There’s the painful kind, the kind that comes from dealing with the death three months ago of a cousin who was very close to him. There’s the made-up variety, stemming from the belief he shared Tuesday night that people who cover the league don’t respect his work. There’s the silly stuff, like a back-and-forth on social media with other NBA players.
And then there’s probably the biggest sort — his want to get the Portland Trail Blazers back to the playoffs.
NBA star Blake Griffin on the launch of his new podcast, “The Pursuit of Healthiness.” He discusses basketball during the pandemic and whether NCAA athletes should be paid. [video, pre-roll + 5:05]
The continual supply of ATP to the fundamental cellular processes that underpin skeletal muscle contraction during exercise is essential for sports performance in events lasting seconds to several hours. Because the muscle stores of ATP are small, metabolic pathways must be activated to maintain the required rates of ATP resynthesis. These pathways include phosphocreatine and muscle glycogen breakdown, thus enabling substrate-level phosphorylation (‘anaerobic’) and oxidative phosphorylation by using reducing equivalents from carbohydrate and fat metabolism (‘aerobic’). The relative contribution of these metabolic pathways is primarily determined by the intensity and duration of exercise. For most events at the Olympics, carbohydrate is the primary fuel for anaerobic and aerobic metabolism. Here, we provide an overview of exercise metabolism and the key regulatory mechanisms ensuring that ATP resynthesis is closely matched to the ATP demand of exercise. We also summarize various interventions that target muscle metabolism for ergogenic benefit in athletic events.
It has been nearly five months since the UVA women’s soccer team has been in the same city much less the same field together, so even with masks and the uncertainty of fall sports hanging over it is still valued time.
“There’s still anxiety, it’s not normal, certainly not normal and we certainly don’t know what the future holds,” Virginia women’s soccer coach Steve Swanson said, “But for now we’re just taking it one day at a time and trying to get better as a soccer team.”
In this paper the dynamics of human running on flat terrain and the required mechanical power output with its dependency on various parameters is investigated. Knowing the required mechanical power output is of relevance due to its relationship with the metabolic power. For example, a better understanding of the dependencies of required mechanical power output on weight, running and wind speed, step frequency, ground contact time etc. is very valuable for the assessment, analysis and optimization of running performance. Therefore, a mathematical model based on very few assumptions is devised. The purpose of the proposed model is to relate running speed and required mechanical power output as an algebraic function of the runner’s mass, height, step rate, ground contact time and wind speed. This is relevant in order to better understand the mechanical energy cost of locomotion, and how much it depends on which parameters. The first of the main energy dissipation mechanisms is due to vertical oscillation, i.e., during each step some of the potential energy difference gets transformed into heat. The second mechanism is due to the anterior ground reaction force during the first part of stance and the third is due to aerodynamic drag. With the approximations of constant running speed and a sinusoidal vertical ground reaction force profile one obtains closed algebraic expressions for the center of mass trajectory and the required mechanical power output. Comparisons of model predictions and reported performance data suggest that approximately a quarter of the ground impact energy is stored during the first part of ground contact and then released during the remaining stance phase. Further, one can conclude from the model that less mechanical power output is required when running with higher step rates and a higher center of mass. Non intuitive is the result that a shorter ground contact time is beneficial for fast runs, while the opposite holds for slow runs. An important advantage of the devised model compared to others is that it leads to closed algebraic expressions for the center of mass trajectory and mechanical power output, which are functions of measurable quantities, i.e., of step rate, ground contact time, running speed, runner’s mass, center of mass height, aerodynamic drag at some given speed, wind speed and heart rate. Moreover, the model relies on very few assumptions, which have been verified, and the only tuning parameter is the ratio of recovered elastic energy.
… To picture what’s happening inside a pulse ox—as health care providers call it—start by thinking about what’s happening inside your body. Blood saturated with oxygen is bright crimson thanks to iron-containing hemoglobin, which picks up the gas molecules from your lungs to deliver them to your organs. In the absence of oxygen, the same hemoglobin dims to a cold purple-red. The oximeter detects this chromatic chemistry by shining two lights—one infrared, one red—through your finger and sensing how much comes through on the other side. Oxygen-saturated hemoglobin absorbs more infrared light and also allows more red light to pass through than its deoxygenated counterpart. Adjusting for certain technicalities using your pulse, the device reads out the color of your blood several times a second.
To “see” your blood, though, the light must pass through your skin. This should give us pause, since a range of technologies based on color sensing are known to reproduce racial bias. Photographic film calibrated for white skin, for example, often created distorted images of nonwhite people until its built-in assumptions started to be acknowledged and reworked in the 1970s; traces of racial biases remain in photography still today. Similar disparities have surfaced around several health devices, including Fitbits. How had designers managed to avoid such problems in the case of the oximeter, I wondered? As I dug deeper, I couldn’t find any record that the problem ever was fully fixed. Most oximeters on the market today were initially calibrated primarily for light skin, and they still often reproduce subtle errors for nonwhite people.
In the baseball world, the most common injuries sustained by the throwing arm are well-publicized. Rotator cuff and labral tears, as well as Tommy John surgery, have gotten a lot of focus over the years as major potential risks throwing athletes face as they continue their athletic careers.
