When Seth Maness shut his eyes before a surgeon opened his right elbow, the former Cardinals reliever was not sure what awaited him on the other side of sleep. The troublesome ligament in his throwing arm had to be fixed and a complete reconstruction would mean missing an entire season.
He went under unsure.
He woke up a potential trailblazer.
Maness is a week away from returning to the mound and expects to be ready for opening day, just 7½ months after surgery, because Dr. George Paletta performed a repair that could eventually prove to be an alternative to Tommy John surgery for select big-league pitchers. Until the St. Louis-based orthopedic surgeon saw inside Maness’ elbow, he wasn’t sure if Maness was a candidate to be the first established major-league pitcher to receive the new procedure, Paletta said.
IT IS MID-FEBRUARY and LeBron James, a man who has labored through six straight trips to the NBA Finals, is leading the league in minutes per game.
A breather is clearly in order — and was on order on Feb. 8, when coach Tyronn Lue had announced that James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love were “probably” going to take the night off on the second game of a back-to-back at Oklahoma City. But then, after a four-hour overnight flight from Indiana ahead of the nationally televised game, the Cleveland Cavaliers had a sudden change of plans. Minutes before tipoff, Lue announced the trio would give it a go.
The coach offered a rationale that was less than scientific: “All three guys say they feel pretty good, and we got a good thing going, so why not keep it going.”
It turned out the Cavs couldn’t get anything going. James shot 8-for-19 in the nine-point loss to the Thunder and missed two dunks, something so uncharacteristic, LeBron hadn’t done it for almost eight years. Instead of getting the night off, James registered a whopping 41 minutes.
The Miami HEAT announced today that they have hired former HEAT player and two-time NBA champion Shane Battier as the Director of Basketball Development & Analytics. His duties will include the development of analytics in evaluating all talent, including college, free agents and current Miami players.
St. Louis flamethrower Alex Reyes, the no. 1 pitching prospect in baseball, just became the latest victim of the sport’s spring training Tommy John trend
GPS monitoring and analysis in professional sport has now become commonplace. The ability of sports scientists and coaches to obtain accurate time motion analysis, ground contact and heart rate data is relativity simple.
Determining the most effective way to apply this data, while avoiding common training load errors, is understandably a more complex process. Typically, in the development of an advanced approach to analyzing performance data, several initial setting preferences need to be configured. This blog post lays out the first and arguably most important setting configuration choice that occurs; the individualisation of player speed zones.
… When doing research on Brendan Rodgers you have to get through some amount of eulogies from his brief reign at Celtic – the players he improved, those he brought in and made stars of, the unbeaten run, the tactical wit, the authority, the positivity, the trophy already won, the league as good as won and the Scottish Cup to play for, continuing at the weekend with a tie against Inverness.
Dig deeper and you find the stuff from before, mention after mention of psychology, self-improvement. The tenets of his philosophy.
“It probably comes from growing up,” he says. “My parents were about being the best they could be.” He lost them far too soon, his mum, Christina, aged 53 and his dad, Malachy, just 59.
This study aimed to analyze: 1) the pattern of repetition velocity decline during a single set to failure against different submaximal loads (50–85% 1RM) in the bench press exercise; and 2) the reliability of the percentage of performed repetitions, with respect to the maximum possible number that can be completed, when different magnitudes of velocity loss have been reached within each set. Twenty-two men performed 8 tests of maximum number of repetitions (MNR) against loads of 50–55–60–65–70–75–80–85% 1RM, in random order, every 6–7 days. Another 28 men performed 2 separate MNR tests against 60% 1RM. A very close relationship was found between the relative loss of velocity in a set and the percentage of performed repetitions. This relationship was very similar for all loads, but particularly for 50–70% 1RM, even though the number of repetitions completed at each load was significantly different. Moreover, the percentage of performed repetitions for a given velocity loss showed a high absolute reliability. Equations to predict the percentage of performed repetitions from relative velocity loss are provided. By monitoring repetition velocity and using these equations, one can estimate, with considerable precision, how many repetitions are left in reserve in a bench press exercise set.
University of California-Santa Barbara, The UCSB Current from
It’s universally accepted that the benefits of exercise go well beyond fitness, from reducing the risk of disease to improving sleep and enhancing mood. Physical activity gives cognitive function a boost as well as fortifying memory and safeguarding thinking skills.
But can it enhance your vision? It appears so.
Intrigued by recent findings that neuron firing rates in the regions of mouse and fly brains associated with visual processing increase during physical activity, UC Santa Barbara psychologists Barry Giesbrecht and Tom Bullock wanted to know if the same might be true for the human brain.
