Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 23, 2016

Expectations for Derrick Rose hit rock bottom this season. Any optimistic pining that he might return MVP form were pretty much wiped away by his performances this October and Novemver—specifically, shooting 35.7 percent from the field, 20.0 percent from the three-point line and only earning 2.5 free throw attempts per game. Since Rose’s return from nearly two full seasons lost to injury, there have been plenty of low points. Those two months seemed like the final pieces of evidence that his days of positive production were behind him.

Well, Rose has quietly dug himself out from that hole and, over the past two months, played some of the best basketball we’ve seen from him, post-injury.

So Pablo Sandoval’s debut at spring training was once again a hot story, as it is every season, especially since Sandoval said he didn’t focus on weight loss in the offseason.

The shorthand way of describing why Diana Taurasi did not play the 2015 WNBA season for Phoenix was that she took off the summer to rest.

Except that’s not exactly what happened.

“I did three months of heavy working out in the summer, Monday through Friday, just weekends off,” Taurasi said Sunday at the first day of USA Basketball’s national team training camp. “I didn’t necessarily take any basketball time off. But I got to work on things I needed to work on, strength-wise, stability-wise.”

Do you want an easy way to improve your game? Get a bit more sleep, and the results could surprise you.

UC San Francisco sleep expert Cheri Mah, who consults with the Golden State Warriors and other elite athletes, has found that extended sleep can improve free-throw and three-point shooting by 9 percent.

… Even if you’re an unsympathetic fan, I’m guessing you still want to see the best product on the floor. If that’ the case, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to ignore the impact that travel and game schedules have on performance. If we’re truly interested in putting the best product on the floor then we have to look at these issues. And if I’m the owner of a team that’s paying players these exorbitant amounts, I would certainly be doing everything I can to protect my investments. To put it in to perspective, many of these guys are worth more than a jet plane. If I owned a jet plane I’m sure as hell not going to be flying it in inclement weather in a poorly maintained state because I’d be worried about the financial loss if something should happen. When you look at it like that and understand that the conditions that players are currently asked to play under likely wouldn’t meet OSHA standards for job safety you start to realize that despite the ridiculous sums these guys are being paid that it would be better for everyone (owners, fans, and players) if we approached the way the schedules, travel and rest are handled more intelligently. Any sport will bring with it some level of fatigue. That fatigue should subside though given sufficient rest and recovery. Similarly, if fatigue persists performance will drop off and the likelihood for injuries will increase.

FC BARCELONA’S LA MASIA ACADEMY has been amongst the most efficient of youth systems over the past 25 years. Following Johan Cruyff’s reconstruction that dates back to 1988 (his original idea was pitched to the club nine years prior) – where coaching and education guidelines were rebuilt completely – the Blaugrana have been responsible for rocketing an extortionate amount world-class stars into the game. However, as many believe that all is rosy around the Cuitat Esportiva Joan Gamper training grounds, there are deep-lying issues and pressures, leading to many questions that remain to be answered.

When Joe Kenn learned his peers had voted him NFL Strength Coach of the Year, he was humbled.

“For me, it was, ‘Wow, my peers recognized my work.’ But your situation arises because of the people you work with,” Kenn said. “Let’s face it, I work with the best. The talent is abundant. It’s our job to be as smart as possible to help those players succeed on Sundays.

“Success breeds success, and it’s nice to be personally recognized.”

Criticism by leading sports officials that the Australian Institute of Sport has become a “ghost town”, devoid of elite athletes and premier coaches has prompted a federal government review of its operations, only five months out from the Rio Olympics.

The halls of residence of the once-proud institute, home to nearly 700 athletes and 76 coaches at its zenith in 2000, are now utilised mainly by school groups visiting Parliament House, with bureaucrats doing laps of its swimming pools or working out in its gymnasiums.

