Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 12, 2016

… At the launch of his V9 Academy – set up to discover non-league talent like himself – he explained why he had been refused a professional contract as a teenager.

He said: “[I was told I was] Too small. That was the reason I was told, yeah. Too small, not ready for the physicality of scholarship football. I’ve said it before, I don’t think anyone can be told if they’re good enough when they’re 15 or 16 years old when you’ve got many years to grow and develop.

… We know more about Nadal’s inner life than any of the other big four players because he provided a surprisingly candid account of his thoughts and feelings in his 2011 autobiography Rafa. The book was published at the height of his achievement, when he was reigning champion at three Slams, and there seemed no end in sight to what he could achieve.

Control is Nadal’s guiding mental principle. His publicity chief, Benito Perez Barbadillo, describes Nadal as ‘a person who needs to be in control of everything’. This applies off-court as much as on. Nadal’s mother says he is a ‘super-sensitive human being full of fears and insecurities’. Nadal has a range of ongoing and significant off-court fears. He’s afraid of the dark, of thunder, of animals. He has a lifelong fear that his family will fall ill or be involved in an accident. He is uncomfortable with driving and swimming.

… how do researchers come to ask questions that make their working hours relevant and impactful? How do sport scientists select the area in which to put their efforts at their club? The first steps toward a 0.2 progress may be as simple as focusing on the “big rocks” (the rest being just pebbles and sand). Practically, this means targeting the 3 to 5 most important areas clearly identified as having a meaningful impact on the athletes’ programs and performance. In an extreme case, I would say that in our field, research studies that can’t help guide or change practice are not far from useless. Forget the unessential, forget big data strategies. Save time, energy, and resources to focus on what is known to matter to practitioners and athletes. Do simple but powerful. Ideally, academic researchers should always be aligned with practitioners’ (eg, sport scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists) needs, who should, in the best-case scenario, be the researchers themselves, or at least those initiating the research questions. However, since the majority of coaches, support staff, and athletes often don’t know what to expect from applied research and scientific support at the club, it is only by sitting right next to them during training sessions and team debriefs, by sharing meals and cups of coffee, living daily with them in “the trenches,” that we can appreciate what they may find useful and which information they rely on to make their decisions.

Nearly all the athletes representing Team USA this summer at the Rio Olympics changed coaches as they became elite competitors.

It’s the way things are done at the highest levels of sports. Elite athletes require elite coaches, don’t they?

Swimmer Missy Franklin and gymnast Simone Biles beg to differ. They still train with the coaches from local swimming and gymnastics programs they signed up for as small children.

You probably spend a lot of time staring at screens — but all that computer time may be making you miss the big picture, new research has found.

Reading something on a screen — as opposed to a printout — causes people to home in on details and but not broader ideas, according to a new article by Geoff Kaufman. a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Mary Flanagan, a professor at Dartmouth.

“Digital screens almost seem to create a sort of tunnel vision where you’re focusing on just the information you’re getting this moment, not the broader context,” Kaufman said.

… Five months ago, it occurred to me: Why not make the policy better match the rationale? Instead of limiting our kids’ screen time, we started requiring them to do a variety of activities each weekend day: read, exercise, and practice their musical instrument. As long as those things are done at some point during the day, they can have as much screen time as they like.

So far, the policy is a huge improvement.

The hardware part of the device, called SmartSole, is placed under the insole of a running shoe and is fitted with a series of pressure sensors. The plan is for the sensors to send a picture of the runner’s foot hitting the ground to an app—now in development— that will organize the information in a way that could explain how a runner injures a foot.

“We have a SmartSole prototype and are building the app to interface with the device,” says Robert Halvorsen ’17. “By the end of the spring term we should have a complete package for testing and evaluation by athletes, including a few members of the Dartmouth Endurance Racing Team.”

But at this stage, only half the problem is being addressed. The prototype has been created for the right foot. Making this a two-foot solution will add another layer of complexity Halvorsen and his team are not yet ready to undertake.

“We probably should go to a two-footed system but that’s not among our immediate priorities. We want to develop the right foot sufficiently to justify adding the left,” he says.

… [Mary Lou Jepsen’s] vision is broad and sweeping: it runs from a new generation of extremely high-resolution, affordable MRI machines for early detection of cancer, heart disease, and more, to a far-out time (or maybe not so far-out) when machines can read people’s minds and people can communicate—with each other and maybe even with animals—via thoughts.

The idea “leverages the tools of our times,” Jepsen says, citing advances in everything from physics to optoelectronics to consumer electronics to big data and A.I. that can be combined to shrink the size, improve the functionality, and lower the cost of MRI. “I could no longer wait. I’m still writing up the patents. But I am incredibly excited to strike off on this direction,” she says.

Tech temp tattoos are nearly here. Microsoft Research and MIT’s Media Lab have published details of Tattio, a futuristic research project looking into “on skin” technology.

Inspired by the kind of metallic temporary tattoos you’d find at Coachella or Glastonbury, the team used gold imitation leaf metal and applied it to tattoo paper with stencil traces.

