Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 8, 2020

… Few are better than Burrow at buying time or can tout more absurd on-the-run accuracy.

“We had a hard time, obviously, corralling him back there,” said Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, perhaps referring to the Peach Bowl play in which Burrow scrambled out of the pocket, sprinted toward his sideline, avoided a tackle and completed a fadeaway 30-yard pass while getting drilled. “We’re certainly not the only ones that have.”

When pressured, Burrow still completes 73.9 percent of his passes, a clip 9.5 percentage points better than any other player in the country and the top mark produced by any QB since at least 2011.4. He also has a 211.2 passer efficiency rating, the highest among qualified passers over that stretch, and has thrown 19 touchdowns, five clear of any other QB in a single season.

The no. 1 pick is finally about to make his regular-season NBA debut, but the suddenly pesky Pelicans face a dilemma about the best way to use him. How should New Orleans spend his minutes?

… Reports had claimed Froome was struggling to get back to full health, with Team INEOS sports director Dario David Cioni quoted as casting doubt on that prospect.

In quotes widely attributed to Italian publication Bicisport, Cioni is reported to have said: “After two days of training in Spain, Froome, who aspires to the fifth yellow jersey, returns home. He is not well and who knows if he will recover.”

Yet Froome has given his side of the story, and stressed the picture is far brighter than has been suggested.

… “About 43 percent of everyday actions are done repeatedly almost every day in the same context,” Wendy [Wood] says. “It’s very much like driving. We have this general sense that we’re doing things but it’s not driven by an active decision-making process.”

This week on Hidden Brain, we consider the everyday things we do, over and over and over again, often without thinking. We hear how habits shape the course of our lives and how we can use them to make change. [audio, 51:01]

Perseverance underpins most stories of successful change, and it can take anywhere from six to 30 attempts to quit for those dependent on drugs to become abstinent. While these numbers might seem off putting, it’s important to be realistic about the need to persevere. Incremental change is known to be superior to overly ambitious targets – appealing as they might be.

This leads to the second “p” – planning. Conventional wisdom suggests that planning improves the chances of success, but there is evidence that unplanned attempts to quit smoking can be just as successful. Good news for anyone embarking on an impromptu attempt to change.

Flexibility refers to the intrinsic properties of body tissues that determine maximal joint range of motion without causing injury. For many years, flexibility has been classified by the American College of Sports Medicine as a major component of physical fitness. The notion flexibility is important for fitness has also led to the idea static stretching should be prescribed to improve flexibility. The current paper proposes flexibility be retired as a major component of physical fitness, and consequently, stretching be de-emphasized as a standard component of exercise prescriptions for most populations. First, I show flexibility has little predictive or concurrent validity with health and performance outcomes (e.g., mortality, falls, occupational performance) in apparently healthy individuals, particularly when viewed in light of the other major components of fitness (i.e., body composition, cardiovascular endurance, muscle endurance, muscle strength). Second, I explain that if flexibility requires improvement, this does not necessitate a prescription of stretching in most populations. Flexibility can be maintained or improved by exercise modalities that cause more robust health benefits than stretching (e.g., resistance training). Retirement of flexibility as a major component of physical fitness will simplify fitness batteries; save time and resources dedicated to flexibility instruction, measurement, and evaluation; and prevent erroneous conclusions about fitness status when interpreting flexibility scores. De-emphasis of stretching in exercise prescriptions will ensure stretching does not negatively impact other exercise and does not take away from time that could be allocated to training activities that have more robust health and performance benefits.

Introduction
This study aimed to 1) identify the impact of external load variables on changes in wellness and 2) identify the impact of age, training/playing history, strength levels and pre-season loads on changes in wellness in elite Australian footballers.
Methods
Data were collected from one team (45 athletes) during the 2017 season. Self-reported wellness was collected daily (4=best score possible, 28=worst score possible). External load/session availability variables were calculated using global positioning systems/session availability data from every training session and match. Additional variables included demographic data, pre-season external loads and strength/power measures. Linear mixed models were built and compared using root mean square error (RMSE) to determine the impact of variables on wellness.
Results
The external load variables explained wellness to a large degree (RMSE=1.55, 95% confidence intervals=1.52 to 1.57). Modelling athlete ID as a random effect appeared to have the largest impact on wellness, improving the RMSE by 1.06 points. Aside from athlete ID, the variable that had the largest (albeit negligible) impact on wellness was sprint distance covered across pre-season. Every additional 2.1 km covered across pre-season worsened athletes’ in-season wellness scores by 1.2 points (95% confidence intervals=0.0 to 2.3).
Conclusion
The isolated impact of the individual variables on wellness was negligible. However, after accounting for the individual athlete variability, the external load variables examined collectively were were able to explain wellness to a large extent. These results validate the sensitivity of wellness to monitor individual athletes’ responses to the external loads imposed on them.

