Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 15, 2015

… “It’s unfathomable to go across the country from Cleveland to San Francisco — at the very least a five-hour flight — and then play 50 minutes in a game the next day,” [Michael] Young says. “You don’t see that in any other sport. The travel stress alone can be debilitating.

“And then you add to the fact that basically it’s a one-man team at this point, and the mental and physical burden — it’s just overwhelming,” Young says.

… “In the old days, defensemen would play 35 minutes all the time, but they would take half the shift off,” longtime ESPN commentator Barry Melrose, a former player and coach, told Bleacher Report. “Keith is jumping into the plays, catching people from behind. He never stops. Yeah, he’s a freak.” … “You won’t find out until he dies and they dissect him and find his brain is bigger than everyone else’s, or something like that. You can’t do what he’s doing just because you do a lot of running.”

Rowing hard hurts. There is no way around it. If you want to go fast and get faster, you have to push through pain. In fact, the fitter you become, the more pain you can handle. But what causes this pain is not as certain as it once was thought.

… Professionals from sports leagues around the United States and around the globe have gathered annually with the Sounders FC staff to discuss advances in the field of sport science. This year, with more participants from various professional leagues from around the country, the group gathered to talk about how data can be best applied in every-day decision making from many levels, including that of coach and physical therapist.

“It’s an eclectic, good mix of people from a variety of backgrounds,” Tenney said. “That’s what makes this a strong event. Sport science really should be applied. In this year’s seminar, the presenters are looking at how you can take the data we collect and how to best translate that into real, actionable decisions daily.”

The National Football League piloted an on-field player tracking capability last season that it hailed as the future of scouting — and of cool television graphics.

But a lawsuit filed this week alleges the firm that licensed the system, Zebra Technologies Corp. of Lincolnshire, Ill., stole it from a company in Haverhill, Lynx System Developers Inc.

Last weekend was a perfect example of how the term pace, in sport, is evolving each year. Three sports exemplified the concept of pace: horse racing, elite soccer, and Formula 1 auto racing. In a span of 24 hours, history was made at the Belmont stakes, thrilling lead changes in occurred Montreal during the Canadian Grand Prix, and glory was claimed in Berlin at the Champion’s League Final.

The sporting world showcased some of its best athletes pushing past their limits; and those extreme limits continue to be pushed as sports science unveils the mystery of what makes the body better. Recent studies explain how simple walking pace can help predict longevity within the general population, redefining the value of step-total versus speed. Pace is tossed around casually as a crude summary of speed of competition, but biomarkers and the wearable technologies available today are poised to help the average fan understand what pace truly means.

MEMSIC announced the launch of its latest addition, the INS380, to its portfolio of Inertial Systems enabled with SmartSensing technology targeted to a broad range of precision motion sensing applications. The portfolio offering consists of Inertial Measurement Units (IMU), Vertical Gyros (VG), Attitude and Heading Reference Systems (AHRS), Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) and Tilt measurement systems in a variety of packages suited for system designers to end equipment manufacturers.

The latest product from MEMSIC, the INS380SA, is a complete inertial navigation system with a built-in 48-channel GPS receiver. The SmartSensing technology enables a turnkey system with better than 0.01 m/s velocity measurement accuracy. The integrated 3-axis magnetometer allows for accurate operation when the GPS signal is lost or when the vehicle comes to a stop.

Background Return to sport and to pre-injury level represents an important outcome after both primary and revision anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructions.

Purpose</b. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to determine the return to sport rate after revision ACL reconstruction.

Material and methods A systematic search was performed of the MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials Databases. All the studies that reported return to sport, return to pre-injury sport level and return to high level/competitive sport was considered for the meta-analysis. The overall pooled mean of post-operative knee laxity and pooled rate of positive pivot-shift and objective International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) categories was calculated as well.

Results Overall, 472 abstracts were identified and screened for inclusion and only 16 studies reported the rate of return to any level of sport activity at the final follow-up of 4.7?years (range 1.0–13.2?years), showing a pooled rate of 85.3% (CI 79.7 to 90.2). The return to pre-injury sport level was achieved in 53.4% (CI 37.8 to 68.7) of cases. Normal or quasi-normal objective IKDC, less than 5?mm of side-to-side difference at arthrometric evaluations and grade I-II pivot-shift test were reported in 84%, 88% and 93% patients, respectively.

Conclusions In spite of almost 8 patients out of 10 returning to sport after revision ACL reconstruction and showing good stability, only half of the patients returned to the same pre-injury sport level.

The stem cell toolbox has been a bit of a jumble, at least as far as joint-improvement projects are concerned. Scattered among bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are stem cells that could be useful in treating arthritis—regenerating tissue, cartilage, and bone—but grabbing hold of them is difficult. BMSCs tend to look alike, even though some are capable of differentiation and some are not. Consequently, cell-based arthritis treatments have involved a degree of blind groping.

Arthritis treatments promise to become handier now that researchers at the University of York have demonstrated that different kinds of BMSCs can be identified and isolated from each other. Most important, these researchers have shown how to identify which BMSCs are stem cells capable of repairing cartilage of joint tissue, advancing the development of cell-based treatments against arthritis.

… “Last year’s postseason [lasted] 89 games and finished with 109 man games lost to injury,” trainer Jeff Stotts told me. … “This year’s postseason total is 182 games lost in 78 games.”

Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Brandi Chastain, Ali Krieger, Aly Wagner, Christie Rampone, Rachel Buehler, Shannon MacMillan, Heather Mitts.

What do these athletes have in common? Apart from being current or former members of the U.S. Women’s National soccer team, they have all suffered ACL injuries. In fact, many of them have suffered the injury twice.

If there is one injury that could define a specific group of athletes, it is ACL injuries in female soccer players.

Challenge people to remember what they ate the day before, and many will draw a blank. That failing means that much of the data on personal eating habits — which form the basis of many national dietary guidelines — are unreliable and misleading, according to a report1 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings that drew attention on social media. The authors argue that the widely used survey method of asking people to recall their food and drink intake is so inaccurate that any conclusions based on such data should be called into question.

Nutritionist Giuliano Poser has confirmed that he helped Lionel Messi change his diet, leading to the Barcelona star’s outstanding 2014-15 campaign.

Messi scored 58 goals and contributed 23 assists as Barcelona won the Champions League, Copa del Rey and La Liga Treble, making him a huge favourite for the 2015 Ballon d’Or award.

This followed a disappointing 2013-14, which was disrupted by injury and saw Barca fail to win a trophy for the first time in six seasons.

… Too often, the American League scout says, his colleagues are too focused on showcase events and spend too little time in search of talent. He recalled the legend of when a Braves scout first saw Hank Aaron: He noticed Aaron incorrectly gripped a bat, placing his left hand over his right on the bat. The scout showed Aaron the proper grip. Today, the scout said, such a player would be laughed out of a workout. The scout said part of baseball’s power outage is because the country’s strongest and best athletes are no longer playing baseball.

The dialogue was part of a lengthy answer to a simple question: Where are the athletes?

“I will tell you a club that is still willing to go raw and still is willing to bank on their development. It’s the Pittsburgh Pirates,” the scout said. “They are one of the lone throwbacks saying, ‘Give us athletes, and we’ll take our chances.’ They do a lot of it.”