Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 10, 2016

… Quietly taking every slight personally is how a kid who, in the estimation of one Bay Area talent scout, was “a good but not great” high school player emerged from a self-funded AAU program and a mid-major college to be a lottery pick and the undisputed leader of an NBA playoff team.

“He’s that kind of guy,” Raymond Young, one of his first AAU coaches, said. “When he’s doubted, there’s some kind of fire or energy inside him that—I don’t know how you describe it, because it’s just him. When he’s told, ‘You can’t do nothin,’ or ‘You won’t win this game,’ or ‘You’re not good enough,’ or he feels you think he’s not good enough, he’s out to prove you wrong.”

… It’s clear that the injuries have had a huge impact on Kompany’s career. He has made 298 appearances for City in his eight years at the club — averaging 37 appearances a season — but City have played 436 matches in that time; almost a third of them without the Belgian international.

Here’s how the injuries have played their part in the defender’s career.

Purpose: This study investigated the effect of different limb blood flow levels on cycling performance recovery, blood lactate concentration and heart rate. Methods: Thirty-three high-intensity intermittent trained athletes completed two 30 s Wingate anaerobic test sessions: 3 x 30 s Wingate test (WAnT 1-3) and 1 x 30 s Wingate test (WAnT 4), on a cycling ergometer. The two Wingate test sessions (WAnT 1-3 and WAnT 4) were separated by a randomly assigned 24 min recovery intervention selected from among: blood flow restriction, passive rest, placebo stimulation or neuromuscular electrical stimulation-induced blood flow. Calf arterial inflow was measured by venous occlusion plethysmography at regular intervals throughout the recovery period. Performance was measured in terms of peak power and mean power output during the first (WAnT 1) and the fourth (WAnT 4) Wingate test. Results: Following the recovery interventions, a large (r = 0.68 (90% CL 0.42; 0.83)), and very large (r = 0.72 (90% CL 0.49; 0.86)) positive correlation was observed between the change in calf arterial inflow and the change in mean power and peak power output, respectively. Calf arterial inflow was significantly higher during the neuromuscular electrical stimulationrecovery intervention compared to the blood flow restriction, passive rest and placebo stimulation interventions (P 0.05). No recovery effect was linked to heart rate or blood lactate levels. Conclusions: For the first time, these data support the existence of a positive correlation between an increase in blood flow and performance recovery between bouts of high-intensity exercise. As a practical consideration, this effect can be obtained by using neuromuscular electrical stimulation-induced blood flow since this passive, simple strategy could be easily applied during short-term recovery.

This study investigated the changes in measures of neuromuscular fatigue and physical performance in young professional rugby union players during a preseason training period. Fourteen young (age: 19.1?±?1.2 years) professional rugby union players participated in the study. Changes in measures of lower body neuromuscular fatigue (countermovement jump (CMJ) mean power, mean force, flight-time) and physical performance (lower body strength, 40?m sprint velocity) were assessed during an 11-week preseason period using magnitude-based inferences. CMJ mean power was likely to very likely decreased during week 2 (?8.1?±?5.5% to ?12.5?±?6.8%), and likely to almost certainly decreased from weeks 5 to 11 (?10?±?4.3% to ?14.7?±?6.9%), while CMJ flight-time demonstrated likely to very likely decreases during weeks 2, and weeks 4–6 (?2.41?±?1% to ?3.3?±?1.3%), and weeks 9–10 (?1.9?±?0.9% to ?2.2?±?1.5%). Despite this, possible improvements in lower body strength (5.8?±?2.7%) and very likely improvements in 40?m velocity (5.5?±?3.6%) were made. Relationships between changes in CMJ metrics and lower body strength or 40?m sprint velocity were trivial or small (<0.22). Increases in lower body strength and 40?m velocity occurred over the course of an 11-week preseason despite the presence of neuromuscular fatigue (as measured by CMJ). The findings of this study question the usefulness of CMJ for monitoring fatigue in the context of strength and sprint velocity development. Future research is needed to ascertain the consequences of negative changes in CMJ in the context of rugby-specific activities to determine the usefulness of this test as a measure of fatigue in this population.

The 22-year-old was not expected to feature again for the season, but spent every day at the training complex to ensure he could help his club with their continental ambition

Surfers had never seen a spot like it: head-high waves unfurling like wrapping paper in pristine, tapering cylinders for more than a quarter-mile, with not a soul out to catch them.

