Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 13, 2016

What do you get when you cross a stick of gum with caffeine and an Olympian? You get Run Gum, the creation of Olympic 800-meter runner Nick Symmonds, whom I had the pleasure of speaking with via Skype this week. For those of you who don’t follow track and field, Nick Symmonds is a bit of a trendsetter. Not only is he one of the best 800-meter runners in the United States, he is a huge advocate for runners’ rights, trying to make a semi-professional sport professional. He runs 60 to 70 miles per week to train for a race that takes 1 minute and 43 seconds. That alone is fascinating in what it reveals about the importance of aerobic metabolism for short races, but I’ll save that discussion for another blog post.

This time, we talked about something else. Tired of the feeling he got in his stomach from gulping caffeine-loaded energy drinks, Nick used his biochemistry degree to create Run Gum, a natural alternative to energy drinks that maximizes the absorption of caffeine sublingually — along with B vitamins, Taurine, and sugar alcohols for taste — without having to drink anything.

It is unknown whether traditional periodization of strength-power training involving accumulation, transformation and realization blocks is superior to other simpler and more practical training schemes. The purpose of this study was thus to investigate changes in strength/power/speed characteristics of elite soccer players in response to either classic strength-power periodization (TSP) or optimum power load (OPL). 23 professional soccer players were randomly assigned to TSP or OPL for 6 weeks in-season regular training (3 times per week). TSP involved half squats or jump squats, depending on the respective training block, while OPL involved only jump squats at the optimum power load. Results revealed that both groups presented similar significant (P<0.05) improvements in squat one repetition maximum, squat and countermovement jump heights and change of direction speed. In addition, although both groups reported significant increases in sprinting speed (P<0.05); delta change scores demonstrated a superior effect of OPL to improve 10- and 20-m speed. Similarly, OPL presented greater delta change in mean propulsive power in the jump squat. Therefore, training continuously at the optimum power zone resulted in superior performance improvements compared to training under classic strength-power periodization.

Dr. Alan Hedge, a professor of ergonomics at Cornell University, describes the best and worst ways you can sleep on a plane.

For years, Fred Lipka devoted his time and energy to developing the next generation of French talent at Le Havre, where the academy has churned out big names such as Lassana Diarra, Steve Mandanda, Dmitri Payet and Paul Pogba.

For the past three-and-a-half years, Lipka’s thrown his efforts behind the drive to replicate those efforts in North America as the main conduit between the French Football Federation (FFF) and Major League Soccer. Two crops of MLS academy coaches have navigated the labor-intensive, 52-week Elite Formation Coaching License (EFCL) course, designed to transfer best practices in the realm of youth development from French coaches to their American and Canadian counterparts.

The consensus from the 34 MLS academy coaches who have completed the program so far is clear: It’s one of hardest things they’ve ever done in their careers.

That’s by design. With so much investment and focus centered around MLS academies and Homegrown players, clubs know they must improve the quality and strategic nature of youth coaching and talent development in order to build from the bottom up.

Like other NFL teams as the season starts to get rolling, the Arizona Cardinals have had some injury issues. They also played their last two games in a span of five days.

So while there was a little rust after five days away from on-field work, the Cardinals will at least go into Monday night’s game against the New York Jets well-rested.

“Looked like a team that had five days off, a little raggedy,” Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said in describing Wednesday’s practice. “Couple of guys were outstanding … Some of the guys, especially the young guys, looked like they had five days off. But thank goodness it was a bonus day and the real work starts tomorrow.

“The rest helps,” Arians added. “It’s just getting back into the swing of things.”

The 40-yard dash may be considered the marquee event at the NFL’s annual Scouting Combine, but an athlete’s time doesn’t always indicate his potential for football stardom. That’s because in nearly every sport, not just football, the ability to quickly change direction is the real difference between success and failure. According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s book, Developing Agility and Quickness (Human Kinetics, 2011), the only way for athletes to maximize performance and bridge the gap between practice and competition is for training programs to address both the physical and cognitive components of agility and quickness.

The efficacy of injury prevention exercise programs (IPEPs) for amateur youth soccer has been established, but little is known about their adaptability to other soccer populations. This study aimed to assess the use of individual injury prevention exercises by professional youth soccer teams, against the industry-standard, FIFA 11+ program. Four teams’ chosen IPEPs were observed across one season and documented on a standardized form. The use of each FIFA 11+ exercise was coded as “performed”, “performed modified” or “not performed”. The proportion of the 160 observed sessions containing each individual exercise was calculated. Staff provided reasons for their use and modification of FIFA 11+ exercises. On average, individual FIFA 11+ exercises were conducted in original form in 12% of the sessions (range 0–33%), and in modified form in 28% of sessions (range 2–62%). The five most frequently observed exercises, in either original or modified form, were “bench” (72%), “squats” (69%), “running straight” (68%), “single-leg stance” (66%), and “sideways bench” (64%). Staff modified exercises to add variation, progression, and individualization, and to align with specific training formats and goals. Professional youth soccer teams often use injury prevention exercises similar to those in the FIFA 11+, but tailor them considerably to fit their implementation context.

Technology has fundamentally changed sport, adapting the sports we spend hours watching. Gone are the days when we’d make uneducated assumptions on how a player is performing. Through technology we are now able to make calculated decisions on our favourite players with stats being relayed to us throughout broadcasting.

