Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 22, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for April 22, 2021

 

Women’s world hockey championships canceled for May

ESPN Olympic Sports, Emily Kaplan from

The 2021 IIHF Women’s World Championships in Nova Scotia have been canceled for May, it was announced Wednesday.

The tournament was scheduled to take place May 6-16 with strict COVID-19 protocols. The IIHF and Hockey Canada said in a joint statement that they would try to find new dates for the tournament this summer.

“This is very disappointing news to receive with just a few weeks until the tournament was to begin,” IIHF president Rene Fasel said in a statement. “We strongly believe that we had the adequate safety measures in place to protect players, officials, spectators, and all residents in Halifax and Truro, based on the IIHF and Hockey Canada’s experiences from hosting the IIHF World Junior Championship in Edmonton.


A Tale of Two Jalens: Green and Suggs Follow Separate Routes to NBA Draft

Sportico, Randall Williams from

… According to an Ohio State study, five-star football recruits are estimated to be worth $650,000 in revenue for their programs. Basketball recruits would not be far behind and at schools without football teams, they may even be worth more. But, of course, under NCAA amateurism rules, none can be paid a salary.

Green decided that wasn’t for him. Instead of spending this season on a college campus, he’s been in Walnut Creek, Calif., playing for the NBA’s G League Ignite, a team focused on developing players in the NBA’s minor league. Unlike Suggs, he’s able to receive pay, and his salary reportedly exceeds $500,000. He also didn’t need to wait for the NCAA to allow him to earn money from his name, image and likeness.

Last year, Green signed with Aaron Goodwin, the sports agent who negotiated rookie shoe deals for LeBron James and Kevin Durant. And though he has yet to sign an endorsement deal, he’s expected to earn seven figures per year from whichever shoe brand he signs with. On top of this, he’s also receiving life skills training, such as financial literacy classes.


NHL rebuts Vegas Golden Knights’ Robin Lehner’s claim that league promised to loosen protocols after vaccination

ESPN NHL, Emily Kaplan from

Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Robin Lehner said that NHL players were lied to by the NHL and NHLPA representatives about loosening restrictions after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, a claim that has been disputed by the league.

“They told me yesterday that they’re surveying all the teams to see who has taken the vaccine, and who has not taken the vaccines, and they’re not going to change the rules for us as players until all the players have the vaccine at the same time so it’s not a competitive edge,” Lehner said in an impassioned news conference Wednesday. “That made me go crazy, to be honest. This is human lives and people are struggling with this stuff a lot in society, and we are humans as everyone else.”


First dissertation paper published

Twitter, Courtney Benjamin from

Heat Acclimatization+5-day Heat Acclimation Heart rate: 14 bpm Internal Temp : 0.42 ◦C Sweat Rate and cold sweat : 9%


The cold truth: the role of cryotherapy in the treatment of injury and recovery from exercise

European Journal of Applied Physiology from

Cryotherapy is utilized as a physical intervention in the treatment of injury and exercise recovery. Traditionally, ice is used in the treatment of musculoskeletal injury while cold water immersion or whole-body cryotherapy is used for recovery from exercise. In humans, the primary benefit of traditional cryotherapy is reduced pain following injury or soreness following exercise. Cryotherapy-induced reductions in metabolism, inflammation, and tissue damage have been demonstrated in animal models of muscle injury; however, comparable evidence in humans is lacking. This absence is likely due to the inadequate duration of application of traditional cryotherapy modalities. Traditional cryotherapy application must be repeated to overcome this limitation. Recently, the novel application of cooling with 15 °C phase change material (PCM), has been administered for 3-6 h with success following exercise. Although evidence suggests that chronic use of cryotherapy during resistance training blunts the anabolic training effect, recovery using PCM does not compromise acute adaptation. Therefore, following exercise, cryotherapy is indicated when rapid recovery is required between exercise bouts, as opposed to after routine training. Ultimately, the effectiveness of cryotherapy as a recovery modality is dependent upon its ability to maintain a reduction in muscle temperature and on the timing of treatment with respect to when the injury occurred, or the exercise ceased. Therefore, to limit the proliferation of secondary tissue damage that occurs in the hours after an injury or a strenuous exercise bout, it is imperative that cryotherapy be applied in abundance within the first few hours of structural damage.


US Club Soccer announces return of id2 program with new format for 2021

SoccerWire from

After a brief hiatus due to COVID-19, US Club Soccer announced the return of its id2 programming and its new format for 2021.

Free to all participants, the id2 Program is an opportunity for players to be identified, scouted and developed through a progression of events offered by US Club Soccer. These events include regional selection events and national training camps, culminating in the selection of an id2 National Selection Team for additional developmental experiences.

US Club Soccer will host approximately 10 regional-based id2 Selection events from May to October 2021. These events will consist of one-day programs that will include scouted tactical training sessions followed by 11v11 match play.


My COVID-19 Year as a Youth Sports Parent

Global Sport Matters, Jon Solomon from

Lacking national leadership and shared safety criteria, youth sports during the pandemic have been a fragmented quagmire of some people doing their best and others ignoring common sense—leaving parents and children to fend for themselves. Will anything change moving forward?


The pulse in your face and an app could replace biometric health monitors

Biometric Update, Jim Nash from

A biometrics idea for contactless monitoring of blood pressure and other health indicators has shown up in a pair of unrelated telemedicine concepts.

