… Today, we have technology that allows us to track the most intricate on-court details in any game. That wasn’t the case when Jordan played. But after accessing the NBA’s historical shot location data and accounting for the brief use of a 22-foot 3-point line before it moved back to 23.75 feet in 1997-98, we can understand MJ’s scoring prowess in fascinating detail.
More than 20 years since Jordan retired, it’s clear that the ways he created all those buckets were not just gorgeous and effective — they were singular. Jordan thrived in ways and in places that few players before him could match, and that even fewer players today can emulate.
… On the advice of his agent, Chris Brady, Phillips compiled a “mock Combines” video where he executed the mandatory drills and power lifting requirements he would have performed on pro day. Phillips made the video while training in Naples, Fla.
“Honestly it’s changed for everyone, scouts and NFL teams included and obviously they can’t do the stuff they normally do on a yearly basis to interview players,” said Phillips during a Zoom interview from his home in Phoenix, N.Y.
NBC Sports, Pro Soccer Talk, Joe Prince-Wright from
How are Premier League players staying fit during the coronavirus pandemic?
From Zoom team workouts to Jose Mourinho apologizing for putting Tanguy Ndombele through his paces at a local park, all 20 Premier League clubs have their own way of keeping players sharp during the current suspension. It’s a two-way street as players themselves have to resist the urge we all have right now of reaching for the candy and chips three times an hour.
It’s tough staying in top shape from home. But hey, of course, there’s got to be an app for that. And now there is: Apollo V2.
It has become the go-to tool for multiple Premier League clubs as it collects data from players and feeds it back to clubs immediately, while coaches and medical staff can send video messages, make notes and design specific sessions for players remotely.
… Bryan Doo, who left the Celtics in 2017 after a 14-year run as the team’s strength and fitness coach to focus on the growth of his private company, Optimal Fitness, believes a gradual ramp-up will be best for all concerned once the NBA sends out the call.
“The thing we don’t think about is how great these guys are as athletes. They’ve been going since AAU, so it’s not necessarily a huge bad thing that they get a rest,” Doo said this week. “In the grand scheme of things I think these guys are such great athletes, they can adjust until it’s time to go back and play games.
“What I think will happen is that teams will go deeper in their benches, so guys don’t play as many minutes. That’s what I would do.”
In the days and weeks following the cancellation of sports across the country due to the coronavirus outbreak in mid-March, veteran Alabama softball coach Patrick Murphy scoured his home for ways to stay occupied, and possibly help better himself for the experience.
Along with catching up on several books he’d been wanting to read, and trying to help his Crimson Tide softball players through the early uncertainty of having their 2020 season ended prematurely, Murphy also signed up for an online course at Yale called “The Science of Well-Being.”
“I’m going back to school,” Murphy quipped, “… and now I can say I took a class at Yale. That’s pretty cool, because there’s no way I would’ve gotten into Yale (as a student).”
Sports Illustrated, Bama Central blog, Christopher Walsh from
University of Alabama coach Nick Saban was obviously disappointed that the annual A-Day festivities were cancelled along with the rest of spring practice for the football team, but is extremely pleased with a pair of recent additions to the program.
Saturday afternoon, when the Crimson Tide was scheduled to be on the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium, Saban instead made an appearance on the Alabama Athletics Spring Update Show on the Crimson Tide Radio Network.
He was especially upbeat about the strength and conditioning and developing sports performance program after host Eli Gold brought up David Ballou and Dr. Matt Rhea, and asked when they first appeared on his radar.
… “You must learn to kind of understand yourself a little bit,” Skinner said. “I think that feeling sometimes it allows you to kind of do a little bit of soul searching and a little bit of, ‘Who am I? What do I stand for?’ and that’s a good test of people’s nature.”
Skinner’s goal in the coming weeks is to keep life as normal as possible for Orlando Pride players. He hosts weekly webinars on Zoom, going over old film and talking about the styles and aspects of the game he hopes to improve this season.
The team use the reporting system Fit for 90 to track individual player statistics, recording data to help athletes adjust their workouts to deliver ideal results.
Objectives We investigated the management of travel fatigue and jet lag in athlete populations by evaluating studies that have applied non-pharmacological interventions (exercise, sleep, light and nutrition), and pharmacological interventions (melatonin, sedatives, stimulants, melatonin analogues, glucocorticoids and antihistamines) following long-haul transmeridian travel-based, or laboratory-based circadian system phase-shifts.
Design Systematic review
Eligibility criteria
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and non-RCTs including experimental studies and observational studies, exploring interventions to manage travel fatigue and jet lag involving actual travel-based or laboratory-based phase-shifts. Studies included participants who were athletes, except for interventions rendering no athlete studies, then the search was expanded to include studies on healthy populations.
