Joe Gyau was at his parents’ Maryland home last summer, playing pool with his little sister Mia, when the phone rang. It was his agent. Hoffenheim, the Bundesliga club that signed the now-22-year-old Gyau as a teenager, had agreed to a transfer fee with Borussia Dortmund. Dortmund wanted him to sign the paperwork tomorrow. Could he get on a plane?
Gyau ran upstairs to tell his parents, Amina and Philip. The family had a brief freak-out over the good news before Gyau packed his bags. The next morning he boarded a flight to Germany. He began training that very week.
The Golden State Warriors are in the midst of one of those charmed NBA seasons that happen only so often.
They have the No. 1 defense in the league—and the No. 2 offense. Their backcourt consists of two of the NBA’s virtuosic shooters, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, both now All-Stars. In his first season as a coach on any level, Steve Kerr has the Warriors off to their hottest start in franchise history, a 42-9 record that tops the NBA.
But it’s what this team does when it isn’t playing basketball that some Warriors say is unheard of in the NBA: They eat together.
This study assessed whether the distance-time relationship could be modeled to predict time to exhaustion (TTE) during intermittent running. 13 male distance runners (age: 33±14 years) completed a field test and 3 interval tests on an outdoor 400 m athletic track. Field-tests involved trials over 3 600 m, 2 400 m and 1 200 m with a 30-min rest between each run. Interval tests consisted of: 1 000 m at 107% of CS with 200 m at 95% CS; 600 m at 110% of CS with 200 m at 90% CS; 200 m at 150% of CS with 200 m at 80% CS. Interval sessions were separated by 24 h recovery. Field-test CS and D′ were applied to linear and non-linear models to estimate the point of interval session termination. Actual and predicted TTE using the linear model were not significantly different in the 1 000 m and 600 m trials. Actual TTE was significantly lower (P=0.01) than predicted TTE in the 200 m trial. Typical error was high across the trials (range 334–1 709 s). The mean balance of D′ remaining at interval session termination was significantly lower when estimated from the non-linear model (−21.2 vs. 13.4 m, P<0.01), however no closer to zero than the linear model. Neither the linear or non-linear model could closely predict TTE during intermittent running.
Purpose: To investigate physical performance and hematological changes in 32 elite male team-sport players after 14 days of ‘live high-train low’ (LHTL) … Methods: Prior to (Pre-), immediately (Post-1) and 3 weeks (Post-2) after the intervention, hemoglobin mass (Hbmass) was measured in duplicate (optimized carbon monoxide rebreathing method) and vertical jump, repeated-sprint (8 x 20 m – 20 s recovery) and Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 2 (YYIR2) performances were tested.
Results: Both hypoxic groups increased similarly Hbmass at Post-1 and Post-2 in reference to Pre- (LHTLH: +4.0%, P<0.001 and +2.7%, P<0.01; LHTL: +3.0% and +3.0%, both P<0.001), while no change occurred in LLTL. ...
Conclusion: ‘Live high-train low and high’ hypoxic training interspersed with repeated sprints in hypoxia for 14 days (in-season) increases Hbmass, YYIR2 performance and repeated-sprint ability of elite field team-sport players with the benefits lasting for at least three weeks post-intervention.
With the NFL Scouting Combine coming up next week in Indianapolis, we’re preparing for weeks of 40-yard-dash clips and endless hype. So we wanted to know what it’s like to go through the stressful process first-hand — not as a glory-boy wide receiver, but as a grunt. We asked Geoff Schwartz, New York Giants offensive guard and former seventh-round pick from the University of Oregon, to write up a helpful guide. Take it away, Geoff.
Two familiar names from the higher end of English club football, Kevin Wilson and Steve Chettle, run a non-League dream factory in Derbyshire, reviving the hopes and careers of teenagers discarded by professional clubs. A flurry of proud texts and tweets flowed between fans, players and staff of Ilkeston FC at the weekend when Ashley Hunter, who benefited from the enlightened work of Wilson and Chettle after being released by Burton Albion, made his Fleetwood Town debut in League One.
Scouring exit trails, holding open trials and fielding calls from heartbroken apprentices, Wilson and Chettle take in unwanted “mavericks”, as Chettle calls them, rebuilding the confoidencendividuals who didn’t fit in to the professional Academy system. They rebuild their confidence, put them in the team at Ilkeston, whose average is 19 and three months, and the best then move on, back into the Football League. “We reinvent them,” said Chettle, who played 527 times for Nottingham Forest where he also worked in their Academy.
Youth Basketball Coaching Association, Brian McCormick from
The big discussion in practice design is transfer. What transfers from practice to games? In making practices game-like, do coaches create sufficient repetitions for skill development? If NBA players practice in isolation, should children do the same drills?
One of the primary misunderstandings tends to be that it has to be all or nothing. Practice is either all games, or all technique. Instead, as expressed in this tweet, the games in practice inform the next activities in practice, and practice can be simplified as necessary.
