… Robben arguably personifies Bayern’s own modern history in the competition: that, with sufficient ability and attitude, your time will eventually come if you keep persisting.
He himself keeps persisting at the exact same athletically high level of performance as a player, even though he turned 33 a few weeks ago. As emphasised by a vest that shows off that ready-to-spring sprinter’s body as he speaks, he is in the same imposing physical shape as ever, and has fully found his form again after a rare long-term muscle injury greatly curtailed his 2015-16 campaign. Robben has hit seven goals in 14 Bundesliga games this season. That represents one of the best returns of his career, and it’s been all the more important this season because it’s often rescued a patchier Bayern.
Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jared Goff, coming off a trying rookie season, has been working with noted quarterback coaches Tom House and Adam Dedeaux.
House and Dedeaux run 3DQB, a quarterback training facility based in Los Angeles. And one of their many notable clients is reigning MVP Matt Ryan.
Matt LaFleur, the Rams’ new offensive coordinator, spent the past couple of years as Ryan’s quarterbacks coach and is happy to see Goff receive similar instruction.
… In the summer of 2006, Nijland, general director of the Dutch club FC Groningen, and Henk Veldmate, then the technical director of the club, flew to Uruguay to scout young attackers. Ten years on, Nijland can still hardly contain his excitement as he recounts, with great pride, the story of Suarez’s transfer from Nacional, Uruguay’s top club, to Groningen.
A considerable share of the global audience that watches Suarez toy with defenders, in Barcelona colours, is unaware that Luis Suarez was once a young, wet-behind-the-ears attacker in the low-lying Netherlands.
Mark Melancon sprints to the mound and his heart starts racing – at precisely 183 beats per minute.
It’s all by careful design for San Francisco’s new closer.
“I didn’t realize it was that high,” San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy said Tuesday, when his pitchers and catchers held their first spring training workout. “That shows you how ramped up these guys get with Adrenalin kicking in. It’s a beautiful thing. Adrenalin’s a beautiful drug as long as you can control it.”
Melancon sure can, and he is monitoring his every movement. The right-hander is wearing a heart rate monitor under his uniform around his rib area while he pitches.
… Two years ago, for the first time, more high school girls played volleyball (432,176) than basketball (429,504), according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. In 2015-16, volleyball added another 4,133 girls to those numbers, while basketball lost 276 participants.
Examine the past decade, and the numbers are more striking. Statistics compiled by the NFHS show an increase of more than 40,000 volleyball players in that span and a decrease of 23,000 basketball players.
“There’s been a huge African-American crossover into our sport, and it’s become the social norm now to play volleyball, whereas 10 or 15 years ago, it was basketball,” Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said.
… I can appreciate that you just took the job, but what do you see as your top priority?
HICKEY: We need to get those technical advisors hired and make sure that they are a good fit, so they can influence the clubs as quickly as possible to make sure that everything they are doing is in the interest of the top-level players. So, hiring the technical advisers is the right away – it’s like your cabinet, right? You’ve got to hire it right away. Then, the communication with the clubs. Listening to what their issues are and how we can help solve them, so we can create this environment where they can succeed every day.
Coaching styles and coaching strategies are terms typically thrown around in academia, the media, and sport. For the purpose of this read, I will refer to a coaching style as a concrete, well established framework from which to base a game-plan. A coaching strategy however, will be referred to a coach’s adaptation style and how he or she applies it to the situation, given unforeseen elements. Let’s look at an example:
A track coach whom specializes in sprints is given the task of coaching mid-distance runners at a large track and field event. The meet is expected run in large heats, but each of his athletes are running in the same heat of roughly 20 individuals. The coach, experienced in sprint style training, decides to put the slower and larger runners up front as ‘rabbits’ or pacers. The purpose is to hide his faster runners behind the ‘rabbits’ for the final 200 meters in the race. Once the last 200m arrives, the larger runners will open a ‘gap’ of which the smaller, faster runners can break out of while the larger runners become ‘blockers’.
The present study compared the effects of two repeated-sprint training (RST) programs, differing in duration of the between-sprint rest intervals, on various soccer-related exercise performances. For 5 weeks during the competitive season, twenty-nine young trained male soccer players either replaced two of their habitual fitness conditioning sessions with RST characterized by short (5–15; n = 9) or long (5–30; n = 10) rest intervals, or served as control (n = 10). The 5–15 and 5–30 protocols consisted of 6 repetitions of 30-m (~5 s) straight-line sprints interspersed with 15 s or 30 s of passive recovery, respectively. 5–15 improved 200-m sprint time (2.0±1.5%; p<0.05) and had a likely positive impact on 20-m sprint performance, whereas 5–30 lowered the 20-m sprint time (2.7±1.6%; p<0.05) but was only possibly effective for enhancing the 200-m sprint performance. The distance covered during the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 2 increased following 5–15 (11.4±5.0%; p<0.05), which was possibly better than the non-significant 6.5% enhancement observed in 5–30. Improvements in the total time of a repeated-sprint ability test were possibly greater following 5–30 (3.6±0.9%; p<0.05) compared to 5–15 (2.6±1.1%; p<0.05). Both RST interventions led to similar beneficial (p<0.05) reductions in the percentage decrement score (~30%) of the repeated-sprint ability test as well as in blood lactate concentration during submaximal exercise (17–18%). No changes occurred in the control group. In soccer players, RST over a 5-week in-season period is an efficient means to simultaneously develop different components of fitness relevant to match performance, with different benefits induced by shorter compared to longer rest intervals.
Background The architectural and morphological adaptations of the hamstrings in response to training with different exercises have not been explored.
