Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 27, 2016

In the modern game we are told pace is everything. But Everton midfielder Gareth Barry is now officially proof that is not the case.

Statistics show Barry is the seventh slowest player in the Premier League with a top sprint speed of 29.4km/h.

By comparison, the fastest player is Southampton’s Shane Long with a spritely 35.31km/h.

The numbers, compiled by Opta and reported in The Telegraph , show that only Lucas Leiva, Olivier Giroud, Shaun Maloney, Cesc Fabregas, Peter Crouch and Charlie Adam are slower than the Blues midfielder.

It’s a hot, humid, painful day in a string of similar excruciating days that mark the relationship Chris Culliver and Dave Puloka have forged the past couple of months.

Culliver used to be a finely tuned NFL cornerback, one of the best at what he did. But he’s not that on this day because multiple ligaments in his right knee were torn last November and the leg and maybe some muscles and definitely his conditioning aren’t quite back to form yet.

So Culliver and Puloka are working to make everything right. They are pushing and pulling and jumping and running and sweating and hurting.

… We deconstruct human movement, like some software engineers do with code. We identify mistakes in personal fitness, physical education, physical rehabilitation and athletic development.

These are simply programming errors.

Everyone living with broken movement has already been on a program or had an opportunity to be programmed. They failed and they’ve been failed.

The number one predictor of a future injury is a previous injury. That statistic tells us that exercise and rehabilitation are unable to restore the original operating program using its authentic programming language—because the language of movement isn’t written in words or pictures or some type of schematic.

Not so long ago, Julian Nagelsmann turned up in the Munich suburb of Giesing for a job interview with a difference: he, the twenty-something coaching prodigy, was sounding out FC Bayern, not the other way around. The German champions, eager to appoint Germany’s most promising young trainer as their U23 team manager, pulled out all the stops. Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and sporting director Matthias Sammer welcomed him personally at Säbener Strasse. Pep Guardiola, too, dropped in on him, offering kind words and a nice pat on the back. Nagelsmann wasn’t swayed by the Red’s charm offensive, however. He preferred the clear path laid out for him in Kraichgau to the glamour of Bavaria. After taking TSG Hoffenheim’s U19s to the Bundesliga championship in 2013-14 and another appearance in the final a year later, the powers at 1899 secretly made up their mind that the Landsberg-born former TSV 1860 player would take over the seniors ahead of the 2016/17 season.
The rise of TSG Hoffenheim: from ninth-tier amateurs to the Bundesliga
Read more

However, Hoffenheim’s carefully laid plans for his career progression were scuppered by a horrible drop down the table and experienced coach Huub Stevens having to resign with a heart complaint after the winter-break. Nagelsmann promotion was fast-tracked to the first-team job in February, to a combination of universal disbelief and doubt. He was 28 years old at the time.

… When you’re faced with a decision, your whole brain goes to work. It acts as a “prediction machine,” connecting different patterns and images with behavioural responses, says Jacob Hirsh, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute for Management and Innovation and the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management.

That comes in handy when you’re bombarded with new information while trying to make a decision. Picture yourself renting an apartment or buying a house: You’re evaluating the neighbourhood, the price, the floor plan, the number of bathrooms and bedrooms, the room layouts. You’re weighing a bunch of competing factors — Is this our dream location? Can we afford the monthly payments? Will we need to renovate the kitchen? — while subconsciously exploring how you feel about the place and whether it makes sense to live there.

In these situations, people often get a gut reaction: This place either feels like home, or it doesn’t. “Where that feeling comes from is your expectations, your previous experiences, your best guess,” says Hirsh.

Elite tennis is characterised by repeated bouts of up to 5-set match play, yet little is known about the technical requirements of shots played. This study therefore investigated technical performance changes over consecutive days of prolonged, simulated tennis match play. A total of 7 well-trained men tennis players performed 4 consecutive days of competitive 4-h match play. Matches were notated to determine between-day changes in groundstroke and serve performance, as well as point and match durations. Changes ≥75% likely to exceed the smallest important effect size (0.2) were considered meaningful and represented as effect size ± 90% confidence interval. Effective playing time reduced on days 3 and 4, alongside likely increases in “stretch” groundstrokes over the 4 days (mean effect size ± 90% confidence interval; 0.57 ± 0.38) and “stretch” backhand returns on days 2 and 3 (0.39 ± 0.54 and 0.67 ± 0.55). Relative unforced errors increased on day 4 (vs. day 2; 0.36 ± 0.22) and second-serve winning percentage reduced after day 1 (−0.47 ± 0.50). Further, a likely increase in emotional outbursts characterised day 3 (vs. day 2; 0.73 ± 0.57). Consecutive-day match play impairs hitting accuracy, stroke positioning and emotional responses; an understanding of which prepares players for elite-standard tennis tournament play.

