Study sets guideline for determining effectiveness of college football training methods

Findings could help athletic departments better prepare athletes for NFL combine test

2014-09-03

(Press-News.org) VIDEO: Athletic performance varies from day to day, which can make it difficult for strength and conditioning professionals to judge whether athletes' improvements are due to effective training. Now, University of...
Click here for more information.

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Athletic performance varies from day to day, which can make it difficult for strength and conditioning professionals to judge whether athletes' improvements are due to effective training. Now, University of Missouri researchers have established a guideline that trainers can use to distinguish whether college football players' improvements on weightlifting tests result from increased performance capability or day-to-day variability. These findings could help coaches and other athletic department personnel determine the effectiveness of their training programs and better prepare promising football players for important tests, such as those during the NFL Combine.

"We found that the NFL-225, a bench press assessment, is reliable in that athletes consistently get within one or two reps of previous performances when tested weekly, demonstrating that such frequent testing is unnecessary," said Bryan Mann, an assistant teaching professor in the MU School of Health Professions and assistant director of strength and conditioning for Mizzou Athletics. "Previously, no one had investigated what actually constitutes a 'worthwhile difference,' which refers to a significant gain as a result of training rather than luck or a particularly good day in the weight room."

The data for Mann's study, which focused specifically on Division I athletes, was obtained through routine strength and conditioning procedures for Mizzou's football training program. Athletes were divided into groups by size – as determined by position – and number of completed repetitions to ensure that the smallest worthwhile difference (SWD) did not differ by weight or overall strength. His results showed that for all groups, the SWD is equal to an increase of three or more repetitions.

"At Mizzou, we work to marry athletics and academics, so we try to use all available resources to base training procedures on scientific evidence," said Mann, who also is an adjunct instructor in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences. "Ultimately, we want to be the school that changes how strength and conditioning is done. The goal is for athletic programs to have scientific evidence backing their training regimens rather than operating a certain way because that's how everyone before them had done things."

Mann said that because collegiate football programs often devote large amounts of resources to maximizing players' NFL-225 results, this research may help athletic programs better judge the effectiveness of current training procedures and determine the best use of program resources.

INFORMATION: Mann's study, "Reliability and smallest worthwhile difference of the NFL-225 test in NCAA Division I football players," was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Other researchers included Pat A. Ivey, assistant athletic director for athletic performance at the University of Missouri; William F. Breschue from the United States Military Academy at West Point; and Jerry L. Mayhew from Truman State University.

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

Study sets guideline for determining effectiveness of college football training methods 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

NIH-led scientists discover HIV antibody that binds to novel target on virus

2014-09-03

WHAT: An NIH-led team of scientists has discovered a new vulnerability in the armor of HIV that a vaccine, other preventive regimen or treatment could exploit. The site straddles two proteins, gp41 and gp120, that jut out of the virus and augments other known places where broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) bind to HIV. This newly identified site on the viral spike is where a new antibody found by the scientists in an HIV-infected person binds to the virus. Called 35O22, the antibody prevents 62 percent of known HIV strains from infecting cells in the laboratory and ...

Hawaii scientist maps, names Laniakea, our home supercluster of galaxies

2014-09-03

University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer R. Brent Tully, who recently shared the 2014 Gruber Cosmology Prize and the 2014 Victor Ambartsumian International Prize, has led an international team of astronomers in defining the contours of the immense supercluster of galaxies containing our own Milky Way. They have named the supercluster "Laniakea," meaning "immense heaven" in Hawaiian. The paper explaining this work is the cover story of the September 4 issue of the prestigious journal Nature. Galaxies are not distributed randomly throughout the universe. Instead, they are ...

