Sports science is a unique convergence of human development and technology development. Besides the effort required these pathways don’t overlap, not when you think of human development in terms of psychology, education and health, and think of technology development in terms of engineering, design and business.
Individual athlete development, if you read the articles, is a mix of skill acquisition, decision-making and well-being, and where progress is vague:
Fear of failure, psychological stress, and burnout among adolescent athletes competing in high level sport (Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports)
Utah Jazz: Rudy Gobert gets a hand in improving his hands (The Salt Lake Tribune, Aaron Falk)
Colorado Rapids defender Axel Sjoberg benefiting from good decisions (ESPN FC, Jeff Carlisle)
Benjamin Henrichs and the rise to prominence at Bayer Leverkusen (These Football Times)
Hawks’ Tim Hardaway Jr. reaps benefits of offseason work (NBA.com, Lang Whitaker)
Development of a Skill Acquisition Periodisation Framework for High-Performance Sport (Sports Medicine journal)
A process toward success: Joel Embiid era begins (at last) in Philly (NBA.com, David Aldridge)
Technology development is a little easier to wrap your arms around. The push from invention meets the pull of market forces, but the process is still imprecise:
Watch a new skin sensor measure your health while you exercise (Science, ScienceShots)
ProFeet 3D Motion Lab (Men’s Running UK)
How to design digital health tools to boost patient engagement (MedCity News, Ted Quinn)
Advances rarely occur in isolation. People improve with the help of other people, and with the help of technology. Technology moves ahead quickly when people making technology better connect with people wanting better technology. Some examples:
With a Fixer-Upper in the Nets, Kenny Atkinson Starts by Building Rapport (The New York Times, Scott Cacciola)
Co-ordinated approach is best to decide when an athlete can return to perform (Metrifit, Eunan Whyte)
The Drummer, the Cop and the Med Student: How Ohio State reloaded from draft losses to stay a playoff contender (SI.com, Campus Rush, Pete Thamel)
The secrets to the success of Southampton’s thriving Academy (Sky Sports, Aidan Magee)
How Computers Made Humans Better at Chess (Fortune, David Z. Morris)
What can we learn from Skill Acquisition (Rob Carroll, The Video Analyst.com)
Sports science is multi-faceted. Effectiveness comes from people working with people and with technology in processes that will inevitably improve. And like technology and human development, the process advances will take effort.
More things that I read and liked last week:
The Changing Look of the Average Outfielder (November 23, FanGraphs Baseball, Eno Sarris)
NFL Lens: Hard Break w/Jordan Reed (November 26, Matt Waldman, The Rookie Scouting Portfolio)
The Debate on the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (November 23, Jo Clubb, Sports Discovery blog)
Arizona’s Ray Smith’s career ended before it ever got started because of ACL injuries (November 23, ESPN Men’s College Basketball, Dana O’Neill)
The Rules Of Returning To Training And Racing Post-Injury (November 22, LAVA Magazine)