… Since U.S. Soccer announced its Girls DA launch, it has been competing with the ECNL for membership. We asked Dorrance, who has won 21 NCAA Division I titles, for his views on the strife between the two organizations and what he would like to see happen in American youth soccer.
… for as much experience as I’ve had with the game all over the world, I am an American first and foremost. When I was a teenager I went to a basketball camp in northern New Jersey where Hubie Brown asked us, “What do you catch a pass with?” There was silence in the gym after somebody immediately said, “Your hands.” And then Coach Brown said, “No, my friend. You catch a pass with your eyes.” A decade later, when I was an assistant to Bruce Arena at Virginia, I became friends with the assistant coach of the women’s basketball team. His name was Geno Auriemma. The three of us would huddle quietly in the soccer office (conveniently located next to the visitors’ locker room in University Hall), where we would listen to greats like Dean Smith, Jim Valvano and Mike Krzyzewski address their teams.
I’ve learned a lot from observing Sacchi, Ferguson and Guardiola. I also learned just as much from watching Pete Carril — the former men’s basketball coach at Princeton, where I was the soccer coach from 1984 to ’95 — teach his players the importance of a good pass. I still learn from the intelligent way Gregg Popovich handles his team and the media.
Preparing for soccer tryouts can be a stressful affair for both player and parent. Planning ahead and understanding what will be expected of you is as important as maintaining a well-balanced diet and being at top fitness during tryouts. Many more components go into successfully competing over the days of training. We asked the question, ‘What can be done to be well prepared?”
GoalNation interviewed LA Orange County’s Tim Woodcock and asked his recommendations. Here is the advice from a Technical Director who has been overseeing youth soccer tryouts for years.
At 13, Caleb Swanigan weighed 360 pounds and faced an uncertain future. So how did he arrive at Purdue and become a player of the year candidate? Hard work
We have all heard athletes acknowledge overthinking in performance situations, whereby their actions change from the automatic nature of ‘see and do’ to, instead, awkward and poor timing. But, when thinking takes over a performer, this presents an opportunity rather than a problem.
Your Thinking is Not the Issue
The problem of overthinking is not a problem – it’s a cue and a solution. Thinking during performance is often an appropriate response that allows us to respond to the environment. Our brain is processing information as part of summarizing threats and non-threats, which is a primary role of the brain moment-to-moment.
The 1st Workshop on Digital Biomarkers, collocated with MobiSys 2017 offers a unified forum that brings academics, industry researchers and medical practitioners together and seeks novel, innovative and exciting submissions broadly related to the modeling, testing, and validation of new digital biomarkers for predicting incidence of diseases, health conditions, effects of treatments, and interventions.
Since 2010, sleep tracking has doubled in interest with coaches, as nearly any professional knows that getting good shut-eye can help athletes. I have used subjective logging for 20 years, starting with hours and quality sleep before progressing to actual wearable devices. My experience has taught me a few hard lessons about data, behavior, and, of course, the details of the technology.
This article covers all you need to know about data capture with sleep tracking, starting with the brands and options first, and then addressing what to do with the information in the second part. Countless articles rehash the same cycle of science on how sleep is valuable for everyone, not just athletes, but rarely do they talk about the necessary hardware and software. What coaches will find here is a breath of fresh air, meaning an honest look at the reasons sleep technology isn’t just about cool apps or what teams are “monitoring” sleep, but how accurate and useful the devices are.
… Tuesday’s patent haul once again reflects that disciplined approach. Of the 56 new patents, 47 relate to footwear and apparel design, the company’s strength. Six relate to manufacturing technology, a key industry battleground as sportswear companies race to automate factories.
Several years ago, Nike’s patents were more scattershot and ranged from baseball and tennis equipment to golf balls and training apparel.
This year promises to be an exciting one for running tech: more wireless audio, the Apple Watch and Android Wear watches, longtime GPS watch brands upping their game, new and better physiology monitoring and apps are all in store. Even treadmills get interesting—with workouts following virtual, highly visual courses.
Teams imagined the “future of the sports fan experience” with projects ranging from virtual and augmented reality experiences to stat-driven data visualizations.
According to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, effective rehabilitation requires interventions that go beyond minimizing pathological conditions and associated symptoms. The scope of practice must include promoting an individual’s activity within relevant contexts. We argue that best practice requires decisions that are not only evidence-based but also theory-based. Perception and action theories are essential for interpreting evidence and clinical phenomena as well as for developing new interventions. It is our contention that rehabilitation goals can best be achieved if inspired by the ecological approach to perception and action, an approach that focuses on the dynamics of interacting constraints of performer, task and environment. This contrasts with organism-limited motor control theories that have important influence in clinical practice. Parallels between such theories and the medical model of care highlight their fundamental inconsistency with the current understanding of functioning. We contend that incorporating ecological principles into rehabilitation research and practice can help advance our understanding of the complexity of action and provide better grounding for the development of effective functional practice. Implications and initial suggestions for an ecologically grounded functional practice are outlined. [full text]
Professional football is as risky as boxing in causing brain damage that can lead to dementia and early death, a major new investigation warns.
