If the past six Cleveland Cavaliers games—all Cavs wins—haven’t served as sufficient warning, five words should sound a piercing alarm for the rest of the NBA. They’re words that merely confirm what the pictures have portrayed, but they’re words that take on further resonance when LeBron James utters them.
“My first step is back,” James told Bleacher Report while he dressed to depart Quicken Loans Arena following a 108-98 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.
It clearly is, and that is why the rest of the Eastern Conference—starting with the Chicago Bulls—better start picking up the pace.
The difference between a banged-up LeBron James and a fresh and rested James has been profound for the Cleveland Cavaliers this season.
That’s not in question. What is, however, is this: Are James and the Cavs prepared to take the actions necessary to keep him that way?
What lessons will James and his team take from the value of rest and monitoring wear and tear? What lessons will they take from seeing how Kobe Bryant’s body has broken down, and from seeing how Tim Duncan’s career and championship window have been extended into his late 30s?
It’s fitting that Kobe Bryant wanted to pretend everything was OK one last time before losing a third consecutive year to a season-ending injury. Pretending — that’s what this entire season has been for Bryant and the Lakers. Because that’s really the only way you get through a season like this with your spirit intact.
After the win against the Miami Heat, Steve Kerr dropped a “dog days” reference to the long season in his post-game presser as many times as Mark Jackson would preach a “this is a no excuses basketball team” in a single response. Later in the locker room, David Lee elicited a few laughs when he poked a little fun at the whole “dog days” portion of the schedule. Unfortunately, it’s not so much a joke as much as an integral aspect of the regular season that begs to be maneuvered around rather than stubbornly trudged throughout.
The very next game, Kerr sat Andre Iguodala and Andrew Bogut, citing reasons of rest and nothing more. Against the Oklahoma City Thunder, some bellowed against the timing. And what if the Thunder of San Antonio Spurs dropped into the lower seeds, forcing the Golden State Warriors to match up against them in the first round? That’s a chance Kerr was willing to take, provided his horses, and in this case, best defenders in the paint and perimeter were ready for that challenge. I’m not sure how much concrete evidence there is to support the fact that rest is good for players with bad knees and joints like Iguodala and Bogut but it would appear to be common sense.
We often talk about periodization and training programs as if they are the only training a person is completing. For many people, it’s not that simple.
Special forces operators often train strength and conduct operational training simultaneously. They also undergo calorie deficits, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures on a regular basis. These factors influence hormones such as testosterone and cortisol, as well as testosterone precursors DHEA and DHEA-S.
To further examine the impact of training on hormones, researchers, led by Jonathan M. Oliver studied eighteen Naval Special Warfare Operators over the course of thirteen weeks.
Every athlete wants to be faster. What most don’t realize is that to get faster you must get better at slowing down. No this isn’t some yogic, metaphysical, “get in the zone” nonsense. This is about one of the most overlooked neuromechanical facets of sprint speed. You see, while most correctly associate sprint speed with horizontal movement, the reality is that in human locomotion, an athlete’s ability to run fast is underpinned by their ability to stop themselves moving vertically downward. While we see the positive movement of the athlete in the upward and forward direction, this isn’t possible without first stopping the downward movement of the athlete’s center of mass that begins immediately following the apex of each flight phase.
Scores of professional hopefuls leave their homes during January break and wind their way toward a cricket pitch in south Florida. The ritualistic importation provides them with one last chance to make their impressions before the MLS SuperDraft. Many of them will soon realize the difficulty of the task ahead.
MLS once relied exclusively on the college system to produce young players capable of contributing at the first-team level. It made sense for a league on tenuous financial footing to lean on others to bear the cost of developing players. It required minimal investment and reaped considerable benefits. The gambit proved successful enough with dozens of players climbing through the ranks and entrenching themselves as valued performers.
Those pathways still exist, but the emergence of academy programs over the past few years altered the calculus substantially.
Do you love to push yourself to the edge? To consistently test your boundaries? Do you consider lifting until you vomit, or running ungodly distances — perhaps with obstacles along the way — inviting “growth experiences”?