Both remote diagnostic methods, one still in the labs and the other now commercialized, use AI algorithms to monitor a person’s pulse using a phone.

The techniques note changes in skin created by blood flow. As blood pulses through skin, the skin becomes more or less translucent, a biometric that can be captured in real time.

In fact, the effect can be seen by AI in any digital video.


There’s no knowing what’s known about osteoarthritis (yet)

BJSM Blog from

Knowledge empowers people to understand their health and make choices about how to manage it. For people who have osteoarthritis, knowledge and beliefs influence their physical activity levels, participation in social and leisure activities, support-seeking and management decisions, and their wellbeing.1 2 Osteoarthritis has an enormous (and rising) burden on individuals and societies worldwide,3 so it is vital that we develop effective interventions to reduce this burden.


Reducing Injury Risk in Youth Hockey

Orthopedics This Week, Tracey Romero from

Number of games played throughout the season, asymmetrical and poor dynamic postural control and better explosive athletic performance are all individual predictors of a general or lower limb injury, new research finds.

In the study, “Game Exposure, Player Characteristics, and Neuromuscular Performance Influence Injury Risk in Professional and Youth Field Hockey Players,” published online on April 6, 2021 in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers set out to identify factors that might predict injury in professional and youth field hockey players.

“Identifying factors that contribute to the occurrence of injury is an important step in designing training programs to minimize the risk of injury. However, despite high injury rates, variables contributing to injury in field hockey players remain relatively unexplored,” they wrote.


Do you really need to drink 8 glasses of water a day? An exercise scientist explains why your kidneys say ‘no’

The Conversation, Tamara Hew-Butler from

The warmer weather and longer days have inspired reminders to “stay hydrated” and drink eight glasses of water – or about two liters – a day.

Not to burst anyone’s water bottle, but healthy people can actually die from drinking too much water. I am an exercise physiologist, and my research focuses on overhydration and how drinking too much water affects the body. Since water – and sodium – balance is essential to life, it is extremely rare for people to die from drinking too much – or too little – fluid. In most cases, your body’s finely tuned molecular processes are unconsciously taking care of you.


Opt-out decisions throw wrench into NFL draft options

Associated Press, Josh Dubow from

Caleb Farley was the first top prospect to make the decision that has added a whole new layer of uncertainty to the annual crapshoot that is the NFL draft.

The talented Virginia Tech cornerback decided back in July to skip the 2020 season because of the coronavirus. Having lost his mother to cancer in 2018, Farley was unwilling to put another loved one at risk and felt it would be safer to skip the season no matter the impact on his draft status.

Farley had plenty of players follow his lead, including several others set to be high draft picks next week such as LSU receiver Ja’Marr Chase, Oregon tackle Penei Sewell, Northwestern tackle Rashawn Slater and Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons.

Now it’s up to NFL teams to figure out how much to weigh those decisions in their draft evaluations and how to project what kind of prospects they will be.


Should Cleveland Browns consider drafting injured players?

Dawg Pound Daily blog, Elliott Kennel from

… The team should not blindly draft injured players hoping for 100% recovery. It matters what kind of injury it is, and very extensive due diligence is required if a multimillion-dollar investment is qualified. Needless to say, the name of this humble publication is Dawg Pound Daily, not the New England Journal of Medicine, and we are not medical specialists and we certainly have no inside medical information about the particular athlete.

However, we can read the sports medicine literature. For example, check out the Orthopaedic journal of sports medicine from April 4 2017 for the lowdown on recovery rates from ACL tears. Of course, not all ACL injuries are the same. The draft team needs to be consulting with their medical staff to determine which athletes are likely to make it back and what the risk factors are.

The data shows that an ACL injury without additional complications, once the kiss of death to an NFL career, may not be an acceptable risk factor in today’s NFL, especially given that the rate of success in drafting NFL prospects is less than 100%.

If you want to calculate a number, you could estimate the failure rate of ACL surgeries, and subtract that amount of draft capital from his original draft position to arrive at his new modified draft stock.

For example, if before the pick Simmons was the 12th most valuable player in the draft (worth about 1,200 draft points on the standard scale) and you thought the failure rate was 20%, you would estimate his new value would be 80 percent of his original value or 960 draft points which would place him about 17th overall.


AP source: NFL exploring changes to scouting combine

Associated Press, Rob Maaddi from

… The league is seeking input from players who attended the combine previously and rookies who went through this year’s version. Teams and their medical staffs also will provide their assessment.


Dent in the pipeline: NHL draft-eligible players take a hit

Associated Press, Stephen Whyno from

A few years from now, Brandt Clarke might be able to brag he took the Auston Matthews path to the NHL by playing in Europe during his draft year.

“He kind of went over voluntarily,” Clarke said. “I went over out of desperation.”

Clarke and other 2021 draft-eligible prospects were forced to different paths this season when their leagues couldn’t stage a season because of the pandemic. Clarke was supposed to play for Barrie in the Ontario Hockey League, which on Tuesday abandoned plans to play this season, a move that plunged countless young players into uncertainty during a year that has put a dent in hockey’s developmental pipeline.

“There’s a lot of my friends in my age group that didn’t play this season, and, yeah, that sucks,” said Clarke, who is 18. “Some of them have grown a lot as players and could have taken huge steps in their draft years and whatnot. It’s hard to base your draft off a 16-year-old’s season, and now that’s what a lot of them are getting based off of.”

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.