… Klinsmann clearly values Yedlin as a prospect. He called him in to national team camp this week for Wednesday’s friendly at Chile even though Yedlin has not played a first-team match since mid-November. That is a reflection of the value Klinsmann places even on weekly training at a top European club, a step up that even Yedlin described as “a different level.” That distinction became clear to Yedlin in his first workout.
“Everything is just faster, just so much faster,” he said, acknowledging that that was no small statement from a player whose greatest attribute might be his speed. “Trainings here are short, sharp, intense. In America, it’s slower, more relaxed. Here, everything is high-paced.”
When Steve Kerr met Seahawks coach Pete Carroll for the first time this offseason, he thought they were “kindred spirits.”
Both are from California. Both are positive. Both believe sports should be fun.
Kerr, the first-year coach of the Golden State Warriors, held those principles long before he met Carroll, but by spending time with the Seahawks, he cemented the vision he had already blueprinted.
“I knew coming in that I would have a bent toward humor and fun,” Kerr said. “But I wasn’t sure if I could be confident in that approach until I saw Pete winning a Super Bowl coaching the way I wanted to coach. He gave me confidence that I could do it my way, and he helped me formulate what that was going to be.”
Former Argentina international Juan Román Riquelme has announced his retirement from football at the age of 36.
Riquelme grew up in a family of 10 in hardened poverty. He was an illiterate street kid, with an Indian family. Yet, he made it in life. He’s now a millionaire, recognizable around the world and pretty much loved by his fellow countryman and colleagues.
He’s story is “old school”. The kid who grew up in poverty and thanks to the set of skills he acquired on the street, he took over the world.
The Junior League of Greenwich and the Greenwich Library hosted a discussion this week on Maximizing Your Child’s Athletic Potential.
Greenwich resident and two-time NBA all-star Allan Houston moderated, along with a panel of experts including Andy Barr, Director of Performance and Rehab for the New York Knicks; Mubarak “Bar” Malik, Head of Strength and Conditioning for the New York Knicks; and Dr. Demetris Delos, Orthopedic Surgeon at ONS (Greenwich Hospital) and formerly of the NY Giants.
Manchester United head of athletic development Tony Strudwick holds the challenge of keeping one of the English Premier League’s top clubs in peak physical condition.
Along with first team fitness coach Jos van Dijk, Strudwick spends his days working with players in the Manchester United club on injury prevention, movement science, recovery, conditioning and various other aspects of maintaining top athletic form. Strudwick, who earned a PhD in sports science from Liverpool John Moores University and mostly oversees the Man U youth system, is in Philadelphia for the NSCAA Convention where he will present a lecture entitled “Long Term Athletic Development” on Saturday morning.
Strudwick shared his thoughts on the American youth development system, as well as his own methodology for talent identification in an interview with SoccerWire.com on Thursday.
… To be an elite level player at a college or professional sport, you need a degree of exceptional athleticism. And the best medically, scientifically and psychologically recommended way to develop such all around athleticism is ample free play and multiple sport participation as a child.
… The recruiters are just one of the things the 34 players had to get used to, in their week at the IMG Academy in Bradenton. They noticed them standing on the sidelines at training, even wandering onto the ground to get a closer look. They were aware of their presence in the gym, at the pool and around the lunch tables. They knew they were there to see how hard they worked, whether they were willing to push themselves and each other, how they coped so far from home, how they interacted with each other, and many other things.
“I think they want to know what we’re like,” said Darcy Parish. “So that means we have to be ourselves and show that to them, instead of trying to be something that we think they want to see.” For others, it has been more confronting. “It’s daunting, definitely,” said Ben Keays, who wasn’t part of the level-one squad that met many of the scouts on a trip to New Zealand this time last year. “It’s all new to me. You try to block them out, but you know they’re there watching everything. Going out to train I’ve just been wanting to hit every target and thinking ‘please, don’t look here if I’m stuffing up a kick!’ ”
There has been been much more to take in, with this camp the first time the academy has travelled overseas in January and the first time it has gone to the US, with the squad travelling to Europe at Easter for the past few years.
Martin Ødegaard’s decision to join Real Madrid after an enormous period of deliberation, hype and tours around Europe’s biggest clubs may have dragged on for an age to us, but the last few months must’ve absolutely flown by for the 16-year-old Norwegian. Relatively unknown at home in Scandinavia back in April when he made his first-team debut for Strømsgodset IF, things have spiralled to a level which not even he could have dreamed of back then.
