Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 15, 2019

… Murray himself said yesterday that current surgical interventions haven’t been sufficient, and that he is debating having an additional operation – hip resurfacing. “For him to consider resurfacing, it’d suggest that he has quite severe osteoarthritis,” says Winston Kim, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Manchester Hip and Knee Clinic.

Resurfacing is a lighter-touch approach than a whole hip replacement, where both the top of the thighbone and the socket into which it sits are replaced with artificial versions. Instead, in an attempt to worsen the wear on the bone at the top of the thigh, the femur is smoothed down and covered with a metal cap, while a layer of metal is placed within the pelvic socket in which it sits.

Rather than bone rubbing against bone, causing severe pain, metal rubs against metal – while a significant amount of the patient’s original bones around the hip area remain intact. “The thought process is about bone conserving,” says Kim. “But the more you use it, the more damage that is done.”

Christian Pulisic made U.S. soccer history last week when he reached an agreement to join Chelsea in the coming summer transfer window. Borussia Dortmund, where Pulisic has played since 2015, will pocket $73 million for the rights to him — by far the largest fee ever for an American. But this transfer raises a number of questions: Is Pulisic worth the money? What can Chelsea expect from a young player out of the Bundesliga, and how well does the American fit his new club’s needs? How will Pulisic slot into manager Maurizio Sarri’s system, and what can fans expect to see from him in the coming years?

The first question is how to adjust for a transfer from the Bundesliga, the top tier of German soccer. Do we expect Pulisic’s production to drop off significantly from Germany to England? Given the players who have moved between the two leagues before, the answer is no.

It’s the regular retirement question and it usually gets a stock answer from Roger Federer. But, in an emotional in-depth interview, he revealed to me as close as you’re going to get to his retirement plan.

“Wimbledon stands out as maybe a place,” he said. “I don’t have the fairytale ending in my head saying there has to be another title somewhere. I hope it doesn’t end with an injury. I’d like to go out on my terms.” So, no date, but at least we have a possible, albeit obvious place.

It turns out Federer is as meticulous and prepared in his answers for an interview as he is on court. In a wide-ranging and candid interview on a Dubai rooftop, he discusses his passion to educate kids in Africa, the tragic death of his mentor and his first kiss with his wife Mirka. Turns out the unstoppable tennis machine hides a big heart.

Exercise is a stressor that induces various psychophysiological responses, which mediate cellular adaptations in many organ systems. To maximize this adaptive response, coaches and scientists need to control the stress applied to the athlete at the individual level. To achieve this, precise control and manipulation of the training load are required. In 2003, the authors introduced a theoretical framework to define and conceptualize the measurable constructs of the training process. They described training load as having 2 measurable components: internal and external load. The aim of this commentary is to extend, clarify, and refine both the theoretical framework and the definitions of internal and external training load to avoid misinterpretation of this concept.

Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid has worked his butt off to be the best hockey player in the world. He has consulted with a skills coach since age 11. Coaches gush over his effectiveness with crossovers; he pivots and cuts as well as anyone. A six-second clip of his edge work posted to Instagram last summer — him breezing around metal bars on the ice while remaining low on his turns and somehow keeping control of the puck — has more than 300,000 views (and 800-plus comments, with most followers in awe).

All of that training, however, came with a sacrifice: He didn’t work his butt off at all. Actually, his lower half became too big to fit into most pants.

… there are coaches and players (even parents) that often seek ‘tennis-specific’ training. Depending on how you define it, ‘tennis-specific’ can mean a lot of different things. What I’m sure of, however, is that there’s nothing more physically specific to tennis than simply playing the sport of tennis. And further to that, playing tournament tennis. Yes you read those last 2 sentences correctly.

I’ve said this before – and I’m sure I’ll say it again – tennis players lack ‘proper’ physical preparation. And a progression that makes sense, both practically, and scientifically.

When it comes to physical preparation, you must realize there’s a training continuum that exists. This post will take a stab at explaining this general to tennis-specific training continuum – and at the same time, attempt to link it to tennis preparation.

… it turned out that the physical impacts on endurance and fullness were often more substantial among the volunteers who believed they had the gene variant and did not than among those who actually harbored it.

These findings suggest that “people tend to attribute more power to genes than they probably should,” says Bradley Turnwald, a doctoral student at Stanford who conducted the study with the senior author, Alia Crum, and others.

Our mind-sets, or mental expectations about ourselves, seem to play an equal or even greater role than does our DNA in shaping some of our bodies’ reactions to diet and exercise, Mr. Turnwald says.

