Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 25, 2016

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr said his players have earned the power to influence whether or not they’ll be rested as the team nears the NBA record for wins in a season and the playoffs approach.

“It’s the players who are setting a record,” Kerr said Wednesday before the Warriors took on the Los Angeles Clippers. “It’s not the organization. It’s the players who are doing it. So they will absolutely have some say in matters down the stretch in terms of how we approach everything. But again, we could lose the next couple games, and all that’s thrown out the window.

… The 6’1? starting point guard is averaging career highs in points (21.1), rebounds (4.5) and shooting across the board. In fact, he’s one of only six players this season who’s averaging more than 21 points, five assists, four rebounds and one steal per game (according to Basketball-Reference.com). The others include All-Stars Stephen Curry, James Harden, LeBron James, Kyle Lowry and Russell Westbrook.

“I think it’s a real testament to all the hard work he’s done over the last few years, and in particular this past summer,” Hornets GM Rich Cho told the NBPA. “He was here in Charlotte in the gym a ton [last summer], and just really working hard on all his aspects of his game, especially working on his long-range shooting with our shooting coach, Bruce Kreutzer. It’s also a testament to his teammates, it’s a testament to the coaching staff and I really think he should be considered highly for the Most Improved Player award.”

If any fans are going to mark up a new Hunter Pence sign to hold, they might want to consider: “Hunter Pence Likes Pilates.”

Pence has been a 120 percenter who played every game in 2013 and 2014, and missed just two games in 2012. Yet the Giants outfielder missed 110 games last season due to a series of injuries; his left forearm was broken by a pitch in spring training, then tendinitis developed in his left wrist after he returned, and then he strained an oblique muscle in August that ended his season.

He said the oblique strain led him to start doing Pilates, which helped him with flexibility, movement and strength.

Those are the words of Dr David Martin, Director of Performance and Research at the Philadelphia 76ers, who featured on the Sport Science panel at the 2016 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC). The sentiment related to the 76ers’ current struggle for improvement from last position on the NBA Eastern Conference ladder, but it could easily represent what the conference as a whole stands for; the continuous search for an edge in the cut-throat industry of elite sport.

Ten years into its existence, the influence of SSAC permeates American sports. Take Daryl Morey for example, a computer science graduate and co-founder of the conference, who has been appointed General Manager of the Houston Rockets and has earned plaudits for his use of analytics to drive improvement in the Rockets’ performance and recruitment. The traditional focus of the conference has been on this ‘Moneyball’ approach to player recruitment, or in real terms: “looking for players whose surface appearance is deceiving the market place about their value”. However, with the recent success of teams such as the Golden State Warriors, who have pioneered the strategic sleep and rest of players, there has been a palpable shift towards exploring the use of analytics in optimising athlete health and preventing injuries.

The purpose of this study was to assess the validity of a GPS tracking system to estimate energy expenditure (EE) during exercise and field sport locomotor movements. Twenty-seven participants each completed one 90 minute exercise session on an outdoor synthetic futsal pitch. During the exercise session participants wore a 5 Hz GPS unit interpolated to 15 Hz (SPI HPU, GPSports Pty Ltd, Australia) and a portable gas analyser (Metamax® 3B, Cortex Pty Ltd, Germany) which acted as the criterion measure of EE. The exercise session was comprised of alternating five minute exercise bouts of randomised walking, jogging, running or a field sport circuit (x3) followed by 10 minutes of recovery. One-wayANOVA showed significant (p<0.01) and very large underestimations between GPS metabolic power derived EE and VO2 derived EE for all field sport circuits (% difference ? -44%). No differences in EE were observed for the jog (7.8%) and run (4.8%) while very large overestimations were found for the walk (43.0%). The GPS metabolic power EE over the entire 90 minute session was significantly lower (p<0.01) than the VO2 EE, resulting in a moderate underestimation overall (-19%). The results of this study suggest that a GPS tracking system using the metabolic power model of EE does not accurately estimate EE in field sport movements or over an exercise session consisting of mixed locomotor activities interspersed with recovery periods; however is able to provide a reasonably accurate estimation of EE during continuous jogging and running.

… The Giants hope the changes will help in another area they desperately need to improve: health. When discussing his new crop of free agents, including pass-rusher Olivier Vernon ($52 million guaranteed), cornerback Janoris Jenkins ($28.8 million guaranteed) and defensive lineman Damon Harrison ($24 million guaranteed), McAdoo repeatedly mentioned that all were healthy. That has been a problem for the Giants in recent years, so McAdoo is planning to give his players an off-day on Monday, not the typical Tuesday, because he believes they need to rest as soon as they’re done playing, particularly on the road. It’s all tied together, McAdoo said.

“The duration of practices. Take a look at the weight room as well. Nutrition will play a factor. Sleep is huge, and probably the best tool for recovery,” he said. “So we’re going to take a look at everything.”

