Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 6, 2021

… She has not skied on the long boards since winning a super-G in Bansko, Bulgaria, more than 11 months ago.

“I’ve not had time for speed training, yet,” said Shiffrin, who will next race a night slalom in Flachau, Austria, on Jan. 12 and two giant slaloms in Maribor, Slovenia, the following weekend.

“Then there might be a chance to get one or two sessions on super-G skies before (the Jan. 26 giant slalom in) Kronplatz,” she said. “That would be ideal — that’s the plan.”

COVID-19 is threatening to wreck the Premier League schedule. There were three matches postponed in the English top flight in December and one in January, the first since “Project Restart” saw football return in June, with further matches threatened due to a spike in positive cases and number of stars in self-isolation.

The spate of positive COVID-19 results — the two weeks of testing through to Jan. 3 returned 58 positives compared to just 13 in the fortnight previous to that — in the Premier League, and the growing uncertainty over when and if matches could be played led to calls for a two-week break that would allow teams to regroup. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the Premier League has remained steadfast in its trust in the protocols and faith in keeping the league going.

With the FA Cup third round across the weekend of Jan. 8-11 and a hectic, unrelenting schedule set to run through May 23, there are growing fears over whether football in England is destined for an unsustainable fixture pile-up during a pandemic. Here’s the state of play.

There’s a term the Cleveland Cavaliers — and other sports teams — like to use when injuries hit: Next man up.

Cleveland’s dire situation is taking that to a whole new level.

“It is what it is. We just gotta figure it out,” head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said following the 103-83 loss. “We are down bodies. We talked about adversity a few games back. I think this is the epitome of it. We’ve gotta figure it out and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

… This Monday, ‘AS’ summed up the curriculum of Sebastiano Pochettino, who at his age has an enviable education. He studied at Saint Paul’s School in Barcelona and then graduated in Sports Science from the University of Southampton, during his father’s time at St Mary’s Stadium.

During those formative years, he worked as a trainer for several athletes at the university. After graduating, he was an assistant in the Sports Science department and managed it before becoming a physical trainer for Tottenham in 2019.

Now, also with a master’s degree from the University of Paris-Saclay, he arrives precisely in the French capital to take on a major challenge with his father: to make PSG a Champions League champion.

… “The sports science department is one of the best I’ve seen since I’ve been involved in football,” said Tavernier. “We’ve got a department that works really well together and pushes the boys when it’s needed during the week.

“If you need rest or a gym session, they’re always on it. Recovery-wise, they’re always on it. You can see the facilities at the training ground too. We’ve got the cryo [chamber] for recovery. That department is second to none.

“Nothing has changed since the start of the season. Our intensity in training, and the intensity in how we’re playing, is the same. If you keep doing the right things, it continues to show. That’s what we’ve been doing and that’s what we have to keep doing. That’s our main focus for the second part of the season.

… [Bob] Bowman, ASU’s swim and dive coach, described coming back to training as an “emergency fitness phase.” He used a metaphor of a savings account representing athletes’ fitness, saying it had been drained.

Bowman said this past semester that he was concerned about getting his athletes “back into a fitness level after having, really, missed an unprecedented amount of time over the summer,” adding they would have a “long buildup” through the end of the year.

Zeke Jones, ASU wrestling coach and Olympic silver medalist, said the training programs developed for wrestlers vying for Olympic competition has been shifted to peak next August.

… In 2020, amid the backdrop of the pandemic, the MLB schedule was also reduced from 162 regular season games to a mere 60, although, as Cleveland President Chris Antonetti told the media, “so much has happened over the course of the season. I know we only played 60 games, but it felt like 260.”

For his part, Francona never strayed from prioritising the wellbeing of his players and staff. “We had a Zoom call yesterday and the consensus was that we learned things during this pandemic that we will use moving forward, even when we get back to the normal baseball season. I go back to when we left spring training originally; my immediate bosses are [General Manager] Mike Chernoff and Chris Antonetti and they took over like nobody’s business. They were honest, they were upfront and it was first and foremost ‘let’s get everybody safely home to where they need to be, we’re not worried about baseball right now.’ After a time passed, we started to think: ‘how are we going to get ready for when we go back to baseball?’ And our players did an outstanding job, they came in so ready, and once they got there, the first thing we told them is: ‘this is going to be different from anything we’ve ever done’. At every turn, you could either roll your eyes and complain or you can embrace the challenge; and our players did a good job of embracing the challenge.”

Jennifer Langton, Senior Vice President of Player Health and Innovation for the NFL, joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) for their virtual re:Invent conference, where she gave an update on the league’s work with AWS to bring speed and scale to player health and safety initiatives, with the goal of powering a new generation of insights into player injuries, game rules, equipment, rehabilitation, and recovery.

