Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 26, 2015

… S: I think it’s important to establish your standards and demands for yourself. A routine and a philosophy that you’re not leaving anything to chance — and everything is by design. Where is my game? Where is my athleticism? Where is my body injury-wise? What am I good at? What am I not good at? When you look at your career going forward, do you have a vision?

J: I’ve had a vision throughout my high school career. It was to win a state championship. Be a McDonald’s All-American, which I did. Go to college. Win Player of the Year. Win a national championship. Be a No. 1 draft pick (which I realize doesn’t matter now). Rookie of the Year. All-Star. And eventually, win an NBA championship. I have a long way to go as well, but I’ve had this vision for a while.

Wimbledon begins on Monday and Roger Federer is in a familiar place. The grass courts at the All England Club, where he’s won seven times, still offer the 33-year-old the best chance to win an 18th Grand Slam singles title. Last year, Federer lost in the final to Novak Djokovic in five sets. Federer also still looks and plays a lot younger than his age.

Here’s a big reason why: Federer is an exceptionally talented loser.

From the media to college coaches to NBA coaches to Kobe Bryant, everyone believes that teenagers play too many basketball games. Of course, the blame is directed at the players. Why? Do the players make their own schedules or do they follow their team’s schedule?

This weekend, I spoke to several high-school coaches who had more than 40 games scheduled in the next 6 weeks. Is it the players’ fault that they are playing in these games?

I received a text from a friend whose daughter is one of the best players in the state and a future NCAA D1 player. He said that she will not be participating with her high school at all during the summer, and she chose an AAU team that only participates in a few big tournaments.

Contradictory to one of Russell Wilson’s most-used hashtags — #NoTimeToSleep — rest, recovery, and sleep have become major points of emphasis in the Seahawks’ overarching program. A huge part of Pete Carroll’s system is messaging, and you can often hear how his coaching staff’s focus on getting the proper amount of rest has sunk in with his players. Doug Baldwin mentions it in a presser. Jermaine Kearse references it in an interview. Richard Sherman talks about it in a column. Almost paradoxically, one of the most important parts of Seattle’s training program is managing the time spent doing absolutely nothing.

Pete Carroll’s focus on the benefits of sleep in recovery is the subject of a quick Q&A over at the Huffington Post today, and Ariana Huffington talked to Seahawks team psychologist Michael Gervais and Director of Player Health and Performance Sam Ramsden about Seattle’s goals in that area. (Huffington also wrote about the value of rest in her book Thrive, so it’s evidently an important factor for her personal philosophy).

… there’s a growing enthusiasm (and a huge market) for training, teaching and supporting young athletes. Elite sports performance and medicine services are available to all with a credit card, and if a family desires, a passionate and competent coach and advisor can be hired.

This may not be a good thing. Forget the popular (yet very real) concern that pushing a young athlete toward athletic excellence can lead to burnout, dropout and even mistreatment or abuse.

Surprisingly, research has shown that encouraging youth to achieve athletic excellence can also lead to young athletes not fulfilling their athletic potential.

… In simple terms, if we take T (training) to be one unit for a typical session, then to make the TE (training effect) actually show the benefits of the training, the R (recovery) needs to be at least equal to one.

But most people aren’t adequately recovering. In addition, if you suffer from range-of-motion deficiencies, you should be focusing on those, first and foremost, as they have a massive impact on the rest of the equation. In fact, if you make the rookie mistake of just worrying about the training aspect, then you will never progress.

… A new paper in the Journal of Sports Economics, by University of Calabria Professor Vincenzo Scoppa, examined the impact of rest on team performance in professional soccer. Scoppa tested a widely-held belief: that teams would be more likely to beat their opponents if they had more rest time before a match.

What he found is fascinating (and useful for athletes of all ability levels). Analyzing professional soccer match outcomes from 1930-2012, he showed that:

Teams that rested for less than three days before a match were at a significant disadvantage when playing against a well-rested opponent.

However, beyond three days of rest, there was no additional benefit of more rest.

… Good speed training involves the proper application of stress (i.e. running fast at maximal output) with adequate recovery times (i.e. full recoveries) between repetitions. Each training session must also involve an appropriate volume of work – not the greatest amount of work – to ensure that the athlete adapts adequately and moves forward with advanced abilities. The accumulation of high quality work, not outrageous training volumes, will result in superior performances. I naively think this is a rather simple and easily absorbed concept that everyone should be able to grasp without delving into deep discussions on super-compensation theory, nervous system recovery, hormonal adaptations and protein synthesis. Yet, I still find that I am trying to convince the “flat” proponents that, yes, the world is actually round.

