… “You very much need to be perfect to impress in the Premier League,” he says, highlighting the technical, tactical and physical demands of top-flight games. “Our setup to the under-18s is the best in the world in terms of the academy system and the way we give youngsters a good training programme…but from 19 to the first team is a big void.
“The under-21s league is something that the Premier League and the FA have put a lot of efforts to make competitive, but I think we fall short and behind the B sides and the competitive leagues that they have around Europe. Spain, Italy and France—even Germany—have all found a system that suits the development of the young player, and I think it is unfair on our youngsters because they find it very difficult.”
The Western Conference logjam would have been bad enough if the defending NBA champs had looked like themselves from the start.
But no, Gregg Popovich and his San Antonio Spurs just had to start slow, just had to have all those injuries that made them look so mediocre and put them in the back of the unreal playoff race in which the fourth-place Portland Trail Blazers and seventh-place Spurs entered Tuesday separated by only two games. And now, with the Spurs having won 11 of their past 15 games and Popovich declaring that they’re only getting started, there’s this frightening possibility for the rest of the West: This Tim Duncan-led version of the Spurs that has been dominating for most of 18 seasons now may not be nearing its end after all.
Despite the prevailing thought around the league that this season would likely be 38-year-old Duncan’s last, Popovich doesn’t see it that way because — stop us if you’ve heard this before — of how well his beloved big man is playing. The two men won’t truly know until they discuss the matter this summer, like they did last offseason, but Popovich isn’t planning the retirement party just yet.
Anyone who is a parent, or who regularly deals with children, will talk with a fair degree of awe over their ability to learn. In the space of a few years they manage to pick up and master complex tasks like walking, talking and reading. Indeed, they can absorb more than one language effortlessly if they live in a multi-cultural household. Their ability to learn is nothing short of amazing.
Similarly, anyone who has tried to learn a new language later in life, or learn to play the guitar or even ride a bike will know just how hard it is. As we grow older, learning new things becomes increasingly more difficult.
There is a physical reason for this and it involves how the human brain evolves.
If you coach sprints, you most certainly run sprints in training. … How are you determining those speeds for each athlete? Most coaches work back from the athlete’s top racing speed over a recorded distance. They translate that to a fly-in time for sprint segments. In other words, they are “guessing.”
To investigate inter and intra-tester reliability of an externally fixed dynamometry unilateral hamstring strength test, in the elite sports setting.
… Results
Inter and intra-tester values demonstrated good to high levels of reliability. The intra-class coefficient (ICC) for inter-tester, intra-day reliability was 0.87 (95%CI= 0.75-0.93) with standard error of measure percentage (SEM%) 4.7 and minimal detectable change percentage (MDC%) 12.9. Intra-tester, inter-week reliability results were ICC 0.86 (95%CI, 0.74-0.93), SEM% 5.0 and MDC% 14.0. Conclusions
This study demonstrates good to high inter and intra-tester reliability of isometric externally fixed dynamometry unilateral hamstring strength testing in the regular elite sport setting involving elite male youth football players. The ICC in association with the low SEM and MDC percentages suggest that this procedure is appropriate for clinical and academic use as well as monitoring hamstring strength in the elite sport setting.
You know how important it is to learn from your mistakes, but the actual process is easier said than done. Despite our best efforts to learn, our brains fight us every step of the way. But with the proper know-how and the right approach, you can clear them with finesse.
It became clear to me some time ago that some ‘biomechanics’ courses being offered (with respect to the lower limb) appeared to be missing the same thing: any actual ‘mechanics’. Furthermore, I’d wager that most undergraduate degrees are also guilty of this (please do remember I look through a UK Podiatry lens though). Alarmingly, I regularly speak to professionals who dislike or fear physics yet happily practice biomechanics. The aim of writing a blog such as this is to try and put some mechanics back into biomechanics and to deliver the controversial news that if you “don’t do physics” then it may be time to choose another speciality.
… Iceland has figured out how to meld the best of both the top-down and bottom-up approaches regarding player development. Icelandic football is enjoying an impressive and unprecedented gilded age and surge of footballing success to the point one wonders what is in the water of the islands’ famous geysers that yields such proficient players the likes of Eiður Guðjohnsen, son of Arnór Guðjohnsen, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Hermann Hreiðarsson, Kolbeinn Sigþórsson, and Aron Einar Gunnarsson.
Arnar Bill Gunnarsson, Director of Education for the Icelandic Football Association (KSÍ), believes the improvement is the result of consistency, education, and an iron-clad national mentality. Arnar Bill, who himself holds a UEFA A coaching license, kindly discussed the systematic approach Iceland is taking to build on the achievements of the past, continue the success of the present, and forge the road ahead for Icelandic football.