But something about the scene was amiss. Between waves, ducks floated in dead-still water the color of tea. A dusty eucalyptus windbreak lined the shore. And the breakers didn’t have the bumps, boils and warbles that blemish even the cleanest ocean waves.

Because they were not ocean waves. They did not come from a storm out at sea.

They came from a machine on a patch of old farmland — and sent a shiver of awe through the surfing world from South Africa to Santa Cruz.

… The company that has been the most aggressive about bringing electronics to contact lenses is Verily. (You may know Verily better as Google, which split up last year into many companies under the Alphabet umbrella. Verily Life Sciences is the Alphabet independent subsidiary that’s developing advanced contact lenses.)

The latest Verily smart contact lens is actually injected into the eyeball, according to a recently published patent. So it’s less of a contact lens and more of a surgical implant.

The process is vaguely gruesome: Your natural lens is removed from your eyeball. A fluid is then injected into the eye, and that fluid fuses with the eye’s lens capsule as it solidifies. Inside this new, artificial lens lives storage, battery, sensors, a radio and other electronics. The artificial lens would take over the job of focusing light onto the retina, improving vision in numerous ways without glasses, but in a flexible, interactive way.

At the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, Iain Hunter, a biomechanist from Brigham Young University, used a high speed video camera to record and compare foot strike patterns among runners competing in the men’s 10,000-meter final. The result, which looks like a MoMA installation curated by leg fetishists, provides a significant contribution to the ongoing debate about whether or not there is a “right” way to run. When examining the strike patterns of 24 of the best runners in the country side by side, Hunter found that all three categories–forefoot, mid-foot, and heel-strikers–were represented. It appeared that even among the cream of American distance runners there was considerable discrepancy in form, which suggests that perhaps we needn’t all aspire to run like Galen Rupp. (Although he did win the race, so . . .)

This idea is at the core of a new shoe-fitting initiative from Brooks called Run Signature.

The purpose of the current study was to characterize the in-game heart rate (HR) responses of baseball pitching. In-game HR was recorded from 16 professional baseball starting pitchers (mean ± SD, age = 22.1 ± 1.3 yrs; height = 187.9 ± 4.4 cm; weight = 90.5 ± 9.5 kg) for a total of 682 innings (home = 381, away = 301). All analyzed HR data were then normalized to each pitcher’s age-predicted maximal HR (%HRmax). The group mean ± SD in-game %HRmax among all pitchers was 84.8% ± 3.9%, suggesting that baseball pitching is predominantly an anaerobic task. A split-plot mixed-model repeated measures analysis of variance identified a significant interaction effect between inning and game location (p = 0.042). Follow-up simple effects indicated that the in-game %HRmax was significantly different across innings, but only during home starts (p < 0.001). Specifically, pairwise analyses indicated that the in-game %HRmax during home starts were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the 1 and 2 innings than all other innings. In addition, follow-up simple effects indicated that the in-game %HRmax was significantly (p = 0.017) higher during home starts than away starts in the 1 inning (87.3% ± 3.6% vs. 85.8% vs. 3.8%, respectively). Thus, it is possible that inning-dependent psychological factors may have contributed to the observed changes in-game physiological intensity across innings and that these factors are specific to game location. Consequently, strength and conditioning practitioners should prescribe high-intensity exercises when developing conditioning programs for professional baseball starting pitchers.

Background: Ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction surgeries in Major League Baseball (MLB) have increased significantly in recent decades. Although several risk factors have been proposed, a scientific consensus is yet to be reached, providing challenges to those tasked with preventing UCL injuries.

Purpose: To identify significant predictors of UCL reconstruction in MLB pitchers.

Study Design: Case control study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: Demographic and pitching performance data were sourced from public databases for 104 MLB pitchers who underwent UCL reconstruction surgery and 104 age- and position-matched controls. These variables were compared between groups and inserted into a binary logistic regression to identify significant predictors of UCL reconstruction. Two machine learning models (naïve Bayes and support vector machine) were also employed to predict UCL reconstruction in this cohort.

