What Do David Martin and Mario Brothers Have In Common? PASTA POWER
By Bret Stuter
Dec 3, 2014; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Philadelphia 76ers shorts with logo against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center. The 76ers defeated the Timberwolves 85-77. Mandatory Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports
What Do David Martin and Mario Brothers Have In Common? PASTA POWER
We are always looking for the new angle, a new story, some new element of breaking news or player information to keep the fans of the Philadelphia 76ers as informed and knowledgeable as possible. Judging by recent stories and comments, you’ve been a great fan-base and have appreciated the efforts of our devoted staff of writers.
But we’re not all work and no play here at The Sixers Sense. I mean, what fun is that to have wave after wave of in depth analysis chock full of statistics, mathematical equations, and scientific evidence. So it’s Friday, July 24, 2015, and I think you’ve been such a great audience that you deserve a break.
No no no…. not an absence of articles. But an article with a little less “ooomph” and a little more “chortle”. Where will I find such a topic? In a place nobody else will look for it… from the research of Dr. David T. Martin.
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Now now… don’t drift off before you get to the meat of the story… or as you’ll soon come to learn the ‘pasta’ of the article. You see, sports science is a broad brush topic that involves everything that affects an atheletes physiology. It’s the duration, interval, intensity, and recovery from practice and training. It’s the intake of the body – the fluids, the nutrition, and the supplements. It’s the output and analysis of the body – the blood sweat and tears. And its the metabolism – the heart rate, the respiration, the sleep patterns, the brain activity.
All of this creates data. Once the sports science has data, they try to form cause and effects – or correlations – to the information to give a sense of understanding and predictability to what is going on. And that is why I think this is a great topic for a Friday evening. Trying to do your best as an athlete? Sit down to a big ole lasagne or bowl of spaghetti about four hours before you compete. Who says so?
Doctor David T. Martin, Philadelphia 76ers Director of Performance Research and Development, does. Or at least that is the conclusion you can draw from a research paper Martin authored while he was working in Australia. Now the official title of the paper is “Effects of Preexercise Carbohydrate Ingestion on Mountain Bike Performance”. And like all research papers, it opens with an abstract which details what the paper is all about. Research papers will then give you background, the objective of the research, the methods employed, the statistical evidence (usually in tabular or graph format) and a handy conclusion.
I’ve cut through all that and will boil the pasta down for you. In summary, eight men ate pasta before simulating a mountain bike ride. If they ate pasta from one to four hours before the exercise, five out of eight performances improved measurably.
Now that’s a lot of research and verbage to get to a defendable conclusion. But this is not the first research of it’s kind. No sir. That distinction falls upon the original Mario Brothers cartoon. See for yourself
So if you are heading out for a long hike, a bike ride, or an afternoon pick-up game… don’t grab your water bottle and head out. Sit down to a nice bowl of penne noodles smothered in marinara sauce. The doctor ordered it… Dr. Martin, that is.