Throwing right-handed, batting left-handed: baseball players more successful

                    

It is known that baseball players who bat left-handed are overrepresented in the sport. But new research by David Mann (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Florian Loffing (University of Oldenburg) and Peter Allen (Anglia Ruskin University) shows that baseball players who bat left but throw right-handed have a surprising advantage, and have a more successful career, than players who bat and throw left-handed.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reanalyzed data from a similar study released in 1982, and used new data from every major league baseball player from 1871 through 2016. According to the new findings, the advantage of throwing right-handed but batting left not only increases the likelihood of players becoming professional players, but also improves a professional player's likelihood of being one of the top hitters in the Major League.

David Mann, from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam: "Baseball players who adopt a left-handed stance enjoy a range of potential benefits, but the players who bat left and throw right-handed have a very large and additional advantage when batting."

Only 2% of the general population throws right-handed and bats left, yet 12% of Major League players throw right and bat left. Incredibly, 32% of the best ever major league batters throw right and bat left. This suggests that right handers who adopt a left-handed stance have a greater chance of becoming a very good professional batter. The research team conjecture that players who throw right-handed and bat left enjoy a biomechanical advantage, with the dominant (throwing) hand being placed further from the hitting end of the bat, providing a longer lever with which to hit the ball.

Slow motion makes football referees more likely to give a red card

Video assistant refereeing in football has to be used with caution. Researchers at KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium, have shown that refs are more likely to give red when they see a foul committed in slow motion, even when a yellow card is more justifiable. This is because fouls viewed in slow motion appear to be more serious.

Football referees and the decisions they make are the subject of very heated debates in the canteen, at the kitchen table, and in the TV studio. Football fans keep a vigilant eye on their every move and decision. These high demands have led to professionalization: more and more elite referees are full-time professionals and follow specific training programmes. Another consequence are the experiments with video assistant refereeing, whereby video assistant referees (VARs) support the referees and check the accuracy of decisions by replaying game situations in real time and in slow motion.

Under the supervision of Professor Wim Helsen, sport scientist at KU Leuven and referee training expert, Jochim Spitz wrote a PhD on the impact of slow motion videos on football referees' perception and decision-making process. He found that the effect of slow motion greatly depends on the type of decision that the referee has to make, as well as on the situation.

For technical decisions on whether or not a foul was committed, watching slow motion videos only improved the accuracy in corner kick situations. "Corner kicks always involve many players, so slow motion may help spot the right fouls in the commotion," Spitz explains.

But for disciplinary sanctions on whether or not to give a card - and if so, which one - slow motion had a significant impact on the decision-making process. "We asked 88 European referees to take a disciplinary sanction for 60 game situations - yellow, red, or no card at all. They had to assess half of the situations after watching a video in real time and the other half based on slow motion videos. For each of these situations, a panel of UEFA experts had given us a benchmark decision. We found that referees judge more harshly when they are exposed to fouls in slow motion. In situations for which the benchmark decision was a yellow card, 20% percent of the referees gave red after watching the video in slow motion. In real time this was only 10%."

"The reason is that fouls viewed in slow motion appear to be more serious" Professor Werner Helsen explains. "This has major implications for the adequate use of video technology in football. Based on the results of this study, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has already issued guidelines for the use of slow motion videos: they can only be used to determine whether a foul was committed inside or outside the penalty area, or to locate the impact of a tackle on the opponent's body."

Red Sox to eke out American League East win over Blue Jays

NJIT mathematician's 2017 Major League Baseball projections
 
Red Sox to eke out American League East win over Blue Jays while Indians and Astros to win American League Central and West Handily; Nationals, Cubs and Dodgers to repeat as National League division winners

After projecting 8 of the 10 Major League Baseball post-season teams in 2016 and correctly claiming that the St. Louis Cardinals would just miss making the playoffs, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Mathematical Sciences Professor and Associate Dean Bruce Bukiet has published his model's projections of how the standings should look at the end of Major League Baseball's regular season in 2017. This is the 20th year that Bukiet has applied mathematical analysis to compute the number of regular season games each Major League Baseball team should win. Though his expertise is in mathematical modeling (rather than baseball), his projections have consistently compared well with those of so-called experts.

The numbers indicate that while his favorite team, the New York Mets (92 wins) should make the playoffs, the Washington Nationals (97 wins) should repeat as winners of the National League East. The World Champion Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers should repeat as winner of the National League Central and West Divisions with 104 wins each to lead the Major Leagues. The San Francisco Giants (95 wins) should be the fifth National League post-season team. The same five teams (correctly called by Bukiet) made the post-season in 2016 and once again the St. Louis Cardinals (88 wins) should be the best team that doesn't make the post-season -- though it shouldn't be so close this time.

In the American League, Bukiet's model has the Boston Red Sox (91 wins) and American League pennant Cleveland Indians (99 wins -- best in the American league) repeating as division winners in the East and Central divisions. Bukiet once again calls for the Houston Astros (94 wins) to win the American League West. (This was one of the two projections that did not pan out for Bukiet last year, with the Texas Rangers winning that division -- the Orioles made the post-season and not the Rays as the model projected). The model calls for the Toronto Blue Jays (90 wins) and the Detroit Tigers (86 wins) to be the American League Wild Card teams. The Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees should all be 6 games behind the Tigers and this not make the post-season.

At the other end of the spectrum, the San Diego Padres (53 wins) should replace the Minnesota Twins as the team with the worst record in baseball. The Padres should win just over half as many games as the division winning Dodgers, ending up 51 games out of first place. The White Sox (64 wins) should win the least games in the American League.

Bukiet makes these projections to demonstrate and promote the power of math. He wants to show young people that math can be fun, that it can be applied to improve one's understanding of many aspects of life and that if you love mathematics, it can be a great college major and lead to a satisfying career.

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Bukiet bases his projections on a mathematical model he started developing in the late 1980s. He has made various revisions over the years. His results have been noted in many publications and he has been predictions champ at baseballphd.net several times. See more results for his baseball modeling, including the projected wins for each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams, at http://web.njit.edu/~bukiet/baseball/baseball.html and at http://www.egrandslam.com.

