Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 14, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 14, 2021

 

PTPA future: How Novak Djokovic’s labor movement can impact tennis – Sports IllustratedSearch

Sports Illustrated, Donald Dell from

History was on the line for Novak Djokovic at the 2021 U.S. Open, as the 34-year-old Serb was seeking his 21st major title—one that would snap a three-way tie with career-long rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal—and the calendar Grand Slam. On Sunday, the historic achievement was thwarted by Russia’s Daniil Medvedev in the final. But it should not be overlooked that Djokovic was attempting this incredible feat, all while leading a labor movement.

It was at the U.S. Open last summer that Djokovic and fellow player Vasek Pospisil officially announced the formation of the breakaway Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), targeting reforms such as increased prize money and greater transparency when it comes to revenue sharing.

Both had served on the ATP Tour’s player council, with Djokovic most recently serving as its president. The governing body of men’s tennis had provided its players with much: a livelihood, a pension fund, health benefits, things that can’t be accomplished without a volume of organized players. But they no longer felt their voices were being heard.


At his Basketball Hall of Fame induction, Paul Pierce recalls the rocky road to greatness

The Boston Globe, Gary Washburn from

… Pierce ended on serious note, thanking brothers Tony and Derrick Battie for taking him to the hospital and helping save his life after he was stabbed 11 times at a Boston nightclub 21 years ago.

“That helped me realize how precious life was,” he said. “Without them I probably wouldn’t be standing here today. I went on to play 82 games that year. There was no load management. I didn’t know nothing about that. I appreciate life a lot more because of that incident.”


Benintendi’s season numbers aren’t great. But there is a lot of intriguing data on Benintendi – career-high hard hit %, verrrry long (375+ foot) flyouts, improved contact rate, uptick in production vs fastballs

Twitter, Alex Speier, WouldItDong from


Naomi Osaka’s can take her time to return from mental health challenges – Sports IllustratedSearch

Sports Ilustrated, Jon Wertheim from

Osaka’s mental health challenges are nothing new in her isolating sport. What is new is the acceptance she’ll face—and the paths back—if she takes a prolonged break.


Against Kids’ Sports

Substack, Culture Study newsletter, Anne Helen Peterson from

… This is a piece about the professionalization of children’s sports — and how that professionalization has transformed and degraded the desire to play, the desire to be part of something, even just the desire to move into class-siloed, life-swallowing regimentation. Somewhat ironically, this regimentation is fueled by its hazy promise (or at least a hope) to bypass the American class system and secure a route — through college scholarship, or, less commonly, through actual professional play — to stability.

In this way, professionalized kids’ sports manage to distill the decades’ long hollowing of the middle class and the quietly frantic parenting reactions to that destabilization. Participation is cloaked in the casual language of “fun” and “teamwork” and “we’re just doing it because our kid loves it so much,” justifications that only bolster the broken economic systems that have rendered the route to professionalization so attractive.


Inside the rise of Whoop, Boston’s fitness-wearable tech giant

The Boston Globe, Pranshu Verma from

Whoop is one of the most valuable fitness-wearable startups in the world, topping $3.6 billion in value with its latest investment round last week. Elite athletes like Michael Phelps, Patrick Mahomes, and Justin Thomas flash the devices on their wrists. The COVID-19 pandemic has unlocked some clinical applications for the product. And on Wednesday, the company released its most advanced products yet, with new tracking features in its wrist band and an apparel line that lets users embed sensors in workout garments.
Related: Fitness wearable company Whoop raises $200 million, now valued at $3.6 billion

Whoop was founded back in 2012. It was Ahmed’s brainchild, born out of his desire to track how efficiently he was working out. A college athlete and government major with little science background, Ahmed said he read hundreds of medical papers. In study after study, he found that if athletes rigorously tracked certain metrics, like the variability in their heart rate, they could learn if their body was ready to work out or needed rest.


Whoop 4.0 Announced: Here’s What’s New and Changed

DC Rainmaker blog, Ray Maker from

Today, Whoop announced their new 4.0 sensor/device. Whoop is part-device, part-platform. The device is a small pod that doesn’t display any metrics itself, but rather has sensors to collect those metrics and transmit them to your phone and the larger Whoop cloud platform. Historically that’s been heart-rate driven data, but the new 4.0 pod includes blood oxygen levels and skin temperature. Once in the Whoop platform the company provides boatloads of data around what they dub ‘strain’ and ‘recovery’. In other words, how much/hard have you been working out, and how well are you recovering.

And while Whoop’s platform/software has largely been fantastic and innovative, the optical heart rate sensor within the Whoop 3.0 band could only be described as a dumpster fire. And thus, as the saying goes: Crap data in, crap data out. No amount of analytical processing could fix the flaming river of bad data into the platform. I talked about this at length in my review, and some 346 comments since then confirmed this by everyone else. Literally, nobody has managed to show me a single good hard/interval/etc workout with accurate comparative HR data. And yes, I’ve actually continued to wear the Whoop 3.0 sensor since my review. And with 379 workouts worth of data in every possible body location, compared to 2-4 other heart rate sensors per workout, and 531 ‘recoveries’. I’m pretty sure nobody has as much comparative data as I do on this thing. Which, means I’ll be well suited to talk about what, if anything, has changed on the 4.0 edition.


