Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 12, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for October 12, 2020

 

NBA Finals: Jimmy Butler has established his legend, no matter what happens next

ESPN NBA, Ramona Shelburne from

… Time and time again, Butler has dug down to some deep well of competitiveness to keep the Heat alive. In Game 5 on Friday night, he seemed downright exhausted during a 47-minute masterpiece in which he went toe-to-toe with a championship-minded James in the fourth quarter, finishing with 35 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists and 5 steals as Miami extended the series to a sixth game on Sunday with a 111-108 victory.

“His will to win is remarkable,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the game. “To do that in 47-plus minutes and take the challenge on at the other end — every young player coming into this league should study footage on Jimmy Butler.”

With each great performance, Spoelstra and Butler’s Heat teammates get asked where that competitiveness comes from. How can a man who was so exhausted that he had to rest on the basketball stanchion to catch his breath after his last drive to the basket that resulted in two free throws, find the energy to hit those free throws and play defense on the next, decisive possession?


Rafael Nadal deserves all the accolades of his 2020 French Open victory

ESPN Tennis, Peter Bodo from

… Nadal was coming off yet another lengthy (five-month) break due to injury. He advanced to the final without losing a set, but Djokovic played at a different level, handing Nadal his first straight-sets loss in a Grand Slam championship match. Nadal did not know what his future held.

Djokovic allowed Nadal just eight games in that wipeout in Oz. Nadal yielded one fewer on Sunday but said he wasn’t counting.

“I am not a big fan of revenges, no? I just accept when the things are not going the way that I like,” Nadal said in his postmatch news conference. “Today was a little bit the opposite, especially for two sets and a half. But I really don’t care much. On the other hand, to win against Novak with that score is because I did a lot of things very well.”


The Road to Sara Hall’s London Marathon PR

Podium Runner, Amby Burfoot from

After Sara Hall’s second-place finish in the London Marathon, her coach (and husband) Ryan Hall discusses the ups and downs of the last year — indeed, of their entire careers.


LeBron ended my NBA title hopes three times. He’s even better now – in every sense

The Guardian, Etan Thomas from

I know from personal experience just how great a basketball player LeBron James is. During my time with the Washington Wizards, we were matched three straight years against a Cleveland Cavaliers team led by the young LeBron. And three straight years they beat us.

His skill, vision and superhuman ability was obvious. I was on court in 2006 for his first career playoff game when a 21-year-old LeBron put up a triple double with 32 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists.

But he has never been merely a great player. He was also a great teammate. For the entirety of that series, my teammate Gilbert Arenas had been heckling – and dominating – Damon Jones to the point where the Cavaliers guard’s performance dipped and he was benched. LeBron took action. Gilbert had two free-throws to help seal Game 6 and level the best-of-seven series at 3-3. After he missed the first shot, LeBron strolled up to Gilbert and whispered in his ear: “If you miss these, you know who will end the game”. Gilbert did miss and I could only watch as, on the next play, LeBron drove the middle of the lane and kicked it out to Damon, who sank a 23-footer from the baseline to eliminate us from the playoffs. At just 21, LeBron knew he shouldn’t be the one to seal the series. Instead he wanted Damon to be the hero and reclaim some pride after Gilbert had embarrassed him. Even though that ended our season, I respected how LeBron had his teammate’s back.


Sabrina Ionescu eyes playing overseas after missing most of WNBA rookie season

ESPN WNBA, Mechelle Voepel from

She is concerned about her time away from competitive basketball, having not played since she was injured July 31. She is doing basketball workouts now, but that doesn’t include contact.

“Partially that has to do with COVID, because I’m not trying to find random people at the gym to play against,” said Ionescu, who is home in California. “I did yoga this morning at 7, yoga and Pilates. I did some cardio, lifted, going to do a basketball workout and recovery. So I really have a very full day.”

Ionescu said that if she goes overseas, it would not be until later in that season, like in January or February, and that Europe is her most likely destination.


Paddy Steinfort and the Craft of Mental Performance Coaching

Sports Illustrated, Julie Kliegman from

The techniques and tactics require trust, but as more athletes embrace the mental side of the game, they draw on experts like Paddy Steinfort to help them find the right headspace.


