… On one afternoon in late February, Trout sat in a conference room at the team’s spring training facility in Arizona with a handful of Los Angeles Angels coaches and executives, and — for perhaps the first time in his professional life — was presented with data that was unfavorable to him.
Angels general manager Billy Eppler described Trout as “open-minded and accepting.”
Dino Ebel, the team’s long-time outfield coach, recalled more conviction.
“He said, ‘I’m better than this.’ And in his mind, he went all-in.”
It paved the way for a season that Trout now considers his best yet, which is no small feat. He once again performed among the game’s best offensive players, but he also turned in a defensive season on par with the most skilled at his position.
… Backstrom would ride his bike to Gavlerinken Arena when he was a kid, too. Anders became the Brynäs general manager, so Backstrom went to every game with his dad until he started playing in the top division at 16. He points to a section of red seats at the corner of the rink where he sat and studied his idols, memorizing everything from players’ equipment to their tendencies on the ice and warm-up routines.
“I don’t know, I was just working my brain,” he says.
His growth spurt didn’t come until he was 17, so he was considerably smaller than the 30-somethings with whom he was playing at the time. Anders recalled a Swedish junior national team coach calling Backstrom and suggesting he make some “other choices in food and drinks.”
Backstrom, who’s listed today at 6-foot-1, realized that if he couldn’t yet physically stand out, then he’d have to do so another way: “I knew I had a good hockey sense and lived off that.”
TruMedia Networks’ Paul Carr uses the award-winning ProVision to analyse stand-out players and teams from leagues and competitions across the globe. This fifth article focuses on one of the most exciting players to break out of MLS in recent years, Vancouver Whitecaps’ teenage winger Alphonso Davies.
… His family and confidants, the people who have known him longer and better than anyone, chuckled at the notion that he might be at a crossroads this season. “We talked about that here after his first year,” said Mark Poolman, the strength and conditioning coach for UND’s hockey program. “He made the playoffs, and we were like, ‘Oh, boy. Now he’s going to have to continually do that. You don’t get to have a dip. Way to go, Hak. You’ve screwed yourself over.’”
Given that timeline and Hakstol’s public persona, it has become easier to define him not by who he is but by who he is not. He is not Mike Keenan, with that Il Duce countenance, stalking the center aisle of the team plane and pointing to a random player to say, I may just cut you tomorrow. He is not Ken Hitchcock, handing reporters a few glib quotes to fill their notebooks and soften them up, then metamorphosing once the puck dropped, mocking his players as sissies – I guess none of you wimps wants to play tonight – until they were ready to shiv him in the solar plexus with their stick blades. He is not John Stevens, who in the minors had coached and won the respect of the very players he was charged with developing into stars, and he is not Peter Laviolette, whose locker-room command that his team “play with jam” made him a cult hero.
Not because it’s awkwardly shoehorned between the Red Sox clubhouse and the players’ parking lot. Not because it’s barely big enough for a desk, a couple of file cabinets, couch, locker and mini-refrigerator that hums noisily. Not because all the other trappings remind the manager that he occupies one of the most pressure-packed jobs in the city. No, Cora explains, it’s much simpler than that.
“You play in college, you play minor league baseball then in the big leagues, and you’re always in that big room [the clubhouse] and there’s always people around,” Cora says. “All of a sudden, when you become a manager, it’s just the locker in the office. You feel like, ‘Where am I at?’ I feel very uncomfortable.”
The British Psychological Society, Research Digest, Christian Jarrett from
The effect of playing sport on men’s testosterone levels is well documented. Generally speaking, the winner enjoys a testosterone boost, while the loser experiences the opposite (though far less studied, competition unsurprisingly also affects women’s hormonal levels, though not in the same ways as men’s). The evolutionary-based explanation for the hormonal effects seen in men is that the winner’s testosterone rise acts to increase their aggression and the likelihood that they will seek out more contests, while the loser skulks off to lick their wounds. When it comes to vicarious effects of competition on men’s testosterone, however, the findings are more mixed. There’s some evidence that male sports fans show testosterone gains after seeing their teams win, but other studies have failed to replicate this finding.
A new, small study in Human Nature adds to this literature by examining the hormonal changes (testosterone and cortisol) in fathers watching their children play a football game – a situation in which you might particularly expect to see vicarious hormonal effects since it’s the men’s own kin who are involved.
… What misconception(s) of nudge do you still encounter that you’d like to put to bed?
First of all we need to vanquish the idea that “nudge = behavioral economics.” Nudging, or even public policy applications, are just a tiny portion of the research going on in behavioral economics these days. And the tools that have been used by so-called nudge units have relied on psychology more than behavioral economics. I try to get people to use the term behavioral science instead, which this publication helps to do! Also, not everything that nudge units will do (or should do) need rely on even broadly defined behavioral science. We should be using AI, big data, design thinking, and all the other social sciences, including tools like ethnography. My “make it easy” mantra is not specific to any one set of tools or research approaches.
In what ways do you think technology can give nudges a broader reach?
I think this is going to be huge in the health care space, especially where “compliance” to prescribed medications is a problem, such as with diabetes. I believe the technology already exists to monitor blood sugar in real time and (if not now, very soon) titrate insulin doses. You know what is better than “make it easy”? “Make it automatic.”
Many fitness trackers are not accurate at measuring heart rate, and can backfire when it comes to weight loss. It’s easy enough to cheat with fitness devices, but John Hancock isn’t worried about that either. “These programs are going to be in place for an average of 20 years and often much longer,” Tingle says, “and while people might figure out a way to get more steps in the short term, people aren’t going to do that for two decades.”