Study identifies modifiable risk factors for elbow injuries in baseball pitchers

Hospital for Special Surgery study findings build foundation for future injury prevention studies

HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY

Elbow injuries continue to be on the rise in baseball players, especially pitchers, yet little is known about the actual variables that influence these injuries.

While elbow varus torque is already linked to ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries, the connection between certain pitching movements and elbow varus torque is unknown.

A study from Hospital for Special Surgery set out to find the relationship between elbow varus torque and the following variables: arm slot, arm speed and shoulder rotation. The prospective cohort study looked at 81 professional pitchers (either in the Major or Minor Leagues) who took 81,999 throws while wearing a Motus baseball sleeve. The study was presented at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting on March 14 in San Diego.

These were a combination of throws that were evaluated in real settings, such as structured long tosses and live game play, as opposed to in a laboratory, like previous studies. This was the largest analysis of throwing biomechanics to date.

"Obtaining this comprehensive, individualized analysis of on-field throwing activity was made possible by technological advancements that give us the ability to accurately measure body motions outside the lab," said Joshua Dines, MD, sports medicine surgeon at HSS and primary investigator. "Capturing data during the pitchers' normal activities provided us with robust, baseline biomechanical performance metrics."

The study found that arm slot, arm speed and shoulder rotation all have a significant relationship with elbow varus torque. There was a 1-nm increase in elbow varus torque associated with a 13 degree decrease in arm slot, 116% increase in arm speed and 8 degree increase in shoulder rotation.

Increased arm speed and shoulder rotation were found to be associated with increased elbow stress as well as decreased arm slot. Height and weight were also positively correlated with elbow varus torque.

"Now that we know these modifiable risk factors, we have a foundation to develop evidence-based rehabilitation programs. Additionally, these findings can be utilized to prevent injury and help to identify potential pitchers at risk," said David Altchek, MD, sports medicine surgeon at HSS.

Evidence of brain damage found in former soccer players

Evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a potential cause of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, has been found in the brains of former soccer players

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

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Evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a potential cause of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, has been found in the brains of former association football (soccer) players examined at the UCL Queen Square Brain Bank.

The study, funded by The Drake Foundation and published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica, looked at 14 retired footballers with dementia who were referred to the Old Age Psychiatry Service in Swansea, Wales, between 1980 and 2010. Permission from their next-of-kin was provided to perform post-mortem examinations, which were carried out in six ex-players. Post-mortem analysis of the brain was carried out by researchers from UCL and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

The team identified CTE pathology in four of the six brains examined, and all six also had signs of Alzheimer's disease. The rate of CTE identified in the footballers' brains exceeds the 12% average background rate of CTE found in a previous survey of 268 brains of an unselected population at the Queen Square Brain Bank. Like Alzheimer's disease, CTE can cause dementia and they are both characterised by a build-up of abnormal tau protein in the brain, but CTE causes tau to accumulate in a distinctive pattern. Previous studies have found evidence of CTE in the brains of contact sports players, most notably boxers and American football players. Footballers are exposed to repetitive blows to the head from heading the ball and from head-to-player collisions. However, football is unique compared with boxing and American football in that blows to the head are commonly more minor and footballers are less likely to experience significant neurological symptoms or loss of consciousness.

"This is the first time CTE has been confirmed in a group of retired footballers," explains lead author Dr Helen Ling (UCL Institute of Neurology), senior research associate at the Department of Molecular Neuroscience and neurologist. "Our findings of CTE in retired footballers suggest a potential link between playing football and the development of degenerative brain pathologies in later life. However, it is important to note that we only studied a small number of retired footballers with dementia and that we still do not know how common dementia is among footballers." 

"All of the players whose brain autopsies showed signs of CTE also had Alzheimer's pathology, but the relationship between the two diseases remains unclear. Both diseases involve a build-up of an insoluble form of tau protein in the brain. However, in CTE tau tends to accumulate around blood vessels and at the depths of the sulci - the grooves in the brain's surface - which helps to differentiate CTE from Alzheimer's pathology under the microscope. Previous studies have shown that the risk of Alzheimer's disease is increased in people with previous head injuries. On the other hand, the risk of dementia is also increased with age and we don't know if these footballers would have developed Alzheimer's disease anyway if they hadn't played football. The most pressing research question is therefore to find out if dementia is more common in footballers than in the normal population."

The ex-footballers monitored in the study all started playing football and heading the ball in their childhood or early teens and continued to play regularly for an average of 26 years. Only six reported concussion with loss of consciousness while playing football, limiting to a single episode each during their playing career. The earliest symptoms of dementia started while they were in their 60s and they lived for an average of 10 years after symptoms began. Twelve out of 14 of them eventually died of advanced dementia. 

"We do not yet know exactly what causes CTE in footballers or how significant the risk is," says co-lead author Professor Huw Morris (UCL Institute of Neurology), Professor of Clinical Neuroscience and honorary consultant neurologist at the Royal Free Hospital and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. "Major head injuries in football are more commonly caused by player collisions rather than heading the ball. The average footballer heads the ball thousands of times throughout their career, but this seldom causes noticeable neurological symptoms. More research is now urgently needed to determine the risks associated with playing football so that any necessary protective measures can be put in place to minimise potential long term damage."

"Of course, any kind of physical activity will be associated with health risks and benefits and it is well-established that playing sports can significantly improve physical and mental health."

Of the 14 footballers included in the study, 13 were former professionals and one was a committed amateur who played every season for 23 years. They were all diagnosed with dementia between 1980 and 2010 and referred to the Old Age Psychiatry Service in Swansea run by consultant psychiatrist Dr Don Williams. He monitored these ex-footballers regularly and collected demographic and clinical data, playing and concussion history from their close relatives. Dr Williams says:

"In 1980 the son of a man with advanced dementia asked me if his father's condition had been caused by heading the ball for many years as a powerful centre-half. As the brain is a very fragile organ, well protected within the skull, this was a constructive suggestion. As a result I looked out for men with dementia and a significant history of playing soccer, followed them up and where possible arranged for post-mortem studies to be carried out. The results suggest that heading the ball over many years, a form of repetitive sub-concussive head injury, can result in the development of CTE and dementia. Thus the original suggestion has been shown to be of merit and worthy of further investigation."

