Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 13, 2015

No season-ending surgery is ever optimal for an athlete, but the timing for Alec Burks last year was especially rotten. Missing 55 games in your age-23 season is one thing; hitting the sidelines permanently just weeks before a team-wide resurgence began in earnest, spurred in large part by the group’s collective realization of coach Quin Snyder’s layered scheme, is another altogether.

When Burks went under the knife in December, he may not have realized the extent to which his recovery would hinge on two very different, and yet interconnected, elements: his body’s return to strength, for one, but also his ability to keep up with a team learning and implementing a whole new playbook right in front of his eyes.

The former was the more tangible concern, and understandably so. Alec’s shoulder had been a nagging point of concern all the way back to his college days at Colorado. It limited him more than he ever let on last season, even while he played 27 games after aggravating it during a drill in the 2014 preseason. “I was playing with one arm,” he said, and unable to raise his left arm above the shoulder for months.

In the run-up to last Saturday’s CONCACAF Cup clash with Mexico, U.S. manager Jurgen Klinsmann mentioned that the game might be the last hurrah for the over-30 players in his squad.

On the one hand, it seemed a curious motivational tactic, as no player likes to be reminded by their coach that the end of their international career is close at hand. On the other, there was no denying that the lineup that took the field Saturday, while long in experience, was also getting up there in years. Three members of the starting XI — Jermaine Jones, Kyle Beckerman and DaMarcus Beasley — are 33 years old. A fourth, Clint Dempsey, is 32.

In just four years in the NFL, Houston Texans defensive end J. J. Watt has become professional football’s most physically dominant force. He’s the first player ever to twice record 20 or more quarterback sacks in a single season. Today, Watt is a 6?5?, 289-pound tower of power, but trainer Brad Arnett remembers the skinny high school sophomore who first walked into his Waukesha, Wisconsin, gym 10 years ago. Arnett applied exercise science and old-school techniques to transform Watt into Andrew Luck’s worst nightmare.

We live in an age of data, so you might imagine that training should be simple. How could anyone get overtrained if they’re diligently monitoring their heart-rate variability, omega-wave brain activity, hormonal profile, blood levels, and lactate kinetics?

Of course, it’s not that simple in practice. Lots of studies have shown promise in linking various types of physiological data to fatigue or training outcomes, but it’s proven to be much harder than expected to nail down exactly what signs to watch for. As a new paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out, this inconsistency could results from “intra-assay and interassay variability, intraindividual and interindividual variability, the influence of circadian and pulsatile rhythms, nutrition and hydration status, climate, psychosocial factors and particular exercise characteristics”—which is another way of saying “We have no idea.”

The jump squat is one of the exercises most frequently used to improve lower body power production, which influences sports performance. However, the traditional determination of the specific workload at which power production is maximized (i.e., optimum power load) is time-consuming and requires one-repetition maximum tests. Therefore, the aim of this study was to verify whether elite athletes from different sports would produce maximum mean propulsive power values at a narrow range of mean propulsive velocities, resulting in similar jump heights. One hundred and nine elite athletes from several individual/team sport disciplines underwent repetitions at maximal velocity with progressive loads, starting at 40% of their body mass with increments of 10% to determine the individual optimum power zone. Results indicated that regardless of sport discipline, the athletes’ optimum mean propulsive power was achieved at a mean propulsive velocity close to 1.0 m.s?1 (1.01 ± 0.07 m.s?1) and at a jump height close to 20 cm (20.47 ± 1.42 cm). Data were narrowly scattered around these values. Therefore, jump squat optimum power load can be determined simply by means of mean propulsive velocity or jump height determination in training/testing settings, allowing it to be implemented quickly in strength/power training.

German researchers have shown the brain’s endocannabinoid system—the same one affected by marijuana’s ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—may also play a role in producing runner’s high, at least in mice.

Imagine an injectable sensor that helps soldiers and athletes optimize performance. Or a virtual clinic where expert social networks diagnose patients using data from smartphone sensors. Or a social network that posts heart-rate data along with pictures, creating a massive data set for health researchers.

Leslie Saxon is going a step further. She is overseeing such projects at the Center for Body Computing she helped form at the University of Southern California. Work on all three will be described at the CBC’s annual conference this week.

In what has become a daily ritual, members of the University of Wisconsin football team can be spotted looking at a bunch of numbers on a sheet of paper posted in the locker room.

One column in particular creates the most buzz: individual mph data from the most recent game or practice.

“It’s a chance to talk trash to somebody,” senior outside linebacker Joe Schobert said, “if you ran faster than them.”

