Peter Laviolette pulled the mask away from his face to bark out instructions while pointing every which way with his stick, then put the mask back on and skated around to show his new players what to do.
It was the first day of training camp for Laviolette and the Washington Capitals and most of the NHL. With the regular season starting next week, there’s no time to waste. Camps are now open for the league’s 31 teams and they will last just 10 days.
There are no exhibition games to tune up before the pucks drop for real.
“There’s so many things that you want to touch on, and the time is limited,” Laviolette said after the first on-ice session Monday. “It’s almost like fear when you get home that maybe you didn’t get everything done or you didn’t get in what you were supposed to get done.”
… Fast-forward to 2020 and in some corners of the football world, Gotze has been written off as a former star, a dynamic player now finishing out his career far from the top tier. That criticism used to get to him, but he’s realised in recent years that he only needs to meet his own expectations. As he rebuilds his career in the relative quiet of the Eredivisie at PSV Eindhoven, he is tentatively planning his second life in football.
Borussia Dortmund, the club that gave him his senior debut on Nov. 21, 2009, released him in June. The six years since that goal in Brazil saw him spend two seasons at Bayern Munich and return to Borussia Dortmund, where his form and fitness slipped away. But remember this: Gotze is still only 28.
Training load (TL) based on the subjective rating of perceived exertion (RPE) may be a useful athlete monitoring alternative when wearable technology is unavailable. The aim of this study was to examine the validity of RPE-based TL monitoring in elite ice hockey. A male ice hockey team (n = 18) was monitored using a 200-Hz accelerometer, heart rate (HR) and RPE (0-10 scale), throughout a 4-week competitive period (n = 309 individual observations). Session-RPE (RPE × duration) averaged 244.8 ± 135.2 and 728.6 ± 150.9 arbitrary units (AU) during practice sessions and during official games, respectively. The smallest worthwhile change was 19.8 AU. Within-individual correlations between session-RPE and total accelerations >0.5 m·s-2 (Acctot), accelerations >2 m·s-2 (Acc2), total decelerations >-0.5 m·s-2 (Dectot), decelerations < -2 m·s-2 (Dec2), time > 85% maximum HR, Edwards’ TL, and modified training impulse were very large (r = 0.70-0.89; p < 0.001). In addition, correlations between RPE and measures of exercise intensity (Acctot per min, Acc2 per min, Dectot per min, mean HR, and peak HR) were small (r = 0.02-0.29; p < 0.05) except for Dec2 being unclear (p = 0.686). Differences in intensity parameters between RPE range (easy to very hard, 2-7 AU) were small (r = 0.22-0.31; p < 0.05). The session-RPE method can be used as a global indicator of TL in ice hockey. Specific ranges of time-motion and HR intensity variables can be demarcated between RPE categories (easy to very hard; 2-7 AU). Accounting for training volume (session-RPE) more accurately reflects objective methods of TL based on accelerative efforts and HR, than the RPE score (based on the perception of the intensity).
Scandanavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports from
The aim was to investigate the preventive effect of a complex training program based on holistic hamstring health understanding in elite professional soccer players. This study involved an elite club in Europe and was conducted over 12 seasons. The last 2 seasons were the intervention period and the others were the control seasons. During the intervention period, players performed a complex program organized into different interventions throughout the week having as a priority the player health. Hamstring injuries, absenteeism, injury rates, and injury burden between the control and intervention seasons were compared using a rate ratio (RR) with 95% CI. Players had a mean exposure of 333.5±18.6 hours per season with no significant differences between the intervention and control seasons. The overall injury rate was 3 times lower during the two intervention seasons than during the previous seasons (p<0.01); the match injury rate was 2.7 times lower (p<0.01) and the training rate 4.3 times (p<0.01). Injury burden was almost 4 times lower during the two intervention seasons than during the previous seasons (p<0.01) and recurrences in the control group were 10% vs. 0% in the intervention group. Hamstring injuries were reduced ~3 times during the seasons in which elite football players were exposed to multicomponent, complex prevention training with individual approaches based on player needs, management of training load, individualized physiotherapy treatment, and planned staff communication, in comparison to the control seasons without a clearly defined and structured injury prevention intervention.
… A survey of 3,500 Americans by The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital found that 76% of people have tried working out at home during the pandemic—and crucially, 66% prefer it. Among millennials, the number is even higher: 82% made the switch and 81% like it more.
This has enormous ramifications for the future of fitness. TD Ameritrade found that 59% of Americans don’t plan to return to their gym after the pandemic, and analysts and industry insiders believe that gyms and fitness studios as we know them could become a thing of the past. This is a devastating blow to an industry that represents more than 40,000 health and fitness centers and employs 3 million trainers and other personnel.
