Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 27, 2015

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for May 27, 2015

 

How does Raheem Sterling score against Ronaldo and Messi at 20?

The Guardian, Sean Ingle from May 24, 2015

Fingers on buzzers for a quickfire numbers round: £35,000 a week; £100,000 a week; “He is not signing for £700,000, £800,000, £900,000 a week.” Name the footballer. You knew instantly that it was Raheem Sterling – and the figures were, in turn, his current salary, Liverpool’s new contract offer, and the dismissive response of his agent, Aidy Ward. Meanwhile Sterling’s potential transfer fee increasingly seems subject to Weimar Republic levels of hyperinflation – from £40m earlier in the week to £60m in one Sunday paper.

Meanwhile the country appears split down the middle. On the one hand we have Sterling the wunderkind, who made his England debut at 17 and won Europe’s Golden Boy 2014. On the other, there are the doomsayers who warn that he might be another Aaron Lennon, his football talents prematurely frozen in carbonite. As one poster on a Liverpool forum put it recently: “His shooting has been poor, his crossing poor, and the only thing he was good at was taking selfies on his mid-season holiday.”

Then there are the professional fence?sitters, who fatuously state that Sterling is a work in progress. Of course he is – he’s 20. Even Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi were at that age. A far more interesting exercise is to try to figure out how Sterling compares with other top attacking midfielders/wing forwards when they were 20 – and that requires a broader range of figures than ones with pound signs and rows of zeros after them.

 

Velocity Based Training | NCAA.org – The Official Site of the NCAA

NCAA Sport Science Institute from May 20, 2015

Over the past several years, Velocity Based Training (VBT) has been coming to the forefront as an innovative way to determine load for strength training. Many people have developed novel approaches for the implementation of this technology. This has led to inconsistencies in the nomenclature used to describe the diverse traits that are developed at different velocities. We hope to address this issue by providing common nomenclature based off of existing literature.

 

…: a coaches’ guide to strength development: PART I

McMillanSpeed from May 22, 2015

… Besides the almost infinite information at our fingertips, today’s coaches have the added (often contradicting) influences of Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, Crossfit, etc. Where does a young coach start? And especially – where do coaches who do not necessarily have a background in strength & conditioning start?

I don’t envy these coaches. It’s great that we have so much information at our fingertips – but without context, and background knowledge, if is nigh on impossible to know where to begin.

I don’t profess to be all-knowing in this, but as a sprints coach with an S&C background, I feel I am in as strong a position to offer my thoughts as most. And hopefully provide some context, and some basic information that will help coaches with their program design.

 

Speed through science

GSK UK from May 21, 2015

Current Olympic, European and Commonwealth triathlon champion, Alastair Brownlee, has a passion for science, having studied Physiology and Sport at the University of Leeds. Here he explains why he thinks science is important, and describes how his involvement with the GSK Human Performance Lab could help his performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

 

Heat acclimation training part of Canada’s final World Cup preparations in MexicoUntitled Document

red nation from May 22, 2015

Since taking over Canada’s women’s national team in late 2011, John Herdman has lived the “leave no stone unturned” mentality, having meticulously planned out every small detail in Canada’s road to their home World Cup.

The final phase of Canada’s World Cup preparation has already taken the team to Los Angeles, where they played a couple of closed-door scrimmages. Canada tied the US Women’s National team 1-1 on May 13th and beat Mexico 1-0 the following day. The team then trained in Mexico for a week, and returned to Canada last night to continue their final World Cup preparations and train for their friendly on May 29th against England.

In comments supplied to RedNation Online by the Edmonton Sun, Herdman told media at a recent speaking engagement at the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce that the team would be going through a “heat acclimation phase” while in Mexico, a technique that he hoped would get his players ready “at another level physically.” Herdman added, “The heat acclimation isn’t to get them ready to play in heat, it’s a science effect where we get adaptation. It actually gets them producing more oxygen in the body.”

 

AIS Centre for Performance Coaching and Leadership

AIS : Australian Sports Commission from May 27, 2015

As a key element of Australia’s Winning Edge, the AIS Centre for Performance Coaching and Leadership was established to deliver world best approaches to learning and development, formalise pathways for professional development for coaches and performance leaders, drive research and encourage innovation. [video, 3:29]

 

…: a coaches’ guide to strength development: PART II

McMillanSpeed from May 26, 2015

… Matt did an awesome job of explaining why we lift in the first section of this post. If you didn’t read it, I encourage you to go back and do so before continuing on. Understanding the why is a necessity – whether you are the one writing the strength program or not. Even if you have a dedicated strength coach who writes the program for your athletes, it is imperative that you have the ability to speak intelligently with him or her about the programming.

It is important to understand that strength does not necessarily equal maximal strength. While maximal strength is the maximal amount of force a muscle can generate, strength is simply the ability to generate sufficient force to overcome inertia or a load. Depending upon the amount of load, velocity of movement can be very high or very low, and anywhere in between (as discussed by Matt as the force-velocity curve first described by AV Hill in 1938). Force is at its highest when there is virtually no velocity – while velocity is at its theoretical highest point when there is little to no force. It is Hill’s FV curve that has formed the basis of organizing training loads and loading parameters for over half a century. By dividing the FV curve into ‘sections’ – or differing abilities – coaches, scientists, and methodologists can effectively reduce an endless amount of decisions into manageable ‘groupings’.

