Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 5, 2019

… “All the time in Chicago when I was coming back, load management wasn’t a term then,” Rose told NBA.com this week. “Back then, it was, ‘He’s [expletive] being lazy.’”

There were no healthy DNPs back then. Very few at all until San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich began to force the issue with veteran stars Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. The idea spread to those overseeing others such as LeBron James, Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. Over time, getting random games off became almost a status symbol, signifying membership among the NBA’s elite.

… The physical capacity of players develops when load is progressively and gradually increased. These progressive increases in load increase the athlete’s capacity to withstand load.

It is also well-established that rapid increases in an athlete’s load increases the risk of poor performance and injury.1 On the other hand, progressive loading is much more effective – athletes with higher chronic loads have better readiness to perform and are much more likely to be available for games when needed.

So if our training principles point to building chronic load, why isn’t Kawhi playing? Why is Kawhi taking time off when the best available evidence points to him loading more, not less? From one perspective, it’s important that players build their chronic load now to prepare themselves for important playoff games at the end of the season.

… Wake worked out at Penn State’s Pro Day but went unselected in the 2005 NFL draft. He signed a deal with the New York Giants; two months later, the team released him. Facing an early end to his football career, Wake decided to make a move. He headed to Canada, signing with the CFL’s BC Lions.

The BC coaching staff switched Wake to defensive end, and he immediately made an impact. He piled up 72 total tackles, 16 sacks, and a blocked field goal during his first year in Canada, earning both Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors. The next year, Wake increased his production to 23 sacks and was unanimously named the Most Outstanding Defensive Player.

Fred VanVleet would prefer nobody noticed the major minutes he’s been logging this season.

The Toronto Raptors guard is averaging a career-high 37.8 minutes as a starter through six games, 10 minutes more than he played coming off the bench last year.

“I don’t really want to talk about the minutes because people read the news, coaches included,” VanVleet said, smiling. “And I’m happy, and if I can play 48, I’ll play 48.

“So I’m feeling good. I’m not ignorant to the fact that it probably has an effect [on his body], but it’s my job to be ready to go every night and I feel like I’ve been doing that.”

We generally think of elite runners as internally focused. They’re constantly checking the other runners around them, and their own perceived effort, the need for a drink or gel, and the pinch at the left knee. They don’t daydream about ice cream, favorite Netflix series, or who’s going to get the Democratic nomination.

So it came as a bit of a surprise at the New York City Marathon press conference to hear two top American runners talk about their favorite mantras. They weren’t asked a question about mantras. The words simply tumbled out as they discussed their plans for Sunday’s marathon through the five boroughs.

Perhaps a mantra is something you seize from the outside world and then make a part of you. At any rate, Sara Hall and Jared Ward both spoke about how they use mantras to stay focused and tough in their marathons. In fact, it turned out that they share one.

… Before we look at the best ways to recover, we need to cement the ‘why’ and the best way is to understand the physical, mental and emotional toll our bodies rack up over a season.

“Racing creates various levels of physiological fatigue – both central and peripheral,” says the strength and conditioning specialist and former elite triathlete, Nick Beer. “Over the course of a season, these levels accumulate and with insufficient rest, can have negative repercussions. Central fatigue affects the central nervous system. The brain is unable to send enough signals to maintain optimal muscle activation and it results in reduced muscle force. After a long season, feelings of sluggishness and loss of motivation are common signs that there are imbalances in our brain bio-chemistry. It needs to rebalance to maintain mental health, well-being and muscular function.”

In contrast, peripheral fatigue results from changes in the motor units of muscles during exercise. When we run low on carbohydrates and blood glucose levels drop, we look for other forms of energy and this can lead to the breakdown of proteins, assisted by cortisol secreted from the adrenal glands.

… Lindsey Greenlund, a cross country runner and chemistry-psychology double major from Rochester, Minn., has found a study-friendly culture at the U.

“When we go on a trip, the majority of people bring out their textbooks and sit down and do work. They will pull out their reading or their notes,” she said. “It’s just like so ingrained in the team culture that it totally motivates you.”

U professor Timothy LaPara, chair of the U’s academic oversight committee for intercollegiate athletics, credited the addition of the Lindahl Academic Center, a three-story study hub within the $166 million Athletes Village.

… “There is nothing more important in the fitness game than consistency,” says certified fitness expert and celebrity trainer, Andrea Marcellus. “So, whether you work out in the morning or the evening doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you are getting your heart rate up for a bit each and every day. The method I use sets the bar at 20 minutes per day, because that’s an easily hittable mark, even if it just means walking 10 minutes in one direction and 10 minutes back at lunchtime.”

