Sports science is a complex solution to the complex problem of athlete health and performance. Unfortunately the perception of sports science is that of next big things, secret weapons and magic bullets.
It should not be a secret that sleep and recovery and nutrition can contribute significantly to on-field performance. There are also emerging technologies like all kinds of new sweat sensing technology whose value will be calculated in the future.
The bigger picture is one where a sports organization’s choices, good or bad, have compound future effects. Good choices make it easier to make more good choices in the future.
Javier Morales documents the trouble big-money football programs are having while their smaller peers thrive. Halson, Peake and Sullivan warn in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance that wearable technology can easily over promise and under deliver for customers.
Bad outcomes are the result of the bad processes that string together bad choice after bad choice. The San Diego Chargers are experiencing NFL-leading injury rates season after season and cannot seem to make it stop. MLS soccer teams have a brutal travel schedule and refuse to charter airplanes to reduce the burden on players and improve the on-field product.
Out of the box thinking gets attention. That can mean hiring the youngest General Manager in the NHL or bringing a yoga instruction to training camp or using artificial intelligence to analyze athlete and game data in Australian football or upgrading a college basketball team’s culture.
Any one-off innovation is a roll of the dice. It might work or it might not. The real difference-makers are integrated steps that cut across an organization. The Lakers have simultaneously upgraded the groups working on data analysis, athlete performance and player development. The University of Michigan recently launched a major initiative for inter-disciplinary sports science research.
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