Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 26, 2015

… Giovinco’s stellar performances might be down to a change in regime: he’s now fitter and sharper, something acknowledged by both player and coach.

“At the moment, I’m very happy with my performance,” Giovinco says. “The last couple of years, I haven’t been in very good shape. And now, I’m very happy to keep scoring, helping the team to achieve their goals. But I’m feeling better as well. I’m playing better than I was in Europe.”

Professional tennis player CoCo Vandeweghe (pronounced VAN-de-way) knew she needed to change her game. The epiphany came in February 2014 after a loss in the first round of qualifying at a Women’s Tennis Association tournament in Acapulco, Mexico. “I had no business losing that match,” Ms. Vandeweghe says. “I went home frustrated and immediately called my trainer and said tennis—skills, technique—has always been the priority. It was time to shift the focus to fitness.”

Ms. Vandeweghe, 23, turned pro in 2008 and quickly got noticed for her powerful serve. She put in two sessions a day on the tennis court, but often slipped with her diet, caving to In-N-Out Burger and choosing time with friends over a gym workout.

But after the Acapulco loss, she started putting in double sessions at the gym with specific workouts to improve explosiveness, footwork efficiency, cardiovascular conditioning, and mobility and flexibility. To maximize the benefits of her amped-up routine, she also adjusted her diet and recovery habits.

… Federer has always been one of the sport’s most creative champions, but he started to take more chances after hiring Stefan Edberg as his coach before the 2014 season.

Only recently, though, has Federer learned how to make risky plays less risky. Federer occasionally serves and volleys, but that tactic cannot succeed time after time with the quality of returns in modern tennis. Federer still needs to play his traditional baseline game and control points with his forehand—and then he needs to be sneaky. Federer increasingly approaches the net as a reaction to his opponent, rather than as a set play.

“Stefan wants me to play up in the court and move in as much as possible but in a clever way,” Federer said.

This study longitudinally examined age-related changes in the match-running performance of retained and released elite youth soccer players aged 8–18 years. The effect of playing position on age-related changes was also considered. Across three seasons, 263 elite youth soccer players were assessed in 1–29 competitive matches (988 player-matches). For each player-match, total distance and distances covered at age group-specific speed zones (low-speed, high-speed, sprinting) were calculated using 1?Hz or 5?Hz GPS. Mixed modeling predicted that match-running performance developed nonlinearly, with age-related changes best described with quadratic age terms. Modeling predicted that playing position significantly modified age-related changes (P?<?0.05) and retained players covered significantly more low-speed distance compared with released players (P?<?0.05), by 75?±?71?m/h (mean?±?95% CI; effect size?±?95% CI: 0.35?±?0.34). Model intercepts randomly varied, indicating differences between players in match-running performance unexplained by age, playing position or status. These findings may assist experts in developing training programs specific to the match play demands of players of different ages and playing positions. Although retained players covered more low-speed distance than released players, further study of the actions comprising low-speed distance during match play is warranted to better understand factors differentiating retained and released players.

A key concept in preventing and managing running injuries is understanding the balance between training load and your capacity to handle that load. In a nutshell it’s a case of working within your limits and not pushing your training beyond what your body can cope with. Today we look at finding the balance and some important recent research…

… On the strength and conditioning staff, Mike Vorkapich, who was promoted to associate head strength and conditioning coach in 2009, has added the title of director of sport science to his resume as he enters his 20th year on staff at Michigan State. He will be leading a team of internal and external experts in the areas of sports nutrition, sport psychology, data analytics and athletic performance. A former Spartan linebacker, Vorkapich rejoined the football program in 2015 after a 10-year stint in which he directed the men’s basketball, hockey and both golf programs. In addition to developing the first sport science program for MSU Athletics and assisting with the football team, Vorkapich will continue to oversee hockey and golf. Vorkapich got his start at Michigan State as a graduate assistant from 1995-97

… One of the digital health companies in the LA Dodgers Accelerator, Santa Monica, California-based FocusMotion, helps athletes monitor and analyze their movement with wearable devices. FocusMotion syncs its software program with any open wearable device platform and integrates with a company’s preexisting iOS or Android app.

