Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 1, 2021

… “These girls are some of my best friends,” said Mewis, who hosts a podcast with Courage teammate Lynn Williams. “And this environment is one that has shaped me already so much. And I know will continue to do so… I just feel like right now, this is the best place. And I’m definitely open to anything in the future, but I’m really happy to be home with the Courage.

“A lot has changed here. But a lot, obviously, is still the same. There’s still such a great energy around everybody.”

Tristan Jarry doesn’t plan to spend his summer moping about his rocky playoff performance.

The Pittsburgh Penguins goalie said Friday he’s going to treat the offseason like every other, meaning he will take a few days off and then get back into training hoping to be “the best version of myself” next year.

Jarry’s iffy play played a major factor in Pittsburgh’s first-round loss to the New York Islanders. He allowed 21 goals in the six-game series. His .888 save percentage was well off the .908 he posted during the regular season and his goals against average ballooned from 2.75 to 3.18.

…

After three straight losing seasons, the team picked up three wins in the past nine days to vault to the top of the NWSL standings.

As the Pride look ahead to the next five months of the NWSL season, the team feels bolstered by a sense of chemistry and connection that its captains say is unmatched by any prior Orlando team.

“We’re building an incredible culture here that people should want to be a part of,” [Ashlyn] Harris said. “That’s always been what we’ve wanted here. We’re so set up, we have everything possible we could need. The training facilities, the stadium, the support staff — the organization is incredible. And finally it was time to just put results up.”

This Wednesday, June 2, is Lou Gehrig Day, the day he began his consecutive games streak that would end at 2,130. (A more round number than Cal Ripken’s 2,632.) Both Gehrig’s and Ripken’s streaks seem incredibly disassociated from the game of baseball as it is played today, and really, any sport: Suffice it to say, the Iron Horse never heard the words “load management.”

But there are players who, relatively speaking, still could classify as Iron Men, players who play more games than anybody else, even if these aren’t numbers that would make Gehrig or Ripken blink. Being an Iron Man means something different than it used to. But that doesn’t mean being ready to go out there every day and play doesn’t make a huge difference.

Here are the Iron Men for each team, the players who have played the most games for their current clubs since the beginning of the 2019 season.

When she returned to the University of Wisconsin to finish her master’s degree in 2018, Ann-Renée Desbiens figured she was done playing hockey. At 24 years old and fresh off a silver medal at the Olympic Games, she simply wasn’t enjoying it anymore, and the lack of suitable professional opportunities in the sport didn’t provide any incentive to continue. With her NCAA eligibility exhausted, Desbiens was ready to move on and prioritize her off-ice career prospects. But as she hung up her pads to focus on her studies, she still wanted to give back to the program that had done so much for her. After discussions with team staff, the former Badgers star opted to rejoin the women’s hockey team ― this time as a goalie coach.

Juggling her responsibilities with her classes, Desbiens attended practices twice a week and planned drills in her spare time. Among her pupils that year was Kristen Campbell, who she’ll be suiting up alongside as part of Hockey Canada’s centralization roster leading into the 2022 Olympics.

… When a 10-game schedule was announced in late January, there was relief. But given the fact that Cal had only just returned to a regular training schedule in mid-January, the team still felt underprepared.

The Bears unsurprisingly stumbled through the first few steps but found their footing on the heels of a difficult loss in Corvallis, Oregon. Here’s how the historic, albeit mediocre, 2020-21 season unfolded, and how Cal redeemed itself after hitting rock bottom early on.

… In addition to deep conviction, a key factor that allows cult members to hold onto their beliefs—especially in the face of damning evidence to the contrary—is social support. It is very difficult for isolated believers to maintain the faith solely on their own. But a group of followers can support one another and collaboratively bolster their beliefs.

We have all been there before in our professional lives: working a job where we feel more like a machine for the company than a human being with thoughts, emotions, and opinions; a job where the higher-ups care only about performance outcomes above all else. Now, two Halifax entrepreneurs have launched a startup company looking to change all that.

Bryce Tully and Michael Bawol have recently launched Innerlogic, which operates a web application that tracks employees’ emotional wellbeing in the workplace. The app can track complex dynamics like team trust, team communication, and team alignment.

“We just noticed a lack of good information and a lack of good tracking and management in the more dynamic and emotion spaces on teams,” says Tully.

Looks like Fitbit Alta HR wins the race (though Oura/Whoop not included). Sleep trackers were good at estimating Sleeping symbol time but NOT good for stages of sleep.

… Even though companies like Garmin or Apple or Fitbit keep their data processing algorithms pretty close to the chest, my PhD research involves a lot of work with wearable technology, so I have a pretty solid understanding of what’s going on under the hood when a GPS watch is estimating things like running speed or heart rate.

I immediately noticed that the supposed “heart rate” being reported by the GPS watch in the screenshot above looked suspiciously similar to the range of values you’d see for cadence—around 165 to 185 steps per minute. So, I asked him to send me an overlay of his heart rate and his cadence (which is also measured by the watch). An, lo and behold—at halfway through the run, a near-perfect match!

In a press conference in early March, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made a subtle but significant shift in the language used to describe the department’s approach to fighting hunger and promoting health.

“It’s very easy to talk in this country about food insecurity,” Vilsack said. “But I think there’s a much larger problem we have to confront, which is not only food insecurity but nutrition insecurity.”

What’s the difference—and how might it affect policy decisions for years to come?

As tracking data grows in NHL, you’re going to see a number of teams build out their analytics department. He’s going to do this with the Kings.

… [Rich] Paul started his agency, Klutch Sports Group, nine years ago. Since then, he has negotiated nearly two billion dollars in deals for his clients. His list is growing and includes some of the N.B.A.’s most extraordinary athletes—Anthony Davis, of the Los Angeles Lakers; Ben Simmons, of the Philadelphia 76ers; Trae Young, of the Atlanta Hawks—but his biggest client, by far, was also his first.

Paul met LeBron James in 2002, at the Akron-Canton Airport. They were both waiting for a flight to Atlanta. James, who was seventeen, was widely expected to be the N.B.A.’s No. 1 draft pick the following year; he had already appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and had been described as the next Michael Jordan. Paul, who was twenty-one, was selling vintage sports jerseys out of the trunk of his car. James spotted Paul wearing a Houston Oilers jersey with the name of the quarterback Warren Moon on it. He was impressed and said so. Paul told James that his source was a store in Atlanta, called Distant Replays, and said that James should mention him if he went. The two stayed in touch. James told me that they talked about “basketball, football, and the greatest that have ever played the game. And then just about being a Black kid growing up in the inner city, and the struggles that come with that.”

… Now, smartwatches don’t that many sensors attached to your body. So they have to rely on data from heart rate sensors. While some watches use photoplethysmography (PPG) — using flashing LEDs to measure blood flow and calculate heart rate — other modern smartwatches like the Apple Watch use ECG (Electrocardiograms) and PPG both for more accurate measurements.

Firstbeat analytics, a company which is now owned by smartwatch maker Garmin, is one of the leading companies to develop an algorithm to use data from heartrate sensors, accelerometers, and gyroscopes to measure VO2Max on wearable devices.

The company said that it also takes into account other factors such as the speed of your movement and, the inclination of your running, walking, or cycling activity to gauge how much work you’re putting in.

The firm claims that its algorithm is 95% accurate compared to the lab tests. You can learn more about how aerobic fitness related to VO2Max and how Firstbeat analytics converts it into a measurable algorithm in this white paper.