Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 12, 2016

… “One of the things I do is with Coach (Brandon) Bailey,” [Demetrius] Jackson revealed Monday morning. “He just randomly grabs me at any time and we do a shooting drill and I have a certain number I want to reach.

“So that kind of simulates just being grabbed off the bench. You never know when you’re going to get called, and then you’ve got to make shots.”

Jackson made half of his six shots during Saturday’s win, including a 2-for-3 performance from long range.

Every NFL position has changed dramatically over the past decade: Quarterbacks are more involved than ever; offensive linemen face a harder college-to-pro leap; middle linebackers may be phasing out of the game completely.

But no position has evolved more than wide receiver, which, thanks to a long list of converging forces, has become perhaps the most talent-stacked group in sports. That’s been palpable in this young NFL season, with dominant pass catchers buoying many top teams: Julio Jones delivered a 300-yard performance two weeks ago for the now 4–1 Falcons; Antonio Brown already has 447 yards and five touchdowns for the 4–1 Steelers; A.J. Green has been a rare bright spot for the flailing Bengals; and the list goes on.

Saying that we’re in a golden generation of wide receivers would be a gross understatement. We’re firmly in an era when, from the youth football level on up, nearly every trend in the past decade has favored receivers. And there’s no evidence that the talent gap between wideouts and other positions will close anytime soon.

This study extends recent coach stress research by evaluating how coaches perceive their stress experiences to affect athletes, and the broader coach–athlete relationship. A total of 12 coaches working across a range of team sports at the elite level took part in semi-structured interviews to investigate the 3 study aims: how they perceive athletes to detect signals of coach stress; how they perceive their stress experiences to affect athletes; and, how effective they perceive themselves to be when experiencing stress. Following content analysis, data suggested that coaches perceived athletes able to detect when they were experiencing stress typically via communication, behavioural, and stylistic cues. Although coaches perceived their stress to have some positive effects on athletes, the overwhelming effects were negative and affected “performance and development”, “psychological and emotional”, and “behavioural and interaction” factors. Coaches also perceived themselves to be less effective when stressed, and this was reflected in their perceptions of competence, self-awareness, and coaching quality. An impactful finding is that coaches are aware of how a range of stress responses are expressed by themselves, and to how they affect athletes, and their coaching quality. Altogether, findings support the emerging view that coach stress affects their own, and athlete performance.

We studied the relationship between daily training load (TL) experienced by professional soccer players and the Hooper questionnaire reflecting their perceived quality of sleep, fatigue, stress and delayed onset muscle soreness. During a 16-week training period, the rating of perceived exertion and duration were collected after each training session, and daily TL was calculated from 14 professional soccer players. The Hooper questionnaire was completed every day before the first training session and the Hooper’s score (HS) was then calculated. The daily TL and HS were 379.9 ± 198.3 AU and 16.2 ± 5.1, respectively. Pearson correlation showed significant relationships (p < 0.01) between TL and perceived fatigue, muscle soreness, sleep and stress. Our findings revealed that the perceived sleep, stress, fatigue and muscle soreness are moderately related to the daily TL in professional soccer players. The Hooper questionnaire is both a simple and useful tool for monitoring perceived wellness and psychometric players' status of professional soccer players.

At No. 5 Experimental Primary School in the coal-mining city of Taiyuan, the red carpet is out. School girls in pink and white stand at the entrance, while fellow students sit in perfect rows inside, awaiting the arrival of a VIP.

With the city’s education chief and other local dignitaries on the stage and TV cameras hovering in the background you might expect a foreign leader or Communist Party bigwig, but the guest of honor is Tom Byer, 55, a soccer coach from New York.

Byer was starting a tour of schools in 32 cities as part of an ambitious plan by President Xi Jinping to extend China’s soft power using the world’s most popular sport. The goal is to train 30 million kids in the next four years and build a national team by 2050 that can beat the likes of Brazil, Argentina and Germany.

The value of video is undisputed. The best coaches in the country swear by its power not only to scout opponents, but to break down one’s own tendencies and uncover insights about your players and where they perform best.

But how do you pass that information along? A coach can have the most advanced video breakdowns around, but if he can’t translate what he’s learned to his athletes it doesn’t do a lick of good.

Yao Ming was big. Still is. But five years after his retirement, the 7-foot-6 Hall of Fame center is still waiting for the growth spurt that will make his native China a significant player in the NBA and the entire basketball world.

“I am a little bit surprised, a little bit disappointed,” Yao said. “I have to show patience. But I think we must look at it like building a car. You do not just open the factory and drive the car away. You must gather the proper pieces and assemble them in the right way.”

That it is taking the most populous nation on the planet — 1.4 billion and counting — so long to figure out which pieces go where before driving down the road is both a conundrum and a simple case of overbearing politics.

“There are too many parties with their fingers in the pie,” said one NBA agent who has never represented a player from Asia. “I don’t have a dog in the hunt, but it’s pretty clear to see that different groups are working against the overall interest of Chinese basketball. In a word, the problem is protectionism.”

The All Blacks are one of the most successful sporting teams on the planet. In 2013 they went through the entire season unbeaten, and over the past 100 years they have an unprecedented 75% winning record. You will struggle to find another team in world sport that will rival that level of success.

But what makes the All Blacks so good?

For a start, they are incredibly cohesive. The players commit to something bigger than themselves. They then work, learn and improve together to achieve a common goal which otherwise unreachable if they are working alone.

Samsung Electronics Co. said Tuesday it has started mass production of a new mobile processor for wearable gadgets, based on its latest 14-nanometer process technology.

The new mobile processor, or application processor, features higher performance and lower electricity consumption, Samsung said in a statement.

