Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 4, 2015

What does it take to be the best? For soccer star Carli Lloyd—the two-time Olympic gold medalist who became an American hero this summer when she propelled the U.S. women’s national soccer team to their first World Cup win since 1999—it’s simple: a very specific 17-year plan. In fact, the 33-year-old revealed said plan at the sixth annual espnW Women + Sports Summit this month. And apparently, that hat track maneuver that won the World Cup? Well, that was just part of the plan for world domination by 2020. (Seriously.)

But as is true with most uber accomplished people, Lloyd isn’t alone in her success: Her coach, James Galanis, plays a huge role too. In 2003, he offered to train Lloyd—then an out-of-shape player who had been cut from the U.S. Under-21 team—for free (she had no money). Why? He saw great potential.

… Why do Habits Emerge?

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge advantage. An efficient brain requires less room, which makes for a smaller head, which makes childbirth easier and therefore causes fewer infant and mother deaths. An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors …

… TM: Many of Pachuca’s younger players don’t seem to be from the state of Hidalgo. Gutierrez is from Sinaloa, Pizarro is from Tamaulipas and Lopez is from Queretaro. How do you go about scouting? How many scouts do you have?

MG: We have 16 scouts and they are locally based. We divide the whole country into different zones. There are zones that are double-A, as we call them, because they are very important for us and we grab a lot of players from those zones. There are zones that aren’t heavily scouted. For example, Jalisco is very important but it is heavily scouted. You have Atlas in here, Chivas in here. So we scout Jalisco, but most of our players come from Culiacan (Sinaloa), we’re bringing a lot of players from Cancun, from Queretaro, so we have locally-based scouts and then we have a package to bring them here.

TM: What about the U.S.? Is that a double-A scouting zone?

MG: (laughs) The States has become a very, very interesting place. We have at least 30 million Mexicans living there with a different kind of nutrition, a different kind of education. They are very strong, they are very well-educated. For me, the big problem in bringing in Americans is that they are very, very used to the American way of life. They want the mall, they want the ocean, they want all that and we don’t have ocean in Pachuca

By now you’re probably getting a little bored of the steady stream of research showing that running (and exercise in general) makes you smarter, as well as faster. Fair enough. But a slightly different twist is that researchers at Johns Hopkins have just published some neat data in PLOS ONE showing that a half-hour run also boosts “motor skill acquisition.”

How much blood is running through your veins, arteries, and capillaries? To find out, you’d typically need to be motionless. Now a new wearable device may soon be able to give you that information even while you’re moving around, doing normal activities. The flexible patch, which conforms to the skin and uses tiny heat sensors to precisely map the blood flow beneath the surface, could give doctors a high-resolution view of this important indicator of health.

The inventors of the new “epidermal electronic” sensor system say it is ready for use in a clinical setting, specifically for monitoring skin health, for example in patients who have recently had skin grafts. They say down the road it may also be possible to use it inside the body. In a recent demonstration, the researchers showed that the device can record accurate data from human subjects about the flow of blood in larger vessels, specifically veins in the forearm, as well as in the network of tiny vessels near the surface of the skin.

Last summer, a trainer for an English Premier League club, who asked to remain anonymous, was looking for a way to upgrade his club’s injury prevention system prior to the season. All the information the training staff collected through regular examinations was scattered among the staff, organized into an Excel spreadsheet and then analyzed by an intern, which took too long. Players were already practicing by the time the staff could determine whether they were fit to be on the field.

The trainer then recalled a company he knew from his days working as a physio in rugby: Kitman Labs, a relatively new player in the injury prevention field. He was vaguely aware there were other companies out there, but none offering what Kitman could: a personalized injury alert system for each athlete. His team signed up with Kitman.

Now, every morning, the first thing players do when they arrive at the facility at 9 AM is check in via the Kitman system. At one of two Microsoft Kinect stations—the same type used with Xbox gaming consoles—players rotate their pelvises and stretch their hamstrings, with the camera logging imperceptible changes in their motion and flexibility. Then, on one of three tablet stations, they fill out a short survey about their sleep, diet, soreness, and overall well-being. Within seconds, the trainers have the day’s information available at their fingertips through Kitman’s online dashboard, which highlights potential problem areas. That is, within seconds, the trainers know who’s stiff, who’s sore, and who’s good to go.

What if a fitness app could show you the way your body changes week to week using a 3D body scan? That’s the sort of mobile app that Body Labs CEO Bill O’Farrell is hoping to inspire, with an API that gives developers access to a growing arsenal of body scans.

To build out that API, his company just picked up $8 million in investor funding in a round led by Intel Capital.

The technology it takes to render the human physique into a 3D digital format is within reach for many companies. There was a time when scanning a person’s body required a giant apparatus with multiple cameras. Today, hardware companies have shrunk those capabilities down to an affordable handheld device. Google Tango, Occipital Structure, Microsoft Kinect, and Intel RealSense all make 3D scanning possible.

