Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 27, 2018

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for December 27, 2018

 

New England Patriots QB Tom Brady reaffirms plan to play beyond 2019

ESPN NFL, Mike Reiss from

Reflecting on what football has meant in his life, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady repeated his intention to continue playing in 2019 and beyond.

“I absolutely believe I will. I know I’ve talked about it for a long time: I have goals to not only play next year, but beyond that,” Brady said in his weekly interview on Westwood One. “I’m going to try to do it as best I possibly can. I’m going to give it everything I have, like I always have.

 

Asher-Smith says self belief has helped her performance

Yahoo Sport UK, Sportsbeat from

… The 23-year-old athlete was named Sportswoman of the Year at the Sports Journalists’ Association British Sport Awards after she became a triple European champion in Berlin, claiming gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. …
“I’m getting a bit older, a bit more mature and even though I’m quite young, I have been racing at senior level since I was 17.

“I’m getting more used to things and starting to believe in myself.”

 

Nick Nurse: Kawhi Leonard should be OK for back-to-backs in Jan.

ESPN NBA, Tim Bontemps from

… “No promises, but I think we’re there.”

Saturday night was the ninth time in 35 games that Leonard sat out. Five of those absences have come as part of what the team has deemed “load management” as he continues to recover from the left quad tendinopathy that kept him sidelined for all but nine games last season, when he was with the San Antonio Spurs. The other four came when Leonard suffered a pair of minor injuries that caused him to miss both halves of the team’s two other back-to-back sets so far this season.

 

Furiously fast Utah receiver Jaylen Dixon burst onto the scene in 2018 by learning to harness his own speed

The Salt Lake Tribune, Christopher Kamrani from

Fast doesn’t mean open.

Speed doesn’t even equal targets.

And just because you might possess a skill that allows you to run beyond an opponent at a normal clip doesn’t mean that you’re going to become a focal point of any offense. Jaylen Dixon learned that from a young age, and even now, as a redshirt freshman at the University of Utah, he still is. In high school, he tried playing basketball in the offseason. But it wasn’t for him. Looking back, the wide receiver said he was “just too fast for myself” on the court.

 

What Mike Phelan will bring to Manchester United with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Manchester Evening News, Ciaran Kelly from

With a combined age of just 114, you would have done well to find a younger coaching team in the Premier League than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Michael Carrick and Kieran McKenna.

Was it any wonder, then, that Solskjaer wanted to bring in some heavyweight coaching experience and turned to Mike Phelan before flying out to Manchester on Tuesday?

Only the 56-year-old did not initially answer as he was busy lecturing and coaching at Burnley College after returning home for Christmas while the biggest story in football played out.

 

Mark Cuban clarifies comment on young players needing to go to Slovenia

Clutch Points, Paolo Songco from

… Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has come out to defend his earlier message pertaining to the development of youth basketball in the country. The 60-year-old billionaire has been called out for his statement, which is considered by some to be downright racist.

In an earlier remark, Cuban shared his thoughts on how he believes the AAU is doing more harm than good in terms of developing the culture of basketball among America’s youth.

 

What can we learn from people who succeed later in life?

Ideas.Ted.com, Albert-László Barabási from

As a society, we tend to focus on prodigies — the young stars in their fields. But what if we looked at the people at the opposite end of the timeline instead? By studying them, network scientist Albert-László Barabási has come up with lessons that can benefit us all.

 

Gooooooal: Danish athletic recruiting startup, Tonsser, just scored $6.2m in funding

The Hustle, Wes Schlagenhauf from

Somewhere out there, the next Messi or Ronaldo is carving up his or her shin-guarded inferiors in the flats without breaking a sweat — and soon, that next scissor-kicking legend could be discovered by an app.

Tonsser, the Copenhagen-based soccer performance app that describes itself as “LinkedIn for young soccer players,” just scored $6.2m in Series A funding from a group led by early-stage investors.

 

Three-dimensional cameras and skeleton pose tracking for physical function assessment: A review of uses, validity, current developments and Kinect alternatives

Gait & Posture journal from

Background

Three-dimensional camera systems that integrate depth assessment with traditional two-dimensional images, such as the Microsoft Kinect, Intel Realsense, StereoLabs Zed and Orbecc, hold great promise as physical function assessment tools. When combined with point cloud and skeleton pose tracking software they can be used to assess many different aspects of physical function and anatomy. These assessments have received great interest over the past decade, and will likely receive further study as the integration of depth sensing and augmented reality smartphone cameras occurs more in everyday life.
Research Question

The aim of this review is to discuss how these devices work, what options are available, the best methods for performing assessments and how they can be used in the future.
Methods

Firstly, a review of the Microsoft Kinect devices and associated artificial intelligence, automated skeleton tracking algorithms is provided. This includes a narrative critique of the validity and clinical utility of these devices for assessing different aspects of physical function including spatiotemporal, kinematic and inverse dynamics data derived from gait and balance trials, and anatomical assessments performed using the depth sensor information. Methods for improving the accuracy of data are examined, including multiple-camera systems and sensor fusion with inertial monitoring units, model fitting, and marker tracking. Secondly, alternative hardware, including other structured light and time of flight methods, stereoscopic cameras and augmented reality leveraging smartphone and tablet cameras to perform measurements in three-dimensional space are summarised. Software options related to depth sensing cameras are then discussed, focussing on recent advances such as OpenPose and web-based methods such as PoseNet.
Results and Significance

The clinical and non-laboratory utility of these devices holds great promise for physical function assessment, and recent developments could strengthen their ability to provide important and impactful health-related data.

