Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 25, 2016

The game of football has been under fire for a while now. But usually the criticism doesn’t come from those drafting players to, you know, play the game of football.

That changed on Tuesday as Doug Whaley offered the most biting criticism of the sport we’ve heard from a current general manager or head coach.

When asked if Sammy Watkins was injury prone, Whaley dove into a more macro answer.

“This is the game of football,” Whaley told WGR 550 Radio Tuesday morning. “Injuries are part of it. It’s a violent game that I personally don’t think humans are supposed to play.”

… Morgan is a journeyman footballer. Born in the Meadows, a district of Nottingham a short walk from Forest’s City Ground, where narrow terraced streets, built for railway and factory workers in the 19th century, were demolished in the 1970s to make way for an ill-conceived redevelopment that merely incubated social problems and produced a unique type of schoolyard football.

Former Notts County youth player & PDP Lead Researcher, James Vaughan remembers playing in the area. James explains, “I remember playing football with the year above at school in Clifton, which wasn’t as rough as the meadows. If you dribbled with the ball you were going to get hammered, unless you were the hardest player playing (or one of the toughest), or your mate was ‘well hard’. This is why I got good at playing one touch and hitting the ball first time, if I didn’t I’d get smashed. Those were some real socio-cultural constraints. I remember tackling the hard kid one day and just getting smacked.”

… She might be one of the world’s greatest swimmers, but everything else about her seems downright ordinary.

There is zero interest in the spotlight, just an insatiable desire to keep going faster in the pool.

The 19-year-old doesn’t have a driver’s license yet, perfectly content to ride to practices and meets with her parents. She enjoys playing board games; no video games for her. She’s worked with a charity that collects bicycles and ships them to developing countries. She’s a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, despite the generation gap.

The idea of learning from your mistakes may sound like a cliché, the kind of glib adage you’d expect to hear from abundantly sideburned 1970s football managers. And let’s be honest, how many of us can say we genuinely use our failures as tools for learning?

How often have you meticulously, dispassionately sifted through the wreckage of a disastrous run, isolating what precisely went wrong before formulating a plan to correct the issue? And how often have you put it down to ‘just one of those days’ and quickly buried the unpleasant memory as deep in the lowest reaches of your grey matter as you could possibly shove it? This may have been a mistake.

For his latest book, Black Box Thinking: the Surprising Truth about Success, Olympian and award-winning author Matthew Syed studied how successful individuals and organisations deal with – and bounce back from – major setbacks, looking everywhere from the aviation industry and healthcare, to education and, of course, sport.

Can sports science be used to improve an athlete’s performance?

The Texans believe it can.

“We hired Erik Korem as a director of sports science,” head coach Bill O’Brien said Monday. “He’s a guy that works with the Catapult company. He was out there today. We’re trying to, again, do what’s best for our players, trying to maximize peak performance. That’s one way we can do it.”

… This year, Mah’s advice is being put to the test — the Sharks are playing their second series against a team in the central time zone. Their opponents, the St. Louis Blues, have been fortunate enough to play each series in their own zone. Can sleep science help the Sharks come out on top?

Click on the ‘Listen’ button above to hear Mah and Mike Potenza, the strength and conditioning coach for the San Jose Sharks, discuss the team’s sleep strategy. [audio, 7:00]

This study aimed to examine the effect of a five-week HIIT-based running plan on athletic performance, and to compare the physiological and neuromuscular responses during a sprint-distance triathlon before and after the HIIT period. Thirteen triathletes were matched into two groups: the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG). The CG was asked to maintain their normal training routines while the EG maintained only their swimming and cycling routines and modified their running routine. Participants completed a sprint-distance triathlon before (pre-test) and after (post-test) the intervention period. In both pre- and post-tests, the participants performed four jumping tests: before the race (baseline), post-swim, post-cycling, and post-run. Additionally, heart rate was monitored (HRmean) while RPE and blood lactate accumulation (BLa) were registered after the race. No significant differences (P?0.05) between groups were found before HIIT intervention (at pre-test). Significant group-by-training interactions were found in vertical jumping ability and athletic performance: the EG improved jumping performance (?6-9%, P0.7), swimming performance (P=0.013, ES=0.438) and running time (P=0.001, ES=0.667) during the competition; whereas the CG remained unchanged (P?0.05, ES<0.4). No changes (P?0.05, ES<0.4) were observed in RPE, HRmean and BLa. A linear regression analysis showed that ?CMJ predicted both the ?Ru_time (R=0.559; P=0.008) and the ?Overall_time (R=0.391; P=0.048). This low-volume, HIIT-based running plan combined with the high training volumes of these triathletes in swimming and cycling improved athletic performance during a sprint-distance triathlon. This improvement may be due to improved neuromuscular characteristics that were transferred into improved muscle power and work economy.

