Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. This month’s topic lines up with the April site theme on HMMR Media: coaching excellence. We share some research on serial winning coaches, pursuing mastery in coaching, as well as other topics like exercise dependence and genetic testing.
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Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. This month we start with a look at how well genetics can be used to predict talent. Then we move on to the latest research on changing team culture, mental health, performance management, and how coaches learn.
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When we look at the future of sport, one emerging area that gets increasing interest is genetic testing for athletes. As of late last year, just over 70 different companies offer genetic tests for sports performance, and these tests can be ordered online, without any sign-off needed by a medical practitioner. I used to work for one such company, and, through that employment, I was fortunate to consult with a number of elite sporting teams around how they might use genetic information with their athletes. A common question, from the teams and other interested individuals, was whether we could use this technology for to identify athletes with the future potential to be elite. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In the September Sports Science Monthly we look at the continuing debate on periodization and whether periodization is more effective than simply adding variation in training. We they dive into diverse topics such as injury risk, stress for university athletes, genetics, the effect of training time on strength adaptations, and more. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In the April Sports Science Monthly we start off by looking at a new framework for evaluating research. Then we focus on new findings about specific topics like gluten free diets for athletes, the role of testosterone in female performance, sports nutrition, the speed gene, and more. Read more
One of the “Holy Grails” in sport is the ability to predict, with accuracy, whether someone has the potential to become an elite athlete or not. I’ve covered this in previous articles and papers in terms of genetics, discussing whether we can test for it or not and how we might think of talent in terms of the ability to respond to training. However, at present, predicting future performance remains very difficult. But we keep trying and a recent paper in Biology of Sport took a novel approach to trying to predict sprint performance. The researchers recruited 104 Croatian sprinters and collected a wide variety of data points relating to anthropometric, genetic, and psychological traits to create a rich data set for analysis. Read more
Lots of new topics in the December edition of Sports Science Monthly. Our first study looks at the role of genetics in endurance programming. We also look at research on whether athletes eat enough, monitoring acute:chronic training loads, biomarkers, acceleration performance, and some interesting new research on tactical periodization. Read more
The Olympics represent the pinnacle of sport, and competing in one is recognized as a major achievement in an athlete’s career and winning an Olympic medal akin to the finding the Holy Grail. Given the importance of such an achievement to countries and governing bodies, there is an increased interest in understanding the factors that increase the chances of such an achievement. A recent study published in Frontiers of Physiology sheds some additional light on this as the authors explore the impact that having an Olympian in the family has on an athletes chance of winning a medal. Read more
Hamstring injuries in sport are highly pervasive, often representing the most common injury site across a range of sports from rugby to sprinting to American football. One sport in which hamstring injuries have been well examined is that of soccer; during the 2016/2017 English Premier League season, 27% of all injuries suffered were hamstring injuries. This lead to the loss of over 20,000 training days, with the wages of the injured players exceeding £131 million. Alongside this massive financial burden is the issue of future performance decrements; having suffered a prior hamstring injury, players are more likely to suffer a further hamstring injury, an injury at another site, and a reduction in future performance. Read more
Welcome back to another edition of Sports Science Monthly. This month, we take a closer look at periodizing some different aspects of training, sleep as a measurement for overtraining, building resilience, supplements, and several other topics. Read more