In terms of functions, Microsoft Research and the Media Lab then experimented with a few ideas. The first was NFC tags to act as your digital identity and the idea is that people could choose how big an antenna they want to use in terms of both aesthetics and power.

So far wearable technology is being designed with utility generally winning over aesthetics or comfort. But recent research from Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research (ISC) could change all that with a new transparent sensor material that can be printed with simple manufacturing, offering a cost-effective way to integrate the two into a versatile thin film.

The German research institution, working with Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon Technology (ISIT) and industry project partners, is developing the new sensor technology in a prototype shirt—called the “MONI” shirt—that is designed to monitor a person’s movement sequences.

Although exercise-associated muscle cramps (EAMC) are highly prevalent among athletic populations, the etiology and most effective management strategies are still unclear. The aims of this narrative review are 3-fold: 1) Briefly summarize the evidence regarding EAMC etiology; 2) report the risk factors and possible physiological mechanisms associated with neuromuscular fatigue and EAMC; and 3) report the current evidence regarding prevention of, and treatment for, EAMC. Based upon the findings of several large prospective and experimental investigations, the available evidence indicates that EAMC is multifactorial in nature and stems from an imbalance between excitatory drive from muscle spindles and inhibitory drive from Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) to the alpha motor neurons rather than dehydration or electrolyte deficits. This imbalance is believed to stem from neuromuscular overload and fatigue. In concert with these findings, the most successful treatment of an acute bout of EAMC is stretching, while auspicious methods of prevention include efforts that delay exercise induced fatigue.

CONTEXT:

? Certified athletic trainers (ATs) are responsible for integrating relevant professionals into the rehabilitation team to assist with the holistic care of injured athletes.
OBJECTIVE:

? To explore National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I (DI) ATs’ experience with sport psychology consultants (SPCs), willingness to encourage athletes to use SPCs for injury rehabilitation, and perceptions of the benefits of sport psychology services.
DESIGN:

? Quantitative study.
SETTING:

? A Web-based survey was administered to a national sample of DI ATs.
PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS:

? A total of 659 (341 men, 318 women) ATs completed the survey.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S):

? Athletic trainers’ experience with SPCs, willingness to encourage athletes to seek sport psychology services, and perceptions of the benefits of those services in injury-rehabilitation settings were self-reported using a rating scale that ranged from 1 (never or not at all) to 5 (definitely or extremely).
RESULTS:

? Logistic regression revealed that the availability of SPCs, previous encouragement to athletes to seek sport psychology services, and previous positive interactions with SPCs predicted the ATs’ willingness to encourage athletes to use these services (P < .0001). The services ATs rated the highest for injury rehabilitation were managing anxiety and emotion, improving coping techniques, and building confidence (ie, confidence in returning to sport and building confidence). Chi-square analyses indicated that female ATs' ratings of perceived benefits were higher (P ? .001) than those of male ATs, and the ratings of ATs who were likely to encourage the use of SPCs were higher (P ? .001) than those who were unlikely to encourage SPC service use.
CONCLUSIONS:

? Athletic trainers in our study who had previous positive SPC experiences were most likely to use SPCs and their services during the injury-rehabilitation process. Possible implications are offered for how ATs interested in sport psychology services might call on SPCs to complement their work with injured athletes.

This time last year, he was a relatively unknown footballer in France’s top flight, Ligue 1. Now, he is a celebrated midfielder, the dynamo of Leicester City’s unlikely run to the top of England’s Premier League. And this time next year – well, who knows? N’Golo Kante may have just made his debut for the French national team, but could he soon be on his way out of Britain?

One outcome of a Brexit result could be that Kante finds himself failing to meet work permit requirements. And he wouldn’t be alone in this. Reports suggest that between 300 and 400 footballers in England’s top two leagues and Scotland’s Premier League would fail to meet Britain’s current non-EU work permit requirements. Forecasts of apocalyptic scenarios abound, with some predicting a mass exodus of players who are in Kante’s position.

In the NBA, identifying and drafting talent can make or break the future success of a franchise. Yet despite 10,000-hour rules and advances in genetic testing, talent remains an elusive quality to define and quantify. When looking for the next Steph Curry, LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, is it as simple as looking for the sum of a player’s athletic skills? Not quite.

Less publicized than the NFL Combine, the NBA Draft Combine is an annual event that will this year bring over 70 of the best collegiate and international players to a 5-day event in Chicago, with the hopes of identifying talent. Prospects are evaluated in a multi-part process?—?anthropometric tests (measuring height, weight, standing reach and wingspan), athletic tests (185 pound bench press, lane agility, shuttle run, three-quarter court sprint, standing vertical leap, and max vertical leap), guided basketball drills and 5-on-5 scrimmages. Teams also use the time to interview players and conduct medical assessments.

The Denver Broncos dove into their draft preparations with all of the prospects’ measurables at their fingertips. They judged the players’ leadership potential and tried to gauge their ability to make the transition from college to the NFL.

But in the six drafts with John Elway as the team’s chief football executive, the Broncos have also tried to predict the medical future. Elway has selected players whose final college season didn’t end with awards and bowl games, but rather crutches and surgeries.

He’s learned not all injuries are not created equal.