Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 19, 2015

… Sporting News spoke with the three coaches who have spent the most time with Russell over the past four years and found a player whose rise to the top of the 2015 NBA Draft class came as a surprise only because he so frequently found himself overshadowed. Whereas Karl-Anthony Towns and Jahlil Okafor topped draft boards before they stepped on a college court, Russell is new to this club after a first-team All-American season at Ohio State.

But he’s sure he belongs.

“I’m the best player in this draft,” Russell said to reporters, coaches and anyone else who will listen, though he generally has been projected between second and fourth.

… When I got to South Carolina, I didn’t know anybody except the people who I came to work with. I didn’t recruit most of the players that were there when I arrived. Culturally, South Carolina was different. My guard? Immediately up.

But after seven years and after building personal relationships with these players — relationships that require reciprocal trust and vulnerability — that guard is down. They’re seeing more of me — who I really am — than any other place I’ve been. I’m more myself now. That feeling of letting my guard down allows me to give my all. I credit our players for allowing me to coach the way I do — I don’t have to censor anything. I don’t have to put on airs. I feel what I feel when I feel it, and then I express it. That’s what the people and players of South Carolina have done: help me be myself.

… Mathews is learning – like so many in coach Chip Kelly’s system do – a little bit about sports science and staying healthy.

“There’s a lot of unknowns coming into here with my health and stuff,” said Mathews, who was drafted 12th overall by San Diego in 2010 out of Fresno State. “I didn’t know a lot. I thought just working out every day and making sure I’m in shape and strong and stuff was the main focus. Now that I look back on it, I was very, very dehydrated. That was one thing that I never really focused on.

… Elite distance runner Lauren Fleshman says that Salazar helped her get treatment for asthma, but she became squeamish when he suggested that she use medication in a different manner than the doctor instructed.

n Sunday, athletes and staff from all five U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA) teams—the U.S. Ski Team, U.S. Freestyle Ski Team, U.S. Nordic Ski Team, U.S. Freeskiing and U.S. Snowboarding—left the gym and took to their bikes for the biggest USSA competition of the summer: Sufferfest.

What is Sufferfest? It’s a gnarly, 8.8-mile road bike ride put on by USSA’s Sports Science staff led by Strength and Conditioning Coordinator Mike Bahn. Started by Bahn’s predecessor Alex Moore—now the Cleveland Cavaliers’ high performance director—the strength and conditioning coaches were looking for a way to motivate their competitive athletes off the snow. They came up with Sufferfest and it quickly became a capstone goal at the end of the athletes’ conditioning block. “They love this kind of motivation,” said Bahn. “It brings them all together in a competitive environment where everyone has a chance to win.”

The flying saucer hovered high above the most recent Giants practice session, carefully taking in the scene, observing each and every play, emitting a quiet whir for about 20 minutes. Then it came down to the ground, and a coach quietly put it away.

No, this isn’t the intro to the Independence Day sequel (that’s next year), and it’s not Bill Belichick spying on the Giants (that’s probably already happened). This was the Giants spying on the Giants, and old-school football coach Tom Coughlin utilizing yet another technological advance. On Wednesday, the second day of the team’s mandatory minicamp, Big Blue debuted its newest practice tool, a DJI 3 Phantom drone.

… Making its debut on last year’s Air Jordan XX9, Nike Flyweave technology is an upper material engineered to provide targeted support for specific movements. In other words, depending on your sport, there are different Flyweave-equipped sneakers to take care of your needs.

Composed of an intricate weave of warp and weft threads (pictured below) that come together to make a textile, Flyweave is as durable as it is supportive. The technology was developed by Nike designer Thomas Bell, who had been inspired by the long-lasting textiles used in the aerospace industry.

The mantis shrimp is able to repeatedly pummel the shells of prey using a hammer-like appendage that can withstand rapid-fire blows by neutralizing certain frequencies of “shear waves,” according to a new research paper by University of California, Riverside and Purdue University engineers.