 

Sabermetric Research: Does the NHL’s “loser point” help weaker teams?

Phil Birnbaum, Sabermetric Research blog from

Back when I calculated that it took 73 NHL games for skill to catch up with luck in the standings, I was surprised it was so high. That’s almost a whole season. In MLB, it was less than half a season, and in the NBA, Tango found it was only 14 games, less than one-fifth of the full schedule.

Seventy-three games seemed like that was a lot of luck. Why so much? As it turns out, it was an anomaly — the NHL was just having an era where differences in team talent were small. Now, it’s back under 40 games.

But I didn’t know that at the time, so I had a different explanation: it must be the extra point the NHL started giving out for overtime losses. The “loser point,” I reasoned, was reducing the importance of team talent, by giving the worse teams more of a chance to catch up to the better teams.

 

There’s a Downside to the Opener

FanGraphs Baseball, Sheryl Ring from

… there’s a part of the opener we really haven’t explored yet – and it’s one the always-thoughtful Zack Greinke discussed with Steve Miller earlier this year.

“[The opener is] really smart, but it’s also really bad for baseball,” Arizona starter Zack Greinke says. “It’s just a sideshow. There’s always ways to get a little advantage, but the main problem I have with it is you do it that way, then you’ll end up never paying any player what he’s worth because you’re not going to have guys starting, you’re not going to have guys throwing innings.

“You just keep shuffling guys in and out constantly so nobody will ever get paid. Someone’s going to make the money, either the owners or the players. You keep doing it that way, the players won’t make any money.”

 

We Are Witnessing the Future of LeBron James

The Ringer, Danny Chau from

It took Steph Curry and the Warriors’ era-defining influence to clarify the lengths the King will go to catch up with Michael Jordan’s bulletproof NBA legacy

 

Rethinking the Mental Game

Jeff Sackmann, Heavy Topspin blog from

… An extreme version of the ‘mental game’ position is one I’ve heard attributed to James Blake, that the difference between #1 and #100 is all mental. (I’m guessing that’s an oversimplification of what Blake thinks, but I’ve heard similar opinions often enough that the general idea is worth considering.) That’s a bit hard to stomach–does anybody think that Radu Albot (the current No. 99) is as talented as Rafael Nadal? But once we backtrack a little bit from the most extreme position, we can see its appeal. At the moment, both Bernard Tomic and Ernests Gulbis are ranked between 80 and 100. Can you say with confidence that those guys aren’t as talented as top-tenners Kevin Anderson or Marin Cilic? Yet Tomic often excels in pressure situations, and Cilic is the one known to crumble.

The problem with Tomic, Gulbis, and so many of the innumerable underachievers in the history of sport, isn’t that they fall apart when the stakes are high.

 

When the Patriots’ secondary is outplaying Tom Brady, things have changed

The Guardian, Oliver Connolly from

… When aging quarterbacks decline, the drop is usually precipitous. That’s not the case with Brady, though: we aren’t in Peyton Manning-2015 territory yet. Almost everything is identical to past seasons, except where the ball ends up once it leaves his hand. He’s missed lots of easy throws, throws he used to make with the regularity of the sun setting in the west. Opposing defenses have blitzed him relentlessly, and he’s caved, something that would have been unthinkable against the Brady of old.

It’s not that he’s dealing with an injury, either. “I feel great. I feel 100%,” Brady said after Sunday’s game. It’s hard to find a fix: if Brady, as he says, isn’t injured, and his arm isn’t impaired, then what gives?

 

College football a business, players now treating it as such

USA Today Sports, Detroit Free Press, Shawn Windsor from

… If Michigan linebacker Devin Bush Jr. wants to skip the Peach Bowl and get ready for the NFL draft? He should. If MSU cornerback Justin Layne wants to skip the Redbox Bowl and do the same? He should, too.

You can hate it. You can wish every eligible — and healthy — player available would suit up for whatever bowl game your team makes. You can pine for the era when those players did suit up.

You know, like in 2015, the year before running backs Christian McCaffrey (Stanford) and Leonard Fournette (LSU) skipped their bowl games and set off weeks of hand-wringing about the demise of the team ethos, sportsmanship, sacrifice and integrity.

 

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