Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 12, 2018

… “He didn’t allow a sack all season, the first time in his career that he went the entire year without surrendering one. DeCastro also didn’t miss a snap all year, playing in 1,047. His pass protection was so impressive that he only surrendered 15 total pressures across 16 games, which earned him the third-best pass blocking efficiency score in the league at the position. He had five perfect games in pass protection, keeping clean sheets against multiple teams including some with top-quality players.”

That sounds about right, but good luck getting DeCastro to expound on it. He’d rather bathe in boiling grease than talk about his accomplishments. He is, however, more than willing to talk about his craft. One of the things that makes him special is his mobility at 6 feet 5, 316 pounds. And what a beautiful sight it is to see him and center Maurkice Pouncey pulling into the open field on any of several plays in the Steelers’ playbook.

Yes, ask DeCastro about that.

“A nice pull — you get (the running back) on the edge, get a nice crease for him, kick a guy out. It’s nice and smooth. Yeah, it’s a great feeling,” he said. “Any time you get a block on the second level or somethin’ and the (running back) sprints right by you, I mean, that’s great as a lineman. That’s really what you live for. Which is kind of sad when you think about it.”

“It wasn’t pretty,” says Ben Chilwell as he thinks back to a summer of hidden toil in the most unglamorous of settings. For three weeks, in the height of England’s hottest summer on record, the Leicester City left-back would ignore the temptations that come with being a cash-rich, time-rich 21-year-old and instead make his way to the local park near his home in Milton Keynes.

He had appointed a personal trainer, but the training was neither complicated nor scientific. “We were just doing horrible running,” Chilwell says. “Minging running. It was just sprints — stuff that is relevant to my position, running up and down to the halfway line as much as I could. The MK Dons boys were there as well, doing a bit of training, so I went to the other side of the pitch.”

Chilwell says it was easily the hardest he has worked before the start of a new season, and there can be no doubts over whether it has paid off. He has played every minute of Leicester’s Premier League campaign so far, completing more sprints than any of his team-mates and clocking the club’s fastest top speed on the pitch.

Before Sue Bird scored 14 points in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the W.N.B.A. semifinals to lift the Seattle Storm into the finals last week, she was sitting on the bench as her backup and protégé, Jordin Canada, hit two straight baskets, including a 3 with the shot clock running down, to give the Storm an early lead over the Phoenix Mercury in the final period.

That the Storm, now one win from a W.N.B.A. title after seizing a two-games-to-zero lead over the Washington Mystics Sunday afternoon, have come to rely so much on a rookie is no accident. Since Canada arrived, she has been a vital cog even as the team plans around her for the future.

“That shot is representative of who she is as a player, period,” Bird said of Canada. “And if you look at the way Jordin played in the playoffs, you can tell she’s a gamer, but you knew right away. Even if it’s at practice or a regular season game, when the shot clocks run down, Jordin finds a way to make a play.”

David Wright is scheduled to participate in a simulated game Saturday at Citi Field, the next step for the New York Mets’ captain as he tries to make a major league comeback from neck, back and shoulder injuries.

The third baseman hasn’t played in the big leagues since May 2016. He batted a combined .171 (7 for 41) with one double in 10 games for Class A St. Lucie and two with Triple-A Las Vegas last month before his rehab assignment expired on the final day of August.

For the first time in 17 years I will not be going back to school this fall. Saying that out loud is more daunting than I had anticipated. For the most part, the classmates that I graduated with can say that they are “going to grad school,” “starting a new job,” or “taking a year off to travel,” but I still don’t know where I lie. I am not taking any classes this year, I am not working anywhere consistently, and I am doing more than just traveling to explore, I’m traveling to race!

I am wrapping up a three-week training camp in New Zealand with the SMS, Craftsbury, and US Ski Team. When I walked through customs I had to write down my reason for visiting New Zealand: Was I a student? Was I visiting a family or friend? Was I working? What was my job? In the rush of the moment and due to habit, I wrote that I was still a student and continued on my way. I later had a few reflections; I still haven’t reached the point yet where I can say I have a job. I don’t have a salary and there are no company benefits. Yet, I work 24/7 toward my job — my job is ski racing. But why is this so hard for me to admit to myself? Is it because, for my entire life, I’ve been a student? What if I hadn’t taken this route? How do others make this decision?

… Paul Riley: Panera and pancakes.

We’re convinced that since we started doing this — we haven’t lost a game away from home so, we get pancakes from IHOP and bring them to Panera and eat in Panera. That’s our pregame, every away game, and we haven’t lost a game.

Diane Scavuzzo: I’m not so sure all the latest sports science nutrition data is going to agree with all that, but I think it’s wonderful. I love it.

Paul Riley: It might not, but what the hell, sometimes you got to do what you go to do.

We trust they make the right nutritional choices their body requires for peak performance.

The reason we went to this was we felt at home games we didn’t control the players’ menu, and after collaborating with the players, we felt the pre-game meal should be individualized — and, in all fairness, it has worked really well for our group.

If you’ve been following along on Baseball Twitter, there’s been some interesting talk about the role and importance of fascia. It’s one of those topics that gets considerable attention in the therapy world, for better or for worse, and is a bit of a contentious topic.

