June in Review

Thoughts/Quotes
 

• If you want to get good at skill A, you need to practice skill A and variations of Skill A – not practicing skill Z in hopes it will transfer

 

• Learning is messy, it requires errors

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• Motor learning is a problem solving process

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• We often practice for practice instead of practicing for performance

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• We often get caught up in evaluating the athlete (testing) and not the actual player (skill)

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• The idea that strength is this get out of jail free card has permeated sports performance, but strength is not a panacea – Dan Pfaff

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• Strength rises all ships – this is a common tort to the above quote by coach Pfaff. Unfortunately, when the pursuit of strength takes away (time, stress, fatigue) from specific endeavors, it does not raise all ships.

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• Habits that have a high rate of return in life via James Clear
  • Sleep 8+ hours each day
  • Lift weights 3xweek
  • Go for a walk each day
  • Save at least 10 percent of your income
  • Read everyday
  • Drink more water and less of everything else
  • Leave your phone in another room while you work

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• What is game speed? Game speed in meaningless when making a preplanned move. It’s nothing more than speed of movement – BUT the for more difficult aspect is speed of thought. Making a decision as to when to make a move & which move to make. That is skill – Rich Bartel

 
Articles

• Sprint Kinetics, Kinematics, and Training Application with Ken Clark
• Trust Me On The Sunscreen – Steve Fudge
• 7 Principles of Non-Linear Pedagogy – Mark Upton
• Let the children play – Norway’s golden approach reminds us of what matters in sport
• England Rugby and the Art of Coaching
• The Plight of the Elite, Fast-Twitch Athlete

 
 
 
Podcasts
 

• Habit vs Skill. Which should we attempt to develop in performers?
• Donor Sports and the Value of Non Specific Sports Practice
  
• When Should a Coach Abandon a Practice Activity and Try Something Else?
• Just Fly Performance Podcast #104 w/ Angus Ross

 
Research
 
Amiri, M., Ghiasvand, R., Kaviani, M., Forbes, S. C., & Salehi-Abargouei, A. (2018). Chocolate milk for recovery from exercise: a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1.
 

• Chocolate milk provides either similar or superior results when compared to placebo or other recovery drinks. Overall, the evidence is limited and high-quality clinical trials with more well-controlled methodology and larger sample sizes are warranted.

 
Moras, G., Fernández-Valdés, B., Vázquez-Guerrero, J., Tous-Fajardo, J., Exel, J., & Sampaio, J. (2018). Entropy measures detect increased movement variability in resistance training when elite rugby players use the ball. Journal of science and medicine in sport.
 

• The application of match specific constraints in resistance training for rugby players elicit different amount of variability of body acceleration across multiple physiological time scales. Understanding the non-linear process inherent to the manipulation of resistance training variables with constraints and its motor adaptations may help coaches and trainers to enhance the effectiveness of physical training and, ultimately, better understand and maximize sports performance.

 
Almonroeder, T. G., Tighe, S. M., Miller, T. M., & Lanning, C. R. (2018). The influence of fatigue on decision-making in athletes: a systematic review. Sports biomechanics, 1-14.
 

• The findings appear to indicate that fatigue may only affect the cognitive processing associated with decision-making when athletes approach a state of exhaustion.

 
 
Strafford, B. W., Van Der Steen, P., Davids, K., & Stone, J. A. (2018). Parkour as a donor sport for athletic development in youth team sports: insights through an ecological dynamics lens. Sports medicine-open, 4(1), 21.
 

• Analyses of talent development in sport have identified that skill can be enhanced through early and continued involvement in donor sports which share affordances (opportunities for action) with a performer’s main target sport. Aligning key ideas of the Athletic Skills Model and ecological dynamics theory, we propose how the sport of parkour could provide a representative and adaptive platform for developing athletic skill (e.g. coordination, timing, balance, agility, spatial awareness and muscular strength). We discuss how youth sport development programmes could be (re) designed to include parkour-style activities, in order to develop general athletic skills in affordance-rich environments. It is proposed that team sports development programmes could particularly benefit from parkour-style training since it is exploratory and adaptive nature shapes utilisation of affordances for innovative and autonomous performance by athletes. Early introduction to varied, relevant activities for development of athleticism and skill, in a diversified training programme, would provide impetus for a fundamental shift away from the early specialisation approach favoured by traditional theories of skill acquisition and expertise in sport.

 
 
Folland, J. P., Allen, S. J., Black, M. I., Handsaker, J. C., & Forrester, S. E. (2017). Running technique is an important component of running economy and performance. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 49(7), 1412.
 

• Despite an intuitive relationship between technique and both running economy (RE) and performance, and the diverse techniques used by runners to achieve forward locomotion, the objective importance of overall technique and the key components therein remain to be elucidated. This study provides novel and robust evidence that technique explains a substantial proportion of the variance in RE and performance. We recommend that runners and coaches are attentive to specific aspects of stride parameters and lower limb angles in part to optimize pelvis movement, and ultimately enhance performance.

 
 Almonroeder, T. G., Tighe, S. M., Miller, T. M., & Lanning, C. R. (2018). The influence of fatigue on decision-making in athletes: a systematic review. Sports biomechanics, 1-14.

•  The nature of the results appears to indicate that fatigue may compromise an athlete’s cognitive processing in a manner that diminishes their ability to control movement when rapid decision-making is required. However, three subsequent studies utilised fatigue protocols designed to mimic sports participation and found that fatigue did not influence the effects of decision-making on mechanics. In general, these findings appear to indicate that fatigue may only affect the cognitive processing associated with decision-making when athletes approach a state of exhaustion

 
 Jackson, R. C., Warren, S., & Abernethy, B. (2006). Anticipation skill and susceptibility to deceptive movement. Acta psychologica, 123(3), 355-371.
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• The ability to detect deceptive movement was examined in skilled and novice rugby players. Participants (14 per group) attempted to predict direction change from video of expert and recreational rugby players changing direction with and without deceptive movement. ConWdence associated with judgments was recorded on each trial to seek evidence regarding use of inferential (heuristic-based) and direct-perceptual (invariant-based) judgments. Novices were found to be susceptible to deceptive movement whereas skilled participants were not; however, both skilled and novice participants were more conWdent on trials containing deceptive movement. The data suggest that the skill-level diVerence in sensitivity to advance visual information extends to deceptive information. The implications of this Wnding, and the importance of considering the underlying process of anticipation skill, are discussed.
  

 

Books

• Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
  • We live in a society where lack of sleep is championed - we reward and think more highly of those that forgo sleep for extra work, more hours and detract from sleep, rest, vacation
  • 1-Hour of cell phone, tv, computer use can decrease melatonin for the next 3-hours. This can also decrease the amount of peak melatonin production leading to les REM sleep
  • The most important aspect of increasing the quality of sleep = consistent bed and wake times
  • You need to keep your room cool do this via - less cloths, fan, thinner blankets, keeping certain body parts uncovered. 
  • Your brain needs to drop 2-3 degrees in order to fall asleep
  • The shorter you sleep - the shorter your lifespan
  • The US runs the worlds biggest sleep experiment 2-times a year = day light savings
  • In the fall, where we gain an extra hour of sleep, heart attacks decrease by 21%!
  • In the spring, where we lose an hour of sleep, heart attacks increase by 24%!
  • If you're going in for sugery, ask how much sleep your surgeon has gotten in the past 24-hours. If less than 6-hours, you're at a 170% increased risk of a surgical error.
  • 1 in 5 medical errors is a result of lack of sleep 
  • Driving without sleep for 16-20hours is equivalent to driving drunk