Wearable technology is become heavily ingrained into professional sports, allowing adverse metrics to be taken into account and utilised within training and allowing for real-time decisions to be made subsequently.

Football has seen a vast change since its beginning, with so much technology being used to enhance the game not only for players but for spectators too. Players and clubs aren’t permitted to use wearable technology in competitive matches, but the International Football Association Board (IFAB) are discussing the use of wearable technology in the future.

Background: Variations in ankle injury rates and distributions among competition levels are unclear, but such data may help inform strategies to prevent ankle sprains during American football.

Purpose: To describe the epidemiological patterns of ankle sprains in youth, high school (HS), and collegiate American football.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study.

Methods: Data regarding youth, HS, and college football athletes were collected from 3 injury surveillance programs: (1) the Youth Football Safety Study (YFSS), (2) the National Athletic Treatment, Injury and Outcomes Network (NATION), and (3) the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance Program (ISP). During the 2012-2014 seasons, the YFSS, NATION, and NCAA ISP included 310, 184, and 71 football team-seasons, respectively. Athletic trainers (ATs) attended each practice and game and reported injuries and athlete-exposures (AEs) via their preferred injury documentation application. Ankle sprain rates for each type of ankle sprain were calculated overall, by event type (ie, practices and games), and specifically for severe injuries (ie, participation restriction time >21 days) and recurrent injuries (as defined by ATs). Rate ratios (RRs) were used to compare ankle sprain rates by competition level and event type. Injury proportion ratios (IPRs) were used to compare differences in severity, surgical needs, recurrence, injury mechanism, and injury activity by competition level. RRs and IPRs with 95% confidence intervals excluding 1.00 were considered statistically significant.

Results: A total of 124, 897, and 643 ankle sprains were reported in youth, HS, and college football, respectively. This led to respective rates of 0.59, 0.73, and 1.19 sprains per 1000 AEs. The ankle sprain rate in college football was higher than the rates in HS (RR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.48-1.82) and youth (RR = 2.01; 95% CI, 1.65-2.43) football. The proportion of ankle sprains that were recurrent in youth football was higher than the proportions in HS (IPR = 2.73; 95% CI, 1.68-4.50) and college (IPR = 2.19; 95% CI, 1.33-3.61) football.

Conclusion: Ankle sprain rates were highest in college athletes. However, level-specific variations in ankle sprain severity and recurrence may highlight the need to develop level-specific policies and prevention strategies to reduce injury incidence.

Tracking athletes’ performances could shed light on psychological conditions that are notoriously difficult to quantify.

Jet lag can be problematic for jet-setters and long-haul cabin crew alike, who cross several time zones to reach their destination. While sleep strategies can alleviate jet lag, they are unable to reset body clocks. Researchers from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom have found that regulating meal times, not sleep, has a positive effect on jet lag.

… [Paul] Riley tends to be more revealing than most and when he said, “It wasn’t a happy place the locker room last year,” it was one of the first times anyone has ventured to put that on the record. “What happens is when there’s only one guy in charge for all this amount of time, you probably don’t realize.”

That person is [Aaran] Lines and the new dynamic certainly could have been awkward. Here was Riley, taking over for Lines as head coach, having to ask his predecessor for the authority to make certain changes. Lines though, was receptive to nearly every request.

“There were a couple of times when he had to smack me on the back of the neck with a fork,” Riley deadpanned. “but most of it was pretty straight forward. When I came in I sat down with Aaran and I said I think we need to do this X, Y, and Z and he said ‘All right if you think it’s going to help we’ll do it.’”

Let’s start with the good news: The NFL is doing better in terms of injury prevention, sports medicine and rehabilitation than it ever has. The most notable issue for the NFL is concussions, and while their current system isn’t perfect, the NFL has been open to iterating it quickly, which has helped. So let’s all give them a hand for getting better.

… The truth is that corruption surrounds the transfer of players because it is essentially a system of trafficking for profit, which gives many people other than the player himself the right to control whose offer of employment he accepts.

Think about this for one moment in the context of your own life. Imagine that the decision as to who you would work for next had to be agreed not only between you and your prospective employer, but also with your last employer. Imagine the company you currently work for could obstruct your move for up to three years, and in the meantime threaten to demote you so that you would be doing a job well beneath your skill level, potentially reducing your effectiveness once you are free to go.

Then throw in the threat of workplace harassment for good measure. It would be intolerable: yet these are exactly the conditions under which professional football players are forced to work (if they want to play professional football).

Of all the topics in football, the high press has one of the largest discrepancies between the interest of analysts and the ability to quantify it.

High defensive pressure has been measured before, including metrics involving opponent pass completion percentage, as viewed relative to pass difficulty or different parts of the pitch. One of the most notable existing measures of pressing is Colin Trainor’s PPDA metric. Colin has explained it in detail here, but in short, the calculation is: Opponent passes allowed per defensive action, in the opponent’s defensive 3/5ths of the pitch.

These metrics are all certainly useful ways to assess pressure and disrupting opponent possession. They are, however, somewhat one-dimensional. Pressing is tough to pin down with event metrics. It involves coordination of players one or two lines removed from the immediate action and is reliant on the movement of a team in unison. There’s also more than one way to pressure an opponent, and different teams may have different objectives in attempting to do so (focusing on harassing the player in possession or limiting passing options are two examples).