… 5. Remote coaching

Becoming an elite athlete requires talent, hard work and good coaching. However gaining access to the final element of this equation can be affected by geography and finances. 5G has the potential to democratise access to knowledge through real-time remote coaching. The ultra-low latency of 5G means aspiring athletes can learn from coaches through Virtual Reality (VR) or holographic technology, with feedback provided via data collected from wearables. And using 5G could eventually mean a young tennis player in the Arctic Circle has the same opportunity to go professional as a youth in Wimbledon.

In the final rush of 2019 some of our studies made it to publication. This particular study – an observational prospective cohort study – explored the association between concussion or musculoskeletal injuries, and the onset of mental health symptoms (MHS) in male professional rugby players over a 12-month period. … Professional rugby players who sustained a concussion within 12 months of baseline were more likely to develop mental health symptoms with ORs ranging from 1.5 (95% CI 1.0 to 2.1) for distress to 2.0 (1.2 to 3.6) for adverse alcohol use. Players who sustained a severe injury within 12 months of baseline were more likely to develop symptoms anxiety/ depression with an OR of 1.5 (1.1 to 2.0). There was no significant association in both groups for other mental health symptoms. … Rugby players who sustained concussion or severe injuries are up to two times more likely to develop symptoms of distress, adverse alcohol use or anxiety/depression.

Kinduct and Gatorade have partnered to create a new solution for athletes: Gx Powered by Kinduct. The innovative technology not only tracks an athlete’s body composition, but also doubles as a hydration recommendation engine. To do this the platform accounts for variables such as weather conditions and duration/type of exercise as well as hydration variance between pre-and-post workout. When both elements are considered, the platform creates a personalized hydration solution for each athlete. Since its first implementation, the Gx Powered by Kinduct has allowed athletes and coaches to monitor and contextualize hydration data alongside other important performance metrics such as in-game statistics, wellness metrics, and injuries.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is piloting a new oral fluid testing program in the hopes of improving the UFC’s anti-doping efforts.

Oral fluid testing was implemented on Dec. 11, 2019 in effort to only detect use of in-competition prohibited substances within hours of use, according to UFC senior vice president of health and performance Jeff Novitzky.

In a follow-up to his original tweet, Novitzky indicated the pilot, if fully implemented in the future, could potentially allow cannabis to be removed from the in-competition prohibited substance list.

Brian Prestidge has been promoted to Director of Insights and Decision Technology at City Football Group, meaning he will head up data science across nine teams including Manchester City.

The Scot joined City Football Group from Bolton in June 2017 as Football Insights Data Scientist. He reported into Head of Data Insights and Decision Technology Lee Mooney, who left in the summer to launch his own start-up.

Prestidge has now been promoted to Mooney’s role, albeit with a rejigged title.

… After six years of bad decisions, poor recruitment and managerial mistakes, this is where United are now. Injuries contributed to Solskjaer’s team being weaker than he would have wished, with Harry Maguire and Paul Pogba unavailable, but that was about it. The United manager was not missing half a team of senior players.

Last summer’s failure to recruit more quality players, in addition to Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Daniel James, left Solskjaer fielding a team that consisted of a goalkeeper who is living off his past reputation in David de Gea, defenders in Phil Jones and Victor Lindelof who are simply not good enough, a midfield of Fred and Andreas Pereira that is the club’s worst in living memory and a selection of exciting prospects — kids, basically — up front in Rashford, James and Mason Greenwood. City’s team was stacked with world-class quality — seasoned players at the peak of their careers — and they even had Aguero, Jesus and David Silva sitting on the bench.

United’s youngsters, including full-back Brandon Williams and the injured Scott McTominay, have carried the team in recent weeks while the more experienced players have continually failed to deliver. It says everything about the malaise and shortsightedness at United that Jones, Ashley Young and Jesse Lingard are still at the club, despite it being clear for years that they are either too old or too inconsistent to be in Solskjaer’s squad.

Commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed MLB will investigate the Red Sox “with the same thoroughness and vigor” as the league looked into allegations against the Astros.