Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 17, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 17, 2020

 

Bam Adebayo Is Turning Traditional Big Men Into Dinosaurs

The Ringer, Jonathan Tjarks from

The Heat’s star center is rendering the opposition obsolete by prowling the paint, the perimeter, and everywhere in between. Not only can Adebayo make game-changing plays like his epic block at the end of Game 1, he can do it all.


Diana Taurasi is still living up to her ‘White Mamba’ nickname – South Florida Sun Sentinel

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The New York Times, Gina Mizell from

… Taurasi is reminding everybody that when they see her, they are still watching a legend in real time.

“Every time I see my life without basketball, I get a little scared, and I try to put a little more into it,” said Taurasi, who is the WNBA’s leading career scorer. “I try to savor all these moments. Even being here in Bradenton, with less-than-ideal conditions, and I’m still finding the beauty in the struggle of being here and playing basketball.”


Warm-Up Smarter With Extended Strides

Podium Runner, Richard A. Lovett from

In 1989, when San Diego Track Club runner Paul Greer ran a 3:59.79 mile and spent a few summers on the European track circuit, he noticed something interesting. Instead of doing the traditional short, quick strides favored by most runners, some of the Kenyans were doing substantially longer strides as part of their warmups. They were doing them on the day before the race, not on race-day (as far as he saw), but that itself was unusual enough that he took note.

At the time, it was merely a curiosity. But now, as coach of the club he raced for 30 years ago, Greer has incorporated extended strides, ranging from 30 seconds to a full minute, into his group’s warm-up routine, quite a bit different from traditional protocols.


Why ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ is a Myth

Leaders in Performance, Mark Williams and Tim Wigmore from

In this excerpt from The Best: How Athletes Are Made, Mark Williams and Tim Wigmore challenge long-held assumptions around practice and explore what science tells us about effective practice and instruction.


Harvard Running Study: Reduce Vertical Loading Rates, Reduce Injuries

OrthoSpineNews, Elizabeth Hofheinz from

A team from Harvard University’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation has delved into the physics of running in order to examine ground reaction force variables between healthy and injured runners—both as a group and within specific common injuries.

Their study, “Impact-Related Ground Reaction Forces Are More Strongly Associated With Some Running Injuries Than Others,” was published in the September 11, 2020 edition of The American Journal of Sports Medicine.


Don’t Worry, It’s Just a Face

Sports Illustrated, Steve Rushin from

This ongoing pandemic is hardly the first time we’ve been asked to cover up for safety’s sake. And it’s hardly the first time there’s been significant pushback. Just ask catchers and hockey goalies and …


The science behind Adidas’s new world-record running shoe

Wired UK, Matt Burgess from

… It’s the company’s first real response to Nike’s new-found distance dominance, and goes on sale today for £170. And unlike the vast majority of top-end running shoes, it doesn’t include a full-length carbon-fibre plate. “We’ve seen the sport of marathon racing changing, and lots of product innovation happening,” says Sam Handy, vice president of design at adidas running. “But of course we don’t launch things until they’re ready.”

Since Nike released its first Vaporfly 4% shoe the rest of the running world has been mimicking its carbon-fibre plate. Rival brands Saucony, On, Brooks, Hoka One One, Asics have all released their own racing shoes that include the plates.

However, adidas has done something different with the Adios Pro. Running throughout the shoe are a series of curved carbon-infused rods. These are wedged between two chunks of the company’s energy-returning Lightstrike Pro foam.


Silicon Valley Thinks Artificial Intelligence Can Upgrade Your Workouts

Men's Health, Nick Heil from

When San Francisco went into COVID-19 lockdown on March 17, the last thing 32-year-old tech entrepreneur Niket Desai had to worry about was staying fit. His regular spot, Barry’s, would be closed indefinitely, but Desai had installed the Tempo Studio, an all-in-one home fitness device designed to turn 30 square feet of your living room into an artificial-
intelligence-powered micro gym.

Tempo is a six-foot-tall weight cabinet (weights included!) kitted out with a 42-inch vertical screen as well as a camera to track movement—a version of Microsoft’s Kinect. While similar devices, like Tonal, offer digital resistance training at home, Tempo is the first one to deploy 3D movement analysis, combined with machine learning and AI to improve your form and curate your workouts.

Its screen streams more than 200 live and on-demand classes, from a ten-minute high-intensity workout to an hour of mobility training, while its motion sensors and AI isolate up to 25 different joints at 30 frames per second. Is your weight too far forward during a squat? Tempo flashes a message onscreen. Rounding your shoulders during a deadlift? Tempo will help you fix it.


Covid-19 antigen tests the key to Pac-12 football restarting

San Jose Mercury News, Bay Area News Group, Jon Wilner from

The Pac-12’s return to competition depends on one unexpected development solving two momentous problems.

The late September arrival of rapid-response antigen tests — two months earlier than anticipated — will allow football teams to test players for Covid-19 immediately before practice and games, thereby preventing on-field transmission by pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic players.

Those same antigen tests, courtesy of a partnership with San Diego-based Quidel Corp., are central to clearing the other hurdle


Private High School Students Report Keeping Concussions Private

Sports Medicine Research, Jane McDevitt from

More than 1 in 5 private high school students may not be disclosing concussions, often because they want to continue to play or believe it is not a serious enough injury.


Sport Motivation as a Possible Indicator of Concussion Reporting Intentions Among Young Athletes – PubMed

Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine from

Objective: To assess the relationship between sport motivation and intentions to report concussion symptoms among young adult athletes.

Design: Cross-sectional study (level of evidence: 3).

Subjects: One thousand three hundred five young adult athletes of various sports and levels of competitiveness from the Survey Sampling International panel.

Methods: Data were collected through an online survey. Ordinary least squares regression was used to examine the relationship between motivation and reporting intentions controlling for competitiveness and perceived risk of injury.

Results: Athletes who play their sport for self-regulated (autonomous) reasons have higher intentions to seek care for concussion-like symptoms, whereas those who play to achieve gains external to the sport or avoid punishment (controlled motivation) have lower intentions. A one-point increase in autonomous motivation was associated with an 11.5-point increase in reporting intention (t = 6.629, P < 0.001), whereas a one-point increase in controlled motivation was associated with an 8.1-point decrease in reporting intention (t = -4.562, P < 0.001). Betas from the model suggested that autonomous motivation had a stronger effect than controlled motivation (0.226 vs -0.163). Conclusions: Innovation in care, concussion education, and cultivation of team culture supportive of autonomous motivation could increase concussion reporting. Measuring sport motivation may reveal which athletes require more proactive attention to ensure symptoms are not concealed. Furthermore, messages to reinforce autonomous motivation may increase willingness to report.


1/ Exercise and Covid-19: A troubling story from Eric Topol this AM got me thinking about COVID-19 and the risk of exercise during active infection and recovery.

Twitter, Paul Bleicher from

… 4/ Why not exercise? Because, according to [Walter] Abelmann, exercise in the setting of viral illness can trigger myocarditis – which physicians know can resolve completely, or damage the heart and lead to congestive heart failure. I have assiduously followed his advice for ~ 40 years


Q&A: Mayo Clinic doctor advises about myocarditis risk for athletes

Syracuse University, The Daily Orange student newspaper, Adam Hillman from

… Dr. Michael Ackerman is a genetic cardiologist at Mayo Clinic. He specializes in genomics and genotype-phenotype relationships in heritable cardiovascular diseases leading to sudden death. This includes myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart that’s linked to COVID-19. Ackerman answered The Daily Orange’s questions about its risk to athletes.


What Newcastle United have discovered from investigation into the club’s injury record

Chronicle Live (UK), Ciaran Kelly from

Newcastle United struggled with injuries at times last season and Steve Bruce has opened up about the internal investigation into the club’s injury record


Capping college coaches’ salaries discussed at congressional hearing

ESPN College Sports, Dan Murphy from

A Power Five university chancellor and at least one U.S. senator say they are among those that believe the NCAA should limit the amount of money college coaches make.

Rebecca Blank, chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, testified in a Senate hearing Tuesday morning that she would “be more than happy” to discuss the possibility of an antitrust law exemption that would grant colleges the power to curb the rapidly increasing salaries of coaches in college sports.

“I think that is appropriate for college sports,” Blank told the members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “I think it is somewhat outrageous that the highest-paid employee in many states is their state university college coach.”

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