… “Next year, I’m going to be back on the track and I’m going to give it a go in the 10,000m,” he said on social media.
“Hopefully I haven’t lost my speed but I will train hard for it and see what I can do. I’m really excited.”
Farah, who is also a six-time world champion and has yet to run the marathon at a major championship, hinted earlier in the year that he could make the switch because he “missed” the frequency that track racing provided.
… Reid said after the game that he thought the 31-year-old McCoy was fine, but he doesn’t want to give him too much playing time because at his age, McCoy can’t handle too big a workload.
… As Okposo waited for symptoms to subside from his latest traumatic brain injury, he contemplated life after hockey. He expressed a blend of overwhelming relief and excitement Monday that he’s “100 percent” and can stop wondering what he would do if he had to walk away from the sport at 31 years old.
“It’s something you think a lot about post-career, and that’s the first thing that kind of pops into my head, as I’m sure it did with a lot of other people that know my history,” Okposo said when asked if retirement crossed his mind. “When these things happen repeatedly, I just want answers. I want to make sure I’m going to be OK later. I don’t have a crystal ball. Nobody else has a crystal ball, either, but I saw the right people and I got the information that I needed to hear to continue to play. I’m excited to be back and I’m happy to be back out there feeling fresh and feeling 100 percent.”
… A number of recent and tantalizing studies have suggested that simple, restorative sleep can help you think, perform, and recover better. It’s compelled the world’s leading players (often prompted by their team’s sleep coaches) to reprogram their social lives and change their priorities. It’s why pro teams’ practice facilities include nap rooms—the Red Sox turned an old utility room into one, and the Warriors’ new Chase Center includes individual sleep pods. They’re reclining chairs with caps over the top that block out noise and light, but still: sleep pods!
In last week’s post, I addressed a fundamental question: What are the major objectives of an endurance athlete’s diet? In this post I would like to tackle an even more basic question, which I’ve already given away in the title. Namely: Which is most important for endurance fitness and performance—training, diet, or sleep?
As you’re about to see, there’s no simple answer to this question. But attempting to answer it is nevertheless a worthwhile exercise, because it yields clarity on the role of each of these three factors in relation to your athletic ambitions.
… if you know what time you have to get up, and you know you need a specific amount of sleep to function at your best, you just need to figure out what time to go to bed.
In this article, we’ll help you understand how to calculate the best time to go to bed based on your wake-up time and natural sleep cycles. We’ll also take a closer look at how your sleep cycles work and how sleep can affect your health.
In her new book, Good Habits, Bad Habits, USC professor of psychology and Behavior Change for Good Initiative team scientist Wendy Wood teaches us how habits are formed. She breaks down the mechanisms that put our brains on autopilot—for better or worse—and tells us how to start fighting back. What can we do to break the habits that are keeping us from saving money, exercising, and generally living fuller, healthier lives? Wood explores all of this in her book and tells us how to form habits for the better.
For this year’s National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Classic this week at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, MO, ESPN is integrating and experimenting with new real-time data-filled graphics designed to enhance the live broadcast. Use of sensor-based tracking technology and high-end graphics-generation engines enables live on-gameplay displays of live player IDs, on-court shot charts, and more.
These new graphics are made possible through a partnership between ShotTracker (the tournament’s title sponsor) and graphics powerhouses Vizrt and Astucemedia.
Platelet-rich plasma therapy, or PRP, has been touted as a miracle cure for sports injuries, but it may counteract the benefits of plain old rehab exercises
… The procedure for injury management followed by most doctors, physical therapists and athletic trainers hasn’t changed since 1978, when Harvard physician Dr. Gabe Mirkin coined the term “the RICE protocol.” The acronym, which stands for “rest, ice, compression and elevation,” is still taught in medical and physical therapy schools today and is listed on the National Institute of Health website as the top treatment for both acute and chronic sports injuries. Dr. Rick Wright, an NIH grantee and a former physician with the St. Louis Blues, Cardinals, and Los Angeles Rams, still swears by it.
