Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 20, 2018

… Odoi, who is 5ft 10in, has benefited from Jokanovic’s decision to turn him into a centre-back at the start of last season. “Before I was a full-back,” he says. “In Belgium a lot of forwards knew I would win headers, even if you are 6ft 3in. I have a pretty good leap. I was always small, so I was used to jumping. It trains your muscles. People who were tall never had to jump and then when everyone grows, they maybe only jump 20cm and the smaller guy can jump 30cm or 40cm.”

He is accustomed to being written off and was studying to become a PE teacher before making it as a footballer. The former Anderlecht defender’s high school doubled up as a football academy and the stars were Burnley’s Steven Defour and Napoli’s Dries Mertens.

“We would have meetings before training and I remember one when I was 16,” Odoi says. “It was: ‘Denis, we know you are not going to become a professional footballer.’ But now I am one of the guys who plays in the Premier League. We didn’t have the best bond, me and the teachers.

… “Every camp we’re coming closer together and every game is a different lesson for us so now we just want to prove ourselves against Peru,” Sargent said. “My goal coming into these camps is to be a starter, so I just have to work my hardest and see what coach has planned for me.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think age really matters,” Sargent said. “It’s who is best for the job and I’m really working hard to show that I can play with this team and be a good piece of the puzzle.”

For many WNBA players, the end of league play means a quick break before heading overseas to play even more basketball until the WNBA season starts up again in the spring. But some players either forgo international play altogether or squeeze in other activities prior to heading out to their other teams. Here’s a roundup of what a few of those players (and teams) are doing this WNBA offseason.

… The sources said that Bosa met with OSU coach Urban Meyer and some of his staff on Sunday to let them know of the decision he, his father John Bosa and the family had reached about his future.

John Bosa told The Dispatch two weeks ago that conjecture about his son’s possibility of playing again this season for the Buckeyes was premature, since no decision could be made about that until at least early November after Nick Bosa was scheduled to have the repair evaluated by the surgeon who did it, Dr. William Meyers of the Vincera Institute in Philadelphia.

As the Sparta Science blog approaches its tenth year in existence, many different topics relating to human performance have been covered in great depth and re-visited over the past decade. Looking back, it is fun to see the evolution of how the industry has progressed and similarly how our insights have been able to grow with the growth of our training facility, software, and database. Because Sparta has been around for so long, those a bit newer to our blog often have many questions around our company and technology. The different assessments we implement and terminology we use (while simple on the surface) are a result of the research, testing, data collection, discussions, experience, and knowledge from countless individuals over the years.

Those who have been following along have seen some of these evolutions occur in real-time. Most of the questions we get from those who aren’t as familiar with us revolve around our assessments, software, and database; and as an (re)introduction, today we are going to take a step back to do an overview of three concepts that have been dissected in great depth over the years: Load, Explode, and Drive.

The ukactive Research Institute has announced plans to make all academic research it conducts available as ‘pre-print articles’ to stakeholders in the physical activity sector.

Accidents will happen. Mistakes will be made. It’s an unavoidable part of life. But what’s important is how we reflect on those mistakes and learn from them. Japan’s train industry, responsible for transporting millions of people each day, understandably takes safety very seriously. And their introspection and dedication to not repeating the past was on full display recently when JR East, one of the country’s major passenger railway companies, unveiled the new expansion to their “Exhibition Hall of Historical Accidents.”

Picking up a new stick from the bench requires a well-oiled machine. The process of getting a fresh twig can be the difference between a timely goal or unintentionally being a man down.

… The basic trade-off you’d expect to see in triathlon results is that a particularly good performance in one discipline will come at the cost of a sub-par performance in the one or both of the other two. This could show up in several different ways. In a series of performances by one particular athlete, unusually fast splits in, say, the swim would be accompanied by slower-than-normal bike or run splits—a simple question of pacing. There might also be genetic trade-offs, where triathletes who record good swim times have characteristics like broad shoulders and short legs that work against them on the bike and run. And training decisions matter too: given a finite amount of time and energy, a disproportionate amount of training time dedicated to one discipline will come at the expense of performance in the other two.

