… [Mourinho] chose this approach. He put chemistry and cohesion ahead of managing a bunch of bodies and worrying about finding playing time. … The question, though, is whether they’re now showing signs of wear and tear. Against PSG, it certainly looked as if they struggled to cope physically. Hazard and Willian, ordinarily so industrious off the ball (especially the latter) lacked their usual oomph in the second half when PSG raised the tempo.
… “I worked a lot with [then-Jazz assistant] Jeff Hornacek. It was a lot of reps. They didn’t try to tweak anything with my shot, it was just a lot of repetition. We just had one of those guns. I don’t even know the drills. He just turned it on and it was follow the leader. It was a lot of shots.”
It offers some clarity that Matthews, an indefatigable worker, looks weary even recounting those days. The burden of proof for any undrafted rookie is incredibly high. Most aren’t afforded the same room to explore and make mistakes that a lottery pick might be – even those who find playing time as quickly as Matthews. His solution was to shoot until his accuracy corrected. By spring, Matthews was hitting better than 40% of his roughly 2.5 three-point attempts per game. Sloan soon found – as Buzz Williams did at Marquette – that Matthews was slowly becoming indispensable.
… Slow down. … Coming into the league, I knew I had two strengths: I could post guys up. And I was fast. Why would I want to take away one of my advantages? When I left college, I was nervous about competing in a bigger, faster league. On the Mavericks, my first two years in the league, I thought I had to rely on my speed to survive.
Context : Knee laxity increases during exercise. However, no one, to our knowledge, has examined whether these increases contribute to higher-risk landing biomechanics during prolonged, fatiguing exercise. Objectives : To examine associations between changes in fatigue (measured as sprint time [SPTIME]), multiplanar knee laxity (anterior-posterior [APLAX], varus-valgus [VVLAX], and internal-external rotation [IERLAX]), and landing biomechanics during prolonged, intermittent exercise. … Intervention(s) : A 90-minute intermittent exercise protocol (IEP) designed to simulate the physiologic and biomechanical demands of a soccer match. Main Outcome Measure(s) : We measured SPTIME, APLAX, and landing biomechanics before and after warm-up, every 15 minutes during the IEP, and every 15 minutes for 1 hour after the IEP. We measured VVLAX and IERLAX before and after the warm-up, at 45 and 90 minutes during the IEP, and at 30 minutes after the IEP. We used hierarchical linear modeling to examine associations between exercise-related changes in SPTIME and knee laxity with exercise-related changes in landing biomechanics while controlling for initial (before warm-up) knee laxity. Results : We found that SPTIME had a more global effect on landing biomechanics in women than in men, resulting in a more upright landing and a reduction in landing forces and out-of-plane motions about the knee. As APLAX increased with exercise, women increased their knee internal-rotation motion (P = .02), and men increased their hip-flexion motion and energy- absorption (P = .006) and knee-extensor loads (P = .04). As VVLAX and IERLAX increased, women went through greater knee-valgus motion and dorsiflexion and absorbed more energy at the knee (P ≤ .05), whereas men were positioned in greater hip external and knee internal rotation and knee valgus throughout the landing (P = .03). The observed fatigue- and laxity-related changes in landing biomechanics during exercise often depended on initial knee laxity. Conclusions : Both exercise-related changes in fatigue and knee laxity were associated with higher-risk landing biomechanics during prolonged exercise. These relationships were more pronounced in participants with greater initial knee laxity.
Apple has been working with several third-party App Store developers at its Cupertino, California offices to assist developers in finishing up applications for the upcoming Apple Watch. Development and design representatives from dozens of different development firms have visited Apple last week, or are coming to Cupertino this week, to work with Apple engineers to finish up WatchKit-based applications. One source claims that Apple is holding workshops for over 100 different developers across February. Apple also met with a smaller number of developers to assist with WatchKit development and discuss future plans in early January…
Wearable technology pioneers will launch the next generation of sports and fitness devices at next month’s Wearable Technology Show, which takes place from 10-11 March 2015 at ExCeL in London.
More than 100 technology innovators from all over the world will exhibit at the event launching groundbreaking wearable devices to a UK audience for the very first time.
Prozone can today announce that it has made an investment of US $1M in Israeli technology startup Pixellot.
Founded by Dr. Miky Tamir and Gal Oz, Pixellot provides a unique, high-quality and affordable alternative to traditional video capture and production processes, opening the way to a new era in outside broadcast for sports events.
