Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 12, 2015

When I attended USATF Level I school in 1997, a level III student told me that drills and cues were virtually lies, since the speed of contraction—as well as the very point of most of sprinting—is reflexive in nature. His words upset me, as I wanted cues and magic words to make my athletes go from slowpokes to podium performers.

Events such as swimming are basically artificial techniques and therefore highly dependent on instruction. On the other hand, as the fastest form of human locomotion, sprinting is natural and more innate. So, if cues and verbal commands are likely to be ineffective, why bother with a list—let alone the “five best”? The answer is that just because verbal instruction may have little impact, it doesn’t mean coaches are simply lap counters or motivators. It means only so much transfers from drills and verbal instruction.

The British have a strange relationship with the siesta. While most of us would love to knock off work for a nap after lunch, it’s viewed as being downright lazy. But among elite athletes, where marginal gains can mean a crucial extra yard of pace, the value of taking forty winks is being?appreciated more and more.

… A couple years ago, the coaching staff at Hoffenheim, whose first team plays in Germany’s top-tier Bundesliga, approached team psychologist Dr. Jan Mayer with a request: Could he teach players to think faster? The coaches, concerned about the quickening pace of the game, worried their players wouldn’t be able to keep up, mentally.

Mayer was surprised. Like many sports psychologists, his work up to that point was rooted in concepts popularized by Timothy Gallwey’s groundbreaking 1976 book, The Inner Game of Tennis, which discussed how to “quiet the mind” and get in and stay in “the zone.” Speed of thought wasn’t something Mayer had ever really considered. But he soon realized that was shortsighted.

… Quanterix is a developer of tools in high-definition diagnostics that has created a blood test to detect traumatic brain injuries. CEO and Executive Chairman of Quanterix, Kevin Hrusovsky described Quanterix as “incredibly disruptive,” since the company has recently emerged onto the medical landscape and has the potential to render other detection methods irrelevant. According to Hrusovsky, Quanterix is creating next generation technology, with diagnostic tests ranging throughout all therapeutics.

At the Quanterix inception, sports-related head injuries were a focus of the company since concussions are, as Hrusovsky describes, “an epidemic.” Much of the current concussion detection system is based on trial and error. But Quanterix created a system, Simoa, that accomplishes what no one else in the world has been able to—measuring concussions in blood, which will transform concussion management.

Some Apple Watch users are apparently confused over what types of exercise the wearable’s Workout app can track. Many people are using it to log weightlifting or stretching sessions, even though Apple only claims the app is suitable for “dedicated cardio workouts.”

Fortunately, a new breed of fitness apps is emerging that uses the accelerometer access enabled by the recently released watchOS 2 to track strength and flexibility workouts more effectively.

mCube, provider of the world’s smallest MEMS motion sensors, today announced the sampling of its new MC3635 3-axis accelerometer featuring the industry’s lowest power consumption and a microscopic 1.6×1.6 mm Land Grid Array (LGA) package. The MC3635 will enable developers to design a complete 3-axis inertial solution, with only a single resistor, in less than 1/10th of a square centimeter of space on a printed circuit board. These advancements will enable a new generation of wearable devices and Internet of Moving Things (IoMT) that require significantly extended battery life and very small form factors.

For nearly a decade, Sarah Wick, a sports dietitian, ran a one-woman operation at Ohio State. She oversaw the eating habits of 1,000 athletes, most of whom paid little attention to her efforts.

“My first years were just knocking on coaches’ doors, asking if I could do a prevent presentation,” said Wick, who joined the Ohio State staff in 2003. “It had nothing to do with what we’re serving them.”

Today she leads a full sports nutrition department that includes four registered dietitians, interns, a logo and a food budget of more than $1.5 million, an increase that is more than double what Ohio State paid to feed its athletes only a year ago.

U.S. dietary guidelines have long recommended that people steer clear of whole milk, and for decades, Americans have obeyed. Whole milk sales shrunk. It was banned from school lunch programs. Purchases of low-fat dairy climbed.

“Replace whole milk and full-fat milk products with fat-free or low-fat choices,” says the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government’s influential advice book, citing the role of dairy fat in heart disease.

Whether this massive shift in eating habits has made anyone healthier is an open question among scientists, however. In fact, research published in recent years indicates that the opposite might be true: millions might have been better off had they stuck with whole milk. [video, 1:47]

Many technology companies now have teams of smart data-scientists, versed in big-data infrastructure tools and machine learning algorithms, but every now and then, a data set with very few data points turns up and none of these algorithms seem to be working properly anymore. What the hell is happening? What can you do about it?

You can say goodbye to the timeout in hockey for the first 59 minutes of regulation, because what coach is going to lose the right to exercise a challenge because he called one to rest weary players following an icing?

“You’d have to have five guys out there for such an extended period of time to call one, and even then, it would be an extremely difficult call,” Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said Friday. “If you know that they have nothing in the tank, then you might have no other choice. … But I don’t know. … You don’t want to lose that [ability to] challenge.”

The punchline arrived early.

A half hour into a day-long gathering of hockey geeks on the first Saturday of the NHL’s regular season, the room was chuckling at Minnesota Wild staffer Andrew Thomas.

“Never, ever use the term ‘R-squared’ with a coach,” Thomas had quipped.

… Analytics have become part of the everyday conversation in front offices around the league and continues to grow as a cottage industry away from the rink.

Let’s take a look at what’s transpiring in both corners — privately in NHL circles and publicly in the blogosphere — as it pertains to modern hockey stats.

The Feinberg School of Medicine launched a study this fall to assess the effectiveness of mobile devices in preventing college students from losing healthy behaviors.

The study, called NU You, will track students’ habits using an app, in-person exams and social media.

“The college years are a time when people lose between 13 and 20 percent of their long-term health,” said Prof. Bonnie Spring, the project’s principal investigator.

… What is the role of Academies? To produce good teams, or great players? As John Peacock said “It’s not just a numbers game – it’s not about producing mediocre or above average players – it’s very much about producing top players and more of them.”?

Brian McClair, the ex-Man Utd academy director, believes the move to Academies sought to improve two things: provide better coaching and produce better players. He believes that it improved the quality of English coaching, yet he is not so sure that the players have improved. For him “It’s been brilliant for the average player. But it’s not been elite.”

For me the most important years for the development of professional players come between the ages of 12 and 16.