What’s particularly interesting about triathlon results is that they span a vast range of performance levels, from sub-nine-hour pros to age-groupers just dipping under the 17-hour cut-off. That’s important, because there’s a debate in evolutionary biology about whether these sorts of trade-offs are truly unavoidable.

On Nov. 19 and 20 at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., four NCAA men’s basketball teams participating in the 2018 College Basketball Hall of Fame Classic have been granted waivers suspending the NCAA’s rules against electronic devices on the sidelines during games. Coaches for Missouri State, Nebraska, Texas Tech and USC will be able to use tablets integrated into a spatial tracking system called ShotTracker.

ShotTracker uses sensors installed in arenas, on players’ bodies and in the basketballs to provide a wealth of data about player and team performance. In addition to the system, ShotTracker will provide each team with a liaison to instruct the teams on how best to use the system.

This will not only be the first time such technology has been utilized in regular-season NCAA D1 men’s basketball games, but the first such event for ShotTracker to provide its services for. ShotTracker has been utilized on a similar scale prior. The NAIA has utilized the system for its national men’s basketball championship tournament for several years. Multiple D1 schools have used ShotTracker in practices as well.

When Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski split the uprights on a 48-yard field goal in the first quarter against the Chiefs on Sunday night, the kick seemed unremarkable enough. But after a commercial break and the ensuing kickoff, NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast debuted a new feature, SNF Kicks, that tracked the trajectory with a TrackMan radar and told a deeper story.

This Gostkowski kick left his foot at 74 miles per hour, reached an apex of 44 feet above the turf, and would have been good from 57 yards.

Sports performance data startup Fusion Sport, which counts AFL premiership winners the West Coast Eagles among its client base, has raised $3 million in its first-ever round of funding since it was founded 15 years ago.

The raise was led by Equity Venture Partners, and also includes Adrian Di Marco, founder of ASX-listed TechnologyOne.

Co-founder Dr Markus Deutsch tells StartupSmart the Fusion Sport platform collates data on an athlete’s activity, providing dashboards and analytics to “bring meaning to the data” and give coaches an insight into what they can do to maximise performance.

… Vision is intended sports whose play tends to flow rather than stop and start, such as soccer, rugby, basketball, lacrosse, and handball. The program syncs wearable tracking data with video, giving analysts and coaches another key input when reviewing game play. If a midfielder was out of position in a formation, the wearable might indicate either a poor decision or a physical inability to get to the intended spot.

The Vision platform adds features to the player data such as the ability to draw on the video, automated tagging, and sharing. In its heritage as a wearable company, Catapult has previously emphasized individual performance. But the Australian tech company is broadening from micro to macro by including data from the team to consider group tactics through formations and other patterns of movement.

Tuning materials for optimal optical and electrical properties is becoming commonplace. Now, researchers and manufacturers may be able to tune materials for thermal conductivity by using a squid-inspired protein made of multiple DNA repeats.

“Controlling thermal transport in modern technologies — refrigeration, data storage, electronics or textiles — is an unsolved problem,” said Melik Demirel, professor of engineering science and mechanics and director, Center for Research on Advanced Fiber Technologies at Penn State. “For example, most standard plastic materials have very low thermal conductivity and they are thermal insulators. These squid-based bio-materials that we are working on have low conductivity at ambient humidity, but they can be engineered so that their thermal conductivity increases dramatically.”

In this case, the increase is dependent on how many tandem repeats are in the protein, and can be 4.5 times larger than increases seen in conventional plastics as tested by Patrick E. Hopkins, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, engineering science and mechanics and physics, University of Virginia. Tandem repeats are repeating strings of DNA that are found in nature, in this case, in squid ring teeth.

Nordic Semiconductor today announces that Creative Medical, a Shenzhen, China-based medical technology company, has selected Nordic’s nRF52810 Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) to provide the processing power and wireless connectivity for its ‘PC-60F Fingertip Oximeter’.

The PC-60F is a Bluetooth LE fingertip pulse oximeter designed for use in hospitals, clinics, and at home, that uses propietary algorithms and non-invasive optics to accurately measure an individual’s current oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse rate (PR), and perfusion index (PI).

Toronto-based Myant has announced the launch of a partnership with Mayo Clinic to bring Mayo Clinic’s patented algorithms for heart monitoring and arrhythmia detection to Myant’s SKIIN textile computing platform.

