Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 6, 2019

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for May 6, 2019

 

Marquise Brown defies odds, from ‘miracle baby’ to first-rounder

ESPN NFL, Jamison Hensley from

… Wherever Marquise Brown would go, the initial impression was about his lack of size. He arrived at his junior college at 140 pounds. By the time he went to Oklahoma, he had bulked up … to 144 pounds.

But when Brown put his hands on the ball, the conversation quickly changed to his speed, elusiveness and burst, even at an early age. During the Pee Wee Super Bowl, Brown’s team trailed 6-0 at halftime before he scored three times in the second half for the victory.

“He’s determined,” said Shaddrick Lowery, who was teammates with Brown from pee wee to junior college. “He always steps on the field with that chip on his shoulder because he’s small. After people get off the field playing against him, they’re like, ‘Yeah, that guy is the truth.’”

 

Federer enjoys tennis like at the beginning of his career – Fitness trainer

Tennis World, Luigi Gatto from

In an interview to Tribune de Geneve, Roger Federer’s fitness trainer Pierre Paganini commented on the Swiss player’s unique talent and longevity. Paganini insisted that Federer needs to work hard physically in order to still be at the top at 37 years of age.

“When you go seeing a dance, you do not see the physical effort. But behind there is an unbelievable training. With his potential, Roger makes us forget the effort”, said Paganini. “Because we know very well that the talent without an effort is not enough.

 

Kyrie Irving and the Celtics’ state of dismay

ESPN NBA, Jackie MacMullan from

… Boston’s players say Irving began prepping them for the postseason weeks in advance, pulling them aside individually for quiet counsel and expressing the urgency required for playoff basketball. It is imperative, he told them, that every possession, every sequence, be treated with the utmost care.

His leadership approach has been notably more collaborative, less combative.

“The energy is great now,” Terry Rozier says. “We’re together. Not like before.”

 

The way he’s playing, it won’t be long before NHL defensemen are trying to keep up with Jones

The Hockey News, Ken Campbell from

Scoring was up in the NHL this season and the league has more exciting and dynamic players than it has ever had in its history. But the Blue Jackets are proving that if you want to have success in the playoffs, you still have to grind out your wins and find a way to wreck a masterpiece rather than create. And nobody has disrupted the opponents more than the Blue Jackets defense tandem of Seth Jones and Zach Werenski. Jones currently sits second in ice time behind Brent Burns with a per-game average of 28:04 in these playoffs, while Werenski is fifth at 26:36. And these are not easy minutes, either.

“Just play hard defensively, that’s all we’re doing, honestly,” Jones said of his and Werenski’s success against the league’s top shooters. “Me personally, I’m just trying to be physical. I know I’m not known as a big, bruising defenseman. I did see I had six hits last game, though. I don’t know who’s counting that. Just trying to be physical and take time and space away.”

 

Former Mariners catcher Michael Marjama tests positive for performance enhancing drug

The Seattle Times, Ryan Divish from

Michael Marjama wanted to come back to baseball and the Mariners organization.

But a return to baseball has been put on hold, and it won’t come with the Mariners.

On Thursday, Major League Baseball announced that Marjama’s application for reinstatement from the voluntary retired list has been placed on hold after he tested positive for Oxandrolone, a performance-enhancing substance, which is a violation of MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Marjama was given an 80-game suspension.

 

A Novel Method of Assessment for Monitoring Neuromuscular Fatigue in Australian Rules Football Players.

International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance from

Purpose: To compare the sensitivity of a submaximal run test (SRT) with a countermovement-jump test (CMJ) to provide an alternative method of measuring neuromuscular fatigue (NMF) in high-performance sport. Methods: A total of 23 professional and semiprofessional Australian rules football players performed an SRT and CMJ test prematch and 48 and 96 h postmatch. Variables from accelerometers recorded during the SRT were player load 1D up (vertical vector), player load 1D side (mediolateral vector), and player load 1D forward (anteroposterior vector). Meaningful difference was examined through magnitude-based inferences (effect size [ES]), with reliability assessed as typical error of measurements expressed as coefficient of variance. Results: A small decrease in CMJ height, ES -0.43 ± 0.39 (likely), was observed 48 h postmatch before returning to baseline 96 h postmatch. This was accompanied by corresponding moderate decreases in the SRT variables player load 1D up, ES -0.60 ± 0.51 (likely), and player load 1D side, ES -0.74 ± 0.57 (likely), 48 h postmatch before also returning to prematch baseline. Conclusion: The results suggest that in the presence of NMF, players use an alternative running profile to produce the same external output (ie, time). This indicates that changes in accelerometer variables during an SRT can be used as an alternative method of measuring NMF in high-performance Australian rules football and provides a flexible option for monitoring changes in the recovery phase postmatch.

 

The Influence of Pitch-by-Pitch Feedback on Neural Activity and Pitch Perception in Baseball

Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology from

This study was designed to examine the influence of performance feedback on task performance and neural activity in expert and novice baseball players. Participants completed a video task to determine whether thrown pitches were balls or strikes while their neural activity was recorded. After each pitch, participants were given feedback on the accuracy of their choice. Results indicated that college players exhibited larger frontocentral positivity amplitudes compared with novices, regardless of feedback type. Furthermore, results showed that the feedback-related negativity was related to response accuracy following incorrect feedback for college players, with larger feedback-related negativity amplitude associated with greater response accuracy. This relationship is independent of any relations between overall task accuracy and either feedback-related negativity amplitude or response accuracy following incorrect feedback. These results indicate that the nature of neural activity during pitch feedback for college baseball players can inform and influence participants’ subsequent pitch-location performance.

