Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 24, 2020

Every flu season, Jordan Morris is extra cautious: He gets his flu shot; he washes his hands as often as he can. That’s because at the age of 9, Morris was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and those with diabetes are at elevated risk of life-threatening complications when they come down with the flu.

Diabetes is also one of the seven underlying conditions that pose greater risk for “severe illness from COVID-19,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It can definitely be a little bit scary to see that [coronavirus warning],” Morris told ESPN. “I think, having diabetes, I understand that you have to take really good care of yourself in order to avoid complications in the future, so it’s kind of been a similar mindset with coronavirus: you have to take really good care of yourself and follow the guidelines to avoid getting sick.”

It has long been said that rapid deceleration is one of the elite physical traits of Houston Rockets star James Harden, and sports scientist Dr. Rajpal Brar breaks down how the former NBA MVP uses it in a new video.

“Harden’s ability to rapidly decelerate and put on the brakes, ‘start-stop,’ is a key part of what makes him one of the toughest covers in history,” Brar says. “The video breaks down the core biomechanical and sports science components that unlock his incredible deceleration ability.”

… In regard to how the coaching staff is approaching training this offseason with the team unable to be together, McElderry explained the focus for the players has been more about staying active and healthy over anything else. “There are a lot of different NCAA rules of what we can require our guys to do. Our approach has been having our strength coach put together programs for our players. We’ve given those to them and said we don’t know exactly the climate at your home regarding what facilities you have. Here are ideas and different workouts you can do.”

As far as how much is required, McElderry made it clear that nothing is mandated during this time. “We are just trying to educate our guys on how to stay healthy and mentally fit as well. We’ve suggested to them that their bodies are used to getting a sweat going pretty much every single day. You need to keep doing that just for your own mental health, in addition to their physical health. We are all stuck at home so it’s really important for these young people to find time to get fitness in. It might not be soccer specific or as hard as they would be training normally, but it’s up to them.”

While some players might have struggled with a lack of routine during the footy shutdown, this has been the perfect time to get better.

It’s time to throw out the rule book. Normally, under the watchful eye of fitness and sport science staff, there is a program everyone must follow to the letter. Being at the club each day, there’s little room to go over and above; little opportunity to work on your deficiencies.

Ever since footy went from semi-professional to a full-time job in the ‘90s, training has become more and more regimented and scientific.

… Interest in the NFL has grown significantly in Britain over the past decade. Next season the Jacksonville Jaguars will play two of their home games at London’s Wembley Stadium while two other regular season games will be held at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium in North London.

For the growing army of NFL fans in the United Kingdom though, outside of seeing who the Jags pick, there is no local interest in the draft. Despite all the talk, there is still no sign of a British franchise in the league nor is there any homegrown talent in the draft.

But there is certainly no shortage of effort being made to produce British gridiron talent capable of enjoying a career in the NFL.

… Players will be expected to remain in their club’s market but the league said it would continue to consider individual requests from players to relocate. MLS play has been suspended since March 12 due to the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, the league announced that the postponement was being extended until at least June 8.

Just a few months ago (what seems like an eon in the time of COVID-19), executives at the startup Epicore Biosystems expected the first consumer market for the company’s sweat-sensing microfluidics patch would be athletes. The so-called Gx, developed in partnership with Gatorade, has been in beta testing since early this year and Gatorade parent Pepsi expects to release it to consumers in the second half of this year.

It turns out, however, that Epicore’s sweat-sensing technology may have several roles to play much sooner in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, including monitoring patients’ electrolyte levels and fatigue and non-invasively measuring their sweat cytokine levels. Physicians could use that information to predict cases in which COVID-19 will become life-threatening. And—if the technology were built into an N95 respirator mask—it could also track the health and fatigue of medical staff.

Garmin smartwatches were not designed or intended to monitor or diagnose diseases, but scientists from top universities and institutes around the world are actively researching whether wearable devices like ours can help identify early indications of coronavirus.

One premise is actually quite simple. (1) An elevated heart rate is an early sign of a common cold, the flu or coronavirus. (2) Garmin smartwatches have built-in heart rate monitoring at the wrist. Put the two together and society could have an extremely helpful tool for early indications of the virus on a mass scale.

To be sure, the ways in which wearable technology can help solve the current and future crises extend far beyond heart-rate monitoring. That’s why Garmin has teamed up with scientists around the world to seek the answers about the potential for Garmin smartwatches to be a useful tool in society’s need to better identify, track and monitor coronavirus.

The coronavirus pandemic is hitting sport hard: team and indoor sports are taboodue to the social distancing measures. Solo endurance sports are often the only sporting activity outdoors. Or are they?

Together with you, Suunto, the brand behind Movesense, and ISPO Open Innovation want to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. Submit your ideas on how the Movesense sensor can be used to solve the current challenges facing sports. We look forward to your creative and innovative ideas, which you can submit here.

Here come the cyborgs. The electrical properties of specific types of nerve cell in living animals have been changed by genetically modifying them to produce conducting polymers on their surfaces.

The work, which promises to allow electrical control of specific groups of cells, could lead to everything from new treatments for conditions such as epilepsy to better ways of connecting prosthetic limbs to nerves, says Zhenan Bao of Stanford University in California. “Those are definitely possibilities,” she says.

