Before he became Chicharito, before he played in three World Cups and before he became Mexico’s all-time leading scorer, Javier Hernández wanted to quit soccer and go back to school.
So he organized a breakfast meeting with his agent and parents, during which they urged him to give the sport one more try. Twelve years later, that advice served him well. But even though he never made it back to the classroom, Hernández has continued his education.
“I’m learning about myself every single day,” the Galaxy striker said. “We go through experiences, we go through situations so we can know about ourselves. From there, we learn if we can become a better version of ourselves.”
Kwity Paye has never met the man. Never had the chance to look him in the eye, or hear his story in his own words, or even so much as thank him. For his life. For the chance to be in the United States, where Kwity became an immigrant, then a citizen; a football player, then a really good football player; a star on the defensive line at the University of Michigan, then an NFL draft hopeful earmarked for first-round glory.
But he knows what he owes this man, Cyrus, his mother’s cousin. Agnes and Cyrus had grown up together in the same village in Liberia; they’d abandoned the country together when the country abandoned them — when civil war twisted their homeland into someplace ugly and misshapen. Cyrus had done odd jobs around the refugee camp in Sierra Leone where they’d lived — existed, survived — for seven years, then left his earnings with Agnes for safekeeping. But he’d been far on the other side of the camp when soldiers attacked their makeshift home. Agnes didn’t have time to find him, so she’d fled, using his savings to buy her way onto an army truck that ushered her to Guinea. It was another strange country, another land that wasn’t her home, but she was the lucky one.
… the U23s must also be ready to jump into Bielsa’s match-day squad whenever they’re called upon.
Leeds U23 boss Mark Jackson, who stepped up from the U18s last September when Carlos Corberan departed to become manager of Huddersfield, said the excellent attitude of the first teamers had been key.
In an excellent interview with Phil Hay of The Athletic today, Jackson said: “I speak to other U23 coaches and sometimes they’re not totally happy when first-teamers drop down. It can be seen as disruptive and maybe their attitudes aren’t great.
“But 100%, every player who drops down here, their attitude is first class. I found myself saying that all the time in interviews after games because it was true and I felt like I needed to make the point.
… “I’m not maybe using as much physical energy in a game, but mentally there is a preparation, a thought process to being as sharp as I possibly can be,” Nurse tells Complex Canada. “I’m maybe using more for the mental and using my mind and making sure that when the ball goes up that I’m in the best mind framework to make the best decisions for the team. That’s really what they hire me for. They don’t hire me for my body—believe it or not—they hired me for my decision making and my mind, but they work hand in hand.”
In order for Nurse to get to the level he feels he needs to perform his duties to the best of his ability, much like an athlete, he ensures he gets proper nutrition, hydration, stress management, yoga, and music. To maximize his nutrition and hydration, specifically, Nurse has now partnered with BioSteel, the North American company augmenting performance through their sports hydration products.
“The zero-sugar was one of the big ones, all natural ingredients,” Nurse says about what appealed to him about BioSteel. “Everything in it, once I learned everything that goes into it, once I investigated a little bit, is all natural. No artificial colours, no artificial flavours, and it’s good for you. And that is important, it’s different than a lot of the other things we’ve been drinking for years.”
SB Nation, Pride of Detroit blog, Erik Schlitt from
The Detroit Lions, like most NFL teams, have long kept a small, specialized strength and conditioning program, with a director and one or two assistants. Last season, Josh Shuler (director) and Morris Henry (assistant) ran the program, and while both return in 2021, there are a couple of new names added to the team—Director of Sports Performance, Mike Clark, and Director of Sports Science, Jill Costanza.
It should be no surprise that you will also find these “new” positions in the Los Angeles Rams organization. So what do they do to help the Rams? Let’s take a closer look.
After winning their eighth straight game and ascending into fourth place in the Eastern Conference with a hard-fought overtime victory over the Atlanta Hawks, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau declared it a blackout day. The practice facility shut, the keycards that allow the extra work after hours deactivated.
“Blackout day is an order from Thibs,” Knicks rookie Immanuel Quickley said. “He basically just declared that nobody’s allowed to be on the court, doing stuff. We’ve got an early game coming up so he declared that nobody is supposed to come in. But the guys that want to work probably will still come in anyway . . . Nobody is allowed in the gym. I’ll still find a way in.”
Our brains are incredibly nimble pieces of machinery, and are actively being rewired and rewritten in response to gathered experience. According to David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, the physical impact of this rewiring is so drastic that imaging is capable of distinguishing the motor cortex of a violinist from that of a pianist.