A Stroke Study Reveals the Future of Human Augmentation

WIRED Ideas, Brandy Schillace from

… It wasn’t what the patients learned, but how they learned it: By stimulating the vagus nerve, they had compressed years of physical therapy into months. The trial was meant as a way of repairing damage and restoring motor control. But what if there had been no damage to begin with? In the hands of the healthy and fit, such technology could significantly enhance physical performance—the question is whether humans are ready to contend with it.

The potential applications of this technology aren’t difficult to imagine. As seen in the trial, when the vagus nerve receives extra stimulation, it causes the brain to release neuromodulators, which regulate the body’s responses. They come online just as the patient is attempting a new task, strengthening the motor circuits involved. “When you practice golf or anything, it’s the same,” explains Charles Liu, the lead neurosurgeon of the study and director of the USC Neurorestoration Center. “There isn’t much difference in teaching a stroke victim to use a fork and teaching an elite athlete to hit a baseball better.” It’s just repeated action and developing and reinforcing brain-motor circuits. If that process can be sped up, then we’ve just learned how to optimize the brain—and how to augment human beings.


New machine learning approach can identify your circadian rhythm from a blood sample

Massive Science, Soren Emerson from

Many of the body’s physiological activities, including hunger, wakefulness, and metabolism, run on 24 hour cycles called circadian rhythms. These cycles are primarily controlled by the release of chemical messengers into the bloodstream from the brain and have been linked to cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and weight-gain.

Measuring circadian rhythms could significantly improve medical care. Doctors could better prevent and treat illness by more accurately assessing individual risk of disease and recommending times to eat, take medication, and rest. Circadian rhythms are not used as a clinical indicator at present because there is not an efficient way to measure them. Based on the results of a new study, however, that could change soon.

The results were recently reported in the Journal of Biological Rhythms by a team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.


Living sensors probe mysteries of the gut

MIT Materials Research Laboratory from

Research into the human gut and the microbes key to its work—the gut microbiome—has boomed over the last decade or so because scientists have learned that the overall system has a much larger impact on our bodies than previously thought. Imbalances of chemicals produced in the gut, for example, have been linked to diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and even hyperactivity in kids. Meanwhile, scientists are also working to create better diagnostics and therapies for diseases specific to the gut, like colon cancer.

“The challenge is that the gut is like a black box. We still don’t fully understand it because it’s difficult to access and study,” says Maria Eugenia Inda, a Pew Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Inda and colleagues report a new approach to solve that problem in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. Their work involves encapsulating living bacteria in a tiny, flexible disc of hydrogel that is ingested. Those bacteria, in turn, can detect compounds that could indicate disease. After eventual excretion of the disc, the bacteria within the disc can be analyzed to determine what they’ve detected and in what concentrations.


Tech startup SportGait gains NCYSA partnership, launches app

WilmingtonBiz, Johanna Cano from

With two recent announcements, Wilmington-based SportGait aims to expand its product to a larger consumer base through a partnership and an app launch.

This week, the company announced it had formed a partnership with N.C. Youth Soccer Association, bringing its concussion-decision support technology to the state-wide organization.

SportGait is a startup that has developed a platform for managing concussion symptoms and recovery that can be used by medical providers, coaches and parents.


Navigating Tough Conversations in Statistical Collaboration

American Statistical Association, Amstat News from

Uncomfortable conversations are inevitable in many research and professional relationships, including statistical collaborations. Topics can vary widely due to the different backgrounds and expectations of researchers. Common discussions include those about coauthorship, the role of the statistician, and even technical concepts. Reasons for discomfort can include misaligned expectations, the tone of either participant in the conversation, and particular topics or words (e.g., bias) that might escalate the conversation from congenial to difficult.

Although it feels difficult, it is important to navigate our way through uncomfortable conversations with the goal of ending in mutual understanding and a clear path forward. In The Champion Forum podcast, Jeff Hancher argues that avoiding difficult conversations is a disservice to everyone and gives the following five reasons we should have them:

  • To build mutual trust – As collaborative statisticians, we build trust and respect by being honest with our collaborators, even around difficult topics.
  • To communicate value – We show ­collaborators we value them enough to have tough conversations.
  • To clarify the future – Without having a ­conversation, each party is left to their own interpretation and conclusions, which can be misunderstood and result in misaligned ­expectations.
  • To increase self-awareness – It is important to come to an understanding of where their (or our) understanding may be falling short.
  • To stretch our leadership – With each difficult conversation we have, our ability to have productive conversations improves and the range of topics we are confident in tackling expands.

  • The Eagles’ commitment to analytics helped Doug Pederson, but eventually created a divide. How will it affect Nick Sirianni?

    Bakersfield Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeff McLane from

    Owner Jeffrey Lurie advocates for analytics in part to challenge groupthink. It helped turn Pederson into one of the NFL’s most aggressive play-callers.


    Incredible visual to explain the 3 planes of human movement, how animals move forward

    Twitter, Phil Wagner from

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