Mo Farah has insisted he had frequent blood and urine tests during high‑altitude camps in Kenya and Ethiopia – and has never seen any of the shady practices exposed by Asbel Kiprop after his positive EPO test.
Kiprop, an Olympic gold medallist and three-times world champion at 1500m, said this month that he had been tipped off in advance before a drug test and had paid money to doping control officers. Those claims, along with his positive test, sent shockwaves through the sport – and raised serious questions about whether athletes in east Africa were being properly tested, with the independent Athletics Integrity Unit confirming that the tip-off took place.
However Farah, who trained in Kenya up to 2014 and has subsequently done much of his winter preparations in Ethiopia, said he has been rigorously tested in both countries.
“When I was in Ethiopia training for the London marathon I was pretty much tested on average every two weeks, and maybe even more than that,” he said. “And when I was in Kenya I was tested a similar amount, although I haven’t been since 2014.”
“I think the Bundesliga is especially a good league for developing younger players, and for Americans, it’s been a good platform to just take it to that next step,” Pulisic said. “I know in Dortmund, they always just gave me a chance. They put me in a few minutes here and there, whatever. They gave me the chance in important games and they weren’t afraid to do that. That’s what’s really helped me grow, become the player I am.”
As a veteran of 20 international matches, Pulisic said he is ready to take on a greater leadership role on the national team. His experience in the regional qualifiers for the World Cup provided him with lessons to share.
“About how CONCACAF can be, about some of the games, about how it’s not just always about who plays the best football, it’s about who wants it the most and just how to fight and do whatever it takes,” he said.
Buried by the weekslong storyline of Ben Roethlisberger’s reaction to the Pittsburgh Steelers drafting quarterback Mason Rudolph was a fundamental question with huge implications: How does a guy who one year ago flirted with retirement pivot to a three-to-five-year outlook?
Roethlisberger, who turned 36 in March, is eyeing a late-30s resurgence, and as he tells it, the reason is simple.
“Being excited about the group we have, the linemen in particular in front of me,” said Roethlisberger from Tuesday’s organized team activities session. “I’m healthy, and just lots of prayers and spending time with family. I’m still going to take it one year at a time but just feeling like what you have left in the tank.”
More than one billion fans tuned in to watch the final of the 2014 FIFA World Cup (WC) Brazil™, with the competition reaching a global in-home television audience of 3.2 billion people (Television Audience Report for the 2014 FIFA World Cup). From 14th of June to 15th of July 2018, the 21st WC in Russia should overtake this audience. During the competition, every pass, tackle or sprint performed will still be scrutinized by billions of fans, media and various professionals of the game. “What are their chances to make it?”. “Has the coach chosen the right system?”. “Are players fit enough to perform through the entire competition?”.
While national teams now have resources and staff comparable to most elite clubs in the top leagues, could/should national staff members really be held fully responsible for players’ fitness and performance during the tournament? The lead up to this incredible event is complex, with the majority of players having played their last domestic game less than a month before the start of the competition. In this specific context, preparing the players is always a challenge for national team staff, who have to find the right balance between (i) recovery to allow players to regenerate from their exhausting domestic league and (ii) training to get them fit and ready for the competition. The challenge is even greater than meets the eye, since in contrast to a club setting where practitioners have frequent, continuous contact with players that allows ongoing monitoring (Buchheit et al. 2013 Buchheit M, Racinais S, Bilsborough JC, Bourdon PC, Voss SC, Hocking J, Cordy J, Mendez-Villanueva A, Coutts AJ. 2013. Monitoring fitness, fatigue and running performance during a pre-season training camp in elite football players. J Sci Med Sport. 16:550–555. [Google Scholar], 2016 Buchheit M, Cholley Y, Lambert P. 2016. Psychometric and physiological responses to a preseason competitive camp in the heat with a 6-hour time difference in elite soccer players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 11:176–181. [Google Scholar]), national team staff have very limited contact time with their players and have to work discontinuously with them. This interrupted player monitoring makes the assessment of players’ readiness and fitness more difficult (e.g., less historical data to compare with, less knowledge of context). In fact, over one season, players train and play for about 10 months with their respective clubs, while they may spend only 4 × ̴10 days during the year with their national teams (i.e., “international breaks”), before the 3-week pre-WC preparation. In between the end of the 2017 Euro and the 14th of June, international players would have spent about ̴250–270 days with their clubs, and at best, 60–70 days with their national teams (Buchheit 2017a Buchheit M. 2017a. Applying the acute: chronic workload ratio in elite football: worth the effort? Br J Sports Med. 51:1325–1327. [Google Scholar]). [full text]
Talent identification and development systems (TIDS) are commonly used in professional sport to convert youth athletes into sporting stars of the future. Acknowledging that only a few athletes can “make it,” the necessity and healthiness of TIDS have recently been questioned based on their increased professionalism, high training, and competition volumes, but limited effectiveness. In this short communication, we suggest that the key issues associated with TIDS are not due to their overall concept, but with how they are designed and implemented. It is recommended that researchers and practitioners determine the worth and value of TIDS by also evaluating the positive health of the athlete rather than solely focusing on performance outcomes. To achieve this, TIDS staff should shape and develop their values, expectations, and day-to-day routines to achieve positive health outcomes focusing on personal development and an athlete-centered culture. In business, this has been termed the concept of “Deliberately Developmental Organisation.” TIDS can deploy the factors (e.g., high-quality staff, expert support services, quality facilities, and learning routines) characteristic of such organizations, to concurrently ensure positive impacts and minimize predictable negative outcomes without losing focus on a drive for sporting performance. [full text]
It’s already known that a number of elements factor into weight loss, including food, exercise, Netflix addiction, etc. Now a new study delves into another piece of the puzzle: sleep. Or more specifically, how the habits that keep you from optimal shuteye can affect your fitness levels.
