Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 23, 2015

The legs are back. The range is back. Kevin Love, is back. And as the season looms, his offseason rehab, training, diet — everything — is set to come together to make sure he’s at his best when it matters most: When it’s time to hit the court and chase a championship. [video, 6:13]

… There is a definite time and place for conditioning, but when speed is the goal the short bursts and longer recover are the keys to success.

The problem is when to do basketball speed training during a practice. Should it be at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end? The answer is YES! Using this simple method of increasing basketball speed can be used anytime throughout a practice. If the goal is to get the purest and most effective speed when the player is least fatigued, it must occur at the beginning of practice or I should say, shortly after the warm-up.

… He has degrees in physiotherapy and sports science, and first linked up with Allardyce at Blackpool in 1995.

He then worked at Blackburn for four years before being reunited with Allardyce at Bolton, where he was appointed the head of sports science and medicine.

Bolton’s remarkable ascent from the Championship to the verge of Champions League qualification under Allardyce was underpinned by a dedicated approach to sports science

For years, study after study has shown that a good sweat improves brain function. But what’s the optimum dose? Only recently are scientists figuring out the proper prescription and timing necessary to achieve the biggest boost. Following new research out of Stanford University and the Mayo Clinic, companies like Google, Reebok, and the online-coaching platform TrainingPeaks are strategically using physical activity to make employees smarter and more productive.

“They’re moving beyond just viewing exercise as something to keep their workforce healthy,” says John Ratey, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. “They realize it’s important for performance.” Try these four tips to get a bigger cognitive boost from your next workout.

In addition to the branding overhaul of the University, Grace Calhoun is quietly upgrading — no, revolutionizing — what it means to practice for Penn Athletics. And we’re not talking an Allen Iverson-esque rant.

We’re talking bringing Penn to the forefront of sports performance on the collegiate and national levels.

“I’d like sports performance to be something that the Penn programs are really known for,” Calhoun said.

VisionMobile’s Q2 2015 Developer Economics report says that only 21% of developers working in the Internet of Things are focused on wearables, a drop of 7% from a similar study conducted in Q4 2014. The survey, which interviewed 3,150 IoT developers and 670 wearables developers, reports that developers have adopted a cautious attitude towards wearables. The primary concern: a perceived lack of actual consumer interest.

VisionMobile reports that just under 50% of all developers have no plans at all to build apps for wearable devices, while 32% consider themselves to be either explorers or future participants. Developers are waiting to see what happens next and although wearables are being hyped by brands like Apple, Samsung and Google, mass adoption is still a long way off.

CoachMePlus, a Buffalo-based company behind an eponymous athlete management system, recently completed a $600,000 round of venture capital fundraising, according to the company. The latest round followed a $1 million round of fundraising in October 2013.

The CoachMePlus software aggregates data from disparate sources into a single dashboard, making it easier for coaches and training staffs to combine the data from different wearable sensors, camera-based systems, and other sources. As such, they draw comparisons to Kinduct and Kitman Labs, which TechGraphs has recently covered. The difference, according to president and co-founder Kevin Dawidowicz, is that CoachMePlus was developed by “software guys,” rather than people with a physiology background. As a result, he argues, the company’s software is agnostic to a trainer’s methodology, which can mean a lot in a field as contentious as injury prevention.

… One of the take home messages of this discussion was the importance of viewing the potential injury risk in light of the nature of the specific sport you are dealing with, across all four steps of the injury prevention model (see figure). Research was presented across some of the sports that have the highest prevalence of groin pain and injuries in this area.

1. Ice Hockey

During the football World Cup (2014) players including Steven Gerrard, Vincent Kompany, Robin Van Persie and Nigel De Jong all suffered groin injuries with Robin Van Persie reporting that he has been suffering with groin pain for the last 6 years! Groin pain has previously been described as the bermuda triangle of sports medicine! Due to its complexity and the amount of pathologies that could be causing the athletes pain (Bizzini 2011). Groin pain in athletes is quite common in sports that require a large amount of kicking especially including football, aussie rules with groin injuries also occurring in ice hockey, running, tennis, rugby, American football and basketball. These conditions are notoriously difficult to diagnose and groin pain represents a significant clinical challenge due to the difficulty experienced in identifying the injured structure(s), which is due in part to the complex anatomy of the region. This blog will go through assessment methods to aid clinical reasoning for myself and possibly others in ruling in and out potential diagnosis’ for groin pain.

