Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 1, 2017

The Vancouver Canucks announced on Thursday that forward Derek Dorsett will not return to their active roster due to health risks associated with playing, on the advice of team doctors.

“I’m devastated by the news. It will take a long time for this to truly sink in,” said Dorsett, who is signed through 2019 with Vancouver.

Dorsett, 30, underwent cervical fusion surgery in Dec. 2016, with general manager Jim Benning saying then that he was optimistic for a full recovery. The surgery, similar to what NFL quarterback Peyton Manning had before missing the 2011 season, was necessary after a neck injury left Dorsett with numbness in his arms.

Coach Vance Joseph said Thursday that the Broncos would be “really careful” with defensive end Derek Wolfe’s neck injury over the past five weeks of the season.

And given that Wolfe has already said publicly this week he’s still visiting with specialists and has experienced numbness in his leg and face, the remainder of his season is certainly in doubt as he continues to search for the source of his issue. Asked after Thursday’s practice about Wolfe’s status, Joseph said: “He’s still getting tests, we’re being really careful with that type of injury.”

Then asked if Wolfe had experienced numbness in his extremities, Joseph added: “I can’t speak to that … obviously it’s a neck, it’s serious, it’s his life. We want to be smart there.”

… The grind of getting up for games that mean more each week throughout December is something they’re experiencing for the first time, and the Eagles will need them to find a way to come out the other side without cracking.

An upcoming West Coast road swing that has them playing NFC West title contenders in back-to-back weeks without coming home in between normally would raise the alert level for young players.

But thanks to sports science, some strong veteran leadership and the overall feeling of euphoria generated by the team’s 10-1 start, the infamous “rookie wall” is not what it used be 10 years ago or even five years ago.

… [Matthew] Walker is the director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, and he’s also the author of the new book Why We Sleep, much of which is, unfortunately, filled with somewhat tired sleep advice. (Don’t drink caffeine too late in the day! Alcohol is not a magical sleep elixir! You can’t repay your “sleep debt” by sleeping longer on the weekends! Yeah, guy, we know.) But one idea he presents was new even to me, an increasingly grizzled health and science editor: that of the “sleep opportunity.”

This is the number of hours in which you give yourself the best chance of sleep, meaning that you’re in bed, your eyes are closed, and your phone is, preferably, turned off and stowed far away. You will not necessarily sleep this entire time, but at least you’ll be giving yourself the chance. My typical routine, for example, allows me a seven-hour sleep opportunity, but to actually get all seven of those hours assumes I’m falling asleep the minute I close my eyes, which seems … implausible. I know — this seems so obvious! But sometimes a discrete word or phrase helps to clarify an ambiguous concept, and “sleep opportunity” did that for me.

In his book, Walker writes that most people give themselves a sleep opportunity of only five to six-and-a-half hours, which translates to about four to six hours of actual sleep.

… Engineers, programmers and astronauts can lie down in the pod for 20 minutes at a time. With the outside world shut out by a large visor, the pod plays soothing sleep music before gently waking its occupant up with natural light patterns.

The company behind the pods, New York-based MetroNaps, also supplies law firms, management consultancies and airlines. Any business, in fact, that is “interested in attracting and retaining good-quality employees”, MetroNaps chief executive Christopher Lindholst told the Financial Times in a recent interview.

You can’t be super-lean all the time, so pick your moments—and watch your health

… But there is a little-known link behind the scenes to these two underdog success stories — Englishman Paul Balsom.

Balsom never graduated beyond Torquay’s youth team as a player but is now a key member of the backroom staff with Sweden and Leicester.

The Foxes’ head of sports science and analysis doubles up as the Swedish FA’s performance chief.

Speaking to SunSport, Balsom said: “At Leicester, there was a model that Nigel Pearson created. It was all about the players, it was all about a tight group.

… We need to find ways to prepare ourselves for a world where learning is a lifetime endeavor. The question then becomes: what will help us to learn faster so that we can quickly acquire whatever skills are required in the moment?