Using pattern recognition, FocusMotion can learn, identify, and count the user’s movement. Based on this data, FocusMotion will help the user understand when they have poor form or feel fatigue so that athletes can prevent overtraining. The company said some use cases for the technology include physical therapy, sports, and training.

Kinduct, the other digital health-focused company in the accelerator, has developed a health and fitness data management platform. The company has created an offering that helps teams track athletes, provides healthcare organizations with patient engagement tools, and allows physical therapists to offer medical education and exercise prescription tools.

“There are a number of key challenges with sensors in shoes but as technology advances these challenges become possible to solve,” argues [Adidas’ Simon] Drabble. “The first challenge would be to identify a unique selling point.

“When we created the miCoach Speed_cell we allowed people to take data from the court and field of play which had never been possible before and the product gave people a new window into their sport.”

Then there’s battery power. Not just any power but ecologically sustainable power. “Any solution for power management needs to minimise the impact on the design, style and weight of any product. Specifically it ideally also needs to removable, changeable or chargeable.”

“The third key challenge is sensor size and durability. Shoes can take a lot of impact and they also allow dirt and water into the area where sensors may be placed so this needs significant consideration.”

QAS Head Jumps Coach Gary Bourne and QAS Strength and Conditioning Coach Andrew Lulham introduce us to the Nord Board. It’s a groundbreaking and integral piece of equipment for jumps training here at QAS.

… I wrote an article on the subject of Sports Psychology for the Philadelphia Eagles blog with Eagledelphia.com.  In that article I describe Chip Kelly’s employment of sports psychology as a new tool in leveraging his teams talents into a team hungrier for success.

But the same philosophy can and must be applied to the players of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Long before Chip Kelly arrived in Philadelphia and banned junk food in favor of personalized smoothies, fitness experts have been helping NFL players get bigger, stronger and faster by changing their eating habits.

Players often transform their bodies during the offseason, but it requires more than pumping iron. Whether they’re trying to bulk up or slim down, proper nutrition is essential.

“We are not eating for pleasure, we are eating with a defined purpose to fill each athlete with rocket fuel,” said Kevin Dunn, owner and CEO of TEST Football Academy.

… When I speak with executives from around the world going through a period of poor performance, it doesn’t take long for them to mention they want to hire a star from another company. “If only we had Kate,” they’ll say, “we could smash the competition and regain our footing.”

At first, poaching stars from competitors or even teams within the same organization seems like a winning strategy. But once the star comes over the results often fail to materialize.

What we fail to grasp is that their performance is part of an ecosystem and removing them from that ecosystem — that is isolating the individual performance — is incredibly hard without properly considering the entire ecosystem. (Reversion to the mean also likely accounts for some of the star’s fading as well).

… A decade ago, in the course of studying why certain high-tech companies thrived during the internet boom, the authors discovered something surprising: To shape their high-level strategies, companies like Intel and Cisco relied not on complicated frameworks but on simple–and quite specific–rules of thumb. The simple rules these companies had mapped out in order to manage complex processes helped them make on-the-spot decisions, adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, and bridge the gap between strategy and execution. All this even though they were in extraordinarily complex, challenging, and fast-moving industries.

Sull and Esienhardt draw on their abundant research to provide a framework for developing and refining effective rules. They find insights in unexpected places, from how Tina Fey codified her Saturday Night Live experiences into rules for producing 30 Rock (“never tell a crazy person he’s crazy”) to burglars’ rules for selecting targets (“avoid houses with a car parked outside”). Whether you’re struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides a powerful antidote to complexity.

In a sport where the desire to quantify every movement only grows with each season, it is a sabermetric aficionado’s worst nightmare.

You can’t measure it. You can’t define it. You can’t put a number on it.

We’re talking about clubhouse chemistry, and the culture that can raise a major league team to extraordinary heights without having the biggest payroll or most talent.

“It’s really undervalued,’’ St. Louis Cardinals veteran starter John Lackey told USA TODAY Sports, “especially in today’s world with all of the numbers guys.”