Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 12, 2016

GOLD COAST coach Rodney Eade believes NFL prospect Brandon Kaufman has the athleticism to make the grade as an AFL footballer.

… Anderson, 33, went more than nine months without playing in a basketball game before he made his season debut Feb. 24 in Washington’s loss the Chicago Bulls. The wait wasn’t supposed to be that long.

Last May, he underwent a routine procedure on his left ankle to remove bone spurs. He signed a one-year, $4 million contract with the Wizards in July to provide a defensive presence on the wing and some veteran leadership. Both sides assumed he would be ready for the start of the season. But when the 6-foot-6 swingman reported to training camp, discomfort persisted, and he had a second surgery to remove more bone fragments Oct. 13.

… Nobody in the NBA has Curry’s license to shoot, but then, nobody in the NBA shoots like Curry.

For anyone else, this type of shot selection would be criticized, particularly in a half-court setting when there are plays to be run. But for the Warriors, it’s a built-in game plan on sorts.

“We let him improvise,” Warriors assistant coach Luke Walton told Business Insider in an interview. “We want our whole team improvising, to be honest.

What would a Premier League team pay for software that allowed it to optimise performance while reducing injuries? There are emerging data that would allow such software to be developed (and indeed, some software companies who already claim they can predict injuries before they occur), but no product is ready for prime time yet. In this editorial, we briefly direct the reader to data showing how workload is associated with injuries, highlight the challenges in training and match load monitoring and call for a consensus meeting to agree on the variables to be used to assess training and match load in football (soccer).

Some in Rachel Balkovec’s family still call her “Rae,” the gender-neutral shortening of her name she briefly used on résumés. Despite qualifications that should have quickly landed Balkovec a job in baseball, she found only dead ends because she was, well, a she. So “Rae” was a temporary workaround.

Now 28, Balkovec is entering her first year as the Astros’ Latin America strength and conditioning coordinator. She landed with the Cardinals in 2013 as a minor league coordinator, becoming the first woman to be hired as a pro baseball strength and conditioning coach. (She was very close to joining the Astros back then, too, impressing two teams at once after so many passed.)

… “When we took that Rose Bowl picture, you see three head strength coaches and any of those guys on that (Oklahoma) team would tell you, there was nowhere to hide,” [Mark] Hill said. “It’s three guys with great chemistry, great enthusiasm, passion for what we did.”

[Corey] Edmond knew he needed help if he wanted to build that type of system at Kentucky. So he called Hill and convinced him to come to Kentucky.

“If we want to be able to take on this conference, I’m not ashamed to say, I need help,” Edmond said. “I needed help from people who know exactly what we’re looking for and exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it. …

For years the promise was too good to be true: You only needed to show up and train the way you felt that day and everything would work out in the end. Simply by listening to your body, you could adjust training according to how you felt and achieve positive results by some sort of mind-body connection. Auto-regulation, or cybernetic periodization, is making another round of interest because of velocity based training (VBT) and immediate feedback. Cybernetic periodization sounds cool, is cool, and if done right it works.

It’s hard not to draw the parallels with what the 76ers are trying to do and why they might be interested in Martin, who has been a part of five Olympics with Australia. The Sixers spent a year interviewing him and his colleagues at AIS. At first, the headhunter didn’t tell Martin which NBA team was interested, just that one was looking for someone with Martin’s credentials. Three months of interviews went by before he was even introduced to general manager Sam Hinkie and Brown.

“I don’t think they called my mom and dad, but they checked with everyone else,” Martin says.

The Sixers hired Martin in July as part of a three-year agreement to join the team. Within a few days, he was dispatched to come to Embiid’s rescue. The Sixers found out about Embiid’s troublesome MRI on Friday afternoon and by Saturday morning, Martin and Hinkie were on a flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles International Airport to meet with the doctor who diagnosed it. In the next few weeks, Embiid, Martin and the Sixers spoke with about a dozen doctors to decide which would be best for his full recovery. After Martin whittled the list down to two surgeons, Embiid made the final call to go with Dr. Martin O’Malley, who replaced two existing screws and performed a bone graft using bone from Embiid’s hip.