Social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) use has increased considerably since its inception; however, research examining the relationship between social media use and sport has not progressed as rapidly. The purpose of the current study was to explore the prevalence rates of Facebook use among athletes around and during sport competitions and to investigate the relationships between sport anxiety and Facebook use. Two hundred and ninety-eight athletes of varying levels completed measures for sport anxiety and Facebook use, which included descriptive information about Facebook use prior to, during and following competitions. Results indicated that 31.9% of athletes had used Facebook during a competition and 68.1% had accessed Facebook within 2 h prior to competition. Time spent on Facebook prior to competition was significantly (and positively) correlated with the concentration disruption component of sport anxiety. Furthermore, regression analyses revealed that having push notifications enabled on an athletes’ phone predicted 4.4% of the variability in sport anxiety. The percentage of athletes who accessed Facebook within 2 h of, or during, a competition is somewhat alarming considering the importance of psychological preparation in sport, which may compromise optimal psychological readiness and may lead to increased sport anxiety.

Hockey goalies are different. Come playoffs, they can be difference-makers.

It’s commonly accepted that a team’s fortunes during the Stanley Cup playoffs ride on its goaltending. For perspective, in the 50-year history of the Conn Smythe Trophy, given to the Stanley Cup MVP, only five players from a losing team have received the award. Four of them—Roger Crozier, Glenn Hall, Ron Hextall and Jean-Sebastien Giguere—were goaltenders.

… Neuroscience Meets Baseball: de Cervo co-founders Jason Sherwin, Ph.D. and Jordan Muraskin ’15SEAS very fast decision making with Columbia Sports Management Professor Vince Gennaro

Cupertino, California-based Sensifree, which develops contact-free, electromagnetic sensors for continuously sensing heart rate and other biometrics, has raised $5 million in its first round of funding led by TransLink Capital. Other backers included UMC Capital, which is a subsidiary of United Microelectronics, and an undisclosed strategic investor. TransLink was one of the first firms to invest in wearable company Misfit, which was acquired by Fossil last November, and it has also backed Noom. Sensifree has raised a total of $7 million to date.

Sensifree’s prior funding included a seed investment from Samsung’s Catalyst fund. Sensifree is also a Samsung partner and its technology helps power some of the sensors in the company’s Simband wearable device. While the company’s heart rate sensor is already in the market, it’s also working to develop a cuffless blood pressure sensor.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed the first flexible wearable device capable of monitoring both biochemical and electric signals in the human body. The Chem-Phys patch records electrocardiogram (EKG) heart signals and tracks levels of lactate, a biochemical that is a marker of physical effort, in real time. The device can be worn on the chest and communicates wirelessly with a smartphone, smart watch or laptop. It could have a wide range of applications, from athletes monitoring their workouts to physicians monitoring patients with heart disease.

Nanoengineers and electrical engineers at the UC San Diego Center for Wearable Sensors worked together to build the device, which includes a flexible suite of sensors and a small electronic board. The device also can transmit the data from biochemical and electrical signals via Bluetooth.

Researchers have been trying to find more user- and design-friendly ways to incorporate power sources into wearable technology. While some researchers are looking to harvest energy rather than use batteries, others are trying to create sleeker, smaller and more suitable batteries.

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has combined these two approaches by developing a lightweight, solar-energy-harvesting mesh of batteries that stretches, making it a more comfortable fit for wearable technology.

The team led by John Rogers, a physical chemist and materials scientist at the university, designed the device — which has been compared to a Band-Aid because it sticks to surfaces like a Band-Aid sticks to skin — using “the latest and best lithium-ion technology,” he told Design News. “In that sense, we don’t give up anything in terms of performance compared to state-of-the-art, rigid, bulky batteries,” Rogers said.

The decision on when to return to play is highly influential toward future injury risk. In this presentation from the first annual International Sports Physical Therapy Congress, Dr. Mike Voight discusses how a Functional Movement Screen is a necessary step in safely returning athletes to the field at their highest level of function.

Create a Strong Plate – Creating a strong plate is essential to help fuel an athlete for optimal performance. This means at each meal I recommend a balance of proteins, complex carbohydrates, fruits/veggies and healthy fats. By providing adequate macronutrients it ensures the athlete has the proper energy to fuel as well as recover from daily activities. A balanced plate also helps to prevent nutritional deficiencies by providing the individual with a variety of nutrients helping them to meet increased needs. It is important to note that this cannot be accomplished in one to two or sometimes even in just three meals a day.