Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 10, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for February 10, 2021

 

Steven Adams and Zion Williamson are the NBA’s strongest tag team

ESPN NBA, Andrew Lopez from

… In games, Pelicans’ ball handlers can go off of double screens with Williamson or Adams on either elbow. Sometimes they’ll run through both. Sometimes they’ll use one while the other screener rolls. Sometimes they’ll ignore both and drive to the goal. Sometimes the other player whose screen isn’t used — Adams or Williamson — will screen for the screener to get an action going.

“That would be pretty annoying,” Adams said with a chuckle.

And those screens are effective. The league-wide average for shots directly off a pick is 0.98 points per chance, according to Second Spectrum tracking. The Pelicans average 1.12 points per chance whenever a player fires directly off a Williamson or Adams screen.


LeBron James – Tom Brady’s 7th Super Bowl win at age 43 ‘inspiring,’ but doesn’t influence career timeline

ESPN NBA, Dave McMenamin from

LeBron James, now 36 years old and in his 18th NBA season, said that seeing a 43-year-old Tom Brady win his seventh Super Bowl title in his 21st season was “inspiring” but not necessarily informative. The Los Angeles Lakers star won’t be planning the final stage of his playing career based off anything that Brady is doing on the football field.

“I’ve been watching him for quite a while now, and just to see him go out and do the things that he’s done in his career, for him to win another one yesterday in the fashion that he won, it was pretty cool,” James said Monday after putting up 28 points, 14 rebounds and 12 assists in L.A.’s 119-112 overtime win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. “It was very inspiring for a guy like myself. But two different sports, two different positions.


Could Phil Foden become Pep Guardiola’s crowning achievement as a coach?

FourFourTwo, Richard Jolly from

For years, there has been a way of annoying Pep Guardiola and it has not entailed mentioning Jose Mourinho. Ask him why Phil Foden is not playing more and, depending upon his mood, Guardiola may react. Ask him if Foden would be loaned out, as someone did a couple of years ago, and he responded with incredulity. He was too precious to be trusted to someone else, even if those were not the Catalan’s exact words.

Initially, perhaps the Anglocentric line of questioning took him by surprise: Guardiola has fielded rather more queries about Foden than Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez or Ferran Torres, foreign, and often more experienced and costlier, rivals for a place. Invariably, Guardiola’s reply involves referencing how often Foden has played, rather than focusing on the games he has not: it is now 102 appearances before his 21st birthday for one of Europe’s elite clubs. Few of his peers have as many at such a level.

Foden’s masterpiece, his catalytic role in Sunday’s demolition of Liverpool, perhaps the most important intervention in this season’s title race to date, may have one side-effect for his manager: more unwanted questions the next time Foden is benched to accommodate a different high-class player instead.


Young Athletes Need their Sleep to Achieve Top Performance

Newswise, Henry Ford Health System from

As Michigan high school student athletes get back to sports competition this week, most are not getting the sleep they need to perform at their best, said Meeta Singh, M.D., a nationally recognized sleep medicine specialist at Henry Ford Health System.

Many young athletes simply don’t focus on getting the sleep they need to recover from training and the energy they expend playing their sport, which ultimately affects performance on game day. In fact, according to a survey from the American College Health Association, most student athletes reported four nights of insufficient sleep each week. Another study from the NCAA reported that one-third of student athletes got fewer than seven hours of sleep each night.


How does Cold Water used as a Recovery Method Affect Strength and Endurance in Sports Performance?

Barca Innovation Hub, Adrian Castillo Garcia from

Recovery between sessions is extremely important for high training loads in professional sports. If the rest period is not appropriate, this could result in the athlete not being able to perform the amount of work required to produce the adaptations that eventually lead to improved performance. Because of that, optimising the recovery strategies is one of the main tasks for coaches and trainers.