The research was funded by UK-based not-for-profit The Drake Foundation. Chief Scientific Officer Velicia Bachtiar, says: "The Drake Foundation is proud to have funded this important research, which highlights the need for future work to improve our understanding of sports-related head injuries and their long-term implications."

Footballing success in the young can be measured in the brain

KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET

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The working memory and other cognitive functions in children and young people can be associated with how successful they are on the football pitch, a new study from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, shows. Football clubs that focus too much on physical attributes therefore risk overlooking future stars.

Physical attributes such as size, fitness and strength in combination with ball control have long been considered critical factors in the hunt for new football talent. The third, slightly elusive factor of "game intelligence" -- making the best play under the circumstances-- has been difficult to measure. In 2012, researchers at Karolinska Institutet provided a possible scientific explanation for the phenomenon, and showed that the so-termed "executive cognitive functions" in adult players could be associated with their success on the pitch. In a new study, which is published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, they show that cognitive faculties can be similarly quantified and linked to how well children and young people do in the game.

"This is interesting since football clubs focus heavily on the size and strength of young players," says study leader Predrag Petrovic, at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Neuroscience. "Young players who have still to reach full physical development rarely get a chance to be picked as potential elite players, which means that teams risk missing out on a new Iniesta or Xavi."

Executive functions are special control functions in the brain that allow us to adapt to an environment in a perpetual state of change. They include creative thinking in order to quickly switch strategy, find new, effective solutions and repress erroneous impulses. The functions are dependent on the brain's frontal lobes, which continue to develop until the age of 25.

For this present study, the researchers measured certain executive functions in 30 elite footballers aged between 12 and 19, and then cross-referenced the results with the number of goals they scored during two years. The metrics were taken in part using the same standardised tests used in healthcare. Strong results for several executive functions were found to be associated with success on the pitch, even after controlling for other factors that could conceivably affect performance. The clearest link was seen for simpler forms of executive function, such as working memory, which develops relatively early in life.

"This was expected since cognitive function is less developed in young people than it is in adults, which is probably reflected in how young people play, with fewer passes that lead to goals," says Predrag Petrovic.

The young elite players also performed significantly better than the average population in the same age group on several tests of executive function. Whether these faculties are inherited or can be trained remains the object of future research, as does the importance of the different executive functions for the various positions on the field.

"We think that the players' positions on the pitch are linked to different cognitive profiles," continues Dr Petrovic. "I can imagine that trainers will start to use cognitive tests more and more, both to find talented newcomers and to judge the position they should play in."

Soccer ball heading may commonly cause concussion symptoms

ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Frequent soccer ball heading is a common and under recognized cause of concussion symptoms, according to a study of amateur players led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers. The findings run counter to earlier soccer studies suggesting concussion injuries mainly result from inadvertent head impacts, such as collisions with other players or a goalpost. The study was published online today in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"The prevailing wisdom is that routine heading in soccer is innocuous and we need only worry about players when they have unintentional head collisions," says study leader Michael L. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein and director of MRI Services at Montefiore. "But our study suggests that you don't need an overt collision to warrant this type of concern. Many players who head the ball frequently are experiencing classic concussion symptoms such as headache, confusion, and dizziness during games and practice, even though they are not actually diagnosed with concussion. Concussion sufferers should avoid additional collisions or head impacts during the following days or weeks, when their risk of incurring a second concussion is extremely high. Because these injuries go unrecognized and unmanaged, there may be important clinical consequences for the short and long term."

Studies clearly show that single or repeated concussion causes neurologic problems. But little is known about the effects of frequent but lesser impacts, such as those experienced while heading a soccer ball. Some research, notably a recent study of adolescent players published in JAMA Pediatrics, suggest that heading is not a common cause of concussion. "However, these studies did not actually measure heading, and thus they were unable to separate the relative contributions of intentional and unintentional head impacts," says Dr. Lipton. 

In the current study, a part of the Einstein Soccer Study, Dr. Lipton and his colleagues asked 222 adult amateur soccer players (80 percent men, ages 18 to 55) to fill out online questionnaires on their soccer-related activities during the previous two weeks, including details about heading and other unintentional head impacts and any resulting headaches, pain and dizziness as well as more severe symptoms, such as feeling dazed, needing medical attention, and becoming unconscious. Some of the 222 players filled out questionnaires for more than a single two-week span, resulting in a total of 470 questionnaires during a nine-month period in 2013-2014.

Approximately 35 percent of the participants reported one unintentional head impact, and 16 percent reported more than one such impact. The median number of headings during the two-week reporting period for all respondents was 40.5. Twenty percent of the participants reported experiencing moderate-to-very severe concussion symptoms, with 18 percent reporting severe and 7 percent very severe symptoms. Although these symptoms were more strongly connected with unintentional head impacts, heading was shown to be an independent risk factor for concussion symptoms.

"This finding is consistent with one of our previous studies, where 30 percent of soccer players who'd had more than 1,000 headings per year had a higher risk of microstructural changes in the brain's white matter, typical of traumatic brain injury, and worse cognitive performance," says Dr. Lipton

In the new study, players who headed the most were the most susceptible to concussion. "The extent to which lesser degrees of exposure to heading lead to cumulative injury over time is not known and deserves further study," Dr. Lipton says. "Our findings certainly indicate that heading is more than just a 'sub-concussive' impact, and that heading-related concussions are common. We need to give people who have these injuries proper care and make efforts to prevent multiple head impacts, which are particularly dangerous."

Jet lag impairs performance of Major League Baseball players

A new Northwestern University study of how jet lag affects MLB players traveling across just a few time zones finds that when people, in this case Major League Baseball players, travel in a way that misaligns their internal 24-hour clock with the natural environment and its cycle of sunlight, they suffer negative consequences.

