Too Much Altitude Training Can Hurt Athletic Performance

New research suggests that athletes and footballers may want to limit the time they spend training at altitude to improve their performance. An Oxford University study has found that people with a rare condition that mimics being at high altitude for long periods show metabolic differences that actually reduce their endurance and physical performance.

The study is published in the journal PNAS and was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Athletes from many endurance disciplines use altitude training as part of their yearly training programme. England footballers, as with many of the teams in the World Cup, spent time at altitude acclimatising for the competition in South Africa.

The body reacts to the low levels of oxygen at high altitude, first of all by breathing harder and the heart pumping more blood, but then through producing more red blood cells and increasing the density of blood vessels in the body's muscles. All of this serves to get more oxygen and fuel to the muscles.
However, an extended stay at altitude can bring a loss of the muscle's ability to use oxygen to carry out work. The number of mitochondria, the oxygen-using powerhouses of the cell, falls with a prolonged stay at high altitude.

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Racial Physiology Differences Determine Race Performances

In the record books, the swiftest sprinters tend to be of West African ancestry and the faster swimmers tend to be white.  A study of the winning times by elite athletes over the past 100 years reveals two distinct trends: not only are these athletes getting faster over time, but there is a clear divide between racers in terms of body type and race.

Last year, a Duke University engineer explained the first trend -- athletes are getting faster because they are getting bigger. Adrian Bejan, professor of engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, now believes he can explain the second trend.

In a paper published online in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics, Bejan, and co-authors Edward Jones, a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University currently teaching at Howard University, and Duke graduate Jordan Charles, argue that the answer lies in athletes' centers of gravity. That center tends to be located higher on the body of blacks than whites. The researchers believe that these differences are not racial, but rather biological.

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Surprising Study Says Inactivity Not The Cause Of Childhood Obesity

A new report from the EarlyBird Diabetes Study suggests that physical activity has little if any role to play in the obesity epidemic among children. Obesity is the key factor behind diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.  EarlyBird is based at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, and has been observing in detail a cohort of city school children for the past 11 years.

A review published in 2009 of all trials using physical activity to reduce childhood obesity showed weight loss amounting to just 90g (3oz) over three years, and the EarlyBird study wanted to know why the trials were so ineffective. So they challenged some popular paradigms.

It is well known that less active children are fatter, but that does not mean -- as most people assume it does -- that inactivity leads to fatness. It could equally well be the other way round: that obesity leads to inactivity.

And this is the question EarlyBird was uniquely placed to answer. With data collected annually over several years from a large cohort of children, it could ask the question -- which comes first? Does the physical activity of the child precede changes in fatness over time, or does the fatness of the child precede changes in physical activity over time?

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Women Should Use New Formula For Maximum Heart Rate

Women who measure their peak heart rates for exercise will need to do some new math as will physicians giving stress tests to patients.  A new formula based on a large study from Northwestern Medicine provides a more accurate estimate of the peak heart rate a healthy woman should attain during exercise. It also will more accurately predict the risk of heart-related death during a stress test.

"Now we know for the first time what is normal for women, and it's a lower peak heart rate than for men," said Martha Gulati, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and preventive medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine. "Using the standard formula, we were more likely to tell women they had a worse prognosis than they actually did."

Gulati is the lead author of a study published June 28 in the journal Circulation.

"Women are not small men," Gulati added. "There is a gender difference in exercise capacity a woman can achieve. Different physiologic responses can occur. " Gulati was the first to define the normal exercise capacity or fitness level for women in a 2005 study.

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More Proof That Caffeine Boosts Athletic Performance

UK scientists show for the first time that high doses of caffeine directly increase muscle power and endurance during relatively low-intensity activities.

New research shows increased muscle performance in sub-maximal activities, which in humans can range from everyday activities to running a marathon. With no current regulations in place, the scientists from Coventry University believe their findings may have implications for the use of caffeine in sport to improve performance.

The scientists present their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting in Prague.
"A very high dosage of caffeine, most likely achieved via tablets, powder or a concentrated liquid, is feasible and might prove attractive to a number of athletes wishing to improve their athletic performance," explains lead researcher, Dr Rob James.

"A small increase in performance via caffeine could mean the difference between a gold medal in the Olympics and an also-ran," he added.

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Goalkeepers Use Clues To Guess Direction Of Penalty Kick

In the split second before foot meets ball, a soccer player's body betrays whether a penalty kick will go left or right, according to recent research in cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The findings could explain how some top goalkeepers are able to head off a penalty kick, diving in the correct direction in advance of the kick. It could also point the way to changes in how players kick, and goalies react.

The research, performed by Rensselaer doctoral student Gabriel J. Diaz, employed motion capture technology and computer analysis to identify five early indicators of the direction a ball would ultimately be kicked. Diaz said his research stemmed from an observation of real-world penalty kicks, in which players aim for the left or right side of the goal while hiding their choice from the goalkeeper.

"When a goalkeeper is in a penalty situation, they can't wait until the ball is in the air before choosing whether to jump left or right -- a well-placed penalty kick will get past them," Diaz said. "As a consequence, you see goalkeepers jumping before the foot hits the ball. My question is: Are they making a choice better than chance (50/50), and if so, what kind of information might they be using to make their choice?"

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Athletes In The Zone Feel The Flow

Robyn Beck/Getty Images

Tiger was in the zone.  On Saturday, in the third round of this year's U.S. Open, Woods made eight birdies, including five on the final nine holes, to come roaring back into contention.  "All the Opens I've won [three], I've had one stretch of nine holes," Woods said. "It doesn't have to be on a back nine or front, just a nine-hole stretch where you put it together." He knows that to win, he needs to find that "flow".