Does load management using the acute:chronic workload ratio prevent health problems? A cluster randomised trial of 482 elite youth footballers of both sexes

British Journal of Sports Medicine from

Background The acute:chronic workload ratio (ACWR) is commonly used to manage training load in sports, particularly to reduce injury risk. However, despite its extensive application as a prevention intervention, the effectiveness of load management using ACWR has never been evaluated in an experimental study.

Aim To evaluate the effectiveness of a load management intervention designed to reduce the prevalence of health problems among elite youth football players of both sexes.

Methods We cluster-randomised 34 elite youth football teams (16 females, 18 males) to an intervention group (18 teams) and a control group (16 teams). Intervention group coaches planned all training based on published ACWR load management principles using a commercially available athlete management system for a complete 10-month season. Control group coaches continued to plan training as normal. The prevalence of health problems was measured monthly in both groups using the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre Questionnaire on Health Problems.

Results The between-group difference in health problem prevalence (primary outcome) was 1.8%-points (−4.1 to 7.7 %-points; p=0.55) with no reduction in the likelihood of reporting a health problem in the intervention group (relative risk 1.01 (95% CI 0.91 to 1.12); p=0.84) compared with the control group.

Conclusions We observed no between-group difference, suggesting that this specific load management intervention was not successful in preventing health problems in elite youth footballers.


Five years of Jurgen Klopp: The real secret to Liverpool’s success? Patience | FourFourTwoFFT_LOGO

FourFourTwo, Matt Ladson from

Three-and-a-half-years into Jurgen Klopp’s reign, Liverpool hadn’t finished higher than fourth, and had lost three finals. But the club had a plan it was committed to, writes Matt Ladson


How stress affects your brain and how to reverse it

Stanford University, Stanford Medicine, Scope blog from

When the fight-or-flight stress response was first hardwired into our ancestors’ brains, predators were a top concern.

But, times have changed.

“I’ve been sitting at the same desk for six months now, and there’s just not been a lot of predators,” quipped Stanford bioengineer Russ AltmanOpens in a new window, MD, PhD, as he welcomed his guest, neurobiologist Andrew Huberman, PhD, to a show on stress and the brain for Stanford Engineering’s podcast series, the “Future of Everything.”

Altman’s joke highlights an important point. The things that stress humans out have changed dramatically over the years, however the human stress response has remained largely the same.


Transparent fibre sensors ‘smell, hear and touch’

The Engineer from

The transparent conducting fibres are 100 times thinner than a human hair and could be applied to health monitoring, Internet of Things devices and biosensing.

The fibre printing technique, reported in Science Advances, can be used to make non-contact, wearable, portable respiratory sensors. According to Cambridge University, these printed sensors are high-sensitivity, low-cost and can be attached to a mobile phone to collect breath pattern information, sound and images simultaneously.

First author Andy Wang, a PhD student from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, used the fibre sensor to test the amount of breath moisture leaked through his face covering, for respiratory conditions such as normal breathing, rapid breathing, and simulated coughing. The fibre sensors are said to have significantly outperformed comparable commercial sensors, particularly in monitoring rapid breathing, which replicates shortness of breath.


FUTURECRAFT Exploring the Upper Limits: Meet the New Textile Innovation That Changes How We Create Footwear

Adidas; Fionn Corcoran-Tadd, Benjamin Kleiman, Ian Hennebery & Clemens Dyckmans from

As is the case with many innovation journeys, it started in a basement with a small but dedicated group of the adidas Future team. The original inspiration came from architecture and some interesting experiments where we saw robotics used in a creative way to build fibre structures. But it was clear from the start that there was no script. With other technologies, there are other people doing similar things, but not with this. The fact that there is no real precedent means the journey is both exciting and frustrating. We’re writing the script as we go, so there’s a lot of trial and error, although our vision is always clear.

We wanted to see how we as a team could interact with robotics and athlete data in a meaningful, creative way. The process of creating and refining new STRUNG software, hardware and prototypes led to increased buy-in and more and more people joining as development became more complex. The travel restrictions that came with the pandemic brought its own challenges, but we were able to navigate some of these and maximise our efficiency due to having connected STRUNG robots on three continents. This allowed upper designs to be sent on to each machine remotely, meaning refinement work was ongoing around the clock.


Olympic legend invests in sports analytics platform

BusinessCloud (UK), Jonathan Symcox from

Triathlete Alistair Brownlee MBE has joined INCUS Performance as an investor and strategic advisor.

The double Olympic and multiple world champion will help develop new product features and business development aspects at Loughborough-based INCUS.

