Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 12, 2020

… A quick on-field diagnosis by the on-site physician in Tampa, Florida, was devastating: Spaulding had torn the anterior cruciate ligament and the meniscus in her right knee. The injury was confirmed by Team USA doctors following an MRI a couple days later in Salt Lake City.

The outlook? A recovery time of six to eight months with surgery.

With the Tokyo Games scheduled to start July 24, that meant she would in all probability miss the Games.

“I didn’t have six to eight months,” Spauding said Friday, a day before her 25th birthday. “So I was just talking to Dr. (Travis) Maak and I came to the conclusion that I’m just going to do intense rehab, I’m going to put a brace on it and I’m gonna try to do anything that I possibly can to help the team out. And so that was a decision then, before anything crazy happened in the world.”

… “We never set out to make that happen, but you know, he loved kicking a ball from the moment he could walk around the house,” Claudio says. “From the beginning, something I remember is when he was younger, he would sit there at 3, 4, 5 years old and watch football matches live and kind of understand the movement of players and where they’re going. He was trying to figure it all out.

“I remember when he was younger and he played he would cry, he would scream, he would yell if he lost … he loved competing.”

Gio talks football with Claudio every day, his dad offering him feedback in an understated, interpretative way. “He knows how it works,” Gio says. “Football is such a big part of his life; I don’t think he really has ever left it. I love talking about it and he finds a way to tell me [feedback] in Dad mode, but also in a football mode where he understands what it takes. It’s all very relaxed but putting no pressure on at the same time.”

… “I am worried like the rest of the world, but I like that it is optional and I’m pleased with the caution, structure and measures the Blazers organization has put in place to ensure the safest environment possible for all parties involved,” McCollum told Yahoo Sports. “I get the measures [the league is] taking, but you have to think at some point when there are drastic measures that need to be taken, ‘Is it really worth it?’ It’s either safe or it’s not.

“ … And let’s just be honest, man, it’s not like it will be the first time players got gym access outside of the team’s facilities. Some people have been working out, if we’re being honest.”

Despite feeling uneasy about working out at the team facility, McCollum — who is also vice president of the National Basketball Players Association — intends to go in on Saturday to evaluate if it’s possible to safely execute a workout with so many restrictions.

Chad McGehee is fond of a comparison between strength training and mental training, perhaps even more so now that he has been hired as a director of the latter for the University of Wisconsin athletic department.

A half-century ago, a weight room would have been unrecognizable by today’s standards, where strength and conditioning techniques are integral parts of sports.

Training the mind to release negative thoughts and focus on the task at hand is emerging today in the same way that weight training once did, McGehee said.

… MLS has stated its plans to start up a DA replacement in time for next season. Existing players like the ECNL and US Youth Soccer aim to help fill the gap as well. So it’s natural to wonder if the USL’s advancement into the space represents something truly new and different, or just another acronym in the alphabet soup of options. According to Liam O’Connell, USL’s Senior Director of Youth Development, this new venture incorporates lessons learned from what worked and what didn’t in the DA, even with the original intent to exist alongside it.

“We made this model through dialogue with clubs at every level of the game since I started this role in December of 2018,” O’Connell said in a conversation with USSoccerPlayers.com this week. “The DA was a phenomenal thing… but as a model, it didn’t work for significant parts of our country.”

Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt, Fed Cup skipper Alicia Molik and Ashleigh Barty’s father have helped drive a major overhaul of Tennis Australia’s high-performance program.

Hewitt, Molik and Rob Barty were among some 150 players, coaches, parents and global experts called on to lead the change following an exhaustive athlete development review.

… “Whatever the amount of time is, just know that players will have the input and say so because we’re the ones that’s playing, and that comes first,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul, president of the National Basketball Players Association. “We don’t ever want to put guys in a situation where their injury risk is high. It varies from player to player. But it’s at least got to be three to four weeks.”

Charlotte Hornets coach James Borrego said players could be at different points based on their access to equipment.

“There’s veterans out there that may have a court in their home, in their facility and they’re probably a little bit more ready to go than others,” he said. “I think we’re talking weeks. This isn’t something where after one week these guys are ready to go.”

… It is not surprising that so many of us are feeling anxious at the moment. The Covid-19 pandemic threat to life is real and it stirs the human imagination, though often not in a good way, while there is a great deal of uncertainty for athletes when it comes to training and the resumption of competition.

Because it is well established that any type of constant, low-grade stress is harmful to our health and immune systems, experts have been quick to offer advice to those who are feeling tense, uncertain or fearful.