The aim of this study was to determine the validity of an accelerometer to measure average acceleration values during high speed running. Thirteen subjects performed three sprint efforts over a 40 m distance (n = 39). Acceleration was measured using a 100 Hz tri-axial accelerometer integrated within a wearable tracking device (SPI-HPU, GPSports, Canberra). To provide a concurrent measure of acceleration, timing gates were positioned at 10 m intervals (0 m – 40 m). Accelerometer data collected during 0 m – 10 m and 10 m – 20 m provided a measure of average acceleration values. Accelerometer data was recorded as the raw output and filtered by applying a 3 point moving average and a 10 point moving average. The accelerometer could not measure average acceleration values during high speed running. The accelerometer significantly overestimated average acceleration values during both 0 m – 10 m and 10 m – 20 m, regardless of the data filtering technique (p < 0.001). Body mass significantly affected all accelerometer variables (p < 0.10, partial [eta]2 = 0.091 – 0.219). Body mass and the absence of a gravity compensation formula affect the accuracy and practicality of accelerometers. Until GPSports integrated accelerometers incorporate a gravity compensation formula the usefulness of any accelerometer derived algorithms is questionable.

A new invention being manufactured in Brisbane by a QUT spin-off company is set to change the face of elite sports science and save professional sports clubs hundreds of millions of dollars in lost player time in the process.

?We are happy to announce that we’ve just completed integration with Strava. We’ll be testing with a few users (feel free to email us at this address if you’d like to take part as early tester) in the next weeks, and release the update at the beginning of April at the latest.

In this post I’ll go over the integration and explain what you’ll get and how we used data gathered from Strava to improve your experience, provide more details on your trainings within the app and how we plan to use the data for research purposes as well.

… I’m the Sports Performance Coach for the Charlotte 49ers Men’s Soccer team and have spent that last few years of my career embracing an expansion of my understanding of what it means to be a “strength coach.” Today, my days involve a lot of different pieces of technology. This post is meant to share my thoughts on how to successfully integrate technology into your everyday job and then to share the specifics of exactly what I’m using with Charlotte Soccer.

At the moment, I believe there’s an arms race happening in elite sports to acquire the most advanced, high tech devices. Whether we’re talking about: wearables, linear position transducers, heart rate monitors, blood panel work, or one of the countless other technologies, the low entry costs and rampant marketing efforts of this equipment is allowing widespread access. Naturally some of this increased interest is just to get new toys and spend money because its there. But that generally never ends well. It’s important to realize, technology can be a great equalizer in the name of athlete development OR it can be a huge nuisance and time waster. So what factors determine which it will be….

Subtle motion happens around us all the time, including tiny vibrations caused by sound. New technology shows that we can pick up on these vibrations and actually re-create sound and conversations just from a video of a seemingly still object. But now Abe Davis takes it one step further: Watch him demo software that lets anyone interact with these hidden properties, just from a simple video.

Autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is increasingly used to treat musculoskeletal soft tissue injuries, either on its own or as an adjunct to surgery

Routine use is not recommended as there is insufficient evidence of clinical efficacy; instead, its use should be restricted to research settings

7th MuscleTech Network Workshop & 4th ECOSEP Congress on hamstring injuries was held on 7 – 9 October in Barcelona.

In a career of great accomplishments, it is not the two Super Bowl victories, five league MVPs, 200 victories or the single season and career record for passing touchdowns that stand out to me. In a first ballot Hall of Fame career, Peyton Manning beating Mother Nature in his recovery from four neck surgeries is his greatest feat. Having success playing with a grandma-like triceps muscle is what is most unbelievable to me.

How does anyone play quarterback in the NFL with an arm that looks like this? With nerve issues leading to multiple neck surgeries, his arm was significantly atrophied as he joined the Broncos. His triceps waggle resembled that of an octogenarian. There were also reports of his fingertips being numb. If a sure-fire top college quarterback prospect showed up at Combine with similar neck and arm findings, he would not be drafted at all based on his medical exam.

