Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 24, 2015

… A minor knee injury in training prevented him from playing in Klopp’s debut — a goalless draw with Tottenham — but the German coach said he won’t rush the striker back onto the pitch.

“I trust this player 100 percent. If Daniel is fit, then he can play no problem,” Klopp told English newspapers. “If he is not then I don’t think about it because if the medics and physiotherapists tell it is not possible, then it is not possible.

… An aggressive runner who never gives defenders any peace, Vardy is much more than a predator who comes to life in the penalty area, and Leicester have reaped the rewards of playing to his strengths. He is a constant menace and thrives in a team that presses high up the pitch, acting as Leicester’s first defender when they are without the ball and, by playing on the last man’s shoulder, the focal point of their attack once in possession.

His transformation from this season to last, when he came good towards the end but scored only once in his first 24 Premier League appearances, has been startling and there are several factors behind the turnaround.

Oftentimes in the world of sports, the best players don’t make for the greatest coaches. When they become managers, former stars might find it hard to relate to a struggling player, or — having gotten through their playing career on talent alone — have difficulties with tactics.

New England Revolution head coach Jay Heaps has been on both sides of the coin. At Duke University, he was a clear go-to guy for the soccer team and was named college player of the year his senior season. He, of course, went on to have a successful career in MLS as a player, spending 11 years in the league, nine of them with New England.

But how many high-level college soccer players play a second sport in college? And how many on a team as vaunted as Duke’s basketball program, coached by the legendary Mike Krzyzewski?

… There have been so many imperfect situations for Gordon. He concedes that those situations are the ones by which he has been judged. It’s unfortunate. Gordon generally is a sharp and thoughtful guy, but a series of circumstances (most not of his doing, with one especially notable exception) have left the impression that he is a fragile malcontent who has wasted his ability.

But talk to Gordon and you can’t help but take a closer look at the context of those important career ups-and-downs. Heck, he’s glad to explain those moments he has been through—as well as those that might be to come.

… The recipe for success in Conference football is much the same as it is among the superstars of the Premier League. Vardy still runs himself to the brink of exhaustion, harries defenders to distraction and never lets a miss get him down. Courage has carried him this far, along with an unstinting work ethic; when Leicester lose the ball, he leads their efforts in winning it back.

“He would stick his head where it needn’t be,” Goodall said. “As an all-round striker, speaking as a defender, he was a horrible to play against because he has got the nasty side of the game as well as the finesse. He trained as he played. Everything in, and rightly so.”

… Many times, athletes go into competition with the expectation of winning based on our past performances. Although athletes may think expectations equals confidence, it can actually have a negative impact on performance.

The expectation to succeed causes stress that takes away from your ability to perform at a high level. The best way to approach a match is without any expectation. You should want to focus on the game, rather than the outcome.

Stan Conte resigned on Saturday as the Dodgers vice president of medical services and head athletic trainer, effective immediately.

“I want to thank the Dodger organization and specifically each and every one of the dedicated medical staff for their support these last nine seasons in Los Angeles,” Conte said in a club release. “My resignation will allow me to focus on my research in baseball injury analytics as I remain committed to determining the causes and effects of various baseball injuries.”

If you play football, the chances are you play 5-a-side – by far the most popular version of the game in many places. But it’s 5-a-side bible covermuch more than a game: it’s an unbeatable fitness regime, a social club, an elite sport … it’s what we do when we get too old for ‘jumpers for goalposts’. In a new book, The Five-A-Side Bible from BackPage Press, CHRIS BRUCE covers every aspect from crazy team names – The Neville Wears Prada, Murder on Zidane’s Floor – to interviews with star names, wacky stories of ill-discipline and injuries, outlandish excuses for not playing, kit disasters and a bucket list of the world’s most iconic 5-a-side pitches. There’s also sports science, the low-down on tactics and nutrition, and how to use warm-ups and warm-downs to optimise performance. In this extract, he interviews a Danish professor who explains why five-a-side isn’t merely fun, but possibly the best exercise in the world.