Heading a football may look effortless but many scientists have suspected it might actually harm the player’s brain. There could be real consequences – we know that brain injury is linked to an increased risk of dementia, for example. However, it has proven surprisingly difficult to find out the true impact of football heading, partly because mild brain injury is notoriously difficult to detect.

Now our new research, published in EBioMedicine, suggests that just a single session of heading practice results in temporary impairment in memory and a disruption of the normal balance of chemicals in the brain. We must now investigate whether these effects remain temporary after repeated football heading exposure and what the long-term consequences on brain health are.

Much of what we know about the brain is based on research on the mature brain, but the human brain is not fully developed until our early twenties. The frontal lobes are especially late to mature. This part of the brain, which absorbs the impact of the ball, is home to uniquely human qualities such as impulse control and conscious planning. In the teenage years brain chemicals are in a state of flux and the brain is very sensitive in lots of ways. A massive process of reorganisation of connections takes place before the brain calms down in its mature state.

The Sabres witnessed history when they watched Jonas Gustavsson skate past their bench and disappear toward the Edmonton dressing room. It was the first time the NHL’s new concussion evaluation and management protocol went to work.

In an attempt to protect players from further brain injury, the NHL is requiring mandatory removal of any player suspected of having a concussion. A team doctor will immediately perform a concussion test in a quiet room. Players diagnosed with a concussion will not be permitted to return, while those who pass the test can come back at the doctor’s discretion.

Making Gustavsson’s case unique was new league spotters ordered the goalie’s removal. “Central League Spotters” will watch all games from the player safety room in New York, and they are authorized to force a player’s removal if they see defined signs of a concussion following a direct or indirect blow to the head.

Background

Asymmetries in the magnitude of plantar pressure are considered a risk factor for stress fracture of the fifth metatarsal in soccer athletes.
Objective

To investigate the presence of plantar pressure asymmetries among young soccer athletes.
Design

Observational.
Setting

Laboratory.
Participants

Thirty young adolescents divided into a soccer player group (n = 15) or a matched control group (n = 15).
Main outcome measures

Mean plantar pressure was determined for seven different regions of the foot. Data were compared between the preferred and non-preferred foot, and between the groups, during barefoot standing on a pressure mat system.
Results

Higher pressure was found in the hallux, 5th metatarsal and medial rearfoot of the non-preferred foot in the young soccer players. These asymmetries were not observed in the control group. Magnitudes of plantar pressure did not differ between the groups.
Conclusion

Young soccer players present asymmetries in plantar pressure in the hallux, 5th metatarsal and medial rearfoot, with higher pressure observed in the non-preferred foot.

After Neil Grimmer sold his organic baby food startup to Campbell’s Soup, he took a long, hard look in the mirror. The fast food, stress, and late nights involved with running a business had taken their toll.

A typical entrepreneur, Grimmer was determined to do more than get a gym membership and eat more broccoli. He made an appointment with a functional medicine specialist, who ordered a battery of tests. Grimmer was informed by the doctor in no uncertain terms that he was overweight, at risk for a heart attack, and verging on pre-diabetic; the doctor prescribed a meal plan to help Grimmer get in shape. “Through nutrition and behavior change, I was able to get a lot of that back in line,” he says.

Grimmer’s new startup, called Habit, aims to help others achieve their goals, whether it’s to lose weight or sleep more soundly. The company, which is launching in January, offers a $299 blood test to screen for 60 biomarkers, including amino acids, vitamin levels, and blood sugar, as well as some genetic variants that may play a role in how an individual responds to diet. The company is also attempting to test a users’ metabolic rate through a “challenge,” which involves drinking a milkshake-like beverage to understand how they respond to fats, carbs and sugars, and then sending in another set of blood tests.

