Injuries and lack of motivation are common reasons for discontinuation of running. Real-time feedback from wearables can reduce discontinuation by reducing injury risk and improving performance and motivation. There are however several limitations and challenges with current real-time feedback approaches. We discuss these limitations and challenges and provide a framework to optimise real-time feedback for reducing injury risk and improving performance and motivation. We first discuss the reasons why individuals run and propose that feedback targeted to these reasons can improve motivation and compliance. Secondly, we review the association of running technique and running workload with injuries and performance and we elaborate how real-time feedback on running technique and workload can be applied to reduce injury risk and improve performance and motivation. We also review different feedback modalities and motor learning feedback strategies and their application to real-time feedback. Briefly, the most effective feedback modality and frequency differ between variables and individuals, but a combination of modalities and mixture of real-time and delayed feedback is most effective. Moreover, feedback promoting perceived competence, autonomy and an external focus can improve motivation, learning and performance. Although the focus is on wearables, the challenges and practical applications are also relevant for laboratory-based gait retraining. [full text]
… a team led by Dr. John Rogers at Northwestern University in Chicago described a smart patch that could ostensibly track nearly every vibration your body generates. We’re not just talking about steps or other movement, such as walking or stretching. The soft patch, not much larger than a Band-Aid, uses high-bandwidth accelerometers that also capture delicate, minute internal movements in the body.
In other words, nearly any bodily function that causes your tissue and organs to mechanically shift is hypothetically trackable with the patch: movements, body orientation, swallowing, breathing, heart rhythms, vocal vibrations, and sleep.
That’s not all. “By design, the technologies and methods described here align well with current manufacturing practices and commercial components, thereby offering a high level of technology readiness,” the authors wrote
Resolving intra-stride accelerations from training and game data routinely collected by athlete tracking devices is rarely attempted, even though these data can provide important insights into the physical condition of athletes. This study describes in detail a novel analysis tool which uses accelerometer-based measures of step variability to assess longitudinal consistency of stride technique. The performance of the analysis tool was examined by combining results from the analysis of data collected over the course of an Australian Football League season with instances of missed or modified training. Results demonstrated increased gait-related trunk acceleration variability when training was modified due to load or accumulated game and training activity (p = 0.02) and reduced trunk acceleration variability in the week following a training modification due to any injury described as “ankle”, “heel”, or any other description that would loosely refer to a joint or bone in the leg (p = 0.01). These results support the findings of recent research which used a slightly modified version of the same analysis tool to demonstrate an increase in gait-related trunk acceleration variability with the increased acute physical load.
What do a primeval animal, a magician or a small Swiss region have to do with companies in the sports industry? A lot more than you think. In part 2 of the series, ISPO.com explores the origins of the brand names Arc’teryx, Berghaus, Houdini, Kari Traa, Maloja and Vaude. Find Part 1 here with the heritage of brand names like Salewa, Fjällräven and Leki.
How do you view athletic wear? Nike? Under Armour? Sleek black leggings built to perform in rigorous environments? Ty Haney had a vision drastically different than what’s hyped in most commercials. So in 2014, at 25 years old, she launched Outdoor Voices for the non-performance-athlete: the daily exerciser. The jogger. The hiker. The dancer. The pilates-goer. The one looking for comfort and aesthetics but also something you could sweat in.
“I started OV with the goal of building the No. 1 recreation brand, a company rooted in freeing fitness from performance,” Haney says. “I felt like all the players in the space had built themselves off this credo of being harder, better, faster, stronger, which is totally cool for a small set of athletes. But I wanted to create a brand for the rest of us.”
Now is the time! Acquaint your youngsters—in my case, grandkids—to the fun and wonderment of snowshoeing on beds of freshly fallen flakes. We’ve compared snowshoes for youth of all ages so you can equip your kids with the proper size and snowshoe style that’s best for them.
