Moments after Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters “We’ve got to be disciplined,” his injured ace showed that might be the biggest challenge in his comeback from Tommy John surgery.
“If it was up to me, I’d be starting tomorrow,” Sale said after throwing 25 pitches in a bullpen session at Fenway Park on Tuesday, joking: “I told AC I was ready for the second one in Atlanta (in eight days), because I want to hit. I left it up to him, though.”
“You combine the technical stuff he has with the intangibles, it doesn’t really surprise me that he is where he is,” says Darren Hersh, one of Grubauer’s former minor-league coaches.
International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance from
Purpose: To survey soccer practitioners’ recovery strategy: (1) use, (2) perceived effectiveness, and (3) factors influencing their implementation in professional soccer. Methods: A cross-sectional convenience sample of professional soccer club/confederation practitioners completed a web-based survey (April to July 2020). Pearson chi-square and Fisher exact tests with Cramer V (φ − c) assessed relationships and their strength, respectively, between the perceived effectiveness and frequency of strategy use. Results: A total of 80 soccer practitioners (13 countries) completed the survey. The 3 most important recovery objectives were “alleviating muscle damage/fatigue,” “minimizing injury risk,” and “performance optimization.” The most frequently used strategies were active recovery, structured recovery day, extra rest day, massage, cold-water therapy, and carbohydrate provision (predominantly on match day and match day + 1). Relationships were identified between perceived effectiveness and frequency of strategy use for sleep medication (P < .001, φ − c = 0.48), carbohydrate provision (P = .007, φ − c = 0.60), protein provision (P = .007, φ − c = 0.63), an extra rest day (P < .001, φ − c = 0.56), and a structured recovery day (P = .049, φ − c = 0.50). Conclusions: The study demonstrates that professional soccer practitioners have a range of objectives geared toward enhancing player recovery. A disconnect is apparent between the perceived effectiveness of many recovery strategies and their frequency of use in an applied setting. Novel data indicate that strategies are most frequently employed around match day. Challenges to strategy adoption are mainly competing disciplinary interests and resource limitations. Researchers and practitioners should liaise to ensure that the complexities involved with operating in an applied environment are elucidated and apposite study designs are adopted, in turn, facilitating the use of practically effective and compatible recovery modalities.
… But another example has arisen this year with the potential for significant impact. Harbaugh has put not one but two new assistants in charge of the team’s wide receivers.
Tee Martin is the actual position coach. Keith Williams, a route-running guru also working with the tight ends and running backs, has the title pass of Pass Game Specialist.
“I don’t think people have ever seen anything like this before,” Martin said last week. “I thought Coach Harbaugh was really outside the box and really ahead of the game when he came up with this idea.”
Generations of Broncos players have sought him out for medical treatment and advice, and for much of his years with the team, Director of Sports Medicine Steve Antonopulos was perhaps the most reliable and most trusted person at Broncos headquarters.
That incredible run was unparalleled in Denver, as the man more commonly known as “Greek” became the only person on staff for each of the Broncos’ eight Super Bowl appearances, including three title victories.
But after 45 memorable years with the Broncos — four as an assistant trainer, one as the director of rehabilitation, 36 as the head athletic trainer and four as the director of sports medicine — Antonopulos is retiring.
National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke from
In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers have mapped out the brain activity that flows when we learn a new skill, such as playing a new song on the piano, and discovered why taking short breaks from practice is a key to learning. The researchers found that during rest the volunteers’ brains rapidly and repeatedly replayed faster versions of the activity seen while they practiced typing a code. The more a volunteer replayed the activity the better they performed during subsequent practice sessions, suggesting rest strengthened memories.
“Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced,” said Leonardo G. Cohen, M.D., senior investigator at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in Cell Reports. “Understanding this role of neural replay may not only help shape how we learn new skills but also how we help patients recover skills lost after neurological injury like stroke.”
… What changed this year, besides everything? The shoes, yes — super spikes make a difference. But something else is, ahem, afoot: as of May 25 (the most recently published comprehensive USATF list), Teare, Hocker, Mu, and Nuguse all led the U.S. lists (although the Portland Invitational rewrote the 1500m list). In 2019, at this time, the top collegians were 6th in the men’s mile (Walid Suliman), 6th in the men’s 1500m (Nuguse), and 4th in the women’s 800m (Lauren Ellsworth).
How did the upheaval affect athletes? I surveyed athletes across the nation, at all levels of the NCAA, to try to find out how their training and mental approaches changed. The survey, conducted between April 19 and May 15, asked respondents about their training history (mileage, frequency of faster workouts, frequency of races, and injury / illness issues) for the two seasons pre-pandemic (for most, 2019 cross country, and 2019-2020 winter track), and for the 13-month period from March 2020 – March 2021. The survey was anonymous, and athletes were not asked to identify their college affiliation; respondents were roughly evenly split male / female, and NCAA Division 1 / Division 3 (with a handful of D2 athletes sprinkled in).
