This April, when Toronto Raptors rookie OG Anunoby first met with Andy Barr to rehab his surgically repaired knee, there was one pressing question on his mind.
“He’d always ask me, ‘When can I dunk? When can I dunk?’” says Barr, a Doctor of Physical Therapy who founded Innovate Performance in Los Angeles. “And I’d have to go, ‘You can’t dunk yet. Just chill out. We know you can dunk.’ And he’d go, ‘but what if I can’t dunk?’ And I’d shake my head and say, ‘you can dunk. Don’t worry about dunking. That’s the last thing you need to worry about.’”
After tearing the ACL in his right knee during a game this January — just five months prior to the NBA Draft — Anunoby went searching for a physical therapist who could help him get back up to speed for NBA training camps in September.
After speaking to a series of specialists around the United States, Anunoby selected Barr, whose physiotherapy resume includes stops with the English Premier League’s Southampton F.C. and Manchester City F.C., as well as a stint with the New York Knicks.
Aim: Previous research into the etiology of neuromuscular fatigue following competitive soccer match-play has primarily focused on peripheral perturbations, with limited research assessing central nervous system function in the days post-match. The aim of the present study was to examine the contribution and time-course of recovery of central and peripheral factors toward neuromuscular fatigue following competitive soccer match-play.
Methods: Sixteen male semi-professional soccer players completed a 90-min soccer match. Pre-, post- and at 24, 48, and 72 h participants completed a battery of neuromuscular, physical, and perceptual tests. Maximal voluntary contraction force (MVC) and twitch responses to electrical (femoral nerve) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the motor cortex during isometric knee-extension and at rest were measured to assess central nervous system (voluntary activation, VA) and muscle contractile (potentiated twitch force, Qtw, pot) function. Electromyography responses of the rectus femoris to single- and paired-pulse TMS were used to assess corticospinal excitability and short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI), respectively. Fatigue and perceptions of muscle soreness were assessed via visual analog scales, and physical function was assessed through measures of jump (countermovement jump height and reactive strength index) and sprint performance.
Results: Competitive match-play elicited significant post-match declines in MVC force (−14%, P < 0.001) that persisted for 48 h (−4%, P = 0.01), before recovering by 72 h post-exercise. VA (motor point stimulation) was reduced immediately post-match (−8%, P < 0.001), and remained depressed at 24 h (−5%, P = 0.01) before recovering by 48 h post-exercise. Qtw,pot was reduced post-match (−14%, P < 0.001), remained depressed at 24 h (−6%, P = 0.01), before recovering by 48 h post-exercise. No changes were evident in corticospinal excitability or SICI. Jump performance took 48 h to recover, while perceptions of fatigue persisted at 72 h.
Conclusion: Competitive soccer match-play elicits substantial impairments in central nervous system and muscle function, requiring up to 48 h to resolve. The results of the study could have important implications for fixture scheduling, the optimal management of the training process, squad rotation during congested competitive schedules, and the implementation of appropriate recovery interventions. [full text]
Violins, cameras, school desks, computer mouses, can openers — these are just a few items that demonstrate how routinely disadvantaged left-handers are in this world.
One notable exception may be sports. Whether it’s Lou Gehrig in baseball, Wayne Gretzky in ice hockey, Martina Navratilova in tennis or Oscar De La Hoya in boxing, some of the best athletes in history have been portsiders.
But even in this realm, the southpaw advantage may vary, being more pronounced in sports where a player has less time to react to an opponent, like table tennis, according to Florian Loffing, a sports scientist at the University of Oldenburg.
Basketball’s talent pool has never been as deep as it is today. The sport has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few generations. There are players in the NBA from six continents, and American players in pro leagues in nearly every industrialized country on Earth. Players who go overseas are often out of sight, out of mind for NBA teams. Even the most diligent organizations can’t keep track of all of them. Pro basketball is like any other industry: It’s hard to get back on the expected career path once a player falls off the first time. There have always been a few players in the NBA who needed time overseas after college to develop their games, but that number is growing every year. The expected career path is starting to change.
“You have to look at it in terms of an age window. There aren’t many players who can play in the NBA at the age of 19, and the ones who can are usually pretty special,” one collegiate scouting director for an NBA team told me. “Even when you get to the 21- and 22-year-olds, there’s still a small number who are ready to contribute immediately on a good team. However, when those same guys are 25 and 26 years old, they have matured on and off the court, and the pool of NBA-caliber players around the world in that age range is much larger.”
… Almost 18 months on, Guardiola can stand back and declare his team unity mission to be a job well done, with Sunday’s 2-1 victory at Huddersfield Town, and the collective celebration among the players following Raheem Sterling’s late match-winner, highlighting that new reality at City of a group of players working as one.
And it makes a difference. One visible sign of the strength of the bond between a group of players is how they celebrate goals, and how many of them join in.
There were no lone City players drifting back to the centre-circle at Huddersfield after Sterling scored. All of them, with the exception of goalkeeper Ederson, were there to congratulate the England winger for producing the strike which restored the club’s eight-point lead at the top of the table and maintained their incredible run of form.
