Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 13, 2016

… There was a time when MLS players loved to go abroad during the off season and play in Europe. While Major League Soccer lay dormant for much of the winter, David Beckham, Landon Donovan, and Thierry Henry jetted off to play in some of the world’s most competitive leagues following a very intense, often grueling eight-month season.

Those were the days when foreigners didn’t think twice about saying yes to such requests. American players were equally eager, using it as another chance to gain experience and prove themselves against some of the best in the globe. Times have changed. This winter, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Andrea Pirlo and others have forgone loan spells. Instead, they have opted to either take the time off, or train with their respective teams early. Maybe, it’s because these players are already up in age. By not going out on loan, however, Gerrard, Lampard, and Pirlo will all be with their teams for the start of the season.

“It doesn’t happen as much as it used to and I don’t believe we are going to see many off season loans happening in our league,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber told reporters last September, “particularly at what I would call the high-level Designated Players. It’s been a couple of years since that last happened.”

In light of Ben Roethlisberger’s shoulder injury that is believed to be a sprained AC joint, I reached out to ESPN injury analyst Stephania Bell to get a few thoughts on the Steelers quarterback’s next few days.

Here are three things Roethlisberger can expect with this injury entering Sunday’s AFC divisional playoff game against the Broncos at Mile High Stadium on Sunday (4:40 p.m. ET).

… The 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday between Alabama and Clemson is a byproduct of the fierce competition that goes on behind the scenes, not to mention the enormous money spent on these employees. Both schools used football analysts — people with coaching backgrounds who by NCAA rule can’t coach on the field — to evaluate both potential championship game opponents even before the semifinal games were played.

It’s our inner debate that sometimes gets us out of bed before hitting the snooze button, calms us down before we give a big pitch to our bosses, or helps us ignore snacks between meals. Did you know that this forgettable exchange is honed by athletes to get the edge over their opponents?

The way athletes think, feel and speak to themselves has a tremendous impact on their performance. Athletes are trained toperfect their inner dialogue to improve their confidence and awareness on their respective playing fields. However, these techniques can be applied for anyone, of any age, in any occupation.

A corner of south London has become a hot-bed of young English talent in recent years with upwardly mobile Crystal Palace the chief beneficiary.

Apart from its role as a flow generator for ventilation the diaphragm has a circulatory role. The cyclical abdominal pressure variations from its contractions cause swings in venous return from the splanchnic venous circulation. During exercise the action of the abdominal muscles may enhance this circulatory function of the diaphragm. Eleven healthy subjects (25 ± 7 year, 70 ± 11 kg, 1.78 ± 0.1 m, 3 F) performed plantar flexion exercise at ~4 METs. Changes in body volume (?Vb) and trunk volume (?Vtr) were measured simultaneously by double body plethysmography. Volume of blood shifts between trunk and extremities (Vbs) was determined non-invasively as ?Vtr-?Vb. Three types of breathing were studied: spontaneous (SE), rib cage (RCE, voluntary emphasized inspiratory rib cage breathing), and abdominal (ABE, voluntary active abdominal expiration breathing). During SE and RCE blood was displaced from the extremities into the trunk (on average 0.16 ± 0.33 L and 0.48 ± 0.55 L, p < 0.05 SE vs. RCE), while during ABE it was displaced from the trunk to the extremities (0.22 ± 0.20 L p < 0.001, p < 0.05 RCE and SE vs. ABE respectively). At baseline, Vbs swings (maximum to minimum amplitude) were bimodal and averaged 0.13 ± 0.08 L. During exercise, Vbs swings consistently increased (0.42 ± 0.34 L, 0.40 ± 0.26 L, 0.46 ± 0.21 L, for SE, RCE and ABE respectively, all p < 0.01 vs. baseline). It follows that during leg exercise significant bi-directional blood shifting occurs between the trunk and the extremities. The dynamics and partitioning of these blood shifts strongly depend on the relative predominance of the action of the diaphragm, the rib cage and the abdominal muscles. Depending on the partitioning between respiratory muscles for the act of breathing, the distribution of blood between trunk and extremities can vary by up to 1 L. We conclude that during exercise the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm might play a role of an “auxiliary heart.”

PURPOSE:

We investigated the effect of a chronic dietary periodization strategy on endurance performance in trained athletes.
METHODS:

21 triathletes (V[Combining Dot Above]O2max: 58.7 ± 5.7 mL·min·kg) were divided into 2 groups: a “sleep-low” (SL, n = 11) and a control group (CON, n = 10) consumed the same daily carbohydrate (CHO) intake (6 g·kg·d) but with different timing over the day to manipulate CHO availability before and after training sessions. The “sleep low” strategy consisted of a 3-week training/diet intervention comprising three blocks of diet/exercise manipulations: 1) “train-high” interval training sessions (HIT) in the evening with high-CHO availability; 2) overnight CHO restriction (“sleeping-low”), and 3) “train-low” sessions with low endogenous and exogenous CHO availability. The CON group followed the same training program but with high CHO availability throughout training sessions (no CHO restriction overnight, training sessions with exogenous CHO provision).
RESULTS:

There was a significant improvement in delta efficiency during submaximal cycling for SL versus CON (CON: +1.4 ± 9.3 %, SL: +11 ± 15 %, P<0.05). SL also improved supra-maximal cycling to exhaustion at 150% of peak aerobic power (CON: +1.63 ± 12.4 %, SL: +12.5 ± 19.0 %; P = 0.06) and 10 km running performance (CON: -0.10 ± 2.03 %, SL: -2.9 ± 2.15 %; P < 0.05). Fat mass was decreased in SL (CON: -2.6 ± 7.4; SL: -8.5 ± 7.4 %PRE, P < 0.01), but not lean mass (CON: -0.22 ± 1.0; SL: -0.16 ± 1.7 %PRE).
CONCLUSION:

Short-term periodization of dietary CHO availability around selected training sessions promoted significant improvements in submaximal cycling economy, as well as supra-maximal cycling capacity and 10 km running time in trained endurance athletes.

Despite the perceived importance of sleep for elite footballers, descriptions of the duration and quality of sleep, especially following match play, are limited. Moreover, recovery responses following sleep loss remain unclear. Accordingly, the present study examined the subjective sleep and recovery responses of elite footballers across training days (TD) and both day and night matches (DM and NM). Sixteen top division European players from three clubs completed a subjective online questionnaire twice a day for 21 days during the season. Subjective recall of sleep variables (duration, onset latency, time of wake/sleep, wake episode duration), a range of perceptual variables related to recovery, mood, performance and internal training loads and non-exercise stressors were collected. Players reported significantly reduced sleep durations for NM compared to DM (?157 min) and TD (?181 min). In addition, sleep restfulness (SR; arbitrary scale 1 = very restful, 5 = not at all restful) and perceived recovery (PR; acute recovery and stress scale 0 = not recovered at all, 6 = fully recovered) were significantly poorer following NM than both TD (SR: +2.0, PR: ?2.6), and DM (SR: +1.5; PR: ?1.5). These results suggest that reduced sleep quantity and quality and reduced PR are mainly evident following NM in elite players.

Under the Las Vegas sun at this year’s CES, L’Oréal and PCH announced a partnership that could make skincare and beauty products a whole lot smarter. Together, the companies plan to develop and manufacture personalized beauty products and connected devices. The first product under this partnership is the My UV Patch, a connected cosmetic UV-ray monitor.

It’s the first-ever stretchable skin sensor available to consumers. L’Oréal and MC10, Inc., developed the technology, and PCH engineered the product for commercial production. This makes L’Oréal and its partners the first beauty-focused partnership to enter the stretchable electronics space.

Guive Balooch, Global Vice President of L’Oréal’s Technology Incubator says, “connected technologies have the potential to completely disrupt how we monitor the skin’s exposure to various external factors—including UV—and can inform consumers how to protect against them.”

It’s that time of year when everyone, Machine Design included, is going to tell you what you can expect to happen over the next year or later. It may be hard to differentiate the hype from that which is based on sound advice, though. Often times, incremental products or innovations are difficult to track, and sometimes end up being more marketing than truth. Whether you plan on investing, trying to stay competitive, or are simply interested in what’s next, determining an accurate technology forecast is possible if you focus on several key factors discussed here.

The future of medical monitoring should be small, flexible and very, very thin according to MC10. The Massachusetts-based wearable company announced several flexible body-worn sensors at International CES, one of which is less than half the thickness of a human hair.

MC10’s “conformal” electronics look a bit like Band-Aids embedded with chips. Like many medical wearable companies, MC10 hopes to take medical monitoring out of the lab with patches that can be worn for a long period of time and send collected data to the cloud.

“We’re building a system that’s hardware, mobile-based application, cloud-based analytics storage, and visualization tools,” said Don Fuchs, vice president of marketing and strategy for MC10.

Don’t miss the chance to share your experience with the Football Medicine Community. You can participate with an Oral or a Poster presentation.
Send an abstract to the Scientific Direction using the 2016 Official Abstract form and following the Guidelines … The deadline for sending Scientific Contributions is 15th January, 2016.

My big sports injury came as a sophomore in high school in an indoor soccer game (an off-season way of staying fresh during the Midwestern winter.) I still remember the feeling of sliding for the ball and then crashing into the wall — and another girl — with my knee.

My knee benched me for the beginning of the high-school season, a blow that hit my fragile teen psyche the hardest. I felt inferior, damaged, irrelevant.

So, when I spotted this BeWell@Stanford piece on exercising with injuries, I devoured it eagerly. Although I’m much healthier emotionally than I was as a teen, I know I want to remain active, period.

… One of the biggest reasons why the Patriots have been so great for this long is their willingness to evolve. Belichick seldom keeps veteran players past the primes of their careers, often opting to discard them a year too early rather than a year too late.

The Patriots have been Super Bowl contenders for well over a decade, but save for Brady, their roster looks entirely different now than it did in the early part of the millennium. This is the second wind of the Patriots dynasty. Here’s how it was built.

showing shifting distributions with small multiples: point differentials in 2015 nba games