Rain started falling at the Surprise Recreation Campus around 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning, which meant that Texas Rangers outfielder Willie Calhoun’s morning run with assistant coach Jayce Tingler would have to be moved indoors.
And it led to a competition with two others who have joined the every-other-day running club – general manager Jon Daniels and assistant GM Mike Daly.
“Our goal is for all our guys to look like me physically,” Daniels said.
It’s not as comical as it might seem. Daly ran the 2017 New York City Marathon, and Daniels is part of the Orangetheory Fitness craze. They, along with others in the front office, work out before sunrise and before the players need the weight room.
… After two years at A&M, Middleton was a solid first-round NBA prospect. Turgeon convinced him to stay another year. That May, Turgeon took the University of Maryland job. A&M hired Billy Kennedy to replace him.
Kennedy and Middleton never clicked. Middleton tore the meniscus in his right knee in early November. He returned a month later but wasn’t the same. “He was skittish,” Kennedy says. “He played not to get hurt.”
His draft stock fell. Scouts — the Thunder were especially interested, sources say — heard rumblings Middleton was soft.
Detroit picked him 39th in 2012 — nine picks after Middleton and his father, devastated at falling out of the first round, had stopped watching. “I didn’t see soft,” says Joe Dumars, then the Pistons’ GM. “I saw a guy who played at his own pace.”
With a few hours to kill during a recent layover in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Kyle Wiltjer was wondering aloud.
The former Gonzaga forward was about to bend his six-foot-10 frame onto yet another transatlantic flight to play for Canada’s men’s basketball team in its final window of FIBA World Cup qualifying in St. John’s, N.L.
Wiltjer was travelling from Malaga, Spain. Others were boarding flights in Saint Petersburg and Kazan, Russia. Still others had put down whatever they were doing to hop on flights in Buenos Aires; Istanbul; Zwolle, Netherlands; Varese, Italy; Podgorica, Montenegro; and Weibenfels, Germany.
Just how many air miles, Wiltjer wondered, has Canada’s men’s basketball team logged on its very long World Cup qualifying road?
… “It’s so wild now,” says Ertz of her current training schedule with the USWNT, which began in December and involves an average of three and a half hours of training every day, six days a week. These 20-plus-hour weeks include “a ton” of running (either outside or on the treadmill), weightlifting, and technical soccer drills, plus recovery-focused activities, like yoga and Pilates.
When it comes to weight training, Ertz doesn’t typically lift super heavy, but instead focuses on targeting certain muscles. “It’s really important to hit the big muscles, but a lot of people forget the smaller muscles, which are just as important, especially in such a multi-dimensional sport where you are running up and down in every direction,” she explains. To target these smaller muscles, particularly the stabilizing muscles in the lower half of her body, Ertz does various movements on a BOSU ball.
She also loves band work and single-leg movements, like single-leg squats and lunges, to improve stability in her lower half and core. Because having a strong core is so important in soccer (it’s key for stability, strength, power, and coordination), Ertz does lots of toe touches, standard crunches, and bicycle crunches, as well as classic core moves with a twist, like planks with step-outs or planks on an exercise ball.
The New England Patriots’ most athletic player only saw the field for 45 total snaps in 2018. That could change next season.
With a full offseason under his belt, defensive back Obi Melifonwu could take on a much greater role in 2019 if he impresses in training camp and the preseason.
The Patriots picked up Melifonwu after he was released from the Oakland Raiders’ injured reserve list. Melifonwu signed a two-year contract with the Patriots but appeared in just two games, playing 20 defensive snaps and 25 more on special teams. He recorded three tackles. The Grafton, Mass.-native also played three special teams snaps in the Patriots’ AFC Championship Game win over the Kansas City Chiefs. He had one tackle in that playoff performance.
National Post, The Canadian Press, Donna Spencer from
Ask one question about the Canada Games and NHL players perk up.
“It was one of the first times you get free gear,” Toronto Maple Leafs veteran Patrick Marleau stated.
Buffalo Sabres forward Sam Reinhart recalled he and his B.C. teammates were so buzzed about winning hockey gold at the 2011 Canada Games in Halifax, they couldn’t sleep.
“We ended up pulling an all-nighter,” Reinhart said.
From learning how to cook to being more accountable for his mistakes, Quinn Hughes has been making the most of his time at Michigan to prepare for what’s waiting for him at the next level.
Dr. Matthew Lieberman is a UCLA Social Psychology professor, founder of Resonance Inc., and the bestselling author of Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. He has published more than 200 articles/chapters, and Science magazine named him one of the “Top 50 Science Stars of Twitter.”
Dr. Lieberman discusses the evolution of the human brain and how it makes us undeniably social creatures. Indeed, we are so programmed to be social that ignoring this can come at a considerable cost to one’s happiness, health, and productivity. Dr. Lieberman also discusses how new portable forms of neuroscience may transform its application in the workplace.
Ballmer became both an investor in and client of Second Spectrum, urging the firm to not only change how fans watched Clippers games — whether on television, or the internet — but also what they watched. Both the company and Ballmer wanted graphics and animation to amplify in real-time the action taking place on the screen, much like how the computer-generated yellow first-down marker, first used in 1998, added a new dimension to football broadcasts.
