When Matthijs de Ligt eventually signs for Juventus, for a reported €80m, the consensus opinion will be that they’ve bought the best under 21 defender in the world, and a player that is likely to become the best centre back in the world. But how certain can we be that this will be the case?
How players progress over time is a fascinating subject and all the more pertinent as clubs buy younger and younger players for huge sums. The general theory on player progression over time is that they follow a fairly standard age curve, depending on their position, as shown above.
But what about the players who reached the top level in their teens – are they likely to follow a similar curve, or are they already closer to their maximum level because they matured earlier than their peers?
… It is only 13 months since Gauff was winning the junior title at the French Open and anyone who saw that will remember a young, slight girl with plenty of talent. A year on and she has grown into an athlete with speed to burn. Some of the balls she reached against Williams and Hercog almost defied belief and she moves so well her quickness rattles her opponents, who often go for broke fearing she will run them down. Serena Williams pointed out the similarities between Gauff and Venus, from the way they played to the way they move, and if Gauff is half the athlete Venus has been over two decades on tour, she will have a great career. “Very fit,” as Hercog said, succinctly. Also her powerful legs are the springboard for her serve, her smash and everything she does.
SummitDaily (CO), The Aspen Times, Austin Colbert from
… One of the questions faced was if “40 is the new 20 for pro athletes,” a question that comes up with the continued success of people like New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the timeless tennis star Roger Federer. Her answer was more or less a no, but she does believe athletes are approaching age much differently than in the past.
“We don’t have the mindset of, ‘Oh, well I just turned 40, so I can’t be an athlete anymore,’” Nelson said. “There is more efficiency. There is more knowledge. There is more wisdom and mental strength when you are 40. So it’s a totally different approach to being an athlete. So I don’t think 40s are the new 20s, but I think 40s are totally being reinvented.”
Nelson is a prime example of this. She’s continued to set the bar into her 40s, having been named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2018. Only last fall, Nelson and boyfriend Jim Morrison, another of the sport’s icons, completed a historic climb and ski of Lhotse, the fourth highest peak in the world.
San Jose Mercury News, Bay Area News Group, Elliott Almond from
… Can Rapinoe, the American co-captain, come back for a fourth World Cup?
Rapinoe’s father, Jim Rapinoe, is not as confident as his daughter about continuing at the highest level. Jim Rapinoe said the other day in Redding that he worries about Megan’s future health after she has undergone three knee surgeries.
But Rapinoe, who started Sunday after recovering from a minor hamstring muscle strain last week, is not ready to stop.
“There comes a point around your late 20s or 30s where you either get old really fast and you’re done or you change,” she said. “You switch things up and you start your second career.”
It might be impossible for KD to be the same player he was before he ruptured his Achilles tendon, but luckily for Brooklyn, the player he could become should be enough to make their big free-agency swing worth it
Former Manchester United defender Michael Clegg has been appointed as the club’s new first-team strength and power coach.
Clegg made 16 appearances for United between 1996 and 2001 and played for England Under-21s before going on to hold a similar role with Sunderland following his retirement.
Clegg wrote on Twitter: ‘It’s an honour to be back at the club I love and one of the best clubs in the world. It’s certainly the job of my dreams.’
Imagine that on the first day of a class, the instructor says, ‘Only smart people will do well in this course.’ Cue the imposter syndrome as you begin to wonder if you are smart enough to be in the course.
Unknowingly, the instructor has communicated their own fixed mindset belief about the students. The belief is that intelligence is a fixed quantity as opposed to growth mindset, where intelligence is thought to be changeable. Previous studies have found that instructor expectations for students can affect their performance, but what about the instructor’s beliefs about their students’ intelligences?
To answer this question, researchers from Indiana University looked at grades from over 600 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, representing over 15,000 students. To understand whether the instructor had fixed or growth mindset beliefs, the researchers posed two questions to the instructors that tested how much they agreed with the idea that intelligence is not something can change be changed.
RTE Brainstorm (Ireland), Orreco, Úna Newell and Georgie Bruinvels from
Women’s sport is on the rise. However, when you mention menstruation to a lot of people, male and female, they still get uncomfortable. They think it is all about blood loss and pain and that it is too personal a subject to talk about openly. But elite female athletes and coaches across the globe are starting to work with the menstrual cycle to gain a performance edge.
Crystal Palace’s players returned for testing last Thursday and Scott Guyett, the Head of Sports Science for the last nine years, was pleased their scores were in line with when they left for the summer.
“Years ago, players would come back well above their body fat thresholds,” the Australian tells TGG. “Today, that doesn’t really happen and the players’ body fat figures were very similar to what they had been at the end of last season.”
In the distant past, fat was assessed using weighing scales. Then skin fold callipers were introduced. Now, we are in the age of dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry – or DEXA, for short.
Japanese sportswear multinational Asics Corporation announced on Wednesday that it has taken an equity stake in Curv Labs, an AI technology startup based in Canada, through its investment subsidiary Asics Ventures Corporation.
… In the United States, conversations around sports-related concussions often focus on athletes who play American football. To gain insight and answers about head injuries related to the sport the rest of the world calls “football,” we spoke with Dawn Comstock, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
Comstock has spent over a decade researching sports injuries across America in an effort to make sports safer for adolescent athletes. In 2014, she was one of five experts invited by the White House to meet President Obama and speak at the Healthy Kids and Safe Sports Concussion Summit. As part of her extensive research, Comstock developed High School RIO (Reporting Information Online), the country’s first national high school sports injury surveillance system, which collects athletic trainer-reported data from a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. high schools.
… A few years ago, researchers analyzed nine years of detailed training and health records from Norway’s world-beating cross-country ski team, seeking to understand the difference between Olympic and World Championship medalists and their very-very-good-but-not-quite-podium-caliber teammates. One of the key patterns that emerged: medal winners spent an average of 14 days per year with colds and other minor infections, while also-rans averaged 22 days.
Can gelatin supplementation increase tendon and ligament strength?
Ligaments and tendons are made up from collagen protein. Collagen largely consists of the amino acids (i.e. building blocks) glycine and proline. Gelatin is the food derivative of collagen (e.g. found in gummy bears).
This study investigated the effect of a 15 g gelatin supplement (with vitamin C) on collagen mass in an engineered ligament. Subjects ingested placebo or gelatin, and performed 6 min of rope skipping. Blood samples were taken from the subjects, and this blood was added to engineered ligaments.
Do you feel like nutritionists are always changing their minds? Do you want science-based information about diet but don’t know whom or what to believe?
If you’re nodding in agreement, you’re not alone: More than 80% of Americans are befuddled.
Yet it’s a lament that’s getting quite tiring – if you’re a nutrition scientist, that is. So much so that I refocused my career to shine scientific light on today’s critical food conversations, which have profound impacts on public health and the environment. My mantra: From farm to fork, what we eat matters.