Scientists at University College London say years of heading the ball can cause the same type of progressive damage as suffered by heavyweight prizefighters.
Every week, NFL players experience a wide array of injuries that cause them to suffer severe pain. Players equate the impact of play on the field to getting into multiple car accidents in one afternoon. Currently, the most commonly prescribed painkillers are opiate based. Clearly opiates are addictive and have led to a nationwide epidemic. Over the years, I’ve had players become addicted to opiate-based painkillers. Looking to avoid that tragedy makes it necessary to look for non-addictive alternatives.
There has been longstanding debate on whether marijuana should be allowed as a form of pain relief in the NFL. Historically, the league has suspended players for their recreational and medicinal use of the drug. With it now legal in 28 states for medical use and legal in seven states for recreational use, the push for permitting use of marijuana as a pain reliever is getting stronger.
For more than half a century, we’ve been led to believe that fat is the root of all dietary evil. Recently, though, increasing numbers of public-health officials and researchers are contending that sugar has been the problem all along, causing numerous chronic diseases including gout, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
The reason it has taken so long to swing popular and scientific opinion is largely because the sugar industry—composed of both trade groups and major corporations like General Mills, the Coca-Cola Company, and PepsiCo—has manipulated or subverted science, paid and pressured researchers, academics, and politicians to ignore the risks, and spent billions funding studies that support their products.
International Journal of Sports Physiology & Performance from
INTRODUCTION/PURPOSE:
Since nasal sprays (NAS) containing caffeine (CAF) or glucose (GLUC) activate sensory(motor) cortices, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of CAF or GLUC-NAS on exercise and cognitive performance. METHODS:
Eleven male subjects (Age: 22±2 yrs) performed a maximal cycle test, two familiarization and three experimental trials. Each trial included a 30 s Wingate test and a 30 min time-trial (TT) performance test interspersed by 15 min of rest. Before and after each exercise test the Stroop task was conducted. Placebo-NAS with or without CAF or GLUC, were provided before each exercise session, and at each completed 25 % of TT. Exercise performance, physiological and cognitive measures were obtained. Magnitude-based inferences determined the likelihood that NAS solutions would be beneficial, trivial or negative to exercise performance measures based upon the smallest worthwhile effect. Physiological and cognitive measures were analyzed using (non)parametric tests (p<0.05).
RESULTS/DISCUSSION:
GLUC-NAS substantially increased the average power output during TT (very likely beneficial: 98 %). No further worthwhile exercise performance enhancements were found for both substances. Additionally, no significant differences in physiological and cognitive measures were observed. In line with mouth rinsing, GLUC showed to substantially enhance endurance performance, probably due to the activation of the olfactory pathway and/or extraoral sweet taste receptors. CONCLUSION:
GLUC-NAS enhances endurance performance, which indicates a novel administration route. The higher activity within sensory brain cortices probably elicited the ergogenic effect. However, no further physiological and cognitive changes occurred, indicating that higher dosages of substrates might be required.
… Sugar is a carbohydrate, and the body converts carbs to glucose which is then absorbed into the bloodstream. This, in turn, triggers the pancreas to release insulin, the hormone that enables the body to use energy or store it as fat. If a person doesn’t eat many carbohydrates, the pancreas doesn’t release as much insulin, and less fat is stored, forcing the body’s metabolism to increase and burn off that energy. In practical terms, the theory goes, such a person will have an easier time losing weight — or avoiding gaining it. This hypothesis is called, appropriately, the carbohydrate/insulin, or C/I, model, and it is the basis for any number of popular low-carb diets, including Atkins, the Paleo diet, and others.
It is also a “minority position” among food scientists, Taubes concedes, and many mainstream nutrition authorities reject it.
The debate is often framed as being over the nature of calories themselves, with scientists holding that calories are units of energy — each one no different than the other — and that obesity and related health problems are a result of a simple energy imbalance: More calories are coming into the body than are, for whatever reason, being burned. Taubes dismisses this notion as “inane,” but the disagreement isn’t really about calories at all. It’s about competing theories of obesity.
Top athletes have an iron will, but their bones are made of the usual imperfect collection of minerals.
That’s the reality that confronted junior tennis star Bianca Andreescu, who was sidelined for six months by a stress fracture in her foot last year. Similarly, Canadian marathon record-holder Lanni Marchant’s career was nearly derailed by a series of stress fractures in college.