Teijin Frontier Co., Ltd., the Teijin Group’s fibers and products converting company, announced today that it has launched a lightweight, tear-resistant and flat-surfaced fabric that also is soft, eco-friendly and abrasion-resistant, making it ideal for sportswear. Teijin Frontier will promote its new fabric as a key product for 2021 spring / summer sports and outdoor collections, targeting sales for a wide range of applications.
The wonder material graphene — an array of interlinked carbon atoms arranged in a sheet just one atom thick — promised a world of applications, including super-fast electronics, ultra-sensitive sensors and incredibly durable materials. After a few false starts, that promise is close to realization. And a suite of other extremely thin substances is following in its wake.
Graphene got its beginnings in 2003, when scientists at the University of Manchester found they could peel off a gossamer film of the material just by touching a piece of ordinary sticky tape to a block of purified graphite — the solid form of carbon that’s mixed with clay and used as the “lead” in most pencils. Graphene proved stronger than steel but extremely flexible, and electrons could zip through it at high speeds. It earned its discoverers the Nobel Prize in 2010, but researchers spent years struggling to manufacture it on larger scales and figuring out how its remarkable properties could best be used.
They didn’t get it right straight out of the gate, says Todd Krauss, a chemist at the University of Rochester. “Scientists are pretty bad at predicting what’s going to be useful in applications,” he says.
It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet. These are the untold accounts of the people who were there.
Gatorade Sports Science Institute, Trent Stellingwerff from
Altitude research and associated nutrition reviews have mainly focused on high to extreme altitudes (> 3,000 m). Recent data and associated practical nutrition recommendations are emerging from studies conducted at altitudes where athletes typically train (~1,600–2,400 m).
Until further research on carbohydrate and fat oxidation and/or protein metabolism during exercise is conducted during the types of training undertaken by athletes at low to moderate altitudes (~1,600–2,400 m), guidelines for altered macronutrient needs remain theoretical and should align with sea-level recommendations.
It is not clear whether low to moderate altitudes have alternative effects on energy availability (EA) requirements and/or risk for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, but there are several recent studies to suggest that EA will play an important role in optimizing hypoxic adaptations.
The micronutrient iron is especially important at altitude, as hypoxia results in a distinct environment where the erythropoietic drive increases reticulocyte formation and hemoglobin mass gains, which are dependent upon adequate iron availability.
… It’s tough to overstate how much this past decade (2010 – 2020) has contributed to the sport and the experience. I’d have to go back to the 1990s and the true heyday of the sport (pre-Team Volvo Cannondale) to find an era with equal impact. The revolution of carbon fiber frames, 1x drivetrains, 29-inch wheels and dropper posts have transformed how we ride. In turn, trail building has evolved to complement the capabilities of bikes and riders alike. Plus, the smartphone era has made the experience more social and inclusive. It’s impossible to imagine what the 2020s will bring to top the era that’s about to wrap up.
In celebration of this decade, these are the 20 best bikes, gear, apps and trends (in no particular order) that defined the 2010s.
To what extent are high cycling levels associated with a specific urban form? Over the past twenty years or so, scores of researchers have explored the relationship between urban form characteristics and cycling in an attempt to identify what types of urban planning measures might encourage cycling. While there are exceptions, the general consensus is that cycling rates tend to be highest in mid- to high-density environments characterised by high destination accessibility – and, of course, by the provision of dedicated of cycling infrastructure.
The problem, however, however, is that the majority of these studies have focused on English-speaking countries with low cycling rates (particularly the USA), which are not precisely known for the cycling-friendliness. If we want to understand the extent to which urban form characteristics are important in encouraging cycling, why not look at a city where cycling is actually the main form of transport?
For the first time, a group of scientists — Zeke Hausfather of UC Berkeley, Henri Drake and Tristan Abbott of MIT, and Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies — has done a systematic review of climate models, dating back to the late 1970s. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, it tests model performance against a simple metric: how well they predicted global mean surface temperature (GMST) through 2017, when the latest observational data is available.
