Miami Heat All-Star center Bam Adebayo is not shying away from the lofty goals he has set for his career after recently signing a five-year extension that could be worth almost $200 million.
“I definitely want to be, long time down the road when my career ends, whenever somebody mentions a top-five center or top-five power forward, they always got to mention my name,” Adebayo said during a Friday video conference call with reporters. “That’s how I want to be remembered. Keep changing basketball.”
Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald said his mind wandered to dark places and he started preparing for the worst-case scenario during his 13-day quarantine at home because of the coronavirus.
Fitzgerald, 37, was put on the reserve/COVID-19 list on Thanksgiving. He started feeling symptoms two days later, and they continued through the weekend and into that Monday.
“I think the scariest part, and I think anybody that’s had it, is nobody really can give you any answers,” Fitzgerald said. “You learn new information every single day. You feel symptoms and you ask, and nobody really can tell you, ‘It’s gonna be better,’ or, ‘This is how long it would usually last.’
… Coaching at one of the most prestigious technical institutes in the world, Raman had access to and applied analytically driven basketball data to her team’s play. Raman is eager to utilize the “mountains of data” Memphis collects, but won’t solely base her coaching off of advanced metrics.
“When I was coaching at MIT, I really liked to look at the numbers if I was wondering about a defensive coverage or looking at a team’s weaknesses in terms of their numbers,” Raman said. “It’s important to know your personnel and you can’t be just numbers-based only.”
Raman isn’t overwhelmed by making the massive leap from Division 3 women’s college basketball to the NBA. That’s due in part to her stellar preparation and a passionate commitment to her craft, which kept her following a unique coaching path.
Toward the end of my rookie year in 2009 it was obvious to everyone in Seattle that I was not a “normal” rookie in that I was someone that was essentially guaranteed to start every game and was becoming a key member of Sigi Schmid’s team. One morning late in the season, I walked out to training in a group consisting of veterans Tyrone Marshall, Pete Vagenas and Freddie Ljungberg. As we made our way to the grass pitch a couple of minutes before the 10 am start time, Brian Schmetzer — an assistant coach at the time — called me over.
He first pointed over to the experienced defender Zach Scott who was already starting to warm up with a few of our teammates and then he said, “I don’t care how many games you’ve started, you’re still a rookie and there’s no way any of these veterans should be on the training pitch before you. If you wanna make it here, they can’t be on the pitch before you. You need to develop the right habits — young players need to be hungry and among the first on the pitch everyday.”
The message was received loud and clear and I made sure to be out on the pitch 10 minutes before every training session going forward, a habit I continued into the next four seasons as much as I could. That’s Schmetzer in a nutshell — a coach who has an ability to call out a starter and the last player on the bench in the same way. He is very good at setting the standard and then refusing to let anyone to fall beneath it.
CEO Tim Cook says that Apple has “things going on in our labs that are mind-blowing” when it comes to fitness. The comment was part of an extended in-person interview at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, that’s featured in the latest episode of the Outside Podcast. Cook and podcast host Michael Roberts spent more than an hour walking the grounds of the company’s headquarters, discussing everything from Cook’s need for daily exercise, to the new breed of health studies enabled by Apple Watch users, to the challenges of escaping screens in today’s hyper-connected world.
In September, Apple introduced the Watch Series 6, with the slogan “The future of health is on your wrist.” Cook told Roberts that the device, which now has a blood-oxygen sensor as well as an electrocardiogram app, is allowing people to “own their health in a way that they were not able to do before.” Later this month, Apple will launch Fitness+, inserting itself into the rapidly expanding online training space in a major way. Fitness+ will integrate your Watch data into guided workouts streamed to an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV screen. Cook believes that the simple interface will encourage people to explore new kinds of exercise routines and “maybe expand their universe a bit.” This kind of coaching isn’t new for Apple, he argued, but a “broadening” of the relationship the company already has with customers through its retail stores. [audio, 1:10:05]
Bob Foose, the executive director of the MLS Players Association, said that “almost 20%” of MLS players contracted COVID-19 over the course of the season, and that the players surrendered close to $150 million in potential earnings because of the renegotiated collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that was agreed to in June.
Speaking to reporters via a conference call Thursday, Foose called 2020 “unquestionably the most difficult season in MLS history.”
To address the growing concern for college athlete mental health, requests by other institutions, and to promote general well-being, the University of Michigan’s Athletes Connected program has created a first-of-its-kind manual to aid in this quest. The College Athlete Mental Health Program Manual, unveiled Tuesday, Dec. 8, is a roadmap to create programming and assist college athletes.
An in-depth analysis of the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey found that nearly half of students in the state consume sugary drinks at least once a day, increasing their risk of becoming obese, and their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular complications, the Minnesota Department of Health states.