Equinox, in conjunction with researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, revealed findings linking behavioral “sleep coaching” to exercise performance. That’s right, they may have finally answered the question of whether or not that late-night cheesecake will slow you down in the morning.
The clinical research study–the first of its kind–found that sleep coaching, which involves improving people’s sleep quality by getting them to change their lifestyle habits, does indeed impact one’s athletic performance. The goal was to prove how a behavioral-level step-by-step program could push incremental improvement in the quality and duration of sleep and, as a result of that, affect fitness outcomes.
University of Colorado Boulder, CU Boulder Today from
Pulling an all-nighter just once can disrupt levels and time of day patterns of more than 100 proteins in the blood, including those that influence blood sugar, energy metabolism, and immune function, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this week.
“This tells us that when we experience things like jet lag or a couple of nights of shift work, we very rapidly alter our normal physiology in a way that if sustained can be detrimental to our health,” said senior author Kenneth Wright, director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory and professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.
The study is the first to examine how protein levels in human blood, also known as the plasma proteome, vary over a 24-hour period and how altered sleep and meal timing affects them.
It also pinpointed 30 distinct proteins that, regardless of sleep and meal timing, vary depending upon what time it is.
… STATS GPS allows teams to monitor player performance with customizable metrics like accelerations/decelerations, energy expenditure, count of zone entries, and time, distance and power thresholds. The innovative solution uses real 50-Hz sampling frequency and allows practitioners to monitor up to 100 players in real-time and post session with over 300 GPS, IMU and HR derived metrics. Embedded in the GPS vests are textile heart-rate sensors, making STATS GPS the most advanced technology on the market.
“Teams and conditioning coaches need the latest technology to ensure players stay at peak health and fitness during long seasons,” said Ryan Paterson, Chief Global Officer at STATS. “With STATS GPS’ new 50-Hz technology, teams can instantly get performance information, allowing them to make in-the-moment decisions.”
Using the STATS Dynamix online portal, coaches can have detailed session reports ready by the time players walk off the pitch. Reports are fully-customizable and can include in-depth player summaries as well as information on imbalance, cardiovascular metrics and running, explosive and brake symmetry. The system also gives sports scientists the capability to create new formulas and apply these to historical data.
Perhaps you’ve read our articles on fat adaptation Train to Burn Fat , Burn Fat to Go Fast , or What Enables Endurance or the “Getting Tested” series Part 1, Getting Tested and Part 2, Interpreting Your Results. If so, you may feel inspired to take the plunge with a lab test of your own. It’d be a great way to start a new training block—by getting some actual personalized data showing your metabolic response to exercise. But where do you go? How do you choose which testing lab to visit? Besides an internet search of available places, what information should you arm yourself with so you are a knowledgeable consumer? And more importantly, why do you need to be informed in the first place? Aren’t all these tests the same?
Let’s start with the last question first: Are all these tests the same? NO!
There are some big differences, which require a little background information to explain.
Scientists have created a monitoring device that gives users an immediate updates to their metabolic energy usage and other trackable statistics using the breath.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory have developed the Carbon dioxide/Oxygen Breath and Respiration Analyzer (COBRA), a passive, proportional and side-stream sampling scheme that enables slow and low-cost O₂ and CO₂ gas sensors to quantify a user’s metabolic health. COBRA was a 2017 R&D 100 Award recipient.
