Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 23, 2017

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for November 23, 2017

 

The Journey: Rose Lavelle – U.S. SoccerThe Journey: Rose Lavelle

U.S. Soccer from

… In this episode of The Journey, Sponsored by Motrin, we learn just how important her support system in the city of Cincinnati has been for the development of U.S. WNT midfielder Rose Lavelle as a player and as a person.

 

Kendrick Perkins Is Trying to Get Back into an NBA He No Longer Fits

VICE Sports, Corbin Smith from

… Perk never really got unplayably injured or any shit like that. He’s just… substandard. He’s big, but he is insanely slow, not that tall, his hands are no good, he misses foul shots. Kind of bad. Once upon a time, it wouldn’t have mattered all that much. There was a time when all kinds of big, plodding dudes commandeered NBA minutes because conventional wisdom was that you needed a center. Perk’s career started in that world, he signed a contract right as it ended, and then he played out the string in a world where that construct became more and more embarrassing by the day.

 

Morning Tip Q&A: Idan Ravin | NBA.com

NBA.com, David Aldridge from

… Ravin is trying to reach the next generation of NBA players where they live, on social media (@IdanWan, idanwan on Instagram, etc.), while bringing his unique training aesthetic to the party — holistic, but demanding. Not a miracle, but effective.

Me: How different is the relationship today between teams and personal trainers/coaches than it was when you started? Is it more collaborative?

Idan Ravin: I would hope, but I don’t find it that way at all. In many, many ways it hasn’t changed at all. I don’t seek permission from someone when I work with an athlete. It’s something we discuss. And I’m supremely confident in my work and how I can help, and I do the work, and then I send them back to their team or I touch base with them at another point. There is always going to be tension. I understand. That’s their asset and they have a lot of money invested and they feel they want to have their people do the work. But when I feel like the athlete’s my responsibility as well, then I act responsibly to them.

 

Tom Byer: Look to parents, not coaches, to create skillful players

SoccerAmerica, Mike Woitalla from

When New Yorker Tom Byer, who has spent more than 20 years of running youth soccer programs in Japan, was appointed the Head Technical Advisor by the Chinese Football Association in 2012, The South China Morning Post announced that the man who is regarded as a “superhero” in Japan is leading the “Chinese soccer revolution.”

HBO, which is featuring Byer in an edition of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” titled Soccer Sensei, calls him a “soccer guru” with a “plan to rescue American men’s soccer.” Byer has recently been charged with launching a U.S. Soccer-supported “Soccer Starts at Home” program in Seattle. Byer asserts that the under-6 age group has been the most misunderstand part of soccer.

 

HBO special on Tom Byer’s plan to rescue American men’s soccer is a must-watch

World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris from

HBO’s special begins with footage of the United States Men’s National Team being defeated by Trinidad and Tobago in the final World Cup qualifier from the CONCACAF Hex. Seconds later, USSF presidential candidate Kyle Martino utters the words, “US Soccer thinks they have all the answers. And they’re not, in its current iteration, willing to ask the experts for help. On the men’s side, that’s been catastrophic.”

From the beginning of this 13-minute special that will air on HBO tonight on the show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, the broadcast is spellbinding. But instead of rehashing the reasons why the United States is failing as a soccer nation, HBO charts a different course by looking at one man who could be a key figure in changing the future of the soccer in this country.

Soccer coach Tom Byer is a fascinating man who has been instrumental in training elite players and teaching fundamentals to millions of children in Japan. While he’s done much to help make the Japanese men and women’s team a force on the world’s stage, the United States Soccer Federation has finally decided to hire the American to begin making a difference on these shores.

 

A Thanksgiving Recipe for Success: Ask Questions

Bloomberg View, Cass Sunstein from

… [Karen] Huang and her colleagues began with a simple experiment, arranging two-person conversations with more than 400 people. They randomly assigned a task to one participant in these interactions: asking either a large or a small number of questions. The other participant was not made aware of that assignment.

After the conversation, people were asked what they thought about the person they had been talking to — and what they thought that person thought about them.

The central finding was clear: People ended up most liking those who asked them a lot of questions. Notably, participants did not anticipate that. Those who asked few questions thought that their conversation partners liked them every bit as much as those who asked many questions. (Nope.)

 

Misconceptions About Nudges by Cass Sunstein

Social Science Research Network from

Some people believe that nudges are an insult to human agency; that nudges are based on excessive trust in government; that nudges are covert; that nudges are manipulative; that nudges exploit behavioral biases; that nudges depend on a belief that human beings are irrational; and that nudges work only at the margins and cannot accomplish much. These are misconceptions. Nudges always respect, and often promote, human agency; because nudges insist on preserving freedom of choice, they do not put excessive trust in government; nudges are generally transparent rather than covert or forms of manipulation; many nudges are educative, and even when they are not, they tend to make life simpler and more navigable; and some nudges have quite large impacts.