Sequencing of 5 African fishes reveals diverse molecular mechanisms underlying evolution

2014-09-03

Cambridge, MA. Wed. September 3, 2014 — In an effort to understand the molecular basis of adaptation in vertebrates, researchers sequenced the genomes and transcriptomes of five species of African cichlid fishes. A research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard uncovered a variety of features in the cichlid genomes that enabled the fishes to thrive in new habitats and ecological niches within the Great Lakes of East Africa. In addition to helping explain the complex genomic mechanisms that give rise to incredible diversity among cichlid fishes, ...

Airlock-like transport protein structure discovered

2014-09-03

Palo Alto, CA—Sugars are an essential source of energy for microrganisms, animals and humans. They are produced by plants, which convert energy from sunlight into chemical energy in the form of sugars through photosynthesis. These sugars are taken up into cells, no matter whether these are bacteria, yeast, human cells or plant cells, by proteins that create sugar-specific pores in the membrane that surrounds a cell. These transport proteins are thus essential in all organisms. It is not surprising that the transporters of humans and plants are very similar since they ...

Carbon stored in the world's soils more vulnerable to climate change than expected

2014-09-03

The response of soil microbial communities to changes in temperature increases the potential for more carbon dioxide to be released from the world's soils as global temperatures rise, scientists have revealed. The potential for global warming to stimulate decomposition rates in soils, and thus release large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, has long been considered to be one of the potentially most important positive feedbacks to climate change. However, the results from more recent studies have suggested that responses within microbial communities could ...

Study shows cellular RNA can template DNA repair in yeast

2014-09-03

The ability to accurately repair DNA damaged by spontaneous errors, oxidation or mutagens is crucial to the survival of cells. This repair is normally accomplished by using an identical or homologous intact sequence of DNA, but scientists have now shown that RNA produced within cells of a common budding yeast can serve as a template for repairing the most devastating DNA damage – a break in both strands of a DNA helix. Earlier research had shown that synthetic RNA oligonucleotides introduced into cells could help repair DNA breaks, but the new study is believed to be ...

Newly identified galactic supercluster is home to the Milky Way

2014-09-03

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) -- among other telescopes -- have determined that our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a newly identified ginormous supercluster of galaxies, which they have dubbed "Laniakea," which means "immense heaven" in Hawaiian. This discovery clarifies the boundaries of our galactic neighborhood and establishes previously unrecognized linkages among various galaxy clusters in the local Universe. "We have finally established the contours that define the supercluster of galaxies we can call home," said ...

Longitudinal study explores white matter damage, cognition after traumatic axonal injury

2014-09-03

Traumatic Axonal Injury is a form of traumatic brain injury that can have detrimental effects on the integrity of the brain's white matter and lead to cognitive impairments. A new study from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas investigated white matter damage in the acute and chronic stages of a traumatic axonal injury in an effort to better understand what long-term damage may result. The study, published online July 21 in the Journal of Neurotrauma, looked at 13 patients ages 16 to 60 with mild to severe brain injuries from the intensive ...

Bariatric surgical center accreditation improves patient survival and postop complications

2014-09-03

CHICAGO (September 3, 2014): Patients who underwent weight loss operations in recent years, when most bariatric surgical centers were accredited, had fewer postoperative complications and were 2.3 times less likely to die in the hospital than patients who had bariatric procedures performed before a national movement toward facility accreditation was taking place, according to new study findings. Study authors, who published their results in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, say these findings suggest that accreditation of bariatric ...

Is a gluten-free diet enough to control the complications of celiac disease?

2014-09-03

New Rochelle, NY, September 2, 2014—A lifelong gluten-free diet (GFD) is the conventional approach to managing celiac disease, a chronic inflammatory disorder affecting the small intestine that can result in malnutrition. However, recent evidence shows that a GFD may not be sufficient to prevent serious complications related to celiac disease. A detailed discussion of the metabolic disorders and functional abnormalities that can develop, and nutritional treatments for these is presented in a Review article published in Journal of Medicinal Food, a peer-reviewed journal ...

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Study sets guideline for determining effectiveness of college football training methods

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: