… “I’m in pain,” he said at the press conference. “I’m still in pain. It’s been four years of this injury-pain-rehab cycle.” Lately, the pain was in his leg. Earlier in his career, the pain had come from a lacerated kidney, an abdominal tear, an injured labrum, a damaged shoulder. He had suffered torn cartilage in his ribs. There had been at least one concussion. There was also the mental and emotional pain that had gone with the constant beating to his body—the costs to his family, to his sense of self-worth. “I haven’t been able to live the life I want to live,” he said. “After 2016, when I played in pain and was unable to practice regularly, I made a vow to myself that I would never go down that path again.” Luck did not make clear at the press conference how severely he is injured right now, or what, exactly, his worst injuries currently are—he mentioned a calf strain, a posterior ankle impingement, a high ankle sprain—but his anguish was obvious. He apologized as he choked back tears.
“The reality is everybody plays through pain in the N.F.L.,” Luck once said, back in 2016. “Football is about dealing with pain,” the former N.F.L. guard Rich Ohrnberger, a fourth-round pick who played in thirty-nine total games, wrote on Twitter, in a thread prompted by Luck’s retirement. This has always been true.
Mike McKenna isn’t sure where to start on the craziest stories from his long and winding road of a career.
“We could be here forever,” he said. “I mean, do you want to talk about me, or do you want to talk about when the bus caught on fire? Or do you want to talk about swiping a Volvo on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge? These are things that have happened. You can’t make that up.”
McKenna’s path through hockey looks stranger than fiction. The journeyman goaltender announced his retirement Tuesday after stints with 15 NHL organizations and 22 professional teams in all, enough material to fill a novel.
Besides their legs of steel, pro cyclists and pro skiers have more in common than you’d think, as noted by the world’s best skier: Olympic and World Champion Mikaela Shiffrin.
Before the 2019 Colorado Classic® presented by VF Corporation rolled onto Shiffrin’s home turf in Avon for Stage 2 presented by FirstBank, the 24-year-old local hero welcomed the race by discussing a few of the similarities shared between ski racing and road cycling during a chat with VF Corporation’s Anita Graham on Thursday night.
“There are a lot more similarities than people realize,” Shiffrin said. “First of all, you have the speed and feeling the wind in your face. The actual movement, the push-pull that your legs and feet do in biking is a very similar movement to skiing. Biking is more of a linear sport … you add more of a three dimensional quality to it and you basically have a ski turn.”
… Their players had been in the air for around an hour following Thursday’s win in Turin when preparations started for the game with Burnley.
During the three-hour flight back to the West Midlands, each player was fitted with a series of pads and electrodes to stimulate the main muscle groups and reduce the risk of flagging against the Clarets.
It worked.
Sixty-two hours after returning from Italy, and despite a far from polished performance in what was their third game inside a week, Wolves had enough energy to salvage a point thanks to Jimenez’ spot-kick and extended their unbeaten start to the campaign.
bioRxiv; Roy Cox, Theodor Rüber, Bernhard P Staresina, Juergen Fell from
During sleep, new memories undergo a gradual transfer from the hippocampus (HPC) to the neocortex (NC). Precisely timed neural oscillations interacting within and between these brain structures are thought to mediate this sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Although slow oscillations (SOs), sleep spindles, and ripples have received the most attention, exactly which sleep oscillations instantiate the HPC-NC dialog, and via what mechanisms, remains elusive. Employing invasive electroencephalography in 10 neurosurgical patients across a full night of sleep, we identified three broad classes of phase-based HPC-NC communication. First, we observed interregional phase synchrony for non-rapid eye movement (NREM) spindles, N2 and rapid eye movement (REM) theta, and N3 beta activity. Second, we found asymmetrical N3 cross-frequency coupling between HPC SOs and NC activity spanning the delta to ripple bands, but not for the opposite direction. Lastly, NREM theta and spindle synchrony were themselves modulated by HPC SOs. These novel forms of phase-based interregional communication emphasize the role of HPC SOs in the HPC-NC dialog, and may offer a physiological basis for the sleep-dependent reorganization of mnemonic content.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Samuel J. Cheyette and Steven T. Piantadosi from
The question of how people estimate numerical quantities is centrally important in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and applied educational research. It is generally believed that estimation of numbers is rapid and occurs in parallel across a visual scene. Here, we show that people’s estimates are determined by a sequence of visual fixations, with both their mean estimates and their precision increasing as a function of how many points they foveate. This mechanism suggests that a considerable body of research which treats estimation as a purely numerical measure is likely to be missing an important part of the picture: Numerical estimation ability is closely tied to the mechanisms that control eye movements and attention. [full text]
Eyetracking equipment can track and show where a person is looking. To do so, it uses a special light to create a reflection in the person’s eyes. Cameras in the tracker capture those reflections and use them to estimate the position and movement of the eyes. That data is then projected onto the UI, resulting in a visualization of where the participant looked.
