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Good morning. Why a flood of data hasn't made coaches sharper, what makes an athlete great at selling a fake, and the mitochondrial cost of sitting still. Let's get into it…
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A new Frontiers in Sports paper from Seoul National University argues that the flood of performance data hasn't improved coaching decisions, calling the disconnect the "analytics-practice gap."
The case: metrics are built to describe what happened, not guide what to do next, and they're often collected because they can be captured, not because they answer a coaching question. The paper names four barriers - low actionability, weak context, fragmented data, and limited staff time - and pitches a "decision-first" approach that starts with the coaching decision before picking the metric.
In a new Applied Performance breakdown, Director of Sports Performance Ramsey Nijem unpacked a study on what separates skilled fake-cut artists from the rest, using 96 handball players, coach ratings, and 3D motion capture.
The findings:
Skilled fakers were faster everywhere - higher approach, cut, and exit speed with about 5% shorter ground contact - preserving speed rather than cutting sharper
They used wider, shallower cuts with more externally rotated foot positions
The deception came from the head and torso, leaning hard away from the true direction while the lower body already moved toward the real one
The catch: skilled performers showed higher knee abduction moments, a possible performance-injury tradeoff
A new Clinical Bioenergetics study compared muscle from inactive but otherwise healthy men against active men, and the inactive group already showed a distinct mitochondrial decline: lower respiratory capacity, a 49% drop in the pyruvate carrier MPC1, weaker fat oxidation, lower VO2 max, and more blood lactate. The authors argue that being sedentary may itself be an early stage of metabolic dysfunction, not a neutral baseline.
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