Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 12, 2020

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for November 12, 2020

 

Christian Pulisic injuries explained by USA boss ahead of Chelsea’s clash with Newcastle

football.london, Andy Ha from

… Despite this, Pulisic has joined up with the national side for their camp ahead of the USA’s upcoming friendly games against Wales and Panama.

And Berhalter dismissed any suggestions that the winger is injury prone, and insisted it’s just a case of the youngster still adapting to the physical nature of the English game.

“I don’t see it like that,” he told Fox Sports.

“I really see it as a young player who is just adapting to the demands of a different game, a different schedule.


DK Metcalf teased a tryout for the Team USA Olympic track team after his jaw-dropping 100-yard chase-down tackle

Insider, Meredith Cash from

DK Metcalf is undoubtedly one of the fastest men on the planet, and he put that speed on full display during his epic chase-down tackle on Arizona Cardinals strong safety Budda Baker.

And now that the sports world has seen just how fast the 6-foot-4, 229-pound Seattle Seahawks wide receiver can move, chatter is building around his potential involvement with the USA Track & Field team.


FEATURE: Retired Olympian reshaping conversation around athletes’ periods

Kyodo News (Japan), Mai Yoshikawa from

Her career in the pool long behind her, retired swimmer Hanae Ito is looking to nurture future generations of female athletes in Japan by ensuring they know what she did not.

Eight years since her retirement, the 35-year-old has “come out” with her very personal story about menstruation, the most human of processes that is still treated as “secret women’s business,” in hope that she can inspire women to feel comfortable in their body.


How Do We Sense Temperature and Pressure?

BrainFacts/SfN, Helen Santoro from

Throughout the day, we feel, taste, see, hear, and smell things, never thinking much about how these senses work. But that’s not the case for David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco, and Ardem Patapoutian of the Scripps Research Institute. These scientists have made it their mission to understand how our sensory systems build our experience of the world.

While scientists unraveled the neural basis of sight and smell decades ago, temperature and pressure remained a mystery. Using capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers responsible for the sensation of heat, Julius uncovered an ion channel called TRPV1 in 1997 that is activated by high temperature. Thirteen years later, Patapoutian discovered a group of pressure-sensing ion channels called Piezos, which are not only responsible for pressure sensing in skin, but also in blood vessels, lungs, and more.

The work, which earned them the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, has helped scientists understand how the body detects temperature and pressure, potentially driving efforts to develop future pain treatments.


For young athletes, inadequate sleep leads to decreased performance

EurekAlert! Science News, Wolters Kluwer Health from

Most young athletes don’t get enough sleep – and that may significantly affect their sports performance, according to a paper in the November issue of Current Sports Medicine Reports, official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

“There’s growing evidence to suggest that youth athletes don’t get required amount of sleep, and that this negatively affects their performance,” comments Mark F. Riederer, MD, of C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, author of the new review. He believes that the trend toward more-intensive training might contribute to a lack of adequate sleep in in young athletes.


Inside Georgia Tech’s data-driven change in practice philosophy

AJC.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ken Sugiura from

… “I think the performance numbers that we’ve been seeing on the field have been really, really good,” Ryan Horton, Tech’s director of applied sports science, told the AJC. “The feedback that we’re getting from the players has been really, really good.”

It should be noted that the numbers of which Horton speaks aren’t the standard football benchmarks, such as yards gained, turnovers created and, certainly, wins and losses. Horton’s realm is the application of science and data to Tech’s strength-and-conditioning program – helping Tech to be at its physical peak Saturday.

“There’s so many different factors, and there’s so many different elements that goes into an actual win or a loss,” Horton said. “My piece of it is just trying to really zero in and look at how did we perform physically, and how can we perfect that as much as possible?”


How to get your players to become better learners

The Coaches Site, Greg Revak from

… A great practice cannot overcome poor learners. The best coaches understand they are only as good as their players. Red Gendron of the University of Maine said it best. To paraphrase: 90% of the time, the team that gets off the bus with the better players usually wins.

Therefore, we can agree that a large part of coaching is teaching young people how to learn better and acquire skills faster. Let’s explore a few key ways to do that.


Scientists hail earwax test for checking stress hormone levels

The Guardian, PA Media from

A test that uses earwax to measure levels of the stress hormone cortisol could “transform diagnostics and care for millions of people with depression or stress-related conditions”, scientists have said.

The researchers believe the test, which can be done at home without clinical supervision, may also have the potential to measure glucose or Covid-19 antibodies that accumulate in earwax.

They say the method is a cheap and effective way to measure chronic cortisol levels, when compared with other methods such as using hair samples.


2020 IFF Innovation Award winners announced

Innovation in Textiles blog from

The Industrial Fabrics Foundation (IFF) recently announced the winners of the 2020 IFF Innovation Award. The IFF Innovation Award encourages companies around the globe to weave tomorrow’s ideas into the fabrics of today. The first-place winner was awarded to Propel LLC for its Propel LLC Smart Integrated Shirt project.

Propel’s US Navy funded smart shirt includes 3-patent pending innovations to monitor the physiology of the wearer in a garment that looks and feels no different than any other first layer garment. This shirt is made with Propel’s proprietary electrically enabled yarn that looks, feels and behaves like a traditional yarn but has the conductive elements needed for transmitting data and power.

The shirt has solder-free textile connectors that are soft and flexible for wearer comfort and user-transparency. All components within this shirt are US sourced. This project led to 3 patent pending technologies.


Quantum Makes Strides in Bolstering Classification, Management, Protection of Unstructured Data

Sports Video Group from

Quantum has unveiled a major expansion of its solutions portfolio to help customers classify, manage and protect video and unstructured data across its lifecycle. Addressing the need to manage data end to end – on premise or in the cloud – is another key step in Quantum’s strategy to be the leading provider of management and storage services for unstructured data.