… Next to the climate chamber is a 22-metre-long stretch of artificial turf. At one end is what adidas describes as the best football player at the facility: a flywheel with an artificial foot at the end, known as Roboleg. Its shots travel at 160kph – 40kph more than the average speed of travel of a ball from a professional player. Not only is Roboleg more powerful than a human, it can reproduce each of its shots exactly. Sixteen cameras in the ceiling of the lab record the trajectory of every ball, taking 3,000 pictures per second, analysing its flight using Hawk-Eye – the tracking technology used at Wimbledon for line calls and in the Premier League for goal-line decisions – which offers real-time data.

The lab measures everything. For instance, the stresses exerted on the upper surface of a boot have been determined by collecting data on how the foot moves inside a shoe: at a normal walking pace, a foot will move up to one centimetre from side to side. At the same time, a person’s toes move upward by up to six millimetres. Knowing that enables the team to establish at what points a boot requires stability and where flexibility is more important. This data is extrapolated so the designers can understand the forces and influences that affect joints and the musculoskeletal system.

So often in football we forget that the people on the pitch are…well people. People with families, emotions and the same personal foibles as the rest of us. Yet so often they are not treated as people. Clubs treat them as commodities. Some potential partners see them as a status symbol. And some fans treat them as not being human at all. There have been a few high profile suicide attempts in football and that’s why fans should have a better understanding of what the people on the pitch feel and go through.

It sounds hard to fathom that someone wouldn’t want to be a 20 something pro-football player with bags of cash, scores of beautiful women throwing themselves at you and all cars, clothes and houses that others can only dream of. The reality for many players though is that it is a lonely and isolated life. Players move around the country every couple of years losing the friends they have made and any roots in the community they lived in. Often their family can stay in one place while the player moves; in some cases it can be a whole other country. They also cannot interact with the rest of the public as we all would. If they wanted to go down to the pub for a drink for example, they might have abuse hurled at them, they might get mobbed by drunken fans after a fight or they might get criticised for being out after a less than stellar performance 2 weeks ago. Any silly mistake they make in the public eye will be snapped, tweeted and sold. Faux outrage and faux apologies follow for daring to be human and have a life outside of football. Safer to not go out then. Just stay in. Perhaps a night out? No. Same problem, plus the added issue of those playing with your emotions purely to ‘bag a footballer.

Carbohydrate (CHO) depletion is linked to neuromuscular fatigue during exercise. While its role at peripheral level is relatively well understood, less is known about its impact centrally. The aim of this systematic review was to critically analyze the effects of CHO on central fatigue (CF) assessed by various neurophysiological techniques. Four databases were searched using PRISMA guidelines through February 2016. The inclusion criteria were: CHO as intervention against a placebo control, fatigue induced by prolonged exercise and assessed using neurophysiological measures [voluntary activation (VA), superimposed twitch (SIT), M-wave, electromyography], alongside maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). Seven papers were reviewed, where exercise duration lasted between 115 and 180 min. CHO improved exercise performance in three studies, whereby two of them attributed it to CF via attenuation of VA and SIT reductions, while the other indicated peripheral involvement via attenuation of M-wave reduction. Although a few studies suggest that CHO attenuates CF, data on its direct effects on neurophysiological outcome measures are limited and mixed. Generally, measures employed in these studies were inadequate to conclude central contribution to fatigue. Factors including the techniques used and the lack of controls render additional confounding factors to make definitive deductions. Future studies should employ consistent techniques and appropriate neurophysiological controls to distinguish CHO effect at central level. The use of pharmacological intervention should be incorporated to elucidate involvement of central mechanisms.

Sports nutrition professionals aim to influence nutrition knowledge, dietary intake and body composition to improve athletic performance. Understanding the interrelationships between these factors and how they vary across sports has the potential to facilitate better-informed and targeted sports nutrition practice. This observational study assessed body composition (DXA), dietary intake (multiple-pass 24-hour recall) and nutrition knowledge (two previously validated tools) of elite and sub-elite male players involved in two team-based sports; Australian football (AF) and soccer. Differences in, and relationships between, nutrition knowledge, dietary intake and body composition between elite AF, sub-elite AF and elite soccer players were assessed. A total of 66 (23 ± 4 years, 82.0 ± 9.2 kg, 184.7 ± 7.7 cm) players participated. Areas of weaknesses in nutrition knowledge are evident (57% mean score obtained) yet nutrition knowledge was not different between elite and sub-elite AF and soccer players (58%, 57% and 56%, respectively, p > 0.05). Dietary intake was not consistent with recommendations in some areas; carbohydrate intake was lower (4.6 ± 1.5 g/kg/day, 4.5 ± 1.2 g/kg/day and 2.9 ± 1.1 g/kg/day for elite and sub-elite AF and elite soccer players, respectively) and protein intake was higher (3.4 ± 1.1 g/kg/day, 2.1 ± 0.7 g/kg/day and 1.9 ± 0.5 g/kg/day for elite and sub-elite AF and elite soccer players, respectively) than recommendations. Nutrition knowledge was positively correlated with fat-free soft tissue mass (n = 66; r2 = 0.051, p = 0.039). This insight into known modifiable factors may assist sports nutrition professionals to be more specific and targeted in their approach to supporting players to achieve enhanced performance.

This fall, Harvard has been rolling out videos from the 2016 edition of Computer Science 50 (CS50), the university’s introductory coding course designed for majors and non-majors alike. Taught by David Malan, a perennially popular professor (you’ll immediately see why), the one-semester course (taught mostly in C) combines courses typically known elsewhere as “CS1” and “CS2.”

Even if you’re not a Harvard student, you’re welcome to follow CS50 online by heading over to this site here.

The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) hosted Dr. Gary King of Harvard University for a talk titled “Big Data is Not About the Data!” on Friday, Oct. 3 as part of the MIDAS Seminar Series. [link to video]