If so, you are not alone. The recent proliferation of extreme sports is palpable. From circuit training to CrossFit, marathons to ultras, and even from what started as participatory Tough Mudders to more demanding Spartan “Beast” races, an increasing number of athletes are flocking to fringe challenges. “I just want to test myself and see what is possible,” Says Ezra Becker, a San Francisco native signed up to run a 100 mile race at the end of January. “Plus, it should be fun.”
While fun is a subjective term, and one that we are not comfortable guaranteeing, the following tips should at least help you finish your next sufferfest.
… Although much research has focused on body maintenance and repair, focusing on the achievement of fitness goals and/or following medicalized concepts of health management, there is an emerging complementary research agenda that calls for a focus on the experience of well-being and increasing quality of life. This latter research agenda focuses on the phenomenological aspects of well-being, broadening the discourse beyond health as the absence of illness and healthcare as disease and/or condition prevention/management (see, for example, [5]). This is what leads us to the idea of “wellth creation,” an intentional play on words to underscore our belief that personal well-being or “wellth” offers broader societal gains.
This shift in perspective from the body as maintained, repaired, and/or mechanistically managed to designing for experienced well-being invites (re)design thinking. We recently organized a workshop at Schloss Dagstuhl [6] to create a companion agenda to technologically managed healthcare: technologically supported proactive well-being. Participants at the workshop hailed from HCI but also from other disciplines, including medicine, sports science, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and computer science. This domain diversity reflects not only the current multidisciplinarity of HCI but also new needs and domain expertise beyond existing HCI practice. At the workshop we outlined four areas for foundational research. We address each of these areas in turn.
Professor Matsuhiko NISHIZAWA form the Department of Bioengineering and Robotics of the School of Engineering of Tohoku University has recently developed with his research team the first organic transdermal iontophoresis patch with built-in biofuel cell.
Skin patches are used to deliver a medication into the skin or into the bloodstream throughout the skin. They rely on the passive diffusion of the drug to achieve their effects. While the main advantage of patches over the other types of medication delivery is the possibility to control the release of the drugs, one of their few drawbacks is to have a limited efficiency. Nevertheless, the use of chemical enhancer, or even microneedle has improved their performances. Besides, mild electrical current, which induces a more efficient iontophoresis (enhanced ion flow diffusion through the medium of an applied electric field), allows a better control of the administrated dose and is now widely used for pain relief, chromic edema or even cosmetic applications. Unfortunately, electrically controlled patches make the patient rely on an external power source, which can become heavy and dangerous. The integration of a lightweight and safer power source would then provide the patient with a more versatile treatment.
Sunday night at the 2015 NHL All-Star Game, the league took another step toward implementing a tracking system, testing the computer chips in sweaters and jerseys during the actual event. It was, everyone involved said, only the initial phase of a rollout program without a definitive timetable, but the telecast implemented the data and a screen inside the media room showed the live results.
The NBA has already invested in similar technology through the company SportVU, where cameras capture “passive tracking” from the rafters. But Sportvision, the company partnered with the NHL, will use “active tracking,” essentially embedding the chips into the moving parts, in a game where there are a lot of moving parts.
So what’s the impact here? Who’s mining this data, and for what purpose?
Sports Medicine Research: In the Lab & In the Field from
Take Home Message: Anterior reach asymmetry larger than 4 cm on the Y Balance test was associated with increased risk of non-contact injury in a sample of collegiate athletes.
Before the top prospects for the 2015 NHL Draft from the Canadian Hockey League showcase their abilities at the 2015 BMO CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game, they’ll undergo a series of on- and off-ice tests that will provide NHL scouts and general managers an in-depth profile on each player. … “We have been impressed with Sport Testing’s professionalism at our events and their accuracy in assessing player potential,” CHL President David Branch said. “Their data reports are a blueprint to on-ice success and will showcase our players to NHL scouts. Sport Testing also gives quantifiable skill and fitness targets to the rest of the CHL players and those young athletes hoping to one day join our league.”