“Massive unstructured data growth may be the defining factor for industries and economies of the 21st century,” says Ashish Nadkarni, GVP, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies, IDC. “This data lives everywhere – it is created and processed at the edge, moved to both the cloud and the core data center, and stored and protected in multiple locations. Quantum is offering the tools to help companies retain and protect this valuable data for decades, with the ability to easily search and access it for future analysis.”


Reliability of a point-of-care device to determine oxidative stress in whole blood before and after acute exercise: A practical approach for the applied sports sciences

Journal of Sports Sciences from

Measuring alterations in redox homoeostasis in athletes can provide insights into their responses to training such as adaptations or fatigued states. However, redox monitoring is impractical in athletes given the time burden of venepuncture and subsequent laboratory assays. The ability of point-of-care tests (POC): 1) Free Oxygen Radical Test (FORT) and 2) Free Oxygen Radical Defence (FORD), to reliably measure whole blood oxidative stress between days and after exercise is unknown as well as their relationship with laboratory measures (F2-isoprostanes, total antioxidant capacity; TAC). Participants completed two trials performed on separate days comprising blood sampling at rest (n=22) and after treadmill-running (n=14). Between-day CVs for FORT (4.6%) and FORD (4.8%) were acceptable at rest. There was no difference in the between-day magnitude of change in any biomarker from pre- to post-exercise (p>0.05), yet the within-trial change in FORD was variable (trial one: +4.5%, p=0.15; trial two: +6.3%, p<0.05). TAC and FORD were significantly correlated pre- and post-exercise (r=~0.53, p<0.05), whereas F2-isoprostanes and FORT had a significant correlation pre-exercise only (r=0.45, p=0.03). Overall, the POC tests are reliable and could be used for baseline longitudinal redox monitoring. More data is required on POC tests for assessing redox perturbations induced by exercise.


Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers says NFL’s virus policy has double standards

ESPN NFL, Associated Press from

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said he sees double standards in the safety protocols the NFL has instituted as it tries to complete a season amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“You can dap up a guy after a game, but you can’t eat at the same lunch table as a teammate,” Rodgers said Tuesday on SiriusXM’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”

“You can go down to practice and hit each other and be in close contact, but you have to have Plexiglass between you and the guy next to you in the locker room. I just think some of those things, to me, really don’t add up.”


Here’s how the American Athletic Conference handles coronavirus cases within football programs like Navy

Baltimore Sun, Capital Gazette, Bill Wagner from

Many questioned the decision by Navy football coach Ken Niumatalolo to not engage in contact practices throughout August training camp.

The veteran coach explained his reasoning numerous times throughout the month, saying it was because of contact tracing protocols. He knew one positive test for coronavirus could wipe out multiple position groups.

If a wide receiver tested positive, more than likely multiple other players at that position would be deemed close contacts. Additionally, any defensive back that practiced against that wide receiver could be considered a close contact. Same goes with offensive and defensive linemen going against one another in the trenches.


Potential prognostic factors for hamstring muscle injury in elite male soccer players: A prospective study

PLOS One; Ismet Shalaj, Masar Gjaka, Norbert Bachl, Barbara Wessner, Harald Tschan, Faton Tishukaj from

Hamstring injuries remain the most common injury type across many professional sports. Despite a variety of intervention strategies, its incidence in soccer players playing in the UEFA Champions League has increased by 4% per year over the last decade. Test batteries trying to identify potential risk factors have produced inconclusive results. The purpose of the current study was to prospectively record hamstring injuries, to investigate the incidence and characteristics of the injuries, and to identify possible risk factors in elite male soccer players, playing in the Kosovo national premier league. A total of 143 soccer players from 11 teams in Kosovo were recruited. To identify possible prevalent musculoskeletal or medical conditions a widespread health and fitness assessment was performed including isokinetic strength testing, Nordic hamstring strength test, functional tests, and a comprehensive anamnesis surveying previous hamstring injuries. On average 27.9% of the players sustained at least one hamstring injury with three players suffering bilateral strains with the re-injury rate being 23%. Injured players were significantly older and heavier and had a higher body mass index compared to non-injured ones (p < 0.05). There was a lower passing rate in the Nordic hamstring strength test and a higher injury incidence among the previously injured players compared to non-injured ones (p < 0.05). Except for hamstring/quadriceps ratio and relative torque at 60°/sec (p < 0.05) for dominant and non-dominant leg, there were no other significant differences in isokinetic strength regardless of the angular velocity. No differences were observed for functional tests between cohorts. Regression analysis revealed that age, Nordic hamstring strength test, previous injury history, and isokinetic concentric torque at 240°/sec could determine hamstring injuries by 25.9%, with no other significant predicting risk factors. The battery of laboratory and field-based tests performed during preseason to determine performance related skills showed limited diagnostic conclusiveness, making it difficult to detect players at risk for future hamstring injuries.


Toronto FC hoping to make MLS Cup run having spent much of 2020 far from home

ESPN FC, Jeff Carlisle from

On a recent Thursday in Hartford, Conn., Toronto FC goalkeeper Quentin Westberg pondered the dichotomy of wanting to reach MLS Cup on Dec. 12, but also desiring to see his family again. Meanwhile, Jim Liston, the team’s director of sports science, was planning a trip to Lowe’s to buy 15 garbage cans so players could have an ice bath after training. As for manager Greg Vanney, he was fretting about his team’s health and the lack of practice time their schedule was affording.

Such is the life of a team as it attempts to not only navigate its way through the COVID-19 pandemic, but has been forced to do it away from home.

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