During an injury-plagued spell that ran from November to March, Rafael Nadal withdrew from six successive tournaments. According to the doom-mongers, his very future as a grand slam contender stood in doubt.
Yet over the last six weeks, Nadal has proved that he is not just the king of clay, but the king of comebacks, too. Once Nadal’s feet had touched the red dirt in Monte Carlo, he began a winning streak that has continued all the way to Roland Garros – with the exception of a single reverse at the hands of Dominic Thiem in Madrid. His unbroken run of 50 straight sets on clay set a new world record.
All of which begs two intriguing questions. Is Nadal playing better than ever? Or is the competition weaker than before?
“Coming into my late 20s – ending my 20s, essentially, this year – I feel very grounded in the player that I am and the person that I am,” said Press, who turns 30 in December. “I feel clear in the goals of what I want to achieve in my personal game and also in more team goals. I feel that’s clearer than I have ever have [been]. Now it’s, what am I going to do to get there? I think that for the first part of my 20s, I put so much on myself – how I was training, the offseason, what types of drills I was doing, my fitness. I made strides with that, and I just got to a point where I feel like I want to play a certain type of soccer, and I’m willing to search for it.
“And I want to be in a certain type of environment that I feel like I can get better. I can play the type of soccer that I want to play; I can have a coach that can push me and teach me new things. It’s not easy for any player to find a good home, a good fit, but I think it’s worth searching for. A lot of ambitions that I’ve had with the national team, I’ve fallen short in those. So, I don’t think that continuing to do the same thing, you should expect different results. So, I think this is my way of kind of searching for what I think can propel me to the next level.”
… One method [Jake] Cox used was to ask student-athletes to wear a smart, wearable wristband that tracks activity data at five intensity levels. It also tracks the wearer’s sleep patterns, which help Cox understand how prepared his athletes are for practice.
“When we were doing that with our guys, it was really positive,” he says. “My staff liked it too; it is valuable data.”
At the same time, Cox holds some of the best technology back from his athletes in an effort to positively reinforce their behavior. He calls this approach “earned use.”
“When you come to Villanova, you’re lucky to get into the weight room and perform the warm-up properly,” he says. “After you can do that, you have to be strong in order to use some of our other technology tools. Plus, you have to be coachable.”
Ask most runners what causes fatigue, and the answer is almost always lactic acid, or its scientific cousin lactate. The mere mention of the word conjures up memories of intense pain, struggle, and the infamous butt lock during the final stretch of a race. Contrary to popular belief, however, lactate is a runner’s friend, not foe. Instead of being an evil substance that causes the elephant to jump on your back in the finishing stretch of a race, lactate is a key fuel source when you run fast.
What gives lactate its bad reputation? As you run faster, your rate of lactate production and consumption rises, but as a well-trained runner, you can “clear” the lactate as quickly as you produce it. At some point, however, either because of running faster or because of holding a fast pace for too long, you produce more lactate than you can clear from your bloodstream. When this happens, the hydrogen ions associated with producing lactate turn off the enzymes used to produce energy and may interfere with your uptake of calcium. As a result, your muscles’ ability to contract is reduced and you’re forced to slow. In other words, all the sensations commonly associated with “lactic acid” appear when you can no longer process lactate as quickly as you produce it.
Tempo runs and cruise intervals are the traditional training means to address this issue. By improving your ability to clear or tolerate lactate as it’s increasingly produced, these training strategies allow you to sustain a faster pace for longer. While conventional tempo runs and cruise intervals work fine, elite coaches and Kenyan athletes have added a new wrinkle that may help runners increase the use of lactate during a race and therefore help clear it and all the corresponding fatiguing products out much quicker.
Josh Norris was lost. After showcasing elite-level athleticism in the dreaded Wingate test at the 2017 NHL scouting combine, he went for a walk. Unlike many of his fellow draft prospects, his steps did not take him to a nearby garbage can to expel whatever was left in his body after the intense exertion required to complete the test.
“I didn’t get sick. I definitely felt sick. I probably laid on the ground for 15 or 20 minutes after it,” Norris said, noting that the Wingate was the test he’d heard the most about coming into the combine.
His memory is a little fuzzy about how he got from the bike to laying on his back in the hallway beneath the bleachers at Buffalo’s HarborCenter. He didn’t pass out, but one of the many athletic trainers on hand had to come collect him after a brief, somewhat nervous search for the missing prospect.
The NHL scouting combine can provide the most physically and mentally exhausting days in a draft prospect’s season. This week, 104 prospects eligible for the 2018 NHL Entry Draft will descend on Buffalo to make their last impressions on scouts and executives from all 31 teams in both physical testing and interviews with individual clubs. Each of the top players eligible for the draft is slated to attend, including consensus No. 1 prospect Rasmus Dahlin who presumably will be making Buffalo his permanent home soon.
