… only 10 Houston possessions all season have ended in Westbrook cuts, per Synergy Sports. On a rate basis, that is right in line with his typical numbers despite not playing alongside another guard of Harden’s caliber earlier in his career. Even on the rare occasions in which he does make an effort off of the ball, he hasn’t converted the opportunities into points. His 0.8 points per possession as a cutter have him in the bottom one percent of all NBA players. When Harden has managed to use his gravity to create free runs at the basket for Westbrook, he just hasn’t been able to convert them.
… Sitting across the table from [Caleb] Dressel at a bustling sandwich shop near Emory University, it’s doesn’t take long to recognize that he runs a bit deeper than many athletes.
“A thinker” is how his coach, Gregg Troy, describes him.
Dressel is an avid reader. His infrequent posts on social media are often quoted from whatever book has his attention at the moment.
“I can get the physical exercise done with practice and staying in shape,” he said. “But you’ve got to sharpen the mental side. I like to learn.”
As a youth player, Kristie Mewis was one of the top prospects in the game. But injuries and frequent trades limited her ability to grow. Now back with the USWNT for the first time in years, she is ambitious as ever.
To investigate the effect of early evening exercise training at different intensities on nocturnal sleep and cardiac autonomic activity in endurance-trained runners. Methods
Eight runners completed three experimental trials in a randomised, counterbalanced order. In the early evening (end of exercise 3.5 h before bedtime), participants performed either: (i) a 1 h high-intensity interval running session (HIGH, 6 × 5 min at 90% VO2peak interspersed with 5 min recovery); (ii) a 1 h low-intensity running session (LOW, 60 min at 45% VO2peak) or (iii) no exercise (CON). Subsequent nocturnal sleep was assessed using polysomnography, wristwatch actigraphy, and subjective sleep quality. A two-lead electrocardiogram recorded nocturnal cardiac autonomic activity. Results
Total sleep time increased after HIGH (477.4 ± 17.7 min, p = 0.022) and LOW (479.6 ± 15.6 min, p = 0.006) compared with CON (462.9 ± 19.0 min). Time awake was lower after HIGH (31.8 ± 18.5 min, p = 0.047) and LOW (30.4 ± 15.7 min, p = 0.008) compared with CON (46.6 ± 20.0 min). There were no differences between conditions for actigraphy and subjective sleep quality (p > 0.05). Nocturnal heart rate variability was not different between conditions, but average nocturnal heart rate increased after HIGH (50 ± 5 beats min−1) compared with LOW (47 ± 5 beats min−1, p = 0.02) and CON (47 ± 5 beats min−1, p = 0.028). Conclusion
When performed in the early evening, high-intensity exercise does not disrupt and may even improve subsequent nocturnal sleep in endurance-trained runners, despite increased cardiac autonomic activity. Additionally, low-intensity exercise induced positive changes in sleep behaviour that are comparable to those obtained following high-intensity exercise. [full text]
An organized tide of brain waves, blood and spinal fluid pulsing through a sleeping brain may flush away neural toxins that cause Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
The balance between training stress and recovery is important for inducing adaptations to improve athletic performance. However, continuously high training loads with insufficient recovery may cause fatigue to accumulate and result in overtraining. A comprehensive systematic review is required to collate overtraining literature and improve the current understanding of the mechanisms underlying functional overreaching (FOR), non-functional overreaching (NFOR) and the overtraining syndrome (OTS) in resistance training. OBJECTIVE:
The objective of this systematic review was to establish markers of overtraining and elucidate the mechanisms underlying maladaptive resistance training conditions. Furthermore, this review aims to critically evaluate the methodological approaches of the overtraining literature. METHODS:
A systematic literature search was performed on PubMed, Web of Science and SPORTDiscus to identify studies up to June 2019. Electronic databases were searched using terms related to resistance training and overtraining. Records were included if they attempted to induce a state of overreaching or overtraining through resistance exercise in healthy participants. RESULTS:
A total of 22 studies were selected for review. Among these studies, eight resulted in decrements in performance and measured changes in performance during a follow-up period. There were four studies that reported decrease in performance yet failed to implement follow-up measures. A total of 10 studies reported no decline in performance. Overall, a lack of standardisation in methodology (follow-up performance testing) and diagnostic criteria prevents consistent determination of FOR, NFOR and OTS in resistance training. CONCLUSIONS:
Few studies have appropriately established FOR, NFOR or OTS in resistance training. Overtraining may be related to frequent high-intensity and monotonous resistance training. However, no marker other than a sustained decrease in performance has been established as a reliable indicator of overtraining in resistance exercise.
Researchers at the product development arm of the University of Antwerp have developed a vibration device designed to assist sports cyclists with perfecting their in the saddle posture.
In a bid to assist sports cyclists in habitually finding the perfect aerodynamic posture in the saddle researchers developed a feedback device that sits on the rider’s back and legs. If a rider slips into a posture that is going to cost an aerodynamic advantage the gadget will send out a subtle vibration letting the rider know.
