The Seattle Seahawks look lively, especially for a team that has been playing football since August. They look championship-ready. I think the Seahawks believe they are championship-ready. As Richard Sherman said in an SI.com article about the victory, “Championships are won in the playoffs.”
From what I saw, Kam Chancellor was a better athlete than all of the other professional athletes on the field–stronger, fitter, fiestier. As the long pro season goes on and on, endurance increasingly becomes a facet in performance. You see with guys like Chancellor that endurance can be a force multiplier among elite athletes, potentially creating a performance advantage for the teams that have.
Consider recent championship teams:
- These same Seahawks are the team that won the last Super Bowl.
- UConn defeated Florida, Kentucky and Wisconsin in last year’s NCAA Final Four. All four programs have superior strength and conditioning staff.
- San Antonio Spurs won the last NBA championship by emphasizing late-season player health and fitness.
- Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco dominated opponents in the MLB playoffs and World Series.
- And, either Ohio State or Oregon will win the
track meetcollege football championship. (and more, more)
The stakes are highest at the end of a professional sports season. Teams and players are showing that endurance and fitness are part of what makes for the best way to navigate the path to a championship.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- CES 2015: Ramping Up Wearables for Athletes PSFK … The annual Consumer Electronics Show has an abundance of quantified self technology. The business models for how companies will make money are still to be figured out but sports have become a proving ground and the main way some companies are trying to differentiate their technology.
- PAINKILLERS AND SPORTS: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE BUNDESLIGA VICE Sports … It’s a better sociology question than a journalism question: Why do athletes do things that are not in their long-term (or even medium-term) best interests and in the process they significantly increase their risk of injury? But either way, it’s an important question.
- Crowd Sourced: How Running’s Social Subculture Exploded Competitor.com, Running … This article is more anecdotal evidence that individual athletes can increase their training gains by committing to work in a community of peers.
- Scientists lead the field in human-performance research The Telegraph, UK … Short profile of the GSK Human Performance Laboratory talks about the ice bath research Ken van Someren is doing.
- It’s Never Too Late to Learn New Skills Wall Street Journal … WSJ lifestyle reporter Elizabeth Holmes does science, talking about brain plasticity in adults.