The thread by Colonels19 about emails from the AC regarding skill improvement led me to do some quick research on the subject of improvement in athletes. I found several things that I thought were interesting and decided to post them here for discussion.

A research team based at Stanford has studied athletes in several different sports such as swimming, football, track and field, and basketball and determined that extra sleep improves performance. Lead researcher and author Cheri Mah reports that in the basketball study involving players from the mens and womens NCAA teams, players showed significant improvement in speed and free throw shooting after getting 11 hours of sleep as opposed to getting what the players felt was "enough" sleep. Similar studies at Northeastern University have confirmed the results.

Professor Mark Denny, also of Stanford, has conducted a major study of thoroughbred race horses, racing dogs, and human athletes to determine their maximum potential. He found that the hundreds of years of breeding in race horses has led to their near ultimate performance levels. The winning time in the Kentucky Derby has not improved since the 1940s and the other major races have not seen improvement since the 1970s. His statistical projections indicate that race horses are within 1% of their ultimate ability. Dog racing has not seen any improvement in winning times since the 1970s either and the projections are similar for them. In human studies, using the same statistical models, he predicts that the maximum top speed for the 100M sprint could go as fast as 9.48 seconds. Usain Bolt currently is the record holder at 9.69 seconds so there is little room for improvement there as well. Denny did acknowledge that if the key to understanding the physiological restrictions of the human body were unlocked, the predicted limits could change.

There are biomechanical and physiological limits to improvement of the human bodies abilities. Too much stress on the body actually begins to break your body down. In other words, you can overtrain. There are numerous programs for increasing the intensity, volume, and/or frequency of workouts that will improve performance but the key is to know which training is appropriate for where you are at. A beginning shotputter needs to work on arm strength but an experienced shotputter will only increase the length of his throws by improving his leg strength. An athlete will never reach his/her ultimate peak without being goal-oriented. Without the cognative mindset, practice is just practice. The saying goes that practice makes perfect but only if it's perfect practice for a purpose.

John Fontanella is a former star basketball player and currently is a physicist working at the U.S. Naval Academy. He has done numerous studies on the physics of making a layup, acheiving greater height for a jumpshot, determining the optimal release point in a jumpshot, and other similar studies. His theory is simply that if you learn how to perform an action correctly and understand the best sequence of movements for that action then if you practice, practice, practice that proper approach your game will improve significantly.

My point with all this is that I think caps for player improvement in HD are necessary. Some athletes develop poor techniques over time and continue them for years - Shaq for example. Other players simply are not taught correctly to begin with. Other players may train in an area that won't help them improve on the court. Finally, there are just so many things to learn and not enough time to learn everything properly. The player improvement caps in HD reflect real life for those who value that sort of thing. Thank you for reading this far.

Comments?

Interesting stuff, Weena.

I don't have a problem with caps in general; I have a problem with how quickly many players hit those caps and how commonplace it is. That's an issue that is going to be addressed in the next major update.

Another interesting tangent is that I've seen studies that show that those sleeping more than eight hours a night actually see their lifespans decrease (6-8 hours was optimum). I'll try to find it ...

http://www.neurologyreviews.com/nov02/nr_nov02_toomuchsleep.html

If you just Google "too much sleep bad for you" a bunch of stuff pops up. So whaddaya think, Ed, should we be incorporating sleep into our practice plans? We could be allotted a handful of 20-minute power naps per season, to be utilized by key players before key games. But do you use one in that monumental non-con matchup vs. the #1 team? Against your big conference rival? Gamble and hope you'll be able to use them in the NT?

(Yes people, I'm kidding.)

I took a nap but I put it back when I was done with it.

Great read Weena, thanks.

Good stuff Weeena

I wish more posts could be this good. Nice post.

So should players practicing less than 130 minutes improve their stamina? Because they're more rested... Or maybe...

and this is a serious thought: Less than 130-minute players should, to a point, heal faster from injuries. Maybe just 6 or 8 points a night instead of 4 or something.

if and when we get more choice and detail in assistant coaches, could one imagine that an assistant coach who specializes in training could push kids beyond the caps that otherwise would apply? consistent with one of the experts quoted above

If you look at the actual graduation rates of most Division I schools, you will see that most players actually get that sleep during their class and study time.

I think the group that disagrees with "hard caps" in the HD world is mainly concerned with the HD scale/timeframe and how it relates to real life. I don't think most argue against the theoretical ideology that the human body has a limit for how well it can perform a particular skill. The informaiton you post simply confirms that.

However, what most people struggle with is that it's unrealistic, for the most part, that guys who are supposed to simulate 18-22 year old amateur athletes would hit their theoretical limit in a particular skill during a college career. To me, the articles you post actually support this. They talk about having a keen sense of where you are and what you need and being completely focused and goal-oriented on a specific training plan, etc. I don't think college athletes who are both limited implicitly (because they have other priorities to deal with, i.e. classes, etc.) and explicitly (the NCAA limits practice time, which is mirrored in this game) would have the time nor the focus to "limit-out" on a phyisological skill at such an early age.

I guess what I'm really saying here is that, while limits exist for an athlete over their lifetime, I don't think that really translates to athletes reaching those limits in a college basketball environment. And it certainly doesn't translate that this should be completely common across all athletes, and that it should happen at the equivalent of when they turn 19-20 years old.

I'm not sure if that means the HD scale needs readjusted, the growth rate needs readjusted, or players just need to start lower on the scale, but the idea that college kids are routinely maxing out physical attributes and skillsets before they leave college remains very unrealistic to me. And I think this information, and specifically how it stresses the difficulty of maxing out a physiological skill, reinforces that rather than disputes it.