Fair enough. However, that said, when you work out can come with some added benefits besides an increased heart rate. Better sleep, higher energy levels, and decreased stress and anxiety can all come into play depending on when you choose to schedule your cardio or yoga session for the day. To help you figure out which fitness schedule is best for you, ahead, fitness experts sound off on the pros and cons of both morning and evening workouts.

Recent work has suggested that prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a key role in context-dependent perceptual decision-making. Here we investigate population-level coding of decision variables in monkey PFC using a new method for identifying task-relevant dimensions of neural activity. Our analyses reveal that, in contrast to one-dimensional attractor models, PFC has a multi-dimensional code for decisions, context, and relevant as well as irrelevant sensory information. Moreover, these representations evolve in time, with an early linear accumulation phase followed by a phase with rotational dynamics. We identify the dimensions of neural activity associated with these phases, and show that they are not the product of distinct populations, but of a single population with broad tuning characteristics. Finally, we use model-based decoding to show that the transition from linear to rotational dynamics coincides with a sustained plateau in decoding accuracy, revealing that rotational dynamics in PFC preserve sensory as well as choice information for the duration of the stimulus integration period. [full text]

For the first time on the ATP Tour, players will be permitted to use wearable technology in competition this year during the Next Gen ATP Finals, to be held 5-9 November at the Allianz Cloud in Milan.

The data collected will allow players and coaches at the award-winning 21-and-under event to quantify the demands of the competition, better understand athlete loading and make key performance decisions that are supported with objective data.

The GPS receiver and inertial sensors in the device will measure velocity and direction, acceleration and force, rotation, body orientation, and will quantify internal load (through heart rate). The data from the wearable device, which will only be accessible by each player and those that the player gives access to, will provide accurate maps of movements and actions.

The ear has long been touted as an excellent place for technology to exist on the body. Over 5 years of gradually gaining momentum, the topic of “hearables” is finally being recognized more widely for the excellent opportunity which it presents, with technology companies from around the world all developing their product strategies for this key group of devices. IDTechEx is hosting Wearable USA, a conference and exhibition which includes many examples of companies developing the future of this exciting product type.

The story of hearables is closely entwined with that of wearables. Both trends were kick-started by the introduction of low energy radio communication introduced with Bluetooth 4.0. On the ear, the initial momentum came from wireless headphone players, first with on-ear wireless headsets, but even more critically with in-ear true wireless headphones such as Apple’s AirPods and others.

Since it first started operating out of the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine in 2013, the Tulane Professional Athlete Care Team (PACT) has been discreetly bringing former NFL players in from around the country and providing medical screenings.

Through its various programs, it has seen thousands of former professional football players. Some of them are household names, others never saw the field in a regular-season game. The PACT’s mission is to treat all of them the same way: As ordinary patients, extraordinary as their circumstances may be.

Here are some facts about how the PACT operates, as well as some context from the staff and the patients to explain why they believe what they’re doing is important.

Foods associated with better health also have the lowest impact on the environment, a new study finds. This suggests that a few key dietary changes could present a double win for humans, and the planet.

The new analysis, led by the Oxford University, revealed several intriguing overlaps between diet, human, and environmental health. For example, increasing the consumption of typically ‘healthy’ foods like wholegrains, nuts, and vegetables was found to produce a low relative risk for diabetes, coronary heart disease, and general mortality. And crucially, the impact of these foods on environmental ills like greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, and land-use was also negligible, compared to other foods.

At the other extreme, the researchers found that processed red meat was conversely associated with the highest risk of diabetes, coronary heart disease, and general mortality. What’s more, processed red meat also had the biggest negative effects on greenhouse gas emissions, acidification, and land-use.

… Another study, published last year, looked at whether scoring a goal just before half-time benefited teams more than at other times. The results were again conclusive. “We do not find any evidence of an effect of timing toward the end of the half,” the researchers wrote. “The performance in the second half of teams scoring late in the first half is very similar to the performance of the teams scoring at other times in the half.” … How to explain it? According to Hemant Kakkar, an assistant professor of management and organisations at Duke University, “Our experiments suggest players do mental calculations about a competitor. They tend to think, yeah, this person will keep moving up. Because of this, they start feeling threatened and their performance tends to suffer.”

Every team in Major League Baseball should be required to have a player payroll of not less than $120 million.

I’m serious.

Last month, I wrote about why modern discussions of player value have gone somewhat off the rails. That’s because the league’s labor market is largely a monopsony; that is, a single-buyer market