Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 9, 2021

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 9, 2021

 

Jonathan Isaac’s return to the Orlando Magic will come in stages

Orlando Magic Daily, Philip Rossman-Reich from

… There is still no official word on when Isaac will hit the floor, whether he will be ready for camp or exactly where he is in the process. More than a year removed from surgery to repair a torn ACL and torn meniscus suffered in the bubble last August, nobody is quite sure where Isaac is.

And not even Isaac is revealing much, keeping to the party line and letting the process play out.

That is the truth of the matter for this year. Whether Isaac is available for camp or not and whenever Isaac makes his on-court debut, it is going to be a process to get him back to full speed. And the goal for this season is more about getting Isaac to full speed and getting him confident in his body to continue growing and developing again.


Wolves appoint six new staff in revamp of medical & performance

Training Ground Guru, Simon Austin from

Wolves have announced a big revamp of their medical and performance department, involving the hiring of six new staff and a change of roles and responsibilities for several others.

Dr Rob Chakraverty, who arrived in May 2020 as sports physician, has been promoted to head the department. The former England national team doctor and Chief Medical Officer of UK Athletics will have the new title of Head of Performance and Medicine.

Elsewhere, Tom Farrow comes in as Head of Sport Science, having been Strength and Conditioning Coach with both the England and Team GB Rugby 7s team. Ben Macdonald has been appointed Head Physio after three-and-a-half years as Lead Physio for British Cycling.


Find your sleep ‘sweet spot’ to protect your brain as you age, study suggests

CNN Health, Kristen Rogers from

How long older adults sleep could affect their brain health, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.

Disrupted sleep is common in late life, the study authors wrote, and associated with changes in cognitive function — the mental capacity for learning, thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, remembering and paying attention.
Age-related changes in sleep have also been linked with early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, depression and cardiovascular disease, so the authors investigated possible associations between self-reported sleep duration, demographic and lifestyle factors, subjective and objective cognitive function, and participants’ levels of beta amyloid.


This is the Ultimate Cross Training Machine for Runners – Use the vertical climbing machine to increase fitness, improve form and increase strength, all in your own home without heavy impact.

PodiumRunner, Colleen Gulick from

… Over 80% of running injuries are the result of repetitive stress. So, the key question is how can we combat this repetitive stress and, thus, reduce our risk of most injuries? There are a few strategies we can employ, but in general being weak, tight, or tired will exacerbate injury risk. So increasing strength is our best weapon against overuse injuries. Strong muscles produce consistent and reliable foot strikes helping the body to know what to expect and how to react to every step. However, if one side of the body, or one muscle, is weak then the other muscles become overworked in order to compensate. Over time, this imbalance can lead to injury. For this reason, tight muscles, particularly hip flexors and hamstrings, are common sources of trouble for runners. So stretching and increasing range of motion in these areas is another key strategy for reducing injury risk. Besides strengthening and increasing range of motion, another way in which we can combat overuse injuries is through variety. Performing the same movement repetitively, without giving the body a chance to adapt or recover can cause trauma.

Vertical climbing machines can assist with each of those injury reducing strategies by strengthening the entire body, increasing range of motion, and performing a natural movement pattern other than running.


Post-exercise Recovery: Cooling and Heating, a Periodized Approach

Frontiers in Sports & Active Living journal from

Recovery is regarded as a multifaceted (e.g., physiological, psychological) restorative process relative to time and modulated by external load, individual response to stress, and often dictated by external athletic competition and demand (Kellmann et al., 2018). The increasing physical demands of athletic competition, particularly, team sports (Barnes et al., 2014), involving high fixture frequency, has further exacerbated the physical and mental load placed on athletes (Ekstrand et al., 2018). Athletes are now routinely exposed to longitudinal demands with, in some cases, only 48 h of recovery time between competitions. Fatigue may be defined as “an inability to complete a task that was once achievable within a recent time frame” (Pyne and Martin, 2011; Halson, 2014) and derived from central and/or peripheral origins. Recovery time between successive competitions may be insufficient to allow athletes to fully regenerate leading to fatigue, which may increase the risk of under-performance, non-functional overreaching, injury, and illness (Dupont et al., 2010; Bengtsson et al., 2013). Demands are further increased in athletes competing in continental leagues, play-off phases, international tournaments, and are further aggravated in circumstances such as the English Premier League that does not include a winter break (Ekstrand et al., 2018) or in recent times the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic (Seshadri et al., 2021). Increased athlete training and competition availability as a result of a reduction in injuries, substantially improves the likelihood of success of an individual or team (Hägglund et al., 2013). Changes in injury occurrence also have a significant impact, particularly, financial implications (team underachievement and player salaries) of sporting organizations due to injury-related decrements in performance (Eliakim et al., 2020). Growing demands and the rising importance of improving recovery have also prompted athletes to inclusively invest in further bespoke personal support in an attempt to accelerate recovery.


Training Load: Science or Semantics?

Global Performance Insight, Jo Clubb from

Recently, a pre-print paper was shared on social media that received a notable reaction from the online sports science community. That paper was “Misuse of the term ‘load’ in sport and exercise science” by Craig Staunton, Grant Abt, Dan Weaving, and Daniel Wundersitz in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, which can be accessed here. The authors postulate that the use of terms load and training load breach “principles of science” and should be abandoned.

There was quite a “Marmite” response to the messages on social media (as to be expected on social!); some applauding the concerns raised, and others questioning the relevance and/or the alternative approach proposed. As is often the case, the discussion is not necessarily binary, so let’s try to recognise and explore the nuance within the arguments.