The agreement gives Myant exclusive license to Mayo Clinic’s technology for use in its textile computing or smart clothing projects, including its first generation of SKIIN smart underwear. The collaboration aims to help people at risk of developing Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), and give patients and doctors the ability to proactively monitor heart activity using clothing that detects normal or abnormal heart rhythm.

This narrative review, excerpted here, sought to determine the prevalence of incorrectly fitted footwear and to examine its association with foot pain and foot disorders across 18 studies involving 3,205 patients.

In professional soccer and other elite sports, medical and performance screening of athletes (also termed periodic health examination or PHE) is common practice. The purposes of this are: (1) to assist in identifying prevalent conditions that may be a threat to safe participation, (2) to assist in setting benchmark targets for rehabilitation or performance purposes and (3) to assist clinicians in determining which athletes may be at risk of future injury and selecting appropriate injury prevention strategies to reduce the perceived risk. However, when using PHE as an injury prevention tool, are clinicians seeking to identify potential causes of injury or to predict future injury? This Current Opinion aims to examine the conceptual differences between aetiology and prediction of injury while relating these areas to the capabilities of PHE in practice. We also introduce the concept of prognosis—a broader approach that is closely related to prediction—and why this may have greater applicability to PHE of professional athletes. [full text]

In 1905, 18 college and amateur players died during football games. With some encouragement from President Theodore Roosevelt, safety guidelines for the sport were put into place, and, according to its official website, the NCAA was founded in 1906 “to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitative athletics practices of the time.”

Goodness, things sure do change a lot in 112 years.

These days, the NCAA still claims to be a “member-led organization dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes.” But, in reality, it’s a billion-dollar corporation masquerading as a non-profit whose main mission is to make sure “student” athletes don’t get paid.

Safety isn’t just an afterthought for the organization; it’s something it actively avoids taking any responsibility for.

… The reasoning behind the different approaches is anything but scientific, and often has to do with a number of factors unrelated to the drug itself. In some cases, it’s the relationship between the league and the players’ union when the policy was written. In others, the policy reflects the public’s attitude and perception of the league. And finally, in leagues with the harshest testing and control policies, attitudes towards marijuana can be linked back to the demographics and makeup of the league itself.

So, with all that in mind, let’s take a look at how the major leagues and players unions approach the recreational use of marijuana and as an alternative, medical treatment.

Nearly 800 dietary supplements sold over the counter from 2007 through 2016 contained unapproved drug ingredients, a new analysis of US Food and Drug Administration data found. More than one unapproved pharmaceutical ingredient was found in 20% of those supplements, the study published Friday in JAMA Network Open showed.

The presence of prescription medicines, often at unknown concentrations, means these supplements are essentially “unapproved drugs” that could be harmful to users’ health, according to the study authors.

“These products have the potential to cause severe adverse health effects owing to accidental misuse, overuse, or interaction with other medications, underlying health conditions, or other drugs within the same dietary supplement,” wrote the authors, led by Madhur Kumar of the California Department of Public Health Food and Drug Branch.

… More nuanced studies have supported what has been observed anecdotally in individual runners: It’s possible to perform well at hydration losses of greater than 2 percent. Haile Gebrselassie lost almost 10 percent of his body weight while winning the 2009 Dubai Marathon. In one study of more than 600 runners at a 2009 marathon, the fastest lost the greatest amount of weight during the race; all of those who broke 3 hours lost more than 3 percent.

One reason that it’s possible to perform at a high level despite seemingly inadequate fluid intake: When you run, your body releases water as carbohydrates and other energy sources are burned. (About three grams of water are stored with every gram of glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate, a fact that helps explain pre-marathon carboloading bloating.) “This effect adds up to a situation where, under common exercise conditions, the water generated in this manner could replace around 10 percent of the water lost in sweat,” [Martin] Hoffman wrote in an email.



In Hoffman’s new study, there was no apparent benefit when the runners followed a set drinking plan and finished less dehydrated. But is there harm? Other than the rare but dangerous condition of hyponatremia, not really.

Colleges often justify the hefty costs and baggage of a big-time football program by highlighting the branding boost that comes with a competitive team. What most of these nonprofit institutions fail to mention is just how profitable the pigskin can be.