But that’s what happens if you’re an absurdly talented young footballer, apparently – and it’s not difficult to see why the excitement over him has grown to enormous levels. A quick, left-footed attacking midfielder with a real elegance about him, Ødegaard’s technical ability and game intelligence is of a level previously unseen in the Tippeligaen. News of him spread like wildfire as he cemented a regular place in the team, and soon after as many as 30 clubs had scouts watching him in one game alone; it was quickly realised that this guy is the genuine deal.
What helps to distinguish Ødegaard from a lot of youngsters who look promising at such a tender phase of their development, or at least acts as a disclaimer to those who are not expecting him to achieve the big things he’s being hyped towards, is his stature.
Soon enough, TV coverage of the NHL will be changed by technology that will go much further than broadcasts. … They’ve created a puck with infrared emitters and use “active tracking,” a set of 10 infrared cameras fixed to the catwalk at the top of an arena, to keep tabs on it. Thirty times a second, data is collected from the puck and “player tags” that are slipped into the backs of players’ jerseys.
It’s only fitting a Super Bowl week sure to be dominated by talk about the physics of a football began with an innovation inside of one.
Several of the balls used in Sunday’s Pro Bowl game contained a tracking device that can’t measure air pressure — yet — but soon could tell the NFL and fans a few other facts about what’s happening on the field.
“I don’t think this will ever replace people doing the (chains) and certainly not replace the refs,” said Jill Stelfox, the general manager of Zebra Technologies’ location solutions division. “But I do think from a fan perspective you’re going to get a lot of fun things.”
Purpose: The α7β1 integrin is a transmembrane protein expressed in the skeletal muscle that can link the actin cytoskeleton to the surrounding basal lamina. We have previously demonstrated that transgenic mice overexpressing the α7B integrin in the skeletal muscle (MCK:α7B; α7Tg) mount an enhanced satellite cell and growth response to single or multiple bouts of eccentric exercise. In addition, interstitial stem cells characterized as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) accumulate in α7Tg muscle (mMSCs) in the sedentary state and after exercise. The results from these studies prompted us to determine the extent to which mMSC underlie the beneficial adaptive responses observed in α7Tg skeletal muscle after exercise.
Methods: mMSCs (Sca-1+CD45−) were isolated from α7Tg mice, dye-labeled, and intramuscularly injected into adult wild type recipient mice. After injection of mMSCs or saline, mice remained sedentary (SED) or were subjected to eccentric exercise training (TR) (downhill running) on a treadmill (three times per week) for 2 or 4 wk. Gastrocnemius–soleus complexes were collected 24 h after the last bout of exercise.
Results: mMSCs did not directly fuse with existing fibers; however, mMSCs injection enhanced Pax7+ satellite cell number and myonuclear content compared with all other groups at 2 wk after exercise. Mean CSA, percentage of larger caliber fibers (>3000 μm2), and grip strength were increased in mMSCs/TR compared with saline/SED and mMSCs/SED at 4 wk. mMSC transplantation did not enhance repair or growth in the absence of exercise.
Conclusions: The results from this study demonstrate that mMSCs contribute to beneficial changes in satellite cell expansion and growth in α7Tg muscle after eccentric exercise. Thus, MSCs that naturally accumulate in the muscle after eccentric contractions may enhance the adaptive response to exercise.
In a study of Dutch professional footballers, a bone deformity at the hip was much more common among men who started playing the sport at least four times a week before age twelve.
If the bones of the hip don’t develop normally during childhood, a so-called cam deformity can occur, with extra bone growing near the ball-shaped top of the femur, potentially leading to joint damage and pain, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS).
Four years ago this week, sitting on the third floor of my university’s library, I launched 5 Added Minutes. For a couple of months, the blog was simply a place to express frustrations at media clichés and received wisdom in football, but it quickly evolved into a medium for me to use data and analytics to challenge the conversations that were taking place in press conferences, ‘expert’ columns and television analyses.
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama encouraged the development of “precision medicine,” which would tailor treatments based on individuals’ genetics or physiology. This is an effort to improve medical care’s effectiveness, which might cause some to wonder: Don’t we already have effective drugs and treatments? In truth, medical care is often far less effective than most believe. Just because you took some medicine for an illness and became well again, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the treatment provided the cure.
This fundamental lesson is conveyed by a metric known as the number needed to treat, or N.N.T. Developed in the 1980s, the N.N.T. tells us how many people must be treated for one person to derive benefit. An N.N.T. of one would mean every person treated improves and every person not treated fails to, which is how we tend to think most therapies work.
What may surprise you is that N.N.T.s are often much higher than one. Double- and even triple-digit N.N.T.s are common.