Nature, Scientific Reports; Ida Selbing & Andreas Olsson from
Learning what is dangerous by observing others can be safer and more efficient than individual learning. The efficiency of observational learning depends on how observational information is used, something we propose depends on our beliefs’ about others. Here, we investigated how described and actual abilities of another individual (a demonstrator) influenced performance and psychophysiology during learning of an observational avoidance task. Participants were divided into two groups. In each group there were two demonstrators who were described as either high (Described-High group) or low (Described-Low group) in their ability to learn the task. In both groups, one demonstrator had a high ability (Actual-High) and the other had a low ability (Actual-Low) to learn. Participants performed worse in the Described-Low compared to the Described-High group. Pupil dilation, and behavioral data in combination with reinforcement learning modeling, suggested that the described ability influenced performance by affecting the level of attention towards the observational information. Skin conductance responses and pupil dilation provided us with a separate measure of learning in addition to choice behavior. [full text]
Talent identification and selection in soccer is typically based on subjective evaluations of experienced coaches. Recently, there has been a trend to complement these subjective assessments with objective tests. However, there is currently no comprehensive overview of the prognostic relevance of objective measurements in youth soccer. Therefore, the primary purpose of the current study was to systematically review published empirical studies related to the prognostic relevance of physiological (e.g. endurance and speed) and physical characteristics (i.e. height and weight). Of 6876 initially identified studies, nine articles were included. In those studies, endurance (nine studies), change of direction (seven), height (seven), and weight (seven) received the most meaningful consideration within the literature. In regard to physiological predictors, between 16 and 29 effect sizes were tested for endurance, sprint, and change of direction, and about half of them were found to be significant with small to moderate effects (0.37 ≤ Mdn(d) ≤ 0.57). In addition, while only investigated in two studies all tested effect sizes for repeated sprint ability were found to be significant. Despite their frequent consideration in the literature, low numbers of significant effect sizes (≤ 26%) and magnitude (0.23 ≤ Mdn(d) ≤ 0.29) were found for the physical predictors height and weight. Overall, results appear to be dependent on the respective study design and, in particular, moderator variables (i.e. soccer development stage, performance level T1/T2, prognostic period, and sample size). Consequently, additional research seems warranted to more comprehensively investigate the predictive relevance of the individual characteristics using more homogeneous study designs. [full text]
Lower Extremity Review Magazine, Joseph Hamill, PhD, and Gillian Weir, PhD from
In spite of advancements in research and subsequent modifications to running footwear design, rates of running-related injuries have not decreased. That may be because researchers and designers have been focusing on the wrong variables.
… emerging technology has the potential to aid in load management, reduce injury risk and assist in gait re-training, however it’s important we are clear that such technology is reliable, valid and accurate and that the data it produces is relevant to the individual.
EurekAlert! Science News, Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute from
A new study led by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) identifies a signaling pathway that is essential for angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing vessels. The findings, published in Nature Communications, may improve current strategies to improve blood flow in ischemic tissue, such as that found in atherosclerosis and peripheral vascular disease associated with diabetes.
PLOS One; Mengmeng Wang, Lee-Ling Sharon Ong, Justin Dauwels, H. Harry Asada from
Angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing vessels, is a critical step in cancer invasion. Better understanding of the angiogenic mechanisms is required to develop effective antiangiogenic therapies for cancer treatment. We culture angiogenic vessels in 3D microfluidic devices under different Sphingosin-1-phosphate (S1P) conditions and develop an automated vessel formation tracking system (AVFTS) to track the angiogenic vessel formation and extract quantitative vessel information from the experimental time-lapse phase contrast images. The proposed AVFTS first preprocesses the experimental images, then applies a distance transform and an augmented fast marching method in skeletonization, and finally implements the Hungarian method in branch tracking. When applying the AVFTS to our experimental data, we achieve 97.3% precision and 93.9% recall by comparing with the ground truth obtained from manual tracking by visual inspection. This system enables biologists to quantitatively compare the influence of different growth factors. Specifically, we conclude that the positive S1P gradient increases cell migration and vessel elongation, leading to a higher probability for branching to occur. The AVFTS is also applicable to distinguish tip and stalk cells by considering the relative cell locations in a branch. Moreover, we generate a novel type of cell lineage plot, which not only provides cell migration and proliferation histories but also demonstrates cell phenotypic changes and branch information. [full text]
Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is a bony condition of the hip caused by repetitive abnormal contact between the femoral head and the acetabulum of the pelvis and has been found to be highly prevalent in young athletes with a peak risk ae of 12-13 year of age, before the epiphyseal plates fuse. Repetitive movements, mainly involving flexion, adduction, and internal rotation lead to bony overload causing asymmetrically fusion and bony overgrowth. Typical symptoms of FAI include deep anterior groin pain and progressive hip stiffness which are often exacerbated during sporting activity and some suggest might lead to a degradation in performance without factoring in the pain caused in acute presentations.
The aim of this study was to identify areas of athletic performance which might be negatively affected in young athletes by bony hip change and to identify any magnitude of possiblereductions in performance. The study was based on the hypothesis that athletes with FAI would show deficits in performance compared with healthy controls.
The Coyotes play 21 of their first 33 games on the road, 16 of those in the Central or Eastern time zones, and FOX Sports Arizona reported that the team will travel a total of 22,333 miles by Dec. 10.
That dizzying travel schedule creates problems for Rick Tocchet’s coaching staff and a young team that needs practice time to learn and grow. It also creates challenges for a training staff trying to help those players compete at optimal performance levels.
“Travel in itself always causes issues,” Coyotes Strength and Conditioning coach J.P. Major said. “There are so many variables and you just can’t account for all of them. It’s always read and react; have a great plan but plan to adapt because there are some things that just go wrong and you have to adjust accordingly.”