Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 4, 2016

A standout at high school and college, Perry Jones III always had the talent. However, after a series of setbacks in his rookie year—including injuries and personal tragedy—the sweet-shooting 6-11 forward found himself traded from the Oklahoma City Thunder and cut by the Boston Celtics. But Jones is not about to let his NBA journey end so soon.

VICE Sports travels to the Peak Performance Project (P3) facility in Santa Barbara, California to see how Jones is using big data—as well as hard work and determination—to kickstart his stalled NBA dream.

… “It’s a great way to jumpstart your season,” said Brent Burns, one of seven San Jose Sharks in the World Cup. “I think guys will feel like they’re in rhythm and ready to go.”

St. Louis Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said it was difficult to start training camp without seven key players because they were in Toronto.

“It was a reality check,” Hitchcock said. “The real challenge is pulling your system together once they all join us and we have our team together. The players that played in the World Cup will be mentally more alert and they’ll be ready for the tempo, which will make our team better and the league potentially better. But we’re not going to have a lot of time to implement everything we want to do this season.”

The World Cup is also going to hurt some teams who will start the season without a key player because of an injury sustained in September.

Background

External mechanical power is considered to be one of the most important characteristics with regard to sport performance.
Objective

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the effect of load on kinetic variables such as mean and peak power during bench press and bench press throw, thus integrating the findings of various studies to provide the strength and conditioning professional with more reliable evidence upon which to base their program design.
Methods

A search of electronic databases (MEDLINE, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science) was conducted to identify all publications up to 31 October 2015. Hedges’ g (95 % confidence interval) was estimated using a weighted random-effect model, due to the heterogeneity (I2) of the studies. Egger’s test was used to evaluate possible publication bias in the meta-analysis. A total of 11 studies with 434 subjects and 7680 effect sizes met the inclusion criterion and were included in the statistical analyses. Load in each study was labeled as one of three intensity zones: zone 1 represented an average intensity ranging from 0 to 30 % of one repetition maximum (1RM); zone 2 between 30 and 70 % of 1RM; and zone 3 ? 70 % of 1RM.
Results

These results showed different optimal loads for each exercise examined. Moderate loads (from >30 to <70 % of 1RM) appear to provide the optimal load for peak power and mean power in the bench press exercise. Lighter loads ( 75 %.
Conclusion

The current meta-analysis of published literature provides evidence for exercise-specific optimal power loading for upper body exercises.

Yes – muscle tension is actually a very good thing for runners!

But it’s probably a little different than what you’re thinking. Commonly called muscle stiffness, it’s not the type of stiffness you feel after a rollicking long run.

Muscle tension is instead the stored energy in your muscles as a result of tension. Our muscles all have some tension stored in them all the time – and that amount can be manipulated with training.

You go to the track to do six 800-meter repeats. On your first one, you’re a little slower than planned. You tell yourself not to worry, because you usually feel better on the second repeat of a workout. But then your second 800 is slower than the first. On your third 800, you push hard, yet you finish even slower.

Should you finish the workout as best you’re able? Switch to a different workout? Or will you ultimately be better off by cutting it short?

Perhaps the two most pertinent words in running are “it depends.” That’s certainly the case when it comes to deciding what to do when a workout is going poorly. Here are nine things to consider to help you choose wisely.

… People are certainly buying the hype—and the games. According to one set of estimates, consumers spent $715 million on these games in 2013, and are set to spend $3.38 billion by 2020.

And they might be wasting their money, according to a team of seven psychologists led by Daniel Simons at the University of Illinois. The team, most of whom have worked on brain-training themselves but have not received money from the industry, spent two years reviewing every single scientific paper cited by leading brain-training companies in support their products—374 in total.

Their review was published today, and it makes for stark reading. The studies, they concluded, suffer from a litany of important weaknesses, and provide little or no evidence that the games improve anything other than the specific tasks being trained.

Darren James has met the secret weapon behind the Bulldogs’ success in 2016.

Claire Saundry is the dietitian at the Dogs, having crossed over from Hawthorn after their successful season in 2015.

And we all know that the little things are what make the biggest difference. [audio, pre-roll + 21:44]

Although studies by numerous investigators and reports from major medical societies have raised health-related concerns about the consumption of energy drinks by youth, manufacturers of the products continue to market them to children younger than the age of 18 years. Many parents, teens, and healthcare professionals are often left wondering how serious the risks of such a readily available beverage might be, and what additional studies are needed.

“The research on energy drinks is in its very early stages, so there is a lot we don’t know about their effects,” said Jennifer Harris, PhD, MBA, Director of Marketing Initiatives at the University of Connecticut Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “But what we do know is disturbing, especially when they are consumed by youth.”

… Men’s and women’s pro tennis carries a decades-long, pristine image in large part because it has never faced a damaging, ongoing and widespread performance-enhancing drug scandal. That cleanliness has paid dividends: Annual sponsorship revenue is north of $250 million; long-term broadcast rights fees will top $1 billion in the coming years; and star Novak Djokovic this year became the first player to bank more than $100 million in career prize money.

Said ATP chairman and president Chris Kermode: Tennis is “in the best place it’s ever been. Sponsors view it as a premier sports product, as sort of a high-end sports product. … People see it as a clean sport.”

