Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 9, 2021

… “I had to go through challenges in the fight,” Felix said, as People reported. “I’m absolutely where I’m supposed to be. You know, sometimes I think you just have to fight through and I think it’s unfortunate. It’s not just me. And I think that that’s the biggest thing.”

Felix told reporters that her daughter was one of the reasons she pushed herself.

“There have been so many women before me who had to stay silent about their fight,” Felix continued. “And so for me to be able to step out and I think my daughter gave me the courage to do that. But I think that was really the thing, that this has been going on for far too long. And I hope that we’re really changing things.”

With Messi set for a shocking exit from Barcelona, we’re looking back at “the greatest stretch of athletic excellence we’ve ever seen—and probably ever will see.”

… Mitchell starts his day with a bottle of water before he gets ready to go to the training facility. He has 7-8 bottles of body armor water a day that is naturally alkaline hydrating water for athletes.

The 24-year old has ginger tea in the morning, known for its hydration and zero calories. His breakfast includes a couple of pancakes with 4-5 eggs and turkey bacon sometimes.

Mitchell would 1-2 cups of beet elite as his pre-workout before getting a 45-minutes session of strength training done. Some of his other supplements include amino acids.

… Her impressive hodgepodge of skills is at least partly a function of hailing from a family of diverse athletic pursuits.

“My dad played a throwing sport, my mom played soccer,” Musselman said, “and I think that energy and competitiveness shows in the way that I play.”

Krikorian, the former UCLA water polo coach, noted the effort and discipline that have made Musselman one of the best players in the world are a function of her determination, not her lineage.

… “I don’t know to what extent he’s doing baseball activity,” Maddon said. “I’m sure he’s sneaking into the cage, doing things like that. For the most part, he is feeling better. And he’ll continue to work more on the kind of stuff that you’re not going to see, to continue to strengthen that [calf] and test it in their way, whatever the method is our staff wants him to test it.”

Maddon said that for as difficult as the physical rehab has been for Trout, there’s a mental component to his recovery process too. While recent doctor visits have all returned good news on the progress of his calf injury, Maddon said, “it’s still up to you, the athlete, to push it to the point where you feel comfortable.

“You have to get to that point where you do something without thinking about it. And that sometimes takes a while. You don’t want to go back after all this good rehab. You don’t want to go backward, especially right now. And that’s always in your mind.”

Practice makes perfect: That’s the message kids, their parents, and coaches have internalized regarding sports. Today, around a third of school-aged athletes focus on a single sport, according to some estimates, participating in intensive, year-round training regimens, sometimes on multiple different teams. And they’re narrowing their focus at a pretty young age, too. Many kids are starting to zero in on a single sport between 10 and 12 years old, says Neeru Jayanthi, a physician at Emory Sports Medicine in Atlanta.

Why does judgment matter?

We expect good judgment from a doctor making a diagnosis, an employer screening resumes, or a professor grading an essay. But even the wisest experts are susceptible to both bias (consistently going in the wrong direction) and noise (randomly missing the mark). The first step to more accurate and precise judgment is to understand the ways in which the human mind jumps to conclusions. Your judgment will never be perfect—but you can strive to be aware of your limitations and to correct for them.

The Olympics are designed to showcase the frontiers of human athletic achievement, but technology has always played a role in helping athletes push the limits.

Why it matters: With some data suggesting that pure human athletic ability in many Olympic events may be plateauing, technology will become even more important to helping the best become better.

Rapid advances in wearable technologies and real-time monitoring have resulted in major inroads in the world of recreational and elite sport. One such innovation is the application of real-time monitoring, which comprises a smartwatch application and ecosystem, designed to collect, process and transmit a wide range of physiological, biomechanical, bioenergetic and environmental data using cloud-based services. We plan to assess the impact of this wireless technology during Tokyo 2020, where this technology could help characterize the physiological and thermal strain experienced by an athlete, as well as determine future management of athletes during a medical emergency as a result of a more timely and accurate diagnosis. Here we describe some of the innovative technologies developed for numerous sports at Tokyo 2020 ranging from race walking (20 km and 50 km events), marathon, triathlon, road cycling (including the time trial event), mountain biking, to potentially team sports played outdoors. A more symbiotic relationship between sport, health and technology needs to be encouraged that harnesses the unique demands of elite sport (e.g., the need for unobtrusive devices that provide real-time feedback) and serves as medical and preventive support for the athlete’s care. The implementation of such applications would be particularly welcome in the field of medicine (i.e., telemedicine applications) and the workplace (with particular relevance to emergency services, the military and generally workers under extreme environmental conditions). Laboratory and field-based studies are required in simulated scenarios to validate such emerging technologies, with the field of sport serving as an excellent model to understand and impact disease. [full text]

