Having traveled halfway around the world to Melbourne for only the second time since 2016, the two-time Australian Open champion was excited to make her return to the tournament and build on the momentum from her 2020 season, in which she reached the US Open final.
She had been there about 24 hours and received yet another negative COVID-19 test result that morning when her agent told her someone on her charter flight from Los Angeles tested positive upon arrival. All passengers on the flight, including 23 players, would have to self-isolate in their hotel rooms for the next 14 days.
Next, there was an urgent and chaotic meeting over Zoom, and when it was over, Azarenka sat on the couch in her room and the tears came. She was frustrated and upset, but mostly just sad. The 31-year-old spent much of the rest of the day in the same spot, watching television, meditating and writing down some of her racing thoughts.
“It took me a day because, and this was the most difficult part about it, there’s nothing you can do about it,” she recently told ESPN over a Zoom call on what she said was her eighth day of quarantine.
… While college basketball freshmen have shined during the pandemic, Green is doing his work as the face of the G League’s new development program. The potential No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA draft turned down Kentucky, Arizona, Memphis, Auburn, Oregon and other colleges to become the first high school player to join the Ignite, which is allowing teenage draft prospects an opportunity to play exhibition games against fellow G League teams and focus on player development over one season. Green is being paid $600,000 for joining the program, which is coached by former NBA player and coach Brian Shaw.
The Ignite have been training in Walnut Creek, California, but will finally take to the court in early February at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida. G League players will need to pass four COVID-19 tests before clearing quarantine and will also be tested daily. Green can’t wait to make his professional debut.
CBC Sports, The Canadian Press, Joshua Clipperton from
D.J. Smith knows what the data suggests.
NHL players strapping on their gear for a morning skate seven or eight hours before a game probably isn’t the best use of energy.
But in an abbreviated, pandemic-condensed season where practice time is limited and days off priceless, the Ottawa Senators head coach sees benefits in a hockey tradition that, for many in recent years, has come to be viewed as nothing more than an archaic nod to the past.
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San Jose’s Erik Karlsson (65) handles the puck against Minnesota Wild’s Nick Bjugstad (27) in the third period of an NHL hockey game Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021, in St. Paul, Minn. San Jose won 5-3. (AP Photo/Stacy Bengs)
With an outbreak delaying the Dallas Stars’ opener, Rick Bowness got to watch a lot of hockey in the first couple of nights of the NHL season. It wasn’t a coach’s dream.
“It was entertaining hockey, but it was a little sloppy,” Bowness said. “And that’s to be expected.”
Sloppy is the term being used all over the league to describe play in the first two weeks of the season. After no exhibition games — and no action at all for seven teams in the past 10 months — there have been plenty of odd-man rushes and mistakes, with six goals a game being scored on average.
Only strong goaltending has kept it from looking like the high-scoring, wide-open 1980s.
The basic theoretical assumptions of Exercise Physiology and its research directions, strongly influenced by reductionism, may hamper the full potential of basic science investigations, and various practical applications to sports performance and exercise as medicine. The aim of this perspective and programmatic article is to: (i) revise the current paradigm of Exercise Physiology and related research on the basis of principles and empirical findings in the new emerging field of Network Physiology and Complex Systems Science; (ii) initiate a new area in Exercise and Sport Science, Network Physiology of Exercise (NPE), with focus on basic laws of interactions and principles of coordination and integration among diverse physiological systems across spatio-temporal scales (from the sub-cellular level to the entire organism), to understand how physiological states and functions emerge, and to improve the efficacy of exercise in health and sport performance; and (iii) to create a forum for developing new research methodologies applicable to the new NPE field, to infer and quantify nonlinear dynamic forms of coupling among diverse systems and establish basic principles of coordination and network organization of physiological systems. Here, we present a programmatic approach for future research directions and potential practical applications. By focusing on research efforts to improve the knowledge about nested dynamics of vertical network interactions, and particularly, the horizontal integration of key organ systems during exercise, NPE may enrich Basic Physiology and diverse fields like Exercise and Sports Physiology, Sports Medicine, Sports Rehabilitation, Sport Science or Training Science and improve the understanding of diverse exercise-related phenomena such as sports performance, fatigue, overtraining, or sport injuries. [full text]
… For months we’ve watched political leaders debate measures like mask wearing and social distancing while discrediting scientific and medical experts. For me, it was particularly chilling to hear Jay’s explanation of the root causes of our polarized public health response and what some of the long-term consequences might be. It’s much deeper than any one behavior, like mask-wearing. [Jump to this part of the conversation, 22:08]
“Getting at the root-causes element of behavior change is fundamental to understanding what’s going on,” he said. “Because if vaccines weren’t the issue, and it was some kind of medicine and that was polarized by our political leaders, then you’d see the same problem there.”
