Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 23, 2015

… The professional sports community has become a pioneer in showcasing the importance of sleep. You have been an advocate of this for a long time — when did you first start incorporating sleep training into your teams’ practices, and what inspired you to do so?

Fatigue and performance are intimately linked and sleep is one of the important variables to get right to help athletes sustain high effort and enthusiasm, for the long haul.

We’ve tried to not make a big deal about sleep, because we don’t want athletes to hyper-focus on if they aren’t getting enough of it.

Instead, we learn from leading scientists about the best practices to maximize the effects of sleep on our organization. We schedule our training schedules and flight patterns to optimize the science of sleep. We spend a good amount of energy to educate athletes and coaches about the impact and effects of sleep. We also allocate resources to monitor sleep patterns for those who want to optimize their recovery process.

This conference, run jointly by Middlesbrough FC and Teesside University, will bring together academics and football professionals to explore new ways of thinking that will help to improve the effectiveness of training for English football. The one day event is at our new Darlington campus, only 2.5 hours from London Kings Cross.

Sessions range from cloud-based training apps, the decrease in hamstring injuries through to the history of AFC Ajax.


Thursday, September 10, starting at 9 a.m. local time

Scientists at Uppsala University report the development of a new technique to study proteins, which does not require advanced equipment, specialized labs, or expensive reagents. The technique, which was developed with colleagues in Scotland and Austria, could be further developed to be used in point- of-care devices, for instance for diagnostic purposes.

The possibility to identify and localize proteins in tissues is essential for understanding disease mechanisms and for diagnostics. However, today advanced instruments are often needed to study proteins and how they interact with each other. An example is the microscopy technique that was awarded for last year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry; super resolution fluorescence microscopy.

Lee Hood, the genomics pioneer who has co-founded more than a dozen biotech companies, is preparing to unveil a new startup, GeekWire has learned.

The Seattle-based company, Arivale, describes itself as “a revolutionary new wellness company combining cutting-edge science, an intimate and unprecedented view of your body, and personalized coaching to help you achieve your unique wellness potential.”

… As they chase down the title, the USWNT is barreling full-steam ahead to ensure that their best match performances are still ahead of them. Behind every world-class team is a training staff that works to keep players healthy, and much of the preparation going into these important matches is orchestrated by Dawn Scott, the strength and fitness coach for the team—as well as a little accessory sitting on the wrist of every USWNT team member.

For years, Scott has been using wearables and activity monitoring tech to make the most of every training session. “Heart rate monitoring has been around for over 10 years now, but in the past five years there has been an increase in the use of GPS technology in soccer and sports generally, which is basically like a car’s satellite navigation tracking every single movement and impact a player makes on the field,” Scott says.

Until recently, I didn’t know a thing about how my roughly 25-minute bike commute across San Francisco—or any other part of my day, really—affects my body, other than that I inevitably arrive at work sweaty and a bit out of breath when I’m in a big rush. How high is my heart rate? Do my sleep habits affect it? How many calories do I burn?

These questions have been on my mind as a number of activity trackers and smart watches have hit store shelves over the past couple of years, promising to track information like steps, sleep, heart rate, sun exposure, and calories. With one of these sensor-filled gadgets on my wrist, surely I could get accurate information about my body.

That’s the idea, at least. These devices could give you more control over your health by making it easier to collect data previously left unmonitored or, as in the case of heart rate, typically gathered only at a doctor’s office (and even then infrequently). And these devices aren’t just tracking data; companies like Apple, Jawbone, and Microsoft offer advice based on what the sensors in their wrist-worn wearables detect.

The chairman of the National Football League’s health and safety advisory commission believes American football could ban helmets in the future.

For years, occasional stories surface of former college athletes who pay out of pocket to cope with injuries they suffered while in school. The medical costs can be thousands of dollars and create lasting debt.

Undoubtedly, there are athletic departments that pay for some post-college medical expenses. But since there has been no NCAA requirement to do so and hardship stories kept emerging, a perception formed that athletic departments flush with new dollars don’t properly treat their former players who sacrificed their health.