To begin, I will first discuss where we first encountered the organization of loads, and how this influenced our programming.

 

Conspiracy String Theory: How New Technology Killed American Men’s Tennis | VICE Sports

VICE Sports from May 26, 2015

… Fact: virtually all high-level competitive players, including teenagers, use a relatively new type of string that allows balls to be hit with a previously unfathomable amount of topspin. In turn, this favors players who have honed their games on clay instead of hard courts, still the surface of choice in the United States. The strings also work better for players who are older, more experienced, and fully physically grown.

Call it the “Luxilon Effect.”

 

6 lessons Apple Watch could learn from rival fitness trackers

Cult of Mac from May 26, 2015

I’ve started cheating on my Apple Watch. It’s not that I don’t love it. It’s amazingly beautiful. It does stuff I didn’t even know I’d like. But when it comes to running wild in the outdoors, I’ve found a smartwatch that satisfies me more than Jony Ive’s wearable does.

For the past week I’ve been testing the Garmin Fenix 3, a top-of-the-line smartwatch from a company that’s made a name for itself by providing runners and outdoorsmen with some of the best wrist-worn fitness tech. I hate wearing the Fenix 3. While Apple Watch gently caresses my wrist, the Fenix 3 feels like I’ve strapped a tank to it. Yet it boasts features Apple Watch doesn’t have that I’m starting to think I can’t live without on runs and hikes.

 

Transfer Deadline Day in Football: A look beyond the camera lens, into the medical room

BMJ Blogs, BJSM blog from May 26, 2015

2300 GMT on the second of February marked the transfer deadline close in England and Wales. It signalled the end of a panic-ridden dash to snap up the athletes required to make a run for the top-spot. The £45 million spent in the last 24 hours of the window in the Premier League alone this year emphasises the perceived importance of this day to football clubs.

The media frenzy surrounding the saga shows helicopters landing outside training grounds and players being ushered through back doors in order to “dot the i’s and cross the t’s” in time for the deadline. When the terms are agreed and a mutual agreement reached between player and club, only a medical stands as a barrier.

 

Dope Once, Test Positive for Life

Outside Online from May 26, 2015

In almost every case, a random drug screen is accomplished via urinalysis and is inherently invasive, embarrassing, and undignified. According to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s accepted protocol, a clear line-of-sight must be established and maintained between an observing agent (the “observer”) and the donor’s collection cup during the entire collection process. This is necessary to eliminate the possibility of a dishonest donor covertly substituting a clean sample (which has happened more than once). For clean athletes, the process is particularly humiliating, and dehydration, a common condition for athletes, compounds the indignity.

But there’s a new body of research underway that may make dopers think longer and harder about cheating than the threat of urinalysis or biological passports—in which WADA looks for changes in an athlete’s blood over time, rather than for specific substances—ever did. A team of scientists at the University of Oslo, under the leadership of Dr. Kristian Gundersen, has found that in mice, the performance benefits of anabolic steroids are viable long after the steroids have been withdrawn. If the research findings can be duplicated in human testing—and Gundersen seems confident they can— the performance benefits of doping could remain latent for decades, and could be activated whenever the athlete resumes training. If that’s true, everything about sports doping enforcement could change because no amount of waiting, rehabilitation, or forgiveness can wash those tiny, illicit protein factories from the offender’s muscles. If you dope, you’re out for life.

 

How Danone gets the right bacteria in your yogurt – Fortune

Fortune, Erika Fry from May 26, 2015

Danone, the $28 billion French dairy maker, has been making yogurt for nearly a century. First sold in Spanish pharmacies as a medicine for children with intestinal disorders, Danone, the world’s largest yogurt producer now sells it in grocery stores around the globe (and under the Dannon brand in the U.S.).

The ascent of the humble, fermented milk product has been just as impressive: yogurt—now sold every which way—has become an $86 billion commercial food category. And that’s a figure that’s bound to get bigger if food companies like Danone succeed in optimizing it for the human microbiome—the 4.4 pounds of microorganisms that live, largely, in our guts and contribute, in a number of ways, to human health. See our feature story on the corporate race to feed the microbiome here.

How does it work? Danone’s Director of Microbiology & Biotechnology, Sophie Legrain-Raspaud, walked Fortune through the art and science of the company’s cutting-edge efforts to develop a new generation of good-for-your-gut yogurts.

 

Lynx’s scrimmage with Mystics focused on analytics, not rules

StarTribune.com, Minneapolis Star-Tribune from May 26, 2015

On Wednesday the Lynx will open their two-game preseason with a game at Washington.

But coach Cheryl Reeve thinks she might get more out of Tuesday’s scrimmage against the Mystics than she does from the game the following night.

Because Tuesday’s workout will be all about basketball analytics.

 

Mets Pitch Advantages of a Six-Man Rotation – WSJ

Wall Street Journal from May 25, 2015

… “I’m trying not to have any more Tommy Johns,” Collins said, referring to pitchers who’ve undergone Tommy John surgery. “I’m trying not to have any more sore shoulders. I’m trying to make sure we’re all rested and that, in September when we’re playing for something, your guys are out there pitching.”

Compared with those alternatives, the six-man rotation was the most palatable option. “You know what, they all nodded their heads, and whatever they said when they walked out of the room, I really don’t care at this moment,” Collins said. “We had to do what we think is best.”

 

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