"Jet lag does impair the performance of Major League Baseball players," said Dr. Ravi Allada, a circadian rhythms expert who led the study. "The negative effects of jet lag we found are subtle, but they are detectable and significant. And they happen on both offense and defense and for both home and away teams, often in surprising ways."

In a study of data spanning 20 years and including more than 40,000 games, the researchers identified these effects of jet lag on player and team performance:

• The offense of jet-lagged home teams is much more affected than that of jet-lagged away teams. Surprisingly, in terms of offensive performance, jet lag from eastward travel had significant negative effects on home teams (after returning from a road trip) and much less of an effect on away teams.
• Negative effects on offense are related to base running. The negative effects on the home team's offense were related to base running, such as stolen bases, number of doubles and triples, and hitting into more double plays.
• Both home and away teams suffer on defense, specifically by giving up more home runs. With defensive performance, strong effects of eastward jet lag were found for both home and away teams, primarily with jet-lagged pitchers allowing more home runs. "The effects are sufficiently large to erase the home field advantage," Allada said. Besides home runs allowed, few other effects were seen on pitching or defense.
• There is a difference between traveling east and traveling west. Most significant jet-lag effects were generally stronger for eastward than westward travel. "This is a strong argument that the effect is due to the circadian clock, not the travel itself," Allada said.

The study, "How Jet Lag Impairs Major League Baseball Performance," will be published the week of Jan. 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Allada and his team, Alex Song (first author) and Thomas Severini, used an unprecedented amount of MLB data (from 1992 to 2011), which gave the researchers the statistical power to identify the effects of jet lag on offensive and defensive performance metrics. The researchers considered if teams were traveling east or west; if the team was home or away; and the team itself.

They also looked at the number of hours players would be jet-lagged, based on the number of time zones traveled across, to determine which games were "jet-lag games" and which were not. (The human body clock can roughly shift about an hour each day as it synchronizes to the new environment.) If players were shifted two or three hours from their internal clocks, the researchers defined them as jet-lagged.

What does all this data analysis mean going forward? With MLB spring training less than a month away, Allada has some advice based on his research.

"If I were a baseball manager and my team was traveling across time zones -- either to home or away -- I would send my first starting pitcher a day or two ahead, so he could adjust his clock to the local environment," Allada said.

Allada provides an example from the 2016 National League Championship Series illustrating the potential impact of jet lag on player performance. In game 2, Los Angeles Dodgers' ace Clayton Kershaw shut out the Chicago Cubs, giving up only two hits, but game 6 was a different story.
"For game 6, the teams had returned to Chicago from LA, and this time the Cubs scored five runs off of Kershaw, including two home runs," Allada said. "While it's speculation, our research would suggest that jet lag was a contributing factor in Kershaw's performance."

More sprints in top-class football necessitates new and individualized training routines

Today's top-class football is characterised by more short sprints than in the past. In English Premier League, high-intensity running has increased by 50% in the last 10 years, presenting new challenges to the players in terms of fatigue resistance and ability to recover quickly. The change has also resulted in greater variation in the tempo of matches, and this new pattern calls for revised training routines. This is the conclusion of new research from the University of Gothenburg and the University of Southern Denmark.

The study in question is based on an extensive amount of data. A research team, consisting of Dan Fransson and Magni Mohr, exercise physiology researchers at the Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science, University of Gothenburg, and Professor Peter Krustrup from the University of Southern Denmark, watched 62 football matches played 2010-2012 and made 1 105 observations of 473 players from 24 different Premier League teams.

The results show that, compared with in the past, modern top-class football is characterised by more high-intensity sprints followed by a substantially lower tempo. Repeated bouts of high-intensity running for 1-5 minutes are followed by a historically low intensity for up to 5 minutes. Thus, a player's activity level during a match tends to alternate between two extremes, compared with the traditionally more steady match tempo.

Training Should Be Adapted to the New Pattern

The analysis points to significant differences in fatigue and recovery patterns among players. Some players can exhibit four times as much high-intensity running as others in one and the same match.

'This indicates that in order for players to maximise their potential and avoid injuries, they need more individualised training depending on position played. All players shouldn't train in the same way,' says Fransson.

Central defenders stand out from the other playing positions. These are the only players whose running did not decrease after the most intense 1-2-minute periods.

'The reason for this is simply that central defenders face the lowest demands of all players except goalkeepers when it comes to high-intensity running. They have the longest recovery periods between the intense phases of a football match,' says Fransson.

Could better eye training help reduce concussion in women's soccer?

With the ever-growing popularity of women's soccer, attention to sports-related concussions is also a growing concern, as the act of heading the ball is thought to contribute to increased incidence of concussion. 

"Current evidence shows that high school female soccer players incur a higher concussion rate than males," says Joe Clark, PhD, professor in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "While this is often attributed to gender differences in physical build or neck muscle strength, our study suggested that there might be other behaviors such as field awareness that are contributing factors that result in these higher concussion rates."

Researchers working with Clark observed that in photographs of female soccer players during play, the players often had their eyes closed while heading the ball. They wanted to quantify whether female athletes closed their eyes more frequently than male counterparts, as a first step toward determining if less visual awareness might expose players to a higher risk of injury. Their results of the first part of this study are have been published in the online version of Medical Hypotheses.

Through an analysis of Google images of soccer headers by both male and female players in active game play, 100 images of each gender were reviewed and categorized. Some images showed more than one athlete participating in the header, what some people may call a 50-50 ball.

Of 170 females identified in the photos, 90.6 percent of them were shown to have their eyes closed during play. By comparison, 79 percent of male players had their eyes closed, of the 170 male athletes evaluated in the photos. 

These findings indicated that female players were more likely to close their eyes at the act of heading the ball, versus males. Vision training methods in other concussion-prone sports like football work to train the athletes to use visual tactics to be aware of the ball and aware of other players prior to a hit something the researchers refer to as "eye discipline." 

