This week in the world of sports science, here’s what happened…
- New offside technology in football
- Are kiwi fruits a sleep-aiding superfood?
- Which surface is better for plyometric training: grass or sand?
On Saturday, football fans will get to experience a ground-breaking innovation being introduced in the English Premier League: Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT). This new technology aims to deliver a more efficient virtual offside line, helping officials improve the speed and consistency of their offside calls. The goal is to reduce the time taken for these decisions by an average of 30 seconds.
Additionally, SAOT is set to enhance the experience for fans and viewers alike, as the technology will generate and display clearer graphics of the virtual offside line for both supporters and broadcasters. Moreover, each Premier League stadium will see the installation of up to 30 new tracking cameras that operate at double the frame rate of traditional broadcast devices. These cameras will accurately track the ball’s precise location and gather an astonishing 10,000 data points for each player on the field!
It will certainly be exciting to see if SAOT lives up to its promise and effectively speeds up offside decisions!
Are kiwi fruits a sleep-aiding superfood?
A recent LinkedIn post by renowned nutritional and health educator William Wallace, PhD, provides a compelling discussion on whether kiwi fruits can be considered a superfood for sleep or not. In his post, Wallace summarises a 2023 study that involved 15 elite athletes consuming two kiwi fruits one hour before bed over the course of four weeks.
The findings of this study revealed that eating two kiwi fruits before bed led to an average increase in total sleep time by one hour. Additionally, the number of night-time awakenings dropped by 27%, sleep efficiency improved from 86% to 93%, and the athletes reported feeling less fatigued and more alert in the mornings.
Wallace highlights that kiwi fruits are rich in melatonin, folate, antioxidants, and potassium, all of which are known to aid in both sleep initiation and maintenance. While he presents a well-articulated summary of the scientific evidence supporting kiwi fruits as an effective sleep aid, he also cautions about some limitations of the study, such as its small sample size, reliance on subjective sleep metrics, and the fact that the results may not apply to individuals outside the elite athlete population.
Nevertheless, in a landscape crowded with numerous supplements, it’s refreshing to consider that one of the best sleep aids might simply come from whole foods like kiwi fruits! For those interested in engaging further with Wallace’s insights, his post can be found here, along with the referenced study (here).
Which surface is better for plyometric training: grass or sand?
A recent study investigated the effects of plyometric training conducted on grass versus sand surfaces. The research involved 19 professional under-20 footballers from Brazil. Among them, 10 players participated in a five-week plyometric training intervention on grass, while 9 players underwent the same intervention on sand.
The findings of the study were remarkably similar across both surfaces concerning pre- and post-intervention assessments. In the squat jump test, the group training on grass exhibited an improvement of 18.2%, whereas the sand surface group showed a closely aligned improvement of 17.6%. For the countermovement jump, the grass group achieved a 12.4% enhancement, while the sand group demonstrated a nearly identical improvement of 12.5%. In the 15-metre sprint test, the grass group’s performance increased by 2.3%, and the sand group experienced another nearly identical improvement of 2.2%.
While the study’s limitations include a relatively small sample size and a brief intervention duration, it effectively underscores that plyometric training on either grass or sand surfaces can lead to similar enhancements in jumping and sprinting performance.
If you would like to learn more about plyometric training, why not check out our highly regarded course: Plyometric Training!
From us this week:
>> New course: Foundations of Sports Nutrition
>> New podcast: Balancing Performance and Player Health
>> New infographic: Youth Vs Adult Athletes
>> New article: Hydrotherapy
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