That’s about to change this fall in the Pac-12 — maybe.

Seven years ago, Bryan Snyder’s position with the Broncos didn’t exist. The team didn’t have nine chefs, and it didn’t have a kitchen that served sushi and quinoa.

It wasn’t until coach Josh McDaniels was hired in 2009 that Snyder, a former basketball player at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, was brought on as the team’s director of nutrition.

The Broncos have since tried to ensure their players are fed properly, during the offseason as well as during the season. But each year brings changes to Snyder’s job, and this year is no different. A new coaching staff and a new playbook mean more dietetic variables to consider.

U.S. Women’s National Team fitness coach Dawn Scott walks us through the ideal gameday breakfast: It’s all about carbohydrates, proteins and the balance between getting them in during breakfast and the players’ pregame meal.

“Gamedays are about making sure the muscles are recovered from the training we have done and ready for the game we are about to play.” Scott says. “The idea is that the players have eaten a good diet leading up to gameday and you are just topping out what you have in the system already. We need to make sure we are fully stocked with carbohydrates because 80% of the game you’re using carbohydrates as your fuel for energy.”

Fasting has long been acclaimed as an effective way to lose weight, improve the immune system and boost brain function. But doctors have been loathe to recommend it because of the dangers associated with such extreme dieting.

Now scientists say they’ve developed a five-day, once-a-month diet that mimics fasting — and is safe.

In the study, which was published in the journal Cell Metabolism and funded by the National Institute on Aging, participants who intermittently fasted for three months had reduced risk factors for an amazing range of issues: aging, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease.

We have been talking about developing predictive models for tasks like evaluating draft prospects. Last time we focused on the question of what to predict. For drafting college prospects, this amounts to predicting things like rookie year performance measures. In statistical parlance, this is the dependent or the Y variables. We did this in the context of basketball and talked broadly about linear models that deliver point estimates and probability models that give the likelihood of various categories of outcomes.

Before we move to the other side of the equation and talk about the “what” and the “how” of working with the explanatory or X variables, we wanted to take a quick diversion and discuss predicting draft outliers. What we mean by outliers is the identification of players that significantly over or under perform relative to their draft position. In the NFL, we can think of this as the how to avoid Ryan Leaf with the second overall pick and grab Tom Brady before the sixth round problem.

… As F.B.I. agents try to build a case against personnel in the St. Louis Cardinals’ front office who are accused of breaking into the network that housed the Houston Astros’ closely guarded baseball intelligence, they are struggling with one particular aspect of the investigation: determining who, specifically, had his hands on the keyboard.

The investigation is focused on a small group of Cardinals employees who specialize in statistical analysis and computer programming and had access to a computer in a residence near the team’s complex in Jupiter, Fla., during spring training in 2014.

Limits to athletic performance have long been a topic of myth and debate. However, sport performance appears to have reached a state of stagnation in recent years, suggesting that the physical capabilities of humans and other athletic species, such as greyhounds and thoroughbreds, cannot progress indefinitely. Although the ultimate capabilities may be predictable, the exact path for the absolute maximal performance values remains difficult to assess and relies on technical innovations, sport regulation, and other parameters that depend on current societal and economic conditions. The aim of this literature review was to assess the possible plateau of top physical capabilities in various events and detail the historical backgrounds and sociocultural, anthropometrical, and physiological factors influencing the progress and regression of athletic performance. Time series of performances in Olympic disciplines, such as track and field and swimming events, from 1896 to 2012 reveal a major decrease in performance development. Such a saturation effect is simultaneous in greyhound, thoroughbred, and frog performances. The genetic condition, exhaustion of phenotypic pools, economic context, and the depletion of optimal morphological traits contribute to the observed limitation of physical capabilities. Present conditions prevailing, we approach absolute physical limits and endure a continued period of world record scarcity. Optional scenarios for further improvements will mostly depend on sport technology and modification competition rules.