Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 18, 2015

This has been as bad a season for injuries in the NBA as I can recall in three decades.

The playoffs are here, and there are plenty of storylines to follow as the toughest postseason tournament in pro sports gets under way. Here are seven of the biggest.

Injuries, injuries, everywhere injuries

It is often said, and accurately so, that the playoffs are as much about attrition as the actual level of play. Think about what was left of the Boston Bruins, specifically Patrice Bergeron, at the end of the 2013 Stanley Cup finals: some jerseys and a bunch of gauze.

… Without getting into the details of the individual slings or trains, by looking at these slings we can identify that hamstring tension that may be a contributing factor in a lower back injury. Or, the tension in the Achilles could be linked to plantar fasciitis. As a practitioner, I look at the body with these slings in mind, as the location of pain or injury may be the result of tension along the kinetic chain.

For many athletes, recovery protocols are often limited to the areas that are tight or the parts that they use the most. As much as this is important, incorporating other areas into your routine could provide great benefit and take the load off the lower limb components.

It begins with a ball and a hoop. Many started out hoisting jumpers from their childhood driveway. Others shot around at the park down the street.

For all who play the game of basketball and aspire to someday be an NBA player, an extraordinary amount of talent and hard work is required. Possessing the ability to shoot certainly doesn’t hurt either.

But what exactly goes into being an elite shooter? Four members of the Bulls organization—one executive/former player, two veterans and one rookie—share their experiences, discussing the paths they took and what went into their respective journeys.

… The forms [Michael] Bennett signed on Jan. 14 came from Five Star Athlete Management. His decision to hire the firm headed by agent Todd France had come a week earlier, though Bennett began getting calls from agents last summer. Because he didn’t want his agent decision to be a distraction during his senior season, he outsourced the weeding-out process to two of the most thorough, skeptical people he knew: Connie and Mike Bennett, two engineers who met as students at West Point and raised their three children in the Dayton suburb of Centerville, Ohio.

Connie, who does IT and software development work for the federal government, quickly realized that she and Mike, a program manager for the Air Force, needed to educate themselves before helping their son. “My husband and I have been in business for a long time. We’ve had to hire people and fire people and evaluate performance,” Connie says. “What does a 22-year-old know about that? I don’t think they have a class that says, Here’s the job of an agent. Here’s how you know you have a good one.”

… “There will be a new generation,” he told former Bayern midfielder Owen Hargreaves in an interview to be broadcast on BT on Saturday. “Not now and not tomorrow, but Bayern need to be conscious that it will happen.

“Philipp and Basti are in their early 30s. Xabi Alonso is older [33]. Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery are over 30. All in the midfield and wing positions.

… With the diversity of players, comes a diversity of cushioning needs. And when you add in an entire range of shoes for every brand’s product line, the diversity of pricing also comes into play. Cushioning isn’t a one-type fit for all. From brand to brand let’s explore the world of basketball sneaker cushioning.

Wearable gadgets and data trackers are taking notes around the clock on how much we run, walk, sleep, drink and eat. But what do you do with all that data?

Nudge, a small start-up in Richmond, Va., has a suggestion: hire a human coach to help.

When the sounds of starting lineup announcements and the National Anthem fade, Adam Echstenkamper, perched in a metal fold-out chair, fires up a small camcorder resting on a tripod in front of him and pulls out his iPad.

From this point forward, Echstenkamper, Georgia’s video coordinator, is entrenched in two things: the game on the field and the app pulled up on the iPad in his lap. The app, iScore, has a simple gray layout. The only defining features are a strike zone in the bottom left corner and the outline of a baseball field in the middle.

But with this simple layout, the Georgia baseball team can make huge strides in the world of baseball analytics and video analysis, which is greatly lagging behind what exists at the Major League level.

The Los Angeles Dodgers want to team up with startups and today the club announced a new accelerator program to make it happen.

As part of a unique partnership with the R/GA advertising agency, the Dodgers Accelerator will welcome startups focused on using technology to build sports-related products and services.

Background: No standardized return-to-activity or sport guidelines currently exist after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Isokinetic testing and unilateral hop testing, which have construct validity, are often used to make the determination of when a patient is ready to return to sport. Neither of these measures has been reported to be predictive of subsequent injuries.
Purpose: To compare the performance on 2 functional tests of ACL reconstruction patients released to return to activity versus those who have not been released based on clinical impairment measures. …
Results: No difference existed between the groups with regard to the descriptive characteristics, with the exception that the group not cleared was younger (21.0 ± 7.4 years) than the group that was cleared (25.6 ± 13.2 years). Performance on the YBT-LQ revealed that no differences existed between groups when examining reach symmetry for any of the reach directions. In addition, no differences were found between groups when looking at the average reach score normalized to limb length for either the surgical or nonsurgical leg. Patients in the cleared group exhibited a similar score on the FMS (12.7 ± 2.9) compared with the noncleared group (12.8 ± 2.7). Similarly, no differences were observed for the number of asymmetries; however, both groups averaged 1 asymmetry during the testing.
Conclusion: Clinical impairment measures do not appear to be related to measured functional ability. Performance on both functional tests, the FMS and YBT-LQ, at 6 months would suggest that the typical patient in both groups would be at a greater risk of lower extremity injury, based on currently published research.

… [Chris] Borland is coming to town April 19 for the premiere of Gridiron Gladiators, a documentary by Portland filmmaker Todd Trigsted (a running back for the Linfield College Wildcats in 1981) that investigates brain injuries to players from the pee wee leagues to the pros. Borland and other former pro players will speak after the screening.

Borland and Trigsted talked to WW about the NFL’s claims, the pressure to play despite head injuries, and the one question someone should ask Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

Tyler Hamilton rode for Lance Armstrong during three of the seven Tour de France victories the Texan won while doping.

Hamilton was stripped of the 2004 Olympic road time trial gold medal after failing a drug test and in 2011 declared his and the team’s doping in grand jury testimony, interviews and a book.

Here to speak at a Sports New Zealand conference, Hamilton sat down with Phil Taylor.

The NBA has been long been criticized for holes in its drug-testing program. The league patched one of those holes Thursday, announcing that, starting in the 2015-16 season, players will get blood tested for human growth hormone.

The announcement was issued jointly by the league and the NBA Players Association, who said that testing for HGH would begin at the start of training camps. The 2011 collective bargaining agreement had called for a study on how to implement blood testing for HGH, and now the league is ready to move forward.