The Conversation, Anthony Blazevich and Sébastien Ratel from
Repeated experiments have shown that the muscles of children tend to fatigue more slowly than adults
These results seem to fly in the face of what science would predict. For example, children have shorter limbs, so they have to take more steps and should therefore theoretically use more energy.
Children are also less able to make use of tendon energy return systems – that is, they store less energy in their tendons so they can’t reuse this energy to propel themselves during movement.
And children show greater activity in muscles that oppose or control movement, a reflection of the fact that typically they are less skillful, and therefore use more energy.
WHEN Dan Micciche was appointed MK Dons manager in January, owner Pete Winkelman hailed him as “one of the most exciting young coaches in the country”.
Three months later, with the Dons five points adrift and with just three games to go, Winkelman sacked the 38-year-old and yesterday lamented a “bad managerial decision”.
Micciche, the former England Under-16 coach, tells TGG: “Results are everything, especially when you’re in a relegation battle, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I desperately wanted to do well for the club and I put every ounce of myself into it.”
University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine from
… friends may have benefits that go beyond those that are purely social. For one, research shows that having strong social relationships — meaning friendships — is linked to decreased mortality. (One overarching survey of this research even found that the effect on your lifespan of having friends is twice as powerful as that of exercising, and equal to that of quitting smoking.)
Additionally, friendships have been linked to better results in common measures of health, such as body mass index, blood pressure and waist circumference. Experts guess that the connection between your relationships and your physical health lies in the body’s stress response. Isolation can lead to chronic stress, and reducing that — by spending quality time with friends — can benefit your health.
In this study we examined the effects of a defender contesting jump shots on performance and gaze behaviors of basketball players taking jump shots. Thirteen skilled youth basketball players performed 48 shots from about 5 m from the basket; 24 uncontested and 24 contested. The participants wore mobile eye tracking glasses to measure their gaze behavior. As expected, an approaching defender trying to contest the shot led to significant changes in movement execution and gaze behavior including shorter shot execution time, longer jump time, longer ball flight time, later final fixation onset, and longer fixation on the defender. Overall, no effects were found for shooting accuracy. However, the effects on shot accuracy were not similar for all participants: six participants showed worse performance and six participants showed better performance in the contested compared to the uncontested condition. These changes in performance were accompanied by differences in gaze behavior. The participants with worse performance showed shorter absolute and relative final fixation duration and a tendency for an earlier final fixation offset in the contested condition compared to the uncontested condition, whereas gaze behavior of the participants with better performance for contested shots was relatively unaffected. The results confirm that a defender contesting the shot is a relevant constraint for basketball shooting suggesting that representative training designs should also include contested shots, and more generally other constraints that are representative of the actual performance setting such as time or mental pressure.
For athletes and weekend warriors alike, returning from a tendon injury too soon often ensures a trip right back to physical therapy. However, a new technology developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers could one day help tell whether your tendons are ready for action.
A team of researchers led by UW–Madison mechanical engineering professor Darryl Thelen and graduate student Jack Martin has devised a new approach for noninvasively measuring tendon tension while a person is engaging in activities like walking or running.
This advance could provide new insights into the motor control and mechanics of human movement. It also could apply to fields ranging from orthopedics, rehabilitation, ergonomics and sports. The researchers described their approach in a paper published April 23 in the journal Nature Communications.
Amber-lensed glasses could soon become the apparel of choice for top sportsmen and women.
SleepSpecs are already worn by Bournemouth FC players, the Golden Lions rugby team and, most recently, Northern Ireland’s athletes at the Commonwealth Games. This is more than just a passing fashion fad though.
With good sleep recognised as key to recovery and performance, elite teams need to ensure it can happen in a world flooded with electronic light. This is where SleepSpecs come in.
The science behind them is simple to understand but very effective. The amber lenses filter out the blue light emitted by electronic devices such as laptops, mobile phones, TVs and computers. Blue light, also emitted by the sun, fools the body into thinking it’s daytime and suppresses natural production of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Melatonin needs to be produced for at least two hours before bedtime to ensure a good night’s sleep.
