… Adam: I’m curious about this process of going from unusually talented to one of the best in the world. Talking last spring with Angela Duckworth, you agreed that talent is not enough. What was the process that you went through, suddenly competing with people who were as talented as you?
Abby: When I was a new kid on the national team, I felt inferior. These women had been playing for many years. Mia Hamm was on the team! I was like, “Oh, my God, this is insane. I can’t even believe I’m here, I’m so grateful.”
Then I started realizing that I had something to give. There was value I could bring to the team that nobody else could. Everybody has to figure out what that one thing is. I believe that every human being on this planet has something to give.
… Opportunity, trust, and sound coaching in Atlanta helped him find it. The Hawks have a proud tradition of turning could-be contributors into actual ones. Bazemore, as with other Hawks newcomers, required a gestation period before meeting Budenholzer’s stylistic standards. It didn’t phase him. Part of the reason Bazemore is so respected as a worker and so revered as a teammate is the way he responds in these moments. Complete engagement—from full-speed individual workouts to energetic practices to end-of-bench theatrics—can be fairly assumed from his body of work. By the time Bazemore became a regular in January 2015, he had an entire organization rooting for him.
Hawks shooting coach Ben Sullivan was instrumental in remaking Bazemore’s jumper. “I used to just launch it at the rim,” Bazemore said. “Now it’s more an NBA-ready shot. Super compact.” That kind of mechanical efficiency makes all the difference for a floor-spacing wing. Players like Bazemore can only threaten—and punish—the defense if they’re able to line up and release a shot before a defender’s close-out. Cleaner aesthetics are just an incidental benefit; the real value in fixing Bazemore’s form came by minimizing the window and space needed to replicate it.
… When the path finally cleared to join the English club’s storied academy at 16, he jumped at the chance – departing the federation’s Bradenton Residency Program to do so, risking a falling-out with Wilmer Cabrera, the head coach of the US U-17 national team at the time. That decision ultimately helped cost Lletget a place on that cycle’s World Cup squad, despite him scoring two goals in three games at CONCACAF’s qualifying tournament.
“It was a risky one. I think a lot of people wouldn’t have done it as soon as I did it,” Lletget said of his move across the Atlantic. “But thinking back, I wouldn’t change anything.”
Winning the faith of the Hammers’ academy staff, Lletget climbed the ranks quickly. Changes at the top, however, combined with time missed due to a severe case of mononucleosis, left him a forgotten man.
To assess sleep patterns and associations between sleep and match performance in elite Australian female basketball players. Design
Prospective cohort study. Methods
Seventeen elite female basketball players were monitored across two consecutive in-season competitions (30 weeks). Total sleep time and sleep efficiency were determined using triaxial accelerometers for Baseline, Pre-match, Match-day and Post-match timings. Match performance was determined using the basketball efficiency statistic (EFF). The effects of match schedule (Regular versus Double-Header; Home versus Away) and sleep on EFF were assessed. Results
The Double-Header condition changed the pattern of sleep when compared with the Regular condition (F(3,48) = 3.763, P = 0.017), where total sleep time Post-match was 11% less for Double-Header (mean ± SD; 7.2 ± 1.4 hours) compared with Regular (8.0 ± 1.3 hours; P = 0.007). Total sleep time for Double-Header was greater Pre-match (8.2 ± 1.7 hours) compared with Baseline (7.1 ± 1.6 hours; P = 0.022) and Match-day (7.3 ± 1.5 hours; P = 0.007). Small correlations existed between sleep metrics at Pre-match and EFF for pooled data (r = −0.39 to −0.22; P≥ 0.238). Relationships between total sleep time and EFF ranged from moderate negative to large positive correlations for individual players (r = −0.37 to 0.62) and reached significance for one player (r = 0.60; P = 0.025). Conclusions
Match schedule can affect the sleep patterns of elite female basketball players. A large degree of inter-individual variability existed in the relationship between sleep and match performance; nevertheless, sleep monitoring might assist in the optimisation of performance for some athletes.
The NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights are busy making hires to get the expansion club ready to operate for the start of the 2017-18 NHL season.
That includes the director of performance medicine, which the club named on Monday.
It was confirmed via official press release that the Golden Knights have hired Jay Mellette to serve as Director of Sports Performance and Head Athletic Trainer, presumably overseeing the team’s sports medicine and training department when they take the ice for the first time next fall.
Tony Strudwick, Head of Performance at Manchester United, shares his thoughts and opinions in winter edition of Football Medic & Scientist. The article, which has proved a hit with Sports Scientists in football, discusses Tony’s thoughts on the future of his profession within the game and extolls the virtues of FMA membership as part of that future. Endorsed by key personnel such as Professor Barry Drust, Chris Barnes and Jon Goodman this is a must read for all practitioners within sport.
New research published in the journal Experimental Brain Research suggests a single bout of moderate intensity aerobic exercise enhances neuroplasticity in the brain through its effects on the neurotransmitter GABA.
PsyPost interviewed the study’s corresponding authors, Winston D. Byblow and Ronan A. Mooney of the University of Auckland.
