CoCo Vandeweghe hopes it is over: the exhausting routine of entering every tournament, of scrambling for qualifying wins, of scrounging for points as she clambered up the slippery rungs of the professional tennis ladder. So many matches. So much potential for burnout.
But now, at 25, Vandeweghe is beginning to see the rewards. She is playing the finest tennis of her career, and she proved as much with a 6-4, 7-6 (2) victory against Lucie Safarova on Monday afternoon in the fourth round of the United States Open. Vandeweghe said her formula, especially during some of the match’s “stickier” moments, was simple.
“I had to show her that I was going to hustle down a few more extra balls,” she said.
… Watt never has looked better in a bathing suit. At least that’s what sources close to him say.
It makes sense, though. Watt is leaner than ever. He weighs the same as he used to, about 285 pounds, but his body fat is below 10 percent. In the past, it would get as high as 13 percent.
He has not, however, lost any strength, according to his longtime trainer Brad Arnett of NX Level in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
“This is the best running, conditioning and recovery shape he’s ever been in,” Arnett told Bleacher Report recently.
The Tennessee Titans quarterback doesn’t fit the gunslinger quarterback stereotype, but he’s still managed to become the best leader in the NFL. Just ask his coaches and teammates.
“So,” I ask Shawn Thornton. “What have you learned about yourself since taking the job?”
“Whoa, there!” the recently retired winger stops me. “That’s a pretty deep question.”
In fairness, we had been talking for only about three minutes, and Thornton — who scraped together a 20-year pro career, including 14 in the NHL, largely as an enforcer — had been in his new role for only three months. But the transition is significant. In April, after winning a Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011 and playing his last two years with the Florida Panthers, Thornton threw out his skates — literally. He chucked them in the trash, fetching them only when he realized he could auction them off for charity. (Some guy paid $2,500.) In June, the Panthers introduced Thornton as their vice president of business operations. It’s a hefty title and an unconventional one for a former player.
“Not too many people go from the actual sporting world to the business world,” the 40-year-old Thornton said. “Usually when guys retire and join an organization, they go into hockey ops or scouting.”
… In today’s era of workplace burnout, achieving a simpatico work-life relationship seems practically out of reach. Being tired, ambivalent, stressed, cynical and overextended has become a normal part of a working professional life. The General Social Survey of 2016, a nationwide survey that since 1972 has tracked the attitudes and behaviors of American society, found that 50 percent of respondents are consistently exhausted because of work, compared with 18 percent two decades ago.
Where once the term burnout was applied exclusively to health care workers, police officers, firefighters, paramedics or social workers who deal with trauma and human services — think Graham Greene’s novel “A Burnt-Out Case,” about a doctor in the Belgian Congo, a book that gave rise to the term colloquially — the term has since expanded to workers who are now part of a more connected, hyperactive and overcompensating work force.
But occupational burnout goes beyond needing a simple vacation or a family retreat, and many experts, psychologists and institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, highlight long-term and unresolvable burnout as not a symptom but rather a major health concern. (Though it does not appear in the Diagnostic Statistic Manual, the benchmark for psychological ailments, it does appear in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a classification used by the World Health Organization.)
… Exos currently has about 50 registered dietitians, each of whom is assigned to a client to analyze diet and blood work to uncover trouble spots, allergies, and unhealthy habits. The kitchen staff keeps a binder listing each athlete’s daily caloric needs, when those calories should be consumed, and in what forms. Some clients are on high-protein diets, some high-carb. Each is also prescribed a regimen of Exos’ supplements (including a.m. and p.m. multivitamins, omega-3s, and a probiotic), and an individually tailored recovery shake blended with blueberries and vanilla-flavored whey protein, to which is added both creatine and at least 2.2g of the branched-chain amino acid leucine (the most important component of protein, says Laura Kunces, Ph.D., R.D., the director of research for the supplement line).
When it comes to athlete performance, Exos leaves no stone unturned. Teams that come in to train have something called “Tinkle Tuesdays,” when players’ urine samples are analyzed for hydration levels, according to nutrition and research VP Amanda Carlson-Phillips. As microbiome tests become more available, they may add stool samples to the program in the future. She says: “I can’t wait for Fecal Fridays.”
… When Stoops went out looking for a coordinator to replace Josh Heupel nearly three years ago, the search centered quickly on Riley.
According to a high-ranking school source, it was Duncan who said at the time that “Lincoln is our future coach.”
Not next coordinator, next head coach. At the time, Riley was 31, calling plays for McNeill at East Carolina.
“He became more than [a mentor],” McNeill said of Duncan. “He was like a dad. I was more like his son. I’m sure he thought of Lincoln the same way. We became very close to him and his wife Sally. We thought of them as family.”
… “What we’ve found is that this sensing of increased blood flow from exercise by the Piezo 1 is important for the physical performance of the mice on the running wheel,” David Beech, a co-author of the study and the Cardiovascular and Diabetes Institute Director for the University of Leeds, told me in an interview. “If we get rid of this protein from the blood vessels, then the mice don’t perform as well. It is necessary for their physiology. They can still exercise but it is important.”
In other words, the researchers discovered that this protein acts as a kind of exercise sensor, and improves the blood pressure and flow during exercise. Healthy adult mice with this specific protein in tact perform better when exercising. But, how do we get from there to a magic pill?