Ok, so it’s been a month since the Garmin Connect IQ Summit. That’s Garmin’s annual conference for 3rd party developers to come to Kansas and drink all the Connect IQ juice about developing on their platform. This would be the 2nd annual iteration of the event, which is roughly formulated after the ANT+ Symposium that’s been going on for 10 years. For those in the IT world, the idea behind the Connect IQ Summit is similar to that of Apple’s WWDC or Microsoft’s Build events, both developer focused on showing the latest application building technologies. It’s also where new developer-specific features are usually announced.
This year had more people than before, and definitely a bit more structure and offerings than last year. I’ll go through some of those new features down below. It’s also worth noting that since the event was held the same week as Sea Otter, Garmin also launched the Edge 520 Plus, Varia RTL-510, and Edge 130 at the start of Day 1 for the Connect IQ Summit. But that was more just a timing coincidence than anything else.
Before we get into all the details, the one headliner tidbit that’s worth noting is there are now 8 million Garmin Connect IQ devices out there, of which there have been 54 million CIQ app download instances, about half of which are watch faces (and the remainder is data fields/apps/widgets). There are currently 4,000 apps in the CIQ app store, from 1,500 developers.
Hamstring injuries remain a significant injury burden in sports such as soccer that involve high-speed running. It has repeatedly been identified as the most common noncontact injury in elite male soccer, representing 12% of all injuries. As the incidence of hamstring injuries remains high, investigations are aimed at better understanding how to prevent hamstring injuries. Stretching to improve flexibility is commonly used in elite-level sports, but risk factor studies have reported contradicting results, leading to unclear conclusions regarding flexibility as a risk factor for hamstring injuries. Purpose:
To investigate the association of lower limb flexibility with the risk of hamstring injuries in professional soccer players. Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods:
All teams (n = 18) eligible to compete in the premier soccer league in Qatar (Qatar Stars League [QSL]) underwent a comprehensive musculoskeletal assessment during their annual periodic health evaluation at Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha, Qatar. Variables included passive knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion range of motion. A clustered multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to identify associations with the risk of hamstring injuries. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were calculated to determine sensitivity and specificity. Results:
A total of 438 unique players (72.4% of all QSL players) competed for 601 player-seasons (148 players competed both seasons) and sustained 78 hamstring injuries. Passive knee extension range of motion (hazard ratio [HR], 0.97 [95% CI, 0.95-0.99]; P = .008) and ankle dorsiflexion range of motion (HR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.88-0.99]; P = .02) were independently associated with the injury risk. The absolute differences between the injured and uninjured players were 1.8° and 1.4 cm, respectively, with small effect sizes (d < 0.2). The ROC curve analyses showed an area under the curve of 0.52 for passive knee extension and 0.61 for ankle dorsiflexion, indicating failed to poor combined sensitivity and specificity of the 2 strength variables identified in the multivariate Cox regression analysis.
Conclusion:
This study identified deficits in passive hamstring and ankle dorsiflexion range of motion as weak risk factors for a hamstring injury. These findings have little clinical value in predicting the risk of future hamstring injuries, and test results must therefore be interpreted cautiously in athletic screening.
… The AIS is undertaking significant and necessary change to position Australian high performance sport for the next 20 years. To succeed, we must be progressive and not default to what may have worked 20 years ago.”
There is growing angst the AIS about the major changes, which are expected to be implemented when the details of the National Sport Plan are revealed.
The sports commission – a federal government agency – owns Canberra Stadium and a 64 hectare parcel of land at Bruce. The ACT government pays $350,000 per year to rent the stadium for NRL and Super Rugby matches.
It is expected the sports commission will sell Canberra Stadium and could consider selling the AIS Arena and one of its two pools.
Deep into the NBA playoffs, we are graced with stats-o-plenty before, during, and after every game. Some of the numbers are informative. Most of them are randomly used to illustrate a commentator’s point.
One of the most common stats is the conditional that says something like, “When player X scores at least Y points, the team wins 90 percent of their games.” It implies a cause-and-effect relationship.
The Cleveland Cavaliers won the most games when LeBron James scored 30 or more points. So James should just score that many points every time. Easy. I should be a coach.
It’s a bit of stat cherry picking, trying to find something in common among games won. So to make things easier, and for you to wow your friends during the games, I compiled winning percentages for several stats during the 2017-18 regular season. Select among the star players still in the playoffs.
Sergio Romo’s short starts may have been a one-weekend experiment, but the philosophy behind them, like the one behind the closer when it was introduced, should expand to MLB at large