But Outside the Lines has found that clean reputation is largely due to lax anti-doping efforts by the sport. Year after year, the testing methods tennis uses have been deemed generally ineffective and unreliable by experts. It has spent — until recently — little effort and money on aggressively testing for the drugs that provide players the most benefit in the modern game: erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormone and synthetic testosterone. And the sport tests athletes at the same level as lower-profile and less-lucrative sports such as handball, canoeing, kayaking, triathlon and volleyball.

… The study found that when participants ate more saturated fat and less fibre, it took them longer to fall asleep and had a less deep, restful sleep. When participants consumed more sugar and refined carbohydrates, their sleep was disrupted. However, fibre intake was linked with deeper, more restorative sleep. This means that a diet high in fibre and low in sugar, refined grains and saturated fat could help improve sleep quality

Purpose: Heart rate variability (HRV) is a popular tool for monitoring autonomic nervous system status and training adaptation in athletes. It is believed that increases in HRV indicate effective training adaptation, but these are not always apparent in elite athletes. Methods: Resting HRV was recorded in 4 elite rowers (Rower A, B, C and D) over the 7-week period prior to 2015 World Rowing Championship success. The natural logarithm of the square root of the mean sum of the squared differences between R–R intervals (Ln rMSSD), Ln rMSSD:R-R ratio trends, and the Ln rMSSD to R-R interval relationship were assessed for each champion-winning rower. Results: The time course of change in Ln rMSSD was athlete-dependant, with stagnation and decreases apparent. However, there were consistent substantial reductions in the Ln rMSSD:R-R ratio, Rower A: baseline towards week 5 (-2.35 ±1.94); Rower B baseline to week’s 4 and 5 (-0.41 ±0.48; -0.64 ±0.65 respectively); Rower C baseline to week 4 (-0.58 ±0.66); Rower D baseline to week’s 4, 5 and 6 (-1.15 ±0.91; -0.81 ±0.74; -1.43 ±0.69 respectively). Conclusion: Reductions in Ln rMSSD concurrent with reductions in the Ln rMSSD:R-R ratio are indicative of parasympathetic saturation. As such, 3 of 4 rowers displayed substantial increases in parasympathetic activity despite having decreases in Ln rMSSD. These results confirm that a combination of indices should be used accordingly to monitor cardiac autonomic activity.

… Efficiency can be defined as the ratio of outputs to inputs- what you get out divided by what you put in. We use efficiency measures all the time in football, though we are not usually aware of it. Familiar metrics such as goals per 90 or conversion ratio are in fact efficiency measures. Goals per 90 is the rate at which a valuable input resource (minutes of playing time) is converted into a desired output (goals), while the conversion ratio measures the efficiency of turning shots into goals.

But in reality football is more complex than this. The basic unit of performance in football is the player, and generally speaking players consume multiple inputs, and deliver multiple outputs. A forward for example consumes playing time and the attacking opportunities created by his team, and delivers shots on goal and key passes. But it is not obvious how to measure efficiency when we have multiple inputs and outputs. Is Ronaldo, who produces more goals and fewer assists, more efficient than Messi, who produces fewer goals but more assists for the same amount of playing time? We would often use two separate measures here, however each performance indicator represents only one aspect of performance, and because of finite limitations on the inputs, the various aspects of performance are unlikely to be independent.

How we can derive a player efficiency measure in such cases?

… maybe college teams are not as far behind the professional leagues as it might first appear. In 2015, Nebraska hired a full-time sports analytics director to help inform decisions and identify trends. Other schools have full-fledged sports analytics clubs on campus or rely on outside consultants for data analysis.

“College coaches today are rooted in data more than ever before,” noted one Power 5 representative. “If you look at the growing size of staffs, the coaches want to be powered with the best information to get them to the answer they want.”

Despite staff size, there’s still a perception that most athletic departments are light-years behind the professional leagues when it comes to data analysis and sports analytics. With big-time college programs bringing in nearly $100 million in revenue, could that really be the case?

In order to understand the sports analytics landscape across college campuses, ESPN’s Sports Analytics Team sent out a brief survey to every Power 5 athletic department. The questions were simple: Who (if anyone) is doing sports analytics for your school? What types of analytics are you doing? And how much does your coach use analytics to run his program?

Cardiovascular variabilities were recognized over 250 years ago, but only in the past 20 years has their apparent utility come to be appreciated. Technological advancement has allowed precise measurement and quantification of short-term cardiovascular fluctuations; however, our understanding of the integrated mechanisms which underlie these oscillations is inadequate for their widespread application. Both autonomic branches, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, are key determinants of the magnitude of these spontaneous cardiovascular fluctuations. Heart rate variability can be an indicator of an individual cardiovascular condition. In this review, we will discuss the two primary rhythmic oscillations that underlie the complexity of the heart rate waveform. The first oscillation occurs over several cardiac cycles, is respiratory related, and termed respiratory sinus arrhythmia. The second oscillation occurs at an approximate 10 s cycle. Due to the closed-loop nature of the control system of cardiovascular oscillations, it is difficult to define specific relations among cardiovascular variables. In this review, we will present the feedforward and feedback mechanism that underlie both oscillations and their implication as quantitative measures of autonomic circulatory control. We will also review the various methodologies to assess them.

… Overall 40% of us are left-eared, 30% are left-eyed and 20% are left-footed.

But when it comes to handedness, only 10% of people are lefties.

Why could this be? Why are left-handers in the minority?