… After going 8-7 on tour through April, Stephens made a strong run in her first tournament with Groeneveld — to the semifinals of the Madrid Open. She then lost in her opening round at the Italian Open in three sets to the eventual runner-up, Johanna Konta.
“For me, my season is starting now,” Stephens said in an interview in Madrid. “I kind of had a rocky first four months of the year, and I’m just kind of getting it going now.”
Stephens, one of the game’s great and most unpredictable talents, has experienced extreme momentum swings. In the late summer of 2017, she came back from a long injury layoff to win the United States Open. She then lost eight straight singles matches before emerging from her funk last spring, winning the Miami Open and reaching the final of the French Open.
… If the book on Weaver was written while he was still in college, it’s a safe bet that he’s had time to read that book. He has worked towards developing a better breaking ball more or less every offseason of his pro career, and 2019 was no exception. This time, though, he had technological help. He bought a Rapsodo, a portable pitch-tracking camera, and used it to work on his curve. He took his cutter (or is it a slider?) out of mothballs, telling David Laurila he was picking up the hybrid pitch after years of being mainly fastball/change/curve.
Still, it’s one thing to decide you’re going to throw two new pitches and another entirely to actually follow through on that. Weaver’s work with the Rapsodo was eye-opening — it completely changed his curveball.
Sunglasses shield your eyes from the infrared lights that give oxygen to your body’s cells. Ugg boots, rubber gloves and shorts are the only protection from freezing temperatures as cold as minus 200 degrees. Then comes the sensory deprivation of floating pitch black in 1,000 pounds of Epsom salt while meditation music plays.
And that’s just at work. At home is a custom-made mattress designed to get just the right amount of sleep.
Massage tables, zero gravity chairs, a laser-therapy table that looks like a tanning bed, a cryotherapy chamber and giant float pods make up the Washington Redskins’ state-of-the-art rest and recovery room.
More coaches with indoor football experience are climbing the ranks in the NFL, in an era when more plays from far-flung corners of the football world are trickling up to the top level.
When Liverpool take to the field in Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium for the Champions League final, the temperature is forecast to be a roasting 27C in bright sunshine.
But whereas most of us would look to head to the bar or the beach in those conditions, the men in red instead face 90 or 120 minutes of unceasing effort against a difficult opponent in Tottenham , where the smallest margins could have a big impact.
That’s why their hot weather training camp in Marbella makes perfect sense – especially with Spurs choosing to stay at home .
The weather is sunny and between 22-27C in Spain, closely replicating the conditions they will face in the final, compared to 15C and overcast back here.
Barry Drust, a professor in Applied Exercise Physiology at Liverpool John Moores University, says the body has to behave differently to cope with any rise in temperature – even before exercise.
… When the players agreed that their batting practice and games had little in common, Albert changed things up to replicate game situations: Coaches wheeled the L-screen closer to the plate, and pitching machines spewed high-velocity fastballs and breaking pitches — sometimes side by side — as well as from different angles.
The players started breaking so many bats in practice — which rarely happened in their previous iteration of B.P. — that the custodian stopped emptying the barrel of wooden shards. The changes implemented by Albert soon trickled up the system all the way to the Astros’ major league club.
“B.P. seemed like the hardest thing in the world,” said infielder Tyler Wolfe, who played in the Astros’ farm system in 2016 and 2017. “Before that, I thought the game was always pretty tough. Then we would take B.P. like that, and the game almost seemed easier after that.”
Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are strongly related to physical activity (PA) in childhood and beyond. To develop FMS, resistance training (RT) may be a favourable intervention strategy. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to systematically examine the effect of RT interventions on FMS in youth. Methods
Meta-analysis followed the PRISMA guidelines (Prospero registration number CRD42016038365). Electronic literature databases were searched from the year of their inception up to and including June 2017. The search strategy aimed to return studies that included product and process-oriented measures as a means of assessing FMS. Studies from English language peer-reviewed published articles that examined the effect of RT on indicators of FMS in youth, with participants of school age (5–18 years) were included. Results
Thirty-three data sets were included exploring five outcomes related to FMS. Studies included only reported product-oriented outcomes. Significant intervention effects were identified for: sprint (Hedges’ g = 0.292, 95% CI 0.017 to 0.567, P = 0.038), squat jump (Hedges’ g = 0.730, 95% CI 0.374 to 1.085, P = < 0.001), standing long jump (Hedges’ g = 0.298, 95% CI 0.096 to 0.499, P = 0.004), throw (Hedges’ g = 0.405, 95% CI 0.094 to 0.717, P = 0.011) and vertical jump (Hedges’ g = 0.407, 95% CI 0.251 to 0.564, P = < 0.001). There was variable quality of studies, with 33.3% being classified as ‘strong’.
Conclusion
RT has a positive impact on indicators of FMS in youth but more high-quality studies should be conducted to further investigate the role RT may play in the development of FMS. Additionally, to more comprehensively evaluate the impact of RT on FMS, there is a need for FMS assessments that measure both process- and product-oriented outcomes. [full text]
Introduction: The current study analysed the impact of spatial occlusion training on control and pass accuracy in football. Occlusion was achieved using goggles that removed the sight of the lower limbs and football as it was projected towards the participants.
Methods: Fifteen skilled male football players were randomly assigned to one of three groups; Occlusion, Practice and Control. Participants were required to control a projected football, before passing it to one of two designated targets, while concurrently identifying a series of randomly generated numbers. Pass direction was determined by a directional arrow that accompanied each number, which coincided with the football release. The study design consisted of a pre-test, training intervention (400 trials), post-test and 2-day retention test. The performance was evaluated via three variables: outcome error, control error and number call error.
Results: The results demonstrated a significant decrease in outcome error (p < 0.05) and number call error (p < 0.05) for the Occlusion group from pre-test to post and retention test. No significant decrease was experienced from post-test to retention test (p> 0.05), demonstrating a learning effect.
Conclusion: This suggests that reducing visual information during training may have a positive impact on performance once full visual conditions are restored.
… The ear is like a biological equivalent of a USB port. It is unparalleled not only as a point for “writing” to the brain, as happens when our earbuds transmit the sounds of our favorite music, but also for “reading” from the brain. Soon, wearable devices that tuck into our ears—I call them hearables—will monitor our biological signals to reveal when we are emotionally stressed and when our brains are being overtaxed. When we are struggling to hear or understand, these devices will proactively help us focus on the sounds we want to hear. They’ll also reduce the sounds that cause us stress, and even connect to other devices around us, like thermostats and lighting controls, to let us feel more at ease in our surroundings. They will be a technology that is truly empathetic—a goal I have been working toward as chief scientist at Dolby Laboratories and an adjunct professor at Stanford University.
How will future generations of hearables make life better? I’ve envisioned many scenarios, but here are four to get things started.
The 1st conference of the Israeli Olympic Sports Research Center will take place at Technion on May 15 with the participation of senior researchers from Israel and around the world
How can technologies used to test the characteristics of aircraft wings be utilized to assist the Israeli windsurfing team?
Running a marathon in less than two hours – is this only a physiological challenge? New developments in the field of footwear and nutrition will soon provide the answer.
Can mathematical models help coaches reduce the number of disqualifications in the long jump and triple jump events?
3D printers, a bionic hand and artificial intelligence – from the world of medicine to the world of sports.
Background: Activity trackers are now ubiquitous in certain populations, with potential applications for health promotion and monitoring and chronic disease management. Understanding the accuracy of this technology is critical to the appropriate and productive use of wearables in health research. Although other peer-reviewed validations have examined other features (eg, steps and heart rate), no published studies to date have addressed the accuracy of automatic activity type detection and duration accuracy in wearable trackers.
Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the ability of 4 commercially available wearable activity trackers (Fitbits Flex 2, Fitbit Alta HR, Fitbit Charge 2, and Garmin Vívosmart HR), in a controlled setting, to correctly and automatically identify the type and duration of the physical activity being performed.
Methods: A total of 8 activity types, including walking and running (on both a treadmill and outdoors), a run embedded in walking bouts, elliptical use, outdoor biking, and pool lap swimming, were tested by 28 to 34 healthy adult participants (69 total participants who participated in some to all activity types). Actual activity type and duration were recorded by study personnel and compared with tracker data using descriptive statistics and mean absolute percent error (MAPE).
Results: The proportion of trials in which the activity type was correctly identified was 93% to 97% (depending on the tracker) for treadmill walking, 93% to 100% for treadmill running, 36% to 62% for treadmill running when preceded and followed by a walk, 97% to 100% for outdoor walking, 100% for outdoor running, 3% to 97% for using an elliptical, 44% to 97% for biking, and 87.5% for swimming. When activities were correctly identified, the MAPE of the detected duration versus the actual activity duration was between 7% and 7.9% for treadmill walking, 8.7% and 144.8% for treadmill running, 23.6% and 28.9% for treadmill running when preceded and followed by a walk, 4.9% and 11.8% for outdoor walking, 5.6% and 9.6% for outdoor running, 9.7% and 13% for using an elliptical, 9.5% and 17.7% for biking, and was 26.9% for swimming.
Conclusions: In a controlled setting, wearable activity trackers provide accurate recognition of the type of some common physical activities, especially outdoor walking and running and walking on a treadmill. The accuracy of measurement of activity duration varied considerably by activity type and tracker model and was poor for complex sets of activity, such as a run embedded within 2 walking segments. [full text]
Forty Kansas Athletics employees specializing in sports medicine are now reporting to actual doctors and medical professionals instead of KU administrators.
Through a collaboration with The University of Kansas Health System and LMH Health, Kansas Athletics on Wednesday morning announced the launch of Kansas Team Health, a third-party healthcare group that will be charged not only with providing KU’s student-athletes with the best care possible but also with overseeing the practices and procedures utilized by KU’s sports medicine professionals.
The new model, which impacts KU employees in the fields of strength and conditioning, training, nutrition and mental health, went into place on May 1 and, according to a news release, is believed to be the first of its kind in major college athletics to incorporate strength and conditioning into the model.
… “Since a very young age, I didn’t like the separation in a team between young players and older players, [or] players who have accomplished something or players that are just coming into the league,” [Zdeno] Chara told reporters in Boston this week. “I don’t like to use the word ‘rookie.’ They are our teammates. I just don’t like to separate. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. Once you’re a team, you’re a team regardless of the age, or accomplishments. We have to treat each other with respect and the same way.”
With deference to Chara, there are no “rookie” references in this article. However, it is a compelling exercise to dissect the makeup of both Stanley Cup Final teams. Where do the players come from and, perhaps just as important, how did they end up on the roster? While many hockey players don’t see nationality — often, they just see personality — it’s interesting to note the Blues are a decidedly more Canadian roster, while Boston skews American. Here are some other notes that we found.
The New York Times Magazine, Bruce Schoenfeld from
… In soccer, pure chance can influence outcomes to a much greater extent than in other sports. Goals are relatively rare, fewer than three per game in England’s Premier League. So whether a ball ricochets into the net or misses it by a few inches has, on average, far more of an effect upon the final result than whether, say, a potential home run in baseball lands fair or foul or an N.F.L. running back grinds out a first down. Graham brought up another game to Klopp, against Hannover a month later. The statistics were weighted even more heavily in Dortmund’s favor: 18 shots to seven, 55 balls into the box compared with 13, 11 successful crosses from the wing to three. “You lost, 1-0,” he said. “But you created double the chances —”
Klopp practically shouted. “Did you see that game?”
“No, no, it’s just …”
“We killed them! I’ve never seen anything like it. We should have won. Ah, you saw that!”