Introduction: Overuse injuries, defined as those without a specific, identifiable event responsible for their occurrence, may be a substantial problem in many sports. However, current surveillance methods in sports injury epidemiology studies, which rely heavily on time loss for injury definitions and severity measurement, may underestimate their true impact. This is because athletes often continue to participate in sport despite the existence of overuse injuries. The main aim of this dissertation was to develop a new method to record overuse injuries in sport, and to establish its validity by applying it in a number of different research settings. Conclusions: The new method has good face, content and construct validity to record the full extent of overuse problems in sport, and we have demonstrated that it is feasible to apply the method successfully in studies of elite Norwegian athletes. We identified particular problem areas in a number of sports, such as the knee in volleyball and the shoulder in handball, for which continued injury prevention research focus is warranted. In the case of shoulder injuries in handball, injury prevention programs should address glenohumeral joint range of motion, external rotation weakness and scapular dyskinesis. The new method can be used to monitor not only overuse injuries, but also acute injuries and illnesses in heterogeneous groups of elite athletes.
There is a lack of injury data for the population of veteran football players. Therefore, a prospective study was conducted to investigate injury incidences and characteristics. Over one season, injuries and exposure of 18 teams (n = 265 players, age: 44.2±7.3 years, BMI: 26.6±3.2 kg/m2) were documented. Sixty-three players sustained a total of 88 injuries during the season. The incidence of training injuries (4.5 per 1000 hours) was significantly lower than of match injuries (24.7 per 1000 hours). The majority of injuries (n = 73; 83%) were located at the lower extremities, 52 (47%) were muscle injuries. The injury incidence of veteran football players is similar to other male football players of different skill levels and age groups, indicating a need for the implementation of preventive measures. Prevention programmes should consider the specific injury characteristics, with more muscle injuries in this population compared with younger football players.
… [Researcher Stephen] Jones doesn’t buy the notion that the modern breeding he shuns is causing bad reactions to bread. “It’s not wheat itself,” he says, pointing to a 2013 study by the US Department of Agriculture that found “no evidence” of increasing levels of gluten in wheat over the decades. Rather, Jones believes that the true problem with bread is how we make it. In commercial bakeries, rising time has been winnowed from hours or even days down to mere minutes, thanks to fast-acting yeasts and additives. By contrast, the team in Jones’ laboratory, located in a rural stretch along Puget Sound, lets dough rise for as long as 12 hours—and they’ve found that the longer it rises, the less potent the gluten that remains in the finished bread.
The book is titled The Two-Second Advantage, and it nestles snugly inside the recent trend of business books with simple, digestible slogans meant to appeal to both the smoothest CEO and the clumsiest salesman. The premise could not be more benign: It is much better to know a little bit of information before something happens than to have all the information in the world six months afterward. So get out there and find those two seconds, wherever they may be.
The author is not a man to take any measurement of time lightly. The value of speed is an obsession for Sacramento Kings owner and technology mogul Vivek Ranadive. Over the years, his companies have focused on accelerating everything from the sale of stocks (his software digitized Wall Street) to the availability of real-time sports statistics.
With the All-Star break having just finished, I figured it’d be a good time to look at which players have improved from last year and which ones have seen a dropoff. Specifically, we’ll look at improvements/declines in RPM1. Let’s first look at RPM this year compared to last year.
… The Warriors’ basketball operations staff — led by Myers and Lacob, but also including NBA legend Jerry West, new coach Steve Kerr and assistant general managers Travis Schlenk and Kirk Lacob — is a hot pot of buoyant opinions, meaty debates and insistent voices.
It’s a powerful dynamic, with the core group in place since West joined in May 2011, and, as you look back, it has overseen a series of key moves that have led the Warriors to the NBA’s best record into the All-Star break.
It has been proposed that match congestion in elite soccer results in residual fatigue and underperformance in ensuing competition due to insufficient recovery time. In this article, matters relating to match congestion and running performance in elite soccer competition are discussed. We suggest a need to determine the extent to which elite players are, in reality, exposed to periods of match congestion and hence to potential declines in performance. Despite evidence of exercise-induced muscle damage combined with a decline in physical performance up to 72 h post-match, research using time–motion analyses suggests that running performance represented by distances covered is unaffected over periods of match congestion. We recommend analysis of alternative movement variables including accelerations, decelerations and turns that are taxing metabolically and contribute greatly to muscle damage. Moreover, a holistic approach combining subjective ratings with biochemical, hormonal and immunological responses to exercise would be pertinent, especially in players frequently exposed to match congestion. Contemporary practitioners typically implement various post-match recovery treatments during dense schedules in an attempt to accelerate recovery and ensure that subsequent running performance is not unduly affected. However, empirical evidence to support their efficacy in maintaining running performance is lacking and we recommend controlled intervention studies using match simulations in an attempt to verify their effectiveness. These points are critically addressed using findings from the current scientific literature, while gaps in the current body of knowledge and future directions for research are highlighted.