… Mostly, though, he worked out at the EXOS training facility in Frisco, Texas, with a group of other pro ballplayers that included Diamondbacks pitcher Shelby Miller, Phillies catcher Cameron Rupp and retired reliever LaTroy Hawkins. One two-hour session in January ended with a grueling exercise in which the players pushed a sled loaded with 270 pounds down a gummy track and then pulled one carrying 330 pounds back. Some of the other players had to take several gasping minutes off between each pass. Syndergaard never missed a turn.
His goal at the beginning of the off-season was to bulk up from 237 pounds to 250. A month before pitchers and catchers were due to report, he weighed in at 253 and had trimmed his body fat from 15.1% to 13.5%, meaning that he had added some 17 pounds of muscle. Last year he threw both his fastball and slider—which tops out at 95—harder, on average, than any starter has in the decade the stat has been kept. (While relievers like Aroldis Chapman can throw harder in short bursts, few have ever had the strength to reach triple digits past 100 pitches.) But Syndergaard wants more. “I always want to raise the bar,” he says. “Right now, with me throwing 100, I’m not really sure if that’s attainable. But I still want to try. And to look good in the uni, of course.”
… On Friday, after a long day of press interviews and while most of the other 2017 All-Stars were likely enjoying everything New Orleans has to offer, Gordon spent his afternoon working with Jazz assistant coach Johnnie Bryant. This incredible work ethic is central to the evolution of Gordon Hayward. His entire work-hard-play-hard mentality is what has driven his evolution into one of the 24 best players in the entire league.
He’s always been dedicated to the game and has made gradual improvement every season in the NBA. He has slowly bulked up, gaining pounds muscle since his sophomore year at Butler. His overall strength, both physical and mental, has increased, and that has translated into increased production on the court. But after failing to make the playoffs last season, Hayward decided that it wasn’t enough. Gradual wasn’t going to cut it.
Hayward went right to work after the season ended. Instead of going home to Indiana, Hayward decided to stay in Salt Lake City to work closely with Jazz coaching staff on improving his game.
“I’m just me,” Steven N’Zonzi says. It is a simple enough statement, delivered softly – obvious too, unremarkable. And yet there is something in it, something in the way he says it and how long it takes him to say it. Ask a silly question, get a sensible answer – one that, unpacked, is more eloquent than it first appears. Not long ago, one of Spain’s sports newspapers compared him to Patrick Vieira and it was not the first: it is a line that goes all the way back to his arrival at Blackburn Rovers eight years ago. So, Steven, are you like the former Arsenal midfielder?
The pause is prolonged and seems a little awkward. “I don’t know,” he eventually says, which feels like a way of saying no. “It’s the same position. Physically we are quite similar because we are tall players. But he was more physical than me in his style. He was stronger than me. He was good technically as well but I like to pass the ball.” There’s another pause before he adds: “Vieira is a legend; I’m just me.”
And there it is. In a way much of the conversation has been about this: about who or what N’Zonzi is and who people think he is, about perception and adaptation, evolution, environment and education, finding his place and himself. In Seville it feels as if he has done just that, at 28. Who, then, is Steven N’Kemboanza Mike Christopher N’Zonzi?
Josh Donaldson strode through the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse Wednesday afternoon like his right calf strain wasn’t a thing, only the wrap around the afflicted area hinting at an injury.
“I feel great,” he said during a brief exchange of pleasantries.
Things seem to be getting better quickly for the all-star third baseman, although that isn’t likely to change his timeline much, as caution remains the order of the day. But the improvement reinforces the club’s feeling that the injury “isn’t going to be that big a deal,” as manager John Gibbons put it.
The extra rest for Donaldson may have been in the team’s plans anyway, as Gibbons also revealed Wednesday that Troy Tulowitzki will be rested for the first week of spring games as a way to manage his workload. Aaron Sanchez won’t start a Grapefruit League game until March 9, with J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada and Francisco Liriano also getting pushed back a bit, although not quite that far.
