Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 2, 2016

The leading scorer in the last Premier League season, leading England’s line this month in the European Championships. At 22 years old, just two years after his first Premier League start, Tottenham striker Harry Kane appears unstoppable.

Now, for a special BBC Radio 5 live documentary, the coaches, players and managers pivotal to his remarkable rise reveal the secret stories and key characteristics that transformed a six-year-old stand-in goalkeeper from the north London suburbs into the most exciting young forward his country has produced in a decade.

This is the making of Harry Kane. [transcript of radio program]

A little girl at the doctor’s office, ear aching. Remember this image when you hear the name Katie Ledecky this summer, and you will hear that name a lot, usually surrounded by phrases like “greatest female athlete alive” or “11 world records” (that number could well change) or “shivers the spines of everyone in the pool.” You may also hear “balanced” and “self-possessed” and enrolling at Stanford,” followed by mention of the 19-year old freestyler’s close family and habit of saying a ready-room Hail Mary. … “She swims like a guy,” says 11-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte after a few days of practicing with Ledecky at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in March. “Her stroke, her mentality: She’s so strong in the water. I’ve never seen a female swimmer like that. She gets faster every time she gets in, and her times are becoming good for a guy. She’s beating me now, and I’m, like, ‘What is going on?’”

To have decided to close their Academy weeks after sorting out their groups and signing new players for next season seemed very heartless and thoughtless. Perhaps the decision had been made months ago and it was merely a case of letting the season come to an end, acting like business as usual and then hitting the sucker-punch at the end. A pretty devastating one for all the young players within Brentford’s Academy programme who dreams must have felt tarnished in the 90 minute meeting which was held to announce the immediate closure of the Academy. Why had this decision being made, so drastically too, and what does it say about the state of Academies outside the Premier League?

Per K.C. Johnson, the Chicago Bulls are on the precipice of finalizing a deal to bring Chip Schaefer back as their new director of sports performance to oversee the team’s strength and training staff.

Longtime Bulls fans may recall that Schaefer served as head trainer for the entirety of the Jordan Dynasty in the 1990s. After leaving the team in 1998, he became the director of atheltic performance for the Los Angeles Lakers for twelve seasons, a stretch that added an additional five titles to his collection.

You have probably heard people say they are just bad at math, or perhaps you yourself feel like you are not “a math person.” Not so, says Stanford mathematics education professor Jo Boaler, who shares the brain research showing that with the right teaching and messages, we can all be good at math. Not only that, our brains operate differently when we believe in ourselves. Boaler gives hope to the the mathematically fearful or challenged, shows a pathway to success, and brings into question the very basics of how our teachers approach what should be a rewarding experience for all children and adults.

Recently having spent a few mornings down at the Port Adelaide Football Club, being mentored by Ian McKeown, it has really consolidated my view on what high performance is all about; the Training Environment. Mainly the human-relationship element. Period.

If you don’t get this right, don’t expect your athletes to reach their potential. They will still achieve, but (in my opinion) it will be at a reduced level. From my experience, the best squads I was involved in had an amazing training environment; primarily starting with the make-up of the squad, the relationships and the interactions. It was full of a dynamic set of individuals who consistently challenged each other to be better. Everyone was striving to beat the next person in the pecking order. It was dog eat dog, but in a competitive setting, rather than from jealousy. Everyone worked hard, enjoyed each others company, validated and supported each other’s achievements (to start with anyway:), and kept each other accountable. It was more about the software than the hardware. It was a great time to be in the squad.

Short trips and simple bus rides are a thing of the past at West Virginia.

Since the Mountaineers left the Big East to join the Big 12 in 2012, a conference road game means a trip to the airport.

“We take planes, we don’t drive anymore,” said Michael Szul, West Virginia’s senior associate athletic director for Business Operations. “But it’s been very good for us, we’re happy with it.”

Notre Dame hired Duncan French to usher in a scientific revolution for Irish athletics. Six months into the job, French appears well on his way.

Initially developed for the defence sector to enable soldiers to communicate on the battlefield, the technology uses the body’s natural ability to transmit sound through bone. BAE Systems has now adapted the system for Land Rover BAR, allowing the sailors to keep both their ears free for external sounds, while at the same time enabling clear communication in the harsh conditions frequently experienced on board.

“We’ve heard from Land Rover BAR how clear and accurate communication is essential to a winning sailing team,” said Mohammed Akhmad, principal scientist at BAE Systems.

“The system we have developed is able to deal with the large amount of background noise, which can affect the clarity of the speech being transmitted, and is also rugged enough to operate in the extreme conditions sailors are regularly put through.”

When he ended his four-year run with the Marines, Swampscott native Alex Stone had no idea that he was still eligible to play football and hockey for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Being on a team would have helped him ease more smoothly back into civilian life, encouraged him to attend college sooner and led to an easier time in the job market.