Results: The binary linear regression model was statistically significant (?2(12) = 33.592; P = .001), explained 19.9% of the variance in UCL reconstruction surgery, and correctly classified 66.8% of cases. According to this model, (1) fewer days between consecutive games, (2) a smaller repertoire of pitches, (3) a less pronounced horizontal release location, (4) a smaller stature, (5) greater mean pitch speed, and (6) greater mean pitch counts per game were all significant predictors of UCL reconstruction. More specifically, an increase in mean days between consecutive games (odds ratio [OR], 0.685; 95% CI, 0.542-0.865) or number of unique pitch types thrown (OR, 0.672; 95% CI, 0.492-0.917) was associated with a significantly smaller likelihood of UCL reconstruction. In contrast, an increase in mean pitch speed (OR, 1.381; 95% CI, 1.103-1.729) or mean pitches per game (OR, 1.020; 95% CI, 1.007-1.033) was associated with significantly higher odds of UCL reconstruction surgery. The naïve Bayes classifier predicted UCL reconstruction with an accuracy of 72% and the support vector machine classifier with an accuracy of 75%.

Conclusion: This study identified 6 key performance factors that may present significant risk factors for UCL reconstruction in MLB pitchers. These findings could help to enhance the prevention of UCL reconstruction surgery in MLB pitchers and shape the direction of future research in this domain.

The field of epigenomics has rapidly progressed from the study of individual reference epigenomes to surveying epigenomic variation in populations. Recent studies in a number of species, from yeast to humans, have begun to dissect the cis- and trans-regulatory genetic mechanisms that shape patterns of population epigenomic variation at the level of single epigenetic marks, as well as at the level of integrated chromatin state maps. We show that this information is paving the way towards a more complete understanding of the heritable basis underlying population epigenomic variation. We also highlight important conceptual challenges when interpreting results from these genetic studies, particularly in plants, in which epigenomic variation can be determined both by genetic and epigenetic inheritance.

… Touch is not a one-way deduction of sensation but a constant two-way interchange between what [Dustin] Tyler calls the “language” of sensation and the raw data of reception. “What we’ve discovered is that the language of touch is what matters most,” he says. “When we first fed the stimulus in, Igor only felt a tingle. The question was, how do we go from tingle to touch? By analogy, pure sound is something we readily do.” Tyler stops and makes a kind of inarticulate cry. “I make a noise, but there’s no information in it. Break it up in the right way, and it’s words. That’s what happens when you have epilepsy—it’s a kind of constant brain sound. But the healthy body works with patterns of information. And there’s a narrow window within which the body interprets. Shouting ‘Baaah!’ is not very different from talking sense.”

… The modern era of breakfast begins with cereal. Before its invention, breakfast was not as standard or routine.

“The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one meal a day,” food historian Caroline Yeldham has said. Many Native Americans, Abigail Carroll writes in The Invention of the American Meal, ate bits of food throughout the day (rather than at set meals) and sometimes fasted for days at a time.

Of medieval Europe, historians alternatingly write that breakfast was only a luxury for the rich, only a necessity for laborers, or mostly skipped.

This study investigated variability in competitive high-speed running performance in an elite soccer team. A semi-automated tracking system quantified running performance in 12 players over a season (median 17 matches per player, 207 observations). Variability [coefficient of variation (CV)] was compared for total sprint distance (TSD, >25.2 km/h), high-speed running (HSR, 19.8–25.2 km/h), total high-speed running (THSR, ?19.8 km/h); THSR when the team was in and out of ball possession, in individual ball possession, in the peak 5 min activity period; and distance run according to individual maximal aerobic speed (MAS). Variability for % declines in THSR and distance covered at ?80% MAS across halves, at the end of play (final 15 min vs. mean for all 15 min periods) and transiently (5 min period following peak 5 min activity period), was analysed. Collectively, variability was higher for TSD versus HSR and THSR and lowest for distance run at ?80% MAS (CVs: 37.1%, 18.1%, 19.8% and 11.8%). THSR CVs when the team was in/out of ball possession, in individual ball possession and during the peak 5 min period were 31.5%, 26.1%, 60.1% and 23.9%. Variability in THSR declines across halves, at the end of play and transiently, ranged from 37.1% to 142.6%, while lower CVs were observed in these metrics for running at ?80% MAS (20.9–53.3%).These results cast doubt on the appropriateness of general measures of high-speed activity for determining variability in an elite soccer team, although individualisation of HSR thresholds according to fitness characteristics might provide more stable indicators of running performance and fatigue occurrence.

If you are unhappy with the underwhelming picks your team made in the N.F.L. draft last month, there is still hope. In the days since the draft, all 32 teams have been scrambling to sign more players, ones who were not quite good enough to have their names called on television.

Most teams have signed a dozen or more, some from powerhouses like Alabama, and others from programs not at the top level, such as Duquesne, Florida Tech and the University of the Cumberlands.