The University of Toronto (U of T) Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport (TISS) has announced a new round of funding to support innovative and interdisciplinary research project proposals in sport science and sport medicine. With the 2025 application process now open for new proposals, we look back at some research projects already underway with funding received from the TISS research accelerator grants last year.
Can elite athletes integrate emergent information to improve performance?
Joseph Baker, a professor at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) and Tanenbaum chair in sport science, sport analytics and data modelling, and Kathryn Johnston, a senior research associate at KPE, are co-principal investigators on a study looking into whether elite athletes can integrate emergent information to improve performance.
“The availability and use of advanced analytics to inform high-performance sport decisions is increasing at an impressive rate, to the extent that athletes have access to performance-related information in larger quantities, spanning more areas, with greater precision, and at faster rates than ever before,” says Baker. “However, little is known about whether information that is accessible up to the moment of performance can be integrated by performers to improve their performance.”
In fact, says Baker, it is likely that too much information or information provided in the wrong way might be detrimental to performance.
“On the surface, it would be easy to assume that more information is better when it comes to enhancing performance,” says Johnston. “However, previous research suggests all information is not created equal, but rather that the value of information changes based on several factors such as the nature, timing, quantity and/or quality of the information being presented and the skill level and expertise of the performer.”
In this series of studies, the researchers will focus on identifying the type and amount of information baseball players have access to immediately prior to performance on a task (for example, batting) to determine the impact of this information on performance. In particular, they will explore the influence of information presentation because previous research on the subject suggests the form of instruction or information delivery can influence performance outcomes in a variety of ways.
Nick Wattie, associate professor and associate dean of research and graduate studies at the Ontario Tech University, and Timothy Welsh, a professor of cognitive and neural motor behaviour at KPE, will serve as co-investigators on the study, with Josh Boyd, vice president and assistant general manager of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club, acting as advisor.
A multi-variate, multi-systems approach to post-ACLR return-to-play
Timothy Burkhart, assistant professor at KPE, and Daniel Whelan, an orthopaedic surgeon in St. Michael’s Hospital, are leading a research project investigating a multi-variate, multi-systems approach to returning to play after an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) procedure.
“More than 125,000 Canadians injure their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) every year,” says Burkhart. “Although surgical treatment of ACL injuries is a highly developed procedure, a large percentage of patients experience re-injury following rehabilitation and after returning to their pre-injury activities.”
While traditional return-to-activity (RTA) assessments use some form of jumping test for distance or height or they rely on an assessment of symmetry between the injured and contralateral, uninjured limb, these tests do not consider the motion strategies (for example, the quality of the motion) that are used to achieve these end points, and they do not take into consideration the interaction of the biomechanical, biological and psychological variables.
“This research project aims to identify the multivariate predictors of successful return to activity following surgical treatment for ACL injury,” says Burkhart, who is also adjunct professor in the division of orthopaedic surgery at U of T.
Patients who have had surgical treatment of their ACL injury will be tested for strength in both legs and have MRI imaging. They will also have their motions and forces measured while they perform return to activity jumping tasks. All testing will occur one month, 6-months, and 9-months post-surgery and again at 6-months, 12-months, and 24 months after they return to activity. Participants will also be followed-up with every two-months after they return to activity for two years to record if they sustain an injury.
The MRI data will be used to assess the internal healing of the surgery, while the motion and force data will quantify how the patients move while performing the different tasks.
“We hypothesize that assessing the quality of movement, or categorizing how performance is achieved, will provide a better indicator of a patient’s progress through rehabilitation and when an athlete is ready to return to activity while minimizing the risk of re-injury,” says Whelan. “The quality of the movement will be further enhanced when the biological healing is combined with the patients’ psychologic status.”
Contributing to the study are Jas Chahal, orthopaedic surgeon in Women’s College Hospital, Michael Catapano, doing his residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at U of T, Tim Dwyer, orthopaedic surgeon in Women’s College Hospital, John Theodoropoulos, orthopaedic surgeon in Mount Sinai Hospital, and David Wasserstein, orthopaedic surgeon in Sunnybrokk Health Sciences Centre.
