Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 6, 2015

When Kevin Love and LeBron James met in Los Angeles prior to the start of free agency last summer, Love’s mind was already made up: He was returning to the Cavaliers.

But in order for these two stars to coexist for the next five years, changes needed to be made. The relationship as it existed likely wasn’t sustainable.

There were various reasons that contributed to it, many of which might never be known, but ultimately those within the organization will concede now that James was indeed frustrated with Love last season. Some of that is starting to change.

It was a free-minded analysis of the various components making up the surfing of a big wave that led Laird Hamilton and a friend to invent tow-in surfing—using a watercraft to catch what was otherwise uncatchable—waves in excess of 70-feet. Known for his exceptional all-around athleticism, born of a childhood spent on Oahu where “my entire life was an obstacle course—rivers, rocks, waterfalls,” Hamilton says, it was when sought to improve the swimming component of his surfing, the image of orthodox swim training was loathsome to him. “I’m not a big fan of the lap pool,” he says. Rather, he improvised in an innovative spirit congruent with his “Forces of Nature” methodology. Borrowing from Hawaii rock climbers and coral divers, he began experimenting with using rocks and other weights to plunge himself and a gulp of air to the bottom of the ocean or a pool. He wouldn’t drop the weights. Rather, under load and deep water, he let nature take it’s course—with an eye toward the sunlight mottling on the surface, he dipped into a squat and jumped. Like a free climber searching out nubs and cracks with his fingernails to scale a 5.10 wall, Hamilton, in a three-way collision between gravity, the viscosity of water and the biological urge for oxygen, counted on the instinct for survival to boost discoveries on how to propel upward movement.

Hamilton knew he was onto something. “It did amazing things for my swimming,” he says. He believes it’s an organic pathway to cut to the chase when it comes to unleashing a natural and good level of technique and perhaps better way to go about it then to see someone like Michael Phelps on TV and then spend thousands of hours in the pool trying to replicate superstar form.

“The training is difficult,” Hamilton says. “But it’s not as mysterious as it might sound. It’s really about trusting that you’re smarter than you think you are.”

… Athletes need to be aware of an additional jet lag factor that can especially interfere with their performance: timing misalignment. On top of the “internal body-clock desynchronization” described above, a misalignment between body-clock time and local-clock performance time can create problems even when jet lag symptoms are minimal. Such is often the case when only 3 time zones are crossed.

There’s a rhythm to sports performance that favours late-afternoons and early evenings, and moving the competition away from these times (according to the body’s internal clock) can lead to unfavourable results.

… In soccer, (sports analytics) is waiting to be explored. You’ve seen it in a lot of other sports,” Sivakumar says. “It’s kind of like the most you can do is just watch the game and analyze it. But the human can only see so much.”

Sivakumar, a sophomore on the Cal men’s soccer team and a computer science major, thinks he can be the one to fill the void. And listening to him talk about analytics, seeing the way he perks up in his seat when he’s asked about it, you’d be hard-pressed to disagree with him.

There has been a paradigm shift in the way head coaches need to approach their jobs of preparing teams and athletes for success in today’s competitive world.

We are now part of sporting environment where specialist skill coaches are abundant, where there is often little that separates the innovation and technology being used by rival athletes or professional teams.

So now is an era when “real coaching”, as I like to call it, is critical.

Scientists have been studying curiosity since the 19th century, but combining techniques from several fields now makes it possible for the first time to study it with full scientific rigor, according to the authors of a new paper.

Benjamin Hayden and Celeste Kidd, researchers in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, are proposing that scientists utilize these techniques to focus on curiosity’s function, evolution, mechanism, and development, rather than on what it is and what it isn’t.

“Curiosity is a long-standing problem that is fascinating, but has been difficult to approach scientifically,” said Hayden, an assistant professor and co-author of a “Perspective” article published today in Neuron.

What is a moment? We tend to place a lot of stock into important “moments in time,” but outside of meaningful memories, what is a moment? As it pertains to time, a moment is around 3 seconds in length. A lot can happen in 3 seconds: a race is won or lost, a pace begins to faulter, an athlete loses confidence…

In each of our 24-hour days, we have 28,800 moments (if we don’t sleep). What we say to ourselves in these moments can have an incredible impact on our performance. On average, humans speak to themselves between 300-1,000 words a minute. We think and ruminate a lot- so much though that we pull ourselves from now, this moment.

As an athlete begins to train and compete, the mental focus is less on technique and pace and more on outcomes and the desire to be great. We want to PR, win, help the team. The moment we feel we are not performing to our capabilities, we begin to doubt ourselves. The words start to become negative and ineffective to our performances. In a moment’s time, in 3 seconds, we can make or break our commitment to the pace, to the plan, to the team by simply saying “I can’t” or “I don’t have it today.”

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.”

What is motor learning? In this case, the task they tested is something called the Sequential Visual Isometric Pinch Task (SVIPT). You pinch a little force sensor between your thumb and index finger, and the harder you pinch, the farther you move a cursor across the screen of a computer. The task involves moving the cursor as quickly and accurately as possible to five different locations on the screen; performance was measured by looking at improvements in the relationship between speed and accuracy of four sets of 30 trials.

The basic result is that subjects got better at the SVIPT if they ran at a moderate pace for 30 minutes immediately before the testing session.

Wearables aren’t setting the world on fire because consumers are still waiting for a compelling reason to buy one. That day might be coming sooner than you think.