Like so many basketball dreams, the NOAH Shooting System was born on a driveway hoop. Alan Marty, an inventor and venture capitalist was trying to teach his daughter how to shoot with the proper arc. Beginning as a ladder with a rake attached, it took fifteen years of evolution and technological advancement to become what it is today — a 3-D tracking system that collects data on shot location, as well as shot arc, entry angle and left/right positioning relative to the hoop, all of which can be announced out loud by a voice feature, providing real-time feedback to the shooter. … “At the end of the day, your naked eye can not tell if a player shoots the ball a little too high, or that the player’s trajectory is too inconsistent, or that their shot depth at the hoop is two inches too short, or that you have an alignment issue and tend to miss more to the right than the left,” NOAH Basketball CEO John Carter told Nylon Calculus.
… The miniaturization of implantable devices has been hindered by a dependency on electromagnetics. In such devices, both the voltage and the current decrease with a reduction in size, thus limiting the power. On the other hand, in devices that depend on photovoltaics, voltage remains unchanged as size is reduced.
The new device made by Tokuda’s research team uses a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor that controls photovoltaic power. “We integrated two sets of photovoltaic cells onto semiconductor chips. Ten cells were integrated for powering, and seven cells for biasing,” he said.
The device includes an InGan LED chip, which causes the device to emit blue light. A more distinguishing feature of the device, however, is that it can be activated with infrared light. Infrared is used in many light therapies, because it can penetrate deep in the body, whereas blue light cannot go much deeper than the surface. Therefore, the device can be implanted several centimeters into the body.
Recent epidemiologic reports have demonstrated rising injury rates in Major League Baseball (MLB) and Minor League Baseball (MiLB). Although several studies have recently been published on specific injuries, the majority of injuries have not yet been formally studied. Purpose:
The purpose of this study is to (1) generate a summative analysis of all injuries that occur in MLB and MiLB, (2) identify the 50 most common injuries, and (3) generate focused reports and fact sheets on the characteristics of each of those diagnoses. Study Design:
Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods:
The MLB Health and Injury Tracking System was used to identify injuries occurring in MLB and MiLB players from 2011 to 2016. Injuries were defined as those that occurred during normal baseball activity and resulted in at least 1 day out of play. A multitude of player and injury characteristics were analyzed, and detailed reports of the 50 most commonly occurring injuries were generated. Results:
A total of 49,955 injuries occurred during the study period; 45,123 were non–season ending, and they resulted in 722,176 days out of play. The mean (median) days missed per injury was 16 (6) days. Overall, 39.1% of all injuries occurred in pitchers. The upper extremity was involved in 39% of injuries, while 35% occurred in the hip/groin/lower extremity. Surgery was required in 6.5% of cases, and 9.7% of injuries were season ending. Hamstring strains were the most common injury (n = 3337), followed by rotator cuff strain/tear (n = 1874), paralumbar muscle strain (n = 1313), biceps tendinitis (n = 1264), oblique strain (n = 1249), and elbow ulnar collateral ligament injury (n = 1191). The diagnoses that were most likely to end a player’s season were elbow ulnar collateral ligament injury (60% season ending) and superior labrum anterior and posterior tear (50.9% season ending). Conclusion:
Contrary to prior reports relying on disabled list data, the annual number of injuries in professional baseball remained steady from 2011 to 2016. Similar trends were noted for the annual number of days missed and mean days missed per injury. Although the mean days missed per injury was high (16), the median was much lower at 6 days.
