Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 31, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 31, 2020

 

Patrick Mahomes’ Texas high school coach explains why so many schools missed

Fort Worth Star Telegram, Mac Engel from

By now you know Patrick Mahomes received but three offers to play college quarterback, and what you may not know is that it was a TCU assistant coach who predicted the exact moment the attention was going to come for the kid from Whitehouse.

By the second week of September 2012, the junior three-sport athlete from Whitehouse, just outside Tyler, was still regarded as more of a baseball prospect.

 

Patrick Mahomes’ high school baseball coach: He is ‘just an unbelievable athlete’ | Local News | tylerpaper.com

Tyler Morning Telegraph (TX), Brandon Ogden from

Derrick Jenkins, like many others, noticed something special about Patrick Mahomes at a young age.

Jenkins, now the head baseball coach at Alto High School, was the head baseball coach at Whitehouse High School from 2010 to 2019.

Mahomes was a freshman during the 2010-11 school year.

“I saw him throw a football, and I said he would start for me as a freshman from Day One,” Jenkins said. “There was not even a question. He was that good.”

 

The Inner Game: Why Trying Too Hard Can Be Counterproductive

Farnam Street blog from

… Ostensibly, The Inner Game of Tennis is a book about tennis. But dig beneath the surface, and it teems with techniques and insights we can apply to any challenge. The book is really about overcoming the external obstacles we create that prevent us from succeeding. You don’t need to be interested in tennis or even know anything about it to benefit from this book.

One of the most important insights Gallwey shares is that a major thing which leads us to lose the Inner Game is trying too hard and interfering with our own natural learning capabilities. Let’s take a look at how we can win the Inner Game in our own lives by seeing the importance of not forcing things.

 

The Secret to Success? Run More Often

PodiumRunner, Jonathan Beverly from

… So, as I head into this new year—one in which I have some big goals—I’m focusing on simple steps. Mostly, my plan is to run often. How often? As often as I can, both making a daily hour’s run a priority in the midst of a chaotic schedule (like yours, I’m sure), and being opportunistic to grab extra runs whenever possible—a quick 30 minutes at lunch, a couple of mental shake-out miles before dinner, an extra 7 or 8 miles stolen by getting up an hour earlier on a weekend morning. I want to make even more true what my wife has long said of me, that “a run is always imminent.” I’m embracing junk miles.

 

Sporting promotes Joey Harty to Director of Sports Performance and Science and Alphonso Thompson to Head of Strength and Conditioning

Sporting Kansas City from

Sporting Kansas City has announced the promotions of two members on the club’s technical staff, appointing Joey Harty (pictured above) as Director of Sports Performance and Science and Alphonso Thompson (pictured below) as Head of Strength and Conditioning.

Harty, formerly Sporting’s assistant fitness coach from 2018-2019, will manage all aspects of the club’s performance department from the academy to the senior team. He will also oversee day-to-day training plans on and off the field, including work in the weight room, soccer session planning, on-field movement training, data analysis and more, aiming to optimize player health and performance

 

Be a Good Sport

Longreads, Soraya Roberts from

Competitive sports can mean professional and financial success — if they don’t compromise your mental health first. ‘Cheer’ and ‘Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’ show how athletics can hurt as much as they can heal.

 

Real Madrid launches innovation brand – plans to enter the e-health sector

Sports Management magazine (UK), Tom Walker from

… Through the new venture, called Real Madrid Next, the football club will look to collaborate with start-ups across six industry sectors – e-health, fan engagement, audio-visual content generation, cybersecurity, business performance and technological and social infrastructures.

The club will offer start-ups access to its resources and expertise, while working together with new companies to develop their products and services which could benefit the club – and the wider economy.

“We look for excellence and the best technological advances possible, which helps to create our own, exclusive tools adapted to our way of working,” a spokesperson for the club said.

 

When the VaporFly first dropped in 2017, one of my intial reflections… It could break the dysfunctional mono-sponsor professional model

Twitter, Geoff Burns from

The sport is built on shoe companies as the sole sponsor of athletes.

That’s where the initial question of “fairness” came into play: if the professional sport is built on & sustained by contractual ties to shoe companies, one brand’s shoe is not “reasonably available to all”

 

How ASICS Runs Localization: Insights on Vendors, Processes, Technologies

Slator, Marion Marking from

ASICS Corporation was founded in Japan over 70 years ago. In 2016, it acquired the running tracker app, Runkeeper, and evolved the team into ASICS Digital. Based in Boston, home to the iconic, eponymous marathon, ASICS Digital is the hub of the company’s digital transformation.

