He has tight hips that give him to problems in coverage. He takes poor angles. He’s slow to react. He doesn’t have great awareness in traffic. He’s not a sound tackler. He’s the biggest Athletic Mystical Creature Pats Pulpit will have ever seen.
Novak Djokovic’s career path, seemingly a runway toward the stars as little as 10 months ago, took another bizarre twist Friday when he fired his entire support team right before the start of what looks like the most critical series of tournaments that he has ever faced.
In a statement published on his website, Djokovic wrote that the parting was “mutually agreed,” and he added flowery tributes to his longtime primary coach, Marian Vajda, fitness coach Gebhard Phil Gritsch and physiotherapist Miljan Amanovic. He wrote that the men “are my family and that will never change.”
But the family isn’t invited to Madrid or any of the tournaments thereafter, including the French Open. The latter is where Djokovic completed his long-sought career Grand Slam last June. It was his 12th major title, but instead of inspiring Djokovic to greater heights, it triggered an unexpected tailspin shaped by complicated personal as well as game-based issues.
Royce White’s anxiety disorder derailed his promising NBA career, and the league did little to help. Now flourishing in the Canadian league, his new goal is to transform how professional sports—and the culture at large—think about mental health.
On his website you can learn many things about Andrew Jones, professor of applied physiology at the University of Exeter. You can read that he is the author of more than 220 research articles, chiefly to do with human endurance, and that he has acted as “consultant physiologist to UK Athletics for many years, advising the majority of the UK’s leading distance runners”, including Paula Radcliffe.
A fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, and the European College of Sport Science, Jones is also special adviser (endurance) to the English Institute of Sport.
But what his website doesn’t tell you is that, 30 years on from when he set it, Jones still holds the British junior half-marathon record – run on an undulating course at Stroud in the jaw-dropping time of 66 minutes 55 seconds. No wonder that when Nike was looking for someone to devise a training and nutrition regime to help an elite runner break the sub-two-hour marathon mark, it was Jones who got the call.
Academy use of bio-banding – where players are matched by maturity rather than age – has sparked a lot of debate in both the football and academic communities.
Sometimes it can be difficult to separate the myths from the reality, so TGG asked Dr Sean Cumming (right), a senior lecturer in sport and exercise science at The University of Bath, to answer some of the most commonly-asked questions.
Dr Cumming is one of the country’s leading experts on growth and maturation and has been working with the Premier League to improve their bio-banding systems, as well as helping to design and evaluate tournaments.
… “The ROTC gentlemen and ladies are all in and they push it and they connect well with our players,” Reid said. “They challenge our players and motivate our players. It is a real plus.”
Assistant coach Andy Parker helped plan the day. He said his goal was to set up drills that “tackled both physical capacity and mental capacity.
“This was an opportunity to get the group together and find out who some leaders are outside of soccer.”
… We had some successful times at Liverpool on the domestic scene and in Europe.
But the dieticians and nutritionists would shake their head in disbelief if they knew some of the stuff I was putting into my body in the hours leading up to games.
I remember my first reserve game for Celtic back in the ’60s.
We never met up for a pre-match meal. So it was left to my mum to make me something to eat, and when she asked what I wanted: “Sausage roll and beans” was my reply.
Alan Pardew says sports science and medical staff have become ‘too protective’ and that this contributed to his sacking at Crystal Palace.
Pardew, who was dismissed at the end of December following a run of eight defeats in 10 games, believes the Eagles struggled to recover from an undemanding pre-season.
… SI: You brought up a great point in Mobile at the Senior Bowl about how Solomon Thomas and his rocketing draft stock illustrate the value of playing in bowl games. I know you’ve been asked a lot about Christian McCaffrey a ton, but what’s the counter-argument?
David Shaw: Like I said before, Christian’s two years were the best two-year span in the history of the league [in terms of production] so there’s some padding there. Yes, this kid is tough. No, he’s not afraid of competition. This [didn’t] hurt him.
Then you have a guy like Solomon. Should he come out? Should he stay? The bowl game became of paramount importance. All the scouts watched it, there were multiple scouts at the game, so they get the chance to see it live, and I got a ton of calls that night from guys saying, ‘O.K., we love this guy.’ It’s one thing to see a guy on film or a guy live. Sometimes those bowl games are the tipping point. You get to rest, get to recover, and you get to say, ‘O.K., I have one game to play to give it my all. It’s not my seventh game in a row in seven weeks.’ That’s what you saw from Solomon. You saw fresh, explosive. It was a great time to evaluate him, and that was him at his best and that’s phenomenal.
The Conversation, Glen Lichtwark, Dominic Farris, Luke A Kelly from
Most runners believe a good pair of running shoes is worth the investment. But advances in running shoe technology have sparked debate about whether shoes help you run faster.
Can they really allow marathon runners to break the elusive two-hour barrier, a challenge set to take place in Italy this weekend? Or can newer shoes help you improve your personal best?
If they do, can we class these shoes as “performance enhancing” technologies that give runners an unfair advantage?
Protein, the most sought out nutrient by U.S. shoppers according to the “2016 Food and Health Survey” from the International Food Information Council Foundation, Washington, is fueling innovation in the beverage sector. Both ready-to-drink (R.-T.-D.) and powdered mix beverages appeal to consumers looking for quick and convenient ways to increase protein intake.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered that changing the circadian clock in mouse liver can alter how the body responds to diet and also change the microbes living in the digestive track. In this study, which appears online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the researchers show for the first time that a liver gene in mice has the ability to link the circadian system, the microbiome and the mouse metabolism under dietary restrictions. What is surprising is that it does so in a sex-specific fashion.
“Organisms can change how their bodies process food in different ways,” said first author Dr. Derek O’Neil, a postdoctoral fellow in obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor. “Here, we studied two of those strategies. One involves the circadian clock, the internal mechanism that helps orchestrate body activities such as going to sleep or when to eat. Another aspect that can affect how we metabolize our food is the microbiome, the bacteria that live in the body.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Richard P. Mann and Dirk Helbing from
Diversity of information and expertise among group members has been identified as a crucial ingredient of collective intelligence. However, many factors tend to reduce the diversity of groups, such as herding, groupthink, and conformity. We show why the individual incentives in financial and prediction markets and the scientific community reduce diversity of information and how these incentives can be changed to improve the accuracy of collective forecasting. Our results, therefore, suggest ways to improve the poor performance of collective forecasting seen in recent political events and how to change career rewards to make scientific research more successful.
Sam Allardyce has given insight into some of the key roles his backroom team have provided as Crystal Palace look to secure their Premier League status for next season.
The Eagles boss appointed Sammy Lee as his assistant boss and Martyn Margetson as the new goalkeeping coach, getting rid of Keith Millen and Andy Woodman.
Margetson has been working closely with goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey for over seven years, thanks to his previous role as goalkeeping coach for the Wales national side.
The Eagles number one dropped a stone in weight after Margetson and his backroom colleagues assessed performance data, the former Wolves player doing extra gym work to shift the excess.
“I’m a great delegator in my life. You learn that if you want to stay in the game for a long time, you want to relieve the pressure on yourself and you want to make better decisions then you have to find the people in the positions you want, who are the best.
… The data showed specifically that total injury rates and muscle injury rates, specifically hamstring and quadriceps injuries, increased in league matches played within four days. But team performance was linked to matchload only when teams played in the Europa League. Specifically, more matches were lost following recovery periods of three days or fewer.
Mourinho’s leadership could be crucial over the next couple of weeks. Historically he has been closest to his fitness coach, Rui Faria, but his relationship with Dr Steve McNally, the head of sports medicine and science, may well determine how many treatment couches are filled.