Everson Griffen offered an introspective look at his life over the past few months and discussed the difficulties that came with returning to the field while dealing with personal issues related to his mental health.
At the start of offseason workouts, the Minnesota Vikings defensive end said he’s in a place where he finally feels like himself again after a “rough year.” Griffen was hospitalized when concerns arose over his well-being last September, which led to him miss five weeks of the 2018 season.
“It’s a progression each and every day,” Griffen said Tuesday. “I’m taking it day by day, staying consistent with my life outside of football with those matters and stuff like that, and I’m happy. I’m happy.
… As the Bucks launch what they hope will be a deep playoff run, Lopez’s shooting is already making an impact. In Game 1 of their first-round playoff series against the Detroit Pistons, Lopez scored 14 points and hit two 3-pointers in just 25 minutes. Detroit center Andre Drummond struggled to find an effective defensive role against Milwaukee’s spread offense. At times, Pistons coach Dwane Casey tried to adjust by moving Drummond off Lopez and onto Antetokounmpo, a less proven shooting threat.
“He has spaced the floor so well for us all season long,” Antetokounmpo said. “He has been hitting 3s and he is making defenses adjust to him.
Des Linden admits two truths about her 2018 Boston Marathon win, which made her the only American woman to earn the title in more than three decades. One: She can barely watch a replay of her victory. And two: It shifted her focus from winning to having fun. With that mindset, she’ll toe the Boston Marathon starting line once again on April 15.
Furthermore caught up with the two-time Olympian ahead of the race to talk bourbon (a staple), 1K repeats (dreadful and aggressive), and what’s next (up in the air).
FC Barcelona and Allianz SE, one of the global leading insurance companies and longtime Global Partner of the Club, will jointly develop innovative projects which will impact on the health and wellbeing of athletes and inturn the wider society. This first project between the Barça Innovation Hub and Allianz SE will analyse the link between sleep quality with physical performance, as well as sports performance.
In this pioneering scientific project, the sleep experience of FC Barcelona athletes will be documented through personalised studies and records – with the objective to measure the possible impact sleep has on their performance and health. The study, which will last approximately six months, will collect qualitative sleep data of 600 young athletes from different sections of the Club. Also, an individualised intense study of 50 of these athletes will be conducted.
The whole world is exhausted. And it’s killing us.
But particularly me. As I write this, I’m at TED 2019 in Vancouver, which is a weeklong marathon of talks and workshops and coffee meetings and experiences and demos and late-night trivia contests and networking, networking, networking. Meanwhile, I’m sick as a dog with a virus I caught from my 3-year-old, I’m on deadline for what feels like a bazillion stories, and I’m pregnant, which means I need coffee but can’t have too much, and need sleep but can only lay on my left side, and can’t breathe without sitting propped up with a pillow anyway, since I can’t safely take any cold medication.
According to neuroscientist Matthew Walker, I’m doing serious damage to my health—and life—by not sleeping enough.
… One of the worst areas for the gender data gap is sport science. In 2014, the European Journal of Sport Science published a paper entitled: “Where are all the female participants in Sports and Exercise Medicine research?” Well, wherever they are, they certainly are not in the research, the study concluded. A 2016 review found the same problem: 27 per cent of studies were all-male, while for the 73 per cent of studies that involved at least some women, “some” was the operative word.
The March 2016 issue of the Journal of Sports Sciences had a “dismal” female participation rate of only 12 per cent.
This leaves researchers who do take an interest in women complaining of a “limited understanding” and an “inadequate number of published studies”. There is “much less information” on female bodies and “several fundamental questions remain unanswered”. A perennial cry of the sports scientist when it comes to women is: “We just don’t know.”
On Monday April 15th, 2019, Caroline Shannon crossed the Boston Marathon finish line with an official time of 3:01:56 (6:57/mile), a personal best out of the four marathons she’s run. Shannon, a professional architect and WHOOP member, credits tapering and getting more sleep for a perfectly executed race. “I felt more prepared than ever with my training,” she said.
On top of her three-minute PR, this was Shannon’s first year running a marathon with WHOOP by her side. We decided to take a closer look at her data before, during, and afterwards to see how prepared her body was and how her exertion progressed along the course.
Swimming Australia and the University of Sydney have partnered on a world-first nation-wide research project, H2Grow.
The project is aimed at investigating the impact growth spurts and different rates of development in adolescence have on performance and ongoing involvement in swimming, in an effort to get more young swimmers interested in elite level competition.
University of Sydney project lead associate professor, Stephen Cobley, said this research will help aid in decision-making for young swimmers and coaches.
Researchers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada, have characterized the structure of normal sleep. The findings of the study “Normal Polysomnography Parameters in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” have been published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
“Many of us believe that as we age, we lose sleep,” says Mark Boulos, MD, sleep neurologist at Sunnybrook and the study’s lead author, in a release. “What we discovered is that as people get older, their sleep doesn’t change dramatically.”
