Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 28, 2015

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for December 28, 2015

 

Liverpool striker Christian Benteke admits he must work harder to win a starting berth – English Premier League | Sport360.com

Sport360.com, Abu Dhabi from December 28, 2015

Liverpool striker Christian Benteke accepts he has to work harder on the pitch to earn a place in the side after an enlightening chat with manager Jurgen Klopp.

The Belgium international came off the bench to score the winner to end Premier League leaders Leicester’s three-month unbeaten run. However, Benteke was only on the pitch because of a first-half hamstring injury to compatriot Divock Origi, who was preferred up front in the starting line-up.

 

Mathieu Flamini is proving to be Arsenal’s secret weapon – Telegraph

Telegraph UK from December 25, 2015

… Flamini is still only 31 and, while the Christmas schedule will provide the ultimate test, starting against Southampton on Boxing Day, he does appear physically capable of playing twice a week on a regular basis. “The more games you have in your legs, the better you become,” says Flamini. “You gain in confidence and you become better physically. You gain physically so the possibility to do game after game is obviously good for me.”

 

NBA: TrueHoop Presents — Kobe Bryant’s ‘all-day process’

ESPN, NBA, Baxter Holmes from December 27, 2015

Many years ago, when Kobe Bryant’s games were filled with explosive attacking moves and windmill dunks, the work he put into stretching, ice baths, massages and the like between games was “zero,” in his estimation.

Now that he is 37, with an injury history in nearly every major joint, plus a staggering 56,000-plus total NBA minutes on his resume, things could hardly be more different.

“The kid has got a lot of miles on him,” says Los Angeles Lakers head athletic trainer Gary Vitti, in his 32nd season with the team. “And they’re hard miles. They’re hard miles. If you’ve ever been to Maui, the Road to Hana? It’s a rough road, man. It’s beautiful when you get there, but it’s a rough road.”

 

Cardiovascular risk and fitness in veteran football players

Journal of Sports Sciences from December 22, 2015

Veteran football players above 40 years have rarely been subject to scientific investigations. This is worrisome because their number is considerable and their cardiovascular risk probably increased. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted in 100 football players between 40 and 63 years of age. This included a medical history and physical examination, venous blood sampling, measurement of resting blood pressure, a resting electrocardiogram (ECG), an exhaustive cycle ergometry and a multistage field test. Also, measurements of heart rate and blood lactate concentration were carried out during one typical training session and one match. Participants trained 1.0 ± 0.6 sessions per week and played 27 ± 8 matches per season. Of them, 19% were smokers. Resting blood pressure was 138 ± 15/88 ± 8 mmHg. Hypertension prevalence (WHO definition) was 66%. Total cholesterol averaged 220 ± 41 mg . dl?1, HDL 46 ± 13 mg . dl?1 and LDL 134 ± 33 mg . dl?1. The average 10-year risk for cardiovascular events (Framingham score) was 6%. Mean maximal power output on the cycle ergometer was 2.8 ± 0.6 W . kg?1, mean VO2peak 40.0 ± 7.3 ml . min?1 . kg?1. Comparing training and competition, no significant differences in cardiovascular and metabolic load were found. In summary, their cardiovascular risk was similar to age-adjusted reference values. However, they showed slightly better ergometric performance. More frequent training stimuli might be necessary to reach more favourable risk factor profiles. Training and competition lead to similar cardiocirculatory and metabolic stress which is considerably high and might put players into danger who have pre-existing cardiac disease.

 

Not Everyone Should Be Doing the Bonk Workout | Outside Online

Outside Online, Performance Plate from December 17, 2015

The bonk run (or ride) is a workout both feared and revered in some elite endurance training circles. The general idea behind it is this: you work out sans carbs, like going for a morning run without eating anything first or during the run. That way, your muscles don’t have much glycogen (sugar) available to power your effort so they learn to use fat as fuel instead.

This adaptation would be a boon to endurance athletes, who have limited glycogen but plentiful fat reserves. Because when glycogen runs out, you bonk. Hit the wall. Blow up. You get super tired and weak and can’t maintain your pace or you stop moving altogether.