Mathematical model predicts best way to build muscle

University of Cambridge (UK), Research News from

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used methods of theoretical biophysics to construct the model, which can tell how much a specific amount of exertion will cause a muscle to grow and how long it will take. The model could form the basis of a software product, where users could optimise their exercise regimes by entering a few details of their individual physiology.

The model is based on earlier work by the same team, which found that a component of muscle called titin is responsible for generating the chemical signals which affect muscle growth.

The results, reported in the Biophysical Journal, suggest that there is an optimal weight at which to do resistance training for each person and each muscle growth target. Muscles can only be near their maximal load for a very short time, and it is the load integrated over time which activates the cell signalling pathway that leads to synthesis of new muscle proteins. But below a certain value, the load is insufficient to cause much signalling, and exercise time would have to increase exponentially to compensate. The value of this critical load is likely to depend on the particular physiology of the individual.


Victoria Invests $4 Million Aiming To Be Home Of Aussie Sports Tech

Australia Ministry of Sport from

The Victorian Government says the State aims to be the home of Australian Sports tech, creating up to 2000 new jobs in the sports technology field over the next four years.

Victoria has invested $4 million to create an Australian Sports Innovation Centre for Excellence to help local companies expand internationally.

Considered as Australia’s sports capital and the tech hub of Melbourne, the centre will be based in Cremorne, connecting to Victoria’s existing digital hub.


Lehigh Announces Partnership With The Zone

Lehigh University Athletics from

Lehigh is proud to announce a part­nership with The Zone, an app designed to monitor and improve the mental health of athletes. The partnership will promote the physical and mental wellness of Lehigh’s student-athletes as a continued priority for the university.

“The Lehigh Athletics Department is deeply committed to the health, well-being, ho­listic growth and personal development of our athletes and staff. The Zone offers an exciting tool that we believe will leverage and support the efforts of our staff to inspire self-awareness in each of our athletes as well as ownership of their personal growth process. The team at The Zone have been highly collaborative, open-minded and responsive to meeting our needs. We are excited about our partnership, eager to introduce the platform to our athletes and inspired to explore further opportunities within The Zone app to support our athletes,” said Lehigh D


Leveraging Student-Athlete Development Through Technology

Lehigh University Athletics from

While the last 18 months have brought lots of change and uncertainty to collegiate sports, Lehigh Athletics remains steadfast in its commitment to student-athlete development and continues to find opportunities for learning, growing and leading.

This year, Lehigh Athletics is excited to leverage the strength of its High Performance Development Team through a variety of technology platforms. Two of these companies with whom the department will partner, The Zone and GamePlan (who recently merged with InXAthlete), are founded by former student-athletes. Both encourage ownership by the individual of their learning and growth, a central tenet of Lehigh Athletics’ developmental framework.

While these platforms can make learning more accessible, the technology won’t replace face-to-face leadership development. In fact, it should actually make a greater depth of learning possible in-person.


This paper provides solid evidence that NFL *players* (not anyone else necessarily!) were safer from COVID playing in the NFL last year than they would have been without the season just living in their communities. Likely driven by testing + outdoor/mask

Twitter, Zachary Binney, Michael Lopez from

How did NFL player COVID-19 infections compare to community numbers during the 2020 season? Our new paper helps answer that question (to be published at @EpidemiologyLWW)


Pioneering study by top researchers + @FCBarcelona medical dept showed although sweating increases in certain situations, players didn’t exceed 2% limit for dehydration

Twitter, Barca Innovation Hub from

as fluid intake was relative to sweating: more players sweat, more they drink.


No-Sugar Diet: What Is a No-Sugar Diet, and What Can You Eat On It?

Parade Magazine, Emily Schiffer from

The process of converting food to energy can be disrupted by eating too much refined sugar, and is the root of metabolic dysfunction that precedes chronic disease,” says Robin Foroutan, MS, RDN, HCC, Integrative Medicine Dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “This disruption in metabolism from over-consuming sugar manifests as insulin resistance, which most people know is the precursor to type 2 diabetes, but it’s also linked to the development of other chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and Alzheimer’s disease.”

According to Foroutan, there’s no set definition of a a no-sugar diet, but it usually means cutting out all added sugar.”Some versions also cut out refined starches that have a high glycemic index, like pasta and wheat flour. Most versions allow for naturally occurring sugar from fruit, starchy vegetables and root vegetables,” says Foroutan.


Column: FIFA, Infantino only winners from biennial World Cup

Associated Press, Rob Harris from

… FIFA argues it is acting purely in the interests of what is best for world football.

But the process that led to the addition of 16 teams at the World Cup shows that isn’t exactly the case. FIFA’s own feasibility study in 2016 — months into Infantino’s first term as Sepp Blatter’s successor — found that “the highest absolute quality would be achieved under the current format.”


Will ProFitX Change the NBA?

Boxscore News, Aron Solomn from

… So why is ProFitX such a big deal and what, exactly, does it do for the league that isn’t already done?

Normally, when I read something that is powered by AI or, here, “provides strong AI-backed evidence,” I’m done, thanks. I think far too much AI isn’t actually AI but rather machine learning at best and more than likely even less than that. But with this skeptical starting point, what I’ve seen of ProFitX is impressive.

ProFitX is a startup that provides their clients (imagine players, agents, executives and even owners of NBA teams) a player’s real-time value. When I first learned of the technology I imagined the most realistic NBA video game in the world, one that would take everything about the player into account to determine their value to the team and performance in each game. What ProFitX actually does is actually part of that – it factors in data such as age, playing history, efficiency, injuries, and many other stats to come up with a player’s contract value.

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