Any of these conditions, along with other chronic diseases, also puts youth at increased risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
The MDH analysis also found significant disparities among Minnesota students. Those who identified themselves as Black, American Indian and/or people of color reported consuming greater amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages per day compared to white students. Additionally, students experiencing economic hardship were twice as likely to report having sugary drinks three or more times per day compared to the average for all students.
Nutrition, as a science, began to be studied in the mid-18th century. However, the origin of sports nutrition dates back many centuries, to ancient Greece, when the original Olympic Games began to be held.
Back then, it was already clear that the athlete, or whoever practices sports, must focus on their nutrition: in addition to being healthy, it must be balanced and as varied as possible, eating as many different foods as possible. This is an aspect that often does not happen since many athletes end up eating just two or three types of food.
Athletes must ask themselves what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. They must adjust to the day they train more or less, or to whether they are in preseason, in full competition or out of season. This concept, called nutritional periodisation, means eating differently based on whether one trains one way or another: some foods will be eaten, especially the most energetic ones. Periodisation seeks to improve both performance and health and optimise weight and body composition.
In this way, if an endurance sport is practised, more carbohydrates will be eaten. However, if it is a strength-based sport, more protein should be eaten. It should also be considered that it must be adjusted to the duration of the effort and the size of the athlete.
Placing warning labels on beverage dispensers might be enough to help college students cut back on sugary drinks, according to a new study.
The study by the University of Michigan School of Public Health and University of California, Davis, found that labels helped reduce consumption by nearly 15%.
“Warning labels may be effective tools for reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, particularly beverages such as sweetened teas, pink lemonade and chocolate milk for which the sugar content is not immediately obvious or well known,” said lead author Cindy Leung, U-M assistant professor of nutritional sciences.
Just a day after the Toronto Raptors announced that three members of their organization tested positive for COVID-19, it was business as usual on the campus of Saint Leo University, where the Raptors are preparing for the coming 2020-21 NBA season in Tampa, Fla.
“We were in full contact today, we sure were,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said Tuesday after the team concluded its morning practice on a Zoom call.
… The Pirates announced several additions and changes to the baseball operations staff, headlined by the hiring of a head athletic trainer, strength and conditioning coach and coordinator for pitching development.
They also did a little bit of reorganization where Todd Tomczyk will continue in his role as director of sports medicine, and A.J. Patrick will assume the title of director of sports performance.
“We’re always looking to advance in our expertise in the technical competencies that we’re putting around our players and wanting to be as current as we possibly can in every one of those roles,” general manager Ben Cherington said. “And [Thursday’s news] was a piece of it.
We should not be playing college basketball right now.
If we had our priorities straight, thousands of athletes would not be gathering on campuses and traveling the country while their classmates were sent home for their safety. If high-level college sports did not “preach education but vote money,” the games would pause until the coronavirus pandemic was no longer out of control.
Instead, with the season just two weeks old, the NCAA appears to be barreling toward disaster. The virus has already ripped through dozens of teams. College programs are burning through tens of thousands of tests while supermarket cashiers or postal workers search for a testing site where they don’t have to wait for hours. At least one college player has been diagnosed with a COVID-related heart condition. All while deaths reach record levels and health experts predict the worst is still to come.
Making Sense Of: Conversations and Collaboration
Pulling off difficult conversations and making them mutually useful experiences, it’s a skill possessed by the best collaborators. The current pandemic is a living laboratory for observing these conversations and for seeing whether or not these interactions are skillful, and ultimately useful.
University of California-Merced researchers surveyed from the campus population to see who complied with public health orders and who did not. Their data showed that risk-tolerant, non-altruistic individuals were most likely to non-comply. The term I like for those kinds of people: assholes. And they’re all over the place.
Research epidemiologist Maria Sundaram posted a recent Twitter thread on “how to talk with vaccine-hesitant people.” It is a good basic guideline for how to steer a difficult conversation: find common ground, be respectful, don’t expect to instantly succeed.
Athletes seeking performance gains are often sometimes told to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and there is a parallel with how we communicate. Business school professors writing in the Harvard Business Review found significant payoffs in terms of trust and cooperation among teams where individuals were more willing to ask sensitive questions.
Also critical, knowing the difference between a sensitive question and a stupid question. It might take work, per Sundaram, to inform before moving into the more challenging phases of a difficult conversation. Of course, you should be well-informed before deciding to inform your peers about sensitive subject material. Otherwise, it’s you who might be the asshole.
Activist Aubrey Gordon has claimed the moniker “Your Fat Friend.” According to her conversations about fatness are extremely one-sided: “We’re very good at talking about fat people without ever talking to fat people.” A better world for fat people is a better world for everyone: greater dignity, less bullying, and much much healthier overall.
Sports analysts say the best athletes make their teammates better, but everyone regularly has this opportunity if you’re willing to put yourself out there and have difficult but important conversations. The hidden personal benefit is that as you learn more about others and increase your empathy for them, you’re making yourself better.
