… A month ago, the 31-year-old forward didn’t envisage being in London right now. The disruption to the women’s soccer season in the United States due to the pandemic led to a rapid decision to find a way to play meaningful games for the first time since giving birth in May — with the rescheduled 2021 Tokyo Olympics on her mind.
She thought staying with the Orlando Pride might mean having only four games until October and then potentially not playing again until March. Five days before the WSL transfer window was closing on Sept. 10, Morgan started quickly looking around at her options.
“By Tuesday (three days later) I had a contract drafted up by Spurs,” Morgan said, “and this was when I was 50-50 if I was ready to make the move with my daughter and pull my family apart from each other.”
… “Anthony, his thing was just ‘Coach, I shoot 3s, that’s all I do,’” [Cortez] Hale told Johnson of his first interactions with Davis. “And I’m like, no, you’ve got to learn how to do everything. You gotta learn how to pass, you gotta learn how to take it to the rim, things of that nature.”
By his junior year, Davis had shot up to 6-7, his senior year 6-10. That growth-spurt is well-documented, and added a completely different dimension and confidence to Davis’ game. Big-man size with guard skills, a frightening blend.
The international tournaments of national teams represent an important change in the players’ regular workload. After a long season, the training prior to the competition substitutes the vacation period for players to attain optimum fitness. As shown in a study published in 2019 by the medical department in charge of the Australia National Football team,1 in this training period, the workload is significantly increased, mainly due to a greater number of training sessions. This, plus the workload from the season, make increase the physical demands significantly.
That’s why monitoring fatigue is relevant both in the previous weeks and during the tournament. One of the main procedures to control fatigue is the use of blood markers, such as Creatine Kinase or urea. Even though these parameters are usually used to assess muscle damage or metabolic status, there is high variability among subjects that hinders their accurate interpretation. Moreover, these markers may vary throughout a regular season depending on the type of work done and the physical demands required. Thus, in competitions such as a European Championship or a World Cup, altered values can be frequently found in a regular week of matches that could be considered a warning sign. Therefore, the context is relevant to interpret these markers accurately.
Considering the scarce reference data in this kind of competitions, recently it has been published a research which was carried out to retrospectively analyse fatigue markers in the German National Football team during World Cups and European Championships from 2006 to 2016.2 During 3 World Cups (2006, 2010 and 2014) and 3 European Championships (2008, 2012 and 2016) the CK and urea of 68 players were registered (1,019 CK data and 943 urea data).
… “I think when you’re playing [on the U.S. National Team], you are going against people who are just as athletic as you, so all of a sudden you can’t just rely on running by someone,” remarked Watkins. “You have to really think about what you are going to do when you go against people, which definitely helped me prepare for playing here because it’s like the same group of elite players. Coming here is like a national team in itself.”
Despite their growth from the U.S. U18 National Team experience, the transition to collegiate play still brought about some challenges for the pair. While the drills and skills are the same, both players commented on the increase in intensity that they have experienced in practices at Duke.
“Everyone is going hard all the time and everything has to be perfect,” stated Graham. “Everything needs to be the point.”
Approximately 20% of people in the U.S. now own a consumer wearable, which is increasing annually, according to the presentation.
People often track several metrics using consumer wearables, including heart rate, BP and blood glucose. For AF, there has been a shift from measuring heart rate to assessing irregular rhythms, which has led to wearables notifying patients when these occur. The FDA has regulated and even approved some of these capabilities, especially as wearables have entered the medical space.
“There’s a whole theme here in a regulatory cascade from consumer-focused wellness device all the way to a medical-grade diagnostic at home,” Turakhia said during the presentation.
Four former Harvard athletes, including two football players, are using their athletic backgrounds—and their shared belief in the power of sports—as the investment thesis behind what they say is the first early stage, institutionally-backed venture fund.
Founded by former football players Isaiah Kacyvenski and Brian Reilly, Boston-based Will Ventures bills itself as the first venture capital fund focused exclusively on leveraging the power of sports.
“We believe that sports are going to prove out the next great wave of technological innovation, whether that’s in consumer, tech or media,’’ said Kacyvenski, who also played in the NFL.
