Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 10, 2021

… When the US Open began, all the talk was about who wasn’t here and how there was no sizzle to the tournament. But Fernandez and Raducanu have turned the Open into their own teen party, becoming the fresh faces of a youth movement that has taken tennis by surprise. With Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena and Venus Williams on the mend, a new generation has emerged with the likes of Fernandez, Raducanu, Carlos Alcaraz, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Jenson Brooksby introducing themselves in style.

Other on the list include Klay Thompson and DeMarcus Cousins.

By winning the 2021 US Open, Novak Djokovic would both lock up the first calendar Grand Slam on the men’s tour in more than 50 years and become the first man to ever win 21 Slams in his career.

With his natural athleticism and defensive abilities, Djokovic was destined to become a top-flight tennis player. But he has become perhaps the greatest men’s player ever because of his ability to turn the few relative weaknesses in his game into outright strengths.

Here’s a look at three areas where Djokovic turned the tables.

When players line up for stretching and activation for the Los Angeles Chargers, it’s done in unison at Jack Hammett Sports Complex or Hoag Performance Center.

But when all players are on the ground going through a stretch, a silent figure is in the back doing his own thing.

Joey Bosa is backpedaling, doing lunges, and working out at his own speed. He is always working on his craft and always tries to improve. He works with his trainer Todd Rice in Florida, and his workout partner is his brother — San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa.

He is out there in Florida from the moment the season ends until mandatory minicamp. Usually, they go through numerous pass-rushing techniques or work on getting stronger and faster.

However, this year was different.

Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo is capable of playing until he is 40 as he has adapted his playing style to extend his career, former captain Wayne Rooney said.

Ronaldo, 36, spent six seasons at Old Trafford between 2003-09, winning eight major trophies, and rejoined United from Juventus last month on a two-year contract.

For most of us, respiration is an automatic, subconscious function. But a new wave of breath research could change your mind — and your body.

… The highest compliment to Coastal Carolina’s ambush of the college football establishment in 2020 is that many will peek at the teal-colored Surf Turf on Friday night to soak in some of the authentic joy that Coastal unexpectedly provided last season. One line from Chadwell sums up how Coastal Carolina became a paragon for college football revelry: “We didn’t kill the chicken.”

Along with going 11-1, upsetting BYU amid the buzz of ESPN’s “College GameDay” and finishing the 2020 season ranked No. 14 in the Associated Press poll, the Chanticleers became a must-follow because of their creative and elaborate postgame celebrations.

The availability of strategies for developing sensors with a defined responsiveness as well as the ability to working in a biological environment is critical to the fields of bioanalysis, nanomedicine, and nanorobotics. Herein, we developed programmable pH sensors by employing a tetrahedral DNA framework (TDF) as a robust structural skeleton for the sensors in biological working scenes and DNA i-motif structures as proton-recognition probes. The sensors’ response midpoint and dynamic range can be fine-tuned by deliberately altering the i-motif’s sequence composition or by combining different sensors, affording pH response windows that are consecutively distributed in the biologically relevant pH range of 5.0–7.5. This controllable tunability was successfully employed for in situ cell-surface pH analysis after anchoring the i-motif-TDF nanosensor on the cell surface via a two-step anchoring strategy, providing a useful platform for the diagnostics of diseases associated with extracellular pH variations. [full text]

Durable hydrophobic materials have attracted considerable interest in the last century. Currently, the most popular strategy to achieve hydrophobic coating durability is through the combination of a perfluoro-compound with a mechanically robust matrix to form a composite for coating protection. The matrix structure is typically large (thicker than 10 μm), difficult to scale to arbitrary materials, and incompatible with applications requiring nanoscale thickness such as heat transfer, water harvesting, and desalination. Here, we demonstrate durable hydrophobicity and superhydrophobicity with nanoscale-thick, perfluorinated compound-free polydimethylsiloxane vitrimers that are self-healing due to the exchange of network strands. The polydimethylsiloxane vitrimer thin film maintains excellent hydrophobicity and optical transparency after scratching, cutting, and indenting. We show that the polydimethylsiloxane vitrimer thin film can be deposited through scalable dip-coating on a variety of substrates. In contrast to previous work achieving thick durable hydrophobic coatings by passively stacking protective structures, this work presents a pathway to achieving ultra-thin (thinner than 100 nm) durable hydrophobic films. [full text]

She explains how sports medical research has primarily focused on studying men, then extrapolating the data to female population. 1/4

As players lose body fluids during match, recommendations for both carb & fluid intake should be made according to player + conditions.

One night in training camp, when meetings were finished and the players had free time, quarterback Zach Wilson popped into Robert Saleh’s office with a question. He always has questions, as the New York Jets quickly learned about their rookie signal-caller. On this visit, which started at 7 p.m., he asked his coach to explain the differences between the Jets’ three-deep zone and the way other teams run it.

A 22-year-old who prefers X’s and O’s over Xbox. Imagine that.

The defensive-minded Saleh dived into it, explaining the nuances of his beloved Cover 3 scheme. The conversation switched to Cover 4, and soon they were breaking down various pressure schemes, the first-year coach and the rookie quarterback talking the night away.

“Then we got into life,” Saleh told ESPN. “The conversation went a million different ways, but that was his curiosity, asking questions and trying to piece together information.”

Setting out her vision as England manager, Sarina Wiegman was sure of one thing — the Women’s World Cup should remain every four years.

There’s no need for FIFA to push through plans to double the frequency of its flagship tournament, according to Weigman.

“The Euros are great, the World Cup is great, the Olympics are great so that is three tournaments,” she said, pitchside at Wembley Stadium on Thursday. “I think if you have a World Cup every two years that is too much for the players at the moment so I wouldn’t be cheering for it right now.

“It is too many tournaments, for Europe it is good (at the moment), the development in Europe for women’s football is ahead of most other continents. So for Europe it is not necessary.”

This offseason, NFL owners voted to extend the regular season to 17 games. One question that remains to be answered: How will this affect the NFL record books?

Shortly before Thursday’s practice, cornerback Marcus Peters was trying to put a positive spin on the Baltimore Ravens’ injury-filled training camp. Peters talked up running back Gus “The Bus” Edwards, who was scheduled to be the starting running back after J.K. Dobbins recently suffered a season-ending knee injury.

“It’s going to hurt us,” Peters said of losing Dobbins. “But Gus is going to be able to pick it back up. We’re going to get on ‘The Bus,’ and we’re going to ride it.”

Less than two hours later, Peters and Edwards were added to the list of injured Ravens with season-ending ACL injuries.