Football generated roughly $4.64 billion in operating profits for U.S. colleges last year, according to a Business Journals analysis of financial data submitted by some 885 institutions with school-sponsored teams. Those numbers equate to an an average operating profit of $5.24 million per school, although the variance among bottom lines was broad; powerhouse schools such as the University of Texas, the University of Tennessee and the University of Alabama each topped the $100 million profitability threshold, while 52 schools failed to crack $100,000.

Big-time college football long ago whistled past the pretense that it is not an enormous business. It is a vast, intricate revenue machine whose essential parts require huge amounts of funding.

So in Baton Rouge earlier this year, few were surprised by the four-year, $10 million contract extension (and potential modest bonuses) that Louisiana State gave to Dave Aranda, its linebackers coach, associate head coach and defensive coordinator.

“There was a battle from Texas A&M; they came after him hard,” L.S.U. Coach Ed Orgeron said. “But he likes what we’re doing here. He believes we’re going to win a championship.”

… A big part of that movement has been player development through a nutritional program and strength and conditioning program.

“The teams that end up playing in those really cool games at the end of the year are pretty good at the line of scrimmage,” Cristobal said.

“I think what really stands out in this whole thing,” he said, “is through our coaching staff, strength and conditioning, nutrition, our sports science center, our training staff, the player development here has taken on a new level.”

Winning the offseason — signing the marquee free agent and/or making the headline-grabbing trade — does not correlate strongly with actual winning. The San Diego Padres “won” the 2014-15 offseason by adding Craig Kimbrel, James Shields and a host of other players, then went on to lose 88 games the following season. The previous winter, Seattle shocked the baseball world by outbidding the Yankees for All-Star Robinson Cano, but the Mariners still haven’t made the playoffs since 2001. In December 2011, the Los Angeles Angels signed Albert Pujols to a 10-year, $240 million contract — a contract that quickly became one of the great albatrosses in the sport. The deal has compromised the Angels’ ability to improve their club; Angels star Mike Trout has participated in only three playoff games in his career.

But last winter, something unusual happened: The Milwaukee Brewers won the offseason and went on to win in the actual season. The Brewers, who will begin the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday, acquired the best player in the trade market last winter in Christian Yelich and the best player in the free-agent market in Lorenzo Cain. They also found an undervalued arm in Jhoulys Chacin.

He prefers quick video sessions from the comfort of his office couch and doesn’t plan to fuss with success. Rookie coach Todd Reirden is ready to guide the Capitals’ in their first post-Stanley Cup campaign.

Twenty-nine teams involving 61 analysts used the same data set to address the same research question: whether soccer referees are more likely to give red cards to dark-skin-toned players than to light-skin-toned players. Analytic approaches varied widely across the teams, and the estimated effect sizes ranged from 0.89 to 2.93 (Mdn = 1.31) in odds-ratio units. Twenty teams (69%) found a statistically significant positive effect, and 9 teams (31%) did not observe a significant relationship. Overall, the 29 different analyses used 21 unique combinations of covariates. Neither analysts’ prior beliefs about the effect of interest nor their level of expertise readily explained the variation in the outcomes of the analyses. Peer ratings of the quality of the analyses also did not account for the variability. These findings suggest that significant variation in the results of analyses of complex data may be difficult to avoid, even by experts with honest intentions. Crowdsourcing data analysis, a strategy in which numerous research teams are recruited to simultaneously investigate the same research question, makes transparent how defensible, yet subjective, analytic choices influence research results.

… This post isn’t about the ‘how’ of skill development but rather a look at the definitions and classifications of skills. It’s my belief that all coaches should have an understanding of the underlying science of ‘motor learning’ before being able to design practices and training sessions that effectively target the vast array of skills needed to perform at an elite level.

The aim in this article is to define the concept of ‘skills’ – detailing their classifications and providing examples from varying tennis scenarios.

The Premier League should be “taxed” to improve grassroots football facilities following the collapse of the Wembley sale, former Football Association chairman David Bernstein says.

Fulham owner Shahid Khan offered £600m for Wembley but withdrew his offer after the plan became “divisive”.

The FA had said it would invest the proceeds of the sale into improving grassroots football facilities.

“It’s a national disgrace,” Bernstein told BBC Radio 5 live.