 

In the Quest for Lasting Behavior Change, Two Researchers Lead the Charge

University of Pennsylvania from

Have you ever made a commitment to exercise more often? You sign up with a gym and succeed for a time but soon, too soon, the enthusiasm fades. Eventually, your workout clothes gather dust and your gym membership does nothing but empty your wallet.

In the short term, changing behavior is doable, even exciting, but it’s really hard to make that change permanent. Ask anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking or eat less junk food. There’s a reason the phrase, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” exists within popular vernacular.

But Penn researchers Angela Duckworth and Katherine Milkman, along with more than two dozen scientists across the country, have a project they hope will turn fleeting life modifications into long-lasting habits. Called the Behavior Change for Good (BCFG) initiative, it launched this fall with an ambitious goal: to understand and improve behavior change across the lifespan, across many domains, using strategies grounded in psychology and behavioral economics.

 

Are We Ready for Heavy Lifting?

The Table Group, Got A Minute blog from

Before embarking on a team-building effort, your team needs to answer two big questions:

Question #1: Are we really a team?

Sometimes a team improvement effort is doomed from the start because the group going through it isn’t really a team at all, at least not in the true sense of the word.

 

Small, foam hearable captures heart data

ApplySci, Lisa Weiner from

In a small study, Danilo Mandic from Imperial College London has shown that his hearable can be used to capture heart data. The device detected heart pulse by sensing the dilation and constriction of tiny blood vessels in the ear canal, using the mechanical part of the electro-mechanical sensor. The hearable is made of foam and molds to the shape of the ear. The goal is a comfortable and discreet continuous monitor that will enable physicians to receive extensive data. In addition to the device’s mechanical sensors, Mandic, a signal processing experter, claims that electrical sensors detect brain activity that could monitor sleep, epilepsy, and drug delivery, and be used in personal authentication and cyber security.

 

Accurate sleep monitoring at home

BMC Blog Network, Kaare Mikkelsen from

The current method for accurately monitoring sleep, a polysomnography, involves the patient sleeping in a sleep clinic, covered in electrodes. With obvious drawbacks to this method, researchers are looking for cheaper, lightweight alternatives that interfere less with patients’ sleep. One such alternative is ear-EEG, here, Dr. Kaare Mikkelsen tells us about this form of sleep monitoring and his research published in BioMedical Engineering OnLine.

 

Motion Sensors Could Lead to New Wearable Technology

R&D Magazine, Kenny Walter from

A new breed of sensitive and flexible motion sensors could pave the way to a new wave of wearable devices.

A team of researchers from the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering have created a new class of motion sensors that improves on existing sensors that are either too crude or too inflexible to reliably monitor complex structures like the human body in wearable technology.

“Current technology is not designed for that,” Richard Liang, director of the High-Performance Materials Institute and professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, said in a statement. “For sensor technology, you need it to be flexible, you need it to be affordable and you need it to be scalable.”

 

Atlanta United exit interviews: Carlos Bocanegra

AJC.com, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Doug Roberson from

Q. You focused on youth, but did the U.S. recent failure to qualify for the World Cup, and everyone focusing on the next generation, does that change your thinking at all, even trying to speed it up even more?

A. I think the U.S. not qualifying for the World Cup has brought a lot of things to the forefront, brought it to the limelight.

I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job in the country of finding ways to develop players.

Are we doing everything right? No. Is there room for improvement? Yes, there is. Now it’s how do we expedite that situation?

Implementing the Developmental Academy years ago, all MLS teams have academies, different showcases, different international tournaments, we are looking for competitions. At the U.S. Soccer level, they are looking for different programming as far as high performance, sports science.

 

Finding Sports Analytics’ Next Revelation

Steve Shea, Basketball Analytics from

… For good reasons, sports analytics is focused on predictive stats. But, what if the next great revelation hides not in the predictive, but in what could be? Should we study more deeply the activities that drive success and where teams are inconsistent? Can we identify the actions where team performance varies wildly, not because it’s random, but because the team hasn’t prioritized the pursuit or hasn’t figured out how to maintain high levels of production?

We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the stats that aren’t reproducible. Inconsistency in the past doesn’t preclude consistency in future.

 

The Hard Value of ‘Soft’ Analytics

The GAIN LINE Report #29 from

In a recent article about the success of the Houston Astros in the 2017 Baseball World Series the author talked about how data and analytics played an important role in their victory. A day doesn’t go by without a sports related analytics story, whether that be a success like the Astros (here) or a failure like Fulham FC in the English Premier League (here).

The biggest difference between these two examples is the focus on the content. The Astros are looking beyond the traditional ‘hard’ analytics towards the ‘soft’ analytics but Fulham, it seems, took a very blinkered and very ‘hard’ option, and in this case ultimately at their peril.

Cohesion Analytics falls into the ‘soft’ category.

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.