The Best Things I Read In August

Welcome to my monthly update.

There are two sections: ‘What Have I Been Up To?’ and ‘What Have I Been Reading?’

Here’s what I would like to share with you this month…

Badminton PhD Opportunity: We’re delighted to have secured funding from the Badminton World Federation for our project “The Development of an Open-Source Badminton-Specific Training Load Metric”. The project will combine wearable technology, signal processing and machine learning. The formal advertisement will be available soon, but please contact me if you want more information. If you know anybody else who may be interested then please pass on my contact details.

Coordination and Control of CMJs: A version of my presentation from the International Society of Biomechanics conference is now available on YouTube. I cover CMJ coordination and control, inter-individual variation, analysis methods, and options for data visualisation:

The Ally Meeting: Likewise, a recording is available of ‘The Ally Meeting’ that I co-hosted between International Women in Biomechanics, Black Biomechanists Association, and Latinx in Biomechanix. I strongly recommend you check this out and hear what the amazing speakers had to say about their own experiences of allyship in biomechanics and academia.

Flywheel Squat Biomechanics: On Tuesday 14th September, I will present a keynote lecture on ‘Biomechanics Considerations in Flywheel Resistance Training’ as part of the Brazilian Congress of Biomechanics - please check it out if you can, or get in touch if you have any questions. The congress also features the ISB Motor Control Group’s symposium.

Terminology Controversy: I shared this paper on Twitter recently, with no idea that my notifications were about to blow up. It’s a really interesting article that tackles the use of terms such as load, training load, and workload within the sport science literature. It’s safe to say it turned out to be a controversial piece, but you can read some of the comments for and against here.

Linear Force-Velocity Relationships: Similarly, this letter to the editor made for an interesting read in Sports Biomechanics. Duane Knudson questions the increasingly common practice of fitting and extrapolating linear force-velocity relationships.

Sample Size Justification: This preprint audits the justification given within Gait & Posture articles for their sample sizes, both before and after the journal introduced a requirement for authors to include such a justification. Intrestingly, the number of studies including a justification has increased, but the actual median number of participants included decreased slightly. A related preprint discusses similar topics in the wider sports medicine literature.

Para Sport Articles: Sports Biomechanics have just made many of their Para sport articles from the last few years free for all to access during the month of September. You can check out many of the studies included in this list.

Beer Mode or Coffee Mode: Finally, I really liked this description of the two modes of working: “In beer mode, you find inspiration. In coffee mode, you harvest it.”

That’s all for this month. If you found it useful, please forward this email or share this link with friends, colleagues, or on social media.

If you’ve read anything particularly interesting or useful recently, please reply to this email and let me know. I read all of the replies and I’m always looking for good reading suggestions.