Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 23, 2015

… Beckham was something of an underdog at Newman. “He was always doubted,” said Brenner, a graduating University of Georgia student who remains in touch with the Giants’ receiver. “He wasn’t even rated the top receiver in the state; that was Jarvis Landry. People always told him he was too small, too skinny, or wasn’t strong enough, and he really used that to fuel his fire.”

Beckham became a legend in local and regional seven-on-seven tournaments, forever making would-be tacklers miss despite the fact a ball carrier was ruled down in those games by a one-hand touch. He made one leaping catch at the New Orleans Saints’ practice facility — above three defenders — that was better than his toe-dragger in the end zone Monday night against Washington, and that rivaled his signature three-finger catch against Dallas last year.

… If anyone needed a timely reminder of the fact that superior players can continue to perform past the age of 30, and at a level that the vast majority of professionals would never even dare dream of, you need look no further than Iniesta’s performance against Real Madrid last month. To say he was the game’s best player is an understatement. At times he made it look as though he was operating on a different level to everyone else; Neymar and Luis Suarez included.

With a successful pass percentage of 95.9% from 68 attempts, combined with a goal and an assist, Real Madrid proved incapable of muting his ability to control the pace and outcome of the game. As with the 2010 World Cup Final, Iniesta proved that he is still be the man to take the leadership role in high-pressure situations against the best opposition available.

Roberto Martinez has called for a winter break in English football.

The Everton boss says if Premier League clubs are to consistently make it to the latter stages of the Champions League and Europa League then a mid-season break is essential.

Martinez also believes a two week pause in the fixture list will help the national team in championship seasons.

The Blues manager says it is important that the tradition of playing on Boxing Day is upheld but would then like to see the Premier League put on hold.

So natural does Curry’s dominance seem now that it can be easy to forget he was once deemed too frail for Division I basketball, too small to play in the NBA, too injury-prone to be a franchise player and too elfin to ever grow a proper goatee. With the arguable exception of the last point—there is a fair amount of scraggle to Curry’s chin, and one surmises it’s an old-growth situation—he has surmounted every challenge he’s faced.

Here’s a look back at his evolution, from one reporter’s perspective.

Last month I wrote about using the months from November to January for working on improving skills, and increasing the number of tools in the toolbox. If you have been training and racing for a number of years, these improvements are going to take persistence, and will be smaller initially. The net sum of many small improvements returns significant gains resulting in racing breakthroughs. Skill acquisition also creates opportunity to change your ideas about how your move and your ideas about what you are good at. There is some truth to the adage “what you believe, you will achieve”. Use the winter to reformat “what you believe”, and to create a stronger mind/body connection.

The most sophisticated fitness tracker available, according to a report last month in the journal Neuron, is the one hardwired into your brain.

In a study of treadmill-running rats with brain implants, researchers at Boston University demonstrated the existence of “odometer neurons” that fired at regular intervals corresponding to how far the rats had run and how long they had been running. Some of the neurons fired every eight seconds, for example, while others would fire every 400 centimetres.

What’s remarkable is that the rats were on a treadmill, which means they had no external cues (such as landmarks or passing scenery) to help them. The brain itself, it turns out, is sensitively attuned to the passage of time and distance – a finding that gives added resonance to an ongoing debate about whether high-tech fitness monitoring gadgets are really superior to old-fashioned gut feelings.

One of the keys to overcoming challenges I’ve faced — rowing across the Atlantic, raising two young children, overcoming an addiction to Dragon’s Den — has been some well-planned shut-eye.

As an Olympic rower, I knew that quality sleep would help me make the team, and help me make the team go faster. Now a working stiff, great sleep boosts my productivity at the office while also helping me reach for my goal of being the best dad on Vancouver Island.

The Canadian Men’s Health Foundation equates proper sleep with healthy eating and exercise, as it helps repair and restore our brains as well as our bodies.

Sleep became a big experiment for me when I was part of a four-man team that attempted the first-ever unsupported rowboat crossing from Africa to North America.

Aaron Medley wasn’t sure what to expect when he agreed to participate in a sleep monitoring program Tennessee football began in the summer.

Rise Science, a Chicago-based company that focuses on sleep and its effect on athletes, outfitted the sophomore kicker’s bed with a sensor that would monitor his heart rate and movement throughout the night. It gave him a sleeping mask and a set of orange goggles designed to block out the blue light emitted by television and computer screens, and smart phones so he could fall asleep faster.

“I was pretty skeptical about how it would work,” Medley said.

Allison Maurer, Tennessee’s athletics nutritionist and one of four primary members of the UT football program’s sports science team, wasn’t as skeptical as she was nervous.