Electroarthrography to non-invasively assess cartilage health during rehabilitation from knee injury
Burkhart is also involved in an investigation into the benefits of using electroarthrography to non-invasively assess cartilage health during rehabilitation from knee injury led by Adele Changoor, an assistant professor in the departments of surgery, laboratory medicine & pathobiology, and materials science & engineering at U of T, who also serves as staff scientist in the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in the Sinai Health System.
“The knee is especially vulnerable to injury during sports because of its wide range of motion and
complex structure,” says Changoor. “A key part of knee stability is the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which helps control knee movements and is involved in half of all knee injuries in athletes.”
When the ACL is torn surgery is often needed, which is followed by a period of rehabilitation. Athletes must meet specific movement and strength requirements before they can safely return to sport. Despite this, around 20 per cent of athletes re-injure their knee, and 35 to 50 per cent develop early-onset osteoarthritis - a condition where the cartilage in the knee wears down over time, causing
pain and stiffness - within 10 years.
“Research shows that even when athletes meet the return-to-sport criteria, their knees may still not be functioning equally,” says Changoor. “While the knee that had ACL surgery may work similarly to a healthy knee, the opposite, uninjured knee often experiences higher forces, which could lead to further injury.”
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has also shown early signs of cartilage damage in athletes who have uneven joint loading within five years of ACL surgery, which suggests a need to optimize current rehabilitation methods, according to the researchers. Unfortunately, the tools used to assess knee balance and cartilage health, like motion capture technology and MRI, are expensive and not widely available.
Electroarthrography (EAG) has emerged as a non-invasive technique that can measure cartilage quality using sensors placed on the skin around the knee to detect electrical signals from cartilage during joint loading.
“EAG has shown potential in animal studies but has not yet been evaluated in human joint injury,” says Burkhart. “Our project aims to explore whether EAG can help track knee health during and after rehabilitation from ACL surgery, providing a more accessible and cost-effective way to promote long-term joint health.”
Contributing to this study are also John Theodoropoulos, medical director at the Dovigi Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Clinic and assistant professor in the department of surgery at U of T, and Andy Kin On Wong, a scientist in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and assistant professor of epidemiology in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at U of T.
Effect of ischemic preconditioning on 2-km rowing ergometer performance in males and females
Ira Jacobs, director of TISS and professor at KPE, is leading a study on the effect of ischemic preconditioning (IPC) on 2-km rowing ergometer performance in males and females.
IPC is a non-invasive technique that involves brief repeated cycles of restricting blood flow to the arms and/or legs, with periods of unrestricted blood flow between each cycle of blood flow restriction. Blood flow restriction, followed by removal of the restriction, is achieved by inflating and deflating blood pressure cuffs placed on the limbs. This technique has been reported to improve certain types of exhaustive exercise performance, although the precise cause of the improvement has not yet been clearly identified. The technique is being adopted by high performance athletes but there is little research supporting the benefits in females.
“The primary objective of the proposed research is to examine whether there are sex-differences in exercise performance and physiological responses after acute ischemic preconditioning application,” says Jacobs, who is working on this project with Vanessa Lin, MSc student, and Liam O’Brien, PhD candidate at KPE. “To address this primary objective, we will examine the effects of IPC on 2-km rowing ergometer performance in trained male and female rowers.”
Defining optimal protein intakes for female strength athletes
Daniel Moore, a professor at KPE, is leading a project to define optimal protein intakes for female strength athletes.
“Dietary protein provides the essential amino acid building blocks that support the recovery from and adaptation to the stress of exercise,” says Moore, who is working on this study with Ines Kortebi and Nick Pourhashemi, both PhD candidates at KPE. “Despite the importance of this vital macronutrient, we know relatively little about the specific requirement for female strength athletes compared to males, and even less about the impact of menstrual phase or oral contraceptive use.”