Purpose To evaluate changes in biceps femoris long head (BFLH) fascicle length and hamstring muscle size following 10-weeks of Nordic hamstring exercise (NHE) or hip extension (HE) training.
Methods 30 recreationally active male athletes (age, 22.0±3.6 years; height, 180.4±7 cm; weight, 80.8±11.1 kg) were allocated to 1 of 3 groups: (1) HE training (n=10), NHE training (n=10), or no training (control, CON) (n=10). BFLH fascicle length was assessed before, during (Week 5) and after the intervention with a two-dimensional ultrasound. Hamstring muscle size was determined before and after training via MRI.
Results Compared with baseline, BFLH fascicles were lengthened in the NHE and HE groups at mid-training (d=1.12–1.39, p<0.001) and post-training (d=1.77–2.17, p<0.001) and these changes did not differ significantly between exercises (d=0.49–0.80, p=0.279–0.976). BFLH volume increased more for the HE than the NHE (d=1.03, p=0.037) and CON (d=2.24, p<0.001) groups. Compared with the CON group, both exercises induced significant increases in semitendinosus volume (d=2.16–2.50, ≤0.002) and these increases were not significantly different (d=0.69, p=0.239).
Conclusion NHE and HE training both stimulate significant increases in BFLH fascicle length; however, HE training may be more effective for promoting hypertrophy in the BFLH
O'Reilly Radar, Design Podcast, Mary Treseler from
… One of the founders of Allbirds, Tim Brown, is an ex-professional soccer player. Obviously, footwear was really big in what he was doing. He also went through design school in Cincinnati, but he was being sent shoes and taking a look at the landscape, and he realized that there’s no real innovation and thoughtfulness in the shoe category. There’s definitely technology and a lot of graphical doodads appearing on shoes, but no company has committed to real innovation to benefit the industry or the world, actually.
He was entering into the arms race of high-tech materials and new features. He was like, let’s strip everything back and create something that’s really elegantly uncomplicated, built around extreme comfort and versatility, and it’s made from New Zealand wool, Merino wool, which is incredibly durable and soft. What he wanted to do was hand us the power of what’s going on in nature and bring that to the footwear industry. That’s kind of the overarching mission. Then he connected with San Francisco native, Joey Zwillinger. Those two started the company, and I met them in New York for a meeting when they were looking for a company to work with. [audio, 43:24]
Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a new “living material” — a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light up in the presence of certain chemicals.
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate the new material’s potential for sensing chemicals, both in the environment and in the human body.
The team fabricated various wearable sensors from the cell-infused hydrogel, including a rubber glove with fingertips that glow after touching a chemically contaminated surface, and bandages that light up when pressed against chemicals on a person’s skin.
A Swiss medical device company is working on a medically accurate sensor, built into a smartphone, that could return results about heart rate, respiration rate, blood oxygenation, temperature, and — the use case the company is initially focusing on — blood pressure. Leman Micro Devices (or LMD or Elemdy) is beginning trials now to simultaneously submit the device for regulatory clearance with the FDA, the CE Mark, and a number of other regional regulators, with the goal of licensing the technology to major smartphone makers to build into their devices within a few years.
“The important thing about our approach which seems unique — and we have patents on this — is we actually use the same science that was being used by doctors for a long time with a cuff on the upper arm to measure blood pressure,” LMD CEO Mark-Eric Jones told MobiHealthNews.
Hamstring muscle strain injury is one of the most common injuries in sports involving sprinting and kicking. Hamstring muscle strain injuries occur at a high rate and have a high re-injury rate, resulting in loss of training and competition time, which has a significant impact on the quality of life of the injured athletes.1 Preventing and rehabilitating hamstring muscle strain injury is an important task for clinicians and scientists in sports medicine.
Understanding the mechanisms underlying hamstring injury is critical for developing appropriate strategies to prevent and rehabilitate hamstring injuries. Understanding the general mechanism of muscle strain injury is essential for understanding the specific mechanisms of hamstring muscle strain injury. Many studies using animal models have been conducted in the past 2 decades to determine the general mechanisms of muscle strain injury. The results of these studies point to excessive muscle strain in eccentric contraction or stretching as the primary mechanism of muscle strain injury.
There are certainly unique challenges associated with being a team physician in the National Football League. A team physician must be able to deal with not only individual professional football players but also agents, team management and other paramedical personnel, including athletic trainers and team physical therapists. Of utmost importance to a team physician is to develop a relationship with players’ agents and to carry out dialogue among the team physician, player and agent at the same time.
St. Vincent Sports Performance, The Defining Sports Performance Blog from
Breakfast at the hotel. Snack on the turf. Lunch. Recovery snack. Dinner. Night snack. This is a normal day of eating for the guys participating in the 2017 EXOS NFL Combine prep program. Each player has individual goals for their eight week stay in Indy and is committed and involved in their nutrition plan.
“Tell me your numbers” can be heard as the guys discuss how many servings of protein, carbohydrates, fruits and veggies are recommended per meal. Snack bags for their three daily snacks are provided, and a night snack is packed for once they leave the training facility.
Before they were sent off with serving recommendations, portion sizes were taught by Lindsey Langford, MS, RD, CSSD and Anna Turner, MS, RD, CSSD, the sports dietitians that have organized the eating schedule that each player participates in. Twice a week, nutrition education meetings take place covering topics from how to build a recovery snack to how athletic performance suffers from alcohol consumption. Each guy is heavily involved in their personal nutrition plan, and every meal they make decisions to positively impact their performance on the field.