At the end of this two day conference there is only one way to sum up my reaction; I am inspired (and I know I am not alone in thinking so). This encapsulates the mind-blowing, thought-provoking and insightful presentations and talks. I can only imagine how fulfilling it is for Jon and Jed (the co-owners) to hear that their main objective has been and I’m sure will continue to be reached.

The first day started with an acute sense of anticipation which was seemingly shared by everyone. Waiting in the hall several of us were forensically examining the schedule, picking out and sharing what we were most looking forward to. There was a star attraction for everyone which in my experience was wonderfully diverse from Mark Sampson to Albert Capellas.

Sure enough the day kicked off with Mark Sampson detailing the fantastic and at times severe processes he went through to create the wonderfully spirited and record-breaking Lionesses we saw in Canada last summer.

… At my high school, one of the basketball coaches, Joe Stulac, was a former Olympic player. (He was on the 1964 team; his older brother, George, played on the 1956 and 1964 teams and competed in the decathlon in 1960.) I went to a very small school with little athletic tradition and no specialized coaches. Mr. Stulac was a math teacher.

But instead of coaching the senior team, Mr. Stulac insisted on coaching the “bantam” team (a step below JV, restricted to ninth-graders). His view, like Terry Laughlin’s, was that you had to master the fundamentals before you could do anything else properly. If you’re going to learn to shoot a left-handed layup, the time to do it is when you’re first learning the sport, not when you’ve already gotten used to doing it with the right hand.

In many ways Arizona Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer is old-fashioned. He handwrites his notes, describes himself as “archaic” and uses a three-ring binder playbook instead of a tablet. So it meant a lot when, after weeks of fighting it last summer, the 35-year-old veteran of 12 NFL seasons got on board with the year’s biggest game-changer, virtual reality. “I thought, There is no way this can change the way I play quarterback,” Palmer (left) told The MMQB last month, “but I am all in.”

Virtual reality is revolutionizing practice and game prep, especially in football. STRIVR, a VR company that works with at least seven NFL teams and 13 college programs, sets up a 360-degree camera during seven-on-seven drills and then stitches together the footage. Later, players and coaches can put on headsets and be transported to the field, where a turn of the head can show them everything from the direction a cornerback is leaning to the quarterback’s footwork.

USC took steps Monday toward a virtual football future.

During a Trojans practice for the Dec. 30 Holiday Bowl against Wisconsin, representatives of a Palo Alto-based company that developed virtual reality technology utilized by several college and NFL teams were on hand as quarterback Cody Kessler and teammates went through a drill.

The company, STRIVR, shoots images with a 360-degree camera. Players can later go through reps with a virtual reality headset.

USC Coach Clay Helton described Monday’s exercise as a “test run” and “experiment.”

Concussions by Position/Teams/Players [interactive data visualization]

The present research examines the impact of leaders’ confidence in their team on the team confidence and performance of their teammates. In an experiment involving newly assembled soccer teams, we manipulated the team confidence expressed by the team leader (high vs neutral vs low) and assessed team members’ responses and performance as they unfolded during a competition (i.e., in a first baseline session and a second test session). Our findings pointed to team confidence contagion such that when the leader had expressed high (rather than neutral or low) team confidence, team members perceived their team to be more efficacious and were more confident in the team’s ability to win. Moreover, leaders’ team confidence affected individual and team performance such that teams led by a highly confident leader performed better than those led by a less confident leader. Finally, the results supported a hypothesized mediational model in showing that the effect of leaders’ confidence on team members’ team confidence and performance was mediated by the leader’s perceived identity leadership and members’ team identification. In conclusion, the findings of this experiment suggest that leaders’ team confidence can enhance members’ team confidence and performance by fostering members’ identification with the team.

“The default brain relates to the fact that your brain is conscious all of the time, regardless of whether you’re awake or asleep or engaging in a particular activity or daydreaming. The brain is engaged pretty much at full capacity all of the time.” So summarizes Marcus Raichle, M.D., researcher and faculty member at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, in defining the brain’s default mode network (DMN).

Raichle was at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, on December 8, giving this year’s Kavli Lecture in Neuroscience on the topic “The Restless Brain.” The Dana Alliance member, who received the 2014 Kavli award that he shares with fellow Dana Alliance member Brenda Milner, Ph.D., and John O’Keefe, Ph.D., was met by an enthusiastic overflow crowd.

Raichle and his lab first detected and deciphered the DMN, showing that when we are in a quiet non-focused state of mind, many brain areas keep percolating and interacting, countering the then-standard idea that the resting brain must show less electrical or metabolic activity than a task-oriented brain. Drawing on his key discovery of the DMN, he has observed that the brain exhibits a high level of “intrinsic activity,” meaning that most of what the brain’s doing, it’s doing all the time.