The biggest change? A sizable reduction in intensity (tables 1 and 2) — fewer hard workouts (defined as workouts at race pace or faster), fewer time trials, fewer races — which leads to an inevitable follow-up question: is there a connection between the reduction in intensity and improvement in performance?
… When we spend too much time analysing our problems and dilemmas, we often end up more at a loss than we were to begin with. On top of that, persistent overthinking can result in a wide range of symptoms such as insomnia, trouble concentrating and loss of energy which, in turn, often leads to further worries regarding one’s symptoms, thereby creating a vicious cycle of overthinking. In some cases, this eventually leads to chronic anxiety or depression.
When overthinking and the associated symptoms spiral and become unbearable, it’s usual for us to look for ways to calm down. Many common strategies sound reasonable or useful, but research shows that they can inadvertently cause more harm than good and typically lead to even more overthinking.
The development of a friction-based wearable autonomous energy system is the aim of a new project being led by Heriot-Watt University’s Research Institute for Flexible Materials.
The team will use nanogenerators designed to capture and reuse the kinetic energy in clothing materials created as the wearer moves.
Professor George Stylios from Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles and Design in the Scottish Borders is leading on the textile aspects of the project.
“As humans, we collectively expend a huge amount of energy as we move around so why not capture this and put it to good use?” he said “To do so would not only benefit the planet in our fight against climate change but also deliver ongoing convenience to people’s lives.
… In a press statement, the Korean electronics giant said its researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) were able to integrate a stretchable organic LED (OLED) display and a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor in a single device to measure and display a user’s heart rate in real-time.
… “No-prick glucose testing has been a holy grail of sorts in diabetes, and hopefully one day someone will cross the finish line,” said Dr. John Buse, director of the Diabetes Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “These data suggest that there is hope.”
The search for an alternative to finger-prick testing to improve diabetes control and quality of life for people with this disease has been ongoing, and sweat has many merits. Fingers contain many sweat glands and produce a high amount of sweat, but sweat has lower levels of glucose than blood. What’s more, readings may vary with other skin characteristics, resulting in inaccurate blood sugar measurements.
The new sensor includes a sweat-absorbing polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel that sits on a flexible plastic strip. You place your finger on the sensor for one minute and the hydrogel absorbs tiny amounts of sweat and undergoes a reaction that results in a small electrical current detected by a hand-held device.
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The National Football League (the “NFL” or “Sponsor”) has developed a funding opportunity (this “Funding Opportunity”) for the purposes of inviting research proposals and providing funding for innovative translational and clinical research being conducted by leading investigative teams related to the empirical investigation of alternatives to opioids in the management of pain, as well as the effects of cannabis / cannabinoids on the performance of elite football players.
The goal of the Funding Opportunity is to provide funding support for up to five (5) pilot research proposals from leading investigative teams in the fields of pain management and the effects of cannabinoids on the performance of elite football players. The Funding Opportunity will evaluate proposals through two broad fields: (1) non-opioid medical pain management treatments and (2) the effects of cannabis / cannabinoids on the performance of elite football players.
Odicci Alexander winced in pain as a not-as-soft-as-advertised ball bounced off her left foot in the batter’s box. James Madison’s star pitcher would lose some toenails after getting hit by the pitch in a game Sunday, ESPN reported the day after, but Alexander dutifully stepped back into the circle when called. When she pitched, the right-hander dragged her injured foot through the dirt.
“Blood, sweat and tears,” Alexander said. “I was going to keep pitching for my teammates.”
Alexander’s heroic effort pitching James Madison to the national semifinals — the longest run for an unseeded team at the Women’s College World Series — won hearts as she became the latest pitcher to step into the spotlight on college softball’s biggest annual stage.
Dealing with the coronavirus was the priority for the NBA in 2020-21, but as the end of the season nears, data suggests the league saw a dramatic increase in injuries not related to COVID-19.
Some team health officials said the effects will drive how they manage player health for next season.
The average number of players sidelined per game due to injury, non-COVID-19 illness or rest this season was 5.1 (includes both teams), according to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton, the highest since he started tracking it in 2009-10. That does not include games missed by players in the health and safety protocols. The next highest season was 4.8, so 2020-21 was 5% higher.
… “It’s magnified when it’s some of the elite players,” said Sun coach Curt Miller, whose team moved back to No. 1 in the AP power poll this week. “We had it before the start of the season with Alyssa Thomas, (Alysha) Clark, Angel. There seemed to be a wave of injuries. It’s more magnified when you don’t have star players. It’s disappointing to see.”
Miller didn’t see any trend as to why the injuries are happening. The league’s preseason schedule was its usual length of roughly three weeks.