Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 19, 2015

Jeremy Holsopple held a stopwatch and barked at Dirk Nowitzki as the seventh-leading scorer in NBA history sprinted up and down the sideline after a recent Dallas Mavericks practice.

“Too fast! Too fast!” Holsopple hollered, words that have rarely, if ever, been directed at the sweet-shooting, slow-footed 7-foot future Hall of Famer.

The Mavs are preparing Nowitzki for a marathon in his 18th NBA season, not a sprint. Every step, every rep and even every bite Nowitzki takes is meticulously planned by Holsopple, the Mavs’ technologically savvy athletic performance director, and head athletic trainer Casey Smith.

Carson Palmer and the Arizona Cardinals allowed The MMQB inside the installation of the game plan for their Week 8 meeting with the Browns. How does a QB absorb and apply so much complexity—nearly 200 plays, plus all of their possible permutations and adjustments—in less than a week? Commitment and confidence help—and so does virtual reality.

The word is Cleveland Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert is breaking records when it comes to how aggressively he’s attacking his rehabilitation.

That might be hyperbole, but what’s clear is he’s ahead of schedule in his recovery from a ruptured Extensor Carpi Ulnaris sheath in his right wrist. But if you ask him, none of this comes as a surprise.

Is a mid-December season debut in the works?

This article will deal with a topic that may help many of you right now. In-season conditioning is a key element to the total package for the successful hockey player, yet many players are unsure how to train during the season, or if there is really any benefit at all to it.

Whether it’s a large enterprise or a startup, partnerships tend to develop at some point in a company’s growth cycle. The former, given its scope, has numerous ways in which to penetrate certain markets and its segments. The latter hopes to create a place for itself among the bigger players in a space or one that’s yet to be in a matured state.

For IBM Watson and three sports tech startups, there’s more behind the surface insofar as fostering a mutually beneficial synergy.

Recently, IBM announced a triumvirate set of partnerships with sports tech startups that will tap into cognitive computing–aiming to advance the pertinent sports-focused verticals involved.

Fitness apparel startup Athos raised $35.5 million in Series C funding Wednesday to scale up to meet customer demand.

Social Capital led the round with participation from new investors such as MAS Holdings, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Felix Capital and existing investors DMC, True Ventures and angel investor Joe Lacob. The company has raised $51 million to date.

An insulin pill being developed by researchers at UC Santa Barbara may in the near future give another blood sugar management option to those who suffer from diabetes. The novel drug delivery technology may also apply to a wide spectrum of other therapies.

“With diabetes, there’s a tremendous need for oral delivery,” said Samir Mitragotri, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering who specializes in targeted drug delivery. “People take insulin several times a day and delivery by needles is a big challenge.”

After a stay at a Nevada brothel, former Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom was rushed to emergency care in early October. Reports said that his stay at the brothel included the use of cocaine and sexual performance drugs. He was unconscious, and it appears that his fast lifestyle had put him in physical danger, and the media circled around the story as his former wife flew to be by Odom’s side. I started to wonder if the lens we view athletes when they experience these types of incidents was fair. Was there another way to understand what Lamar Odom was going through from a psychological perspective?

Humans consuming vegetarian-based diets are observed to have reduced relative risk for many chronic diseases. Similarly, regular physical activity has also been shown to assist in preventing, and reducing the severity of these conditions. Many people, including athletes, acknowledge these findings and are adopting a vegetarian-based diet to improve their health status. Furthermore, athletes are incorporating this approach with the specific aim of optimising physical performance. To examine the evidence for the relationship between consuming a predominately vegetarian-based diet and improved physical performance a systematic literature review was performed using the SCOPUS database. No date parameters were set. The keywords; vegetarian* OR vegan* AND sport* OR athlete* OR training OR performance OR endurance’ were used to identify relevant literature. Included studies; (i) directly compared a vegetarian-based diet to an omnivorous/mixed diet, (ii) directly assessed physical performance, not biomarkers of physical performance, (iii) did not use supplementation emulating a vegetarian diet. Reference lists were hand searched for additional studies. Seven randomised controlled trials and one cross-sectional study met the inclusion criteria. No distinguished differences between vegetarian-based diets and omnivorous mixed diets were identified when physical performance was compared. Consuming a predominately vegetarian-based diet did not improve nor hinder performance in athletes. However, with only 8 studies identified, with substantial variability amongst the studies’ experimental designs, aims and outcomes, further research is warranted.

Age of squad members on October 1st [for European football teams].

The best ability is availability. It’s a trite and slightly silly adage, but one that contains bucketloads of truth. Clubs know this, which is why they go through such pains to keep their guys fit. And yet the stars still get hurt.

Take a quick look around Europe. In the Premier League, Manchester City’s David Silva and Kun Aguero have been out for six weeks. Arsenal have had a gaggle of injuries, with Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck (among others) missing significant chunks of time. Lionel Messi last played for Barcelona in September, while Rafinha is out for months to come. Franck Ribery hasn’t played all year for Bayern Munich, while Arjen Robben missed six weeks. And those are just some of the teams at the tops of their tables.

When I first started writing this article a few weeks ago, the focus was very simple. It was motivated when someone posted a link to a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, “Why Hitting Curveballs Scores More Runs; How Pedro Proves Rule,” in which it was claimed that an optimally hit curveball can be hit farther than an optimally hit fastball.

The article was based on an interview with Professor Mont Hubbard of UC Davis, who earlier had published an article in the American Journal of Physics, “How to hit home runs: Optimum baseball bat swing parameters for maximum range trajectories,” which directly addressed this topic. Some discussion ensued on Twitter, concluding with a question posed to me: Is the claim fact, theory, or nonsense?

The effects of competition and teammates on players are not new concepts in hockey. We hear about it all the time in analysis and conversation: “Jonathan Toews is deployed by his coach to specifically shut down the top players of the opposition”, “4th liners play against the opposing 4th line”, “Sidney Crosby makes his teammates better”, etc. etc.

Having analyzed the metrics used to quantify quality of competition and teammate, I came to two conclusions.

The first takeaway is that using current metrics, I did not find evidence that coaches can choose the quality of competition their players face over a full season of play.

The second takeaway is that quality of teammate effects are observable in a full season sample size. We can see differences in the quality of players’ teammates.

… “The NHL should terminate their partnership and find someone who actually cares about the work they are doing. And the SAP should find more big business to sink their teeth into before the well dries up. Monorail sales have never been better,” Yost wrote.

Ouch.

In an interview with Puck Daddy on Monday, Yost didn’t mince words on NHL.com’s advanced stats site.