International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance from
Purpose:
To examine the ability of multivariate models to predict the HR responses to some specific training drills from various GPS variables and to examine the usefulness of the difference in predicted vs actual HR responses as an index of fitness or readiness to perform. Method:
All data were collected during one season (2016-2017) with players’ soccer activity recorded using 5-Hz GPS and internal load monitored using heart rate (HR). GPS and HR data were analysed during typical small-sided games and a 4-min standardized submaximal run (12 km/h). A multiple stepwise regression analysis was carried out to identify which combinations of GPS variables showed the largest correlations with HR responses at the individual level (HRACT, 149±46 GPS/HR pairs per player) and was further used to predict HR during individual drills (HRPRED). HR predicted was then compared with actual HR to compute an index of fitness or readiness to perform (HRΔ,%). The validity of HRΔ was examined while comparing changes in HRΔ with the changes in HR responses to a submaximal run (HRRUN, fitness criterion) and as a function of the different phases of the season (with fitness being expected to increase after the pre-season). Results:
HRPRED was very largely correlated with HRACT (r=0.78±0.04). Within-player changes in HRΔ were largely correlated with within-player changes in HRRUN (r=0.66,0.50-0.82). HRΔ very likely decreased from July to August (3.1±2.0 vs 0.8±2.2%) and most likely decreased further in September (-1.5±2.1%). Conclusion:
HRΔ is a valid variable to monitor elite soccer players’ fitness and allows fitness monitoring on a daily basis during normal practice, decreasing the need for formal testing.
Georgia Tech, Institute for People and Technology from
“Our vision is to establish Atlanta as the world leader in sports technology and innovation.”
It’s a lofty goal, for sure, but Doug Allvine is determined to achieve it. As Georgia Tech’s assistant athletics director for innovation, it’s his job to bring together athletics, researchers, and industry. He’s been in the newly-created position for about a year and is concentrating on three areas—sports performance, fan experience, and operations. Allvine and the Georgia Tech Athletic Association are also spearheading the creation of the Center for Sports Innovation, which focuses on entrepreneurship innovation.
“We want to create an entity that brings together Georgia Tech first and then brings together what makes Atlanta so special, which is all these pro teams within a stone’s throw.”
The center is working with other units on campus, including the Institute for People and Technology, the College of Computing, and the Office of Industry Collaboration. It’s all about bridging the gap.
We all know that the mind can affect the body in dramatic ways, but we tend to associate this with things like the placebo effect or psychosomatic illnesses. But subtle clues to the mind-body relationship can be gleaned from the way the body moves, and these hacked fitness monitors can be used to tease data from the background noise of everyday movements to help treat mental health issues.
Over the last few years, [Curt White] of the Child Mind Institute has been able to leverage an incredibly cheap but feature-packed platform, the X9 Pro Sports Bracelet, a fitness band that looks more or less like a watch. Stuffed with an ARM Cortex processor, OLED screen, accelerometer, pulse sensor, and a ton of other stuff, the $35 wearable is a hacker’s dream. And hack it he did. One version of the bracelet is called Tingle, which is used to detect and avert body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), compulsive disorders that can result in self-harm through pulling at hair or pinching. The Tingle is trained to recognize the motions associated with these behaviors and respond with haptic feedback through the vibration motor. Another hacked X9 was attached to a dental retainer and equipped with sensors to monitor respirations intraorally, in an attempt to detect overdoses. It’s fascinating stuff, and the things [Curt] has done with these cheap fitness bands is mighty impressive.
Cells are the ultimate ensemble cast members, but they can also deliver soliloquies—if the cells ever get the chance to have the stage to themselves. To give individual cells their turn in the spotlight, an international team of scientists has built a sort of microfluidic theatre, complete with a gold-coated glass stage and a nanoplasmonic lighting system.
With the right stage management, individual cells can be induced to reveal their innermost motivations, the signals they would transmit to other cells while playing their parts—heroic or otherwise—in dramas as varied as infection, immune disorders, inflammation, sepsis, and cancer. By listening intently to cells and designing the appropriate therapeutic interventions, scientists may be able to direct cellular actors toward happier endings.
That’s the hope that has been expressed by scientists based at RMIT University in Australia, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne. These scientists reported that they have developed an optofluidic device that contains a chamber that is around one one-thousandth the size of a raindrop.
