Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 19, 2015

… Let me quickly eviscerate two myths about the preseason. First, you need the preseason so that guys on the roster, looking for a shot, get their chance. The problem is, teams know who these players are. All teams know. They have tape on them. Scouting reports. If he’s a rookie, they have college tape. This isn’t 1940. There are things called computers and DVRs.

By the time preseason games roll around, coaches know what 90 to 95 percent of the roster is going to look like. There is very little the games themselves do to determine roster outcomes. Oh, sure, coaches will publicly dispute this, but privately, many do not.

… “I felt terrible and just didn’t understand what was wrong with me,” [Petra Kvitova] told ESPN.com. “I beat Jarmila [Gajdosova] and felt like I wanted to cry. David and I were in the elevator, and he said he wanted to talk to me. I said, ‘Good, because I need to talk to you too,’ and we were both thinking exactly the same thing. He said he saw me with the same energy I had when I was at the end of the season in Singapore. I said I feel like it’s the end of the season already, and I just started. It was very worrying.”

Kvitova missed tournaments at Indian Wells and Miami and spent much of that time asleep or lying on the beach. When she returned to tennis in April, her positive outlook had returned. She won the Madrid Open the following month, and despite early losses at the French Open and Wimbledon, she is enjoying tennis again.

… a new study from the Research Institute for Olympic Sports in Finland, just published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, caught my attention. The study put 29 runners through an eight-week baseline training period (mostly easy running, with one weekly tempo run, maintaining their usual training volume), and then eight weeks of either high-volume (increase mileage by 30 to 50 percent, keep intensity the same) or high-intensity (three workouts a week ranging from 6 x 2:00 with 2:00 rest to tempo runs of up to 40 minutes) training.

The key questions were: (a) how would the runners respond to increased volume compared to intensity, and (b) could they use any baseline data to predict which individuals would benefit most from which type of training? The outcome measured was treadmill speed at the point of exhaustion during a progressive VO2max test on a treadmill (a measure that correlates well with race performance because it combines aerobic fitness and running economy).

Energy Systems Development, or ESD, is the cardiovascular component of EXOS training programs. The intensity of the workouts is broken up into three different zones, which are differentiated by color: Yellow is easy/recovery, green is moderate/strength, and red is hard/power.

Although the science of sleep is a relatively new field (most of what we know about sleep has been learned in just the past 50 years), studies continue to show that failure to obtain adequate and consistent restful sleep is associated with attention deficits, memory problems, mood disturbances, and impaired mental performance. … recently published data on Australian elite athletes suggest that a majority of team sport athletes have no strategy in place to overcome poor sleep. While coping with stress, jet lag, and demanding schedules can present challenges for even the most dedicated athletes, sleep in almost any circumstance can be improved by following these 10 steps toward better sleep hygiene.

Britain’s Olympic long jump champion hits out at lack of support from UKA and calls on the IAAF to do more to tackle the doping crisis on the eve of the athletics world championships in Beijing

… HeadTrainer, a new app available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play, partnered with Duke Sports Science Institute and clinical scientist Deborah Attix to develop mental workouts in the form of games aimed at helping help athletes of all ages exercise their brains to enhance performance.

HeadTrainer’s games are all sports-specific, directed at improving decision-making, processing speed, focus/concentration, visual/spatial awareness and memory.

+ Russ Tedrake – Director, Center for Robotics, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
+ Sangbae Kim – MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab
+ Mick Mountz – Founder, Kiva Systems
+ Gill Pratt – Program Manager, DARPA Robotics Challenge, DARPA Defense Sciences
+ Marc Raibert – Founder, Boston Dynamics
+ Radhika Nagpal – Self-organizing Systems Research and Robotics Group, Harvard University

Motion capture is defined as the process (or technique) of recording patterns of movement digitally. Traditionally, this process has been used for the purposes of recording an actor’s movements and animating a digital avatar for film or video games. Similarly, motion capture has also been associated with clinical rehabilitation following injury. In addition to diagnosis and rehab, movement analysis plays an important part in tracking adaptation to training as well as tailoring training to individual-specific movement idiosyncrasies, asymmetries etc.

