… The injury was season-ending; she underwent reconstructive surgery at the end of October to repair her shoulder. As the semester went on, though, she began to realize her shoulder wasn’t the only thing bothering her. She wasn’t happy in her current situation—a frustrating thing to reckon with after all of the hard work and dedication she’d put into being a Division I hockey player.
“One thing that I noticed was that hockey was turning into the deciding factor of my mood, and [that] how each day was going to turn out was based on what line I was on or how my rehab was going or something like that,” Boyle said. “I realized that, you know, if you can’t create your own happiness for yourself in the situation you’re in, then the only opportunity you have to change that is to change your surroundings and to try again.”
… Heading into the 2019-20 season, it was widely determined that the greatest addition the San Antonio Spurs would bring along wasn’t a free agent or draft selection—it’s the return of their starting point guard, Seattle-native Dejounte Murray. Though he’s been pushed back to the bench, for the time being, the Spurs continue to rely on their breakout candidate for defensive intensity, balanced playmaking and fiery intensity.
However, Murray has been forced to play roughly 25 minutes or less in every game so far this season after tearing his ACL during the 2018 preseason.
Running participation continues to increase. The ideal strike pattern during running is a controversial topic. Many coaches and therapists promote non-rearfoot strike (NRFS) running with a belief that it can treat and prevent injury, and improve running economy. Objective
The aims of this review were to synthesise the evidence comparing NRFS with rearfoot strike (RFS) running patterns in relation to injury and running economy (primary aim), and biomechanics (secondary aim). Design
Systematic review and meta-analysis. Consideration was given to within participant, between participant, retrospective, and prospective study designs. Data Sources
MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and SPORTDiscus. Results
Fifty-three studies were included. Limited evidence indicated that NRFS running is retrospectively associated with lower reported rates of mild (standard mean difference (SMD), 95% CI 3.25, 2.37–4.12), moderate (3.65, 2.71–4.59) and severe (0.93, 0.32–1.55) repetitive stress injury. Studies prospectively comparing injury risk between strike patterns are lacking. Limited evidence indicated that running economy did not differ between habitual RFS and habitual NRFS runners at slow (10.8–11.0 km/h), moderate (12.6–13.5 km/h), and fast (14.0–15.0 km/h) speeds, and was reduced in the immediate term when an NRFS-running pattern was imposed on habitual RFS runners at slow (10.8 km/h; SMD = − 1.67, − 2.82 to − 0.52) and moderate (12.6 km/h; − 1.26, − 2.42 to − 0.10) speeds. Key biomechanical findings, consistently including both comparison between habitual strike patterns and following immediate transition from RFS to NRFS running, indicated that NRFS running was associated with lower average and peak vertical loading rate (limited-moderate evidence; SMDs = 0.72–2.15); lower knee flexion range of motion (moderate-strong evidence; SMDs = 0.76–0.88); reduced patellofemoral joint stress (limited evidence; SMDs = 0.63–0.68); and greater peak internal ankle plantar flexor moment (limited evidence; SMDs = 0.73–1.33). Conclusion
The relationship between strike pattern and injury risk could not be determined, as current evidence is limited to retrospective findings. Considering the lack of evidence to support any improvements in running economy, combined with the associated shift in loading profile (i.e., greater ankle and plantarflexor loading) found in this review, changing strike pattern cannot be recommended for an uninjured RFS runner.
Bright light at night interrupts the body’s normal day-night cycles, called circadian rhythms, and can trigger insomnia. In fact, circadian rhythms play a major role in health. Disrupted day-night cycles have even been linked to increased incidence of diseases like cancer, heart disease, obesity, depressive disorders and type 2 diabetes in people who work night shifts. Therefore, understanding how human eyes sense light could lead to “smart” lights that can prevent depression, foster sleep at night, and maintain healthy circadian rhythms.
In a Science study published December 5, 2019, researchers at the Salk Institute report the discovery of three cell types in the eye that detect light and align the brain’s circadian rhythm to our ambient light. The study marks the first direct assessment in humans of light responses from these cells, called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs)—and the implications for health are substantial.
… Sleep’s prophet, were it to have one, might be William Dement, who, in 1970, founded the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic (now the Sleep Medicine Center), the world’s first medical facility of its sort. In 1971, he began teaching Sleep and Dreams, which went on to become one of the most popular courses in Stanford’s history. Over nearly half a century, the professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences warned about the dangers of sleep debt not only for brain health but also for safety on the highways, in the skies and on the high seas. He educated more than 21,000 students, sending ranks of sleep experts into industry and academia while making the university a hub and place of pilgrimage for those intent on the mysteries of Nod.