“Ice is the best modality to control pain, swelling and inflammation, especially if you ice for 25 to 30 minutes so you get actual cooling of the tissue and decrease inflammation, as opposed to shorter periods where you can get a rebound response,” says Wright, who is currently chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “There have not been well-done scientific studies that have crossed my desk that would make me say there was something I would use instead of ice that has been proven to work better. I have no plans to change any time in the near future.”
Yet even Mirkin now disagrees. These days, he tells anyone who will listen that he was wrong about both rest and ice. He wrote the forward to Gary Reinl’s 2013 self-published book, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option, which has become the bible of the growing anti-ice movement. “My RICE guidelines have been used for decades, but new research shows rest and ice actually delay healing and recovery,” says Mirkin, now 84.
Pine Forest grad Isaiah Bennett is one of hundreds of baseball players ages 15-19 who have had Tommy John elbow surgery; Bennett is now on the comeback trail at UNC.
The day that changed Isaiah Bennett’s world started out normally.
A 16-year-old junior pitcher for the Pine Forest High School Trojans, Bennett’s 90 mph-plus fastball had already earned him a scholarship offer as a sophomore to play for the University of North Carolina and had major league scouts attending his games.
But Bennett’s promising baseball career was suddenly derailed when he became one of the hundreds of players between the ages of 15 and 19 to have Tommy John elbow surgery. Bennett is now on the comeback trail as a freshman pitcher at UNC.
Gatorade Sports Science Institute, Trent Stellingwerff from
Altitude research and associated nutrition reviews have mainly focused on high to extreme altitudes (> 3,000 m). Recent data and associated practical nutrition recommendations are emerging from studies conducted at altitudes where athletes typically train (~1,600–2,400 m).
Until further research on carbohydrate and fat oxidation and/or protein metabolism during exercise is conducted during the types of training undertaken by athletes at low to moderate altitudes (~1,600–2,400 m), guidelines for altered macronutrient needs remain theoretical and should align with sea-level recommendations.
It is not clear whether low to moderate altitudes have alternative effects on energy availability (EA) requirements and/or risk for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, but there are several recent studies to suggest that EA will play an important role in optimizing hypoxic adaptations.
The micronutrient iron is especially important at altitude, as hypoxia results in a distinct environment where the erythropoietic drive increases reticulocyte formation and hemoglobin mass gains, which are dependent upon adequate iron availability.
The Daily Tar Heel student newspaper, Evelyn Gandy from
… Rachael Flatt, the 2010 U.S. ladies figure skating champion and a member of that year’s U.S. Winter Olympics team, said she witnessed many of her figure skating peers struggle with disordered eating and poor body image.
“I struggled with that myself, in large part due to a number of negative comments that I received about my physique and how I looked when I was on the ice,” said Flatt, who is now a clinical psychology Ph.D. student at UNC.
These experiences inspired her to research eating disorders in athletes at UNC. Flatt studies how technology-based tools, such as online screening tools and treatment programs, can increase access to mental health care for eating disorders.
With the help of Cynthia Bulik, founding director of the UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, Flatt hopes to improve the body image environment of athletics around the world.
I found myself in a little Twitter discussion last week about using regression to analyze player aging. I argued that regression won’t give you accurate results, and that the less elegant “delta method” is the better way to go.
Although I did a small example to try to make my point, Tango suggested I do a bigger simulation and a blog post. That’s this.
A decade ago, Fleury started 61 out of 82 games before backstopping Pittsburgh to the Stanley Cup. He started 58 and 34 times on the Penguins’ 2016 and 2017 Cup runs splitting time with Matt Murray, then made 46 starts for Vegas and led the expansion Golden Knights to the final.
“As a player, I love being in there. I love playing the game,” Fleury said. “It’s tough to find like the perfect amount of games. Nowadays, I feel like we’re hearing more than ever how we’re going to manage two goalies and stuff.”