Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 20, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 20, 2021

 

James Milner: Being careful with Virgil Van Dijk is a necessity

Four Four Two from

Liverpool vice-captain James Milner admits they have to look after Virgil Van Dijk even if the players think he is Superman.

The Netherlands captain was rested for the midweek victory over AC Milan, but returned to play his fifth full 90 minutes in the Premier League this season since making a successful recovery from ACL knee surgery last October as Crystal Palace were beaten 3-0.

Manager Jurgen Klopp hopes leaving out the Dutchman will become less of a necessity as the months go on and he is up to speed with the rigours of the campaign.


Bo Jackson: An oral history of the legend, from Auburn to Bo Knows

Sporting News from

… Bobby Wallace, assistant Auburn football coach 1981-85. Currently director of athletics at the University of West Alabama: Obviously, his talent just jumped out at you. So the spring of Bo’s junior year of high school, we invited him to the spring game and got a jump on everybody in recruiting him. His mom came, and they liked it. The real big thrill of recruitment was being able to watch him in all the different sports that he played: track, baseball and football in high school, and watch him do the miraculous things that he could do. It was unbelievable.

Paul Finebaum, SEC Network: I remember it very well. A running back named Alan Evans was considered the No. 1 player in the state and he also went to Auburn. Bo was getting a lot of attention because he was a great baseball player as well. He was really great at everything. I was a writer for the Birmingham Post Herald, and I did write a big article focused on the tug-of-war between Alabama and Auburn and how it seemed to be affecting Bear Bryant. I even had a chance to interview Bo’s mom. She did not like the idea of him going to Alabama, because a coach had told Bo he would not start until his junior year and that really upset them. That helped Coach Dye get the advantage, and when he went to Auburn it was a death blow to Alabama. There was still some skepticism about how good he would be, but when he showed up for camp everyone was whispering about Bo. You thought he would be good, but then by the first or second game he exploded, and it was no longer a myth.


Supersized steaks, $1,500 tabs and lots of laughs – NFL linemen dinners are back and bigger than ever

ESPN NFL, Jake Trotter and Brooke Pryor from

One by one, the tubs of oysters began arriving.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers had invited the entire Green Bay Packers offensive line to the Kentucky Derby, which had included a dinner out in Louisville. As each oyster bucket slammed onto the table, young Green Bay center J.C. Tretter grew even more mortified about his misconstrued appetizer order.

“Aaron was like, ‘Did you order 12 dozen oyster Rockefellers!?'” recalled Tretter, now the NFLPA president and Cleveland Browns starting center. “And I was like, ‘No, I just ordered 12 of them!'”

As Packers tackle David Bakhtiari returned from the bathroom, he overheard someone in the kitchen screaming, “Who the f— thought they ordered 144 oyster Rockefellers!?”


Serendipity has marked Anson Dorrance’s illustrious career

University of North Carolina, Athletics from

For the Carolina women’s soccer program, there has been a series of right place, right time events — and people — that landed the program where it is as one of the most prodigious dynasties in the history of college athletics.


Inside Florida football coach Dan Mullen’s two worlds – part Darth Vader, part Yoda

ESPN College Football, Alex Scarborough from

… The season should have been viewed as an all-around success — a key step forward in Mullen’s rebuilding efforts. Four years after returning to Gainesville, he had led the program to within shouting distance of the College Football Playoff and had broken a drought of offensive skill players selected in the first round of the draft that dated back to Tim Tebow in 2010.

But Mullen’s national reputation took a hit. He was roundly panned for saying the crowd was a “major factor” in an October loss at Texas A&M and for calling on UF to “pack the Swamp” despite an ongoing pandemic. Two weeks later, he got into a shouting match with Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz after an apparent late hit on Trask led to a brawl at the end of the first half. When the field was cleared, Mullen returned to incite the crowd. Then, during his postgame news conference, he answered questions while wearing a Darth Vader costume. He was fined $25,000 for “violating SEC bylaws governing sportsmanship.”

The bitter cherry on top came after a 35-point loss to Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.


Habit Stacking: The Easiest Way to Get Your Strength Training Done

Training Peaks, Karen Parnell from

Building upon your existing habits might be the key to creating positive new ones — especially when it comes to strength training.


Retrospective survey of youth sports participation: Development and assessment of reliability using school records

PLOS One; Steven Jin, Amanda Rabinowitz et al. from

Many youths participate in sports, and it is of interest to understand the impact of youth sports participation on later-life outcomes. However, prospective studies take a long time to complete and retrospective studies may be more practical and time-efficient to address some questions. We pilot a retrospective survey of youth sports participation and examine agreement between respondent’s self-reported participation with high school records in a sample of 84 adults who graduated from high school between 1948 and 2018. The percent agreement between our survey and the school resources for individual sports ranged between 91.5% and 100%. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the reliability of retrospective self-report of youth sports participation. This survey may serve as an efficient approach for evaluating relationships between involvement in youth sports and health outcomes later in adulthood.


RecoveryOne raises $33 million for virtual physical therapy | MobiHealthNews

MobiHealthNews, Laura Lovett from

The company is focused on providing virtual physical therapy to patients. Clients can start the program with a telehealth consultation.

The clinician can then create a recovery plan for the patient, which is made up of virtual exercise sessions that the patient is able to tap into on a connected device. The company’s physical therapists are able to track a patient’s progress over time.

