietary patterns (daily carbohydrate, daily protein, and daily overall calorie intake) were found to be the independent triggers of OTS, while sleeping, social, and training characteristics depended on other factors to induce OTS. Once triggered, OTS independently induced multiple changes, including reductions of cortisol, late growth hormone and adrenocorticotropic hormone responses to stimulations, testosterone-to-estradiol ratio, neutrophils, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, vigor levels, hydration status, and muscle mass, while increase of tension levels and visceral fat.
Conclusions

OTS can be independently triggered by eating patterns, regardless of training patterns, while the occurrence of OTS reduced late hormonal responses and the testosterone-to-estradiol ratio, worsened mood, and affected the immunology panel. These novel findings may explain underperformance, which is the key characteristic of OTS. [full text]

A team of Whitehead Institute scientists has for the first time revealed the molecular structure of a critical growth regulator bound to its partner proteins, creating a fine-grained view of how they interact to sense nutrient levels and control cell growth. Their findings, described in the Oct. 10 online issue of Science, help answer longstanding questions about how the mTORC1 kinase, and its anchoring complex, Rag-Ragulator, work at a molecular level. Using cryo-electron microscopy, the researchers uncover key structures, including a large coiled region and a small, flexible claw. These discoveries help explain the biology of mTORC1 and also lay the foundation for a new generation of drugs that are more precisely tailored to its distinct molecular makeup.

“These interactions are fundamental to the biology of mTORC1, so we and other researchers have been trying to resolve them since the connection of mTORC1 to lysosomes was first discovered in my lab over 10 years ago,” says senior author David Sabatini, a member of Whitehead Institute, professor of biology at MIT, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and American Cancer Society research professor. “Now, we have a really deep look at how this important complex works, which opens up a panorama of new research.”

… Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks — new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. If it was a commercial company, it figured out product/market fit; if a government organization, it focused on solution/mission fit. Over time as these organizations got large, they built process. By process I mean all the tools that allow companies to scale repeatable execution. HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and organizational forms etc. All of these are great strategies and tools that business schools build, and consulting firms help implement.

Process is great when you live in a world where both the problem and solution are known. Process helps ensure that you can deliver solutions that scale without breaking other parts of the organization.

Treatment of tendinopathy often encompasses only rehabilitation, where the athlete is removed from training and competition and the tendon is progressively loaded through a rehabilitation program. This is costly in terms of time – for elite athletes time they may not have!

Keeping someone in training and competition with substantial tendon pain is more challenging, as control over the loads on the tendon is the remit of the coach and athlete. So, what are the key parts of managing tendinopathy in these athletes?

There are three key aspects of a plan: first the use of isometrics for immediate relief of tendon pain, second using other helpful exercises and adjunct therapies, third management of load on the tendon.

… Professor Pappas believes too many people opt for surgery when there is another way: a physical rehab program that trains leg muscles to increase stability.

Some people will find they still need the surgery, but in other cases a good recovery can be made without it.

In 2013 Swedish researchers tested rehab against ACL surgery in a trial published in The BMJ. After five years there were no differences between the two groups in pain, sports function, and how their knee injuries affected their daily lives.

“Currently,” says Professor Pappas, “there is no evidence that surgery is superior to rehab.”

… Hepcidin research in sport has focused on single and repeated training blocks, and has suggested a cumulative effect in hepcidin activity over a regular and consistent training period (~7 days). The majority of dietary interventions pre- and post-exercise have focussed on manipulating dietary macronutrient (carbohydrate and fat) content among athletes in an attempt to determine the impact on iron status and health of adopting low carbohydrate or ketogenic diets. However, iron status may not be the only concern when focusing on dietary changes in athletes. Research indicates that whole body health may be compromised by overall low energy availability and inadequate energy intake, a syndrome known as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). In instances where energy intake has been reduced (intentionally to lose weight, or unintentionally) an athlete’s current dietary intake may not meet daily iron requirements. While the impact of metabolic disturbances, such as RED-S, on iron metabolism has not been directly investigated, results from nutritional interventions over the last decade have provided incidental evidence to support the notion of hepcidin as an early-onset marker of low energy availability (LEA). In fact, when athletes present with overall LEA they may not initially demonstrate low iron stores but may instead display altered iron metabolism, a response that may be due to exaggerated hepcidin activity.

… Studies have shown elite athletes to have a superior diversity of bacteria in their gut. But what is not yet known is whether they are born with this superior microbial composition or whether it evolves as a result of their training and diet.

“We do know that athletes are meticulous about eating, recovery and training, so this might influence their positive balance of bugs,” says Dr Jonathan Scheiman, a researcher in Harvard Medical School’s department of genetics who is researching the links between diet, gut health and performance.

What is certain, though, is that diet and lifestyle habits help to shape a healthy gut – and that fibre is an essential part of the equation for athletes. So how do you make sure you are getting enough?

… “Obviously sticks are a lot better,” Blackhawks goaltender Robin Lehner said. “When I got into the league a while ago [in 2010], you always had that group of guys on the team that had good shots. Then you had a group of guys on the team that didn’t have good shots. These days everyone shoots well. There’s no more divide.”

Lehner also mentioned the speed of the game as a contributing factor. “Ten years ago, you could always get into decent blocking position where you could be as protected as possible,” Lehner said. “But now, it’s hard to time it right. You only have like a half-second, and the shots that are coming are much harder.”

Zach LaVine’s recent comments touched off another round of the debate over midrange shots. There’s an important element missing from all of the discussion, though: context.

If you read the article that touched off this latest midrange debate, you’d be forgiven for wondering what all the hubbub was about. Sure, Zach LaVine is unhappy that the Bulls have asked him to stop shooting midrange shots, but that’s not explosive news. Joe Cowley, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, used LaVine’s quotes as a way to insult statistical analysts and “analytics bloggers”, but that’s nothing novel either. The media has been playing up a perceived tribal war between the jocks and the nerds to generate more attention for decades now.

With Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Aníbal Sánchez poised to star in the World Series, let’s look back at the legacy of the 2012-14 Tigers teams that taught us that sometimes tremendous starting pitching isn’t enough