The first stage of the research called on the help of nine amateur cyclists, who initially begun with a systematic step test to determine maximal power. Six locations were chosen for the device; three on the legs and three on the spine, with vibrations sent at intervals of power ranging 0 to 90% of maximal effort.
For a decade, digital health has been the supposed savior of the health care system, driving health care into a data-first, low-cost industry worthy of the 21st-century.
For that reason, investors have poured over $30 billion into digital health since 2011.
But almost a decade in, what material change can we point to in health care costs or the experience of the average patient? Are there companies that qualify as major disruptors? To me, the answer is no. And I call this “the Digital Health Conundrum.”
Video-to-video translation for super-resolution, inpainting, style transfer, etc. is more difficult than corresponding image-to-image translation tasks due to the temporal consistency problem that, if left unaddressed, results in distracting flickering effects. Although video models designed from scratch produce temporally consistent results, training them to match the vast visual knowledge captured by image models requires an intractable number of videos. To combine the benefits of image and video models, we propose an image-to-video model transfer method called Hyperconsistency (HyperCon) that transforms any well-trained image model into a temporally consistent video model without fine-tuning. HyperCon works by translating a synthetic temporally interpolated video frame-wise and then aggregating over temporally localized windows on the interpolated video. It handles both masked and unmasked inputs, enabling support for even more video-to-video tasks than prior image-to-video model transfer techniques. We demonstrate HyperCon on video style transfer and inpainting, where it performs favorably compared to prior state-of-the-art video consistency and video inpainting methods, all without training on a single stylized or incomplete video.
Dublin-based medical technology company Medtronic has acquired digital health startup Klue, a two-year-old startup which uses gesture sensing and other behavioral health metrics to determine when someone is eating. Nothing was disclosed about the terms of the deal, except that Medtronic considers it to be immaterial to 2020 earnings per share.
“Bringing Klue and their unique meal detection capabilities into our organization will accelerate our progress to help people with diabetes live with greater freedom and better health,” Alejandro Galindo, president of the Advanced Insulin Management division, which is part of the Diabetes Group at Medtronic, said in a statement. “Based on our learnings from a first-generation hybrid closed loop system around the importance of simplifying diabetes management, we believe the Personalized Closed Loop system will be transformational for diabetes management, and the integration of the Klue technology helps clears the path to a true hands-free closed loop system.”
For the clinicians gathered in Vancouver earlier this fall for the World Congress of Sports Physical Therapy, Norwegian researcher Roald Bahr had a sobering message: You can’t predict the future.
Bahr was speaking about the widespread use of screening tests that assess strength, flexibility and other physical measures to predict which athletes are most likely to get injured. His conclusion – “it’s fortune-telling”– is a blow to the idea that we can catch and prevent injuries before they even happen.
But that doesn’t mean injuries are inevitable. Instead, Bahr argues, it means that injury-prevention tools such as a unique warm-up routine developed at the University of Calgary should be adopted by everyone, rather than just those who are supposedly at high risk.
NFL Football Operations, The Extra Point blog from
In Football Operations, one of our primary roles as a data and analytics team is to supply the league with metrics that help us better understand the game. One framework that we often use is win probability.
Models to estimate win probability have been around football for more than a decade, with several researchers (including Brian Burke, Trey Causey, and a trio of statisticians from Carnegie Mellon) having developed versions of their own. These models help assess each team’s chance of winning at any given point in a game.
Models use familiar inputs including score, down, distance, and field position, and also more subtle variables, including which team kicked off to start the game and the number of timeouts each team has left. During the 2019 offseason, win probability models were used by the National Football League’s Competition Committee to assess which penalty types have the biggest impact on game outcomes. In addition to penalties, we can use win probability formulas to derive metrics of game competitiveness and excitement.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy insists the club are not frightened by the spending power of their Premier League rivals – and stressed transfer funds are set aside should they find the right player.
New boss Jose Mourinho replaced Mauricio Pochettino at the end of November, and has guided Spurs back up into fifth place.
With the January transfer window just around the corner, Spurs fans will again be hoping for more squad investment following the 2019 summer arrivals of Ryan Sessegnon and Tanguy Ndombele.
Given the north London club are committed to a repayment financing schedule following their stadium move, Tottenham will have to remain within budget.
@EricCressey pointed out a valid note – do not be so quick to apply what you find in averages to outliers. That said, the more data you can collect across the spectrum, the better. That’s why our database of motion capture data is so valuable – from HS to MLB, and a lot of it.
… NBA deputy commissioner Tatum said the same in his Yahoo Finance interview: “I think we have to continue to innovate, right—I think fans evolve and change. What they’re interested in changes, and so we need to continue to innovate… We’re looking at certain things that we think might make sense like reducing the number of games, creating an in-season tournament… Our partners, between the Disney corporation and Warner Media, are working with us on different ways to present the games in meaningful ways.”
Of course, the NBA is not panicking yet. It’s a long season (maybe too long, an increasing number of fans say, which is why the league is looking at shortening it), and many (not all) of those injured players will return.