Protein ingestion before sleep augments post-exercise muscle protein synthesis during overnight recovery. Purpose: It is unknown whether post-exercise and pre-sleep protein consumption modulates post-prandial protein handling and myofibrillar protein synthetic responses the following morning. Sixteen healthy young (24±1 y) men performed unilateral resistance-type exercise (contralateral leg acting as a resting control) at 20:00 h. Participants ingested 20 g protein immediately after exercise plus 60 g protein pre-sleep (PRO group; n=8) or equivalent boluses of carbohydrate (CON; n=8). The subsequent morning participants received primed-continuous infusions of L-[ring-2H5]phenylalanine and L-[1-13C]leucine combined with ingestion of 20 g intrinsically L-[1-13C]phenylalanine and L-[1-13C]leucine labelled protein to assess postprandial protein handling and myofibrillar protein synthesis in the rested and exercised leg in CON and PRO. Exercise increased post-absorptive myofibrillar protein synthesis rates the subsequent day (P<0.001), with no differences between treatments. Protein ingested in the morning increased myofibrillar protein synthesis in both the exercised- and rested-leg (P<0.01), with no differences between treatments. Myofibrillar protein bound L-[1-13C]phenylalanine enrichments were greater in the exercised (0.016±0.002 and 0.015±0.002 MPE in CON and PRO, respectively) versus rested (0.010±0.002 and 0.009±0.002 MPE in CON and PRO, respectively) leg (P0.05). The additive effects of resistance-type exercise and protein ingestion on myofibrillar protein synthesis persist for >12 h after exercise and are not modulated by protein consumption during acute post-exercise recovery. This work provides evidence of an extended window of opportunity where pre-sleep protein supplementation can be an effective nutrient timing strategy to optimize skeletal muscle reconditioning.

Since last Friday’s double-OT win over Oregon ended, Cal head coach Sonny Dykes has been bashing the Pac-12 schedule, which has Cal playing at USC this Thursday with USC coming off a bye.

“We have a game in six days, which is crazy. Absolutely nuts that we have to go to USC in six days and play a team that’s had 13 days off to prepare for us,” Dykes said after the game. “It absolutely makes no sense. Utah had an extra day to prepare for us. Arizona State had an extra day to prepare for us. Oregon had an open date before the game like we did, and now USC has an extra week. I don’t think there’s a lot of equity in scheduling. I didn’t make the schedule. I’m not happy about it.”

… Technically, they’re low men on the totem pole, but they might be the two most relied-upon men in their roles in the league. The defensive players grin at the mention of Bogardus, who earned his MBA from Ball State in 2012. “Thad does everything,” says outside linebacker Shaq Barrett. “He practically prepares us to go. Everything that you need to know, Thad knows.” Offensive players have a nickname for Rauscher, a former UCLA tight end: “KGB.”

Bogardus and Rauscher pore over hours and hours of film, and not just the silent, All-22 copies of games; they’ll break down the television broadcast, hoping an on-field microphone catches an audible call or a piece of defensive communication they can then catalog and use to discern patterns. They do the same with hand signals shared between quarterback and wide receiver or cornerback and safety. Then both coaches prepare briefings for position coaches and lead a weekly meeting with the offense and defense to point out the smallest bad habits.

There’s something about baseball and all those crazy stats that appeals to data nerds—and the Google Cloud evangelist team is taking advantage of that. Eric Schmidt (no, not that Eric Schmidt, this Eric Schmidt) is analyzing every pitch, every at bat, and is posting his take on Google’s cloud blog.

The main goal is to demonstrate how to use Google Cloud Platform’s data crunching goodies, writes Schmidt, a developer advocate for Google. That means services like Cloud Dataflow, which parses both streaming, real-time data as well as more sedentary, stored (or “batch”) data. Think live baseball stats coming over the wire versus troves of MLB data from decades ago stored on paper or a database somewhere.

Two years ago, Microsoft introduced a new division dedicated to ideating, building, and rolling out technology solutions for the sporting industry.

Its Global Sports Innovation Centre in Madrid was opened to help facilitate this. The centre, which is backed by more than 100 partners worldwide, is open to entrepreneurs, students, companies, and civic organisations interested in advancing the sporting industry.

The global business development architect for Microsoft Sports, Jesus Serrano Castro, told ZDNet there is a huge opportunity for sporting organisations around the world to enhance fan engagement, build ‘smarter’ venues, create new revenue streams, and improve athlete performance through technology.

Describing Australia as a sports-mad nation because it closely “follows five or six sports, unlike European nations that follow one or two”, Castro said Australia’s sporting industry lags behind other nations when it comes to exploiting technology.