It is felt that better eye discipline may account for the difference in concussion rates between males and females. "In other studies, vision training has successfully reduced the rates of concussion in college football athletes; overall lack of visual awareness in a contact sport may increase the risks of concussion. Therefore vision training and better eye discipline may decrease concussion rates." 

Clark, who works with high school and college-level athletes on vision training techniques to improve their awareness in avoiding hits on the field, says that with practice, athletes can learn to play safer. "The startle reflex, or blinking or closing one's eyes upon a perceived risk, can be suppressed through training and coaching. So it is possible that training to improve eye discipline and maintain control of ball handling, may help mitigate concussions in soccer players heading the ball," he says.

Hagar Elgendy, a medical student at the UC College of Medicine, and a co-author of the study, has been involved with the sports medicine research at UC for the past few years. "Concussion in sport has gained much attention recently. It was exciting and interesting to be involved in this project and to propose a hypothesis for the greater concussion incidence in the high school athletic setting for females over males." Elgendy, along with her sister, Hanna Elgendy, worked to obtain and analyze the Google images for the study.

Clark says, "We hope to follow up with larger future studies as to whether eyes closed upon impact correlate with higher rates of concussion, to validate this hypothesis."

Top-level football refs are better at spotting fouls because of enhanced visual perception

Top-level professional football referees have enhanced visual perception, which means that they are better at spotting foul play and issuing the correct disciplinary action than lower-level referees, according to new research published in the journal Cognitive Research.

The researchers, from Belgium and the UK, had 39 football referees from the top and lower leagues in Belgium watch staged videos of fouls being committed from the point-of-view of a referee on the football pitch. Eye-tracking technology was used to assess their visual-search behaviour - that is the location that the referees' eyes fixated on and for how long.

Professor Werner Helsen, co-lead author from the University of Leuven in Belgium, said: "Our results show that elite referees have visual-search behaviour patterns that make them better at assessing foul play situations in football compared to lower league referees. When watching open play fouls being committed, elite referees spend more time fixating on the body part involved in the foul than other areas, suggesting that they are focusing on and interpreting the most crucial information within their visual display."

Visual-search behaviour is a primary skill utilised by professional athletes that enables them to coordinate perceptual-cognitive function with motor skills. Referees also rely heavily on visual-search behaviour in order to rapidly translate what they see into a correct decision based on the rules of the game. When asked to state if they thought the open-play foul committed deserved a disciplinary sanction (no card, yellow card or red card), elite referees made the correct decision with an accuracy of 61%, compared to 45% amongst lower level referees.

Dr Jochim Spitz, co-lead author, said: "Visual-search behaviour is an in-built cognitive function that can be improved through training and development. Understanding what it is exactly that makes elite referees able to make better decisions than lower-level referees could help devise training programmes specifically aimed at improving visual-search behaviour."

The video clips used in this study were filmed with the help of competitive football players who were tasked with simulating a variety of foul play scenarios including fouls in open play and from corner kicks. The action was filmed from approximately 10 meters away to mimic the proximity of a referee to the game in a real life situation. In order to make the simulations as natural as possible, no specific instructions were given to the players related to the type of foul that should be executed. A total of 20 videos were made, 10 open-play situations and 10 corner-kick situations, out of which three showed no foul play.

In the open-play and corner-kick scenarios, there was no difference between the numbers of locations that the referees focused on when watching the videos but, importantly, the elite referees did spend more time fixating on the contact zone between the attacker and the defender than the non-elite referees. Analysing the data collected from incorrect decisions made by referees, it was concluded that the fixation time plays an important role translating perceived incidents into a correct interpretation according to the 'Laws of the Game'.

Professor Werner Helsen added: "We can speculate from our results that the level of experience in elite referees is translated into long-term memory which allows their visual-search behaviour to be driven by acquired knowledge. Sub-elite referees on the other hand have less experience and seem to apply a more random control of visual fixation".

Example videos of foul play situations watched by the referees are available here: https://goo.gl/tXpNrW

Heading a football can significantly affect a player's brain function

Heading a football can significantly affect a player's brain function and memory for 24 hours, a study has found.

Researchers said they had identified "small but significant changes in brain function" after players headed the ball 20 times.

Memory performance was reduced by between 41% and 67% in the 24 hours after routine heading practice.

One of the study's authors suggested football should be avoided ahead of important events like exams.

The University of Stirling study was published in EBioMedicine.

It is the first to detect direct changes in the brain after players were exposed to everyday head impacts, as opposed to clinical brain injuries like concussion.

Researchers fired footballs from a machine designed to simulate the pace and power of a corner kick and asked a group of football players to head a ball 20 times.

The players' brain function and memory were tested before and after the exercise...

Complete article:http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37714830?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-102416

Heavy hitters: Obesity rate soars among professional baseball players

CREDIT: CHRISTIE CLANCY/PENN STATE

Major League Baseball players have become overwhelmingly overweight and obese during the last quarter century, say health researchers.

David E. Conroy, Penn State professor of kinesiology, and colleagues looked at 145 years of data on professional baseball players' body mass. The researchers found that the athletes' weight held steady for over 100 years, with the majority of them weighing in at what is considered "normal," -- i.e., with a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 24.9.

However, around 1991 the average player's BMI began to rise, and over the last 25 years nearly 80 percent of players fall into the overweight or obese category with a BMI above 25. Obesity in the general U.S. population began to rise in the mid-1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Research exists that shows how having extra weight can help with certain aspects of baseball," said Conroy, also professor of human development and family studies. "The more force a batter can put into the ball, the further it will travel."

The researchers used the publicly available Lahman Baseball Database, where players' height, weight and age are recorded for their debut year in Major League Baseball. The data were self-reported, however Conroy points to the trend of players' increasing weight as informative -- and cause for some concern.

Conroy and colleagues report their findings today (Sept. 28) in Obesity Research and Clinical Practice.

"The data are observational, and raise more questions than they answer," cautioned Conroy. "BMI can be misleading, because it doesn't take body composition into account. What kind of pounds are the players adding? Are they mostly muscle or fat?"