“So it’s not a problem with masking per se, it’s not a problem with distancing. Individuals might say I don’t trust the masks, but those same individuals are not trusting anything, because of this polarization and the way the media landscape is set up.”
… Can I help equip athletes with the mental tools that are essential to becoming the whole athlete? Absolutely! But, as a coach, I believe that if you do not have a team that works together to build each other up, no matter how strong the players they seem to be, they will eventually fall like a house of cards. Having a strong team with physical skills is one thing, but a team must be cohesive to achieve greatness.
Many corporations hire people like myself to work on team-building with their employees who have group projects, and the idea behind it is simple. People who can work better together enjoy what they do and appreciate who they are doing it with. What is the point of playing on a team when the outcome could be subpar, and it was unenjoyable?
Elite marathon runners need a specific blend of physiological traits to stand a chance of breaking two hours in the marathon, according to a study from the University of Exeter published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Eliud Kipchoge was one of the athletes tested by Andy Jones, professor of applied physiology at Exeter and the study author, along with 16 others who took part in the selection stage of the ambitious Nike Breaking2 project of 2017. Kipchoge was to record 1:59:40.2 in the INEOS 1:59 challenge after the trial had finished.
Jones reported that a “perfect balance” of a high VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake) and high “lactate turn point” (the percentage of someone’s VO2 max that can be sustained before anaerobic respiration, and fatigue, set in) were also necessary attributes of potential sub-two-hour runners.
PLOS, Computational Biology; Christopher L. Dembia, Nicholas A. Bianco, Antoine Falisse, Jennifer L. Hicks, Scott L. Delp from
Musculoskeletal simulations are used in many different applications, ranging from the design of wearable robots that interact with humans to the analysis of patients with impaired movement. Here, we introduce OpenSim Moco, a software toolkit for optimizing the motion and control of musculoskeletal models built in the OpenSim modeling and simulation package. OpenSim Moco uses the direct collocation method, which is often faster and can handle more diverse problems than other methods for musculoskeletal simulation. Moco frees researchers from implementing direct collocation themselves—which typically requires extensive technical expertise—and allows them to focus on their scientific questions. The software can handle a wide range of problems that interest biomechanists, including motion tracking, motion prediction, parameter optimization, model fitting, electromyography-driven simulation, and device design. Moco is the first musculoskeletal direct collocation tool to handle kinematic constraints, which enable modeling of kinematic loops (e.g., cycling models) and complex anatomy (e.g., patellar motion). To show the abilities of Moco, we first solved for muscle activity that produced an observed walking motion while minimizing squared muscle excitations and knee joint loading. Next, we predicted how muscle weakness may cause deviations from a normal walking motion. Lastly, we predicted a squat-to-stand motion and optimized the stiffness of an assistive device placed at the knee. We designed Moco to be easy to use, customizable, and extensible, thereby accelerating the use of simulations to understand the movement of humans and other animals.
bioRxiv; Luis G. Rosa, Jonathan S. Zia, Omer T. Inan, Gregory S. Sawicki from
Background and objective Dynamic muscle fascicle length measurements through B-mode ultrasound have become popular for the non-invasive physiological insights they provide regarding musculoskeletal structure-function. However, current practices typically require time consuming post-processing to track muscle length changes from B-mode images. A real-time measurement tool would not only save processing time but would also help pave the way toward closed-loop applications based on feedback signals driven by in vivo muscle length change patterns. In this paper, we benchmark an approach that combines traditional machine learning (ML) models with B-mode ultrasound recordings to obtain muscle fascicle length changes in real-time. To gauge the utility of this framework for ‘in-the-loop’ applications, we evaluate accuracy of the extracted muscle length change signals against time-series’ derived from a standard, post-hoc automated tracking algorithm.