Patients are also able to send messages back and forth with therapists about any questions that come up. The tool also provides a health coach dedicated to helping patient’s stay engaged and compliant with care.


Self-Powered Smart Arm Training Band Sensor Based on Extremely Stretchable Hydrogel Conductors

Applied Materials & Interfaces journal from

The development of elastic electronic technology has promoted the application of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) in flexible wearable electronics. However, most of the flexible electronics cannot achieve the requirements of being extremely stretchable, transparent, and highly conductive at the same time. Herein, we report a TENG constructed using a double-network polymer ionic conductor sodium alginate/zinc sulfate/poly acrylic-acrylamide (SA–Zn) hydrogel, which exhibited outstanding stretchability (>10,000%), high transparency (>95%), and good conductivity (0.34 S·m–1). The SA–Zn hydrogel TENG (SH-TENG) could harvest energy from typical human movements, such as bending, stretching, and twisting, which could light up 234 green commercial LEDs easily. Additionally, the SH-TENG can be used to prepare a self-powered smart training band sensor for monitoring arm stretching motion. This work may provide an innovative platform for accessing the next generation of sustainable wearable and sports monitoring electronics.


A challenging year prompts a look at mental health for Dartmouth student-athletes

Valley News, Seth Tow from

Kat Grgic felt alone.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic back home with her family in Mississauga, Ontario, the Dartmouth College women’s soccer defender alternated between productive periods of regular workouts and funks when she couldn’t muster the energy for a simple run.

Zoom meetings with her teammates and coaches helped, but she couldn’t help feeling isolated. And when she returned to Hanover for classes during the last academic year, it made the problem worse. Her squad of friends was still attending school remotely, and the strict COVID-19 precautions on campus made it tough to socialize with the students who were around.

“There’s seven of us in my class, and my six friends just weren’t here. I was here completely by myself,” Grgic said.


Caring for Young Athletes: The Importance of Pediatric Specialists

Cincinnati Children's Hospital blog, Kelsy Logan from

Every parent of a young athlete wants their child to participate in the sport they love and be as successful as possible. If that young athlete has an injury, going to specialists who care for professional athletes can seem like a good idea, but care for adolescent athletes isn’t the same as for adults. Pediatric specialists are experts in young bodies, and seeking care from pediatric specialists is important for kids to heal fully and get back to playing the sport they love.

One of the first conversations I have with new patient families is a discussion of how young athletes are different from adults – the differences in body size and strength, ‘weak spots’ in the musculoskeletal chain, how the developing brain learns and adapts, and how growth affects both injury and recovery.

It’s crucial to remember that children are not small adults.


Why more professional athletes use and rely on cannabis

New York Post, Gavin Newsham from

As the sports world battles the use of performance-enhancing drugs, one substance almost always slips under the radar — cannabis.

But according to the new book “Runner’s High” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) by Josiah Hesse, its use is rife in professional sports.

Former Denver Nuggets basketball player Kenyon Martin estimates that 85 percent of the players in the NBA use cannabis. Ex-Philadelphia Flyers enforcer Riley Cote reveals that at least half the players in the NHL do the same.


Rate of BMI increase in children nearly doubled during pandemic, study finds

CNN Health, Sandee LaMotte and Virginia Langmaid from

The rate of body mass index change in children nearly doubled from March to November 2020 compared to the rate of BMI change before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a study published Thursday in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report on morbidity and mortality.

The CDC team used a medical record database to compare BMI changes in 432,302 US children between the ages of 2 and 19 before and during the pandemic. BMI is a measure that uses height and weight data to track changes in weight relative to height.


The Philadelphia Union model is working

US Soccer Players, Jason Davis from

… “We still sit in a decent spot in the table that a lot of teams would exchange with us gladly,” Union head coach Jim Curtin said on Wednesday before results bumped his team down to ninth. “But at the same time, we have a little bit higher standard now, too. I think obviously the press has a higher standard, the fans have a higher standard for us, the players in the locker room probably have the highest standard. And we’re disappointed now when we lose – we’re always disappointed when we lose, but now it’s, I think, a little bit more amplified.”

No team in MLS would have an easy time replacing the likes of Brenden Aaronson and Mark McKenzie. Both were homegrown players with large roles in procuring last year’s Shield. Both left over the winter for seven-figure transfer fees. Bigger spending teams would deal with that by bringing in talent while the next batch of youngsters grows into the team. It’s different in Chester.

By developing players as talented as Aaronson and McKenzie, the Union raised expectations. It’s living up to those expectations that’s proving a challenge.


What is the best advanced statistic for basketball? NBA executives weigh in

HoopsHype, Bryan Kalbrosky from

… While some may shy away from numbers when talking about athleticism, others have embraced the statistical revolution. We were curious, though, which of those numbers we should reference in our player evaluations. Is there a catch-all, all-in-one composite metric that has the best reputation and has the most accurate assessment of a player’s holistic impact on winning?

We wanted to find out so, for this story, we surveyed some of the most trusted thinkers in the basketball community.

HoopsHype received answers from nearly 30 participants, including various media members as well as individuals who have a combined experience with more than half of the teams in the NBA. Answers came from folks at every level within an organization, including those who work on a coaching staff as well as several different directors of analytics departments.

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