So training yourself to avoid an in-competition bonk by running low on glycogen once in a while might seem like a decent idea. But the ultimate performance benefits have already been questioned, and a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition brings up two more glaring reasons to avoid the bonk, or to at least approach it carefully.

 

Why seeing Pep Guardiola training session was my most enduring football memory of 2015 – Telegraph

Telegraph UK from December 26, 2015

… I had arrived with some scepticism about the view that Guardiola has been the outstanding manager of his generation. Jose Mourinho, it seemed to me, had achieved more given the highly privileged context of the squads Guardiola inherited at Barcelona and then Bayern.

Yet 90 minutes spent observing the Spaniard from just a few feet was sufficient to challenge that view. It was beguiling, not simply for the hands-on speed and intensity of the session but how it was possible to clearly recognise a Guardiola team from the training he so very personally conducted.

 

Teaching Grit On The Water: A Top Coach Mixes Rowing With Life : NPR Ed : NPR

NPR, All Things Considered from December 24, 2015

The education at the Rose City Rowing Club starts long before oars touch the water. The first lesson from head coach Nick Haley is about punctuality.

Afternoon practice begins at 4 o’clock sharp at this club in Portland, Ore.

The next lesson is about respect. This one’s a big deal at Rose City: Respect your fellow teammates, coaches, the sport itself and — today in particular — the equipment. [audio, 7:24]

 

Single-Leg Squat as a Tool to Evaluate Young Athletes’ Frontal Plane Knee Control. – PubMed – NCBI

Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine from December 23, 2015

OBJECTIVE:

To determine the agreement between 2-dimensional video analysis and subjective visual assessment by a physiotherapist in evaluating young athletes’ knee control, and to determine the intrarater reliability and inter-rater reliability of the single-leg squat test.
DESIGN:

Frontal plane knee control was assessed by a physiotherapist on a 3-point scale. Frontal plane projection angles were calculated from video images. To determine the intrarater reliability, a physiotherapist reassessed 60 subjects’ performances from a video. For the inter-rater reliability, 20 subjects were assessed by both the physiotherapist and a nonexperienced tester. The study continued for 3 test years.
SETTING:

Research institute.
PARTICIPANTS:

Three hundred and seventy-eight floorball, basketball, ice hockey, and volleyball players.
ASSESSMENT OF VARIABLES:

Knee control was assessed to be good, reduced, or poor.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

Agreement between the video analysis and subjectively assessed frontal plane knee control. Intrarater reliability and inter-rater reliability.
RESULTS:

There were statistically significant differences in the mean frontal plane knee angles between subjects rated as having “good,” “reduced,” or “poor” knee control. Intrarater reliability was fair for the assessments in the first year, moderate (dominant leg) and good (nondominant leg) for the second year, and very good (dominant leg) and good (nondominant leg) for the third year. Inter-rater reliability was fair/poor.
CONCLUSIONS:

This study suggests that by using the subjective assessment of the single-leg squat task, it is possible to detect differences in frontal plane knee control in young team sport athletes. The assessment can be considered to be reliable for clinical use when performed by an experienced tester.

 

Rethinking the Next-Generation Helmet – WSJ

Wall Street Journal from December 24, 2015

… “We’ve seen a lot of effort going into detection and treatment of concussions, which is great, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually have a piece of equipment that helped reduce them as well?” said Dr. Eric Morgan, a radiologist at Orangeburg Regional Medical Center in South Carolina and an advisory board member at Tate Technology, one of a handful of companies working to design a safer helmet.

Jeff Crandall, who specializes in applied biomechanics at the University of Virginia and is the chairman of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine engineering subcommittee, said any product that reduces the most severe forces by 20% would be significant.

 

Why some take the recovery slow road

Athletics Weekly from December 27, 2015

What makes some athletes recover quickly from intense endurance efforts and others seemingly stall despite their best efforts to bounce back to training?