According to Alessandra Binazzi, Director of Localization, ASICS Digital powers the company’s “entire digital consumer world” comprising four brands: ASICS.com; customer membership program OneASICS; virtual workout app ASICS Studio, and the Runkeeper app. In Binazzi’s words, “We improve our users’ lives through fitness and make ASICS the most helpful fitness brand in the world.”

 

Major League Soccer and U.S. Soccer select Stats Perform as exclusive global data partner

MLSsoccer.com, MLS Communications from

… The agreement facilitated by Soccer United Marketing (SUM), U.S. Soccer’s partner for more than 15 years, grants Stats Perform the right to exclusively collect, analyze and distribute official ultrafast data and player data to global broadcast, media, betting and professional teams for all MLS, U.S. Open Cup and Men’s and Women’s National Team matches. For the first time, MLS and U.S. Soccer will also offer an official ultrafast data feed optimized for sports betting operators from all MLS, and select U.S. National Team and U.S. Open Cup matches.

 

NFL tries to dispel mystery around sideline medical tent

Associated Press, Teresa M. Walker from

The blue medical tent on each NFL sideline is a place no player ever wants to go, and everyone else would love to sneak inside for a peek.

Yes, it’s a basic pop-up tent anchored by a metal rectangle frame on the ground around an exam table. When a player is suspected of having a concussion or an injury where a little privacy is helpful, someone pulls the tent into place and people disappear inside, away from prying eyes.

“Probably one of the first things you notice is it’s actually a lot more roomy in here than you might think,” Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said Tuesday.

 

NFL Incorporates Machine Learning, AI Technology to Prevent Player Injuries

ThomasNet, Lindsay Gilder from

In December 2019, the National Football League (NFL) announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to apply the data collected from the league’s Next Gen Stats technology to artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to prevent player injuries during games. The new program will be used to develop what the NFL calls the “Digital Athlete” platform, a simulation of an NFL player that will be used to model scenarios in the game environment without any risk to athletes.

The announcement comes in an era of increasing injury incidents; According to the NFL’s latest injury data reports, an average of 6-7 injuries occurred per game in the 2018 season. The NFL plans to employ the new technology to specifically address factors such as game rules, equipment, and rehabilitation and recovery strategies. Key players are hoping the partnership will enable the NFL to predict player injuries and prevent them before they happen.

 

Estimated Age of First Exposure to Contact Sports and Neurocognitive, Psychological, and Physical Outcomes in Healthy NCAA Collegiate Athletes: A Cohort Study | SpringerLink

Sports Medicine journal from

Background

Collegiate football players who started playing tackle football before age 12 years did not show worse neuropsychological test performance than those who started playing tackle football after age 12 years. It is unknown if beginning other contact sports, such as lacrosse, at a younger age is associated with worse neurocognitive performance, greater psychological distress, or worse postural stability in collegiate student athletes.
Objective

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between estimated age of first exposure (eAFE) to repetitive head impacts (RHI) and these outcome measures in collegiate student athletes.
Methods

1891 female and 4448 male collision/contact (i.e., football, ice hockey, lacrosse, wrestling, soccer) and non-contact (i.e., golf, rifle, rowing/crew, swimming, tennis) sport athletes completed baseline testing, including the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT), Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI-18), and Balance Error Scoring System (BESS).
Results

For women, the eAFE-by-sport interaction was associated with ImPACT Verbal Memory and Visual Memory, whereby earlier eAFE to contact sports was associated with higher composite scores (B = − 0.397, B = − 0.485, respectively). For men, the eAFE-by-sport interaction was associated with BSI-18 Depression and Global Severity Index and symptom severity scores, whereby earlier eAFE to football was associated with lower psychological distress and symptom severity [Depression, Exp(B) = 1.057; Global Severity Index, Exp(B) = 1.047; Symptom Severity, Exp(B) = 1.046]. Parameter estimates were small suggesting these results may have minimal practical relevance.
Conclusion

Findings suggest that RHI during early adolescence is unrelated to brain health as measured by these specific outcome measures in collegiate student athletes.

 

Tech role in personalised nutrition praised

Nutra Ingredients, Will Chu from

Precision data is key to unlocking long-term health, a World Economic Forum (WEF) report says, as its authors think combining microbiome biodata with emerging technologies will result in new ways to address health risks.

 

“Smart” vs “Athletic”: how AI reveals the unconscious racial bias in our language

Prospect Magazine, Jenny McCall from

It’s easy to imagine sports commentators have moved on from the sort of offensive comments that received widespread attention in the 1980s. But AI analysis shows how an old bias endures in language differences

 

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