The learning pyramid

In that context, we would all benefit by expanding our horizons and exploring the learning pyramid outlined below that can ultimately become the key to sustained and accelerated learning for all of us. Skills are at the top of the pyramid – they are ultimately what helps us to achieve impact and create value in a specific context.

I was about to bring my laptop back into bed this morning. The cozy blankets and lounging potential seemed irresistible, but I decided against it and worked at my stand-up desk. Here’s why…

So many products and technologies today aim to increase our comfort. No, I’m not about to complain about indoor plumbing, washing machines, and microwaves (I’m not crazy). But I will suggest that these and other amazing innovations have confused us. When everything is geared to be more comfortable and easier, we begin to think that we need that in all areas of our lives. But comfort has a downside, or rather, discomfort has a counterintuitive upside!

Talent identification (TI) is a popular and hugely important topic within sports performance, with an ever-increasing amount of resources dedicated to unveiling the next sporting star. However, at present, most TI processes appear to select high-performing individuals at the present point in time, as opposed to identifying those individuals with the greatest capacity to improve. This represents a potential inefficiency within the TI process, reducing its effectiveness. In this article, we discuss whether the ability to adapt favorably, and with a large magnitude, to physical training can be considered a talent, testing it against proposed criteria. We also discuss whether, if such an ability can be considered a talent, being able to test for it as part of the TI process would be advantageous. Given that such a capacity is partially heritable, driven by genetic variation between individuals that mediate the adaptive response, we also explore whether the information gained from genetic profiling can be used to identify those with the greatest capacity to improve. Although there are some ethical hurdles which must be considered, the use of genetic information to identify those individuals with the greatest capacity appears to hold promise and may improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of contemporary TI programmes. [full text]

… what exactly drives uptake of health apps? There are many answers to this question, but here we propose a few.

Health apps must be interesting and easy to use

This one seems unbearably obvious, but as a field we have a long way to progress on this front. Most health apps today continue to work primarily through offering triggered messages and/or patient education. They do not capitalize on the opportunity to be more interactive or individualized. A 2015 study found a leading reason consumers stopped using a health app was loss of interest. This clearly does not bode well for wide-scale implementation.

Amazon’s AWS division today expanded its line-up of pre-trained machine learning tools with the launch of Amazon Rekognition Video. This new service works for both batch uploads and even real-time video streams, which gives Amazon a leg up on similar services from some of its competitors.

With Rekognition, AWS already offered a tool for analyzing static images and getting data about them out of those image files. With this video version, developers can now automatically get information about the objects in a video, the scenes they are set in and the activities that are happening in them. The service also includes support for person detection and recognition (and it’s pre-trained to recognize celebrities). It also can track people through a video and filter out potentially inappropriate content.

Recognizing objects and people in videos is quite a bit harder than doing the same thing in images.

AliveCor, the digital health company led by ex-Googler Vic Gundotra, says the Food and Drug Administration has approved its EKG band accessory for the Apple Watch. Gundotra says the Kardia Band, as the product is called, is the first Apple Watch health accessory to get FDA clearance.

Kardia Band attaches to the Apple Watch like any other replaceable watch band. The user rests a finger on the sensor pad embedded in the band, allowing an EKG reading to be taken.

The potential of recent advances in genetics research to supplement elite sport decision-making has potentially extensive implications, but remains highly controversial. One potential application is the use of genetic information to enhance exercise prescription, thereby positively influencing athletic performance and public health domains. Recent research suggests that this is both feasible and potentially beneficial.1 2 However, such an effective use of genetic information requires a clear understanding of the mechanism by which each reported single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mediates physical performance. In the absence of such a clear, mechanistic explanation, we are left with vague associations without causative roots. While uncovering gene associations is necessary, it is not sufficient to presume causation. Given the complex entangled routes through which genes and environment interact to express phenotype, superficial association-based logical inferences are likely to be misleading. [full text]

The Celtics’ rookie wing has thrived in Brad Stevens’s position-fluid team concept, just as Boston had hoped. As we move past 2017’s point-guard-heavy draft class and into 2018’s center-dominant crop, Tatum’s seamless addition to a championship contender brings up important questions about how teams should think about positionality.