Some of my first running role models were the mononymous Paula, Deena, and Meb. Their bold accomplishments inspired runners of all ages to chase after big things, creating a ripple effect in the sport that helped shape my running life.
I was also influenced earlier on a more immediate level by the runners in my community. I was shaped by watching my dad rise with the sun to fit in track workouts for fun, twice a week, throughout my entire childhood. I was also strongly impacted by my friend Diane Sherrer, who was at all the local road races, either running or writing about them. She became my earliest educator on all things related to women’s distance running history, and she would encourage me to chase records I didn’t even know existed.
I think we should be aware of this ability to influence one another in the running community. Though you may not be known on a first-name basis to running fans, you’re able to impact some of the runners in your sphere, and I think that’s a special phenomenon.
The 33-year-old Waukesha native has set her sights on winning the gold medal in the marathon at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. She wanted a new goal after winning the triathlon at the 2016 Rio Games.
No American woman has claimed Olympic gold in the marathon since Joan Benoit Samuelson in 1984. Jorgensen is trying to do it two years after giving birth to her son and while dealing with a recent injury setback.
“It’s been an uphill battle, I’d say,” Jorgensen said. “But one that I like. One of the reasons I switched sports, I wanted that challenge. I wanted something that keeps me motivated.”
TribLIve.com, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jerry DiPaola from
Pitt professor Chris Kline wants college students and athletes to wake up to the fact many of them are “notoriously sleep-deprived.”
Kline, an assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Health and Physical Activity, served on an NCAA Task Force on sleep and wellness in 2017, co-authoring a paper that recommends practices for student-athletes to improve sleep habits. It appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in June.
He said the task force was created when it became evident proper sleep habits and optimizing sleep can benefit athletic and academic performance and overall health.
“Other research was showing,” he continued, “that athletes don’t get enough sleep, and the sleep they do get is not high quality.”
Ever wonder what post-practice is like for a college football player? Jump into the ice tub with Michigan’s Ben Mason as he takes you through the Wolverine practice facility and shows you how they recuperate.
f, as Sadio Mane suggested, fatigue is in the head, then it helps as an elite footballer to have a psychologist attached to the team.
And a physiologist, head of medical services, a head of fitness and conditioning, medical rehabilitation and performance manager, rehab fitness coach, first team fitness coach, masseur, head of nutrition and four physios, a specialist team of 10 people in fact, who design and implement a scientific programme aimed at getting the squad in the best physical shape.
Most travel with the first team. At this level, with the fixture list and travel a successful team is forced to follow, it isn’t just necessary, it is essential. Even a brief look at Liverpool ’s schedule after the Super Cup final in Istanbul tells you that.
The Kansas City Star, Jesse Newell and Gary Bedore from
… It’s a significant loss for KU’s athletic department. Hudy is considered among the top in her field, and in 2013 she was named the National College Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year by the National Strength and Conditioning Association. She also received the “Impact Award” from the NSCA in 2017 — an honor that is given each year to an individual whose career has greatly contributed to the advancement of the industry.
The Sixers are hiring Lorena Torres Ronda, formerly the Sports Scientist Coordinator for the San Antonio Spurs, as the new Performance Director in their revamped sports science department, sources told PhillyVoice on Friday evening.
More staff announcements are expected to be made in the coming days to establish the hierarchy and overall shape of the new department, following the departures of Dr. Daniel Medina and Dr. David Martin earlier this offseason.
For now, the team has remained relatively tight-lipped on the overall structure of the department, as well as what individual roles will entail for new hires or internal promotions. But Torres Ronda is expected to be one of the leaders of Philadelphia’s reimagined athlete-care program, and more clarity on her role will come, from my understanding, fairly shortly.
University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley News from
Needle pricks not your thing? A team of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing wearable skin sensors that can detect what’s in your sweat.
They hope that one day, monitoring perspiration could bypass the need for more invasive procedures like blood draws, and provide real-time updates on health problems such as dehydration or fatigue.