By Ballmer’s first home game as owner in October 2014, fans at Staples Center were watching highlight packages on the arena scoreboard that used augmented reality to highlight why a certain play succeeded.
For Second Spectrum, it was a first step toward developing CourtVision.
… Bone had long been appreciated as much more than an inert internal scaffolding – step by step, it had been shown to be the seat of red blood cell formation, the body’s dynamic reservoir of calcium, and a tissue that, uniquely in our bodies, is constantly, actively broken down then remade. But still, the idea that it was also an endocrine organ – the definition of any organ excreting hormones – and that it played an essential role in keeping mammals trim, seemed too much. ‘It took us 10 years to accept it,’ says Karsenty. ‘It took me 10 years to accept it.’
Karsenty and others eventually confirmed that bones secrete hormones essential for an animal’s health. And with that finding, the skeleton joined a growing list of tissues shown to participate in a body-wide conversation between organs. The traditional concept of the endocrine system as a second-command system working in tandem with the nervous system – and largely directed by the brain – is being replaced with a more autonomous view of interorgan communication, one in which most, if not all, organs have a voice. Grasping the logic of a control system in which the body’s organs are both the targets of hormonal commands and the source of them is still only beginning, but the clinical implications are sure to be profound.
Some athletes demonstrate excellent dynamic stability after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture and return to sport without ACL reconstruction (ACLR) (copers). Others demonstrate persistent instability despite rehabilitation (noncopers) and require surgical stabilization. Testing to determine coper classification can identify potential copers early after rupture. It is unclear how coper classification changes after a brief intervention and how early classification relates to long-term outcomes. Purpose:
(1) To evaluate the consistency of early coper classification (potential coper vs noncoper) before and after progressive neuromuscular and strength training (NMST) among athletes early after acute ACL rupture and (2) to evaluate the association of early coper classification with 2-year success after ACL rupture. Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods:
This was a prospective analysis from the Delaware-Oslo ACL Cohort Study, composed of athletes consecutively enrolled early after ACL rupture. Participants (n = 271) were tested and classified as potential copers or noncopers according to established criteria before and after a 10-session NMST program. Success 2 years after ACLR or nonoperative rehabilitation was defined as meeting or exceeding sex- and age-matched norms for knee function, no ACL graft rupture, and ≤1 episode of giving way within the previous year. The McNemar test evaluated changes in coper classification pre- to posttraining. Logistic regression adjusted for baseline characteristics was used to evaluate the association of early coper classification and surgical status with 2-year success. Results:
Of 300 athletes enrolled, 271 (90%) completed the posttraining data collection, and 219 (73%) returned for the 2-year follow-up. The coper classifications were different between time points: nearly half of those classified initially as noncopers became potential copers (P < .001). At the 2-year follow-up, 66% of the ACLR group and 74% of the nonoperative group were successful. Athletes who were potential copers posttraining and chose ACLR or nonoperative rehabilitation had 2.7 (95% CI, 1.3-5.6) and 2.9 (95% CI, 1.2-7.2) times the odds of success, respectively, as compared with noncopers who chose ACLR.
Conclusion:
Coper classification improved after NMST; more athletes became potential copers. Athletes who were potential copers after NMST were more likely to succeed 2 years later regardless of whether they had surgery, strongly supporting the addition of NMST before ACLR. Persistent noncopers fared poorly, indicating that more intensive rehabilitation may be needed.
Former Clemson baseball player Grant Cox has filed a lawsuit alleging medical malpractice and negligence against the university and its sports medicine department.
The lawsuit claims that during the treatment of an injury Cox suffered in 2016 Clemson willfully and wantonly “fell below the accepted standard of care for a reasonably prudent athletic program.”
The suit asserts that Clemson’s improper actions and inaction cost Cox his baseball career and facilitated the physical ailments and inconveniences he still endures.
With 15 Premier League clubs now employing a Sporting Director or equivalent, the question is no longer why the post is important, but rather how it can be executed effectively.
In an article for TGG last year, I identified the Sporting Director as one of five key roles transforming high-performance sport. Most people agree that this person is responsible for organising a club around an overarching vision and strategy.
What exactly does that mean though? And what capabilities are required to make the vision more than an unrealised statement of intent? That’s something I’ll explore further here.
Major League Baseball is eager to speed up our national pastime. In the past few offseasons, MLB has tried to combat the slowing pace of play by targeting pitching changes, intentional walks and mound visits. But another significant culprit behind the sport’s sluggish pace of play may be something that no pitch clock or simple rule change can fix: the foul ball.
The number of foul balls has increased by 11.98 percent from 1998, when baseball expanded to 30 teams, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of Baseball-Reference.com data. There were almost 14,000 more foul balls last season than there were 20 seasons earlier. In 1998, 26.5 percent of all strikes were foul balls. That share increased to a record 27.9 percent of strikes in 2017 and 27.8 percent last season, the top rates since pitch-level data was first recorded in 1988.
Overall, there were 26,313 more pitches in baseball in 2018 (724,447) than in 1998 (698,134). That’s the equivalent of adding 88 games, or roughly a week, to the schedule.