The club is made of a composite material containing fibers of chitin, the same substance found in many marine crustacean shells and insect exoskeletons but arranged in a helicoidal structure that resembles a spiral staircase.

This spiral architecture, the new research shows, is naturally designed to survive the repeated high-velocity blows by filtering out certain frequencies of waves, called shear waves, which are particularly damaging.

Pain is hard to ignore. Pain, heat and swelling are often present with acute inflammation. Inflammation is a normal physiological response to a physical activity. During the recovery period, the inflammatory process repairs any damage and also promotes training adaptations leading to strength and endurance gains

Research has now proven links between inflammation, diet, and gut bacteria. This is the main reason why many athletes are now looking towards personalizing their diets and adding in more anti-inflammatory foods and practices [e.g. Heart Rate Variability devices and monitoring]. A good quality diet and moderate, consistent aerobic efxercise are some of the best ways to lower inflammation. Regular exercise has actually been shown to reduce inflammation by 20-60% and to reduce white blood cell count (a marker for inflammation) during and after exercise. Interestingly enough, inconsistent exercise can actually have the opposite effect on inflammation, increase your white blood cell levels, increase inflammation and weaken your immune system.

… A foot injury his junior year didn’t derail Roman. He needed minor surgery on a small bone, but he popped some OxyContin and after a few weeks was back on the mound. His senior year Roman planned to lead Eldorado to a state title and then declare for the 2008 major league draft (the Braves had expressed the most interest in him), spurning about 20 Division I scholarship offers. Before the season, though, Roman committed one of those judgment-deprived acts for which teenagers are known. He and some friends used a stolen credit card at a mall. They got caught. The school found out. Though it was Roman’s first offense, he was kicked off the team.

Humiliated, angry and depressed, Roman thought back to the numbing effect of the OxyContin. His prescription had run out, but that wasn’t much of an impediment. In the upscale Northeast Heights—more High School Musical Albuquerque than Breaking Bad Albuquerque—painkillers were competing with marijuana and alcohol as the party drug of choice. “There are pill parties,” says Roman’s younger brother, Beau. “[Pills are] so easy to get. They’re everywhere.”

Roman was soon in the grip of Oxy.

After attending the Football Medicine Strategies (#FMS2015) Conference in London, I was inspired to put together a brief, yet hopefully informative overview of the streams I attended. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn, first hand, from some of the world leaders in Sport and Exercise Medicine (SEM).

… Most businesses spend many weeks or months trying to find their next leader or senior manager, yet that is not always the case in football.

Few other single roles can have such an impact on a business as the man that runs the playing side of a football club – a winning team makes money while a losing one gets relegated and jobs are lost.

Yet for many clubs it seems that no sooner has one manager gone, the next one appears.

The investigation into the breach of the Astros’ database has shined a light on an emerging sports issue: the fight over intellectual property.

Dribbling speed in soccer is considered critical to the outcome of the game and can assist in the talent identification process. However, little is known about the biomechanics of this skill. By means of a motion capture system, we aimed to quantitatively investigate the determinants of effective dribbling skill in a group of 10 Under-13 sub-elite players, divided by the median-split technique according to their dribbling test time (faster and slower groups). Foot-ball contacts cadence, centre of mass (CoM), ranges of motion (RoM), velocity and acceleration, as well as stride length, cadence and variability were computed. Hip and knee joint RoMs were also considered. Faster players, as compared to slower players, showed a 30% higher foot-ball cadence (3.0 ± 0.1 vs. 2.3 ± 0.2 contacts · s-1, P < 0.01); reduced CoM mediolateral (0.91 ± 0.05 vs. 1.14 ± 0.16 m, P < 0.05) and vertical (0.19 ± 0.01 vs. 0.25 ± 0.03 m, P < 0.05) RoMs; higher right stride cadence (+20%, P < 0.05) with lower variability (P < 0.05); reduced hip and knee flexion RoMs (P < 0.05). In conclusion, faster players are able to run with the ball through a shorter path in a more economical way. To effectively develop dribbling skill, coaches are encouraged to design specific practices where high stride frequency and narrow run trajectories are required.