… Today, Federer hit nearly ever ball as it was coming up off the bounce, shot selection that might feel awkwardly or unnecessarily aggressive for most others but is looking more and more like his norm.
We saw the origins of these tactics in his Australian Open run, as his solution to the puzzle of his career, Rafael Nadal: Step into the court, take the ball early before it kicks way over your shoulder, and rob your opponent of as much time as you possibly can. (The basic logic is that the earlier you strike the ball, the earlier you put the ball back in your opponent’s court, and the less time you give them to recover after hitting their last shot. Repeat ad nauseum: these little slivers of time really add up.) In that final you could always catch Federer’s feet sneaking inside the baseline, applying constant pressure.
As it turns out, this looks to have not been a one-time fix, but the blueprint for the rest of his career. And it makes a lot of sense. For Federer, it’s wise to rely on the aspects of your game that won’t age as unforgivingly as, say, your knees might: your sense of timing and your feel for the ball, which you’ve spent your whole life refining to freak levels.
… “I miss being on a team, man,” Sanders said on the phone last week. “I miss going to war with my teammates and fighting against another team and giving my all out there and affecting the game. My children are getting older. I have a boy and a girl, and my son talks about it all the time now, he misses me playing. Giving them something to cheer for, and my family. Having my name on my back, our name on my back. There’s a lot of value in that, there’s a lot of strength in that, for my whole family. Me being that person for them brings joy to me.”
Sanders has been working out for and meeting with teams — individual times with the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers, a group workout in Miami earlier this month witnessed by the Cavs and six other squads — to show them that he’s serious about returning to the NBA, two years after flaming out in Milwaukee, needing and ultimately receiving treatment for depression and anxiety disorder.
Now, he says he’s much better equipped, through the inclusion of new people in his life and the removal of others, along with having been able to tap into the creative world during the past 24 months, to return to the physical and mental rigors of the NBA.
In 2016, 12 professional psychologists accompanied Team GB to the Olympics in Rio. They helped the athletes employ a host of techniques to get a psychological advantage over their competitors.
We all face situations of high pressure in life where we would like to improve our performance – whether that’s job interviews, public speaking, or weekend sports.
So could sports psychology techniques such as ‘self-talk’ and ‘visualisation’ improve performance under pressure? A study carried out by the BBC in 2012 aimed to find out. Over 44,000 people took part, and the results have been published. Discover what we learned and whether it could work for you.
Researchers hope the study results will help the next generation of athletes protect against psychological breakdowns
Researchers at Loughborough University have published findings that they say may help athletes to understand the triggers that cause depression.
Dr David Fletcher, a senior lecturer in sport and performance psychology in the school of sport, exercise and health sciences, collaborated with experts at the Open University to scrutinise the autobiographies of 12 high-profile sportspeople, studying their accounts of depression, low self-esteem and feelings of failure.
… Here’s the consistent message I’m getting: “My kid is performing REALLY fast in practice, but, in competitions, he/she is a totally different athlete. He/she seems scared during competitions. While performing, he/she is REALLY cautious. And, after the competition, he/she kicks him/herself for performing REALLY tentatively.”
So, what happens to athletes as the big competitions approach that causes them to go from “all out” to “play it safe” in such a short time? And what can you do about it so you can set yourself up for success in the REALLY important competitions that are fast approaching?
Smartphones will soon become mobile laboratories which can monitor bone density, calculate red blood cell levels and even predict if an asthma attack is imminent.
Scientists are repurposing the technology which already exists within phones, such as accelerometers, camera flashes and microphones to use as medical tools.
… technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable. At least from the perspective of human users. From the vantage point of technology, if it can be said to have a vantage point, it’s evolving separately from human use.
At the Waseda University in Japan, researchers have come up with a new, cheaper way of producing electronic devices that are flexible, elastic, and adhere to the skin. This development may help body monitoring electronic skin patches that interface with smartphone apps to become commonly used in medicine and by consumers.
