… Rafinha is no stranger to serious injury; he suffered a similar injury in September 2015 in his right knee and underwent meniscus surgery at the start of last season.
And it is the rehab he has undergone in the wake of those injuries which had conditioned Rafinha’s body to cope with another serious injury.
Daily sessions with a physiotherapist and physical trainer have helped strengthen his legs, while a strict diet has also played a role in the 25-year-old reaching the shape of his career.
This off-the-field work allowed Rafinha to manager the injury at Atletico, which he originally thought was a minor knock.
Active NFL players are subject to random drug screenings throughout the calendar year, but Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid said he’s been tested repeatedly since arriving in Charlotte.
He also says it’s not a coincidence.
Since signing with the Panthers on Sept. 27, Reid said he’s been drug tested six times — once as part of his pre-employment screening and five times as part of the NFL’s and NFL Players Association’s Policy on Performance-Enhancing Substances. Reid, currently involved in a collusion lawsuit against the NFL, received his latest notice of a random test after the team’s loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
Active NFL players are subject to random drug screenings throughout the calendar year, but Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid said he’s been tested repeatedly since arriving in Charlotte.
He also says it’s not a coincidence.
Since signing with the Panthers on Sept. 27, Reid said he’s been drug tested six times — once as part of his pre-employment screening and five times as part of the NFL’s and NFL Players Association’s Policy on Performance-Enhancing Substances. Reid, currently involved in a collusion lawsuit against the NFL, received his latest notice of a random test after the team’s loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
… ESPN surveyed several NBA executives to gauge their thoughts on Leonard through six weeks, and how he has looked after spending virtually all of last season on the sidelines due to a quad injury. And while there was some debate over whether he is all the way back to what he was before the injury, there was no disputing the fact that Leonard is, at a minimum, back to playing like one of the league’s elite players once again.
“He’s pretty much back to his old self,” Green said. “Just physicality-wise of being able to sustain back-to-backs is the only thing. … He’s fresh, he’s playing at a high level, the level he normally plays at.”
More Than An Athlete
The eight-part docuseries, produced by UNINTERRUPTED and airing on ESPN+, will follow LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s improbable journey from Akron to the global stage. Watch on ESPN+
Then Green smiled.
“I think he’s doing all right so far,” he said with a laugh.
David Fizdale says his club may have an edge over the 76ers’ rebuilding program — nicknamed “The Process’’ — because of a certain 7-foot-3 big man.
Though there’s still no definitive timetable on Kristaps Porzingis’ return from ACL surgery, Fizdale has hinted recently he will have him back this season.
“We have Kristaps in the wings,’’ Fizdale said before the New York Knicks’ 117-91 blowout loss Wednesday night. “That’s one thing a little different than what Brett [Brown, Sixers coach] went through. They were trying to figure out all those young guys. With Kristaps sitting in the wings, that could fast-track us a little more.”
… By some estimates, as much as half of the variation in objectively measured fitness can be explained by genetic and environmental factors outside your control, rather than by your exercise habits. That means some people can ace a treadmill test despite being mostly sedentary, while others fare poorly on the treadmill despite arduous workout routines – and it’s not clear who is healthier.
In a new report published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Louise de Lannoy of the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and her colleagues draw on a database of almost 30,000 people who had multiple fitness assessments at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Tex., starting in the 1970s. They identified 1,014 matched pairs of men and women who had similar age, body-mass index, and – crucially – aerobic fitness as measured in a treadmill test.
… The first thing that strikes you about Pochettino’s right-hand man is his intensity. Perez rarely breaks eye contact as he talks to football.london, his brown eyes lock on their subject. He also provides moments of real warmth and it’s these two sides to his coin that make him the perfect middle man between Pochettino and his players.
Victor Wanyama and Ryan Mason have both said the same thing about Perez. He seems to know everything about every player under his watch. He’s always there to help but there’s also nowhere to hide.
Matt Lovell, who worked for years as a nutritionist at Spurs, once said of Perez: “He’s a lovely fella, but he’s fierce.”
… What Comes First – High Training Loads or the Robust Athlete?
Along with the health factors that influence load capacity, various physical qualities have also been shown to moderate the relationship between training load and injury. For example, tolerance to ‘spikes’ in training load are moderated by aerobic fitness and lower-body strength; athletes with well-developed physical qualities have a reduced risk of injury, while at the same increase in load, athletes with poorly-developed physical qualities have a greater risk of injury (10, 11). But this presents somewhat of a ‘Chicken or Egg’ problem; what comes first, load, or the ability to tolerate load? That is, the development of physical qualities (that protect against ‘spikes’ in load) requires high training loads; but tolerating high training loads requires well-developed physical qualities. Presumably, structure-specific load capacity, which is associated with a degree of physical capacity (e.g. aerobic fitness, strength) allows an individual to tolerate training load. In turn, the application of training load further develops these physical qualities, which eventually leads to sport-specific load capacity (Figure 2).
… “We use the APEX Team Series for the first team, which is the gold standard,” Beardsley told TGG. “It enables me to download 36 units after a training session, with a sophisticated platform to manage it.
“The Athlete Series comes into play when players are outside of that system. When Tendayi Darikwa went off to play for Zimbabwe during the October international break, they didn’t have GPS monitoring.
“He was able to take a vest and unit with him, which downloaded straight onto his phone. He then had that immediate feedback and could screenshot his data straight back to us so we knew what he’d done.
“And because we have a little bit longer off during the international break, other players want to go away and do some extra work.
… here are the main trends that make me believe sportstech will be the next “big thing” to revolutionize the sporting world.
More opportunities for sportstech startups joining dedicated accelerators
Accelerators are programs that mentor, educate, and finance early-stage, growth driven companies. With this support, these companies can rapidly access tools to build and develop all avenues of their business, such as their marketing plans, funding, and so on. These programs are playing an increasing role in startup communities around the world, as they help immensely with the early investment in equity stake.
High school students are less likely to opt for milk, whole fruit, or water when fruit juice is available as part of the school lunch program, which may decrease the nutritional value of what they are consuming, according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut.
The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, utilized data from three low-income, Northeast high schools in a single school year to determine whether high school students select different meal options on days when juice is available. Juice is not served as part of the National School Lunch program on all days.
… McDonald’s has sustained catastrophic brand damage in the last two decades, as the tide turns against both the industry of fast food and its brand behemoth, due to health, labor, and environmental criticisms. McDonaldisation, McJobs, McJunk, McLibel are all common currency to describe the low wages, precariousness, slick marketing and poor foods, cultural imperialism, and economically homogenizing force that McDonald’s represents.
Of course, there have been recent moves on the part of the brand to make its Happy Meals more healthy, but this step blindsides us from McDonald’s most important strategy of recent years: the dedicated way the brand builds an enchanted, seamless, full sensory experience. To put it simply, it’s hard to order those carrot sticks in a place that smells of delectable French fries and has touch screen menus that foreground big strawberry sundaes.
Further undermining its “healthy” new image, consumer research has demonstrated that adding healthy additions to what is otherwise an unhealthy eating environment actually prompts people to eat even more unhealthily.
San Antonio has remained competitive with DeMar DeRozan in Kawhi Leonard’s place, much to Gregg Popovich’s delight. But a dated style of play and a dearth of young talent have raised serious doubts about the future of one of the NBA’s model franchises.
In this special guest feature, Isaias Sudit, Founder at TROVE Predictive Data Science, proposes that an Agile Data Science platform is right for the enterprise. Agile Data Science is a collaborative process that helps clients identify the best use cases for predictive data science, i.e., those that will deliver the most value. Isaias has spent the last 20 years creating and building high growth companies.