The endlessly repetitive impacts of high-level training – running, jumping, pivoting, cutting – often make such injuries seem like an inevitable occupational hazard for athletes. But a new study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, published by researchers at Stanford University, offers an important reminder that training isn’t the only risk factor: Eating patterns, and the broader cluster of conditions known as the “female athlete triad” predict stress fracture risk in female athletes with devastating accuracy.
State government becoming involved in the enforcement of safety for college athletes is good on the surface for awareness, but it begs the question of whether more checks and balances by legislators are necessary to make certain proper procedures are taking place.
A proposed bill in the Connecticut state legislature to create a commission to enforce safety for all the NCAA athletes in the state is in the early stages. If passed, Connecticut will become the first state to oversee the safety and medical care of college athletes. The National College Players Association (NCPA) is supporting the bill. Its executive director, Ramogi Huma, is the same person who spearheaded the attempt by Northwestern’s football players to unionize two years ago, which was rejected by the National Labor Relations Board.
… [Will] Kuntz soon became a valuable member of the league operations, which is no surprise considering his background. Kuntz’s career with the Yankees started with a dose of luck. When Kuntz was a freshman at Williams College in Massachusetts, he learned Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was an alum and decided to send him a letter to ask for an internship. Kuntz emailed then-Williams president Morty Schapiro for help getting the letter to Steinbrenner, and Schapiro offered to help make sure the letter found its way to the Yankees owner.
Kuntz took full advantage of the opportunity. He spent all four years of college interning with the Yankees and was hired full-time when he graduated. He soon became known as the “whiz-kid scout” of the Yankees, and stunned the baseball world when he left to take on the director of player relations job at MLS in 2014.
Now, Kuntz will leave the league office and head to Los Angeles to become the assistant general manager and vice president of soccer operations for LAFC.
… If teams had found a way to suppress their attack this season, it would surely show up in the data. Yet not a lot has changed by these measures, though there are some subtle differences. Leicester’s possessions are half a second shorter than they were last campaign, while they attack at an almost identical speed. Last season, their offence managed to generate the 9th most shots per possession, but this season they are in 17th. This supports the idea that while Leicester’s attack is like last season’s, it is less efficient as teams have learned to defend against it.
Their struggles going forward have resulted in fewer chances created for their talismanic striker, Jamie Vardy. He had 2.73 shots in the box per 90 minutes last season, while this season he’s averaged 1.29. Some of this is due to the signing of Islam Slimani, who is less unselfish than Shinji Okazaki and gets 1.79 shots off inside the area per 90, but the Algerian has only played 903 minutes in the league.
… For a team to make a run in any competition it all has to start somewhere. For the staff at Lincoln it all begins with meticulous preparation, and their use of Hudl has been instrumental as part of this process. Although this is the first year that the Imps have been on Hudl, it’s not the first time that the staff has used it.
Previously, Danny and his brother Nick managed at Braintree Town FC with Skingsley, and together they brought Hudl into the fold. So when the staff moved over to Lincoln at the beginning of the season, it made sense for them to continue with the same formula, and it’s paid tremendous dividends. “[It’s due to] lots of hard work, and loads of dedication from the staff, especially the hard work that’s been put in behind the scenes,” said Skingsley.
The hours spent on analysis each week can range from any number of specifics the staff chooses to focus on, but a tremendous amount of time is spent on analysing their opponents.
… the NBA curiously neglected to also announce raises for the hundreds of D-Leaguers who make minimum wage-equivalent salaries, and will soon become walking billboards for a popular sports drink company worth billions of dollars.
Each D-League team has a salary cap of $209,000, with a roster limit of 12. D-Leaguers sign one-year contracts with the league, and receive one of two salaries: $26,000 or $19,500. Each team may only have up to five players with the $26,000 “A-level” contracts, meaning the majority of players make $19,500. That’s actually an improvement, as until this season, the majority of players made just $13,000. The federal poverty level for single person households is $12,050.
In a league that tends toward volatility, the few franchises that can maintain any sense of consistency are usually the ones who also find the most success. The Patriots are the model, but what about everyone else?
… Despite its incremental nature, there has been progression in how this style of analysis is perceived within the professional game. Simply put, there is a place for it inside professional football and it holds influence in informing decision making. Of course this varies across different teams, but the interest this event from teams (over 50 teams were represented at the Forum, made up of technical scouts, heads of recruitment, chief scouts and heads of performance analysis – at both first team and academy level), the make-up of analysis staff and the engagement with the wider community (the enthusiasm of the ‘analyst mentors’ to support presenters this year was particularly pleasing) all demonstrate a clear shift in opinion.
Application of the work presented at the Forum is of course a core aspect to the day and is regularly discussed not only by OptaPro, but across the entire industry, most frequently by practitioners. “How will it help us win?” is the common question in this space.