Things ultimately turned out well for Stone, but he wants to make it easier for veterans like him to seize opportunities. That’s the idea behind the venture capital-backed startup he founded, Athletes of Valor, an online platform that connects college coaches with athletes who have served their country in the armed forces. The company opens its first office in Kendall Square tomorrow.

… When Steve Ballmer went all in on the Clippers, he wasn’t estimating what the team was worth on the day he bought it. He was looking at its future value. This happens every day in the technology sector—it’s hard to imagine that Uber, say, is currently worth the $51 billion valuation private equity investors have given it. In the sports world, though, this kind of thinking is rare.

At least, it used to be. But a new generation of owners like Ballmer, with fortunes made in technology, private equity, and venture capital, are accustomed to being intimately involved with their investments. They’re not just looking to win championships and trophies. They’re looking to build a great business.

More than that, these tech-enabled owners have helped turn the NBA into North America’s most forward-thinking sports league. Other leagues struggle with aging fans and restrictive views on intellectual property; the NBA has the youngest TV audience of any US league and lets its content flow through the wilds of the Internet.

Background

Evidence is needed to develop effective educational programs for promoting evidence based practice (EBP) and knowledge translation (KT) in physical therapy. This study reports long-term outcomes from a feasibility assessment of an educational program designed to promote the integration of research evidence into physical therapist practice.
Methods

Eighteen physical therapists participated in the 6-month Physical therapist-driven Education for Actionable Knowledge translation (PEAK) program. The participant-driven active learning program consisted of four consecutive, interdependent components: 1) acquiring managerial leadership support and electronic resources in three clinical practices, 2) a 2-day learner-centered EBP training workshop, 3) 5 months of guided small group work synthesizing research evidence into a locally relevant list of, actionable, evidence-based clinical behaviors for therapists treating persons with musculoskeletal lumbar conditions–the Best Practices List, and 4) review and revision of the Best Practices List, culminating in participant agreement to implement the behaviors in practice. Therapists’ EBP learning was assessed with standardized measures of EBP-related attitudes, self-efficacy, knowledge and skills, and self-reported behavior at baseline, immediately-post, and 6 months following conclusion of the program (long-term follow-up). Therapist adherence to the Best Practice List before and after the PEAK program was assessed through chart review.
Results

Sixteen therapists completed the long-term follow-up assessment. EBP self-efficacy and self-reported behaviors increased from baseline to long-term follow-up (p?<?0.001 and p?=?0.002, respectively). EBP-related knowledge and skills showed a trend for improvement from baseline to long-term follow-up (p?=?0.05) and a significant increase from immediate-post to long-term follow-up (p?=?0.02). Positive attitudes at baseline were sustained throughout (p?=?0.208). Eighty-nine charts were analyzed for therapist adherence to the Best Practices List. Six clinical behaviors had sufficient pre- and post-PEAK charts to justify analysis. Of those, one behavior showed a statistically significant increase in adherence, one had high pre- and post-PEAK adherence, and four were change resistant, starting with low adherence and showing no meaningful improvement.
Conclusions

This study supports the feasibility of the PEAK program to produce long-term improvements in physical therapists’ EBP-related self-efficacy and self-reported behavior. EBP knowledge and skills showed improvement from post-intervention to long-term follow-up and a trend toward long-term improvements. However, chart review of therapists’ adherence to the participant generated Best Practices List in day-to-day patient care indicates a need for additional support to facilitate behavior change. Future versions of the PEAK program and comparable multi-faceted EBP and KT educational programs should provide ongoing monitoring, feedback, and problem-solving to successfully promote behavior change for knowledge translation.

1. Trainers and coaches, if you do NOT hold a license to manipulate soft tissues, manual therapy is off limits to you, even if you think you are doing your clients a favor by going out of your scope of practice.

2. There is a new emergence of hybrid strength coaches who hold licenses in massage, physical therapy, chiropractic and other specialties that provide a unique programming and care that incorporates manual therapy for their clients which goes above and beyond what a personal trainer can legally do.

In late April, the NFL recently informed its players, a Skins athletic trainer’s car was broken into. The thief took a backpack, and inside that backpack was a cache of electronic and paper medical records for thousands of players, including NFL Combine attendees from the last 13 years. That would encompass the vast majority of NFL players, and for them, it’s a worrying breach of privacy; for the NFL, it’s potentially a costly violation of medical privacy laws.

Sometimes, just sometimes, bad news can also be good news. Respected Italian journalist Gianluca Di Marzio just reported that Andrea Berta, sporting director at Atletico Madrid, has turned down a job offer from Manchester United. This is bad news for United since Berta works at a club that for the past five years has performed significantly beyond its means, reaching two UEFA Champions League finals in that time. But it is also good news because it means that United are recruiting for a position that they did not seem to acknowledge until recently.

For the past three years, Ed Woodward, the club’s executive vice-chairman, has been responsible for overseeing the transfer strategy and it is fair to say that the results have been mixed.