In the matrix of skills and professions that make up Applied Sports Science, the clinical professions–physical therapy and sports medicine–feel like the most difficult to integrate with the data and research that are becoming platforms for collaborations within teams and throughout sports.
Art Horne told me about work he’d done at Northeastern University to foster closer work between training staff and sports medicine:
“You’ve got sports medicine, physical therapy, athletic trainers, strength coaches, all in their own silos working on the same athletes,” said Art Horne, the well-known Director of Sports Performance at Northeastern University who also organizes a major annual sports science conference, the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group Summer Seminar held in May. “It’s like an assembly line” and each group needs to keep its own channel of communication to coaches and to management.
At each step in the assembly line the different professions do their own work, often without input, coordination or oversight from other stakeholders in the athlete return to play process, be they coaching, front office or medical staff. The division of labor muddles decision-making. Sports medicine might make the clinical return to play decision but the sports trainers or physical therapists might have useful information that fails to come into play.
Notable exceptions in the NBA are Indiana and Oklahoma City, according to Horne. The two teams have coordinated their sports medicine and training, something that Horne has done at Northeastern. Last year the Boston school literally removed the concrete wall separating the departments (replacing it with a door and glass partition). “The biggest thing about all this, it comes down to communication. Now it’s easier. Everyone sees what’s going on,” said Horne.
One big problem is the habit that many in sports have to rely on injury recovery timeframes, like what’s reported by In Street Clothes about Rajon Rondo’s hand injury. The data and research are showing that that variability of athletes’ injuries (even when it’s the same body part and incident type) and athletes’ physiology is diffuse enough that time windows for athlete recovery is a guess at best, and generally not a helpful one.
Instead of close collaboration with lots of information sharing between an athlete, clinical caretakers and strength/sport coaches, the return to play timeframe is used to handoff from one process step to the next, from the medical intervention to the rehabilitation to the recovery workouts to the return to practice. When the shared object is a schedule collaboration turns into a sequence of events and not the kind of integrated work products where multiple facets contribute.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Training Versus Practice The Original Coach … It’s helpful not to conflate the two, “Technical work falls into the training category, while a player’s use of that technical ability is true practice.”
- Role of Sport Medicine Professionals in Addressing Psychosocial Aspects of Sport-Injury Rehabilitation: Professional Athletes’ Views Journal of Athletic Training … A good question: clinicians know that athletes will struggle with self-confidence when rehabilitating an injury, but are athletes aware that clinicians can help them with it.
- Joachim Low says coaches have to communicate with players U.S. Soccer Players … Low makes a basic but valuable point. Sports science is this complex, integrated, multi-faceted collaboration but all of it takes a backseat to the essential collaboration between coach and players.
- Neuromuscular Adaptations to Different Modes of Combined Strength and Endurance Training. International Journal of Sports Medicine … The order of athlete training (endurance then strength, or vice versa) affects the neuromuscular adaptions of athletes on an individual by individual basis.
- Smart Clothes Seek Slim Electronics EE Times … Apparently consumers view these products as mere expensive pieces of clothing, not athlete performance-wear. There is work to do on the use case to show the utility of these interfaces.