Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 5, 2015

Tony Parker never expressed concern about his subpar performance over the summer in the Eurobasket tournament, in which he connected on 32.3 percent of attempts from the field as France fell in the semifinals.

That’s because the stat line couldn’t measure what’s most important for Parker these days: his health.

The former League Two and then League One player of the year excelled in the Championship last season, and has adapted to the Premier League quickly.

… Arrieta’s commitment and work ethic are evident in his regular between-starts regimen. Each new profile of Arrieta duly notes his fondness for Pilates, TRX training, foam rolling and kale juice.

Meanwhile, the embodiment of the new-age baseball player/physical specimen seems baffled that his constant quest for an edge should brand him as novel in some way.

“This is the highest level of professional sports,” Arrieta said. “Why wouldn’t you put all your time and energy into being as strong and healthy and mobile and flexible and explosive as you can? It’s part of my lifestyle, so it’s kind of an easy thing for me to do.”

Louis van Gaal will rest his weary players tomorrow before they prepare for Sunday’s Premier League clash with Arsenal following a taxing night in the Champions League against Wolfsburg.

The Manchester United manager spoke of his concern at the club’s domestic and European schedules following his side’s 2-1 victory against the German side at Old Trafford.

“As a manager, you want to prepare on the pitch and you can’t do it because you need freshness of the players,” he said on Thursday.

Ben Roethlisberger rides a cart into the locker room, his face contorted in pain. Tony Romo supports his crumpled shoulder with a sling. Drew Brees misses his second start in 11 years. Matthew Stafford’s ribs and arms are battered. Andrew Luck is taking practice days off to nurse his ravaged body.

NFL quarterbacks took a beating in the first three weeks of the season, so much so that a long-simmering issue has been elevated into mainstream discussion. Offensive line play has deteriorated in a way that’s apparent to both to the expert and novice eye, endangering the league’s quarterback star system and threatening the aesthetic appeal of the game.

The situation has descended into an “epidemic,” Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian said recently on ESPN, and there are no easy solutions.

Do you perform well during training or practice but choke in competition? If feelings of nervousness, anxiety or fear interfere with your sports performance, learning to use a few tips from sports psychology may help you get your anxiety under control and reduce game day nerves.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the functional movement screen (FMS) could predict running injuries in competitive runners. Eighty-four competitive male runners (average age = 20.0 ± 1.1 years) participated. Each subject performed the FMS, which consisted of 7 movement tests (each score range: 0–3, total score range: 0–21), during the preseason. The incidence of running injuries (time lost because of injury ? 4 weeks) was investigated through a follow-up survey during the 6-month season. Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to investigate which movement tests were significantly associated with running injuries. The receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to determine the cutoff. The mean FMS composite score was 14.1 ± 2.3. The ROC analysis determined the cutoff at 14/15 (sensitivity = 0.73, specificity = 0.54), suggesting that the composite score had a low predictability for running injuries. However, the total scores (0–6) from the deep squat (DS) and active straight leg raise (ASLR) tests (DS and ASLR), which were significant with the U-test, had relatively high predictability at the cutoff of 3/4 (sensitivity = 0.73, specificity = 0.74). Furthermore, the multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the DS and ASLR scores of ?3 significantly influenced the incidence of running injuries after adjusting for subjects’ characteristics (odds ratio = 9.7, 95% confidence interval = 2.1–44.4). Thus, the current study identified the DS and ASLR score as a more effective method than the composite score to screen the risk of running injuries in competitive male runners.

The Sacramento Kings organization is joining a dozen Northern California companies in offering a genetic test for ovarian and breast cancer as an employee benefit.

Genetic testing is so unusual as a benefit that the Society for Human Resources Management, which surveys 300 healthcare benefit offerings, doesn’t even ask about it yet, said Vanessa Gray, a spokeswoman with the Alexandria, Va.-based research firm.