The rise coincides with baseball's steroid era, and steroids are known to cause weight gain in some. But the rise also lines up with advances in sports science and nutrition, which have enabled athletes to better train and fuel, helping them build muscle and endurance -- which could lead to weight gain as well.

"These trends warrant further attention because of the potential for adverse long-term health consequences in this population and those who perceive them as role models for health and human performance," the researchers wrote.

Referees add more extra time when the big teams are losing

Football (soccer) enthusiasts suspected it, but now statistics is confirming it. After analysing all the matches of the Spanish league "La Liga" from the 2014-2015 season, two experts in sports science have found that the greater the difference on the scoreboard, the less stoppage time is added to the end of the game. When the score is tighter, however, referees tend to add more stoppage time when the team in the higher division is losing.

The stoppage time added by the referee following the obligatory 90 minutes of a football match is used to compensate for time lost due to substitutions, injuries, expulsions and other incidents that arise during the game, but it seems as though other factors also play a role according to a new study.
Researchers Carlos Lago, from the University of Vigo (Spain), and Maite Gómez, from the European University of Madrid, have confirmed that referees favour the big teams by reducing the extra time when these teams are ahead on the scoreboard. In contrast, and according to an article published in the journal 'Perceptual and motor skills', referees slightly draw out the match when the big teams are losing.
To carry out the study the authors relied on data from the 380 matches played in the Spanish league during the 2014-2015 season. They then took several variables into account -such as the difference in goals on the scoreboard, the playing level of each team, the number of red and yellow cards, player substitutions, the average number of assists and fouls committed- to see if any of them had an influence on the amount of stoppage time.
After applying a statistical method (called linear regression and widely used to identify relationships between variables), it was observed that the greater the difference on the scoreboard, the less stoppage time was given by the referee. In very tight matches, nevertheless, refs tend to add more seconds when the team in the higher division is losing, and fewer seconds when they are winning. The number of red cards and fouls also cause an increase in extra time.
"The typical complaint from less powerful teams regarding how referees treat big teams better might make sense," explains Carlos Lago, "as their decisions tend to benefit the higher‑ranked teams when the scoreboard is against them. Furthermore, the more important the difference between the clubs, the greater the advantage." As the inequality between the teams decreases, because either two big teams or two small teams are playing against each other, this statistical trend disappears.
A bias that also favours local teams
Previous studies had already demonstrated that pressure from local fans also has an influence on referees when it comes to adding on more or less time. In the Spanish league, specifically, referees add 112 more seconds when the home team is losing by one goal or winning with a minimal difference.
This bias in favour of local teams was also found at football matches of the Bundesliga (Germany), Serie A (Italy), Premier League (United Kingdom), Major League Soccer (USA and Canada) and of the Campeonato Brasileiro (Brazil) leagues.
According to Lago, "what is most troubling is that the partiality of some referees for local teams and big clubs seems to have a name and surname, meaning that refs with less experience are more affected by the noise around them; there are also referees who are more or less home-biased and show a greater or lesser tendency to benefit the big teams in specific situations."
The expert in sports science concludes with some recommendations: "improve referee training and prevent subjectivity in their decisions to the extent possible, which at present have not proven to be malicious, but simply human. Additionally, technology could also help, although referee bias can decrease if they are simply aware of the role they play in the outcome of the matches."

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Wearable neuromuscular device may help reduce ACL injuries in female soccer players

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Using a wearable neuromuscular device can reduce the risk of ACL injury in female soccer athletes, according to new research presented today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Colorado Springs, CO. The study showed functional improvements in athletes who used the devices in combination with a regular training program.

"Our study showed that training with a wearable neuromuscular (WNM) device improved postural control in athletes, without limiting performance," said Michael John Decker, PhD, from the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado. "Moreover, no athletes in the study experienced an ACL injury during training or over the course of the following season." 

A total of 79 elite youth and collegiate female soccer players (age 12-25) in the study trained with a WNM device that applied bi-lateral, topical pressure to the medial quadriceps and hamstring muscles. The athletes performed 7 to 9 weeks of pre-season training with the device consisting of strength and conditioning exercises and on-field team practices. 

"Research has shown female soccer players have a three times greater risk of ACL injury compared to males, yet only a small portion of soccer coaches are currently utilizing ACL injury risk reduction programs," commented Decker. "We hope these devices offer coaches a practical means to overcome participation barriers, opening the door for more organizations and teams to implement similar programs."