Andrew Murray’s official title at Oregon is director of performance and sports science.
But when it comes to the football program’s offseason workouts, Murray is now the maestro.
In the aftermath of three players being hospitalized last month with exercise-related injuries, the athletic department announced that new football strength and conditioning coach Irele Oderinde would report directly to Murray instead of coach Willie Taggart.
To many, the idea of mindfulness and meditation training may seem to be nothing more than the latest wellness craze. For those more familiar with the practice, its many applications can provide a significant advantage in almost any competitive situation.
Many believe this is especially true in sports, even enhancing the performance of athletes in game-time situations.
Someone who came to see this early on was Phil Jackson, who first introduced the concept of mindfulness to the Chicago Bulls back in 1993 as coach. The team was coming off three consecutive NBA championship years and he was looking for a way to help players stay focused under mounting pressure.
He enlisted zen-master George Mumford to lead the team in weekly mindfulness sessions. At the time, Mumford, who’s following includes both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, was running a stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts.
Before Tyler Sambrailo laced up his cleats to run his 40-yard dash Friday at the NFL combine, he pulled out his iPad for an important part of his pre-workout routine.
He opened an app, and a white screen filled with black numbers popped up. A 30-second countdown started, and Sambrailo, the former Colorado State offensive lineman who projects as an early-round pick, stares at the phone as he tries to tap out as long a sequence of numbers as he can before time runs out.
It might look like mindless distraction, but it’s actually part of a carefully crafted plan developed by Colorado State’s mental conditioning coach, Lowell Wightman, to help Sambrailo and his former teammates focus before important events, like the 40-yard dash and other drills here at the combine, or an exam at school. One his former teammates even used the numbers game while getting ready to go on a blind date.
Whatever people think about English rugby union they tend to agree on one thing: if the Rugby Football Union ever fully maximises its financial muscle and its vast playing numbers, the potential is colossal. Unfortunately for England’s opponents that may be in danger of coming to pass, for reasons which have nothing to do with the senior side’s run of 16 consecutive Test victories.
Perhaps the most significant breakthrough of recent weeks did not take place at Twickenham or Cardiff or even within earshot of Eddie Jones but under a heap of rubble in Wiltshire. Exposing academy kids to a simulated earthquake in the care of specialists in international disaster relief might not sound the obvious way to unlock world-class rugby talent, but English rugby is beginning to think that little bit differently.
The young players, who had simply been given a postcode and told to report at 9am sharp without any further instructions, are the guinea pigs in a programme designed to develop more players capable of thinking for themselves on and off the pitch. Dean Ryan, the RFU’s head of international player development, is wearily familiar with the blinkered world of the average young professional and is in the process of yanking open the curtains.
In 2002, Dr. Michael Black was researching how to create statistical models of the human body and preparing to teach a course on computer vision at Brown University. However, before the course began, the Virginia state police contacted Black with hopes of utilizing his research to identify a perpetrator in a robbery and murder case. Black took the opportunity to change his course syllabus to focus on identifying human beings through computer vision techniques and, ultimately, the class’s research helped to confirm the perpetrator’s height.
It also became the basis for his next venture — Body Labs.
Activity trackers, also known as fitness trackers, are definitely in style. Not only are they becoming more popular among the fitness community (gymgoers, CrossFitters), but working professionals, stay-at-home moms, and even teenagers are purchasing wearable tech to help track fitness. In 2015, roughly 78.1 million fitness wearables were sold. That number was estimated to increase to 102 million for 2016.
According to a new study from Indiana University, those activity trackers can be an effective way to lose weight, especially if you pair them with wellness coaching. Faculty at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington discovered that the combination of fitness trackers and wellness coaching proved effective.
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, CU Anschutz Today from
The patient breathes harder as his workout intensifies. His metabolic fingerprint – heart rate, oxygen level and other data – streams onto a tablet in the form of a colorized digital bar that shows exactly what his muscles are doing and the fuels he’s burning.