There are very ‘pro-fascia’ camps and others that dismiss it altogether. While there is considerable amounts of research looking at fascia’s physiological properties, there isn’t quite as much to go on from a practical perspective. Making the jump from what’s available in the scientific literature to how it affects treatment, training, performance and health, isn’t an easy process.

In the latest edition of Keeping up with Baseball Research (9/10/2018), I will highlight some of the recent literature on fascia as well as some of the research that I’ve revisited once again to solidify my own rationale for what I do with my athletes.

… does technology really enhance our decision-making ability? … “User experience and choice satisfaction can easily be conflated when good system design creates positive feelings about an experience, artificially leading participants to think good decisions have been made,” Schaffer said. “This can lead to false positive situations, where researchers may assume good decisions are being made due to a system’s appearance or ease of use.”

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has had huge success at the box office and increasingly with its teams, but the sports conglomerate is always looking for an edge.

Its latest venture – joining forces with Toronto’s Ryerson University, which is always looking to expand on its forward-thinking reputation – is designed to unearth the next great thinkers and their industry-changing ideas.

On Tuesday, MLSE and Ryerson will launch a think tank for innovation called the “Future of Sport Lab” (FSL), one of the first of its kind in North America.

The objective of the FSL is to create a new sports-business ecosystem, which brings together industry leaders, tech startups, faculty and students, to discover and foster new business solutions and technologies. The goals are wide-ranging, and could include anything from improving player performances or the fans’ experience.

Tech to help you sleep better has been around for years. And a recent boom is resulting in more people putting faith in questionable science

As deals struck by health care behemoths go, this was one of the stranger ones. On one side, you had a medical device giant, with a phalanx of PR professionals carefully guarding the company’s image. On the other, you had a consultant who didn’t sound much like a consultant:

“I am synthetic life form ‘Yoko K.,’ assembled in the US with components made in Japan,” one of her websites explained. “I am designed to assume the role of an ‘electronic musician.’ I am one of many secret agents sent to this time to plant magical thinking in people through the use of ‘pre-22nd century nostalgia Mars pop music.’”

In other words, Yoko K. Sen is an ambient electronic musician, born in Japan but transplanted to the United States, where she’s layered her breathy, machine-modulated vocals over ethereal blooms of synth at galleries, in concert halls, and on award-winning albums. In recent years, though, she’s created a new, more corporate niche for herself: revamping the soundscape in hospitals. Medtronic had hired her, late in 2017, for a related project, to help design the beeps patients would hear from their cardiac monitors at home.

The first simple blood test to identify your body’s precise internal time clock as compared to the external time has been developed by Northwestern Medicine scientists.

The test, TimeSignature – which requires only two blood draws – can tell physicians and researchers the time in your body despite the time in the external world. For instance, even if it’s 8 a.m. in the external world, it might be 6 a.m. in your body.

“This is a much more precise and sophisticated measurement than identifying whether you are a morning lark or an night owl,” said lead author Rosemary Braun, assistant professor of preventive medicine (biostatistics) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We can assess a person’s biological clock to within 1.5 hours.

As they grew into Super Bowl contenders, the Seahawks—especially the Legion of Boom defense—prided themselves on a ruthless internal competitiveness that lifted everyone and was the foundation of an NFL championship. But some former and current Seattle players say a growing rift developed, based largely on the special treatment some felt was afforded quarterback Russell Wilson. Now the team they believed was set up for a long run of success has been torn up and rebuilt around Wilson. Did it have to go down like this?

Australians spend nearly A$11 billion a year on sport and physical activity participation fees, according to the Australian Sports Commission.

Not surprisingly, many people believe these costs are becoming far too expensive. Retired football player and SBS sports analyst Craig Foster recently criticised the rising registration fees for football clubs across the country. He argued that elite-level sport leagues should increase their funding for grassroots participation.

Others agree that more needs to be done to reduce cost barriers and increase participation. Some experts are warning of a “growing grassroots divide between families able to afford junior sport” and those who cannot.

Hilary Parker and I just released part 2 of our book club discussion of Nigel Cross’s book Design Thinking and it centers around a profile of designer Gordan Murray, who spent his career designing Formula One race cars. One of the aspects of his job as a designer is taking a “systems approach” to solving problems. Coupled with that approach is his role in balancing the various priorities of members of his team. He describes himself as both dictator and diplomat in doing this aspect of the job.

When designing a complex object like a race car, there will be many people contributing who have specific expertise. It is their job to focus on what they think is the highest priority, but it is the designer’s job to put the whole car together and, on the way, raise some priorities and lower other priorities. The designer is at the center of activity and must have good relationships with every member of the team in order for everything to come together on time and on budget.

Data Analyst at the Center

A mentor once told me that in any large-ish coordinated scientific collaboration there will usually be regular meetings to discuss the data collection, data analysis, or both. Basically, a meeting to discuss data. And that these meetings, over time, tend to become the most important and influential meetings of the entire collaboration. It makes sense: Science is ultimately about the data and any productivity that results from the collaboration will be a function of the data collected. My mentor’s implication was that as a statistician directing the analyses of the group, these data meetings were an important place to be.