[HN Gopher] Impact of travel and circadian disruption on athleti...
___________________________________________________________________
Impact of travel and circadian disruption on athletic performance
Author : ohmyblock
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-01-15 09:54 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| scott_s wrote:
| ESPN had an excellent piece in 2019 on how grueling the NBA
| travel schedule is for players, mainly in how it disrupts their
| sleep: "NBA exec: 'It's the dirty little secret that everybody
| knows about'",
| https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27767289/dirty-little-se...
|
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21251094
| mogadsheu wrote:
| Fun and well thought out approach to a question we've all had for
| sports.
|
| I don't understand why the authors attributed the impact on
| performance to circadian rhythms, seems like they just threw it
| in there as a possible explanation for the results they recorded.
|
| It could be any number of factors related to travel as far as the
| method is concerned.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Circadian rhythm and athletic performance have been studied
| quite a bit, see e.g. [1] at which time of day elite athletes
| swim fastest.
|
| Apart from obvious confounding effects, which factors related
| to travel are you thinking of that aren't already mitigated at
| the elite level?
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72573-8
| mogadsheu wrote:
| The opposing crowd and lack of familiarity with the stadium
| come to mind.
|
| It's pretty common to hear athletes comment on these aspects
| of away games.
|
| That's not to say circadian rhythms don't have an affect, I'm
| sure they do.
|
| The study's methods however are related only to travel vs
| non-travel. The authors' attribution/specific call-out to
| circadian rhythms is a bit odd to me, since it doesn't seem
| like they tested/measured those specifically.
|
| Edit: case in point: " We also did not have data at the
| individual level regarding each player's internal circadian
| timing, and therefore individual differences in circadian
| disruption could have differed between players and affected
| team outcomes."
|
| I don't think circadian rhythms should have been mentioned in
| the title of the article at all. It should be about travel
| which is more broad and accurate to what they were measuring.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I was watching Amazon's "All or Nothing" series, specifically the
| one about the New Zealand Rugby team aka the "All Blacks"
|
| Since the international rugby league is spread across a wide
| variety of countries and time zones (e.g. Australia/NZ, South
| Africa and Argentina), it was fascinating to see that the NZ team
| will send players out ahead of time to acclimate to the time
| zone. They will also do this even if it means they will play
| short handed.
|
| For example, if they are playing a series with Argentina, they
| will have players stay in Argentina through most of the series
| and not physically play in New Zealand till the end of the
| series. I always wondered how they quantified the benefit or if
| it was just a "makes sense to do that" style decision.
| BlackVanilla wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a similar study on motorsport
| drivers. You would be able to measure athletic performance more
| accurately because you're measured against a stopwatch. There are
| also fewer external factors than basketball as drivers simply go
| around the track as fast as they can without external obstacles
| (in qualifying rather than racing stages). Unlike basketball,
| their athletic performance is less influenced by reacting to what
| the other team is doing.
|
| There are a range of time zones changes and non-changes. From
| three consecutive races in UTC+2 (Belgium, Netherlands, Italy in
| F1 this year) to large changes (Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia).
| The sample size can go beyond the 20 F1 drivers by including
| junior leagues (F2/F3) as well as MotoGP and other tournaments.
|
| Some F1 teams, like McLaren, are already doing some interesting
| work outside of car performance which could have benefits outside
| of motorsport.[1] See MindMaze for work in neuroscience.
|
| Separately, it would also be interesting to test non-drivers like
| pit stop crew and race strategists. Like drivers, their
| performance (albeit less/not athletic) can be measured against a
| stopwatch.
|
| [1] https://www.mclaren.com/racing/partners/mindmaze/
| Pyramus wrote:
| I spoke to someone from McLaren not too long ago and if I
| remember correctly they plan their whole logistics such that
| the driver at the time of the race is in an optimal point in
| their circadian rhythm.
|
| McLaren (and others) realised some years ago that considerable
| gains could also be had from improving human performance.
| BlackVanilla wrote:
| Do you know if they do this for their non-drivers? Imagine if
| they did this with strategists, pit-stop crew etc.? I bet
| it's not just athletic performance which is impacted, but
| cognitive performance too.
|
| If you or your friend at McLaren have any insight about F1,
| please do email me (address is in my profile), I'm
| considering a career in it! My email is:
| hnblackvanilla@gmail.com
| [deleted]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| In Singapore, where the race is held at local nighttime but
| at a normal time for Europe, everybody (other than, IIRC,
| some of the media/marketing folks) stays on UK time. I've
| heard some strange stories about trying to find dinner at
| 4AM.
| cheezerman wrote:
| Check out Peter Attia's podcast interviewing Luke Bennett, a
| performance doctor in F1. He goes into sleep and performance.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/lukebennett/
| bborud wrote:
| At the very least F1 is a very quantified sport since the cars
| have a ton of more or less high sample rate data channels that
| you can use to describe the environment of the driver. For the
| driver they will at least have heart rate, respiration and body
| temperature throughout the race.
|
| In addition they have vast treasure troves of historical data
| to compare against.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I feel like it isn't necessary to study athletes while
| competing.
|
| Just study athletes under controlled circumstances. I'm sure
| teams of all sports would be interested in seeing the results,
| and by extension, willing to fund the studies (esp.
| universities with strong athletic programs).
| BlackVanilla wrote:
| Sure, it's not necessary, but it is convenient. Athletes
| train in the off-season, so teams and sportspeople alike
| would not want their training disrupted knowing that it would
| probably negatively impact their performace next season when
| it really matters. May as well measure while sportspeople are
| travelling between time zones, rather than having a scary
| coach shouting "give me thirty, kid" at 3am.
| ohmyblock wrote:
| A partially related and interesting story is how Tinder has also
| affected performance of NBA players (pre-pandemia) [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinde...
| bluedino wrote:
| I always found it odd that boxing and MMA main events are often
| held at midnight or so.
| hammock wrote:
| Las Vegas, man...
| sojournerc wrote:
| I bet Major League Baseball could have some good supporting
| statistics for this as well.
|
| With so many games, often traveling the night before another
| series, I wonder if batting performance in particular is
| impacted.
|
| I bet West -> East travel would be worse with the loss in time.
| ghaff wrote:
| It looks like Five Thirty Eight did one piece on overseas MLB
| travel years ago but I'm a little surprised they don't seem to
| have looked at this more.
| mattficke wrote:
| There's been a lot of attention to the impact of fatigue on
| performance in competitive cycling, it's interesting to see this
| research in other sports as well.
|
| In 2015 Team Sky (the dominant pro team at the time) experimented
| with using a motorhome for their race leader instead of the
| provided hotels during a stage race, to help him sleep better at
| night. The UCI almost immediately banned the practice as an
| unfair advantage [1].
|
| [1] https://cyclingtips.com/2015/06/team-sky-motorhome-
| blocked-b...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-15 23:03 UTC)