In two years off the sidelines and away from being a coach, Ben Howland, while itching to get back, spent much of his newfound time studying and researching for when the day came he would once again have a team of his own.

When he was hired by Mississippi State to be their new head coach, one of the first things he implemented was a discovery he made of the Sparta Science Force Plate technology.

Nothing can stop a season short for a team like a quarterback grabbing his hamstring after a play, or a slugger grimacing and grabbing after a routine ground ball to first base. Just ask Bears fans about their beloved Jay Cutler or look to the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka. It happens so often, especially in baseball, we’ve gotten used to it. But the most frustrating thing about those hamstring tears? They are entirely preventable.

We all lean forward way too much. As we have noted before, sitting has wreaked havoc on our hip flexors, keeping them perpetually shortened. Our trunk is leaning forward even as we stand. And this has a domino effect. When our trunk leans too far forward our glutes become passively insufficient (too long to work properly). And if that weren’t bad enough, our hamstrings are also then passively insufficient. And let’s not forget the lats, the huge muscles across your back, which are now too short to work the way they were supposed to work. So now our hip flexors, our glutes, our lats, and our hamstrings are unable to lengthen and shorten properly.

In the simplest terms, the hamstrings’ job is to flex the knee, bringing the foot closer to the glutes. Much like the tricep has a lengthening (eccentric) contraction that helps counterbalance the bicep as it flexes, the hamstrings counterbalance the quadriceps as they straighten the knee. So the hamstring will help decelerate knee extension as it works eccentrically.

On September 21st and 22nd, Stanford Sports Medicine served as a host site for three physical therapists (PTs) accepted into the Sports Physical Therapy Section -?Kevin Wilk Traveling Fellowship.

Michael Bogden, PT, DPT, SCS, Robert Metzger, Jr. PT, DPT, SCS, ACSM EP-C, and Chris Wilson, PT, DPT, CHES spent Monday morning touring the Lacob Family Sports Medicine Center, the Phillip & Penelope Knight Athletic Training Center, and the rest of Stanford’s athletic facilities and competition venues. They spent that afternoon being mentored by the physical therapy staff. This included a presentation by Floyd VitoCruz, MSPT, SCS, CSCS on the collaborative approach of the Sports Medicine healthcare team, and clinical use of the Functional Lower Extremity Evaluation in determining return to sport.

… The brand’s first protein bars were made five years ago in a small kitchen with rolling pins and hand-held knives. As products began generating buzz in the health and fitness community, the company researched how to manufacture on a larger scale. But to maintain texture without changing the formulations, Quest had to develop custom equipment.

“Keeping the ingredient label clean is difficult once you factor in manufacturing because manufacturing has grown up over the last 60 years with a food industry that has been using high-fructose corn syrup, it makes any product it’s in, quite frankly, really soft and pliable, even when under pressure, which is why it’s everywhere” Mr. Bilyeu said. “We don’t use high-fructose corn syrup; we don’t take the easy route.

KEY POINTS

Different protocols are available for collecting data on the eating practices of athletes according to the goals and available resources of the activity.

Retrospective methods (e.g., food frequency questionnaires and diet history) are limited by the athlete’s insights and memory, while prospective methods (e.g., food diaries) are limited by the tendency for the act of recording to alter usual intake.

Food diaries are a frequently used dietary assessment in research and athlete support, but should be checked for the common bias of under-reporting.

New technologies provide the potential for more rapid and efficient dietary assessment protocols, but like all methods, need to be validated for use with athletic populations.

Publicly available optical data from SportVU classified only 12.8 percent of threes last season as contested shots, compared with 66.3 percent as tracked by Vantage.

On threes, the biggest flaw in optical data is underinclusiveness as NBA players are able to contest shots despite their “center of mass” being outside the 3.5-feet distance required by SportVU’s “Contested FGA.”

Optical data also has an overinclusive problem as there are many times that defenders are within 3.5 feet of the shooter but fail to get a hand up prior to the shot, which is the defining characteristic of contesting a shot.