Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 29, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 29, 2021

 

Jordan Morris makes another choice

US Soccer Players, Jason Davis from

… Morris is proof that there’s no fairly judging players on a single career choice. He’s proof that players can change and evolve and that presumptions about what is the “right” move should never trump a player’s own understanding of himself. That doesn’t mean that every choice made by every player is a good one and that they are above scrutiny. It’s that our ability to judge players depends on information that may not exist alongside an inability to know the future.


Jozy Altidore Is Still Here

Sports Illustrated, Brian Straus from

Altidore hasn’t featured for the U.S. in 18 months, and the national team is trending younger, but he’ll be the first to remind you that 31 is still young and that he has plenty more to offer.


Haniger healthy, hopes to regain All-Star form for Seattle

Associated Press, Tim Booth from

Nearly three years have passed since Mitch Haniger was an All-Star and was viewed as part of the Seattle Mariners’ core.

Then came the injuries that sidelined Haniger for much of the 2019 season and all of last year’s truncated 60-game schedule.

“Injuries can derail your career, but at the same time I think you can come back stronger from them if you put in the time and learn your body better and kind of understand why those things happen,” Haniger said Thursday. “I think I’ve had a good handle on things and I’ve been excited to get back out there.”


The Problems With Sport Psychology

Medium, Sports Psychology, Dave Kearney from

95% of athletes recognise that mental skills are an important part of every successful sporting performance. And while these athletes are often surrounded with coaches, athletic trainers as well as an ever increasing array of tracking apps and other technology, the vast majority of teams have little or no investment in mental skills coaching. There is clearly a gap (in terms of both time and money invested) between what athletes believe is important to their success and how they actually train for it.


Texas bolsters athletic performance staff with focus on velocity training, sports science

247 Sports, Horns 247, Jeff Howe from

With Torre Becton already in place at Texas and leading the Longhorns through winter conditioning as director of football performance, head coach Steve Sarkisian announced on Thursday a series of hires aimed at maximizing the strength and conditioning program. Becton’s athletic performance staff includes assistant performance coaches Cory Castro and Markus James who are following Becton from Cal and Isaiah Gonzales, who in addition to serving on Becton’s staff was also Cal’s Director of Football Sports Sciences.

The only non-Cal hire is Joe Vaughn, who was on the Kansas State strength staff in 2020 and previously worked for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after returning to Kansas for five years (2007-2011) as an assistant strength coach following an All-Big 12 career as a player for the Jayhawks. Of the hires, Sarkisian said Becton, a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach who was with Sarkisian when he was the head coach at Washington, “is thrilled to have his four assistant coaches for athletic performance in place.”


Brewers’ Sara Goodrum becomes first woman to serve as minor-league hitting coordinator

CBSSports.com, Katherine Acquavella from

Sara Goodrum has been promoted to the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor-league hitting coordinator, the team announced Thursday. The move makes Goodrum the first woman to lead a minor-league hitting department for a Major League Baseball club.

Goodrum played Division I softball as an outfielder at the University of Oregon from 2012 until 2015, where she majored in human physiology. She earned a master’s degree in exercise and sports science at the University of Utah before joining the Brewers organization in 2017 as a sports science intern. Over the last three years, Goodrum has served as the organization’s coordinator for integrative sports performance.

“We’ve seen it work for almost four years with Sara in our organization, working very closely with our players and our coaches,” Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said of Goodrum, via Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. “I think we’ve seen that because of her talent and her skill set, she is trusted and respected.”


Hovering, Thriving, Winning: How the L.A. Dodgers Adapted and Became Baseball’s Best Team

SportTechie, Joe Lemire from

… Leading the Los Angeles Dodgers’ player performance efforts was Brandon McDaniel, whose department ultimately prepared the club for a historic season: a 43-17 record followed by the franchise’s first World Series title since 1988.

Since president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman took over in late 2014, the Dodgers have constructed arguably the sport’s best player development system, with the training programs falling under McDaniel’s purview. SportTechie recently caught up with McDaniel, a native of Council Bluffs, Iowa, to discuss his experiences in 2020 and his views on the evolution of sport science in MLB.


Apple Watch blood sugar sensor ‘coming in Series 7’ – report

9to5Mac, Ben Lovejoy from

A Korean report claims that an Apple Watch blood sugar sensor will be included in the Series 7 device, when it is launched later this year.

With health applications a major selling point of the Apple Watch, it has long been expected that the Cupertino company would want to expand its medical capabilities …


Amazon Halo Review: I Tried Amazon’s New Fitness Tracker and It Completely Creeped Me Out

GQ, Drew Millard from

In retrospect, I gave up on my Amazon Halo at approximately 1:15 a.m. on January 1, 2021. Or maybe it gave up on me. I opened up the companion iPhone app for the tech giant’s fitness tracker, which by that point I’d had strapped to my wrist for the better part of a month, to check on the “points” I’d racked up for the week and figure out how much exercise I’d need to squeeze into the coming weekend to meet my goal.