What if you suddenly had twice the time to train? What would you do? Not to be a downer, but you’d probably get injured.
That was the consensus among a group of four leading sports podiatrist I had the privilege of interviewing on their RPM2 podcast last week. Matt Werd of Florida Foot and Ankle says he’s seen more than the usual stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendon issue and the like since the start of the pandemic. “People have been stuck at home, not going to work, so they had extra hour of two not commuting,” Werd says. “Not only people who never exercised, even people who were seasoned, experienced — now they had time to train more, go faster, do new things. They took the opportunity to train harder, do more.”
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism from
The main focus of this review is illness among elite athletes, how and why it occurs, and whether any measures can be taken to combat it or to prevent its onset. In particular, there is particular interest in exercise-induced immunodepression, which is a result of the immune system regarding exercise (e.g., prolonged, exhaustive exercise) as a challenge to its function. This promotes the inflammatory response. There is often a high incidence of illness in athletes after undertaking strenuous exercise, particularly among those competing in endurance events, not only mainly in terms of upper respiratory tract illness, but also involving gastrointestinal problems. It may well be that this high incidence is largely due to insufficient recovery time being allowed after, for example, a marathon, a triathlon, or other endurance events. Two examples of the incidence of upper respiratory tract illness in moderate versus endurance exercise are provided. In recent years, increasing numbers of research studies have investigated the origins, symptoms, and incidence of these bouts of illness and have attempted to alleviate the symptoms with supplements, sports foods, or immunonutrition. One aspect of the present review discusses iron deficiency, which has been primarily suggested to have an impact upon cell-mediated immunity. Immunonutrition is also discussed, as are new techniques for investigating links between metabolism and immune function.
No Grass in the Clouds newsletter, Ryan O'Hanlon from
… And so, what can be done in the face of a seemingly inevitable trend? As anyone who’s paid any attention to the dislocation of American society over the past decade knows, you move the lines. Pep Guardiola would no doubt hate that comparison, but that’s what he — and others, including current Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp — did. Rather than limiting themselves to three zones across the field, Pep’s teams roughly organized themselves into five horizontal zones: there were the two wings (same as they were before) and then they split that original central zone into three smaller ones. And although the most-central zone was still the prime real-estate, his Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City teams all dominated from the right- and left-centers, or as it’s become known: the “half-spaces”.
… “To be honest, there’s a lot of good. It’s been an experience. And for the most part, it’s been a really cool experience. I look back at some of the notes I’ve taken over time, it’ll be pretty cool to tell the story,” [Jon Cooper] said. “But probably the best part about this thing is when we check out.”
Everyone wanted out of the bubble. It was a necessity, but it was also a nuisance and an ordeal of attrition. While many were good at stifling their discontent, it occasionally slipped through a crack in their veneer, as it did for Dallas Stars coach Rick Bowness on the day of Game 6.
“We knew coming in and we were all prepared to be here nine, 10 weeks. And that’s where we are,” he said. “But no, there will not be one bit of this bubble life that I’m going to miss.”
To prevent injuries, a precise description of the injury-inciting event can be helpful.1 2 Thus, the purpose of this study was to systematically video-analyse moderate and severe match injuries from German Bundesliga (BL) and Bundesliga 2 (BL2).
How did we do this?
We searched for all moderate and severe match injuries (>7 days of time loss) that occurred during the observation period of the three consecutive seasons 2014/15, 15/16 and 16/17.3 Two raters then independently assessed the injuries for game situation, player and opponent behaviour, referee decision, and injury mechanisms.
Postseason games come at an unprecedented pace starting Monday in this year of the pandemic.
Teams could play the Division Series over five straight days, take a single day off and then contest the League Championship Series on seven consecutive days. That could stress closers such as Aroldis Chapman, Liam Hendriks and Kenley Jansen, and starters like Gerrit Cole and Walker Buehler.
“I’m old school, I guess, but it’s all about winning. And if they needed me, I wanted them to put me in there, ” said Darold Knowles, who helped Oakland win the 1973 title by becoming the first to pitch in all seven World Series games. “I think that’s the way everybody feels now, but they’re so afraid they’re going to hurt somebody. And I understand that. I think it’s a little bit overdone.”