Time for another edition of the Sports Science Weekly Gym Bag. (Yes, a Wisconsin Badger football gym bag this week...they're 5-0!) If you ever run across something that you would like to share, just add it to the comments below!
Marathon Runners Mull the ‘D Word’
This is the time of year, after marathoners have logged their longest miles, that any kind of pain, nagging or excruciating, can send runners into a panic about whether they will make it to the starting line. Or if they should even try...
Faster tunes make you bike faster, even if it hurts a bit more Researchers have been studying how music and other “distractions” affect exercise performance for decades (see here, for instance), hoping to trick us into pushing a little harder without realizing it. One of the factors they’ve looked at extensively is the speed of the music — the idea that faster tempos make us pick up the pace. The problem is that the effects of tempo tend to be swamped by the effect of whether the subjects in the experiment like the particular tunes selected for them...
How Do Marathons Affect Your Heart?
Last year the European Heart Journal published a study that continues to prompt discussion among researchers who work with marathoner runners and those, many of them the same researchers, who run marathons. In the study, German scientists scanned the hearts of 108 experienced, male distance runners in their fifties, sixties and seventies. By standard measures, the group’s risk for heart problems was low. But when the researchers studied the runners’ scan results, they found that more than a third of the men showed evidence of significant calcification or plaque build-up in their heart arteries. Several also had scarring of some of the tissue in their hearts...
The Eyes Have It - Is visual training the sports world's next big thing?
Seattle Mariners first baseman Russell Branyan began this season on a tear. In interviews, Branyan credited his newfound success in large part to a piece of software that runs on an ordinary laptop. "I think it's helped me really pinpoint and focus on the ball," Branyan said of the Vizual Edge program, which offers a variety of exercises to train and sharpen visual skills. "I see the ball exactly where it is. I don't want to say it's all because of this. … But, I mean, I was a .230 hitter."
Watch Out Gatorade, Powerade, Accelerade! Mother Nature's Entered the Game!
"I'm convinced more than ever that Mother Nature is a runner. I've recently hailed Mother Nature's "natural sports drink"—coconut water—and its health benefits, especially how its naturally high level of potassium helps keep my calf cramps at bay on long runs. Well, it appears that Mother Nature has expanded her line of sports drinks..."
Young Athletes and Women More Likely to Have Second ACL Surgery Within a Year According to one of the largest studies ever conducted on the outcomes of ACL surgery, patients under 40 and women are both more likely to have second knee surgery within a year of an ACL repair. Investigators looked at surgical outcomes in 70,000 patients who had ACL reconstruction surgery from 1997 to 2006 in New York state. The results, published in the October 2009 issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, found the following...
Despite Size, NFL Players Not More Likely To Develop Heart Disease, Even After Retirement
Former professional football players with large bodies don't appear to have the same risk factors for heart disease as their non-athletic counterparts, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found in studying a group of National Football League (NFL) alumni....
Here's a new feature of Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: A weekly round-up of some of the best blog posts, articles and other interesting stuff that I've found on sports science and fitness research. If you find anything else, please just add it as a comment to this post!
Aging Muscles: 'Hard To Build, Easy To Lose' Have you ever noticed that people have thinner arms and legs as they get older? As we age it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy. They get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures. New research is showing how this happens — and what to do about it...
Back to Basics: Yes, Sergeant! If Mark Roozen, a personal trainer in Colorado Springs, set his group conditioning classes to music, the playlist could start with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Mr. Roozen’s routines are as likely to incorporate logs, wheelbarrows and sandbags as circuit machines, Pilates equipment and other gym staples... Often Overlooked but Key to Marathon Success: The Base Doesn't sound glamorous, does it? Isn't snazzy sounding. Isn't flashy. But, man is it important. One of the biggest mistakes new marathoners make is overlooking the base mileage needed before beginning any kind of marathon training...
Real-Time Feedback System For Alpine Skiers Help Improve Performance Researchers have developed an effective real-time performance management and feedback system for alpine ski racers that allow skiers to better understand their carved turning skills and improve their performance...
Caster Semenya - cover-ups, lies and confusion For those who have not been following this astonishing story, Athletics South Africa boss Leonard Chuene admitted on the weekend that he lied about not having prior knowledge of the doubt around Caster Semenya, and has admitted that he authorized tests on Semenya in South Africa before the team left for the IAAF World Champs in Berlin...
Slushies: the new weapon for exercising in heat Reading up on Australian sports research for an upcoming magazine story, I came across this little nugget about dealing with competition in hot conditions. The Aussies have been leaders in research on “pre-cooling” to lower body temperature before starting extended exercise in the heat. They introduced ice vests at the 1996 Olympics (which have since become widely used commercial products), and in 2004 brought big bathtubs full of ice-water to the Athens Olympic venues, actually immersing their endurance athletes shortly before their competitions...
Phys Ed: Can Vitamin D Improve Your Athletic Performance? When scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport recently decided to check the Vitamin D status of some of that country’s elite female gymnasts, their findings were fairly alarming. Of the 18 gymnasts tested, 15 had levels that were “below current recommended guidelines for optimal bone health,” the study’s authors report. Six of these had Vitamin D levels that would qualify as medically deficient. Unlike other nutrients, Vitamin D can be obtained by exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, as well as through foods or supplements. Of course, female gymnasts are a unique and specialized bunch, not known for the quality or quantity of their diets, or for getting outside much...