… In their latest update, the researchers say work on manufacturing the anti-Lyme antibodies has gone well, and they expect to begin testing the safety of the shot in humans by mid-2020.
If you’re a fellow Lymelands dweller eager to volunteer, sorry. Dr. Mark Klempner, who leads MassBiologics, the publicly funded non-profit developing the injection, says the trial needs to be done in an area free of Lyme disease, so that it will be clear that antibodies in the blood come from the injection and not from previous exposure.
Albuquerque Journal, High Country News, Jessica Kutz from
… When it comes to the Borderlands, the fight for public lands looks much different. The land isn’t considered a recreation mecca and so far it hasn’t been the focus of prominent campaigns by the outdoor recreation industry. As a result, the public lands that hug the southern border don’t reap the benefits of the debate’s most powerful voice: Big Rec. When the recreation industry focuses attention on places like Bears Ears, those landscapes steer the narrative and influence which public lands are considered worth fighting for.
Border residents who have deep ties to the landscape and its wildlife – but lack the money to buy products from companies like Patagonia, for example – are losing out on that sort of advocacy currency. Access to the outdoors can be expensive. Transportation costs, and the increasing price of park passes and outdoor gear make some forms of recreating out of reach for disadvantaged communities. At places like REI, where public lands advocacy is “very much member-driven, and driven by interests in and around where we do business,” according to Marc Berejka, REI’s director of community and government affairs, that means that certain communities don’t receive as much attention. “We’ve not heard the same amount of outcry for engagement for purposes of creating or sustaining recreational opportunities” when it comes to places like Organ Pipe, Berejka said.
The Trump administration this month abruptly ended work by the so-called “Made in America” Outdoor Recreation Advisory Committee that aimed to privatize some aspects of the nation’s public lands.
There’s a new running event series in town. And country. Its name is EcoTrail, and it’s the fastest-growing trail running series in the world. The idea is as brilliant as it is simple: bring eco-friendly trail running events with different distances each time into significant cities to remind runners—locals, or not—that a preferable natural path is never too far away from the buildings they live by.
The EcoTrail movement started in Paris, back in 2008, and today shines all over Europe, a bit in Asia and now in the Middle East. And it’s growing. This is where it comes from and where it is going. And when it finally gets to America, this is probably why you should go for it.
MNN – Mother Nature Network, Lindsey Reynolds from
We are a country that loves our electronic gadgets, but when it comes to keeping them charged, it gets complicated.
The Sierra Club estimates about 5 billion batteries are purchased in the United States every year, but less than 10% get recycled.
Whether it’s a standard alkaline AA battery in your smoke detector, a rechargeable nickel-metal hydride in your cellphone or a wet-cell car battery, most of them contain toxic chemicals like cadmium, lead, zinc, manganese, nickel, silver, mercury and lithium.
That kind of chemical concoction means batteries need to be disposed of or recycled safely and knowledgeably.
A team of scientists and engineers led by Letian Dou, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, have developed a sandwich-like material incorporating organic and inorganic materials to form a hybrid structure that doesn’t use lead and has much improved stability. … Yao Gao, lead author of both research papers and a postdoctoral fellow in Dou’s research group, said the new organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite materials are cheaper and perform better than a traditional inorganic semiconductor. Also, Gao said, the new material’s design strategy could serve as a blueprint for many other functional hybrid materials.
In the popular imagination, energy-storage technologies like batteries are a key part of the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change.
But storage has something of a dirty secret: Its net effect is often an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The full causes and dynamics behind this are complex, having to do with what energy is being stored, what energy is being displaced when it is released, and what energy makes up for the energy lost (roughly 20 percent) in the round-trip journey to battery and back. If you want the full details, I wrote a deep-dive post on this last year.
Today I have a happier story to tell — about how California realized that its enthusiastic deployment of batteries was increasing emissions and figured out a way to solve the problem.
The solution it has developed is clever in its own right, but it also illustrates how computing power is going to enable a cleaner grid. Once again, California is blazing a path that other states will follow.