Data sources Electronic searches in PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Google Scholar and SPORTDiscus from inception to March 2019. We assessed included articles for risk of bias, methodological quality, level of evidence and quality of evidence.
Results Twenty-two articles were included: 8 non-RCTs and 14 RCTs. No relevant travel fatigue papers were found. For jet lag, only 12 athlete-specific studies were available (six non-RCTs, six RCTs). In total (athletes and healthy populations), 11 non-pharmacological studies (participants 600; intervention group 290; four non-RCTs, seven RCTs) and 11 pharmacological studies (participants 1202; intervention group 870; four non-RCTs, seven RCTs) were included. For non-pharmacological interventions, seven studies across interventions related to actual travel and four to simulated travel. For pharmacological interventions, eight studies were based on actual travel and three on simulated travel.
Conclusions We found no literature pertaining to the management of travel fatigue. Evidence for the successful management of jet lag in athletes was of low quality. More field-based studies specifically on athlete populations are required with a multifaceted approach, better design and implementation to draw valid conclusions.
This is the first in the series of “An Interview with Graeme”. I will be interviewing different LJMU Sport Science Staff about hot topics. This week it is Professor Neil Walsh discussing Exercise and Immune function. An absolute must watch where we cover: an overview of exercise immunology, are athletes at more risk of infections, what is the link with stress, immune resistance versus immune tolerance and any nutritional interventions that may support the immune system. [video, 37:00]
Carbohydrate ingestion—and its subsequent digestion, absorption, and delivery to skeletal muscle—is imperative for maintaining carbohydrate burning during intense exercise that lasts longer than 60–90 minutes. As carbohydrate stores in your body dwindle, rates of energy production and muscular contraction decline because slower-burning fatty acids become an increasingly dominant fuel source. Consequently, ingesting carbohydrate helps maintain higher absolute workloads during intense, prolonged exercise.
There is a natural limit, though, to the amount of carbohydrate you can digest and absorb over any given period. The absorption of carbohydrates is facilitated by protein transporters in the outer wall of the cells that line your small intestine. These transporters act sort of like off-ramps on an interstate, and as many of you know from your own experience, traffic congestion can lead to major commuting problems. Similarly, overloading the gut with carbohydrate can overwhelm these transporters, leading to the equivalent of a traffic jam in your small intestine.
… Despite its name, vitamin D is not a vitamin. Instead, it is a hormone that promotes the absorption of calcium in the body. The challenge is that, aside from a few foods like oily fish, vitamin D is hard to find in the average diet. But in the presence of “ultraviolet B” rays, our skin can produce its own from a common cholesterol.
Back in November I was lucky enough to write an essay for SI’s Innovations issue on the state of the NFL as an innovator, and I made calls across the spectrum: coaches, players, data wonks and others. The end product centered on the very pressing issue of technology and reviewable pass interference, which left some of the best conversations I had about the actual future of the NFL on the cutting room floor. Instead of condensing them for the space of a magazine article, I decided to expand on them here.
University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler, a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist, and Cade Massey, a professor at Penn’s Wharton School of Business whose expertise lies in why we make certain decisions, wrote an influential research paper in 2005 called “The Loser’s Curse: Decision Making & Market Efficiency in the National Football League Draft.” It’s the reason a lot of good teams value mid-round picks today. They famously pitched their idea to Washington owner Dan Snyder and then watched him torch the team’s draft capital to trade up for Robert Griffin III in 2012.
The most important position in sports is also one of the most difficult to analyze. But thanks to new models and data-inclined front offices, teams are closer to predicting QB prospects’ success than ever before.
The 291st Weekly Post of the CIES Football Observatory highlights the main clubs from where current big-5 league players departed to reach the five major European leagues. At the top of the stepping-stone club rankings are three regular European Cup participants: AFC Ajax (22 players currently in the big-5 were recruited there), SL Benfica (21) and RB Salzburg (20).
Less than a month ago, AAU President Roger Goudy watched membership in the long-running youth sports organization drop from 20,000 ahead of last year’s pace to about 3,000 behind in just a week.
For now, he hopes a girls volleyball tournament he helped turn into one of the world’s biggest will somehow be played in late June. Should the coronavirus pandemic disrupt that event along with other tournaments, Goudy is prepared to view the Amateur Athletic Union’s financial losses as significant.
“If we don’t crank up, I’d say, by the first of May, we’re going to see some tremendous losses simply because we’re not going to have time for those events that have qualifiers,” Goudy said.