BodyCap has just announced the successful testing of the new e-Celsius Performance connected pill that performs temperature monitoring for elite athletes. The testing took place on ten FC Nantes soccer players during two French League 1 games on September 13 against Rennes and on September 26 against Paris Saint-Germain. The e-Celsius Performance connected pill aims to analyze player’s ability to regulate their temperature during warm-up and play and track the return to baseline values during recovery.

e-Celsius Performance, the ingestible pill, continuously monitors the user’s internal temperature. Players swallow the pill a few hours before the match begins and there is no requirement to wear a monitor. Every 30 seconds, the pill wirelessly transmits the athlete’s gastro-intestinal temperature measurement to a monitor called e-Viewer Performance. The pill stores measurements for up to 16 hours when away from the monitor and then this data is wirelessly transmitted once the pill is back within the 3-meter range.

From Japan to Europe and now in the U.S., a growing number of people are seeking cryotherapy — a treatment that subjects their bodies to cold temperatures far below those found anywhere on Earth.

Backers claim it can ease pain and inflammation, aid blood flow and weight loss, improve skin and even ward off aging and depression.

The treatments, however, have come under scrutiny after a Las Vegas spa employee was found dead last month in the chamber of a cryotherapy machine chilled by liquid nitrogen.

Imagine you are looking for your wallet on a cluttered desk. As you scan the area, you hold in your mind a mental picture of what your wallet looks like.

MIT neuroscientists have now identified a brain region that stores this type of visual representation during a search. The researchers also found that this region sends signals to the parts of the brain that control eye movements, telling individuals where to look next.

… Based on the most recent data collected, the amounts spent by clubs on transfer fees are higher than ever in professional football. In this article, I will briefly develop the approach of the CIES Football Observatory for advising on the creation and management of a team with a view to long term performance. I believe the management of professional clubs should adopt a more scientific-driven approach to player recruitment, so as to avoid engaging in unnecessary expenditure, in what is becoming an ever more competitive football market.

There are four key areas which have been identified by the CIES Football Observatory to ensure greater success for teams active in player recruitment: team chemistry, demographic structure, performance analysis and transfer policy.

This study compared the athletic movement skill between elite Under-18 (U18) Australian football (AF) and senior Australian Football League (AFL) players. The U18 sample (n = 13; 17.7 ± 0.6 years) were representatives of an elite talent development programme. The AFL players were classified accordingly; Group 1 (1–4 AFL seasons; n = 20; 21.2 ± 1.9 years) and Group 2 (>5 AFL seasons; n = 14; 26.3 ± 2.6 years). Participants performed an athletic movement skill assessment, inclusive of five foundational movements. Each movement was scored across three assessment points using a three-point scale. Total score for each movement (maximum of nine) and overall score (maximum of 63) were used as criteria. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to test the effect of developmental group (three levels) on the criteria. Receiver operating curves were built to examine the discriminant capability of the overall score. A significant effect of developmental group was noted, with the U18 sample having a lower mean total score for four of the five movements. Overall scores of 49/63 and 50/63 discriminated the elite U18 sample from Group 1 and Group 2, respectively. U18 players may have less developed athletic movement skills when compared to their senior AFL counterparts.

The aim of this paper is to describe the physiological changes that occur during the transition period in soccer players. A secondary aim is to address the issue of utilizing the transition period to lay the foundation for the succeeding season. We reviewed published peer-reviewed studies if they met the following three selection criteria: (1) the studied population comprised adult soccer players (aged >18 years), (2) time points of physiological and performance assessments were provided, and (3) appropriate statistics for the calculation of effect sizes were reported. Following two selection phases, 12 scientific publications were considered, involving a total sample of 252 players. The transition period elicits small to moderate negative changes in body composition, a moderate decline in sprint performance with and without changes of direction, and small to moderate decrements in muscle power. Detraining effects are also evident for endurance-related physiological and performance outcomes: large decrements in maximal oxygen consumption (( dot{V} )O2max) and time to exhaustion, and moderate to very large impairments have been observed in intermittent-running performance. Off-season programs should be characterized by clear training objectives, a low frequency of training sessions, and simple training tools in order to facilitate compliance. The program suggested here may constitute the ‘minimum effective dose’ to maintain or at least attenuate the decay of endurance- and neuromuscular-related performance parameters, as well as restore an adequate strength profile (reduce muscle strength imbalances). This periodization strategy may improve the ability of players to cope with the elevated training demands of pre-season training and therefore reduce the risk of injury. Moreover, this strategy will favor a more efficient development of other relevant facets of performance during the pre-competition phase (e.g., tactical organization). We contend that the transition period needs to be perceived as a ‘window of opportunity’ for players to both recover and ‘rebuild’ for the following season.

… Mourinho acted in an unmistakably misogynist way toward Carneiro. If he’d been coaching a club of stereotypical English Premier League players from a decade ago – young, rootless men with more money than sense, in dire need of a fatherly hand to keep them on the straight and narrow – he might have gotten away with it. The problem for Mourinho is that almost no one in the current Chelsea squad coincides with that stereotype.

Of the 15 players with the most minutes so far this season, all but two are married, and all but two are fathers*. This is the case despite the players’ ages being close to the league average; they are an unusually mature bunch. Moreover, 11 of the 13 fathers have at least one daughter.