How to Build a Fitness App? UI-UX Design Case Study

2 Much Coffee from

In the last few years, we’ve seen the fitness tech market explode with a plethora of wild new products. From smartwatches and other wearables to apps designed for everyone from gym rats to yogis, we’ve seen it all—and then some.

Our team aimed to create a new approach to a healthy lifestyle. The app includes a wide range of workouts, marathons, and fitness challenges which make this app address crucial social issues. Our goal was not only to make people healthier but to help organizations to hold their charity events. The app follows the best practices of user experience and the recent trends to address and solve the common user pain points.


Energy harvesting made possible with skin temperature

EurekAlert! Science News, National Research Council of Science & Technology (South Korea) from

Development of flexible thermoelectric devices with maximized flexibility and high efficiency; enabling mass production with high yield by automated process, commercialization of self-powered wearable devices


Scared no more: Inside Mississippi State guard Xaria Wiggins’ four-month injury battle – The Dispatch

The Dispatch (Starkville, MS), Ben Portnoy from

… Seated alongside Dr. Angel Brutus, MSU’s Assistant Athletic Director of Counseling and Sport Psychology, Wiggins took deep, controlled breaths as a sensor attached to her earlobe measured her pulse. On the computer screen in front of her, the junior guard was forced to keep a digital hot air balloon from falling beneath the clouds with each ensuing breath.

When Wiggins gets nervous or anxious, she says, her heart rate spikes. The balloon exercise was a way for her to find a balance in controlling her breathing when things got tense.

“(Brutus) wanted me to get from that, like, ‘I’m in full control of my body,'” Wiggins explained. “That’s really what I got. I’m going to focus on my body.”


2021 Executive Reflections: NBA’s Steve Hellmuth on How Unity of Purpose and Creative Partnerships Were Key to NBA Restart

Sports Video Group, Steve Hellmuth from

… The medical success of “The Bubble” came from unity of purpose. We were all united by respect and a focus on keeping each other healthy.

Testing was axiomatic, but most important, as Dr. Leroy Sims, the NBA doctor in charge of The Bubble reminded us frequently, stick with the big prevention fundamentals: wear a mask, maintain distance, eat outdoors only, keep your hands away from your face, and use good judgment always.


In new age of sports, increased injury concerns might linger

San Antonio Express-News, Mike Finger from

… “You’re at a higher risk if your core strength is down,” Schmidt said. “That’s going to be the case if kids haven’t been working out because the gym is closed.”

It wasn’t just an American football trend. In soccer, muscle injuries soared in the English Premier League by anywhere from 16 percent (using numbers cited by ESPN) to 42 percent (per The Athletic) last fall.

Experts pointed not only to a lack of training in the offseason, but also to a condensed preseason and to a condensed regular season in which there was less time off between games.

So far, nothing jumps out about similar impact on the NBA. But the same underlying factors are there, and many coaches — including the Spurs’ Gregg Popovich — have talked about how they’re trying to be more cognizant than ever of players’ need for rest and healing.


Why does MLB want to delay or shorten season again? Follow the money

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Michael Rand from

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that MLB owners want to “delay or even shorten the upcoming season” as the sport continues to navigate the fallout from the virus. The logic for delaying makes some sense: pushing things back, say, 30 days means tens of millions more vaccine doses in circulation before things start and could promote a safer environment.

If the sentiment was merely safety-based, perhaps it would be a win-win. It might mean a neutral site World Series again, since the postseason would probably extend into mid-November even with a lot of doubleheaders in the regular season, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world. In fact, a permanent neutral site World Series might make a lot of sense.

But these are owners. And this is Manfred. So it’s probably about money, isn’t it?


Making Sense Of: Collaborative Work Space

The pandemic has forced a shift to remote work that will likely change professional work habits forever. Office workers have seen significant increases in productivity and quality of life as a result, indicating that the world is unlikely to go back to lots of commuting office workers in big shared office floor plans in gigantic office buildings.

A new article in The New Yorker by John Seabrook found that new state-of-the-art office designs remain empty, void of employees. Tech companies are taking advantage of low real estate prices to buy up urban office space, but they are also extending mandatory remote work policies through Summer 2021.

Team sport athletes can never be remote employees. Their workplace changes have produced severe quality of life compromises, like with the NBA bubble. The NHL is seeing the quality of the on-ice product drop as hockey players figure out their new circumstance. NFL opt-outs from the season just past have to pick up their lives as well as their careers.

The currently in-season basketball and hockey players are experiencing busier busy days (NBA, NHL) that are, yet, not as demanding.

There is going to be a longer path for team athletes to find a new normal the way that office workers have. Effective communication will continue to grow in importance and evolve as distance and separation norms continue.

Improved communication sets the stage for better technology. Digital feedback technologies keep getting better for personal skill development but the challenge for team development is exponentially more difficult. Communication tools for video analysis and data reporting are established communication platforms within sports organizations. Eventually athlete management and training platforms will be too. Training Peaks is a remote coaching app for endurance athletes that’s proving highly effective. Someday team athletes will get to do extensive remote work, but only after the communication channels are as well-developed as what we typically see for highly-skilled office workers.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the weekend.
-Brad

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.