Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 29, 2017

… The USOC’s director of sport performance, Alan Ashley, said this is an out-of-the-box way of identifying elite athletes — football players, runners and the like — whose skills might translate into an Olympic sport, many of which don’t get the mainstream attention as football, basketball, baseball and hockey in America.

“We’ve always believed in ‘talent transfer’ — high-level athletes who may not make it in one sport but could try out in another,” Ashley said. “But when you think about all the college athletes out there, this could be a stepping stone for people to think about this in a different way.”

When Washington coaches came to offensive guard Nick Harris last season and asked the freshman if he’d like to play instead of redshirt, he might have been more shocked than anyone. “I wasn’t that highly recruited. I’m not big,” Harris says. “I’m 6′ 1″. I was 270 pounds. I wasn’t expecting to play at all.”

But Chris Petersen and his staff saw something in Harris that Harris hadn’t even seen in himself. No other FBS coaching staff saw it, either. Cal Poly and New Hampshire had offered scholarships to the Inglewood, Calif., native who played in Orange County at Junipero Serra Catholic, but no one in the Mountain West wanted him. Certainly no one in the Pac-12 besides Washington did. Some of those Pac-12 schools got interested after Washington offered and Harris committed in the summer of ’15, but that speaks more to Petersen’s pet peeve of staffs only issuing scholarship offers based on which other programs have offered—not on the coaches’ belief that the player can succeed at that level. But Washington coaches believed in Harris, who might be the quintessential OKG.

Several coaching staffs use that acronym, which stands for Our Kind of Guy. Petersen’s staff, at Boise State and now at Washington, takes it more seriously than most.

The human brain has a region of cells responsible for linking sensory cues to actions and behaviors and cataloging the link as a memory. Cells that form these links have been deemed highly stable and fixed.

Now, the findings of a Harvard Medical School (HMS) study conducted in mice challenge that model, revealing that the neurons responsible for such tasks may be less stable, yet more flexible than previously believed.

The results, published Aug. 17 in the journal Cell, cast doubt on the traditional notion that memory formation involves hardwiring information into the brain in a fixed and highly stable pattern.

The researchers say their results point to a critical plasticity in neuronal networks that ensures easier integration of new information.

Robyn Jones is arguably the world’s leading researcher and scholar in the microsociology of sports coaching. Viewing coaching as a ‘complex socio-pedagogical process’ he has drawn especially from Erving Goffman’s work on stigma, interaction and impression management, in addition to educational perspectives such as Nel Noddings’ feminist ethic of care. This article and the accompanying commentaries from Robyn’s current and past doctoral students, as well as some colleagues from academia, is focused on the ontology, epistemology and methodology of research in sports coaching. [download fulltext pdf]

The aim of the present study was to quantify the individual practice and game loads throughout an NCAA division I football season to determine if significant differences exist between the practice loads associated with pre-season training camp and those undertaken during the in-season period. Thirty-one NCAA division I football players were monitored using GPS and IA (MinimaxX S5; Catapult Innovations, Melbourne, Australia) during 22 pre-season practices, 36 in-season practices, and 12 competitions. The season was divided into four distinct phases for data analysis: pre-season week 1 (pre-season1), pre-season week 2 (pre-season2), pre-season week 3 (pre-season3), and 12 in-season weeks. Individual IA datasets represented players from every offensive and defensive position group (WR: n=5), (OL: n=4), (RB: n=4), (QB: n=2), (TE: n=3), (DL: n=4), (LB: n=4), (DB: n=5). Data were set at the practice level, where an observation for each player’s maximum player load (PLMax) or mean player load (PLMean) from each training camp phase was referenced against each player’s respective PL from each game, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday practice session. Notable results included significantly (p<0.05) greater PLMax values attributed to pre-season1 compared to PL resulting from all in-season practices, and significantly (p<0.05) higher cumulative PL reported for pre-season1, 2, and 3 compared to every in-season week. Data from the present study augment our understanding of the practice demands experienced by NCAA division I college football players, and provide scope for the improvement of pre-season practice design and physical conditioning strategies for coaches seeking to optimize performance.

… As we reported earlier this month, a handful of Seahawks have been testing the Vicis helmet during practice and preseason games. Cliff Avril, a ninth-year defensive end who was named to the Pro Bowl last season, told GeekWire that he wanted to try something else that might help keep him safer on the field. He and his wife did some research and decided to give Vicis a try.