Brian Murray, MD, head of neurology at Sunnybrook, conceptualized the study. He says, “One very interesting finding is that the percentage of deep and dreaming sleep remains remarkably constant in healthy people over their lifespan.”
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and the Manchester United staff will assess the club’s physical conditioning in the summer, as there is a concern that the season’s approach has led to the loss of energy and drop in performance level over the past few weeks. … There are therefore likely to be changes to the approach in the summer, as Solskjaer alters their physical conditioning.
Premier League stars, Raheem Sterling and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain have each invested more than £1M ($1.3M) in STATSports, considered to be the global leader in wearable tech and performance analysis tracking equipment and software.
University of Wollongong (AU), Media Releases from
Advanced robotics sensitive touch or next-generation wearable devices with sophisticated sensing capabilities could soon be possible following the development of a rubber that combines flexibility with high electrical conductivity.
The new smart composite material, developed by researchers at the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, shows properties that have not previously been observed: it increases in electrical conductivity as it is deformed, especially when elongated.
Elastic materials, such as rubbers, are sought after in robotics and wearable technology because they are inherently flexible, and can be easily modified to suit a particular need.
To make them electrically conductive, a conductive filler, such as iron particles, is added to form a composite material.
Researchers from AMBER, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering, at Trinity College Dublin, in collaboration with iForm, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Manufacturing, at University College Dublin have today announced how the development of a new material, called MXene inks, will greatly aid the development of the next generation of smart wearable devices – otherwise known as e-wearables and e-textiles.
In a new study, published in Nature Communications a leading international science journal, Professor Valeria Nicolosi, AMBER and iForm lead Investigator on the project have announced how this new material could address the issue of energy supply for the smart wearable market. The smart wearable market has seen significant growth of late and is due to grow to $51 Billion by 2022. However, the development of such e-wearables has so far been greatly over shadowed by the power supply issue, as a traditional battery is unsustainable and not convenient.
… It was early in the 2010 season and the Pistons were beset by a rash of ankle injuries.
Rip Hamilton, Ben Gordon and Will Bynum all suffered serious ankle sprains.
Pistons medical consultant Arnie Kander, then the strength and condition coach, figured the culprit was a certain brand of shoe, which featured a lighter design, which is preferred by players — not so much by trainers or medical staff.
Onera Health, an at-home sleep diagnostics startup spun out of research center imec, has raised $9.3 million in Series A funding. The round led by Jazz Pharmaceuticals and imec.xpand, with additional participation from imec, BOM and other unnamed investors. … Onera’s in-development diagnostic platform is centered on disposable monitor patches. The product is pitched as an alternative to bulky clinical sensors, as the patches are unobtrusive and can be applied and worn at home.
At first glance, the University of Pittsburgh Neuromuscular Research Lab seems more like a gym than a laboratory. Treadmills, stationary bikes, weight racks and kettlebells all line the walls of the lab, which sits in a sports medicine hub of Pittsburgh. Just a few steps away, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Rooney Sports Complex welcomes the Steelers to practice and train.
But the Bod Pod, underwater treadmills, and an array of experiments hint that these workout machines aren’t used for regular exercise. Instead, they’re measuring warrior performance – the performance of military personnel. NMRL is also Pitt’s Warrior Human Performance Research Center. The researchers strive to optimize the performance of those who are quite literally human warriors: military personnel, athletes and other active populations.
“In sport, it’s the ones that shout the loudest that get noticed and get what they need. For someone with mental health issues who suffers in silence, the help never seeks them out.”
While many high-profile athletes have chosen to speak out recently about their experiences of mental health problems, a new report has been hearing about experiences in grassroots sport.
Football coach Melanie Timberlake was one of 1,200 people to respond to the nationwide study looking into mental health across sport.
… [James] Gladstone explained an oblique strain as a “micro tear of the muscle fibers.”
“When they tear, they create a pretty intense reaction,” he continued, “which involves pain and then bleeding and then the whole healing process begins.”
Gladstone said the key to the early stages of Judge’s recovery will be rest followed by stretching.
… Despite Hazrati’s diagnosis, Kelli [Ewen] was convinced that her husband had had CTE. She had sections of Ewen’s brain sent from the Canadian Concussion Centre to Boston, so a world-leading expert on CTE, Ann McKee, could retest them. In late 2018, McKee announced her own conclusions from the tests: Todd had, in fact, had CTE.
In this short documentary from The Atlantic, Kelli Ewen recounts the role her late husband played in the sport of hockey before and after his death.
Physically, when the body is under “stress” levels of cortisol rise. When this is chronic, it prevents the pituitary gland from working effectively, leading to hormonal disturbances that have serious negative consequences.(1-3) The more obsessive and restrictive an athlete becomes, the more the workings of neurotransmitters are affected, which in turn structurally affects the brain. In addition to this, there is a heightened sense of anxiety, which leaves an individual feeling physically and mentally uncomfortable. In an attempt to control and contain these emotions, the individual’s behaviours become even more rigid and controlled.(4)
… The Times crunched the numbers and found that, aside from being catchy and alliterative, Lawler’s Law turned out to be remarkably accurate. Over the last 23 years, among more than 27,000 NBA games, the first team to reach 100 won 94% of the time.