PLOS One; Karin Fischer-Sonderegger, Wolfgang Taube, Martin Rumo, Markus Tschopp from
Purpose
This study compared the validity and inter- and intra-unit reliability of local (LPM) and global (GPS) position measurement systems for measuring acceleration during team sports. Methods
Devices were attached to a remote-controlled car and validated against a laser. Mean percentage biases (MPBs) of maximal acceleration (amax) and maximal running speed (vmax) were used to measure validity. Mean between-device and mean within-device standard deviations of the percentage biases (bd-SDs and wd-SDs) of amax and vmax were used to measure inter- and intra-unit reliability, respectively. Results
Both systems tended to underestimate amax similarly (GPS: –61.8 to 3.5%; LPM: –53.9 to 9.6%). The MPBs of amax were lower in trials with unidirectional linear movements (GPS: –18.8 to 3.5%; LPM: −11.2 to 9.6%) than in trials with changes of direction (CODs; GPS: –61.8 to −21.1%; LPM: −53.9 to –35.3%). The MPBs of vmax (GPS: –3.3 to –1.0%; LPM: –12.4 to 1.5%) were lower than those of amax. The bd-SDs and the wd-SDs of amax were similar for both systems (bd-SDs: GPS: 2.8 to 12.0%; LPM 3.7 to 15.3%; wd-SDs: GPS: 3.7 to 28.4%; LPM: 5.3 to 27.2%), whereas GPS showed better bd-SDs of vmax than LPM.
Conclusion
The accuracy depended strongly on the type of action measured, with CODs displaying particularly poor validity, indicating a challenge for quantifying training loads in team sports.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed an ultrasound-powered implantable sensor that can measure oxygen levels in tissues deep within the body and transmit these data to an external device. The technology could be useful in monitoring transplant viability or oxygen exposure in preterm infants. It also has potential to be adapted to measure other biochemical markers, such as carbon dioxide concentrations or pH levels.
Oxygen is crucial for living tissues, and poor oxygenation leads to cell death. This process forms the basis for various pathological phenomena, but clinicians can struggle to measure tissue oxygenation, at least in tissues that aren’t near the surface of the body. Current methods to assess tissue oxygenation involve using infrared light, but this can only penetrate a few centimeters at most.
“It’s very difficult to measure things deep inside the body,” said Michel Maharbiz, a researcher involved in the study, in a Berkeley announcement. “The device demonstrates how, using ultrasound technology coupled with very clever integrated circuit design, you can create sophisticated implants that go very deep into tissue to take data from organs.”
Recent findings, including a new study out this week, should reassure people about fears that even mild covid-19 could damage the heart in young and fit people. Despite earlier research that found reason for concern, athletes don’t seem to be at high risk for heart issues related to the viral illness after all.
The coronavirus pandemic has made this year drastically different for everyone in the Florida State athletic department.
From student-athletes and coaches to administrators and staff members, everyone has had to make countless sacrifices and changes in order for sports seasons to be able to happen in a modified sense.
Amanda Robinson, Jake Pfeil and the entire FSU sports medicine department have seen their responsibilities change as much as anyone.
In a normal year, both have their hands full serving as athletic trainers for their teams, Robinson with FSU men’s basketball and Pfeil as the head of the FSU football staff. Those responsibilities were still there this season, but they also had to supervise the COVID testing of their respective teams.
… Choosing a drink that contains vitamin C — such as orange, tomato or grapefruit juice — around the time of your meal will increase the amount of the non-haem iron you can absorb.
In one study, 100mg of vitamin C increased iron absorption four-fold. This is roughly equivalent to what you’d get from one glass of orange juice.
Keeping this in mind is particularly important for people who don’t eat meat, as all of their dietary iron will be non-haem iron.
Sports nutrition ingredients are adapting to changing consumer and diet trends, but true innovation remains risky, costly and elusive. That’s one reason why it’s easy to understand how “innovation” often can mean revising an old reliable. For example, Vaughn DuBow, marketing manager at Lonza, suggested creatine monohydrate was the industry’s response to “what type of creatine should I be taking?”
As that ingredient flooded the market, companies had to differentiate their products. Hence, the arrival of magnesium creatine chelate, creatine gluconate and others. The reason for these ingredients, he said, was clear: A product could stand out among its competitors by making specific claims that didn’t belong to creatine monohydrate.
A new book from Annenberg’s Damon Centola describes why some ideas succeed while others fail and uses case studies to illustrate the science behind what drives change.