Traditional serum biomarkers used to assess skeletal muscle damage, such as activity of creatine kinase (CK), lack tissue specificity and sensitivity, hindering early detection of drug-induced myopathies. Recently, a novel four-factor skeletal muscle injury panel (MIP) of biomarkers consisting of skeletal troponin I (sTnI), CK mass (CKm), fatty acid binding protein 3 (Fabp3), and myosin light chain 3 (Myl3), has been shown to have increased tissue specificity and sensitivity in rodent models of skeletal muscle injury. Here, we evaluated if a previously established model of tissue-engineered functional human skeletal muscle (“myobundle”) can allow detection of the MIP biomarkers after injury or drug-induced myotoxicity in vitro. We found that concentrations of three MIP biomarkers (sTnI, CKm and Fabp3) in myobundle culture media significantly increased in response to injury by a known snake venom (notexin). Cerivastatin, a known myotoxic statin, but not pravastatin, induced significant loss of myobundle contractile function, myotube atrophy, and increased release of both traditional and novel biomarkers. In contrast, dexamethasone induced significant loss of myobundle contractile function and myotube atrophy, but decreased the release of both traditional and novel biomarkers. Dexamethasone also increased levels of matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-2 and -3 in the culture media which correlated with increased remodeling of myobundle extracellular matrix. In conclusion, this proof of concept study demonstrates that tissue-engineered human myobundles can provide an in vitro platform to probe patient-specific drug-induced myotoxicity and identify of novel injury biomarkers to guide preclinical and clinical drug development studies.

… While a timely start to the 2020 season remains in question, the conversation needs to be more about how to get to kickoff than when. Latest guidelines call for an acclimation period (7-10 days) for players prior to any formal football drills taking place. Guidelines introduced last year call for a “safe and effective framework” in order to ease players into strenuous workouts.

That would put the return-to-practice date at approximately July 15. Some say the so-called “drop dead” date for starting the season on time should be much earlier.

“I think we have to be willing to be nimble while still maintaining the standards of safety,” said Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer.

… After digging into the goals and responsibilities of a Director of Football, we first asked Mr Marshall about his role in the club. What does exactly a Head of Recruitment do? … “The main challenge is to be ahead of the opposition to present the manager and the coaching team with the best options for every position on the pitch. So when the manager asks us for the best player in a certain position, we can say ‘There we are. There’s the best three, there’s all the data, the reports, the live footage. That’s why we think he’s ideal for the team.’”

… Aside from giving fans the opportunity to relive the Jordan-era magic, the documentary invites a deeper question — that is, when do athletes peak?

Fortunately, research has some answers. Below are five studies to help you understand the ever-shifting science of athletic longevity, peak performance, and inevitable physical decline.

… “This impacts all the high-drafted guys that you want to get that face to face interaction with, but it also affects the late draftable kids that you’re trying to recruit maybe as rookie free agents if they slip out of the draft,” former NFL scout and current ESPN draft analyst Jim Nagy said. “As a scout, you go to these pro days and the workout to recruit these kids up. And you invite them to a facility visit and those things. That’s all been impacted. So the lack of data compared to a normal year is what makes it different.”

Depending on the team, anywhere from a quarter to a third of their draft boards are missing data. “Somewhere in that range, you have a ton of incomplete information,” Nagy said.

Incomplete information makes drafting decisions more difficult.

The melting pot of modern team sports is reflected in how talent is evaluated and identified, something that is on display in any league draft, including the ongoing 2020 NFL draft.

Coach and football analyst Trent Dilfer told podcast host Ryen Russillo a revealing anecdote about quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. The young qb from Hawaii hadn’t attended many stateside youth camps, but was there for an elite quarterbacks camp before his senior high school season. Dilfer paid close attention to how the mystery man, Tua, assimilated with his peers. The Hawaiian did everything right. Teammates loved him, often instantly.

Diversity is a feature when it fits. But what fits? Russillo’s colleague at The Ringer, the football writer Robert Mays has a series of articles on scouting pre-NFL quarterbacks. Tall quarterbacks, the really giant ones that are 6′ 6″ or taller struggle. Athletic, mobile quarterbacks are prized.

Talent evaluators struggle with the range of athletes they are asked to evaluate. Every pro-level athlete is a unicorn. (Each human being is, if you think about it, a unicorn.) Scouts and coaches don’t always know the best development path to bring out the most in each unicorn case. Tall quarterbacks lack for coaching. Mobile quarterbacks are weapons that defy countermeasures. NBA draft analyst, Chad Ford, made the point on another Ringer podcast with host Bill Simmons, success with top draft picks is context dependent. A draft pick’s potential depends on how the organization approaches and values that pick’s future.

Dilfer said that the former 49ers executive Trent Baalke was a top talent evaluator, one of the very best. He was fired, replaced by John Lynch, who instituted a consensus-based approach. A more diverse set of voices in the talent acquisition process adds diversity to the talent pool a team can consider. There’s wisdom in crowds.

There is also wisdom in technology. I use a funnel process to rapidly distill thousands of articles, posts and tweets down to what appears each day. I’ve learned that the diversity of content at the narrow, bottom of the funnel is directly related to the quantity and diversity of content at the fat, top end of the funnel. And it’s generally true for athletes’ acquisition funnels — if the diversity is absent at the top, it won’t be there at the bottom.

To sum up: Diversity is an indicator of a healthy talent identification and development process. Organizations lacking roster diversity should probably take a close look at what they’re doing.