Using novel stable isotopes (amino acids that are slightly heavier than those typically found in the diet), the researchers will determine the daily requirement for dietary protein to support whole body and muscle-specific protein synthesis, which are physiological processes that underpin training adaptations when maximized through exercise and dietary approaches, in both trained female and male athletes during recovery from resistance training.
“This approach will allow us to both define the optimal intake for female athletes in the luteal phase (the period after ovulations that lasts until the start of the next menstrual cycle) and establish to what extent research, which has historically been biased towards male participants, can be translated across the sexes,” says Moore. “Furthermore, we will directly compare how menstrual phase impacts the body’s need for dietary protein and whether oral contraceptives, which are commonly used in female athletes, modify the daily requirement.”
According to the researchers, the study will be the most comprehensive assessment of dietary protein requirements in female athletes and establish foundational sports nutrition knowledge for virtually all strength-trained athletes.
R2Play-Rehab: Co-designing a multidomain and integrative sport rehabilitation tool for youth athletes with concussion
Shannon Scratch, a clinician scientist and clinical neuropsychologist in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and associate professor (status only) in the department of pediatrics, Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at U of T, Elaine Biddiss, a senior scientist in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and associate professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at U of T, and Josh Shore, a PhD candidate from KPE, are co-principal investigators on a project called R2Play-Rehab: Co-designing a multidomain and integrative sport rehabilitation tool for youth athletes with concussion.
“Evaluating concussion recovery and readiness for return-to-sport is challenging for clinicians since current tests do not fully capture the complex demands of playing sports,” says Scratch. “Our team developed an assessment tool called R2Play which uses technology to help simulate the demands of sport within clinic settings by combining physical, cognitive, sensory and emotional skills.”
With feedback from clinicians suggesting the tool could also be useful for guiding personalized rehabilitation therapy, the aim of this project is to adapt R2Play as a rehabilitation tool (R2Play-Rehab) and develop an accompanying rehabilitation program using R2Play to help youth recover after concussions.
“We will work closely with clinicians and youth who have experienced concussions to ensure their needs and preferences guide the design of R2Play-Rehab,” says Scratch. “We hope that R2Play-Rehab will help youth be physically and mentally ready to return to sport after concussion, lowering their risk for re-injury and increasing confidence in the return to play process for youth, families and clinicians.”
The co-investigators on this project are Sarah Munce, scientist at the KITE-Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, at University Health Network, and assistant professor (status only) at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at U of T, Michael Hutchison, associate professor at KPE and director of the concussion program at the MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic, and Nick Reed, associate professor in the department of occupational sciences & occupational therapy at U of T and Canada research chair (Tier 2) in pediatric concussion.
In the eye of the beholder: Exploring gaze behaviour during athlete evaluation and selection
Nick Wattie, associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ontario Tech University and associate professor (status only) at KPE, is the principal investigator of a research project exploring gaze behaviour during athlete evaluation and selection, with KPE’s Baker and Johnston acting as co-investigators and Michael Bartlett, president & CEO of Canada Basketball, as collaborator.
Identifying and selecting athletes with the potential to reach the highest levels (talent identification and selection) is common practice in high performance sport. Whether at competitive youth stages of participation or elite professional levels, coaches, scouts and/or administrators are tasked with identifying and selecting athletes for their teams.
“In attempts to better understand and improve athlete selections, the decision-making processes of coaches have become a focal point of research,” says Wattie. “However, coaches often find it difficult to articulate how they make their selection decisions and what information they use.
“As such, selection decisions tend to be explained as a result of ‘the coaches’ eye’ – a sort of subjective black box that we do not fully understand.”
This project will use advanced mobile eye tracking technology to measure coaches’ gaze behaviour while evaluating athletes. This technology will allow researchers to understand gaze strategies used by coaches, and to compare coaches’ evaluations of players with their gaze behaviours in an effort to gain insights into athlete selection decision making processes.