Objectives

The present paper elucidates some cognitive mechanisms of expertise in sport that have emerged from recent studies of three topics in psychology: motor imagery; flow and “clutch” states; and the “quiet eye” phenomenon.
Design

A selective narrative review was conducted of research on the three preceding topics. Special consideration was given to recent studies by European researchers on these topics.
Method

Following a brief overview of theoretical approaches to sport expertise, the paper examines certain cognitive mechanisms of elite athletic performance that have emerged from recent studies of motor imagery; flow and “clutch” states; and the “quiet eye” phenomenon. In the final section, conclusions are drawn about theoretical progress in understanding the cognitive mechanisms of expertise in sport.
Results

The mechanisms underlying sport expertise reflect both task-specific and universal cognitive processes (e.g., mental representations).
Conclusion

Considerable progress has been made in identifying the cognitive mechanisms underlying expertise in sport but additional research is required to address certain unresolved issues in this field.

For doctors and medical researchers repairing the human body, a 3D printer has become almost as valuable as an x-ray machine, microscope, or a sharp scalpel. Bioengineers are using 3D printers to make more durable hip and knee joints, prosthetic limbs and, recently, to produce living tissue attached to a scaffold of printed material.

Researchers say that bio-printed tissue can be used to test the effects of drug treatments, for example, with an eventual goal of printing entire organs that can be grown and then transplanted into a patient. The latest step toward 3D-printed replacements of failed human parts comes from a team at UC San Diego. It has bio-printed a section of spinal cord that can be custom-fit into a patient’s injury.

… “More information isn’t necessarily good information,” HockeyData’s Garret Hohl said in an interview. HockeyData is a Vancouver-based provider of hockey-specific analytics and information to teams, players, agents and scouts.

Still, there are three areas Hohl believes will be enhanced through improved puck and player tracking: better evaluation of player performance — data points that analysts have long craved is more complete information about passing and goalie positioning — better understanding of player fatigue, and a better understanding how team systems work.

On the latter point, Hohl points out how data analysis in systems has been revolutionary in basketball.

The use of artificial intelligence, and the deep-learning subtype in particular, has been enabled by the use of labeled big data, along with markedly enhanced computing power and cloud storage, across all sectors. In medicine, this is beginning to have an impact at three levels: for clinicians, predominantly via rapid, accurate image interpretation; for health systems, by improving workflow and the potential for reducing medical errors; and for patients, by enabling them to process their own data to promote health. The current limitations, including bias, privacy and security, and lack of transparency, along with the future directions of these applications will be discussed in this article. Over time, marked improvements in accuracy, productivity, and workflow will likely be actualized, but whether that will be used to improve the patient–doctor relationship or facilitate its erosion remains to be seen. [full text]

Big data has become the ubiquitous watch word of medical innovation. The rapid development of machine-learning techniques and artificial intelligence in particular has promised to revolutionize medical practice from the allocation of resources to the diagnosis of complex diseases. But with big data comes big risks and challenges, among them significant questions about patient privacy. Here, we outline the legal and ethical challenges big data brings to patient privacy. We discuss, among other topics, how best to conceive of health privacy; the importance of equity, consent, and patient governance in data collection; discrimination in data uses; and how to handle data breaches. We close by sketching possible ways forward for the regulatory system. [full text]

… Interviewer: Mike Roberts, Ph.D. Q1: I had the opportunity to see you give a great presentation at Texas A&M this year on “power eating” for athletes. In a nutshell, could you define what “power eating” is?

In a nutshell, Power Eating is the evidence-based science and practice-based art of fueling for strength, power and speed.

With the kind of cross training that is required of both recreational and professional athletes, Power Eating supports the fundamental needs of all athletic individuals, yet targets the specifics of the periodized training regimes of athletes seeking strength, power and speed.

Welcome to INFO474, Interactive Data Visualization. This is a course at the University of Washington’s Information School, and these materials were developed by Michael Freeman. The purpose of this course is to teach students the necessary conceptual and technical skills to design and build interactive data visualizations on the web. While these resources are built for students currently enrolled in the course, they have been structured to be an online resource for anyone exploring tools to build visualizations on the web.

If you asked me: “Do we need artificial intelligence (AI) to be better sport scientists?” I might retort by asking you in return: “Did we need electric guitars to make better music?”

I’ve spent the last ten years in the field of mathematical modelling. As a master-level student in mechatronics, I started out by modelling systems like electronic circuits, hydraulic circuits and multi-body systems. A few years later, I was fortunate to be enrolled in a PhD course in movement science at CeRiSM Research Centre. That’s when I first came in contact with exercise physiologists and sport scientists, including work with lactate analysers and metabolimeters. I was amazed that sport scientists were, in fact, using the exact same equations I was using in my engineering courses. This meant that I could translate my expertise in hydraulics, electronics and mechanics to the modelling of physiological responses to cycling exercise, and actually contribute to the scientific community! What I love about modelling is that we can use our understanding of physics and physiology to describe the world we experience. And if we do a good job, the process of creating a model always leaves us with something to learn (4,6). Let me try to explain further.