After his success with England rugby, playing key roles in the 2003 World Cup and with Team GB at the 2012 Olympic Games, Dave Reddin is becoming an increasingly influential figure at the Football Association, shaping the future of the national game and the national team.

With the FA undergoing a huge restructuring – and a painful redundancy programme that will lead to the loss of between 100 and 300 jobs – it is Reddin, head of performance services since February 2014, who will emerge as one of the organisation’s most powerful figures, reporting directly to the other technical director, Dan Ashworth.

The man credited with bringing Luis Suarez to English shores in 2011, Damien Comolli, has been confirmed as one of the presenters at the 2015 FA Talent ID conference, which takes place at St. George’s Park on Friday 4 December.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies typically collapse data from many subjects, but brain functional organization varies between individuals. Here we establish that this individual variability is both robust and reliable, using data from the Human Connectome Project to demonstrate that functional connectivity profiles act as a ‘fingerprint’ that can accurately identify subjects from a large group. Identification was successful across scan sessions and even between task and rest conditions, indicating that an individual’s connectivity profile is intrinsic, and can be used to distinguish that individual regardless of how the brain is engaged during imaging. Characteristic connectivity patterns were distributed throughout the brain, but the frontoparietal network emerged as most distinctive. Furthermore, we show that connectivity profiles predict levels of fluid intelligence: the same networks that were most discriminating of individuals were also most predictive of cognitive behavior. Results indicate the potential to draw inferences about single subjects on the basis of functional connectivity fMRI.

Skin-integrated wearable sensors may provide cost-effective new ways for patients to be monitored in the comfort of their own homes while offering a promising future for broader applications, bioengineering professor Todd Coleman, SM ’02, PhD ’06, said Oct. 7 at the MIT System Design and Management conference.

Coleman, director of the Neural Interaction Lab at the University of California, San Diego, focuses his research on sensors, their practical medical applications, and potential future uses to encourage healthier lifestyles in society.

With the market for wristwatch-style fitness trackers such as Garmin and Fitbit surging, the Apple Watch seemed to come at just the right time for fans of the Boston app RunKeeper when it was released earlier this year.

Just one problem: until now, you’ve had to carry your iPhone with you while jogging to maintain a Bluetooth connection to the watch. That meant a quarter-pound hunk of glass and metal tucked into your running shorts or strapped to your arm.

That changed Thursday.

LeBron James and Michael Phelps are two of the top athletes in the world who have reached the elite level where their every movement is measured and analyzed by performance trainers. Every calorie spent, every calorie replenished, sleep patterns, heart rates and more. Athletes generate mountains of data, really, and trainers need to sift through what is important to monitor their clients’ specific health.

“You get information every day and if you’ve done a good job as a sport coach or, as in my case, a sport scientist, of tracking what they did the day before, you can start to after a while attach numbers to the training and see conclusions with the outcomes,” says Keenan Robinson, the trainer for Phelps. And that 24/7 personalized data is exactly why Robinson and Mike Mancias, LeBron’s trainer in Cleveland, and others are gravitating towards the new Whoop system.

… One company that stands to benefit from the heightened concern over concussion is BlackBox Biometrics, which makes a small wireless sensor that pairs with an app to detect blows during training and gameplay.

The technology – called Linx IAS – originated as a military tool to measure the invisible impact of shockwaves from an explosive blast which can rattle soldiers’ brains inside their skulls. The sensor gives medical staff an indication of the severity of the impact of the shockwave on an individual, which in turn helps the triage process.

When Lebron James famously dropped out of game one of the 2014 NBA Finals with a cramping left leg, many wondered if he was low on electrolytes. Gatorade even teased him on Twitter, suggesting he wouldn’t have cramped if he’d been drinking their product. (James reps Powerade.) He was hardly alone. From tennis star Rafael Nadal (2011 U.S. Open) to marathoner Dathan Ritzenhein (2012 Olympic trials), athletes the world over have always been plagued by painful muscle spasms that show up in the crucial late stages of fierce competition. Inevitably, these cramps are blamed on heat and dehydration. The only problem? Research tells us that neither have anything to do with it.

