“We don’t do a very good job with mental health,” said an NBA team executive as he looked down at the sad contents of his boxed lunch and sighed. “We don’t have any answers, and we’re not doing a good job looking for them.”
This was three years ago at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference in Boston. I’d asked about the status of a player who had had some early success but had fallen off the NBA map after a short stint with the exec’s team.
… “As I went to England, [my philosophies] started to change,” he said. “You realize it’s a more national game with more power; it’s more physical. The German side of it was about the precision and the movements. The German game is extremely physical with really fast transitions and really good crossing and shooting. You combine all those things, and you come out where we are.”
Leadership came naturally to Berhalter, who was nearly immediately named captain of his 1860 side and had become one of the more experienced members on the US national team by his 44th cap in 2006. But management and organizational prowess are difficult qualities to develop while just a player.
Miami Dolphins Executive Vice President of Football Operations Mike Tannenbaum announced today that Wayne Diesel has been named sports performance director and Dennis Lock was promoted to director of analytics after serving as head analyst.
In his role, Diesel will oversee all of the team’s sports science initiatives and will work closely with the training and strength and conditioning departments. His focus will include player injury prevention and rehabilitation in an effort to reach optimal performance.
Owen Coyle is set to enter his first season in charge of the Houston Dynamo, but he’s had his eye on MLS and the Dynamo for quite some time.
In recent years, Coyle has managed Burnley, Bolton Wanderers and, most recently, Wigan Athletic. He moved to Bolton in Jan. 2010, and that’s where he started to show his interest in MLS and Houston. With one of his first signings for Bolton, he brought over former Dynamo midfielder Stuart Holden.
There’s an interesting parallel between Tampa Bay third baseman Evan Longoria and Pirates star Andrew McCutchen. First consider Longoria and McCutchen are signed to two of the most club-friendly contracts in the sport. The difference between McCutchen’s remaining contract value and his actual wages is staggering.
Regular exercise and good nutrition aren’t enough to achieve optimal well-being; Rest and regeneration are crucial too. So, if we have personal trainers for fitness, how far off can the sleep trainer be?
That’s the premise, in part, of a new clinical trial being conducted at the University of California on the effect that sleep coaching can have on heart-rate variability, one prominent measure of health and fitness. The backer of the study is an unlikely institution with a keen interest in those things: Equinox Fitness, the luxury health-club chain.
Perhaps more than any other group, athletes have fully embraced sleep as a performance enhancement tool. Top athletes are, of course, all about results. So there’s no better place than the world of sports to see the tangible effects of sleep (including pre-game naps) on performance.
As medical director of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine in Virginia, and one of the country’s leading sleep researchers, W. Chris Winter has worked extensively with athletes eager to learn from him. He also works with teams to teach them about sleep’s importance. In fact, when we exchanged emails, he was in Florida, and shortly bound for Arizona, working with Major League Baseball teams. Here are his answers to my questions about why athletes are putting sleep at the forefront of their lives — and what the rest of us can learn from them.
International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance from
PURPOSE:
To quantify the relationship between daily training load and a range of potential measures of fatigue in elite soccer players during an in-season competitive phase (17-days). METHODS:
Total high-intensity running distance (THIR), perceived ratings of wellness (fatigue, muscle soreness, sleep quality), counter-movement jump height (CMJ), post-exercise heart rate recovery (HRR) and heart rate variability (Ln rMSSD) were analysed during an in-season competitive period (17 days). General linear models were used to evaluate the influence of daily fluctuation in THIR distance on potential fatigue variables. RESULTS:
Fluctuations in fatigue (r=-0.51; large; P<0.001), Ln rMSSD (r=-0.24; small; P=0.04), and CMJ (r=0.23; small; P=0.04) were significantly correlated with fluctuations in THIR distance. Correlations between variability in muscle soreness, sleep quality and HRR and THIR distance were negligible and not statistically significant.
CONCLUSIONS:
Perceived ratings of fatigue and heart rate variability were sensitive to daily fluctuations in THIR distance in a sample of elite soccer players. Therefore, these particular markers show particular promise as simple, non-invasive assessments of fatigue status in elite soccer players during a short in-season competitive phase.
Every day we make decisions that affect our work, personal relationships and health. With stakes this high, it’s no wonder many of us dread decision-making and wish we knew how to make better choices.
The first step towards making better decisions is to understand how the process works. This animation from Worldview Stanford’s upcoming course, The Science of Decision Making, shows the regions of the brain that are activated as we evaluate information. [video, 7:42]
Sports Technology blog, QSTC Sports Technology and Sports Engineering from
Tracking how fast a ball was kicked or thrown used to be done with an external device – it could be a speed radar or a high speed camera or maybe even a very trained (and experienced) eye. However in the last 5-6 years, more and more engineers and scientists have tried to put some form of sensors inside the balls to measure linear velocity, spin velocity, spin axis. This has mostly been made possible with advanced developments in microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS), where accuracy and measurement range have increased significantly (while still keeping the small form factor). Another 2 tech contributions that helped keep the sensors (more permanently) in the balls are wireless connectivity (Bluetooth or Wifi) with the micro-controllers and wireless charging.
This last weekend over 300 of the most promising football prospects in the world were invited to NFL Combine in Indianapolis to be evaluated by potential employers. They were tested in nearly every way imaginable. Running, jumping (for some, almost flying), lifting, cutting, reading, analyzing, and, of course, moving.
Functional Movement Systems has had a presence at the Combine for almost a decade and became the screen became an official test in 2011. For the 4th consecutive year, I had the opportunity to be in Indy assisting the NFL in performing 330 Functional Movement Screens. Assisting me was Jon Torine, former strength and conditioning coach for the Colts and current FMS Instructor.
The sport of ice hockey requires coordination of complex skills involving musculoskeletal and physiological abilities while simultaneously exposing players to a high risk for injury. The Functional Movement Screen TM (FMS) was developed to assess fundamental movement patterns that underlie both sport performance and injury risk. The top one hundred and one elite, junior hockey players from around the world took part in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft Combine (NHL Combine). The FMS was integrated into the comprehensive medical and physiological fitness evaluations at the request of strength and conditioning coaches with affiliations to National Hockey League (NHL) teams. The inclusion of the FMS aimed to help develop strategies that could maximize its utility among elite hockey players and to encourage or inform further research in this field. This study evaluated the outcomes of integrating the FMS into the NHL Combine and identified any links to other medical plus physical and physiological fitness assessment outcomes. These potential associations may provide valuable information to identify elements of future training programs that are individualized to athletes’ specific needs. The results of the FMS (total score and number of asymmetries identified) were significantly correlated to; various body composition measures, aerobic and anaerobic fitness, leg power, timing of recent workouts and the presence of lingering injury at the time of the NHL Combine. Although statistically significant correlations were observed, the implications of the FMS assessment outcomes remain difficult to quantify until ongoing assessment of FMS patterns, tracking of injuries and hockey performance are available.
Speaking with fcbayernmunich.com, Niemeyer talked about his time at the conference, the difference in analytics between Europe and the US and how it is used at FC Bayern.
FiveThirtyEight’s delegation made the pilgrimage to this year’s Sloan conference, a kind of mecca for anyone who’s obsessed with sports, data and retelling how they first felt when they read “Moneyball.” We updated all of Friday and Saturday from Boston, where Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and our own Nate Silver roamed the halls. Read on for highlights from the weekend.