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal from
PURPOSE:
Although community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections have reduced among inpatient populations, the incidence in athletics continues to range greatly dependent on the sport. Over the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years, we assessed the annual CA-MRSA incidence, sport risk, referral practices, and management protocols or interventions among high school and intercollegiate athletics. METHODS:
This study targeted high school and intercollegiate athletic programs across the United States. For the 2015-2016 study, 269 athletic trainers completed a one-time questionnaire. In the 2016-2017 study, 217 athletic trainers reported data bimonthly during the academic year. Each questionnaire targeted demographic information, physician-confirmed CA-MRSA infection occurrence, and management of CA-MRSA infections and bacterial skin lesions. RESULTS:
The CA-MRSA infection incidence was 26.8 per 10,000 athletes (95% confidence interval [CI], 24-30) in 2015-2016 and 20.3 per 10,000 athletes (95% CI, 18-23) in 2016-2017. The CA-MRSA infection incidence was high in wrestling and football compared to the general student-athlete population. During the 2015-2016 study, the wrestling incidence rate was 248.3 per 10,000 (95% CI, 204-302); the football incidence rate was 71.0 per 10,000 (95% CI, 60-85). In the 2016-2017 study, the wrestling incidence rate was 100.0 per 10,000 (95% CI, 66-151); the football incidence rate was 81.8 per 10,000 (95% CI, 68-99). At least 23% of respondents denoted at least one physician-confirmed CA-MRSA infection within their populations (2015-2016, 39%, n=105; 2016-2017, 23.5%, n=51). In the 2015-2016 survey, respondents indicated that athlete education and environmental decontamination were the most utilized management steps (51.8%, n=582). CONCLUSION:
Despite increased awareness of CA-MRSA, more educational efforts focusing on best practices and education are needed, especially with athletes and the medical community involved in their care.
For the 11th consecutive season, Major League Baseball is going to set a record for strikeouts. The new marks are not simply incremental, either. In 2008, hitters struck out 32,884 times. At the current pace in 2018, they will strike out 43,163 times, which would obliterate the record of 40,104 set last year. This is a game careening toward a reckoning borne of inaction, and when nearly 23 percent of plate appearances end with a third strike, the culprit is clear.
It is no surprise, with MLB’s laissez-faire approach to strikeouts, that the sport-wide batting average has cratered to .241. The only two worse seasons in the game’s history were 1908, in the heart of the Dead Ball Era, and 1968, a year so disquieting it prompted the league to lower the mound from 15 inches to 10. Certainly this could be mildly anomalous, a function of the horrid weather, but over the last decade, the most a batting average has risen from April over the rest of the year was 8 points and the most a strikeout rate has dipped was .40 percent. April is no perfect indicator, but it does forecast trends quite well.
Alexi Lalas and David Mosse discuss whether heavy club workloads will cause stars like Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne to struggle at the World Cup in the State of the Union Podcast.
… “The illegal check to the head rule is often misunderstood or misstated,” the league said in the video. “Illegal checks to the head and legal full body hits often look similar at first glance because the difference between legal and illegal can be a matter of inches in a sport that moves fast.”
Discontent over the goalie interference rule has been grabbing headlines for weeks, but the head shot discussion carries far more serious implications for a league still grappling with how best to protect its players. What’s acceptable has evolved from the early days of hockey through Scott Stevens’ then-legal crushing blow on Eric Lindros in 2000 to today, where checks to the head are parsed frame-by-frame to determine if a line was crossed. The NHL, too, is still facing a federal class-action concussion lawsuit filed by former players alleging it failed to warn them about the health risks associated with head injuries.
Meeting with Associated Press Sports Editors last week, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman insisted there was nothing new about the subject.
… Fenway Sports Group, the owners of Liverpool and the Boston Red Sox, have learned on the job since completing its takeover at Anfield in October 2010, while Raptor Group, led by James Pallotta, a board member at the Boston Celtics, have also experienced bumps along the road since acquiring Roma in 2011.
In a world dominated by the old elite of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, with the likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City propelled into the “superclub” bracket by state-backed owners from the Persian Gulf, Liverpool and Roma have bucked the trend by reaching the Champions League semifinals with a shared approach rooted in analytics, smart scouting and astute recruitment. And one of them is going to be rewarded with a place in this season’s Champions League final.
“Liverpool and Roma are great case studies of the impact of U.S. sports thinking on the Premier League and European football,” says Mike Forde, CEO of the consulting and software company Sportsology, who advise over 30 ownership groups in five major sports in the United States.