After a great performance, many athletes have described a feeling of being “in the zone.” In this state, they feel invincible, as if the game slowed down, the crowd noise fell silent and they achieved an incredible focus on their mission. What is this Superman-like state and how can players enter it when they most need it?

Like the feeling of being moved down a river by the current, this positive groove has been described as a "flow." In fact, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, psychology professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, coined the term in his 1990 book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” (Harper Row, 1990).

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Morning Type Pitchers Do Better In Day Games

A Major League Baseball pitcher's natural sleep preference might affect how he performs in day and night games, according to a research abstract presented June 9, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

Results indicate that pitchers who were morning types performed statistically better overall than those who were evening types. In early games that started before 7 p.m., the earned run average (ERA) of pitchers who were morning types (3.06) was lower than the average ERA of pitchers who were evening types (3.49); however, in games that started at 7 p.m. or later, pitchers who were evening types performed slightly better (4.07 ERA) than morning types (4.15 ERA).

"We were surprised to see that chronotype did affect pitching," said principal investigator and lead author W. Christopher Winter, MD, medical director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Va. "We were also surprised to see that pitchers who were more 'morning type' seemed to do better overall."

Individual pitchers showed a trend toward higher ERAs in the late games. According to Winter, this supports previous research showing that the peak performance time for most athletes is between mid-afternoon and early evening.

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Will The Jabulani Bend At The World Cup?

Physics experts at the University of Adelaide believe the new ball created for the 2010 World Cup, called the Jabulani, will play "harder and faster," bending more unpredictably than its predecessor.  But why? And what will it mean for the game?

"The Jabulani is textured with small ridges and 'aero grooves' and represents a radical departure from the ultra-smooth Teamgeist ball, which was used in the last World Cup," says Professor Derek Leinweber, Head of the School of Chemistry & Physics at the University of Adelaide, who has previously written about and lectured on the aerodynamics of cricket balls, golf balls and the 2006 World Cup soccer ball, the Teamgeist.

Along with student Adrian Kiratidis, Professor Leinweber has been reviewing the physics behind soccer balls and what that means for the Jabulani. Adrian is also a soccer enthusiast.

"While the governing body FIFA has strict regulations on the size and weight of the balls, they have no regulations about the outside surface of the balls," Professor Leinweber says.

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New Proof That Exercise Pumps Up Your Metabolism

Using a system that analyzes blood samples with unprecedented detail, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers has developed the first "chemical snapshot" of the metabolic effects of exercise. Their findings, reported in the May 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine, may improve understanding of the physiologic effects of exercise and lead to new treatments for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

"We found new metabolic signatures that clearly distinguish more-fit from less-fit individuals during exercise," says Gregory Lewis, MD, of the MGH Heart Center, the paper's lead author. "These results have implications for the development of optimal training programs and improved assessment of cardiovascular fitness, as well as for the development of nutritional supplements to enhance exercise performance."

The beneficial health effects of exercise -- including reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes -- are well known, but the biological mechanisms underlying those effects are unclear. Previous investigations of exercise-induced changes in metabolites -- biological molecules produced in often-minute quantities -- have focused on the few molecules measured by most hospital laboratories.

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Soccer Robots Are Getting Smarter At RoboCup

(Credit: Image courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University)

Robot soccer players from Carnegie Mellon University competing in this month's RoboCup 2010 world championship in Singapore should be able to out-dribble their opponents, thanks to a new algorithm that helps them to predict the ball's behavior based on physics principles.

That means that the CMDragons, the Carnegie Mellon team that competes in RoboCup's fast-paced Small-Size League, likely will be able to out-maneuver their opponents and find creative solutions to game situations that could even surprise their programmers. It's possible that the physics-based planning algorithm also might enable the players to invent some new kicks. "Over the years, we have developed many successful teams of robot soccer players, but we believe that the physics-based planning algorithm is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment," said Manuela Veloso, professor of computer science and leader of Carnegie Mellon's two robot soccer teams.

"Past teams have drawn from a repertoire of pre-programmed behaviors to play their matches, planning mostly to avoid obstacles and acting with reactive strategies. To reach RoboCup's goal of creating robot teams that can compete with human teams, we need robots that can plan a strategy using models of their capabilities as well as the capabilities of others, and accurate predictions of the state of a constantly changing game," said Veloso, who is president of the International RoboCup Federation.

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New Video Games Help Blind Kids Play

VI Fit, a project at the University of Nevada, Reno, helps children who are blind become more physically active and healthy through video games. The human-computer interaction research team in the computer science and engineering department has developed a motion-sensing-based tennis and bowling exergame.

"Lack of vision forms a significant barrier to participation in physical activity and consequently children with visual impairments have much higher obesity rates and obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes," Eelke Folmer, research team leader and assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department, said.

"Exergames" are a new type of video game that use physical activity as input and are considered powerful weapons in the fight against obesity. Unfortunately, exergames have not yet been accessible to children with visual impairments, although it is evident they could benefit from them the most.
"Our games are adaptations of the popular Nintendo Wii Sports exercise games that have been modified so they can be played without visual feedback," Folmer said.

VI Tennis and VI Bowling are the first of several games to be made available. VI Tennis implements the gameplay of Wii sports tennis providing audio and vibrotactile cues that indicate when to serve and when to return the ball. It can be played against the computer or against a friend using two Wii remotes.

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