Methods We collected B-mode ultrasound data from the soleus muscle of six participants performing five defined ankle motion tasks: (a) seated, constrained ankle plantarflexion, (b) seated, free ankle dorsi/plantarflexion, (c) weight-bearing, calf raises (d) walking, and then a (e) mix. We trained machine learning (ML) models by pairing muscle fascicle lengths obtained from standardized automated tracking software (UltraTrack) with the respective B-mode ultrasound image input to the tracker, frame-by-frame. Then we conducted hyperparameter optimizations for five different ML models using a grid search to find the best performing parameters for a combination of high correlation and low RMSE between ML and UltraTrack processed muscle fascicle length trajectories. Finally, using the global best model/hyperparameter settings, we comprehensively evaluated training-testing outcomes within subject (i.e., train and test on same subject), cross subject (i.e., train on one subject, test on another) and within/direct cross task (i.e., train and test on same subject, but different task).
Results Support vector machine (SVM) was the best performing model with an average r = 0.70 ±0.34 and average RMSE = 2.86 ±2.55 mm across all direct training conditions and average r = 0.65 ±0.35 and average RMSE = 3.28 ±2.64 mm when optimized for all cross-participant conditions. Comparisons between ML vs. UltraTrack (i.e., ground truth) tracked muscle fascicle length versus time data indicated that ML tracked images reliably capture the salient qualitative features in ground truth length change data, even when correlation values are on the lower end. Furthermore, in the direct training, calf raises condition, which is most comparable to previous studies validating automated tracking performance during isolated contractions on a dynamometer, our ML approach yielded 0.90 average correlation, in line with other accepted tracking methods in the field.
Conclusions By combining B-mode ultrasound and classical ML models, we demonstrate it is possible to achieve real-time tracking of human soleus muscle fascicles across a number of functionally relevant contractile conditions. This novel sensing modality paves the way for muscle physiology in-the-loop applications that could be used to modify gait via biofeedback or unlock novel wearable device control techniques that could enable restored or augmented locomotion performance.
The NFL is bringing its awards for novel advancements in athletes’ safety and performance to television.
Next Tuesday night during Super Bowl week, the league will air its sixth annual “1st & Future” competition. The show is set for 8 p.m. EST on NFL Network. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, which is collaborating with the league, will be on hand as $150,000 in prize money is handed out on the telecast.
Emerging research suggests that even mild hits to the head may damage the tiny lymphatic vessels that clear toxic chemicals and cellular debris from the brain
Few would think to compare Sam Allardyce and Pep Guardiola, given their vastly different approaches to the game. However, both of them have impressive careers in their own way over the past two decades, and now they need to keep up with the game in order to stay relevant as modern football moves on yet again.
Aim: This study aims to scope available peer-reviewed literature published in a FIFA language to understand the current quantity of research on women’s football.
Methods: Five databases were searched on the 15/12/2019. Studies were included when containing original research published in a peer-reviewed journal around female competitive football of any level, any age and on any subject. Author, journal, title and abstract of all included studies were scoped. Population assessed number of participants, level of play, age level of football and publication theme(s) were extracted.
Results: A total of 1,634 articles were scoped. The oldest publication dated back to 1939, whilst a total of 202 studies were gathered from 2019. The publication theme most frequently researched was sports medicine (N = 521) followed by strength and conditioning (N = 331) and sociology (N = 299). The majority of studies has focussed on elite (N = 442), senior (N = 977) players.
Conclusion: A continuous growth in research attention has been seen. However, the numbers are not comparable to current research output levels in men’s football. This study represents an essential first step in a larger ‘research agenda-setting’ project to determine research priorities for women’s football during the next 10 years.
In an effort to combat the piling up of games due to postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA on Wednesday said it will adjust the existing schedule to avoid having to fill in too many games during the second half of the season.
To do so, the NBA will do two things: reschedule games that have already been postponed, where possible, between now and the league’s scheduled midseason break in early March; and reschedule games to the second half of the season — which has yet to be announced — in order to squeeze in more games where possible in the first half.