Regular exercise improves health but can also induce adverse responses. Although such episodes are rare, many guidelines for pre-participation exercise screening have historically had a low threshold for recommending medical clearance prior to the commencement of exercise, placing the responsibility for decision making about exercise participation on physicians. The ‘clearance to exercise’ model still occurs widely in practice, but creates cost burdens and barriers to the uptake of exercise. Moreover, many physicians are not provided the training, nor time in a standard consultation, to be able to effectively perform this role. We present a model for pre-participation exercise screening and the initial assessment of clients wishing to commence an exercise programme. It is designed to guide professional practice for the referral, assessment and prescription of exercise for people across the health spectrum, from individuals who are apparently healthy, through to clients with pre-existing or occult chronic conditions. The model removes the request that physicians provide a ‘clearance’ for patients to engage in exercise programmes. Instead the role of physicians is identified as providing relevant clinical guidance to suitably qualified exercise professionals to allow them to use their knowledge, skills and expertise in exercise prescription to assess and manage any risks related to the prescription and delivery of appropriate exercise programmes. It is anticipated that removing unjustified barriers to exercise participation, such as mandated medical review, will improve the uptake of exercise by the unacceptably high proportion of the population who do not undertake sufficient physical activity for health benefit. [full text]
Professional Baseball Strength & Conditioning Coaches Society from
Several epidemiologic reports on injury rates in MLB have been published in recent years. Each of these has provided valuable information on specific injuries to MLB players, such as the frequency of injuries to the shoulder, elbow, knee, back, etc., but none have addressed specific injury rates among minor league baseball players (MiLB)1-4. A recent study by Camp, et. al. published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine used the Health and Injury Tracking System (HITS) to analyze 6-years (2011-2016) of injury data on both MLB and MiLB players5-6. The primary purpose of the study was three-fold: 1) to generate a summative analysis of all injuries that occur in MLB and MiLB; 2) to identify the 50 most common injuries; and 3) to generate focused reports and fact sheets on the characteristic of each of those diagnoses.
Readers can access the complete study and a 56-page appendix on-line that provides information on the frequency of each of the 50 most common injuries, player age, level of play, position, throwing- and batting-side-dominance, days missed due injury, injury characteristics, etc. The purpose of this article is to hi-lite several of the important findings of the study.
Major League Baseball suspended White Sox catcher Welington Castillo for 80 games last week after he tested positive for erythropoietin, better known in the doping community as EPO. It is the first reported positive test by an MLB player for the drug.
As a medicinal chemist, this caught my attention. I actually have some professional experience with EPO. No, I have never taken it, but I once spent a couple of years on a project concerning it. My first reactions to news of a baseball player testing positive for EPO was incredulity and confusion. EPO is an endurance drug. I can understand the rationale behind an athlete in other sports taking it. Theoretically, it could help basketball players with all the running up and down the court they have to do. It could help soccer players with all the running they do, too. And it could help football players on those long drives down the field.
… Can an immaterial variable such as ‘culture’ impact this black and white realm where there is no room for abstract thought and where an answer is either right or wrong? According to Gareth Walton, a consultant for the human performance company EXOS that supports over twelve thousand athletes across a range of sports around the world, when it comes to sports science, culture is where it all begins.
“It might seem counter intuitive but the first thing a sports scientist should do when assisting a team is to understand the pre-existing culture within the organisation,” Walton tell CONQA. “There is a reason why things aren’t working and so often it comes down to how people feel about the work, how they feel about the people in the team, how they feel about their place within the team and how they feel about the people in charge. That’s culture and before I get down to the science, I need to understand what environment I’m working with.”
Walton has made a name for himself by aiding struggling teams by implementing new strategies in the sports science department and helping create synergy between the analysts, coaches and players. As a consequence of his outsider’s perspective, Walton is able to identify what is working and what is holding back progress.
They are former players putting their inside knowledge of the game to good use, renowned wheeler-dealers whose silver tongue secures the right player for their club, and are — to a man — arch-strategists in whom the hopes of the Bundesliga’s finest lies: they are the sporting directors.
Men such as Hasan Salihamidzic at Bayern Munich, Rudi Völler at Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund’s Michael Zorc, RB Leipzig’s Ralf Rangnick and Christian Heidel at Schalke have combined contacts forged during their careers on and off the pitch with finely tuned business acumen and Meisterschale-level negotiating skills to shape the destiny of their respective clubs.
bundesliga.com lifts the veil on the 18 sporting directors masterminding the future of the Bundesliga’s clubs.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chris Palmer from
Last May, a 31-year-old former NFL player was diagnosed with early-stage dementia after reporting to a doctor that he had memory problems and difficulty helping his son with homework. That month, the same man received a master’s degree in business administration.
The doctor who made the diagnosis, Serina Hoover, frequently evaluated other NFL retirees seeking to receive payments under the league’s landmark concussion settlement. But Dr. Hoover, a California neuropsychologist, later was disqualified from making evaluations after her reports were found to contain irregularities, including that she had spent 273 hours working on cases in less than a week.
Those allegations and others were made by lawyers for the NFL in court documents last month, part of a broader assertion by the league that its historic deal to compensate former players for long-term effects of head injuries had been “hampered by the extraordinary number of fraudulent claims clogging the system.” The concussion settlement agreement does not have a collective ceiling, meaning the league is on the hook for any claim deemed legitimate, a total that the NFL estimates could exceed $1 billion.