Some might assume Mariners players undergo a routine, stress-free physical exam at spring training. But Times reporter Ryan Divish can attest that it’s no walk in the park.

Background: There is limited research regarding the epidemiology of hip/groin injuries in ice hockey, the majority of which is restricted to time-loss injuries only.

Purpose: To describe the epidemiology of hip/groin injuries in collegiate men’s and women’s ice hockey from 2009-2010 through 2014-2015.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods: Hip/groin injury data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance Program (NCAA-ISP) during the 2009-2010 through 2014-2015 seasons were analyzed. Injury rates, rate ratios (RRs), and injury proportion ratios (IPRs) were reported with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results: During the 2009-2010 through 2014-2015 seasons, 421 and 114 hip/groin injuries were reported in men’s and women’s ice hockey, respectively, leading to injury rates of 1.03 and 0.78 per 1000 athlete-exposures (AEs), respectively. The hip/groin injury rate was greater in men than in women (RR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.08-1.63). In addition, 55.6% and 71.1% of hip/groin injuries in men’s and women’s ice hockey, respectively, were non–time loss (NTL) injuries (ie, resulted in participation restriction time 3 weeks). The proportion of hip/groin injuries that were NTL injuries was greater in women than in men (IPR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.11-1.48). Conversely, the proportion of hip/groin injuries that were severe was greater in men than in women (IPR, 8.67; 95% CI, 1.20-62.73). The most common hip/groin injury diagnosis was strain (men, 67.2%; women, 76.3%). Also, 12 (2.9%) and 3 (2.6%) cases of hip impingement were noted in men’s and women’s ice hockey, respectively.

Conclusion: Hip/groin injury rates were greater in men’s than in women’s ice hockey. Time loss varied between sexes, with men sustaining more injuries with time loss over 3 weeks. Despite increasing concerns of femoroacetabular impingement in ice hockey players, few cases of hip impingement were reported in this dataset.

… In June 2014, Montaño ran the USATF Outdoor Track and Field Championships while eight months pregnant, and gave birth to a daughter, Linnéa, that August. She returned in 2015 to win the 800 meters at the U.S. championships.

Montaño is hoping to make her second Olympic team this summer. The foodie loves to keep her meals fun and interesting, with an alliterative weekly meal schedule and burritos with Linnéa, now almost 2 years old.

Regular physical exercise provides many health benefits, protecting against the development of chronic diseases, and improving quality of life. Some of the mechanisms by which exercise provides these effects are the promotion of an anti-inflammatory state, reinforcement of the neuromuscular function, and activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Recently, it has been proposed that physical exercise is able to modify gut microbiota, and thus this could be another factor by which exercise promotes well-being, since gut microbiota appears to be closely related to health and disease. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent findings on gut microbiota modification by exercise, proposing several mechanisms by which physical exercise might cause changes in gut microbiota.

Hydration is an important part of athletic performance, and understanding athletes’ hydration knowledge, attitudes, barriers, and behaviors is critical for sport practitioners. The aim of this study was to assess NCAA Division 1 (D1) American football players, with regard to hydration and fluid intake before, during, and after exercise, and to apply this assessment to their overall hydration practice. The sample consisted of 100 student-athletes from two different NCAA D1 universities, who participated in voluntary summer football conditioning. Participants completed a survey to identify the fluid and hydration knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, demographic data, primary football position, previous nutrition education, and barriers to adequate fluid consumption. The average hydration knowledge score (HKS) for the participants in the present study was 11.8 ±1.9 (69.4% correct), with scores ranging from 42-100% correct. Four key misunderstandings regarding hydration, specifically related to intervals of hydration habits among the study subjects, were revealed. Only 24% of the players reported drinking enough fluids before, during, immediately after, and two hours after practice. Generalized linear model analysis predicted the outcome variable HKS (?=28.001, p=0.045), with nutrition education (Wald ?=8.250, p=0.041) and position on the football team (?=9.361, p=0.025) being significant predictors. “Backs” (e.g., quarterbacks, running backs, and defensive backs) demonstrated significantly higher hydration knowledge than ‘Linemen’ (p=0.014). Findings indicated that if changes are not made to increase hydration awareness levels among football teams, serious health consequences, including potential fatalities, could occur on the field, especially among heavier linemen.