David Nucifora’s time as the IRFU’s performance director has not been universally acclaimed by Ireland fans but we are very intrigued by news today of the appointment of Nick Winkelman as the IRFU’s new Head of Athletic Performance and Science. Winkelman is an American who worked for nine years with the Arizona-based high performance firm Exos. In appointing him, the IRFU is looking far beyond both Ireland and the world of rugby for expertise and excellence. They are looking to American football, and to a man who has worked with the likes of AJ Green, Odell Beckham, JJ Watt and Robert Griffin III. We’ve looked through Winkelman’s social media footprint and here are some of the changes we think he is going to look to instill.

It is often said that the lifeblood of a successful NFL team is the draft. The ability to draft and develop quality players is critical in the salary-cap era.

For New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, his approach extends beyond the locker room.

It goes into the coaching and meeting rooms as well.

In what might have been the most thorough answer of his 45-minute breakfast session with reporters Tuesday at the NFL’s owners meetings at the Boca Resort, Belichick explained his philosophy in constructing a successful coaching staff that can sustain over time.

… This is not a discussion regarding high-school soccer participation. There are positives and negatives for the MOST TALENTED youth soccer players who play high-school soccer.

What we need to also discuss is THE OTHER SPORTS – the OTHER SPORTS that our athletes will no longer be participating in if they are mandated to only play Development Academy soccer.

Will limiting sports participation to DA soccer – and therefore having these athletes participate in DA soccer for more hours over the course of the year – make a positive impact on their long-term soccer development? Or rather, might it hurt their long-term athletic development?

The growth mindset was intended to help close achievement gaps, not hide them. Renowned psychologist and author Carol Dweck describes her work to help educators adopt a deeper, true growth mindset, one that can show in classroom practice and throughout school systems. [video, 1:00:05]

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this study was to test the concurrent validity of data from two different global positioning system (GPS) units for obtaining mechanical properties during sprint acceleration using a field method recently validated by Samozino et al.
METHODS:

Thirty-two athletes performed maximal straight-line sprints, and their running speed was simultaneously measured by GPS units (sampling rate: 20 Hz or 5 Hz) and either a radar or laser device (devices taken as references). Lower limb mechanical properties of sprint acceleration (theoretical maximal force, F0; theoretical maximal speed, V0; maximal power, Pmax) were derived from a modeling of the speed-time curves using an exponential function in both measurements. Comparisons of mechanical properties from 20 Hz and 5 Hz GPS units with those from reference devices were performed for 80 and 62 trials, respectively.
RESULTS:

The percentage bias showed a wide range of over or underestimation for both systems (-7.9-9.7% and -5.1-2.9% for 20 Hz and 5 Hz GPS), while the ranges of its 90% confidence limits for 20 Hz GPS were markedly smaller than those for 5 Hz GPS. These results were supported by the correlation analyses.
CONCLUSIONS:

Overall, the concurrent validity for all variables derived from 20 Hz GPS measurements was better than that obtained from the 5 Hz GPS units. However, in the current state of GPS devices accuracy for speed-time measurements over a maximal sprint acceleration, we recommend that radar, laser devices and timing gates remain the reference methods for implementing Samozino et al.’s computations.

… Rather than using a single wearable device, the sports technology company gathers data from a variety of sources, using player biomechanics and movement to monitor performance and flag up any potential for future injury.

Kitman’s system features three components: Capture, Athlete and Profiler. For the first, athletes are asked to stand in front of a three-dimensional video screen and movements are tracked without the use of sensors or wearables.

The second stage sees athletes enter feedback into a customisable mobile app about a range of variables. Popular subjects include sleep quality, hydration, diet, mood, stress and perceived muscle soreness.

Information from third-party sources, such as GPS systems or heart-rate monitors can also be fed into Profiler, Kitman’s diagnostics engine, which provides easy-to-grasp information to coaches.

… an investigation by The New York Times has found that the N.F.L.’s concussion research was far more flawed than previously known.

For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies — including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.

If the only basketball you’ve watched this year is the Golden State Warriors, then you have no idea that this sport isn’t always the most fun anyone can have in sneakers. You probably think that basketball teams are supposed to cripple their opponents with infectious joy. You might also have come to believe that shots closer to the halfcourt line than the free-throw line are perfectly normal.

All you have to do to remember the Warriors are a team of basketball aliens is turn on the NCAA tournament. And there is no team that makes the Warriors look more like monsters from a faraway planet than No. 1 seed North Carolina.

“You could say,” said Tar Heels guard Nate Britt, “they’re the complete opposite.”

Every organization wants to hire the best of the best, but research from Columbia Business School shows that teams with the most talent don’t always net the best results.

Professor Adam Galinsky, the Vikram S. Pandit Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, examined a variety of team-based situations — including egg-production in a chicken coop as well as 10 seasons of professional basketball and baseball — and concluded that when a team is filled with top-notch talent, overall performance actually goes down.

“If a team does not have a clear pecking order, status conflict and chaos emerges, and as a result the overall performance goes down because coordination goes down,” says Professor Galinsky. “Overall, our findings suggest that team coordination suffers when there is too much talent, because team members all try to be the alpha.”