Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 20, 2015

… “It helped me out a lot,” Rubin said of his time under Klinsmann’s watch. “It gave me a lot of confidence to go in with the national team and come back with my club. Seeing players like Jozy, Clint Dempsey, and Michael Bradley—some of the top guys on that team—and seeing how that act as professionals.

“On the field, they don’t take plays off. Even in practice, they all want to win. They’re all fighters. I try to bring that same mentality back to my club. I’m trying to win even the little 4v4 and 5v5 drills. It showed me I can play at that level.”

… You’ve probably read the reports. Martin Odegaard, the 16-year-old Norwegian prodigy lured to Real Madrid in January, has struggled to settle in the club’s third-division reserve side Castilla. The squad were better off without him. After his debut in February, they went from promotion favourites to mid-table mediocrity. His reported £80,000-a-week salary and training sessions with the first team have triggered jealousy in the dressing room. His high-profile arrival has disturbed the harmony of the squad. He has rejected requests to train with Castilla more than his contract states, making it impossible for him to bond with his team-mates. The playmaker has become a burden. For Castilla, the season has been a disaster. But what has really happened? While the campaign has been disappointing for Castilla, several claims about Odegaard have warranted enough pinches of salt to worry a dietician. The integration process has not been as smooth as was hoped, but certain reports from Madrid have contributed to paint a harsh and misleading picture of his first four months in the capital.

… Over the past two years, Thompson has barely had time to breathe with brief stints at a few locations along the way.

“It’s not been easy going to three or four different teams in the past year and a half,” Thompson said. “I’m grateful for it. Each team gives me new opportunities to learn from different players and different coaches. My time at Indiana prepared me for the physicality that the MLS was going to bring – I wouldn’t say it’s as physical as the MLS, but it’s definitely a step up from what I was playing in high school. Going to Sacramento Republic for a month or so helped me as well. That prepared me by giving me professional minutes. That ultimately prepared me for San Jose.

Bob Bradley’s last gig in Major League Soccer ended in 2006, but his influence on the league remains stronger than ever. And, judging by the number of coaches who have been developed by Bradley, soccer in the U.S. will carry his mark for some time.

This season, three “Bradley guys” are head coaches of MLS teams and another 13 are in assistant roles. Bradley-influenced coaches are on staffs of more than half the league’s 20 teams and several have been head coaches in Africa, Europe and the U.S.

Spanish club has spawned the winning managers of five of Europe’s best leagues this season, including Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho.

STATS, a sports technology, data and content company, has been involved in the acquisition of many different companies recently, including Automated Insights, The Sports Network, and Prozone. Today they added another company to that list when they announced the acquisition of TVT Video Technologies Inc. (TVTI).

This acquisition will boost STATS’ existing suite of data and analytics service for professional teams as TVTI is a leading provider of video solutions, services, and consulting for the MLB and the NHL. Most MLB and NHL organizations currently use TVTI’s services to review and analyze indexed video.

… Simon Segars, chief executive of ARM Holdings (ARMH), the chip design powerhouse that is the brains of most of the world’s semiconductors including those inside wearables, was on stage with Erica Kochi, the head of the eight-year-old “innovation labs” tech effort of UNICEF, the non-profit that does lots of good for children in over 190 countries around the world. … The idea is to take wearable technology into places fraught with everyday challenges: helping a mother with limited access to health care know how her pregnancy is faring; helping remind people to wash their hands, say.

Who would have known that Rocky 4 would end up predicting the future? We all know that a great 80’s movie is defined by its montages. And Rocky’s training in Rocky 4 basically sums up how athletes used to train – In Siberia, pulling sleighs; helping lift fallen horse carts; cutting down trees and carrying logs. On the other hand, athletes now train like Captain Ivan Drago, using top of the line technology to measure performance and to induce pique athletic performance.

Kinduct Technologies is a company that is at the forefront of the wellness, health and performance software industry. Founded in 2010 by Dr. Travis McDonough, Kevin Rimmer and David Anderson, Kinduct has quickly established itself as a leader in health and performance management, organization and data analysis. With their 4 platforms: Kinduct Performance, Kinduct Health, Kinduct Clinic, and Kinduct Fitness, they have developed an “ecosystem” of statistics and data that helps sports organizations, doctors, patients, personal trainers and clients.

Examining technology that claims to ‘auto detect’ sleep patterns. No user input required. No buttons to press. No need to keep phone on at night.

To compare and contrast the user experience & results of using 4 different devices to track my sleep during 1 night
Devices used in this test: Sense, Basis Peak, Microsoft Band, Mi Band

XOS Digital, Inc., the leading provider of digital coaching technology for sports organizations, and Catapult, pioneers of wearable technology for elite sports, have partnered with the Jacksonville Jaguars to implement the latest in coaching technology innovation, XOS Thunder Radar.

XOS Thunder Radar integrates a variety of advanced analytical player performance data with game and practice video. Coaches are now able to visualize player’s paths instantaneously, allowing for immediate feedback and correction. The intuitive interface also allows positional information to be repurposed into play drawings; automating the tedious process of drawing plays.

The age-old question of whether human traits are determined by nature or nurture has been answered, a team of researchers say. Their conclusion? It’s a draw.

By collating almost every twin study across the world from the past 50 years, researchers determined that the average variation for human traits and disease is 49% due to genetic factors and 51% due to environmental factors.

University of Queensland researcher Beben Benyamin from the Queensland Brain Institute collaborated with researchers at VU University of Amsterdam to collate 2,748 studies involving more than 14.5 million pairs of twins.

The reason why football is so exciting is uncertainty. The outcome of any match or league is unknown, and you get to watch the action unfold without knowing what’s going to happen. Watching matches where you know the score is never exciting.

This weekend the English Premier League season will conclude with little fanfare. Bar one relegation place, the league positions have already been determined. In fact, these positions were, for the most part, decided weeks ago. The element of uncertainty seems to have been reduced this season.

With this in mind, I wanted to look at uncertainty over the long run in English football.

The drive to improve performance means elite sport is inundated with data from wearable technologies such as GPS, computer vision and match statistics.

So professional clubs are constantly on the lookout for tools that can help turn these data into usable and meaningful information.

One such tool gaining popularity is machine learning. Put simply, machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence, whereby computers are able to learn without being explicitly programmed by a human operator.

Between the 2013 and 2014 seasons, nobody logged more plate appearances than Matt Carpenter. Only nine guys appeared in more games. And it wasn’t just the workload that we saw on the field. Carpenter was one of those guys rolling in at 1 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game, pushing his body to the sort of pregame extremes we celebrate in order to log the amount of playing time we expect.

The ultimate result, as you heard last week, was the odd but apt diagnosis of “extreme fatigue,” which forced Carpenter to miss four games. So now Carpenter not only understands his body better; he understands Major League Baseball in the year 2015 better, too.

“I kind of take a football mentality into a baseball game,” said Carpenter, “and it’s not healthy.”

Nor is it realistic.