… The latest of these “glowing cow” studies, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Burd and his colleagues in Dr. Luc van Loon’s muscle research group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, compares the muscle-building power of milk and beef after a workout. The approach allows researchers to use real foods that people actually eat, rather than laboratory-created protein powders, and the results suggest that the specific protein source you consume matters less than once thought.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of competitive football match play on hamstring strength and lower limb flexibility. Fifteen male international youth football players were included. Hamstring strength and associated pain ratings, ankle dorsiflexion, hip extension, knee extension and flexion range of motion were evaluated immediately post-match and at intervals of 24, 48, and 72 h post-match. Strength significantly reduced post-match (P < 0.01), mean difference ?0.43 (CI95: ?0.56, ?0.30) and 24 h post (P < 0.05) mean difference ?0.12 Nm/kg (CI95: ?0.20, ?0.04). The associated pain scores significantly increased at the post-match (P < 0.01, ES = 0.61) and 24 h (P < 0.01, ES = 0.55) time intervals. At the 48 and 72 h post-match tests no significant difference was found for strength or pain ratings. No significant differences were detected for any of the range of motion measures. Competitive football match play has a significant acute and transient effect on isometric hamstring strength and associated pain levels during resisted knee flexion in male international youth players. Range of motion measures appear to remain relatively unaffected by match play. Isometric hamstring strength testing and associated pain levels might be considered for inclusion in-season to monitor player's post-match hamstring recovery characteristics.

For most hitters, batting is an optimization strategy between power and contact, finding that point where the incremental benefit of harder contact is offset by the incremental cost of less contact. Giancarlo Stanton could potentially be a more productive hitter if he tweaked that balance, sacrificing some of his power for gains in batting average. This might not work so much for Ben Revere on the reverse side, where there is little power upside. Is there a way we can quantify how hard a batter is swinging, from a purely numerical standpoint and give us some insight into which batters are sacrificing contact on the altar of power?

A simple approach would be to simply look at the correlation between contact percentage and isolated slugging, which would reveal a negative relationship (higher contact percentage links to lower ISO and vice versa) and a not insignificant .28 R squared correlation. I would argue that this is likely simply measuring the effect that pitchers will pitch around powerful hitters, thus reducing contact percentage. In other words, it’s only half the story; the real question we should be asking is: given that a power hitter will see pitches farther from the center of the zone than the average hitter, are power hitters making more or less contact than we would expect?

… ‘subjective,’ unstructured data such as scout reports, medical records, doctor’s notes and coach reports will all start to be brought into analyses. Analysts and scouts will need to work together to reap the benefits of this data windfall. Scouts will have ‘big data’ environments with approachable analytics where they can look for pockets of potential in the growing data stores and pass those insights back to the analysts.

Success in cultivating this feedback loop will be the next area where teams will tilt the competitive balance, much like the Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s were successful doing in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. After a few years, everyone caught on with what the A’s were doing, all teams hired analysts and it was no longer a competitive edge. It was simply a cost of doing business (If you haven’t read Competing on Analytics by Tom Davenport, that’s his basic premise…that organizations will use analytics to find temporary areas of competitive advantage until others catch on – then that particular brand of analytics simply becomes a cost of doing business).

Three years ago Simon Farrant, a man from the sports data company Opta, brought football bloggers and football clubs together. It was the first Optapro Analytics Forum.

The clubs might see some good ideas; the amateur analysts get the chance to work with large football data sets. The sort of place where physicists apply themselves to football; where you find out if a goalkeeper’s height is relevant when asking how good they might be at dealing with crosses.

This idea of putting data and thrusting young statistical turks together is a good thing, and the third edition of the forum took place last month.