While the league has been working with AWS since 2017 on the NFL Next Gen Stats (NGS) platform, this expanded partnership between the NFL and AWS, announced last year, combines the league’s unique data sets of human performance and football information with AWS’s strong culture of technology innovation to develop a more profound understanding of the game and human performance than has ever existed before.

Fitness gadgets of the future could be powered from an unusual source – the sweat pouring out of their wearers’ bodies.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) created a film which helps to evaporate sweat from skin as people exercise – harvesting it to generate power.

The film is made from cobalt chloride and ethanolamine, chemicals which rapidly absorb water – and can be reused.

Using small electrochemical cells, the researchers show that sweat can generate power – and could herald a future of fitness devices without batteries.

… Dan Forcum, head athletic trainer at La Salle and an employee at Beacon Orthopaedics, initially came up with the idea back in May. He had just receive word sports may resume summer conditioning after a multi-week hiatus, and the program’s current method for checking in student-athletes included tedious and time-consuming front-door screenings. He thought there’s got to be a better way.

“Generally speaking, we’re dealing with teenagers who understand technology, and they all have a phone,” Forcum said. “So we started brainstorming. First we thought we could use a text, but we couldn’t figure out how to do that. And email wouldn’t work. But what if we use a QR code?”

After some trial and error, the system took shape: training staff essentially taped a piece of paper to the wall outside the weight room, for example, and the athlete can open up their phone camera, scan the QR code, follow the link, and complete a seven- or eight-question survey and ensuing manual temperature check.

Unless you’ve been extraordinarily fortunate, you know what it’s like to suffer through an injury layoff. Not only can you no longer race, but you can’t train. Sometimes, you can’t even get out for an easy jog…and, if you can, you can still feel your hard-won fitness slipping away.

In a college football season defined by disruption, chaos and fluid dates of games, the culmination of the season remains on track.

After reports emerged Tuesday that the College Football Playoff title game could be moved because of COVID-19 issues at Ohio State, multiple sources told Yahoo Sports that the Buckeyes have no plans to move back the title game.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith told Yahoo Sports: “We are on track to play.” He added in a statement: “We continue to follow the same protocols as we have all season. We plan to play January 11th.”

… Already an established group with a variety of projects ranging through a multitude of industries, the potential to advance the brand of Purdue Athletics, while offering students unprecedented access to the emerging field of sports analytics was very exciting to The Data Mine.

“The projects that Purdue Athletics is offering with The Data Mine are strongly resonating with students,” Ward said. “The teams were “full” (i.e., reached their maximum capacity) very quickly. Our students are analyzing data with their mentors within the athletic department. The students are creating some innovative solutions for Purdue Athletics.”

Born out of a $1.5 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation in 2014-15, the Statistics Living Learning Community (which gave rise to The Data Mine) featured a yearly cohort of 20 sophomores conducting research in applied disciplines chosen by each student. Living together in Hillenbrand Hall allowed for a tighter, more focused bond amongst the cohort.

The Data Mine officially made its debut in 2018, as the program welcomed more than 100 students into its ranks.

… Rui Marcelino realized that something was missing when he read about the pigeons.

In a 2010 issue of the leading scientific journal Nature, a group of Hungarian research published a paper called: “Hierarchical group dynamics in pigeon flocks.” Up until that point, pigeon behavior had only been studied through mathematical modeling that tried to accurately, well, model the flight patterns of flocks of birds. However, these researchers were able to attach miniature backpacks with GPS devices to a group of pigeons — wait ‘til you see the picture — which enabled them to actually record how the birds moved, rather than predicting how they should be expected to move.

You’ve seen a flock of birds before, and perhaps you’ve taken it for granted, but take a second to consider what a marvel their movements are. The birds travel in near perfect unison, diving and cutting and ascending as if they were all connected by some invisible, imperceptible string, a single brain, or a hidden remote control. What the authors of this new paper wanted to understand was how the birds achieved such an impressive physical harmony.

… Here’s a simple framework to think about halfcourt basketball: the offense works to create an advantage, and then aims to capitalize on that advantage. That means the defense does the opposite: they work to not even allow an advantage in the first place, and then if they fail at that, they work to neutralize any advantage that was gained.

Think about a ball handler going against a defender. The first goal of the offensive player is to gain an advantage: to try to create an opening to take a shot, or get a step past the defender on a drive. The defender’s goal is to not allow any advantage. When people talk about defense in basketball, this is what they typically think of: guarding the ball and stopping any advantage from being created in the first place.