… The Verizon 5G Performance Center: The future of NBA training facilities

Step into the 53,000-square-foot Verizon 5G Performance Center and you might think it’s just another palatial practice facility. But there’s much more to it than the eye can see. It is literally reinventing what a training center can do.

Tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the courts and workout areas are 150 HD cameras, sensors, nodes and 3D force plates that can track the motion of players and the ball. Using Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband connectivity, the Suns are merging computer-aided motion analysis, player and ball tracking, and shot tracking—three usually isolated technologies—into one integrated system.

This revolutionary 5G system can provide nuanced insights to a degree not possible until now, and it could change the very nature of NBA training forever.

… In 2016, there was the revelation that Russia had been running a state-sponsored doping system, which Russia has always denied.

Also in 2016, there was a widespread drug testing failure, not just in Russia, before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, says the failure happened in 10 sports considered high risk for doping, including swimming and track and field.

“In those high-risk sports alone,” Tygart said, “there were 1,913 athletes who had no tests in the months leading into the Rio Olympic Games.”

That’s significant, he says, because most doping happens before a big event, like the Olympics.

Seaweed, insects, and worms will be instrumental elements of our future diets, argue a group of researchers. Not only could these novel ingredients make our diets more sustainable, they say—but crucially, they could also make our food systems more resilient to climate change.

The challenge of sustainable diets is not just what foods will have the least impact on our planet, but increasingly also which foods we can sustain—and which ones can sustain us—in the unpredictable reality of our changing world. Agriculture, livestock farming, and wild fisheries—all our conventional methods of food production—are under increasing risk due to climate change, from weather extremes like drought and flooding, warming oceans, and the spread of pests and disease.

“Our global, conventional food system is inexorably exposed to a litany of risks,” says Asaf Tzachor, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and first author of the new Nature Food article. To respond to this, “we have to radically change the foods we farm and consume, as well as our farming approaches and techniques,” he says.

What’s behind these super-fast times? Some have suggested the composition of the track, new “super spike” running shoes, or hot weather are responsible. While these almost certainly contributed to the results, another reason is likely to be more uninterrupted training through reduced international travel and competition in the months leading into the Tokyo Olympic Games.

This better preparation in turn is due to two things: first, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant less competition and more time for training; and second, steady improvements in sports science and applied research are maximising the extremes of human performance. `

… Hundreds of athletes found some way to use their voices in ways they hadn’t considered until the Tokyo Games — and the seismic 18 months that led up to it — all but commanded it.

They learned to talk about what it felt like to make sacrifices and accommodations for four years, then five, to come to the Games without friends and family, to put themselves out there, and to know they will be judged not on who they are but on how fast they run, how well they shoot, or whether they stick the landing.

“I’ve been afraid that my worth is tied to whether or not I win or lose,” Allyson Felix wrote the morning before her bronze-medal run in the 400 meters made her the most decorated female track athlete in Olympic history. “But right now I’ve decided to leave that fear behind. To understand that I am enough.”

The Summer Olympic Games bring together top athletes from around the world to compete and showcase their skills every 4 years like clockwork—excepting the most recent games, of course. As issues of environmental sustainability continue to gain public and political traction, the Olympic Games have become a focal point for environmentalists and academics seeking to raise awareness and evaluate the environmental impacts of international sporting events.

But those impacts extend beyond the 4-year games: Thirty-two International Sports Federations (IFs) participate in the Summer Olympic Games, each of which may host dozens of international competitions every year. Each federation’s progress toward sustainability contributes to the overall environmental impact of the Olympic Movement. However, a new report found that most IFs have made little to no progress over the past decade toward the environmental sustainability goals set by the Olympic Movement, and even fewer sports organizations have sustainability goals of their own.

“Climate change poses a multitude of risks for the sporting sector,” Dominique Santini of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, lead researcher on the report, said in a statement. “Immediate climate change mitigation among sports organizations is therefore vital.”