National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke from
Serotonin is a neurochemical that plays a critical role in the way the brain controls our thoughts and feelings. For example, many antidepressants are designed to alter serotonin signals sent between neurons. In an article in Cell, National Institutes of Health-funded researchers described how they used advanced genetic engineering techniques to transform a bacterial protein into a new research tool that may help monitor serotonin transmission with greater fidelity than current methods. Preclinical experiments, primarily in mice, showed that the sensor could detect subtle, real-time changes in brain serotonin levels during sleep, fear, and social interactions, as well as test the effectiveness of new psychoactive drugs. The study was funded, in part, by the NIH’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative which aims to revolutionize our understanding of the brain under healthy and disease conditions.
… The Krishnan lab at UChicago specializes in building tiny sensors to travel inside cells and report back on what’s happening, so that researchers can understand how cells work—and how they break down in disease or disorders. Previously, they have built such machines to study neurons and lysosomes, among others.
In this case, they decided to use the technique to investigate the electric activities of the organelles inside live cells.
In the membranes of neurons, there are proteins called ion channels which act as gateways for charged ions to enter and exit the cell. These channels are essential for neurons to communicate. Previous research had shown that organelles have similar ion channels, but we weren’t sure what roles they played.
The researchers’ new tool, called Voltair, makes it possible to explore this question further. It works as a voltmeter measuring the voltage difference of two different areas inside a cell. Voltair is constructed out of DNA, which means it can go directly into the cell and access deeper structures.
Frank Lampard says there are some players in his Chelsea squad that are struggling with coronavirus for longer than others and admits it has been “very challenging” for his medical staff.
Across the NBA, team officials tasked with enforcing and managing the league’s day-to-day health and safety protocols say they’re exhausted and struggling to balance those roles along with their typical team duties, many of which are focused on player health.
Further, several of these officials say they have found themselves so busy with protocols that their ability to work with individual players on a hands-on basis — in areas that include treatment, recovery, training — has been sacrificed, leading to concerns about reduced care for players.
“I’ve actually told my peers on these trips that we’ve been on — it’s very, very difficult for me to get my hands on [players],” said one Western Conference head athletic trainer, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. One Eastern Conference head athletic trainer independently echoed this point and said it’s shared league-wide among peers.
… “I give the NFL a D-,” Dr. Rolle said. “That’s being honestly generous. I would give them an F, but the chief medical officer of the NFL is Dr. Allen Sills who happens to be a neurosurgeon so I can’t be too rough on someone with the same specialty. I don’t think that a lot of it is his fault, honestly. I think it’s owners and leadership that are really telling him ‘Look, we need products, products, products. We need money, money, money. Figure it out. Find a way to be reactive and get this game on the field whether you have the third-string quarterback, the practice squad wide receiver playing for a team, it doesn’t matter. Just get this product on the field.’
The NBA is adopting a tougher policy regarding masks, telling teams Monday that players on the active roster will have to wear the face coverings in the bench area until they enter games.
That memo, obtained by The Associated Press, was released on the same day the Brooklyn Nets ruled All-Star forward Kevin Durant out for Tuesday’s game against Utah in accordance with the league’s health and safety protocols for dealing with coronavirus.
Among the new rules, which take effect Tuesday: players who are dressed for games and eligible to participate must wear a face mask until they enter the game, all players and coaches must wear face masks when outside the team environment if they are around other players and coaches, and players must report the names of any private trainer, therapist, chiropractor or other specialist who they work with outside of the team facility.
Overtime, the competitive distance among elite football teams has shortened, so the focus is currently on those aspects that can tip the scale to one side or the other. This has caused elite teams to incorporate specialists in different fields with the intention to seek the most comprehensive preparation possible while reducing injuries, one of the main limitations in regard to performance.
Training load (TL) monitoring is one of the main tools, as it allows us to assess fatigue, anticipating overloads and overtraining in order to minimise the risk of injury. In fact, there is a relationship between TL and the incidence of injuries,1 which reflects the importance of its measurement. The TL can be differentiated between external and internal, defined respectively as the work performed by the athlete (e.g., distance covered, speed and acceleration, number of repetitions performed…) and the associated physiological response (e.g., rate of perceived exertion, heart rate, blood lactate, oxygen consumption…). Establishing the relationship between the two measures is important, while adjusting the external load to produce the programmed internal load is key when it comes to monitoring the evolution of the player’s state and their risk of injury as well.
For some clubs, both may be extremely challenging options requiring period of transition & process of transformation. Big onus on leaders & managers to adapt
… Like many areas of elite sport, talent identification processes have embraced the ongoing increase in data availability. However, despite incorporating data as part of standard practice, the amount to which data is used to inform decision making remains varied between sports and individual organisations. Whilst there is a general acceptance amongst many decision makers that data driven ways of thinking is a step in the right direction, fully committing to a process which prioritises it is still relatively uncommon. My take on this is twofold: On one hand, utilising data gives us an ability to uncover patterns and causative associations that as a human we could not possibly comprehend without the data. On the other hand, even the most complex algorithm based on an extensive dataset will still have difficulty accounting for all of the erratic contextual factors that exist within team sports. This then poses the rebuttal, but what if when you look at the data, it doesn’t tell the whole story? Or worse, what if those interpreting the data are unclear what story the data is telling?