Samsung Electronics’ System LSI Business Department unveiled and demonstrated its new bio-processor at the International System on Chip Design Conference in South Korea this week. According to Samsung, it will “help humans and save lives.”

…
During your career within football, has there been any major changes in the sport? If so, what influences do you believe affected these changes

I started to work as a full time coach in 1997. So that’s 18 years of daily work now. Of course football always has evolved since its start. But I think football evolved dramatically during the last two decades. For me the recent evolution was initially caused by some clever marketing strategies. Clever salesmen created a worldwide interest into topflight leagues such as the Premier League or into interesting competitions such as the UEFA Champions League.

Because these competitions are interesting to such a big market, huge amounts of money are being paid to those who participate. So today the biggest business markets like the Premier League, the Primera Division, Bundesliga or the Champions League of course attract the best and most expensive players. Best players guarantee a tight competition and tight competitions create a lot of natural stimulation which is decisive for the development of each individual player. You only develop better techniques or quicker decision-making processes if you face certain situations on certain levels. So if the best players develop in the best leagues – the natural outcome is a better, tighter, faster and more intense football. Each year.

“Compare it to the dashboard of your car, if the oil runs out, your engine will not run properly and goes to warn a red light. This indicates that you have to stop to refill the oil. Those dashboard function we want to accomplish for runners. We’ll give you a call as soon as you start getting tired and thereby develops possible injuries.”

The words of Marcel van der Kuil, CEO and co-founder of Sensorun. The team of sensors also includes two scientists working at the research department of rehabilitation Roessingh, Roessingh Research & Development and another entrepreneur. The four men have one important thing in common: long experience as avid runners.

From this shared passion was recently decided that the foundation Lifelong Running to set up with the primary aim to help people live longer and healthier running through scientific research and innovation. “Running as a sport is growing in popularity, but we also see that many new runners have rapid injuries. Many of them make the walk there after such a full experience when sitting. We want to try to avoid, “says Van der Kuil.

Sporting Chance Initiative, Scotland’s hub for business innovation in sport, has secured a new funding package of £450,000.

Injuries to the knee, including intra-articular fractures, ligamentous ruptures, and meniscal and articular cartilage lesions, are commonplace within sports. Despite advancements in surgical techniques and enhanced rehabilitation, athletes returning to cutting, pivoting, and jumping sports after a knee injury are at greater risk of sustaining a second injury. The clinical utility of objective criteria presents a decision-making challenge to ensure athletes are fully rehabilitated and safe to return to sport. A system centered on specific indicators that can be used to develop a comprehensive profile to monitor rehabilitation progression and to establish return to activity criteria is recommended to clear athletes to begin a progressive and systematic approach to activities and sports. Integration of a sports knee injury performance profile with return to activity criteria can guide clinicians in facilitating an athlete’s safe return to sport, prevention of subsequent injury, and life-long knee joint health.

… The 6-foot-10 power forward previously tore his left ACL, MCL and meniscus but had sufficiently recovered from the injury to become the top recruit in 2016.

He suffered a broken third metacarpal in his left hand in practice in September but had recovered from that injury to suit up for Oak Hill.

… The question is, then: is it better for a club to sack a manager sooner, or later?

There is conflicting research about the point in a season at which a struggling manager or coach should lose their job. By sacking a manager straightaway, the argument is that there will still be time to attract a new one. After all, the replacement will also need time to settle into their new position, and turn the club’s performance around. Indeed, in Chelsea’s case, if Mourinho were to be sacked at this point it would leave the incumbent 27 games (or 81 points) to hoist the club back up the league.

But other research shows there may be a “honeymoon period” for new managers, during which results initially improve … before continuing in a downward trajectory. So Mourinho could be given a chance to turn things around into the new year and if results fail to pick up, a new manager could be brought in for the second half of the season. The club may then benefit from a new manager’s probable honeymoon period of good results.

The aim of the study was to assess the level of internal physical load among professional soccer players during
training matches and determine differences in size of physical load among field positions (fullbacks, central defenders, wide midfielders, central midfielders, attackers). The screened sample consisted of 13 players of the highest league (average age 23 ± 3.8 years, average body height: 183.1 ± 6.2 cm, average body weight: 74 ± 3.9
kg). Players’ physical load was observed during three international training matches with respect to different field positions using Polar Team 2 heart rate monitor. The size of physical load was evaluated according to the level of heart rate and load duration in five zones that were set according to load intensity. These were classified as a zone under the aerobic threshold, zone of aerobic threshold (± 5 beats), zone between aerobic and anaerobic threshold, zone of anaerobic threshold (± 5 beats) and zone over anaerobic threshold. The results showed differences in players’ load with regards to their field positions. The highest demands on physical load at high intensity (over anaerobic threshold) were found in central midfielders (21.8 ± 7.8 %) and attackers (17.8 ± 3.8%). On the contrary, the greatest representation of central defenders was found below aerobic threshold (10.9 ± 3.8 %). Furthermore, results of the study showed that central midfielders spent 61.9 % of total time at, or over,
the level of anaerobic threshold. Central defenders spent most time in lowest intensity (zone 1: 10.9 ± 3.8 %). Central midfielders and attackers achieved, in terms of effect size, a significant difference in time spent over the level of anaerobic threshold. The greatest differences between the first and second half-time were found in fullbacks, wide midfielders and central midfielders, while the lowest in central defenders and attackers players. Objectivized results of players’ loading are the basis for designing team, group and individual training programmes reflecting the requirements of different field positions.