A Boston startup called Flex Pharma says it knows why cramps really happen and, more important, how to prevent them. Founded by Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Rod MacKinnon and Harvard neurobiology professor Bruce Bean, the company is testing a supplement that it says makes athletes less likely to cramp by resetting the motor nerves in seizing muscles. If true, Flex could revolutionize how cramps are understood and treated.

I’ve written a few columns about my experience with venous thromboembolism (VTE)—that is, blood clots—and in response, I’ve received countless questions about the risks specific to runners, the symptoms to watch for, and the recovery process.

Tuesday, October 13, was World Thrombosis Day, and in honor of everyone who has asked questions, I put together a Q&A with Dr. Gary E. Raskob, Dean of the College of Public Health and Regents Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Raskob is also Chair of the World Thrombosis Day Steering Committee.

Quarterbacks Ben Roethlisberger, Tyrod Taylor and now Marcus Mariota all have medial collateral ligament (MCL) injuries of the lead left knee. A handful of other players also suffered MCL sprains across the NFL on Sunday.

Of the four main knee ligaments, the MCL is most often injured. Located on the medial or inner side, it gives the knee stability from a valgus or “knock-knee” force. Fortunately, the MCL rarely if ever needs surgery as it heals reliably. More severe sprains may recover with some residual laxity but the knee functions well.

For the first time, some of the more forward-looking people around the NBA are having thoughtful — if very preliminary and still somewhat theoretical — conversations about the length of the schedule.

Commissioner Adam Silver said Friday following the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting that the league’s younger owners are more open to innovation, and because of it, there’s a newfound sense that few issues are off the table.

“I’d say the new generation of owners who have come into the league are incredibly open-minded on all issues,” Silver said of the composition of the 82-game schedule. “We’re open-minded on it. It’s something we’ll continue to look at.”

Gary Vitti was so interested in research and technology that he devoted his professional life to it — first at the University of Utah, then the University of Portland.

“All I ever wanted to be was a college professor,” he says.

Then the Los Angeles Lakers called.

… Last month, Tracie McMillan (@TMMcMillan) made a strong case that The U.S. Doesn’t Have Enough of the Vegetables We’re Supposed to Eat for NPR ‘s The Salt. The senior fellow at Brandies University and author of The American Way of Eating presented several well-researched reasons why there is a shortage of fresh vegetables available in the United States.

… genetic variations can be used to help athletes achieve an optimal body composition and gain the most from their nutrition and training and conditioning programs. For example, vitamin C can affect an athlete’s health and endurance fitness goals depending on how well they process it, which is determined by their genes. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that aids in reducing exercise-induced free radical damage, which translates into better recovery from training and greater resistance to fatigue. However, too much vitamin C can negatively impact how an athlete responds to training aimed at improving aerobic capacity, as some free radicals are necessary to stimulate adaptations. Some athletes have impaired utilization of vitamin C, so they are at a greater risk of depleted levels in their blood. Others may have very efficient processing and should be cautious with supplements.

Your friend has cut out sugar and feels amazing as a result. Another friend, on the other hand, is on what sometimes appears to be a strict all-candy diet and still stays perfectly healthy and trim. And you have tried both of these dietary tactics and have seen no real changes in your own body.

The same could be said for dairy or carbs — whatever the nutrient may be, you likely know from experience that just because some eating habit works for somebody else, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll work for you. Everyone’s body is different, of course, which means everyone’s body responds to food a little differently. And this, some scientists across the globe are now arguing, points to the potential future of healthy eating. The key to fighting the increasing threat posed by diabetes and obesity may be personalized diets — that is, eating plans tailored specifically for each individual — instead of the generalized nutrition guidelines we have now.

The answer is in your gut — more specifically, the trillions of bacteria currently residing there.