Mental training for soccer tactics

It's not only controlling the ball, physical endurance, and dexterity that matter when it comes to playing soccer. Members of a soccer team also have to be at the top of their game when it comes to tactical strategy. Researchers at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University have developed a mental training technique that helps soccer players improve their tactical action. The "kicker" here is that the players can practice with this method without actually being on the playing field.
"In soccer, as in other team sports, all players on the team have to work together harmoniously -- especially when it comes to tactical action," says Professor Dr. Thomas Schack. The sports scientist and cognitive psychologist specializes in recording how athletes store and recall sequences of action for a game in their memories. He heads the research group "Neurocognition and Action -- Biomechanics" and works at the Cluster of Excellence CITEC. "These days, there is hardly any difference in the physical fitness among soccer players of the same performance class. For this reason, the mental conception of tactical team action can be a decisive advantage." A tactically experienced team can successfully conceal their real plans from their opponents. This can help them outwit their competitors and determine the very outcome of the game. "The problem is that for many players, tactical team action is stored incorrectly -- or not at all -- in their memory. We have developed a technique that allows athletes to (re)learn this missing knowledge," explains Schack.
The new method draws upon the athlete's mental powers of imagination, and was tested with athletes who play futsal, a version of indoor soccer where the ball is passed significantly faster than in standard soccer played on a grass field. In futsal, two teams, each with five players, score by shooting into handball goalposts.
"Our technique is based on photographs and textual explanations of typical tactical situations," says Dr. Cornelia Frank, a member of Schack's research group. These photos and textual descriptions allow the players to mentally put themselves in the situation of the game, and imagine their teamwork up to and including successfully scoring a goal. The sports scientist calls the new technique "Joint Action Imagery." Dr. Frank and student Gian-Luca Linstromberg have applied and analyzed the method for the first time in a study on participants from a Bielefeld University sports group.
The test subjects were shown a photo with a scene of a tactic being played out, such as a counterattack. They were told to put themselves in the place of a certain player in the picture. As part of this mental positioning, they received an explanation of how the tactical maneuver unfolds from player's point of view, e.g.: "You intercept the ball on the right side of the field. In front of you is a member of the opposing team, and to the left and right are two players from your team. You speed up, and then pass the ball to the teammate on your right." Next, the test person was told to vividly imagine the situation ten times in a row. This mental training was practiced for four weeks, along with regular sports training at the gym. Players were led through the mental exercise twice a week, and once a week players went through the training using a script on their own at home.
Futsal players of average experience took part in the study, and a total of 12 players went through the mental training. At both the beginning and end of the study, the researchers measured how well the test subjects mentally internalized the four tactics -- playmaking, counterattack, shifting to defense, and pressing. To evaluate this, the test subjects had to make tactical decisions for different game situations. They were shown two different situations at a time and then had to judge whether the same tactic can be used to react to both cases.
"The main finding here is that the mental training enabled the players to better distinguish between the various tactics than before," says Cornelia Frank. The progress made by the test subjects was compared with a control group of futsal players, who had not participated in the mental training. "The astonishing thing in comparison to the control group was that the players that had practiced the mental training developed functional, that is, proper mental conceptions of the tactics. With this, their mental tactical skills moved towards that of professional players."
Cornelia Frank will present the new training technique at the end of July during the sports symposium of the Deutschen Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft (German Association of Sports Sciences, dvs). The symposium will be held together with the conference "Teaching Games for Understanding." In her conference presentation, Dr. Frank will also go into greater detail on which effects of the mental training should be subject to further research: at this point, it is still unclear whether such training helps players actually make suitable tactical decisions on the playing field. It also remains to be seen whether the training helps players better understand the tactical instructions given by their coach, or makes them better able to discuss these tactics with the coach and fellow teammates. One thing, however, is clear: "With our method, players learn the basics of soccer strategy, which every coach requires, in a short amount of time. And the players get a better understanding of which tactical approach can be called upon for different situations."

Goalkeepers prone to 'gambler's fallacy' but penalty takers fail to exploit it

After a string of penalties aimed in the same direction, goalkeepers are more likely to dive in the opposite direction on the next penalty

After a string of penalties aimed in the same direction, goalkeepers are more likely to dive in the opposite direction on the next penalty but kickers fail to exploit this pattern, finds new UCL research.
The study, published in Current Biology, shows that penalty shoot-outs in international tournaments resemble a psychological game. The researchers studied penalty shoot-out videos from all World Cup and Euro finals tournaments between 1976 and 2012.
They found that each team of kickers produced more or less random sequences of kicks to the left or the right of the goal. Goalkeepers' dives to the left or the right were not related to the direction of the kick, suggesting that goalkeepers at this elite level make their decisions in advance, rather than reacting to each kick. However, goalkeepers' decisions were non-random in one crucial respect: when the kickers repeatedly kicked in the same direction on consecutive penalties, goalkeepers became more likely to dive in the opposite direction on the next penalty. The goalkeepers therefore display what has been called the 'gambler's fallacy' – like a person who believes that after coin flips produce a run of 'heads', the next flip is bound to produce 'tails'.
"Complete randomness is generally the best strategy in competitive games" says lead author Erman Misirlisoy of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. "Because the goalkeeper displays the gambler's fallacy, kickers could predict which way the goalkeeper is likely to dive on the next kick. That would obviously give the kicker an advantage – they would simply aim for the opposite side of the goal. Surprisingly, though, we found that kickers failed to exploit this advantage".
"Often you can only win in elite sport by exploiting tiny weaknesses in your opponent's strategy", explains senior author Professor Patrick Haggard. "We can only speculate on why goalkeepers can get away with non-randomness, without the kickers exploiting it. One possibility is that penalty shoot-outs are relatively rare. But there is a more psychologically interesting possibility: shoot-outs are asymmetric, because one goalkeeper faces several different kickers, one after the other. Kickers are under enormous pressure, focussed on the moment of their own kick. Each individual kicker may not pay enough attention to the sequence of preceding kicks to predict what the goalkeeper will do next."
Erman Misirlisoy adds: "People can learn to predict: perhaps football coaches could study the gambler's fallacy, and could train their penalty kickers in preparation for the next World Cup. At the same time, goalkeepers could also learn to be less predictable".

Physics experts: Soccer ball created for the 2014 FIFA World Cup is a “keepers’ ball”.

New Ball to Showcase Talent in World CupUniversity of Adelaide

The new ball, called Brazuca, should be much more predictable than the 2010 World Cup ball, Jabulani, which was less-than-affectionately labelled a ‘beach ball’ because of its sometimes erratic flight path.
“The Brazuca has very deep grooves – it’s much rougher than Jabulani – and this creates a different pattern of air flow around the ball,” says Professor Derek Leinweber, Professor of Physics in the University’s School of Chemistry and Physics. He has previously written about and lectured on the aerodynamics of cricket balls, golf balls and earlier World Cup soccer balls.
“The Jabulani was much smoother than the Brazuca with smaller grooves and ridges across its surface,” says Professor Leinweber. “That meant the ball had to be moving much faster before the airflow around the ball changed from smooth to turbulent. As this shift to turbulent airflow occurred at high speeds, the ball could make some pretty erratic movements on the way to the net.
“In contrast the Brazuca, with its deeper grooves, hits that turbulent air flow at a lower speed with the result that the ball is much more predictable. In many ways, it’s a return to the aerodynamics of the old 32-panel ball.”
Professor Leinweber and PhD candidate Adrian Kiratidis have been investigating the likely performance of the new ball by matching up the physics of air flow with available wind tunnel data and video of the ball’s movement.
Mr Kiratidis says he believes players taking hard and fast shots in this World Cup won’t find the Brazuca as easy to bend into the net as they did with the Jabulani.
“Keepers facing players of the calibre of Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar are going to be glad that it’s Brazuca coming at them rather than Jabulani,” he says.
Mr Kiratidis will explain the science behind World Cup soccer balls at a free public lecture on Thursday 12 June at 6.30pm, just hours before the first kick-off in Brazil.
The lecture, The Brazuca – a better ball?, will be held at 6.30-7.30pm, Lecture Theatre 102, Napier Building, at the University’s North Terrace campus.
Commentary from Professor Leinweber and Adrian Kiratidis on the Brazuca is available on the YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohwJgkbbuqs.