Dr David Nieman, a physiologist at the Appalachian State University human performance laboratory, set about trying to discover why recovery is sometimes lengthy, even among experienced athletes who have been training and competing for years.

After collecting muscle biopsies from 24 male runners who had run to exhaustion, he found that as muscle glycogen stores were depleted, all of the runners experienced a release of damaging, pro-inflammatory cytokines into their blood. The greater the loss of muscle glycogen, the higher the release of cytokines and the slower the recovery rate.

 

The Science Behind the NFL’s Biggest Problem – CNN Video

CNN.com from December 23, 2015

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta takes an in-depth look at how concussions happen.

 

High-tech gear aims to lessen deadly risk of football concussions

USA TODAY Sports from December 26, 2015

Deep inside a gym on the campus of Stanford University, Dr. Jamshid Ghajar tinkers with virtual reality goggles that will determine within a minute if its test subject (me) has head trauma.

Starting this season, the SyncThink eye-tracking system — the goggles are attached to a monitor that records and prints the results of an eye following a circular path — has been on the sidelines for Stanford University football games.

It’s part of a growing movement within the sports and medical communities. After years of neglect — in some cases, denial — football teams are looking at everything from new-fangled helmets and neck contraptions to injury-risk monitoring systems, shock-absorbing turf and mandated spa days.

 

New emphasis on better food and nutrition boosts UGA tennis

Dawg Nation from December 25, 2015

As Georgia and Oklahoma battled for a spot in the NCAA tournament quarterfinals in May 2013 at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, then-sophomore Nick Wood of UGA went into a full body cramp during his match.

Wood recalled wondering why his body was breaking down when he felt so fit.

In the two seasons since Wood’s incident, the Georgia tennis team has placed an increased emphasis on nutrition, going to science-based diets and adding more staff.

 

Why Man Utd Liverpool and Chelsea keep losing to small clubs – ESPN FC

ESPN FC, Rory Smith from December 23, 2015

… Over the past four months, countless hours and millions of words have been spent discussing quite why it might be that, this season, the small fry have caught up with the big beasts.

The most convincing, most comprehensive theory runs, roughly, that the prospect of the new UK-based television deal — worth £5.134 billion over three years and due to kick in next summer — has allowed the division’s middle-and-lower orders to attract a higher calibre of player on a higher calibre of wage.

Couple that with improving tactical sophistication, more intelligent managers and ever-more modern approaches to areas like analytics and fitness, and those sides have been able to improve a lot in a very short period of time.

 

Positional interchanges influence the physical and technical match performance variables of elite soccer players

Journal of Sports Sciences, Science and Medicine in Football from December 24, 2015

Positional variation in match performance is well established in elite soccer but no information exists on players switching positions. This study investigated the influence of elite players interchanging from one position to another on physical and technical match performance. Data were collected from multiple English Premier League (EPL) seasons using a computerised tracking system. After adhering to stringent inclusion criteria, players were examined across several interchanges: central-defender to fullback (CD-FB, n = 11, 312 observations), central-midfielder to wide-midfielder (CM-WM, n = 7, 171 observations), wide-midfielder to central-midfielder (WM-CM, n = 7, 197 observations) and attacker to wide-midfielder (AT-WM, n = 4, 81 observations). Players interchanging from CD-FB covered markedly more high-intensity running and sprinting distance (effect size [ES]: ?1.56 and ?1.26), lost more possessions but made more final third entries (ES: ?1.23 and ?1.55). Interchanging from CM-WM and WM-CM resulted in trivial to moderate differences in both physical (ES: ?0.14–0.59 and ?0.21–0.39) and technical performances (ES: ?0.48–0.64 and ?0.36–0.54). Players interchanging from AT-WM demonstrated a moderate difference in high-intensity running without possession (ES: ?0.98) and moderate-to-large differences in the number of clearances, tackles and possessions won (ES: ?0.77, ?1.16 and ?1.41). The data demonstrate that the physical and technical demands vary greatly from one interchange to another but utility players seem able to adapt to these positional switches.

 

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