 

A 360-degree tour of Gatorade’s futuristic Sports Science Institute

Fast Company, Cale Guthrie Weissman from

We all think of Gatorade as a sports beverage, right? Well, the company is becoming much more than that with the help of technology. At the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in Florida, the company tests out new product ideas and analyzes performance data in real time.

Professional athletes come to the institute every day and are asked to play and sweat and do all the things extremely fit people usually do. Then, Gatorade’s doctors and scientists investigate their performance. The participants are hooked up to large, expensive machines that track energy intake, sweat rate, even a person’s fat and muscle mass, to understand what’s happening at a molecular level. With this, the company is able to understand what products work and what products don’t–as well as understand how different athletes’ bodies respond to different conditions.

All of this research is used to help shift Gatorade’s business model.

 

The Ice Hockey Research Group Braves the Ice with Vicon to Study the Effects of Hockey

Vicon from

For Canadians, hockey is more than just a pastime – it’s a way of life. From a young age, many Canadians learn to skate. It can become as natural as walking to some, but the reality is that skating – and especially hockey – can take its toll.

Over the years, there have been several attempts to document the physical effects that skating and hockey can have on the human body. But there has always been an obvious and prohibitive obstacle: how do you conduct delicate, scientific research in the cold, on ice?

The Ice Hockey Research Group (IHRG) working out of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, found the answer to exactly that question when it turned to Vicon

 

How wearable sweat trackers are providing athletes with critical hydration insights

Wareable (UK), Chris Smith from

… At all levels, the patch will be a single use item that’s thrown away (or hopefully recycled) after use. That means no cleaning, no need to replenish the reactive dye or problems with adhesive for repeat usage. However, in this climate of renewed environmental consciousness, do we really need more items containing single-use plastics from a sports drinks company?

“We spend a lot of time on the use case for this 1st gen product and decided single use was the way to go,” [Roozbeh] Ghaffari says. “These materials that can be dropped in a regular recycling box. We do have the capability to build in Bluetooth and NFC, but that would require a battery. In a lot of cases, the battery is the biggest driver of waste.

“From our standpoint, it’s not meant to be a device that you use every day, the way you would a Fitbit. A pack of 12 may be good enough for a season, to give you a quick snapshot at the end of the exercise, or at half time.”

 

Winning at all costs: a review of risk-taking behaviour and sporting injury from an occupational safety and health perspective | SpringerLink

Sports Medicine journal from

Professional athletes involved in high-performance sport are at a high injury risk, which may lead to long-term health consequences. Professional athletes often expose themselves to risky behaviours, resulting in a higher acceptance level of occupational risk compared to other occupations. To date, many studies have focused on elite athletes’ specific injury prevention techniques. The objective of this narrative review is to (1) summarise elite athletes’ attitudes towards important occupational safety and health (OSH) practices, including injury reporting, medicine usage and personal protective equipment (PPE) usage, and (2) explore factors that may influence elite athletes’ injury awareness. If injury awareness were given a similar weighting in elite sports as in any other highly physical occupation, the potential benefits to elite athletes and their long-term health could be highly significant. This review identifies that most elite athletes are not aware that sporting injuries are occupational injuries requiring behaviours determined by OSH rules. All the 39 studies identified met the moderate methodological quality criteria according to the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). The factors impeding athletes’ injury awareness from achieving occupational health standards are discussed from three safety management perspectives: organisational, societal and individual. This review contributes to a better understanding of how to build a positive safety culture, one that could reduce elite athletes’ injury rate and improve their long-term wellbeing. Further research is required to develop a quantitative measurement instrument to evaluate occupational health awareness in the sport context. Based on the papers reviewed, the study population was categorised as elite, professional, high-performance amateur and student-athletes. [full text]

 

Taping, bracing and exercise can all help prevent ankle sprains

FIFA Medical Platform from

This FastFact showcases a clinical guideline which explores the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of lateral ankle sprains. It was created by a multi-disciplinary team of experts and is evidence-based1.

 

The ‘Dumb Choice’ That James Harden, Stephen Curry and the Rest of the N.B.A. Increasingly Avoid: The 2-Point Shot

The New York Times, The Upshot blog, Kevin Quealy and Benjamin Hoffman from

If current trends continue, the N.B.A. could be a majority-3-point-league in the 2030s. That might sound ridiculous, but it’s already happening in lots of games right now. The Rockets shot more 3s than 2s in more than 80 percent of their games this year; no other N.B.A. team came close. At one point in the Rockets-Jazz first-round series, Utah’s Ricky Rubio guarded Harden from behind on the perimeter, essentially inviting him to drive into the lane with a 5-on-4 advantage rather than allowing him to take another 3-pointer.

 

Leicester appoint first Head of Football Analytics

Tribal Football blog, Ansser Sadiq from

Leicester City have appointed a Head of Football Analytics as they look to reshape the club structure under Brendan Rodgers.

Mladen Sormaz will take on the role, where he will focus on data driven insights into the performance of the team and other related matters.

He will have a wide purview, including recruitment, sports science and medicine.

 

The sour science driving James Harden’s vexing genius

ESPN NBA, Kirk Goldsberry from

… The Rockets are the most innovative group in the league, but as their playbook continues to try and hack offensive efficiency in new ways, it’s also demonstrating that efficiency and beauty aren’t always harmonious. In many cases, they’re in wild disagreement. … Harden drew a league-leading 120 3-point shooting fouls in 2016-17, then that number dipped to 69 in 2017-18 after the league honed in on his continuation techniques as a point of its officiating emphasis. Harden adjusted by mastering the step-back 3 this season, drawing 93 3-point fouls in the process.

 

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