In this context, one of the most popular recovery methods is immersion in cold water, which involves partial or total immersion in water at a temperature of 10-15ºC during 5-20 minutes.1 It has traditionally been hypothesised that cold water accelerates recovery after a training session, which could possibly contribute to maximising adaptive responses chronically. Although cold water is an effective method to reduce pain within 24 hours after training,2 showing that it can be an effective method to greatly reduce fatigue, there are other mechanisms induced by cold water that could also reduce training adaptations. Two of these mechanisms are the reduction of blood flow and inflammation. Cold induces a vasoconstrictor response and subsequent decrease in blood flow that decreases the amino acid transport and, therefore, muscle protein synthesis,3 thus contributing to a reduction of muscle hypertrophy and strength development. Also, the reduction of the inflammatory response associated with cold could limit an essential mechanism of the muscle recovery process after training, which would result in lower muscle mass gain in the long term. For example, a study published by Roberts et al. in 2015 compared the effects of immersion in cold water (10 minutes at 10ºC, immersion of legs up to the waist) and the active recovery (bicycle at low intensity) on changes in muscle mass, strength and satellite cells (muscle stem cells) activity in a strength training program.4 After 12 weeks of training, researchers observed that those who recovered with cold water had significantly reduced training adaptations, apart from having lower mass gain and muscle strength and a reduction of key proteins in muscle synthesis and the activation of satellite cells for up to 2 days after training.


How college basketball teams travel during COVID-19, from battling boredom in hotels to rising at dawn for testing to no snacking on the bus

Chicago Tribune, Shannon Ryan from

Illinois’ list of travel items includes basketballs and uniforms, of course. But this season coach Brad Underwood reminds his sixth-ranked team to pack something else besides a change of clothes and a toothbrush.

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking, heading into the postseason and Big Ten Tournament, about taking gaming systems,” Underwood said. “There is nothing worse than sitting in a hotel room.”

Video games are one of the few escapes for players as they pass time awaiting tipoffs on the road while restricted from interacting much with teammates or enjoying a new city.


20 sports tech ideas to invest in now – Class of 2021

SportsPro SmartSeries from

For the second year running, SportsPro presents its pick of sports tech startups and early-stage companies whose products and solutions should be on every investor’s radar.

To help compile this year’s cohort, the opinions and predictions of investors, advisors, executives and analysts were sought from across the global sports tech ecosystem, each of whom shared their views on the standout companies and top trends to watch in the sector in 2021.


GitHub – TwentyBN/sense: Enhance your application with the ability to see and interact with humans using any RGB camera.

GitHub – TwentyBN from

sense is an inference engine to serve powerful neural networks for action recognition, with a low computational footprint. In this repository, we provide:

  • Two models out-of-the-box pre-trained on millions of videos of humans performing actions in front of, and interacting with, a camera. Both neural networks are small, efficient, and run smoothly in real time on a CPU.
  • Demo applications showcasing the potential of our models: gesture recognition, fitness activity tracking, live calorie estimation.

  • MLB players to wear electronic tracers, face discipline

    Associated Press, Ronald Blum from

    Major League Baseball players, on-field staff and non-playing personnel who require access to them at ballparks must wear electronic tracing wristbands from the start of spring training and face discipline for violations.

    Players will be encouraged to get vaccines but are not required to get them.

    That was part of upgraded health protocols agreed to by Major League Baseball and the players’ association to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic.


    Meet the Smurfs: A bone metabolism family

    EurekAlert! Science News, Osaka University from

    Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) has a strong osteogenic (bone forming) ability. BMP has already been clinically applied to spinal fusion and non-union fractures. However, dose-dependent side effects related to BMP use, such as inflammatory reactions at the administration site, prevent widespread use.

    For safe use, it was necessary to clarify how the BMP signaling pathway is controlled. In a report published in Bone Research, a group of researchers from Osaka University and Ehime University has recently identified a novel role for the protein Smurf2 in regulating bone formation by BMP.