The platform provides data and analytics from endurance training sessions in minute detail and is working on automated insights that contextualise the numbers and show how these can be applied when progressing towards a specific goal.


How COVID Affected the NBA Playoffs

GQ, Michael Pina from

From a health and safety perspective, the NBA’s bubble experiment has been a rousing success. Rapid-response COVID-19 tests combined with strict, commonsense safety protocols have, since July, protected every player, coach, and team employee from catching the coronavirus at Walt Disney World. But in the four months that led up to the season’s resumption, over 30 NBA players were diagnosed with COVID-19 and then entered the bubble after a period of recovery. (For confidentiality reasons, the NBA declined to provide an official count; GQ’s estimate is drawn from various media reports and press releases made by the league before the season resumed.)

What do we know about how COVID-19 affected these players on and off their court? And to what degree did these pre-bubble cases affect the outcome of the playoffs?

We know that the NBA was very cautious about protecting players from long-term health complications. Each player who tested positive for coronavirus had to pass a series of physical examinations before they could work up a sweat with their teammates, including electrocardiograms that detect changes in the heartbeat. “The NBA has done cardiovascular screenings for years,” according to Dr. Matthew Martinez, a representative for the NBA player’s association and a cardiologist for Major League Soccer and the New York Jets, so the league had a reference baseline for those tests.

There turned out to be no heart-related abnormalities due to COVID-19, which was a pleasant surprise for Martinez: “[In July], we thought we would find a lot of them,” he said.


Genetics of height and risk of atrial fibrillation: A Mendelian randomization study

PLOS Medicine, Scott Damrauer et al. from

Background

Observational studies have identified height as a strong risk factor for atrial fibrillation, but this finding may be limited by residual confounding. We aimed to examine genetic variation in height within the Mendelian randomization (MR) framework to determine whether height has a causal effect on risk of atrial fibrillation.
Methods and findings

In summary-level analyses, MR was performed using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of height (GIANT/UK Biobank; 693,529 individuals) and atrial fibrillation (AFGen; 65,446 cases and 522,744 controls), finding that each 1-SD increase in genetically predicted height increased the odds of atrial fibrillation (odds ratio [OR] 1.34; 95% CI 1.29 to 1.40; p = 5 × 10−42). This result remained consistent in sensitivity analyses with MR methods that make different assumptions about the presence of pleiotropy, and when accounting for the effects of traditional cardiovascular risk factors on atrial fibrillation. Individual-level phenome-wide association studies of height and a height genetic risk score were performed among 6,567 European-ancestry participants of the Penn Medicine Biobank (median age at enrollment 63 years, interquartile range 55–72; 38% female; recruitment 2008–2015), confirming prior observational associations between height and atrial fibrillation. Individual-level MR confirmed that each 1-SD increase in height increased the odds of atrial fibrillation, including adjustment for clinical and echocardiographic confounders (OR 1.89; 95% CI 1.50 to 2.40; p = 0.007). The main limitations of this study include potential bias from pleiotropic effects of genetic variants, and lack of generalizability of individual-level findings to non-European populations.
Conclusions

In this study, we observed evidence that height is likely a positive causal risk factor for atrial fibrillation. Further study is needed to determine whether risk prediction tools including height or anthropometric risk factors can be used to improve screening and primary prevention of atrial fibrillation, and whether biological pathways involved in height may offer new targets for treatment of atrial fibrillation. [full text]


Why MLB has a brain drain problem in front offices; and how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated it

CBSSports.com, R.J. Anderson from

A former front office type, who had been a senior member of an analytics department, recently recalled when he decided to leave the baseball industry. It was right after he returned home from spring training, which had been shuttered in mid-March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I started preparing my résumé that weekend,” he said. “I got home and was like, ‘I’m going to dust off the old thing.'” By the time the season started nearly four months later, he had escaped to an industry situated on firmer ground than that under Major League Baseball’s cleats.

He’s one of countless individuals who departed the industry this summer. Some exits, like his, were voluntary; many were not, and were instead the result of sweeping layoffs. Even now, as the expanded playoffs continue, teams continue making cuts to their scouting and player development staffs. The upcoming winter is not expected to be kind. Teams will be steeling themselves for the second of potentially three compromised seasons in a row: two because of the pandemic, one because of a work stoppage. In 10 years’ time this stretch could be viewed as the beginning of a transformative period for the industry, and specifically for front offices.

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