Though the program is optional, experts worry that it’ll change down the line. “At this stage, they’re saying it’s voluntary,” Ann Cavoukian, who served as Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner until 2014 told CBC.”My gut says over time it’s not going to be voluntary, or it will be less voluntary, or there will be consequences for not doing it. Like you’ll pay higher premiums because … you’re not willing to share that data. That’s what disturbs me.” (For his part, Tingle stresses that it’s important “the customer has total choice about whether they participate.”)
Another worry is that this will fundamentally change how we measure our lives, according to Dan Bouk, a historian at Colgate University.
In the decades following the deployment of the first clinical ultrasound machine in 1956, high-frequency scanners have become a go-to tool in many clinicians’ diagnostic arsenals — at least in the developed world. Unfortunately, despite the proliferation of smaller, cheaper devices like GE’s Vscan, they remain prohibitively expensive. The going price for a single machine is between $9,000 and $20,000, with individual scans costing about $250.
That’s because traditional ultrasound machines rely on transducers containing quartz crystals and other specialized components to generate images. But Butterfly, a startup cofounded by 2015 National Medal of Technology and Innovation award recipient and Carnegie Mellon graduate Jonathan Rothberg, claims to have pioneered a technologically superior alternative. The company‘s eponymous $2,000 Butterfly iQ shrinks ultrasound tech down to a peripheral the size of an electric razor.
… Every year, the NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) perform a laboratory study of helmets in an attempt to evaluate which ones best reduce head impact severity in conditions that are intended to represent potentially concussive head impacts in the NFL. … The NFL also works with Dr. Richard Kent, a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Emergency Medicine at the University of Virginia, to develop laboratory tests that evaluate cleat performance and safety.
Exposure to severe heat can have detrimental effects on athletic performance and increase the risk of exertional heat injuries. Therefore, proactive assessment of the environmental characteristics of international football match venues becomes critical in ensuring the safety and optimal performance of the athletes. OBJECTIVE: :
To propose the use of climatologic data (modeled wet-bulb globe temperature [WBGT]) in making athletic-event management decisions for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games and the 2022 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup. DESIGN: :
Descriptive study. SETTING: :
Hourly meteorologic input data for a WBGT model were obtained from the second Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications for Japan (Yokohama and Saitama) and Qatar (Doha and Al-Daayen). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): :
The pattern of hourly WBGT and percentage of hours between 30°C and 32°C and exceeding 32°C WBGT during the expected competition periods for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Japan and the scheduled (November, December) and traditional (June, July) periods of the World Cup games in Qatar. RESULTS: :
The WBGT during the 2020 Olympic football tournament in Japan may exceed 30°C in 40% to 50% of the late mornings and early afternoons. The shift in tournament timing for the 2022 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup in Qatar from the summer to late fall will reduce the exposure to ≥30°C WBGT to null. CONCLUSIONS: :
Directors of mass sporting events should consider using climatologic data in their organizational decision making to assess the potential heat illness risk and to implement risk-mitigation plans.
… “Another thing I’ve come around to is the value of rest. That includes the time you spend in the clubhouse. I think that showing up at one o’clock for a seven o’clock is detrimental for a lot of players. Not physically, but mentally. The drain of just sitting there. Hey, show up at four o’clock. Get your rest at home. Or go out and enjoy the city. Don’t come to the ballpark and sit around, looking at each other. Break the monotony.
“Workloads… you wouldn’t believe how many swings some guys take in the cage. We need to be smarter about managing workloads. Joe Maddon does it. I talked to Alex Cora today, and they’re not taking BP. Ten years ago, if we didn’t take BP, or if we didn’t go out there take ground balls, I almost felt like we weren’t prepared for the game. Now I’ve come around to the value of rest.
“How often you’re getting guys up in the bullpen…when you ask a pitcher if he’s OK to go today, he’s always going to tell you yes. You believe some of them — at least until they prove you wrong — but with some guys you have to say, ‘Today you’re not going to pitch.
Injury rates in 12 U.S. men’s college sports and 5 U.S. boys’ high school sports are examined in this article. The sports are categorized as “contact” or “noncontact,” and differences in injury rates between the two are examined. Injury rates in the contact sports are considerably higher than those in the noncontact sports, and they are on average more severe. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the contact sports were changed to have injury rates similar to those in the noncontact sports. The estimated college savings are 48,100 fewer injuries per year and 5,900 fewer healthy years lost-to-injury per year. The estimated high school savings are 568,600 fewer injuries per year and 92,000 fewer healthy years lost-to-injury per year. For concussions, the savings are 6,900 per year for college and 161,400 per year for high school. The estimated dollar value (in 2015 dollars) of the total injury savings is between US$433 million and US$1.5 billion per year for college and between US$5.1 billion and US$18.4 billion per year for high school.
In a four month spell between March and July this year, three new MLS attendance records were set – each of them for an Atlanta United game. In fact, all five of MLS’s record attendances have been for Atlanta United games. But their impact on North American football cannot be quantified in numbers alone.
In just two years, Atlanta United have changed the landscape in MLS. There’s a good chance you’ve seen the scenes. They bounce around social media every so often: the Tifos, the flags, the Icelandic Thunderclap which has been adopted by the club’s supporters. But on the field, too, Atlanta United have set a precedent. That is down, in no small part, to the work of Lucy Rushton.
She is the head of technical recruitment and analysis who has helped to pull together the most dynamic, exciting and entertaining team in MLS. In Josef Martinez, Atlanta United boast the league top goalscorer. In Miguel Almiron, they have the league’s most creative playmaker. And in Tata Martino, they are coached by a former Argentina and Barcelona manager.