Beech told me that, someday, he and his colleagues would like to develop a drug, but it wouldn’t replace exercise. It would ideally be used to increase the health benefits of exercise for people with limited mobility due to injury or illness.
This week at IFA, some of the biggest players in wearables launched their latest smartwatches. From Fitbit’s debut Ionic to Samsung’s Gear Sport, these fitness-focused watches also run the companies’ own proprietary platforms, each offering their own app selection. For them to succeed, Samsung, Fitbit and Garmin, which also unveiled a new watch at the show, must now race to stock their stores with the best apps. That’s good news for smartwatches in general, because the influx of wearable apps could do for smartwatches what it did for smartphones years ago.
Frankly, they need it. Even though smartwatches have been selling better than expected lately, the entire product category has been poorly received in general. Companies like Microsoft and Motorola have completely given up on making them anymore, and the industry now relies on the enthusiasm from fashion and fitness brands to keep it going. Still, with the devices announced this week, there is hope for a rejuvenation of the industry, especially if smartwatch apps take off.
The Tesla jam out front, the bike commuters riding one-handed while clutching MacBooks, the Apple Watches on everyone’s wrists capturing biometric data—all hint at the kind of skunkworks activity that sends geeks a-Twitter.
Located on a side street in Cupertino—a few miles from Apple’s shiny new headquarters—the single-story building these Apple workers are entering looks like any anonymous suburban office block. Inside, once I clear security and get buzzed past a solid white door, I enter an invite-only secret exercise lab. On a recent morning, about 40 employees are sweating away on different contraptions—rowers, treadmills, cable machines—as 13 exercise physiologists and 29 nurses and medics monitor data. Many of the exercisers are hooked up to a metabolic cart and ECG and are wearing a $40,000 mask apparatus that analyzes their calorie burn, oxygen consumption, and VO2 max. Down one hall there’s a studio for group fitness; behind another white door an endless pool; and over there, three chambers where temperatures can be set to mimic Arctic conditions (subfreezing) to Saharan heat (100°F-plus). At Apple every room has a name, and these climate-controlled chambers are called Higher, Faster, and Stronger.
The labels are appropriate, because the company that transformed the way you enjoy music and video is now sinking its teeth into a meatier challenge: new ways you can optimize your health. “Our lab has collected more data on activity and exercise than any other human performance study in history,” says Jay Blahnik, Apple’s director of fitness for health technologies, in a rare interview. “Over the past five years, we’ve logged 33,000 sessions with over 66,000 hours of data, involving more than 10,000 unique participants.”
The military is developing a new battlefield tool that will help ground forces navigate hostile territory without the susceptibility of GPS platforms. Instead, warfighters will use radio frequency signals as a source of positioning information. To display navigational solutions on a map, the tool connects to a smartphone running the Air Force’s Android Tactical Assault Kit.
In conjunction with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Sterling, Virginia-based Echo Ridge LLC is designing the technology to fit in a small, low-power package that can be carried by ground operators, according to Mark Smearcheck, an electronics engineer with the AFRL Sensors Directorate.
The company created an algorithm to aggregate signals of opportunity from various radio frequency sources and then worked to provide a complementary, backup source of positioning, navigation and timing. The algorithm is used to determine a position based on the time difference of arrival of those signals, which do not operate on the same frequency as GPS.
Valencell, the leading innovator in wearable and hearable biometric sensor technology, announces that it has joined the STMicroelectronics Partner Program to produce its powerful biometric sensor platform for wearables and IoT at a faster rate, reducing customer time-to-market.
Valencell has collaborated with STMicroelectronics to create a highly accurate and scalable development kit for biometric wearables, integrating Valencell’s BenchmarkTM sensor system and the ST SensorTile. The SensorTile packs a powerful STM32L4 microcontroller, a Bluetooth® Low Energy chipset, a wide spectrum of high-accuracy motion and environmental MEMS sensors, and a digital MEMS microphone onto a tiny 13.5mm x 13.5mm board. Integrating ST’s SensorTile development kit with Valencell’s Benchmark sensor technology simplifies the prototyping, evaluation, and development of innovative wearable and IoT solutions by delivering a complete Valencell PerformTek® technology package, ready for immediate integration and delivery into wearable devices.
While Cleveland rolls to the AL Central title, Chicago is on pace to be the first reigning World Series champion this decade to win its division the following season. But the Cubs will do so with a much worse record than a year ago.
Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins arrived in the majors on August 10. By August 27, he had 11 home runs, including eight in nine days, and was already being declared the savior of the franchise. But we had seen this story unfold once already this summer. In late April, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger arrived in Chavez Ravine, where he started hitting dingers at a historic rate and basically never stopped.
This isn’t supposed to happen in MLB. Call-ups from the minors often look overwhelmed and out of sorts when facing big league pitching for the first time — if not immediately, then at least at some point in their first month. But that’s not the case this season. Rookies are contending for MVP awards, young hitters across the league are mashing at a ridiculous rate and minor league prospects aren’t missing a beat when earning a first-time call-up.
There’s evidence that this is not necessarily because today’s young hitters are just better than previous years’ crops, but rather because ballclubs are armed with new technologies, which is making them better at determining which players are ready for the majors and when.