To quantify the energy expenditure (EE) of Australian Football (AF) training and matches and the total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) of AF players using tri-axial accelerometers.
… Methods
An algorithm was developed for the MiniMax 4.0 (Catapult Innovations, Scoresby Australia) using measured oxygen uptake and accelerometer data to estimate EE of 18 AF players during training and matches. The algorithm was used to validate a metabolic power calculation used by Catapult Innovations (Scoresby Australia) in their proprietary GPS software. The SenseWear™(Model MF-SW, Bodymedia, Pittsburgh, PA) armband was used to determine non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) and was worn for 7 days leading into a match. Training, match and NEAT data was summed for TDEE. Results
EE for field training was estimated to be 2,719 ± 666 kJ and for matches to be 5,745 ± 1468 kJ. The estimated EE in the current study showed a large correlation (r = 0.57, 90% CI 0.06–0.84) with the metabolic power calculation. The mean TDEE for an in-season main training day was approximately 18,504 kJ and match day approximately 19,160 kJ with NEAT contributing approximately 85 and 69% on training and match days, respectively. Conclusions
The MiniMax 4.0 and SenseWear™ armband accelerometers provide a practical, non-invasive and an effective method to successfully measure training and match EE, and NEAT in field sport athletes. Taking methodological limitations into consideration, measuring energy expenditure allows for individualised nutrition programming to enhance performance and achieve body composition goals.
They started by revolutionising the management and reduction of injury risk in Irish rugby, but the ambitions of Kitman Labs extend far beyond the world of the oval ball.
Since July of last year, the highly-respected Dublin firm have been busy breaking into the US sports market, with co-founder Stephen Smith now based out of the company’s office in Silicon Valley, California.
Background: There is increasing evidence that kinematic changes after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury can influence the risk for premature osteoarthritis. However, kinematics can change over time, and the factors influencing those changes remain unknown but potentially important.
Hypothesis/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to perform gait analysis on a population of ACL-deficient (ACLD) subjects without knee osteoarthritis after considerable time had elapsed since their injuries. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) ACLD knees will have greater anterior femoral translation, external femoral rotation, and flexion moment as compared with healthy contralateral knees with increased time since injury; (2) side-to-side differences in anterior femoral translation and external femoral rotation are positively associated with side-to-side differences in knee flexion moment.
… Results: There was a time dependency in side-to-side differences. Subjects with shorter times since injury had the femur of the ACLD knee more posteriorly translated and internally rotated than the femur of the contralateral knee, and subjects with longer times since injury had the femur of the ACLD knee more anteriorly translated (R2 = 0.33) and externally rotated (R2 = 0.53) than the femur of the contralateral knee. Additionally, when the population was stratified into 2 subgroups based on time after injury (short-term: 1.4-18.7 months; long-term: 58-383.5 months), a relationship between side-to-side differences in knee flexion moment and side-to-side differences in knee translation and rotation was found for the long-term subgroup.
Conclusion: The results of this study provide an understanding of the relationship between kinematics and kinetics of the ACLD knee and the amount of time since injury. They suggest that elapsed time since injury might be an important factor when the function of ACL-injured knees is interpreted as it relates to osteoarthritis.
Last month a research group published an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that had such an important message that I really wanted to write some comments about it. In their 2014 study McCall et al surveyed the most popular practices and perceptions in premier league football teams from around the world in terms of injury risk factors, screening tests and preventative exercises. In the follow up study published last month (McCall et al, 2015) they reviewed the literature to assess if the published research actually supported these. The findings are important for us all to consider, whether you are from an applied or research perspective.
How much does the January transfer deadline day matter? It is a question rarely asked by those who impatiently skedaddle between Sky Sports News, Twitter and live blogs, itchy for fresh gossip, no matter how vague or violently spun. Perhaps for some the ride is enough: that breathless, hold-on-to-your-smartphone bullet train to Transfer Central, via rumour mill alley and “my-mate-reckons-he-saw” boulevard, with regular stops at QPR’s Harlington training ground. For the rest of us, a few facts might puncture the hype.
Do you know how many January deadline-day transfers into the Premier League there have been in the past four years? According to Omar Chaudhuri, a data analyst with 21st Club, it is just 74. That is, roughly, one signing per hour of Sky’s live coverage. And if you strip out players aged 22 and younger, who are unlikely to play many times during the season in which they are signed – such as Arsenal’s Krystian Bielik – that figure drops to 44, or 11 per deadline day.