The Sports & Innovation series n°1 on high-level athletes described how technologies have become essential to monitor athletic performances. Technology is also becoming a part of regular sports practice: Sophisticated high-tech equipment is now accessible for amateurs to measure individual athletic performance.

As Benjamin Carlier (from Le Tremplin, a French accelerator for sports startups) points out, “Nowadays, non-professionals who run a marathon in 4 hours and 30 minutes have nearly the same demands in terms of performance monitoring and analysis as an athlete who runs the same distance under 3 hours.” (Read the full article in French on Tremplin.)

With smartphones, there is large access to measuring and monitoring tools like accelerometers and gyroscopes. Everyone is equipped to track their physical activity: frequency, intensity and progress. The technologies involved are not necessarily recent (pedometer and GPS have been around for some years), but they are now in (almost) everybody’s pocket or handbag.

What started as a bright idea in the mind of a Brisbane-based scientist has become a commercial reality – and his invention is now being sold to some of the most elite sporting clubs around the world.

The device, known as the NordBord, tests the strength of hamstrings.

That helps predict when they may tear, potentially saving sporting clubs millions of dollars in injured players.

We’ve all experienced those moments when we’ve been working really hard on a task, finally finish and feel like a well-deserved break so we grab a coffee and relax for a few moments. What goes through your mind next? Do you believe you’ve reached as far as you can go that day, or do you feel energized for the next task, believing that your powers to keep focused are not depleted?

Research led by psychologist Veronika Job at the University of Zurich and others shed valuable light on the question of willpower and a person’s beliefs about it. Job found that if people believe their willpower is limited – and that they have a certain amount of it that will be used up – it will impact on their performance, particularly when they feel under pressure.

… It sounds simple, but one of Boston’s best traits is effort — a staple of Stevens’ past Butler teams, but not necessarily a staple of most NBA teams.

“The biggest thing is this team plays for each other and not just with each other,” Thomas told The Huffington Post. “We play as hard as possible and I think that’s the difference … between our team and everybody else.”

Look at the Steamer projections for players like Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Cabrera and Troy Tulowitzki and you’ll quickly see they’re not projected to play anywhere close to a full season. Certainly this is due to their increased likelihood of trip(s) to the disabled list. For fantasy players, most calculation systems convert those projected stat lines into rotisserie dollar values but don’t account for replacement level statistics accumulated when the injured player is on the DL.

In this article I’ll look at this adjustment using projections for the 2016 season.

After yesterday’s loss to FC Midtjylland, Louis van Gaal is again under pressure at Manchester United. Earlier this season, I wrote that he was doing fairly well given the players at his disposal, and he certainly didn’t have his first-choice team in Denmark. But after some embarrassing losses, it’s natural that fans – and maybe even executives at the club – are calling for the sack. In truth, it’s far from an easy decision.

The market for managers is full of informational asymmetries. In plain English, clubs can’t always tell how skilled a manager is or how good the match is likely to be. In the midst of this uncertainty, I think it helps to give a little structure to our thinking. Here are some common-sense starting points based on what I’ve seen in the data and the news.

Back in the ’70s, Scott Burnham was a technician working for a company that made guitar cables and accessories. While soldering parts one day, he accidentally attached the wrong resistor to a circuit board. It was a fortunate error, because the circuit suddenly produced a haunting moan — so lovely and eerie that Burnham realized it would make a fantastic ­guitar-pedal sound. He created the Rat, a pedal that quickly sold tens of thousands of units. Bands from Nirvana to Radiohead used it, and musicians I know today still swear by it.

This is the type of story that crops up a lot in Pagan Kennedy’s new book, “Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World.” After talking to dozens of inventors, she finds that their breakthroughs frequently involve an element of luck — though, as Louis Pasteur observed, luck favors the prepared mind. Burnham, after all, was an expert in his field, and had been planning for some time to create a new distortion pedal. His expertise and passion helped him recognize the happiness in the happy accident. You or I might have winced at the circuit’s weird sound; Burnham heard the future of rock guitar.