As the old saying goes, “you can’t coach height”, but, according to researchers at the University of South Australia, you can recruit and develop key skills beyond genetic gifts. That was their conclusion after interviewing 90 elite basketball coaches from around the world, including men and women from major college programs and professional teams from the NCAA, NBA, WNBA, and 10 other international leagues.
"Game statistics are commonly used to recruit basketball players but by watching players on the court, and how they behave outside of it, coaches can pick up a lot of non-physical factors that indicate whether a player is likely to make the grade,” said Michael Rogers, a PhD student in the university’s Allied Health and Human Performance program and lead author of the study.
With team training now resume for many leagues around the world, athletes are increasing their physical fitness levels back up to in-season form. Well-known data metrics, like heart rate, speed, and power, are being uploaded and summarized by performance trainers and scrutinized by coaches. But, mentally, where is the team at? Are they cognitively as sharp as they were two months ago? Are they thinking about family members or friends? How has this new pattern of living affected their brain?
Of course, team psychologists will have discussions with players, when needed, to address any concerns that they bring forward. Yet, it would benefit players and the team if there was a standardized framework for assessing their overall readiness to endure the battle on the field, in other words, their cognitive fitness. On top of physical capabilities, the variables of anticipation, awareness, perception and decision-making often determine the outcome of a game.
Because we all need one more reason to get off the couch and on the treadmill or the empty trail while we work from home, researchers at the University of California, Davis have found that the neurotransmitters in our brains actually switch into a hyper-learning mode after aerobic exercise.
n the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship game, two true freshmen, quarterback Trevor Lawrence and wide receiver Justyn Ross, made a startling statement as they dominated the defending champion Alabama Crimson Tide. The Lawrence to Ross connection produced 6 catches for 153 yards, including a game-breaking 74-yard touchdown pass and a one-handed circus catch for a late, crucial first down. Two 19-year-olds, one 6 feet, 6 inches and the other 6’ 4”, outplayed one of the best defensive units in the country.
In our latest book, we featured the rise of Justyn Ross and his ironic results at Nike’s “The Opening” competition for high school football stars. Despite the speed and athleticism that Ross displayed in the national championship game, he has another, defining quality that doesn’t show up in the SPARQ ratings - he’s a Playmaker.
The double-edged sword of respect and expectation that comes with the number 10 jersey is reserved for the shoulders of a player that can handle the weight. So when Jürgen Klinsmann, former U.S. Men’s National Team head coach, handed it to seventeen-year-old Christian Pulisic before a 2016 World Cup qualifier game, he knew the load that was being placed on the young playmaker. “The No. 10 has a meaning,” Klinsmann said. “Ask him now how he feels with that heavy number on his back.”
That night, Pulisic responded brilliantly, scoring two goals and assisting on a third in just twenty-six minutes, making him the youngest U.S. player ever to score in a World Cup qualifier. Even Bruce Arena, who’s seen his share of promising prospects in his forty years of coaching at the college, pro, and national team levels, believes in Pulisic. “I think he is just a natural,” said Arena. “The game’s easy for him. He’s got exceptional skill, vision, he’s pretty smooth.” Wary of anointing him a savior too early, Arena did inch out on a limb when pressed: “It makes you think that this is going to be perhaps the first American superstar in the sport. You have to be hesitant about this but this is a very talented young man.”
For those baseball hitters who can do the former, the latter comes much easier. Seeing, identifying and selecting which pitch to swing at is a combination of visual perception, brain processing and motor skill execution. Sure, the physics of hitting a baseball, measured by things called launch angle and exit velocity, determine the trajectory and distance of a batted ball. But it’s that pre-contact decision making process that gets hitters on base so they can score runs and win games. Just as bat speed, leg drive and arm strength define the distance of a hit, the purely cognitive skills of perception, information processing and hand-eye coordination pick out the best pitch to hit and, more importantly, which pitch to avoid.
And when you’re 5 feet, 9 inches tall, you rely on those brain skills much more than physical dominance to stay up in the big leagues. That’s exactly what Mookie Betts, right fielder for the 2018 World Champion Boston Red Sox, has done over his young four-season career. Sure, he won the AL batting title this year with a .346 batting average, but he also had a league high slugging percentage, with 32 home runs and 80 RBIs.
Substituting brain for brawn, Betts excels in a category of baseball analytics known as plate discipline, in other words, picking the right pitch to swing at and then making contact with that swing. In the pre-swing decision-making process, hitters with good plate discipline swing at pitches in the strike zone, not out of it. When they do decide to swing, they make contact more often with better hand-eye coordination.
“I’ve done this a long time and I’ve never had a game like that. This is uncharted territory.” To be sure, it was one of Mason Crosby’s worse games of his 12-year NFL kicking career, missing four out of five field goals and an extra point. In his last five full seasons, the Green Bay Packers kicker has made an average of 85% of his field goals, so his week 5 game, a 31-23 loss to the Detroit Lions, was more than a statistical anomaly. Missing wide from 42, 41, 38 and 56 yards, Crosby was at a loss to explain his sudden inaccuracy, “Every attempt I felt like I was in rhythm going through it,” said Crosby. “It was one of those days that just wasn’t there. I’ve done this a long time, and I’ve never had a day where it wasn’t there like that.”
These pre-game preparations are certainly important for warming up the arms and legs, getting the heart rate up and loosening up muscles. But maybe more importantly, this skill repetition also gets the brain ready for the hundreds of actions it will need to perform soon after.