Background Tendon pain occurs in individuals with extreme cholesterol levels (familial hypercholesterolaemia). It is unclear whether the association with tendon pain is strong with less extreme elevations of cholesterol.

Objective To determine whether lipid levels are associated with abnormal tendon structure or the presence of tendon pain.

Methods We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. Relevant articles were found through an electronic search of 6 medical databases—MEDLINE, Cochrane, AMED, EMBASE, Web of Science and Scopus. We included all case–control or cross-sectional studies with data describing (1) lipid levels or use of lipid-lowering drugs and (2) tendon structure or tendon pain.

Results 17 studies (2612 participants) were eligible for inclusion in the review. People with altered tendon structure or tendon pain had significantly higher total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol; with mean difference values of 0.66, 1.00, 0.33, and ?0.19 mmol/L, respectively.

Conclusions The results of this review indicate that a relationship exists between an individual’s lipid profile and tendon health. However, further longitudinal studies are required to determine whether a cause and effect relationship exists between tendon structure and lipid levels. This could lead to advancement in the understanding of the pathoaetiology and thus treatment of tendinopathy.

Are you among the many coaches, athletic trainers, and support crews—including parents, partners and siblings—who spend too much time on the road, traveling with your athletes from one sporting event to the next? If so, your food budget is likely tight, your encounters with unhealthy foods are relentless, and your hankerings for comfort foods might often overpower your nutrition knowledge. While you likely know what you should eat, you may struggle to eat well. Regardless of the obstacles, athletes who travel by car and bus need to fuel optimally to be able to perform at their best.

When healthful food options are scarce, some travelers wonder if eating a decent sports diet is even possible when grabbing late-night snacks from a gas station or vending machine’s meager offerings. The answer: yes, with a bit of creativity.

… he difficulty of seeing the metaphorical left-handed pitchers in soccer reaches across all parts of the game. Imagine a team of left-handed hitters. They’d be perfect to play in a league with very few left-handed pitchers. Sure, maybe there’d be a weird, unlucky stretch when they happened to run into two or three lefties in a row, but those would pass, and most of the time they’d be uniquely situated to dominate a league. Now, imagine that that team had to play in the Champions League, where lefties came along a lot more often. It’s worth considering whether that is what’s been happening with Arsenal3 (and maybe Manchester City) in recent years, even if you wouldn’t know it from looking at the data and the results would be indistinguishable from bad luck. For the most part, though, they’ve dominated in England, and when the style of play changes against continental sides, they’ve struggled.

The same problem applies to player acquisition. Say there’s a guy whose attacking stats make him look like a superstar: great shooting numbers, plenty of shots from dangerous positions, and lots of chances created. Yet, a new team in a different league signs him and soon finds out that all the things that made him great don’t translate to their tactics, personnel, or the style of the league.

In the 69th minute of the most important derby in English football (that’s still the case right?) Manchester United lead Liverpool 1-0 with the game obviously still very much open. An average team in Liverpool’s position would still expect to draw or win the game about 21% of the time, not ideal but nowhere near a lost cause.

With United on the attack and the ball in the final third Carrick plays a weighted ball through to Ander Herrera who latches onto it on the edge of the penalty area. Right here Gomez has a decision to make, he can accept that his positioning wasn’t great but just try and track Herrera as quickly as possible, or he can try and redeem himself with a last-ditch tackle near the byline.

Unfortunately for Liverpool Gomez attempted to make up for his poor positional play with a rash tackle on Herrera, fouling him in the process, and greatly diminishing Liverpool’s chances of getting anything from the game. It’s alright saying it was a stupid decision to dive in with hindsight, but let’s try and put a value on the decision Gomez made.

Michael Lewis’ Moneyball … describes how the Oakland Athletics exploited an imperfection in the way player productivity was being evaluated pre-2003. On-base percentage appeared to be more important in determining team success compared to more popular statistics. We test the hypothesis that in a competitive market, other teams will increase the weight given on-base percentage in the reward structure for their players. Our results show that in the post-Moneyball (MB) era, the return to on-base percentage has indeed increased for free agents, the group whose salaries we expect to be most affected by the MB philosophy.