“In the purple zone he’s stressing his anaerobic system, and in the red he’s going to burn muscle mass if he stays up there too long,” says Nicholas Edwards, MS, director of Exercise-Medicine Integration in the Department of Family Medicine, CU School of Medicine. “The blue here represents his prime zone, where he performs best during exercise and creates the most energy, so he’s safely burning the most pound for pound right at this second.”
Edwards is also co-founder and chief scientific officer of METHOD, a CU spinoff company, that is proving to be a health game-changer by connecting exercise to medicine. The system gives thousands of pro athletes and patients access to individualized, real-time metabolic information that, when combined with a prescribed fitness regimen, builds strength and stamina, reduces injury, sheds weight and improves their response to treatment.
As kids play sports like soccer and football with more frequency and force, many are damaging their knees, a new study finds.
A common knee injury — an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear — has steadily increased among 6- to 18-year-olds in the United States, rising more than 2 percent a year over the last two decades, researchers report.
These injuries peak in high school, said lead researcher Dr. Nicholas Beck.
Recent population dietary studies indicate that diets rich in ultra-processed foods, increasingly frequent worldwide, are grossly nutritionally unbalanced, suggesting that the dietary contribution of these foods largely determines the overall nutritional quality of contemporaneous diets. Yet, these studies have focused on individual nutrients (one at a time) rather than the overall nutritional quality of the diets. Here we investigate the relationship between the energy contribution of ultra-processed foods in the US diet and its content of critical nutrients, individually and overall. Methods
We evaluated dietary intakes of 9,317 participants from 2009 to 2010 NHANES aged 1+ years. Food items were classified into unprocessed or minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. First, we examined the average dietary content of macronutrients, micronutrients, and fiber across quintiles of the energy contribution of ultra-processed foods. Then, we used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify a nutrient-balanced dietary pattern to enable the assessment of the overall nutritional quality of the diet. Linear regression was used to explore the association between the dietary share of ultra-processed foods and the balanced-pattern PCA factor score. The scores were thereafter categorized into tertiles, and their distribution was examined across ultra-processed food quintiles. All models incorporated survey sample weights and were adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, family income, and educational attainment. Results
The average content of protein, fiber, vitamins A, C, D, and E, zinc, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and calcium in the US diet decreased significantly across quintiles of the energy contribution of ultra-processed foods, while carbohydrate, added sugar, and saturated fat contents increased. An inverse dose–response association was found between ultra-processed food quintiles and overall dietary quality measured through a nutrient-balanced-pattern PCA-derived factor score characterized by being richer in fiber, potassium, magnesium and vitamin C, and having less saturated fat and added sugars. Conclusions
This study suggests that decreasing the dietary share of ultra-processed foods is a rational and effective way to improve the nutritional quality of US diets. [full text]
Chemical & Engineering News, Alexandra A. Taylor from
… The essential formula for sports drinks has changed little over the years. They contain sugar for energy, water for hydration, electrolytes such as salt to help with water retention, plus color and flavoring. Formulators play around with the sources and relative concentration of these ingredients to make sure they end up where they’re needed in the body as quickly as possible.
Of course, a sports drink’s primary function is to prevent dehydration. According to Nancy J. Rehrer, an exercise metabolism expert at the University of Otago, elite athletes performing in hot environments are most at risk. The stomach can process roughly a liter of fluid an hour, so if the intensity is high enough, athletes may lose fluid faster than their gastrointestinal tract can absorb it, Rehrer says.
Both Rehrer and Stavros Kavouras, director of the hydration science lab at the University of Arkansas, recommend elite athletes follow a rehydration regimen, such as consuming sports drinks at specific times throughout a competition in extremely hot climates to combat this deficit. But both say drinking water to quench thirst is fine for your average exerciser. That being said, Rehrer warns that first-time marathoners can overdo it on the water and cautions against hyponatremia, a dangerous condition that can result from consuming too much water too quickly.