Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 8, 2015

The discovery of two holes in her heart as a teenager taught future England midfielder Jade Moore about how fragile a football career can be.

Faced with the very real prospect of a life outside sport, the then 17-year-old had surgery knowing she needed a back-up plan.

By the age of 23 she had her own business and, 12 months later, she was a member of England’s bronze-medal-winning World Cup team in Canada.

… now [Jordan] Morris, a college junior, is back in school, pen out on the first day of class, listening to a lecture about the age of Earth. (“It’s very, very old.”) He’s enjoying a few weeks on campus before heading to Kansas City to help the U.S. under-23 team attempt to qualify for the Olympics. Morris is a novelty — the first college player called up to the national team since 1999, the first one to score a goal since 1992. Even with the U23 team, a group composed almost entirely of college-age players, Morris is the only one who plays college soccer. The others are scattered around North America and Europe,

When the Golden State Warriors’ Andre Iguodala lifted up the NBA Finals MVP trophy last June, it was the culmination of countless reps in the weight room and hours in the gym. But it was also a testament to something else: his newfound devotion to analyzing and refining his sleeping habits.

… First, the lead-up to a match in-season for a team sport may vary between weeks. An athlete may have played 40 min during the current week, while during the previous week the athlete played 80 min. One week might have involved 2 days of travel while the other had no travel. The game day turn around may be 6 days one week and 8 days the following week. Should we expect an athlete to have the same response to training and recovery in the lead-up to these matches?

Second, team sport athletes often experience cumulative fatigue or physiological adaptation across a playing season which can change the stress response, recovery rates, and even the amount of muscle damage from equal exposure to collisions and maximal efforts. Investigating a day-by-day comparison relative to previous weeks can therefore limit to ability to identify fatigue and performance and ultimately lessen the likelihood of repeating optimal performance.

Third, collecting information and data in sport is only valuable when actionable steps can be taken from the information.

… [Mark] McClusky talked to Inverse about the importance of mental exercise, drawing the line between cheating and enhancement, and training the next generation of superathletes.

Can all sports benefit from the switch to science-based training paradigms?

I think it’s generally more easily applied in individual sports or in endurance sports where there’s a clearer link between physiology and performance than in, say, a team sport. A team sport like soccer has obviously a big physiological component but also a big skill-based component, and that’s harder to quantify in some ways than a sport like running or cycling, where frankly, it’s power output and efficiency over time, and you can model that a little more easily. So it’s easier to take that approach in a sport where a) there’s only one person, not a team; and b) where there are models that can throw their arms around the entire sport that way.

It doesn’t take us too many late nights or early wakeups before we understand the importance of getting enough quality sleep. I wish it were that clear and easy to comprehend the importance of taking a recovery phase after your goal races each year. We often have to learn this valuable lesson the hard way.

Rather than write a column on the value of the recovery phase, I thought I’d share some inspiring stories instead.

Owner Anthony Precourt and head coach and sporting director Gregg Berhalter took another step toward reshaping the image of Columbus Crew SC on Wednesday.

The club announced a revamped academy structure, headed by new academy director Michael Milazzo and modeled after the attacking brand of soccer Berhalter has brought to Columbus.

Crew SC now boasts that they have one of the “most qualified group of youth soccer professionals in the country.”

Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff has warned against too much complacency among players in the modern game at the Aspire Academy Global Summit on Football Performance and Science in Berlin.

Borussia Dortmund’s coach Thomas Tuchel, who is in his first season with the club in Nordrhein-Westfalen, raised the issue during the 2-day congress backed by Qatar’s Aspire in the German capital.

“With talented players I can only say to coaches: prepare obstacles for them,” said Tuchel. “In the past, I was always sure to create optimal conditions. It’s great to optimise, but this excellent comfort zone that we allow players today can lead to a shortcoming: [how] to overcome obstacles. Who can lead the dressing room when it’s not air conditioned, when there is no shuttle service, when the laundry has not been done? You only learn to overcome obstacles that way.”

Researchers have taken a step toward flexible, stretchable batteries by hybridizing a candidate for lithium-ion battery electrodes, V₂O₅, with a conductive polymer. Not only does that process convert the electrode material from a paperlike form that easily cracks to one that’s flexible and robust, it also improves its electrochemical properties.

Viewing the body as a chemical system and treating maladies with pharmaceuticals is so 20th century. In 21st century medicine, doctors may consider the body as an electrical system instead, and prescribe therapies that alter the electrical pulses that run through the nerves.

That’s the premise of DARPA’s newest biomedical program, anyway. The ElectRx program aims to treat disease by modulating the activity of the peripheral nerves that carry commands to all the organs and muscles of the human body, and also convey sensory information back to the brain.

Jawbone is known for creating a fitness tracker on your wrist, but its CEO Hosain Rahman sees a future where wearables are actually inside your body.

“The first thing you have to crack though is actually getting people to wear it,” Rahman said onstage at the Code/Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, California.

“If you can keep it on all the time, the amount of information you get about the user is staggering.”

Strava, one of the leading GPS-based run-tracking apps, has launched Strava Insights. The interactive running data tool aggregates nearly 5 million weekly Strava entries and breaks them into interesting data points concerning location, time and place, popular days for running and more.

The data refreshes each week and shows the most current 12 months of data from Strava members in its 12 most active cities.

There are monitors attached to the chests of Celtics players under their jerseys that measure heart rate. More monitors, strapped to the back, record movement.

Players occasionally will be wired for science this week in Europe, with an exhibition game today against Olimpia Milano and on Thursday against Real Madrid. There’s a quick turnaround and a transcontinental flight between the two games, which should alter the data for Johann Bilsborough, an Australian sports scientist hired by the Celtics last summer. He’s traveling with the team as an intrigued observer, a recorder of everything that influences the system of a professional athlete.

Bilsborough’s experience has come primarily with the Australian Football League, rugby teams and mixed-martial artists. He’s developing an overall health and fitness plan for each of the Celtics, while working with the team’s strength-and-fitness and training staffs. The goal is to apply an analytical approach to everything from rest and sleep needs to recovery from exertion.

During a national championship, the anthropometric, physiological and maturation characteristics of 13-14-year-old players of elite basketball teams and their association with sport performance were analyzed. Body parameters (weight, height, skinfold thicknesses and lengths) were measured and physiological capacities assessed by sprint (20 m) and jump tests (i.e. countermovement jump with arm swing [CMJ-S]). Chronological age (CA) and maturity offset (years from age at peak height velocity; YAPHV) were calculated, and then predicted age at peak height velocity (APHV), as the difference between CA and YAPHV. Game performance was assessed with point averages and the Performance Index Rating (PIR). The birth-date distribution of players was biased, those born early in the selection year outnumbering those born later. Anthropometric analysis indicated that players who performed better had longer body lengths. Physiological testing showed that semi-finalists had better sprint performance than quarter-finalists and those players with greater jump capacity scored more points. Early maturation and advanced maturity status were also associated with better PIR and scored points per game. Multiple blockwise regression analysis showed that, among the factors analyzed, YAPHV was the best predictor of basketball performance. In conclusion, around puberty, physical and physiological parameters associated with maturity and CA are important in determining the success of elite basketball players. Consequently, boys who are born in the second half of the year and/or (late maturing tend to be marginalized or totally excluded, and not given the chance to play under equal conditions; their careers may then be held back by the relative disadvantage associated with inexperience.