The reliability of Lawler’s Law appeals even to those devoted to using numbers to find out why teams win.
“When you’re doing analytics, you want to be as accurate as you can be but also as simple as you can be,” said Dean Oliver, a statistician who pioneered advanced analysis of basketball data and worked for multiple NBA teams. “You never ignore either one of them. The simplicity of [Lawler’s Law] is what’s good.”
“Big Data is the future of football. Not because you are going to buy a player based on the data, but because it reduces the risk.”
Big Data refers to very large data sets that can be used to reveal patterns and trends. Liverpool have a four-strong research team headed by Ian Graham that specialises in research and development, modelling, machine learning and analysis.
The members of the team have PhDs in maths and physics from institutions such as Harvard and Cambridge University. Last year, Arsenal hired Russian data scientist Mikhail Zhilkin, who has a Masters in physics and maths and had previously helped to develop Candy Crush games.
… Video review can deflate a thrilling moment. It can lengthen a game and disrupt its pace of play. Yet, vitally, it also leads to more accurate calls and fair officiating. It helps ensure the pain of a suspect call won’t linger.
This dichotomy is nothing new and is debated in arenas, coaches meetings, living rooms and especially within NCAA playing rules committees, where coaches and athletics administrators gather to try to chart the best course for their sports. So far, the quest for fairness has carried the day: Seventeen of the NCAA’s 24 sports stop competition while officials review replays, though some make the allowance only during postseason play.
But with video replay technology perpetually advancing and its ability to capture the truth having far surpassed the human eye’s, how much is too much? It is costly and nearly impossible to standardize. As schools and conferences try to keep pace with that technology and with each other, they must confront an emerging dilemma: Are we helping or hindering the games we are trying to improve?
Sleep scientist Matthew Walker has observed that “human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain.” We stay up late to watch our favorite TV shows. We wake up early to get to work or school on time. And twice a year we change our clocks, to the bewilderment of our circadian rhythms.
We also set up conflicts between our natural and social clocks in other, less obvious ways, a fact underscored in research published this month in the Journal of Health Economics. It turns out, the study found, that living on the wrong side of a time zone’s boundary can have negative consequences on a person’s health and wallet.
The phrase “one-year wonder” is not often used as a term of endearment in scouting circles. It’s a saying that’s used to describe a player who has one year of production that stands out from the rest of their career. College players with this type of career arc can be difficult evaluations for NFL teams as they try to determine if the breakout season is a sign of things to come or an anomaly. Thankfully when it comes to Quarterback evaluations there are typically a few years of game tape to digest. However, every so often teams are left to evaluate quarterbacks with just one-year of starting experience. Ryan Dunleavy of NJ.com wrote an article stating that since 2000, there have only been three quarterbacks selected in the first round who have only been one-year collegiate starters – Mitchell Trubisky, Cam Newton, and Mark Sanchez. Next week that number is expected to grow to five as Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray and Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins are expected to be selected early.
Are there any similarities to take away from this pool of players? On the surface, all five players put up terrific production and four of the five even led their school to at least a dozen wins in their lone year under center. On the flipside, their size and play style fits all across the QB spectrum.
Hockey players are conditioned to think that winning the Stanley Cup means going through the best teams to be the best team.
That doesn’t mean they are blind to some of the inequalities of the NHL’s current divisional playoff format. An Associated Press/Canadian Press survey of NHLPA representatives from all 31 teams shows that almost half favor changing the format — and most of those support going back to seeding the Eastern and Western conferences 1 through 8, the structure that was used from 1994-2013.
This is the sixth playoffs where each division’s top three teams and a wild card are bracketed together with no reseeding by round.
… A rookie selected in this month’s W.N.B.A. draft will make $41,265 to $53,537 in base salary, and nobody in the league will earn a base salary of as much as $120,000 this coming season.
Because of that, many of the 144 players in the W.N.B.A. maximize their earning window by heading to Europe and Asia, where independent owners, free of salary caps, can offer them lucrative opportunities.
There is a price to pay, however: endless seasons bleeding into one another; a physical, psychological and emotional toll; and, the players say, a heightened risk of injury.
… The larger truth, of course, is that the difference in position players is so small in baseball that the difference between average or good players and great players is almost non-existent in any one game. It doesn’t tell us how well the Yankees will survive overall with the losses due to injury.
To get an idea of how much health is responsible for changing the outlook, I ran two sets of ZiPS projections, one with the Yankees and the current assumptions for injuries and one if the Yankees suddenly got healthy, at least healthy enough to match the preseason playing time assumptions from this point on.
… So how does data ‘live’ at Manchester City and how is its use evolving over time? [Nick] Chadd, who has been at City since 2016, tells the Leaders Performance Institute that it remains a case of data informing coach intuition, integrating players into your process, and adopting a fully aligned approach across all coaches at the Academy.