This study examined differences in diet, particularly vegetarian and vegan, among ultramarathon and other long distance runners. Participants who had completed a half- (HALF), full- (FULL), or ultramarathon (ULTRA) in the past 12 months were recruited to complete an online survey assessing current diet, reason for diet, and other dietary behaviors. A total of 422 participants completed the survey (n=125 ULTRA, n=152 FULL, n=145 HALF). More ULTRA participants were men (63%) (vs. FULL (37%) and HALF (23%)) and ULTRA participants reported significantly more years of running (16.2 ± 13.6) than FULL (12.1 ± 11.1, P<0.05) or HALF (10.6 ± 11.6, P<0.05). Body Mass Index (self-reported height/weight) was significantly higher in HALF (24.3 ± 4.4 kg/m2) vs. FULL (23.1 ± 3.2 kg/m2, P<0.05). ULTRA runners were almost twice as likely to report following a vegan/vegetarian diet than HALF and FULL marathoners combined (B=1.94, 95% CI=1.08, 3.48) and reported following their current diet longer (13.7±15.3 years) than HALF participants (8.6±12.1 years, P=0.01). ULTRA participants more commonly cited environmental concerns whereas HALF and FULL participants cited weight loss or maintenance as a reason for following their current diet. There was no difference in diet quality between ULTRA and other runners but vegan and vegetarian runners had higher diet quality scores than non-vegetarian runners (P<0.001). The findings point to an interconnectedness between long distance running, diet, and diet choice and can help guide nutrition, exercise, and psychology professionals who are working with distance runners.

TruMedia Networks, an industry leading sports analytics firm, announced today that Dean Oliver will be joining the company as Vice President of Data Science.

In his senior role with TruMedia, Oliver will focus his efforts on the analysis of three?dimensional data and the development of products and methodologies that will serve the unique needs of tier-one sports teams, leagues and global sports media properties.

Companies large and small globalize their enterprises in search of advantages, such as lower costs, flexibility, and closer proximity to key markets. But globalizing comes with an Achilles’ heel: The vaster a company’s operations, the more vulnerable it becomes to jarring events around the world, including natural disasters, political upheaval, industrial actions, mistreatment of workers in suppliers’ factories, and damaging effects of climate change.

“For a variety of reasons, these disruptions are getting more potent,” says Yossi Sheffi, the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, and director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.

So if companies seek greater rewards by spreading themselves out, they should also recognize that they face greater risks. Now in a new book, The Power of Resilience: How the Best Companies Manage the Unexpected, just published by the MIT Press, Sheffi details how some leading multinationals are coping with a rising tide of disturbances, and suggests ways in which all large firms can think anew about their disruption-prone operations.

… 70% (yes, that’s seventy percent) of the body’s sensory receptors are in our eyes, this makes vision our most powerful channel when it comes to taking on board information from the outside world. Not only are the eyes a powerful input tool for the human body, but they are also pattern seekers, but only when these patterns are portrayed in the most cohesive manner for our visual cortex.

It would be senseless, and somewhat ironic, for me to emphasise the importance of visualising data through words, so from here on I’m going to try and limit the words and maximise the graphics.

In the second part of our look at football and maths, Professor David Sumpter analyses the faltering Premier League champions and their Belgian wing wizard…

Can Chelsea connect again? Teams work best when the players connect. In part, getting connected is about players anticipating each other’s movement and reading the game. A lot of these connections are subtle and difficult to see in statistics alone. But there are ways of quantifying how well a team is connecting. To do this we need to get networking.

I’ve thought DeMar DeRozan’s athleticism was overrated for a couple of years now. From the time DeRozan won the dunk contest as a McDonalds All-American, he’s been billed as an all-world athlete. There’s a discrepancy between what my eyes tell me and what his reputation is.

What is athleticism? As basketball fans, we intuitively associate a player’s “athleticism” to his ability to gather momentum, jump high and slam the ball through the hoop. That’s the type of raw ability that has player evaluators in awe during workouts, in an empty gym, on fast breaks, and at dunk contests. But what is functional athleticism in the natural flow of a game situation? Is it the ability to jump high in traffic? Is it end to end speed? Is it fluidity of movement?