… The Apple-owned iBeacon standard is the current market leader, with beacon suppliers like Estimote now established as approved hardware manufacturers, and with beacon-powered applications being rolled out by some big names. … iBeacon may have a strong toe-hold, but there is a new contender emerging, and I expect the beacon ecosystem to really heat up if/when Physical Web beacons go mainstream.
Wizards guard Bradley Beal has been diagnosed with the third stress-related injury to his right fibula of his three-year career. The team has said he will be re-evaluated after the All-Star break but the injury raises plenty of red flags.
Beal originally hurt his fibula during his rookie season and missed Washington’s final eight games of the year. The injury was officially diagnosed as a stress fracture in the distal (bottom) portion of the fibula. The injury ultimately prevented him from being an active participant with Team USA. However Beal reported to training camp cleared for contact. His return didn’t last long as he developed a second stress fracture in his fibula, this time in the proximal (upper) portion of the leg. He was sidelined for nine games but finished out his sophomore campaign without any reported issues.
… The first red flag should have been when I told Dr. Nardella that I was planning to run later in the day and he reacted with a grimace and a “let’s go after your calves another day”. “No, no”, I insisted, “they have to go through it sometime, it might as well be today.” The second red flag was probably Shayne saying that my calves would likely feel like someone kicked them for the rest of the day after treatment. Yeah, no problem. I have a giant bruise right now from fencing last week when Alex fleched me and I parried his blade into my shin bone. If I can handle a grown man hitting me in the shin with a metal sword while he’s running at me full speed, I think I can tolerate someone kicking my muscle.
I happily jumped onto the table on my stomach and settled my face into the face-hole. Dr Nardella put a needle in the last remaining tight spot on the right side of my neck and told me that I’m not allowed to move while there’s a needle in me. He’s a smart man. If I hadn’t had a tiny little piece of metal sticking out of my neck, effectively holding me to the table, I would have been up and out of there so fast as soon as the calf abuse started.
For the last year or two, people have been talking a lot about the bacteria we carry in our guts and elsewhere in our bodies – fecal transplants, fermented foods, probiotics, and so on. Along those lines, I got an interesting e-mail from a reader recently, wondering whether the difference between “responders” and “non-responders” to the endurance-enhancing effects of beet juice could be explained by differences in gut microbiome – that is, in the mix of friendly bacteria contained in their digestive tract. It’s an intriguing idea, and it got me thinking more generally about whether and how microbiome composition might affect athletic performance.
As if on cue, there’s a study in this month’s Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, from researchers at National Taiwan Sport University, investigating the effect of intestinal microbiota on exercise performance…in mice.
Five months after acquiring New York-based Bloomberg sports, STATS LLC announced it has purchased yet another sports data company to help bring its analytics to more professional sports leagues.
… During running, multiple kinematic and kinetic events are occurring rapidly and simultaneously over a relative short period of time. In this illustration of a typical rearfoot striking runner, foot strike begins with heel contact of the right foot and 200 milliseconds (msec) later, toe off (i.e. takeoff) occurs. The duration of support phase is dependent on running velocity, among other factors.
The purpose of the present study was to determine whether any relationships were present between lower-body muscle structure and strength and power qualities. Fifteen elite male surfing athletes performed a battery of lower-body strength and power tests, including; countermovement jump (CMJ), squat jump (SJ), isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP), and had their lower-body muscle structure assessed with ultrasonography. In addition, lower-body muscle-tendon complex (MTC) stiffness and dynamic strength deficit ratio (DSD) were calculated, from variables of the CMJ and IMTP. Significant relationships of large to very large strength were observed between the vastus lateralis (VL) thickness of the left (LVL) and right (RVL) leg and peak force (PF) (r=0.54-0.77, p<0.01-0.04), peak velocity (PV) (r=0.66-0.83, p<0.01-0.01), and peak jump height (r=0.62-0.80, p<0.01-0.01) in the CMJ and SJ, as well as IMTP PF (r=0.53-0.60, p=0.02-0.04). Furthermore, large relationships were found between left lateral gastrocnemius (LG) pennation angle and, SJ and IMTP PF (r=0.53, p=0.04, and r=0.70, p<0.01, respectively), and IMTP relative PF (r=0.63, p=0.01). Additionally, large relationships were identified between lower-body MTC stiffness and the DSD ratio (r=0.68, p<0.01), right (LG) pennation angle (r=0.51, p=0.05), and CMJ PF (r=0.60, p=0.02) and jump height (r=0.53, p=0.04). These results indicate that greater VL thickness and increased LG pennation angle are related to improved performance in the CMJ, SJ and IMTP. Further, these results suggest that lower-body MTC stiffness explains a large amount of variance in determining an athlete's ability to rapidly apply force during a dynamic movement.