The technology relies on elastomeric films only 1 μm thick that can safely contain electronic components sandwiched between them. An inkjet printer is used to put down lines of silver for wiring the components together. Importantly, there’s no soldering or gluing involved, which allows for a thinner final product that is highly flexible without fear of damage to the electrical connections.
… “[Kim Stagg] was everywhere,” Yellowjackets coach Thomas (Sike) Dardaganis says.
Dardaganis knows this because he has the heat map and data to prove it. His program was one of the first in the nation (and remains the only one at Rochester) to use Polar Team Pro, a GPS-based performance tracking system for team sports. Each player straps a sensor under her jersey, close to her heart. The sensor tracks movement, monitors heart rate, and acts as an accelerometer, tracking how many times an athlete runs at full speed.
The information is logged in an iPad carried by a team manager during practices and games. Once the iPad is loaded onto a docking station, the sensors start charging, and the data for each player is uploaded for review.
Blogger, author, and scholar Bruce Schneier reveals the hidden ways our health data are currently being used, and proposes a solution to make medical data both more accessible and more secure. [video, 13:41]
Due to the sheer number of categories, no single injury accounts for more than 7-8% of all diagnoses related to physical injuries. Still, we found that the most common injuries don’t vary a lot across the country.
In recent years, several studies have correlated pitch count with an increased risk for injury among baseball pitchers. However, no studies have attempted to draw a similar conclusion based on number of carries by running backs (RBs) in football. Purpose:
To determine whether there is a correlation between number of carries by RBs in the National Football League (NFL) and risk of injury or worsened performance in the subsequent season. Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods:
The ESPN NFL statistics archives were searched from the 2004 through 2014 regular seasons. During each season, data were collected on RBs with 150 to 250 carries (group A) and 300+ carries (group B). The following data were collected for each player and compared between groups: number of carries and mean yards per carry during the regular season of interest and the subsequent season, number of games missed due to injury during the season of interest and the subsequent season, and the specific injuries resulting in missed playing time during the subsequent season. Matched-pair t tests were used to compare changes within each group from one season to the next in terms of number of carries, mean yards per carry, and games missed due to injury. Results:
During the seasons studied, a total of 275 RBs were included (group A, 212; group B, 63). In group A, 140 RBs (66%) missed at least 1 game the subsequent season due to injury, compared with 31 RBs (49%) in group B (P = .016). In fact, players in group B missed significantly fewer games due to injury during the season of interest (P < .0001) as well as the subsequent season (P < .01). Mean yards per carry was not significantly different between groups in the preceding season (P = .073) or the subsequent season (P = .24).
Conclusion:
NFL RBs with a high number of carries are not placed at greater risk of injury or worsened performance during the subsequent season. These RBs may be generally less injury prone compared with other NFL RBs. [full text]
… [Jake] Wittig dug a little deeper to evaluate his performance. Using Synergy Sports Technology, an online service whose clients include hundreds of NCAA teams from Divisions I, II, and III, Wittig learned that he ranked “below average” in catch and shoot 3-pointers (19th percentile), jump shots off the dribble (31st percentile), and pick and roll including passes (48th percentile).
“The data showed me what I was good at and what I needed to work on,” says Wittig, a business major from Manlius, New York, and son of Jeff Wittig ’86, a two-time All-American quarterback at Rochester. “Last summer, I worked on those things and have been able to make better reads and limit my turnovers.”
Through the middle of February, Synergy ranked Wittig “very good” in catch and shoot (76th percentile) and jump shots off the dribble (79th percentile), and “excellent” for pick and roll including passes (88th percentile).
The Angels’ undoing last season, they maintained amid it and after it, was the lack of health of their starting rotation. The key to their success this season, General Manager Billy Eppler is now saying, will be the health of their starting rotation.
“Let’s call it what it is,” Eppler said. “If we can get 25 or more starts out of every guy that we go west with, the original five, I think we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