Five years ago, Dement began priming his Sleep and Dreams successor: Rafael Pelayo, a clinical professor in the psychiatry department’s division of sleep medicine. Pelayo—who, in 1993, as a medical student in the Bronx, found his passion for sleep research upon reading about Dement in National Geographic—took over Sleep and Dreams three years ago. But Dement, at 91, still attends, with a wireless mic clipped to his lapel so he can interject with songs (he is a trained musician) and stories (for instance, about working with the scientists who discovered REM—the sleep phase with rapid eye movement and dreams—in the 1950s).
… in our experience many top-level players have achieved their status through incredible inherent talent and technical skills, that effectively hides significant movement deficiencies. The majority of these players were not exposed to quality movement training during their academy experience. As they transferred from one team to the next, the movement training was not considered. While this is beginning to change at the academy level of many large clubs, quality movement training needs to continue to evolve and be applied at every level. This might be achieved by incorporating movement sessions in small doses as part of the warm-up or team gym sessions. Doing so, we believe, reinforces high-quality movement patterns, producing better performances whilst mitigating the potential for injuries.
From what we have witnessed, the biggest objection coaching staffs or technical staffs may have with integrating movement skills training into practice sessions is lack of time.
Mladen Sormaz: People are aware of data, aware of what is contained in data, and the next step is what can a data scientist do to improve the workflow of someone working at a club. That means being super-applied, focusing down to really specific examples and making their life easier where you can.
If you can answer an applied question with the data set you’re given then you’re at least some of the way there.
Ed Sulley: In the early days of the industry, it was about how do we join data. Now it’s about getting into the good stuff, which is the insights, and how that can be delivered.
How do you create a situation where you can empower people? At Hudl, we ask how we can create something that people are going to warm to. [audio, 28:47]
… There’s a different story for every player, and with each, Scott took a personal approach. That meant shepherding a young Horan when she was on her own in Los Angeles for days of fitness tests. It meant working with Heather O’Reilly as she broke her own records on the infamous beep test. And it meant witnessing the most important moments that nobody outside the team ever saw, but ones which were as critical as any to the United States’ dominant decade.
“One of the highlights of my World Cup was the day before the World Cup final, when [Megan] Rapinoe and Rose were trying to make the final on the back of respective hamstring injuries, and we were like, ‘Ok, well the day before, we’ve got to test max speed,’” Scott said. “Because we don’t want to have not done that and then you go to the final and then you break down straight when you have to max sprint in a game. So, we did that whole warm-up piece and they both looked at me and I was like, we’ve got the live GPS system, so we know their speed straight away. They both looked at each other and sprinted across the field. They both hit close to their top speed and then they turned around and gave the thumbs up and jogged off into the rest of practice. That, for me, was one of the highlights of the World Cup. We’ve got them available for the final.”
Each player scored in the final, Rapinoe on a penalty kick which sealed her the Golden Boot and Golden Ball, and Lavelle in an iconic goal from open play which cemented her as the breakout star of the tournament.
Nike didn’t tell Rodger Kram and Wouter Hoogkamer much about the prototype shoe at first. “We knew it had a new foam, called Pebax, and they showed us the carbon [fiber] plate,” recalls Kram. The exercise physiologist and longtime director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Locomotion Lab, and Hoogkamer, then a post-doctoral researcher there, were writing a journal paper, published in March 2017, detailing how an elite runner might break the mythical two-hour marathon barrier. One factor they detailed was shoe design, and the two had been given what would become the ZoomX Vaporfly 4% to test.
Explaining how shoe design might help break two hours was tricky, says Kram, because while they had already completed testing on the new shoe, they couldn’t include their non-peer-reviewed data in a peer-reviewed journal. So they focused on the weight of the foam midsole, which, based on previous studies, they estimated could improve an athlete’s running economy by around one percent.
Achieving human-level versatile locomotion is the holy grail for designing humanoid robots. It remains a top research challenge, as human movement is an innate ability that’s achieved through a complex and highly coordinated interaction between hundreds of muscles, skeletons, tendons, joints, and more.
We’re excited to present our recent research results in this area, which we believe will advance the field: our Baidu research team trained a 3D human musculoskeletal model that can walk and run when given velocity commands.
Our results topped the NeurIPS 2019: Learn to Move Challenge in both the Best Performance Track and the Machine Learning Track. We accomplished this using popular reinforcement learning techniques and our home-grown framework PARL, which contributed to a significant performance improvement and played a key role in winning the challenge.
The Conversation; Holly Thorpe, Katie Schofield, Stacy T. Sims from
… [Mary] Cain was experiencing a condition known as low energy availability. But it had become so normalised within the sporting world her pleas for help went unanswered.
This condition occurs when athletes’ food intake does not match the energy they expend during training and day-to-day functioning. For many athletes this happens because they restrict their diet in the belief weight loss will improve performance. The condition can lead to reproductive dysfunction, lower bone density and compromised immunity, as well as increased cardiovascular risk and lower performance.
Our new research shows a lack of knowledge about the condition among coaches and athletes and that hierarchical power relations and stigma are contributing to it.