Meet the Celtics' sports scientist: Johann Bilsborough

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Post by bobheckler Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:03 pm

Meet the Celtics' sports scientist: Johann Bilsborough


Physiologist to track workout, diet habits



Meet the Celtics' sports scientist: Johann Bilsborough 100515johannbilsborough
Photo by: Courtesy
BILSBOROUGH: Physiologist will monitor every move of Celtics players.


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

By:  Mark Murphy



There are monitors attached to the chests of Celtics players under their jerseys that measure heart rate. More monitors, strapped to the back, record movement.

Players occasionally will be wired for science this week in Europe, with an exhibition game today against Olimpia Milano and on Thursday against Real Madrid. There’s a quick turnaround and a transcontinental flight between the two games, which should alter the data for Johann Bilsborough, an Australian sports scientist hired by the Celtics last summer. He’s traveling with the team as an intrigued observer, a recorder of everything that influences the system of a professional athlete.

Bilsborough’s experience has come primarily with the Australian Football League, rugby teams and mixed-martial artists. He’s developing an overall health and fitness plan for each of the Celtics, while working with the team’s strength-and-fitness and training staffs. The goal is to apply an analytical approach to everything from rest and sleep needs to recovery from exertion.

From 7-foot Tyler Zeller to 5-9 Isaiah Thomas to Jared Sullinger’s bulky 6-8 composition, each body is different. Each player eventually will be handed an individual lifestyle plan.

It’s admittedly a brave new world for Bilsborough as he interviews players, who, in turn, laugh at his Aussie accent and his unusual questions about workout habits and dietary choices. They also find his background in Aussie Rules Football intriguing. They find the sport itself a little different.

“No pads,” shrugged Bilsborough.

Just how, exactly, is this physiologist going to parlay that experience into his first professional basketball season marathon?

“I’ll be honest, our (Australian) football season has 26 games,” said Bilsborough. “I hope I’ll have answers by then, because I’m still getting my head around an 82-game season. Even in our football code, we try to look at aspects of how our players are coping with the stimulus of a weekly game, training.

“This is pretty intense, 82 games, not sure what I’m in for.”

Five Australian sports scientists have taken similar positions with NBA teams over the last year, including the Australian Institute of Sport’s David Martin, who was recently given the elevated job of head of performance by the Philadelphia 76ers.

So the Celts are part of the NBA’s latest trend — biological analytics, you might call it.

However, Danny Ainge didn’t fall for the first sports scientist who sent a resume to the Celtics president of basketball operations.

“We didn’t hire Johann just because he’s a sports scientist,” said Ainge. “It was because we wanted Johann. It’s his education, his experience and personality. Some of the people we talked to over the last two years just weren’t a good fit. Some were without the necessary experience.

“In some ways it’s good that he doesn’t come from a basketball background, and in some ways he’s catching up, but even people who have been in the NBA for a long time haven’t figured this stuff out.”

Bilsborough contributed to innumerable studies and papers, like the densely themed, “Measurement precision of body composition variables in wheelchair athletes, using dual-X-ray absorptiometry.”

As advanced as the Celtics have become, much in his realm needs to be simplified.

“We don’t want to go to our coach with 200 things that have little meaning,” said Bilsborough. “It’s trying to find the cluster of really important factors that we believe are the most important. In the previous sports I’ve worked in, we’ve looked at the movement patterns on the field, some of the heart-rate measures we would take to see what zones they’re in relating to the stimulus of the practice session, and then we’d look at some subjective things as well — how they’re feeling.

“The best sports science is having dialogue with the player. You can’t run your program with just numbers, and I’ve seen that done in other places. The most important thing is to have a balance of common sense and evidence-based practices. But the most important thing is to have dialogue with a player. That’s when you learn the most — if they’ve broken up with their girlfriend, if they’re moving house — stresses that we may not be able to quantify in sport, and won’t be discovered by any other tool than having a good rapport and relationship with him.”

As Bilsborough admits, players typically have little bandwidth for dialogue at the end of a hard day of workouts. And Ainge admits there’s room for their interest to grow.

“I’m not really concerned because he’s so new and the players are still young,” said Ainge. “Players in general find science and sport fascinating. Once we have some data, once we can show them things on video, which Johann calls vision, they’ll be fascinated by Johann. He’s like a coach. It’s a matter of what you can provide.”




bob
MY NOTE:  It's a brave new world.  Maybe if Sully had this a year or two ago he'd have been in better shape.


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bobheckler
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Post by worcester Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:21 pm

I'm going to contact Bilsborough to advance all my latest performance improving nutritionals. The trick will be convincing him they're not nostrums. Sully in particular could benefit from a shift in his approach to fat loss:

http://blogs.webmd.com/breaking-news/2015/08/low-carb-diets-dont-work-the-way-we-thought.html

Johann is a VERY interesting guy tuned into some very savvy researchers. Check out this article he read:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26171606

His tweeter feed - https://twitter.com/jbils1972 - is full of intelligent people and ideas. I'm very encouraged. Adding the edge he can bring to player's performance with the fact that they're so young, the 2015-16 Celts may smoke teams in the 4th Q and at the end of the season.
worcester
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Post by worcester Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:37 pm

Sully, Check this out too:

http://cyclingtips.com.au/2015/06/why-you-should-think-twice-before-trying-a-low-carb-high-fat-diet/
worcester
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