Thousands of participants in this Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon will run the race as marathon organizers, with key assistance from a Northwestern University and Chicago Marathon research team, will utilize big data — both historic and real-time — to supply a comprehensive picture of the race as it unfolds.

Northwestern logistics expert Karen Smilowitz and her team of four engineering students have custom-designed a new data visualization system that provides a computer simulation of the 26.2-mile race. Using data from the last seven Bank of America Chicago Marathons and from runners in this year’s race, the system can forecast where large concentrations of participants will be 20 minutes later and help race officials to plan accordingly.

… serious organizations understand that self-awareness is essential to self-improvement. The entire “people analytics” movement taking root in enterprises worldwide is predicated upon the measurable belief that people who know more about what makes them effective will do more to become more effective. Books like Laszlo Bock’s Work Rules highlight the ongoing convergence of individual and institutional efforts to quantify what works and what works in quantification. And organizations are, in turn, grappling with the kinds of tough questions that come with the ability to track more employee data.

The common denominator? Best-in-class performers are relentlessly dedicated to measurable self-improvement.

Background: Convergence insufficiency (CI) is a common binocular vision deficit after a sport-related concussion (SRC). CI may result in visual discomfort and vision-mediated functional difficulties such as slowed reading and compromised attention, leading to impaired academic, work, and sport performance.

Purpose: To test the reliability of repeated near point of convergence (NPC) measurements in a sample of athletes after an SRC; compare the symptoms and cognitive impairment of athletes with normal NPC to those with CI after an SRC; and explore the relationship among age, sex, learning disability, migraine history, and CI.

… Results: Groups did not differ on demographic or injury characteristics. NPC differed between trial 1 and trials 2 (P = .02) and 3 (P = .01) for the CI group but not the normal NPC group. Internal consistency was high across NPC measurements (ICC range, 0.95-0.98). Patients with CI performed worse on verbal memory (P = .02), visual motor speed (P = .02), and reaction time (P = .001, ?2 = .13) and had greater total symptom scores (P = .02) after the injury. Results of hierarchical regression revealed that the NPC distance contributed significantly to the model for reaction time (P < .001).

Conclusion: CI was common (~42%) in athletes evaluated within 1 month after an SRC. Athletes with CI had worse neurocognitive impairment and higher symptom scores than did those with normal NPC. Clinicians should consider routinely screening for NPC as part of a comprehensive concussion evaluation to help inform treatment recommendations, academic accommodations, and referrals for vision therapy.

… He is the guy who once helped put Chauncey Billups back on the court in only four days by wrapping frozen banana peels on his split hamstring. He is the guy whose stature with the Pistons once inspired the team to add Kander’s training-table wheatgrass and organic lemon drink as well as quinoa, kale and lentils to the Palace of Auburn Hills concession stands.

Players who have had him tend to their both their bodies and minds through these many years are believers.

“I will say his style is a lot different than anybody I’ve ever seen,” said Wolves veteran forward Tayshaun Prince, who played all 82 regular-season games six consecutive years early in his career with Kander in Detroit and seven times in his 13 NBA seasons. “He was one of the reasons I was able to stay as healthy as I was. No matter who it is, the longer you spend with somebody, the more they learn your body and they can master it.

Second Spectrum CEO Rajiv Maheswaran talks at Strata+Hadoop on the beginnings of machine learning in the world of professional sports.

Prozone, a pioneer in sports performance and analysis, recently signed a landmark deal with the U.S. Soccer Federation to deliver a wide range of services to the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) and U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT). Prozone, which was purchased by STATS LLC in May 2015, will provide the U.S. National Teams its advanced video and analytics platforms that are used by soccer clubs and leagues all over the world.

… Klopp’s final season at Dortmund offers a different lesson. The simple narrative was that he failed because the club finished seventh, although it could have been worse given they were bottom in early February. But as Omar Chaudhuri, the head of football intelligence at 21st Club – which advises clubs throughout Europe on analytics and strategy – explains, Dortmund were actually extraordinarily unlucky. They converted only around 6% of their chances while their opponents scored with 15% of their attempts on goal. … So how do you detach managerial talent from luck? Dan Altman, a Harvard-trained economist whose company North Yard Analytics works with a number of Premier League and Champions League clubs, does it by first analysing how good the players at a manager’s disposal are – and then looking at the underlying numbers in each game they play, including the quality of chances they create and allow. As Altman explains: “The difference between these offers one measure of a manager’s ability to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.”