A team of researchers from the University of Canberra and the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) is investigating whether wearing compression clothing can increase the brain function of athletes.

BACKGROUND:

Rate of torque development (RTD) measures the ability of a muscle to produce torque quickly. Decreased quadriceps RTD may impair performance of sporting tasks after surgery. Currently, little is known about variations in quadriceps RTD between anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)-reconstructed and noninjured limbs.
PURPOSE:

To determine the differences in RTD of the quadriceps, the rate and timing of knee extensor moment (KEM) development, and knee flexion excursion during running after ACL reconstruction with patellar tendon autograft.
STUDY DESIGN:

Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3.
METHODS:

This study involved 21 patients (11 female) 6 months after ACL reconstruction with patellar tendon autograft (median [IQR]: age, 18 [16-20] years; mass, 68.18 [61.34-75] kg; height, 1.74 [1.66-1.78] m). Patients performed four 5-second maximal voluntary isometric strength trials of both limbs on an isokinetic dynamometer. RTD was calculated as the mean slope of the torque-time curve between 20% and 80% of total time to peak torque. Then, patients underwent 3-dimensional motion analysis while running on an instrumented treadmill at a self-selected running speed (mean ± SD, 2.68 ± 0.28 m/s). The rate of knee extensor moment (RKEM) was calculated as the mean slope of the moment curve between 10% and 30% of stance phase. Between-limb comparisons were determined with a paired t test for peak KEM, RKEM, knee flexion excursion during 10% to 30% of stance, and time to generate KEM.
RESULTS:

In the reconstructed limb, deficits in the peak rate of quadriceps torque development compared with the noninjured limb existed both isometrically (RTD, 257.56 vs 569.11 Nm/s; P < .001) and dynamically (RKEM, 16.47 vs 22.38 Nm/kg·m·s; P < .001). The reconstructed limb also generated a KEM later in the stance phase compared with the noninjured limb (11.37% vs 9.61% stance; P < .001) and underwent less knee flexion excursion (15.5° vs 19.8°; P < .001).
CONCLUSION:

After ACL reconstruction with patellar tendon autograft, patients have lower RTD and RKEM in the reconstructed limb. Deviations in RTD and the timing of the KEM can change the way the knee is loaded and can potentially increase injury risk and future development of posttraumatic osteoarthritis. Rehabilitation should consider exercises designed to improve RTD and prepare the limb for the demands of sport performance.

The last two seasons have seen the Lakers lead the NBA in games lost due to injuries. Can analytics and cutting edge technology help the purple and gold return to health?

… Today, every major professional sports team either has an analytics department or an analytics expert on staff. Teams often have to scan scout notes from clipboards, convert those PDF’s to Excel, and then hand those files over to top-notch data developers. Thereafter, another set of young talented mathematicians crunch numbers that scouts and general managers use to help determine which players they think fit their club best. This is all a part of creating an overall profile of a player to determine if that player is worth drafting, signing as a free agent, or acquiring in a trade. Analytics are the present and future of professional sports. Any team that does not apply them to the fullest is at a competitive disadvantage.

I was first introduced to this concept from a colleague, Loren Chiu, PhD, while we were both doctoral students at USC. Loren is now a biomechanics professor at the University of Calgary. He explained that the way the term “power” is used to describe an athlete’s quality of movement (short-term, high-intensity muscular performance) is scientifically inaccurate, and that measuring REAL power by performing a vertical jump on a force plate presents a lot of problems.

Unfortunately, power has just become a buzz word because it is easier to explain to coaches and athlete, yet the term is thrown around without an understanding of the true meaning. Power is simply defined as the rate of doing work, and should be limited to this mechanical definition, rather than trying to isolate it during different movement techniques that have a large number of variables.