Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 10, 2015

The challenge is usually to transfer club form on to the international stage but, after his third goal in only 82 competitive minutes as an England player, Harry Kane returned to Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday with the opposite problem.

Kane is yet to follow up his magnificent breakthrough season for Tottenham with a goal in the opening four games of this campaign and has sought advice during the past week from Wayne Rooney.

AIM:

To test if the critical power (CP) concept can be utilized to determine the critical rest interval (CRI) using repeated sprint ability (RSA) testing with varying work-to-rest ratios.
METHODS:

Twelve recreationally trained men (mean±SD; age 24.1±3.6y) completed a graded exercise test and three RSA protocols with 6s maximal sprints and varying rest intervals (12-36s) on a cycle ergometer to determine CRI. Intermittent critical power (ICP) was calculated through the linear total work (TW) and time-to-exhaustion (TTE) relationship, whereas CRI was estimated using average work per sprint and ICP. Validation trials above and below CRI were conducted to evaluate physiological response. Repeated measures analysis of variance were used to analyze variables from RSA trials and changes in blood lactate, oxygen uptake (V? O2), heart rate ( HR), peak power, and TW throughout the validation trials.
RESULTS:

Blood lactate, average V? O2, V? O2peak, and heart rate were significantly greater below CRI (8.94±4.89mmol·L-1, 2.05±0.36L·min-1, 2.84±0.48L·min-1, and 151.14±18.46bpm, respectively) when compared to above CRI (6.56±3.45mmol·L-1, 1.78±0.26L·min-1, 2.61±0.43L·min-1, and 138.14±17.51bpm). Significant interactions were found between above and below CRI for minimal V? O2 response and maximal HR response which were consistent with the heavy and severe exercise intensity domains.
CONCLUSIONS:

The use of the work-time relationship determined from RSA testing with varying rest intervals can be used to determine CRI and may distinguish between physiological responses related to exercise intensity domains.

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Watching the races and reading the recaps from the IAAF World Championships was not only exciting, it was inspiring. Sure, I was impressed by the performances from the world’s best, but I was inspired watching my friends (like teammate Abbey D’Agostino) compete on that stage—it made my goal of competing at that level seem more tangible.

There was one other takeaway from the meet for me: anything can happen. This statement is true for any given moment, but I look at it in two ways within the context of the world championships.

Anything can happen—in a good way—such as grabbing a medal in the final five meters of a 10,000 or splitting 8:19 over the final 3,000 meters of a 5,000 to defeat the heavy favorite. Anything can happen in a bad way, too, such as getting tripped by another competitor or losing a shoe mid-race.

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I’ve just returned from the first Endurance Research Conference, a gathering of experts interested in the science of endurance sport hosted by the University of Kent’s Endurance Research Group. The great thing about a small, focused conference like this is that everyone is interested in similar things, so you get plenty of chances to discuss and debate ideas with one another, both during the conference sessions and over meals and breaks. I think the next one is tentatively scheduled for two years from now—if you have the opportunity to attend, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, in addition to the big keynote talks (Samuele Marcora, Stephen Seiler, Andy Jones, Yannis Pitsiladis, Dominic Micklewright, Guillaume Millet, and many others), there were also plenty of shorter talks discussing new and in-progress results. Conference results always have to be taken with a grain of salt, since they haven’t yet been peer-reviewed, but they offer a preview of what we can expect to see in journals in the next year or two.

For years, soccer players in the United States dreamed of playing abroad in order to compete at the sport’s highest level.

These days, many international standouts are looking stateside to further their careers – and further their education.

The Clemson Tigers have 29 players on their roster and 11 of them are internationals – three from the United Kingdom, two from Costa Rica, and one each from Denmark, France, Bermuda, Norway, Italy and Brazil.

One of the biggest trends to hit the performance field in recent years, wearable GPS devices are changing the way athletes train and recover. We asked leading strength coaches how they are making the most of the technology.

The New York City Marathon is rapidly approaching. With it will come many common overuse injuries in the runners I serve in Westchester County and beyond.

Many runners will suffer from the same, mostly avoidable common running injuries.

With 4-6 weeks left to train for the NYC marathon is when we see the most severe forms of overuse injuries. “Catching Up” is a bad training concept.

Hamstring strain injuries are the predominant injury in many sports, costing athletes and clubs a significant financial and performance burden; therefore, the ability to identify and intervene with individuals who are considered at high risk of injury is important. One measure that has grown in popularity as an outcome variable following hamstring intervention/prevention studies and rehabilitation is the angle of peak knee flexor torque. This current opinion article will firstly introduce the measure and the processes behind it. Second, the article will summarise how the angle of peak knee flexor torque has been suggested to measure hamstring strain injury risk. Finally, the numerous limitations will be presented and the article will outline how these limitations may influence the usefulness of the angle of peak knee flexor torque measure. These include the lack of muscle specificity, the common concentric contraction mode of assessment, reliability of the measure, various neural contributions (such as rate of force development and neuromuscular inhibition), as well as the lack of prospective data showing any predictive value in the measure.

NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development will host “Making Waves: Why We Eat What We Eat,” featuring food policy expert and Steinhardt professor Marion Nestle, on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. in Vanderbilt Hall’s Greenberg Lounge (40 Washington Square South).

The event brings Nestle together with a leading neuroscientist of food and flavor, a historian of taste, and a cultural sociologist for a lively conversation about food, our diets, and why we eat what we eat.

In Intangiball, baseball writer Lonnie Wheeler argues that players who work hard, set good examples and mentor other players can make teams better in ways that are easy to see — but hard to measure. [audio, 10:11]

Young runners are different than you and me. They have more speed. And to achieve that swiftness, they use certain leg muscles quite differently than runners past age 50 do, according to a new study of runners’ strides at different ages. The study also intimates that many of us might be able to reinvigorate our flagging pace with the right type of strength training.

China’s national team have long been seen as a joke, and the domestic league has never truly taken off – but all of that, and much more, could be about to change

… as Germany has opened its borders to people fleeing conflict in the Middle East, so German football has responded in the same way.

Leading from the front, Bayern Munich last week pledged €1m to projects supporting the refugees now entering Germany. Meanwhile FC Schalke invited 100 refugees to their first home game of the season, and the club is organising clothing and toy collections. Other clubs, such as Borussia Dortmund and Werder Bremen are following suit with similar initiatives.

In one sense, we shouldn’t be surprised by such responses; after all, we are constantly reminded of the unique position that football clubs hold. What is now happening in Munich, Dortmund and Bremen shows how deeply embedded Europe’s clubs are in the communities where they are located, although German football seems especially unique.

… Little did I know at the time, but my daughter was far from being the only one struggling with social and sensory issues at such a young age. This was becoming a growing epidemic. A few years ago, I interviewed a highly respected director of a progressive preschool. She had been teaching preschoolers for about 40 years and had seen major changes in the social and physical development of children in the past few generations.

“Kids are just different,” she started to say. When I asked her to clarify, she said, “They are more easily frustrated – often crying at the drop of a hat.” She had also observed that children were frequently falling out of their seats “at least three times a day,” less attentive, and running into each other and even the walls. “It is so strange. You never saw these issues in the past.”