    Most Concussions Come From Practice, Not Games, an NCAA Study Found

    Sports Illustrated, Joseph Salvador from

    College football players are more likely to suffer from a concussion during practice than they are during a live game, according to an observational study of NCAA Division I players. The study that looked at six NCAA football teams from 2015 to 2019 found that 72% of concussions and 67% of head impacts occurred during practices according to Michael McCrea, PhD of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and co-authors.


    Practices of Athletic Trainers Using Weight Charts to Determine Hydration Status and Fluid-Intervention Strategies

    Journal of Athletic Training from

    Context

    Determining an athlete’s hydration status allows hydration-related concerns to be identified before significant medical or performance concerns arise. Weight charts are an accurate measure of hydration status changes, yet their clinical use by athletic trainers (ATs) is unknown.
    Objective

    To investigate ATs’ use of weight charts in athletic settings and describe their subsequent clinical decisions.
    Design

    Cross-sectional survey.
    Setting

    High schools and National Collegiate Athletic Association Divisions I, II, III and National Association Intercollegiate Athletics colleges.
    Patients or Other Participants

    A total of 354 ATs (men = 162, women = 175; 17 respondents did not answer the demographic questions) responded across athletic settings (Division I [45.7%]; Division II, Division III, National Association Intercollegiate Athletics combined [n = 19.9%]; and high school [34.4%]).
    Main Outcome Measure(s)

    The 26-question online survey was developed by content experts and pilot tested before data collection. Participants answered questions focused on weight-chart use (implementation, timing, and calculations) and clinical decision processes (policies, interventions, and referral). Frequency statistics were calculated.
    Results

    The majority of ATs (57.2%) did not use weight charts. Of those who did, most (76.0%) used charts with football, soccer (28%), and wrestling (6%) athletes. They calculated changes as either an absolute (42.2%) or percentage (36.7%) change from prepractice to postpractice; only 11.7% used a baseline weight for calculations. Of those who used the percentage change in body mass, 66.0% selected a threshold of −3% to −4% for an intervention. Most ATs (97.0%) intervened with verbal education, whereas only one-third (37.0%) provided specific fluid amounts based on body mass changes.
    Conclusions

    Typically, ATs in athletic settings did not use weight charts. They considered a body mass change of –3% the indication for intervention but did not specify rehydration amounts for hypohydrated athletes. Educational workshops or technology applications could be developed to encourage ATs to use weight charts and calculate appropriate individual fluid interventions for their athletes. [full text]


    KU studies show breakfast can improve basketball shooting performance

    University of Kansas, KU News Service from

    Parents around the world have long told us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Soon, basketball coaches may join them.

    Researchers at the University of Kansas have published a study showing that eating breakfast can improve a basketball player’s shooting performance, sometimes by significant margins. The study, along with one showing that lower body strength and power can predict professional basketball potential, is part of a larger body of work to better understand the science of what makes an elite athlete.


    Are the Tokyo Olympics really going to happen?

    ESPN, D'Arcy Maine from

    Last March, the Tokyo Olympics were postponed and since then, the speculation has been endless.

    In January, there was a rumor that the International Olympic Committee would be canceling the Games outright. Earlier that month, two surveys revealed that more than 80% of the Japanese citizens surveyed believed the Games would not go on — or should not.

    So, can the Olympics actually happen this summer?

    While we can’t know for sure, here’s what we do know so far


    Why Tennis Is Still Not Ready to Play Moneyball

    Harvard Data Science Review, Stephanie Kovalchik from

    … If Moneyball is the quintessential underdog story for modern sport, tennis may be the ultimate story of missed opportunity. To understand why analytics have yet to enter tennis’s mainstream, we must trace the history of quantitative study of the game and the structural changes to professional competition that coincided with it. What emerges is a cautionary lesson of the way a sport can stymie statistical innovation when it allows data to become a tightly guarded commodity whose owners aren’t invested in the understanding or improvement of sport performance.

    Leave a Comment

    Your email address will not be published.