Here’s what the sports science team at IMeasureU is reading this week:
Monitoring the running profiles of elite athletes has become common place as practitioners try and find non-invasive ways to measure fatigue in the field. Therefore, the aim of this review was to identify, review and summarize the literature to understand the effects of fatigue on the running profile of elite team sport athletes. Changes in sprint time, kinematic variables; contact time, center of mass vertical displacement and vertical stiffness and GPS accelerometer vector variables were all included in the review which found that fatigue has a negative impact on the running profile in elite team sport athletes, offering an alternative task-specific measure of monitoring NMF in this population.
The next article comes from author Mark De Ste Croix and colleagues at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Mark explored the efficacy of robustness training on injury risk factors among female youth soccer players and to examine if high-risk athletes are greater responders to such training. He concluded that robustness training induces significant beneficial improvements in injury risk factors among female youth soccer players with the beneficial effects of this multidimensional program being greater for those classified as high risk.
The next article comes from Hans-Peter Weisinger in the Scandinavian Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. Due to the increased interest in hamstring injuries over the last 10 years as well as an increase in the methods used to assess hamstring muscle strength, this study proposes a critical comparison of the mechanical output of hamstring muscles as assessed with either a dynamometer (IKD) or a Nordic hamstring device (NHD). The authors concluded that that the evaluation of eccentric knee flexor strength depends on the testing conditions and even under standardized procedures, the IKD and NHD measure a different trait.
Our fourth article comes from Gordon Dunlop and colleagues in the Sports Medicine Journal. Return-to-play (RTP) is an on-going challenge in professional football. Return-to-play related research is increasing. However, it is unknown to what extent the recommendations presented within research are being implemented by professional football teams, and where there are gaps between research and practice. The purposes of this study were (1) to determine if premier-league football teams worldwide follow a RTP continuum, (2) to identify RTP criteria used and (3) to understand how RTP decision-making occurs in applied practice. The authors concluded that general research recommendations for RTP and the beliefs and practices of practitioners appear to match with, the majority of teams assessing functional, clinical and psychological criteria throughout a RTP continuum to inform decision-making which is also shared among key stakeholders.
The last article in this week’s articles of the week comes from Aaron Scanlan and colleagues at Central Queensland University. The authors’ aim was to examine correlations between peak force and impulse measures attained during the isometric midthigh pull (IMTP) and basketball-specific sprint and jump tests. The authors concluded that the IMTP may be used to assess maximal and rapid force expression important across a range of basketball-specific movements.
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