Where this all gets very interesting is in the application of ‘make-believe’ training concepts to the practice and training-camp environments of team sports, particularly at the highest levels of performance.

… If how we are feeling before a workout or race does not consistently correlate with performance, what we are thinking almost always does. “You can definitely limit yourself by thinking, ‘I’m not going to do well,’ or ‘today just isn’t my day,’” says Dr. Michael Sachs, a professor of exercise and sports psychology at the University of Temple and author of The Psychology of Running. With these negative thoughts swirling around in our mind, “we are less likely to take constructive risks and we subconsciously hold ourselves back.”

Therein lies a common trap for runners: you don’t feel so great before a workout or race, so you tell yourself you aren’t going to do well and sure enough, you don’t do well. You blame your body and search for physiological issues when in fact all your body needed was a little more time to warm up. The real problem was your mind.

Like most innovations that disrupt traditional conventions, TrackMan seems to take more than its fair share of heat. The most vocal of the skeptics seem to wear their unwillingness to embrace change like a badge of honor– chosen defenders of the status quo.

A recent tweet by a former Tour player insinuated that somehow this inanimate device was responsible for the decline of a certain iconic golfer. This added fuel to the fire, stoking what’s become a rather redundant debate on the benefits of technology in golf instruction. The apparently arithmaphobic detractors seem to point to ‘The Numbers’ as the most prominent wrong-doer in their indictment of Trackman. Their central point being that measuring and then quantifying the intricate details of the swing will leave a golfer a confused, overly-technical mess. All those numbers– robbing the game of ‘feel’ or artistry and replacing it with sterile, cold, hard measurements.

Yes– in the wrong hands or delivered carelessly, all those numbers can be bad. But the same can be said for anything being administered by the inexperienced or misinformed! This frequently cited reasoning is reductive and hardly a compelling reason to condemn the measurement device or its users. It can actually be a massive aid in shifting the learning environment from command-based, prescriptive instruction to one that is performance-focused and more conducive to effective skill acquisition.

… The story of Renaissance offers a view inside the intoxicating brew of hype and hope in the field of genetic testing. All over the country, labs and research firms are popping up, eager to study strands of DNA to better identify who is at risk for developing a disease, to guide existing treatments and to develop new ones. But the troubles at Renaissance speak volumes about how difficult it is for Medicare and private insurers to keep up with the proliferation of tests being offered.

After receiving $130 million in Medicare funds and $55 million from a unit of the private investment giant TPG, Renaissance halted its study late last year after Medicare suspended payments and began reviewing the company’s billing practices.

The Justice Department is also looking at whether the company’s billing and payment practices violated federal laws. Renaissance officials say the federal government is unfairly targeting the company.

Dr John Dickinson says heavy exercise causes rise in bronchial restriction in airways after Alberto Salazar notes proportion of his athletes with asthma lower than in Britain’s 2004 Olympic team.

Background Autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been widely used for the treatment of sports injuries. It has been associated with improved healing and regeneration of soft tissues in elite athletes. Athletes are commonly receiving nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). As yet, the effect of these drugs on platelet function in PRP formulations has not been taken into consideration.

Hypothesis The function of platelets in PRP produced under the influence of NSAIDs is inhibited and may lessen a possible healing effect on the site of injury.
…
Results For both groups, the baseline platelet counts of whole blood and the platelet counts of PRP formulations were found to be in the normal range. Both collection systems for PRP produced comparable results without significant differences between the groups. Platelet function testing with LTA revealed significantly impaired platelet aggregation in both PRP preparations, obtained from patients taking NSAIDs, irrespective of the type of NSAID (P < .001). All subjects from the control group showed normal platelet aggregation patterns when tested with LTA.

Conclusion Autologous PRP produced from subjects after NSAID medication shows significantly impaired platelet function and may result in lower quality regarding the content of bioactive compounds.

Clinical Relevance If required, the administration of NSAIDs should be performed after blood collection for preparation of autologous PRP; otherwise, the therapeutic effect may be limited.

What are the makings of a great salad? You need fresh greens, of course, and then a layer of colorful vegetables like tomatoes and carrots.

That’s a good start. But to help the body absorb more of the nutrients packed into this medley, you may want to add something else: a cooked egg.

A small study published in May in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concludes that adding eggs to salads makes it easier to absorb the carotenoids in the raw vegetables.