“I like it so far — it’s different,” Avril said after Seattle’s 26-13 win over Kansas City last week. “It’s not as hard as the other helmets. It’s a little bit heavier, but I definitely like it.”

In professional sport you have to make smart decisions in extreme situations. A team of Queen’s University Belfast is working on Virtual Reality trainings to simulate such situations.

The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on “unscrupulous” clinics selling unproven and potentially dangerous treatments involving stem cells.

Hundreds of clinics around the country have started selling stem cell therapies that supposedly use stem cells but have not been approved as safe and effective by the FDA, according to the agency.

“There are a small number of unscrupulous actors who have seized on the clinical promise of regenerative medicine, while exploiting the uncertainty, in order to make deceptive, and sometimes corrupt assurances to patients based on unproven and, in some cases, dangerously dubious products,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement Monday.

It’s easy(ish) to eat the right foods at home. On the road, it’s much more difficult. But elite athletes, who abide by strict nutrition plans while traveling nonstop, have to figure it out. For outdoor athletes, competitions typically take them to small, rural towns all over the world—places where an abundance of nutritious food or sport-specific packaged goods may not be readily available. So how do they do it? We asked eight athletes for their most reliable on-the-road eating hacks.

… “Whilst we assume that a healthy mindset would serve us best when it comes to improving our wellbeing, we’ve found that this is not always the case, ” explained Dr. Alia Crum, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, when I interviewed her recently. “In fact in some instances our seemingly smart approaches to things like healthy eating may actually be backfiring.”

For example, in one study Alia and her colleagues found that when hungry participants consumed a milkshake labeled ‘Indulgence: Decadence You Deserve’ with 620 calories and 30 grams of fat, their blood levels of ghrelin (known as the hunger hormone) went down leaving them feeling full. The following week when the same hungry participants consumed a milkshake labeled “Sensi-Shake: Guilt Free Satisfaction with 140 calories and zero grams of fat, their blood levels of ghrelin saw a much smaller decline leaving them feeling less full.

More than one-third of Americans do not know that foods with no genetically modified ingredients contain genes, according to the new nationally representative Food Literacy and Engagement Poll we recently conducted at Michigan State University. For the record, all foods contain genes, and so do all people.

The majority of respondents who answered this question incorrectly were young and affluent, and also more likely than their peers to describe themselves as having a higher-than-average understanding of the global food system. The full survey revealed that much of the U.S. public remains disengaged or misinformed about food. These findings are problematic because food shapes our lives on a personal level, while consumer choices and agricultural practices set the course for our collective future in a number of ways, from food production impacts to public health.

… [David] Just, who described Robinson as a “solid researcher,” believes much of the hullabaloo boils down to perspective: namely, whether it is fair to describe a small change, such as a bite of apple, as “significant.”

This is a more nuanced question than it may seem: It is notoriously difficult to change people’s eating habits, which become ingrained during early childhood. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 87 percent of Americans don’t eat enough vegetables, and 76 percent don’t eat enough fruit. (Those figures are 93 percent and 60 percent, respectively, for children.) In that context, Just said, even an extra fraction of a serving of fruits or vegetables is good.

At the same time, Robinson points out, such a small uptick is unlikely to have any real impact on an individual’s health.

Maintaining a football roster isn’t just about evaluating top-flight players or even guys on the bench. It involves keeping tabs on practice-squad guys, scout team fill-ins, opponents’ benches, and even the Arena Football League. An anonymous army of pro scouts puts all the pieces together—here’s how they do it.

Wendel Clark is confident the Toronto Maple Leafs can improve on their place in the standings. His optimism does come with a couple caveats, though.

Good fortune in the forms of great health and unexpected production were blessings for the Leafs as they reached the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in a full season since 2004.

“This year may not happen that way,” Clark, the former Leafs captain and current community representative, said Wednesday morning on the Jeff Blair Show with Joey Vendetta. “We have to see how we play through those situations. If we play through those situations with flying colours, this team is well on its way to doing great things.”

… The ATP has been studying and tracking injuries since 2012 and, according to its own data, there has been a 7% fall in injuries so far this year.

“Our players are doing a lot of preventative work which is also expanding the number of years they are on the Tour,” said Todd Ellenbecker, a former physio who is now the ATP’s vice-president of medical services.

“Right now between 40 and 43 players of our top 100 are over 30 years of age,” he added.