Matt Beaty had seen it before. The floppy blond hair. The low leg kick. The towering overhead release point. The blistering sinker with late, devastating bite.
Beaty had never faced Noah Syndergaard before the Dodgers’ game against the New York Mets on May 29 . But thanks to the newest hitting tool at the Dodgers’ disposal, the rookie already had a feel for Syndergaard’s stuff. When he stepped to the plate, he knew what to expect.
Beaty is among a growing contingent of Dodgers embracing virtual reality batting practice, a cutting-edge device that uses a VR headset to create immersive visual experiences and simulate at-bats against opposing pitchers.
… Your body doesn’t handle these extremely hot and humid days well, because sweat — your natural cooling mechanism — doesn’t evaporate when it’s really humid and you can’t cool down as well. It can also be hard to breathe.
For both conditions, “danger” days and “heat index” days, it can be dangerous to exercise outside and can lead to heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
A number of sporting events around the world have had to cancel due to high temperatures, including the New York Triathlon in July. Last year, for the first time in the US Open’s history, an extreme heat policy was implemented to help male tennis players cope with temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York.
A simple test using a few drops of blood can detect signs of a concussion in just 15 minutes, giving doctors more accurate information about a potential brain injury than standard imaging currently performed in most emergency rooms.
The handheld testing device, called the i-Stat Alinity, is under development by Abbott Laboratories in the U.S. and is used in Europe to test for things like heart attacks and electrolyte levels. To assess for TBI, the device measures a protein that is released into the bloodstream when astrocytes, the most common cell found in the brain, are injured.
Soccer is the world’s most popular sport. As the sport has grown, so have the physical demands and the search for ways to edge out the competition with the use of sports science and nutrition. The demands, which include intense training, ≥90 minutes matches, congested fixtures, and travel, lead to increased energy and nutrient requirements, stress on the body, and risk of impaired sleep cycles. Identifying key areas to enhance a player’s performance is an ongoing effort because of individual differences. Moreover, new information is being discovered via research, and advancing technology to measure performance is always evolving. This article focuses on the core nutrition principles known to lay the foundation for a better soccer player. These principles are obvious for some; however, nutrition and hydration are often undervalued, leaving the individual player with the responsibility to eat right. This review addresses the most applicable nutrition-related recommendations for soccer players.
… The soccer consultancy 21st Club has developed a player-rating system that calculates how many points an individual player is worth compared to a league-average player. It’s a rough version of baseball’s wins above replacement statistic.
“[Raheem] Sterling, [Sergio] Aguero and De Bruyne are fifth, eighth and ninth, respectively, in our ratings,” said Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence at 21st Club. “Our top four are [Lionel] Messi, [Mohamed] Salah, Neymar and [Cristiano] Ronaldo.”
Since the Abu Dhabi Group purchased the club in 2008, City have spent more on transfer fees than any other team, but not a single transaction breaks into the top 20 of the most expensive transfers of all time.
“They have a group of outstanding players,” said Chaudhuri, “but not any true superstars.”
First let’s stipulate that all else equal, playing more regular-season games will cause more injuries, more hurt players, more wear-and-tear on bodies, and potentially more lifelong health problems such as arthritis and neurological diseases from two more weeks of hits every year. Nobody is arguing otherwise.
But there is also a concern that players would suffer financially due to injury-shortened careers. I’m not so sure about that.
Let’s start by looking at how (reported) injuries occur over the course of a season, per the NFL’s injury report.