The aim of this study was to identify the influence of prior knowledge of exercise duration on players’ pacing patterns during soccer small-sided games. Twenty semi-professional male soccer players participated in this study. In the first game scenario, players were not informed how long they would be required to play the small-sided game and the activity was terminated after 20 min (Unknown Condition). In the second game scenario, players were told that they would play the small-sided game for 10 min, but immediately after completing the 10-min game, they were asked to complete another 10 min (Partially Condition). In the third game scenario, players were instructed that they would play the small-sided game for 20 min and then they completed the 20-min game (Known Condition). The results presented a tendency of higher values in all performance variables in the [0′–10′] min compared with the [10′–20′] min. As the players’ previous knowledge about the tasks duration increased, the performance between two moments tended to be similar. Considering the entire 20-min game duration, the Partially Condition of the exercise was the most demanding condition. In conclusion, the knowledge of shorter durations of the exercise seems to lead to an increase of exercise duration demand, and longer exercise durations possibly tend to decrease differences between full knowledge and not knowing the exercise duration.
Heart rate variability (HRV) has been increasingly used to monitor team sports athletes. Besides the traditional time domain indices (i.e., the standard deviation of successive RR intervals [SDNN] and the root mean square difference of successive normal RR intervals [RMSSD]), recently it has been proposed the use of the stress score (SS), which is an inverse function of the standard deviation 2 index derived from the Poincaré plot, and the sympathetic/parasympathetic ratio (S/PS) to monitor soccer players. However, the reliability of these new indices and the ability of HRV to differentiate between soccer competitive levels are unknown. The aim of this study was to analyze the reliability of the different HRV-derived indices in professional soccer players during the competitive period and to compare HRV of professional soccer players from three teams of distinct competitive levels (i.e., Italian Second Division [2D], European League [EL] and Champions League [CL]). Fifty-four male professional soccer players from three different teams of two European countries (Italy and Germany) participated in the study. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) values of the HRV indices varied from 0.78 (very large) to 0.90 (near perfect). The coefficient of variation (CV) values for RMSSD and SDNN were all <5.00%, while the CV for SS was 6.13% and for S/PS 21.33%. Both the CL and EL groups, assumed to be internationally qualified, presented higher lnRMSSD and lnSDNN and lower lnSS and S/PS than the 2D. Therefore, the HRV can be considered reliable in professional soccer players and able to differentiate between international and national level players.
A patent granted to Apple today describes how the company could use a modular Watch bracelet to add functionality. Each link could perform a separate function, with owners able to add as many active links as needed.
In one or more embodiments, a method for utilizing functional components of band system for a wearable device may include: receiving identifiers at a wearable device from multiple modular functional band links connected to the wearable device, determining functionality available via the multiple modular functional band links utilizing the received identifiers, and communicating with one of the multiple modular functional band links to utilize the determined functionality.
… with the likes of Lumo Run, a pair of smart running shorts that look like a normal pair of shorts you’d find in a regular sports shop. Now the tech has the chance to go a lot further as Lumo recently announced that its Motion Science Platform will be open to third parties. It teased that it is already working with “top sports apparel” names.
OMSignal said it spent a lot of time trying to get the right design for its smart sports bra to make sure it also offered a good fit to go with the cutting-edge tech. In our test, our reviewer Gina agreed: “It’s incredibly supportive while remaining as comfortable as a sports bra can be.”
… today, more and more medical experimenters in the United States appear to circumvent getting the voluntary, informed consent of those whose bodies are being used for research. What’s more, rather than fighting this retrograde trend, some of the most powerful actors in medical research are defending it as necessary to medical progress.
… Among the top 10 most improved men, the number one and two spots go to the Mischa Zverev and Denis Istomin. It was a surprise enough to see Denis Istomin in the main draw after saving three match points in the wild card playoff, but to the man who would send Novak Djokovic his ticket home in the second round was a shock that left us all reeling for the first week. Istomin proved he was more than a one-upset wonder by continuing his run through to the Round of 16, where he eventually lost to a tough Grigor Dimitrov.
Understanding how youth football players base their game interactions may constitute a solid criterion for fine-tuning the training process and, ultimately, to achieve better individual and team performances during competition. The present study aims to explore how passing networks and positioning variables can be linked to the match outcome in youth elite association football. The participants included 44 male elite players from under-15 and under-17 age groups. A passing network approach within positioning-derived variables was computed to identify the contributions of individual players for the overall team behaviour outcome during a simulated match. Results suggested that lower team passing dependency for a given player (expressed by lower betweenness network centrality scores) and high intra-team well-connected passing relations (expressed by higher closeness network centrality scores) were related to better outcomes. The correlation between the dyads’ positioning regularity and the passing density showed a most likely higher correlation in under-15 (moderate effect), indicating a possible more dependence of the ball position rather than in the under-17 teams (small/unclear effects). Overall, this study emphasizes the potential of coupling notational analyses with spatial-temporal relations to produce a more functional and holistic understanding of teams’ sports performance. Also, the social network analysis allowed to reveal novel key determinants of collective performance.
The Charlotte Observer, Joseph Person and Gavin Off from
The NFL has taken steps in recent years to better protect defenseless receivers from big hits, but a database of league injuries built by the Observer suggests the league should do more to safeguard defensive backs from concussions as well.
The Observer used data from teams’ final weekly injury reports, official NFL box scores and pro-football-reference.com to build and analyze a spreadsheet of concussions.
The Observer’s analysis showed that both offensive and defensive players in open-field positions were more vulnerable to concussions than linemen.