One of the less commonly discussed injuries which can also have serious implications is thoracic outlet syndrome. Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) is a unique condition which many baseball athletes have experienced at some point in their careers. This article will discuss what thoracic outlet syndrome is, how it can impact a throwing athlete’s career, and possible treatments.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, Steffan A. Griffin et al. from
While sporting governing bodies prepare guidelines and policies to comply with social distancing requirements and governmental guidelines, and some may feel that such changes threaten the very existence of their sport, is there a hidden opportunity to be found among the noise?
A worrying trend?
Elite team sports generate significant financial wealth and widespread media attention, but grass-roots participation rates in many traditional team sports have been decreasing, especially over the last 5 years.1 2 This contrasts with some data suggesting that physical activity levels actually may be increasing overall across the general population, especially among women and older people.1 This begs the question, are sports losing touch with the general population, and are people turning to non-traditional sports and individual activities for leisure-time physical activity? [full text]
… “You’ve known me long enough to know that I don’t sit back and try to dislocate my shoulder trying to either pat myself or anybody else on the back,” Bettman said before the restart. “This is just another step in what has been a long journey and still has many, many miles to go before we get to the ultimate place that we’re all striving for, which is the conclusion of the [2019-20] season and the presentation of what we all believe is the best trophy in all of sports.”
As the NHL and the players enter their third week inside the bubble, here’s a look at how it’s worked — as well as the challenges in keeping COVID-19 out of it.
ESPN Women's College Basketball, Mechelle Voepel from
Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer said the school might opt for a bubble-like environment on campus if student-athletes return this fall to try to get ready for 2021. Tuesday, the Pac-12 announced the postponement of all sports until at least Jan. 1 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s my understanding … I think Stanford has a brilliant idea, if it works,” VanDerveer said. “They’re gonna try to do what we call an Olympic village. They know that kids are going to socialize. So any teams that maybe want to be back and train, they would house them in the same area. Our team would get housed in the same area, and would get single rooms. Stanford has 97% of students living on campus so, it’s a very dorm-heavy population.”
Importantly, intake data doesn’t reflect success or failure of NFL protocols.
For that we need to see what happens 5+ days *after* training camp started. We don’t seem to have useable data for that just yet, but haven’t seen any big problems. Past no guarantee of future though
Objectives
This study aimed to ascertain if there is a defined pattern of injury related to the percentage of attained adult height and classify injuries according to maturity status bands. Design
Prospective cohort study Methods
From 1998–2019, 63 elite male soccer players of at least the U12 category from a Spanish LaLiga club’s academy were followed until reaching their final height. Medical staff recorded injuries following the FIFA consensus and measured height 2–3 times per season. The percentage of adult height at which each injury occurred was calculated using the player’s closest height to the injury and his final adult height. Injuries were classified in maturity bands, pre-peak-height-velocity (PHV) <88%, circa-PHV 88%–96%, and post-PHV >96%. Results
There were 509 injuries among the 63 players. Growth-related injuries occurred at a median (IQR) of 91.2% (86.7%–95.2%) of adult height, predominating in pre-PHV and PHV bands. Muscle injuries predominantly occurred at post-PHV, with 77.78% of those conditions occurring within that time frame and at 98.7% (96%–99.5%) of adult height. Likewise, knee and ankle joint/ligament injuries predominated at post-PHV (87% and 65% of total cases, respectively) occurring at 99.0% (97.9%–99.9%) and 98.4% (89.2%–99.4%) of adult height, respectively. Conclusion
Injuries follow a specific pattern according to the percentage of adult height.
The people running college football owe the players an answer. With the 2020 season on the brink and the careers of the athletes in flux, there’s a simple question that no coach, administrator or commissioner can answer right now: “What’s next?”
All signs over the weekend continued to point to a great unwinding of the 2020 college football season. At the same time, a unified and unprecedented movement began on Sunday night — led by Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and linked by the #WeWantToPlay hashtag — to potentially give players a seat at the table as the decisions are made on the sport’s future. By late Sunday, there had been buy-in from players in all major conferences and the hope to “ultimately create a College Football Players Association.”
… For a sport with layers of financial inequity (Division I vs. lower divisions, FBS vs. FCS, Power 5 conferences vs. Group of 5, rich P5 schools vs. the middle class), no central leadership model for making enforceable decisions across all conferences and a group of players paying more attention than ever to this lack of leadership, it’s no surprise that pulling off a season in the current environment is the wickedest problem of all.
It appears that the least wrong answer — a spring football season — is the one that college football’s higher-ups have somehow not discussed in detail until recently. Now, with the Big Ten and Pac-12 joining the group of schools and conferences deciding to postpone their fall football seasons, let’s talk about how the spring timetable could play out. It doesn’t have to be as destined to fail as some might think.
… The two types of opt outs recognised are voluntary opt-out and higher risk player opt-out. Both conditions allow players to opt-out without being in breach of contract. For voluntary opt-outs, players who were either drafted in 2020 or have a credited season in 2019 are eligible for a $150,000 stipend. This stipend constitutes as a salary advance. Players that fall into the higher risk category(based off a modified list of conditions from the CDC) have the choice to opt-out and collect a $350,000 stipend. This stipend does not count as a salary advance nor is offset by prior salary. However the stipend for higher risk players will count towards total player cost. Both opt-out scenarios require players to report their decision within seven days from the date the NFL and NFLPA finalize the side letter. In addition to opt outs, Clubs (NFL Teams) must provide housing for players that cohabitate with high risk individuals that fall under all CDC risk factors except smoking.