Female soccer players get tired more, run hard less

 

Every year billions of people across the globe tune in to watch the UEFA Champions League in which men compete, yet the number who tune-in to watch the female equivalent is miniscule and research carried out at a North East University has discovered it is a whole different ball game.

For the first time both versions of the sport have been compared by the University of Sunderland to discover how the male game differs from that of the female game from a physical and technical point of view.

Research published in the journal Human Movement Science analysed 54 male and 59 female football (soccer) player observations in the UEFA Champions League. It is the first study to focus on high-intensity running in football for both men and women.

They found that during the course of a typical UEFA Champions League match male players covered approximately 3-5 per cent more distance in total than females but covered around 30 per cent more distance at high intensity. The research also showed female players did not cover as much distance in the second half at a high intensity as they did in the first half, while male players did manage to maintain their running performances.

There were no gender differences shown between attackers and central defenders; however male full-backs, central and wide midfielders covered more distance at high intensity compared to female players in the same position.

The research, 'Gender differences in match performance characteristics of soccer players', also showed the difference in technical characteristics with female players losing the ball more frequently and having a lower pass completion rate.

Dr Paul Bradley, led the research and is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Sunderland. He said: "We can clearly see that the male and female game at the top level is very different both physically and technically. It was very interesting to see fairly similar total distances but substantial differences at high intensity between gender. The larger drop off in running performance in the second half for females could be due and their lower physical capacity thus, the demands of the game cause fatigue in the second half."

It is now hoped the research can be used to provide gender-specific training for professionals in both male and female footballers to improve physical and technical performance.

MLB pitchers don't regain performance level after Tommy John surgery

     Major League Baseball players who undergo Tommy John surgery are less likely to regain the performance level they had before surgery, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study.

The study is the first to show a link between the surgery and declining pitching performance at the professional level. It also involved the largest cohort of professional pitchers to date to examine the issue.

Researchers analyzed pitching statistics of 168 MLB pitchers before and after surgery between 1982 and 2010 and found diminishing returns in three major pitching categories: Earned runs average (ERA), walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP) and innings pitched (IP). The findings:

ERA increased 4.15 to 4.74.
WHIP increased 1.40 to 1.48.
IP declined 59 to 50.

"Tommy John surgery is an effective surgery and most pitchers get back to pitching after surgery. But it's not going to improve their level of performance," says Vasilios (Bill) Moutzouros, M.D., a Henry Ford orthopedic surgeon and the study's senior author.

"There's been a perception that the surgery will make you better. Our findings debunk that perception. Eighty to 90 percent of major league pitchers will get back to pitching at the major league level but they just won't be as effective as they were before injury."

The study is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons March 11-15 in New Orleans.

Tommy John surgery, named after the former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who underwent the pioneering surgery 40 years ago, has been since performed on legions of pitchers at the professional and collegiate levels. In medicine it is known as ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction. During the two-hour outpatient procedure, the ulnar collateral ligament in the medial elbow is replaced with a tendon from the same arm or from the hamstring area.


               
       

 IMAGE: This is Vasilios (Bill) Moutzouros, M.D., a Henry Ford Hospital orthopedic surgeon and study's senior author.
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Until Henry Ford's observational study, other research had shown that a high percentage of players returned to the same level of performance after UCL reconstruction, and the perception among players, coaches and parents was that UCL reconstruction would even lead to a higher level of performance. In the only other study involving just MLB pitchers (68 pitchers), 82 percent of them returned to the mound after surgery and had no significant decline in performance.

Henry Ford researchers sought to examine the effects of UCL reconstruction on pitching performance involving the largest cohort of MLB pitchers and identify risk factors associated with the pitching injury, says Robert Keller, M.D., a third-year Henry Ford orthopedic resident and study co-author whose father Phil was a teammate of Tommy John in the 1970s.

The cohort of 168 pitchers pitched in at least major league game after undergoing UCL reconstruction between 1982 and 2010. Data collected included the year of surgery, pitchers' age, years of MLB experience, height/weight, body mass index, pitching arm injured, pitching role, pitching statistics, and whether the pitcher returned to MLB pitching after surgery. This was then averaged for the three years of pitching before UCL reconstruction and for the three years after returning to play.

For comparison, researchers collected similar data of 178 MLB pitchers in a control group with no prior UCL reconstruction and age-matched them with a corresponding UCL reconstruction pitcher. Performance was determined using three years of statistics before their "index year" (their roster year of either 2004 or 2005) and three years after their "index year."

Drs. Moutzouros and Keller used paired analysis, generalized estimating equation model and other commonly used research tests to evaluate the data. Other highlights:

- UCL pitchers were "statistically better" than the control group in ERA, WHIP, IP and win percentage in the three years and two years before surgery.
- In the year before surgery, UCL pitchers' performance declined significantly.
- After surgery, the control group was either superior in nearly every performance measure or no difference observed.
- A predictor of surgery is MLB experience. Sixty percent of pitchers required UCL reconstruction within their first five years in the MLB.
- While the cause of UCL injury is not fully known, orthopedic specialists theorize it's due to overuse and stress on the elbow, pitching velocity and joint motion, Dr. Keller says, adding that surgery isn't a panacea.

"We even have parents who come into our clinic asking if their children can have the surgery even before they injure anything because they think potentially it can make them better. What this study shows is it doesn't. Matter of fact, players get statistically worse after having this surgery."