In a paper appearing today (Friday, August 16) in Science Advances, the team describes a new sensor design that can be rapidly manufactured using a “roll-to-roll” processing technique that essentially prints the sensors onto a sheet of plastic like words on a newspaper.
Treating wounds often involves consuming huge clinical resources and significant pain for patients. Dr. Michael Crichton, assistant professor in biomedical engineering at Heriot-Watt University in the United Kingdom, has been awarded a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a microsensor that will detect wound healing, by monitoring the tiny, microscale mechanical changes that happen to the body’s tissue.
Crichton is working with Dr Jenna Cash, a specialist in wound healing immunology from the University of Edinburgh, on the two-year project.
“We want to understand what actually happens in a wound,” Crichton said. “Lots of research has looked at the biological properties of wounds, but we know very little about the mechanics of how wounds heal, especially at the microscale, which is where changes are happening at sub-hair width scales.”
As people strive ever harder to minutely quantify every action they do, the sensors that monitor those actions are growing lighter and less invasive. Two prototype sensors from crosstown rivals Stanford and Berkeley stick right to the skin and provide a wealth of physiological data.
Stanford’s stretchy wireless “BodyNet” isn’t just flexible in order to survive being worn on the shifting surface of the body; that flexing is where its data comes from.
The sensor is made of metallic ink laid on top of a flexible material like that in an adhesive bandage. But unlike phones and smartwatches, which use tiny accelerometers or optical tricks to track the body, this system relies on how it is itself stretched and compressed. These movements cause tiny changes in how electricity passes through the ink, changes that are relayed to a processor nearby.
… “Among many bodily fluids, sweat provides a significant amount of information about a patient’s health status and is readily accessible, making it suitable for wearable, noninvasive biosensing. Sweat contains important electrolytes, metabolites, amino acids, proteins, and hormones, which allows monitoring of metabolic diseases, physiological conditions, or a person’s intoxication level,” Stanford University researchers wrote in a paper on sweat sensors published in Science Advances.
Nextflex and GE Electronics have been working on a sensor that monitors dehydration by tracking the volume and make up of sweat. “If we’re able to track the rate at which we’re sweating, and perhaps track the concentrations in the sweat at the same time, we can really start to get a measure of what the body’s state of hydration is,” says Scott Miller, Nextflex’s director of strategic programs. The system has been tested with Navy pilots to track their hydration while working.
Taking a ‘big-data’ approach to identifying white spaces in the sports market will be vital for brands looking to stand the test of time in the rapidly expanding sports and active nutrition market, says Nick Morgan ahead of his interactive ‘build-a-bar’ session at the Sports Nutrition Summit next month.
Density is a degree of consistency measured by the quantity of mass per unit of volume—or, the proportion of one substance in relation to a whole. The concept of nutrient density, therefore, refers to the quantity of nutrients in relation to the total quantity of a particular food (usually measured by the number of calories).
Low caloric food containing plenty of macro- and micronutrients is considered more “nutrient-dense” than high-calorie, nutritionally-poor food, and many consider this a measure of overall food quality. Apart from general health, nutrient density is also an important consideration for athletes hoping to optimize their fuelling strategy.
One of the most exciting aspects of baseball is the explosion of young, endlessly exciting hitters who have taken over the game over the last few years. Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Matt Chapman, Pete Alonso, Carlos Correa … there is so much otherworldly talent under the age of 25 that it’s virtually impossible to list all the great young players without feeling guilty about leaving someone out.
Of the top 10 position players in WAR in baseball right now (per Baseball Reference), only one — Yankees infielder DJ LeMahieu — is over the age of 30. Only two of the top 20 are over 30. (Michael Brantley is No. 20.)
But when you look at the pitching leaderboard, you discover something fascinating: If this is the era of the young phenom hitter, it’s even more the era of the old, wily veteran pitcher.
You know how only one of the top 10 hitters was over 30, and two of the top 20? It’s the opposite involving pitchers.