But I have yet to read anything about the advantages of Alexander Technique-style lying down – that is, lying on the floor with the back of your head supported by one or two paperback books, knees bent upwards, and feet positioned about shoulder-width apart (pictured, above).

This article will try to give some insight into creating a helpful terminology for coaching, mostly relating to the coach’s game model, utilizing basic insight about the game itself.

A specified terminology helps the coach to give their game model meaning for their players and a tool in the everyday coaching process – on and off the pitch. Hereby the article starts with some general information about language and its application in human life, in order to help build a more specific application of language for improving communication and thus, players.

The main point of this work is to connect Action Language and Football Theory together, so the coach can utilize terminology in his coaching process that is individualized without becoming abstract Concept Language but a clear and concise Dialect of Football Action Language. Not only should the ensuing terminology be based on the game of football, but it should relate to the coach’s interpretation of its fundamental principles and be relatable to practice. Whilst this article is obviously neither the finished product nor complete, it should still be able to give some useful advice regarding coherency and accuracy in coaching.

FitByte, a noninvasive, wearable sensing system, combines the detection of sound, vibration, and movement to increase accuracy and decrease false positives. It tracks behavioral patterns to help users reach their health goals, offering a way to understand the relationship between diet and disease, and to monitor the efficacy of treatment.

The device tracks all stages of food intake. It detects chewing, swallowing, hand-to-mouth gestures, and visuals of intake, and can attach to any pair of consumer eyeglasses.

“The primary sensors on the device are accelerometers and gyroscopes, which are in almost every device at this point, like your phones and your watches,” says Mayank Goel, an assistant professor in the Institute for Software Research and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

… Vibrations from bodily motions and sounds put part of the chip in very slight motion, making the voltage flux, thus creating readable electronic outputs. In human testing, the chip has recorded a variety of signals from the mechanical workings of the lungs and the heart with clarity, signals that often escape meaningful detection by current medical technology.

“Right now, medicine looks to EKGs (electrocardiograms) for information on the heart, but EKGs only measure electrical impulses. The heart is a mechanical system with muscles pumping and valves opening and shutting, and it sends out a signature of sounds and motions, which an EKG does not detect. EKGs also say nothing about lung function,” says Farrokh Ayazi, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Did you know that some supplements are better taken with meals while others should be taken on an empty stomach? And that some vitamins and minerals interact with each other and should be taken separately? Or how to find a reputable, safe supplement brand? In this blog, we reveal everything you should know about taking supplements, including which ones to take, when and how to take them, how to pick safe types, and much more.

In an open letter to the “football community”, Jim Harbaugh on Thursday published a lengthy thesis arguing for a massive change to the NFL draft entry process.

In short, Harbaugh argues that players should be able to go pro at any point they choose, rather than spend the NFL-mandated three years in college first.

“I was fortunate to attend the University of Michigan on a scholarship, played football and earned a meaningful academic degree over a five-year period of time,” Harbaugh wrote. “While that was great for me and can be for many current football athletes, it may not be best for all. There are ‘early bloomers,’ capable of competing in the NFL and earning a livelihood at an earlier age.”

… Basketball coaches can be fooled by regression to the mean too and, just like Kahneman’s flight instructors, coaches can become enamored with the power of punishment as a result.

Take my high school coach. He was a smart, rational guy; but when our team screwed up — by missing too many free throws, for example — we were punished in practice the next day. There would be lots of running and yelling, possibly some puking. Ostensibly, the wind sprints were meant to improve our conditioning and mental toughness so that we could toe the charity stripe without feeling our knees wobble; but there was always an undertone of retribution as well. Miraculously, our foul shooting would usually improve in the next game and that’s probably why our coach continued to favor this corrective approach.

… Major League Soccer, which has for too long been derided as a retirement league, is the first to tout the young stars it has developed. Sure, it’s exciting when the league attracts household names like Zlatan and Chicharito, but the biggest source of pride among the MLS faithful are the stars who started as unknowns in league and worked their way up.

It’s not just about outliers like Alphonso Davies, who set an outgoing transfer record by jumping from the Vancouver Whitecaps to Bayern Munich at a mere 17 years old. It’s about clubs like FC Dallas and the New York Red Bulls creating a steady pipeline of young academy talent that yields stars like Reggie Cannon and Tyler Adams, who may very well be the future of the U.S. men’s national team.

But you won’t find that kind of talent pipeline in the National Women’s Soccer League. At least not yet.

Unlike MLS, there’s no pathway for NWSL clubs to develop young players and sign them to professional contracts. That means there no requirement for NWSL clubs to operate their own youth academies, and only some of them choose to do so.