Superstars are staying superstars for longer than ever. From Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon to Tom Brady and LeBron James, the top athletes in the world are all doing something we’ve never seen before: remaining the best well after they’ve put together all-time great careers.
… Marshall raved about the Giants’ use of new-age methods. He specifically noted the GPS and thought overall their approach was at a level beyond any he’d experienced with his previous four teams. And even though Marshall has had only a few months to digest some of it, he’s clearly embraced the progressive approach.
“I love it,” said Marshall, who worked on the sideline Friday at Giants OTAs with what he called a little soft tissue stuff that shouldn’t keep him out long.
… the belief that mathematical ability is a “gift” (that you either have or you don’t) is so well established it is hard to get rid of. Part of the problem is the way it is often taught, as a collection of rules and procedures, rather than a way of thinking (and a very simplistic one at that). Today, this is compounded by the rapid changes in society over the past few decades, that have revolutionized the way mathematics needs to be taught to prepare the new generation for life in today’s – and tomorrow’s – world. (See my January 1 article in The Huffington Post, “All The Mathematical Methods I Learned In My University Math Degree Became Obsolete In My Lifetime,” and its follow up article (same date), “Number Sense: the most important mathematical concept in 21st Century K-12 education.”)
With many parents, and not a few teachers, having convinced themselves of the “Math Gift Myth,” attempts over the past several decades to change that mindset have met with considerable resistance. If you have such a mindset, it is easy to see what happens in the educational world around you as confirming it.
Like all runners, Nicole Haber dreads any injury that keeps her from her sport. So when she found herself struggling after an ankle injury two years ago, Haber, a 32-year-old regular in New York City road races, was open to all solutions to get back to running. When her orthopedist suggested custom-made orthotics she went for them, even at the steep cost of $500.
Haber is in good company when it comes to orthotics. Physicians have prescribed them to injured runners for years, and there is no slowdown in sight. According to a study from IndustryARC, the foot orthotic insole market is likely to grow at a rate of 5.8 percent annually to reach $3.5 billion by 2020.
But not everyone is on board with the philosophy that orthotics are a panacea. Many in the industry, in fact, rally against the widespread recommendation that runners add either over-the-counter or custom insoles to their collection of gear.
NBA players who stay up late tweeting the night before a game tend to suffer subpar performances on the court.
When researchers at Stony Brook University looked at the relationship between late-night tweeting and basketball performance, they found NBA players players active on Twitter between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. were less efficient shooters and scored fewer points.
Jetting off for a jog in snug-fitting compression tights won’t help a runner go farther or faster, according to a new study that’s not doing any favors for its sponsor, Nike.
The sports gear giant — which offers compression tights in every color of the rainbow — funded the study, which was conducted by sports medicine researchers at Ohio State University. It was meant to test a long-standing theory that compression tights tamp down on muscle vibrations during exercise and, in turn, reduce fatigue.
The best games, by common consent, are at Tabard Gardens, not far from the Elephant & Castle tube station, and a couple of miles southeast, on the AstroTurf field at the Damilola Taylor Center in Peckham.
They are where the standard is highest, the competition fiercest and the talent brightest. In the summer, especially, the matches can get even better, when some of the players who have left the housing projects of south London and gone on to reach the Premier League, or the divisions just below it, return. They come to remember where they began and to play with their friends. But most of all, they come to prove they can still cut it in the white heat of the cage.
… In January 2016, Zidane had taken over a team of malcontent superstars with a conservative style of play and a disappointing third-place standing in La Liga. Five months later, Zidane’s squad won the Champions League. Now, as he looks out over the skyline on this August day, Zidane has two obvious goals: repeat in the Champions League and reclaim the La Liga crown from Leo Messi’s Barcelona. But first he has to do the completely unexpected by changing the way this generation’s greatest galáctico, Cristiano Ronaldo, approaches the game.
In a few days, Ronaldo will miss the season’s start, recovering from a knee injury sustained just minutes into the Euro 2016 final. At 31, he has seemingly reached the pinnacle of an astonishing career — international success. Yet, facing his footballing mortality, his best season had also been one of his worst. He has much to celebrate, European champion for club and country, but also issues to address. His future, especially. Whether he has much of one.
Zidane seeks him out. If you listen to me, the coach says softly, you’ll reach the end of the season in better shape than ever before — and you’ll prolong your career.
Could it be possible to run a normal existence without social life? Indeed, sociability is an important aspect for individuals and social interaction builds our lives. In fact, social interaction enhances quality of life and improves the stability of communities. Impaired sociability is a classical symptom observed in many neuropsychiatric disorders including autism, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and generalized fear. Interestingly, many studies have pointed to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain area located in the ventromedial part of the frontal lobe, as key region involved in the neural bases of sociability (Valk et al, 2015; Treadway et al., 2015; Frith et al., 2007).
The prelimbic cortex (PL) and the infralimbic cortex (IL), two subregions of the mPFC, have been strongly suggested to play an important role in the neural mechanisms underlying sociability as isolation rearing in rats results in impaired social behavior and structural modifications in the PL and IL. Isolation rearing is a neurodevelopmental manipulation that produces neurochemical, structural, and behavioral alterations in rodents that in many ways are consistent with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. In particular, it has been shown that isolation rearing can alter the volume of mPFC, the dendritic length and the spine density of pyramidal neurons. However, the detailed mechanisms involved in sociability disorders remain elusive and poorly understood.
… “If (the NFL) gave us $2 million, we’d have this problem solved in three years,” Nauman said. “We’ve only spent $1.2 million to their ($100 million) and we’ve gotten more … useful data.”
Working with both local high schools and the Purdue soccer team, Nauman and Talavage have used sensors to detect the magnitude of hits on players’ heads.
These sensors have been placed in helmets and mouth guards and behind players’ ears. A sensor tracks each hit as well as measures how much force is behind it.
… “There’s some of both,” [Jon] Daniels said. “I think that there are certain injuries, there are certain body types, there are certain medical histories that probably lend themselves to coming back more than others. But the biggest [matter] is about the individual, both the individual player and then the individuals on your medical staff and your coaching staff and how do they handle it.
“One of the things that I’ve become so acutely aware of, whether it’s sports medicine or it’s the real world, real-life medicine, it matters dramatically. If you have a heart attack, you have a stroke, it matters dramatically which hospital you go to and which doctor you see. And so by the same token, when you’re putting a medical team together and they’re all highly qualified, and yet there’s still an enormous difference between — and not just in medical practices, but in bedside manner. Kind of the ability to communicate with the players, get the most out of them, have players trust them. Our whole medical team, top to bottom, has been a real asset for us and has helped us both recruit players and then get the most out of them when they’re on the mend.”
As Saturday spilled into Sunday, U.S. soccer glimpsed into the future on three disparate fronts.
Early in the evening, on the outskirts of Washington, Mallory Pugh, 19, scored her first professional goal before packing her bags for U.S. women’s national team service. Later, in a Salt Lake City suburb, Christian Pulisic, 18, continued solidifying an eminent role with the men’s squad by bagging the equalizer in a tuneup for two vital World Cup qualifiers.
And in the wee hours, a U.S. men’s squad featuring several senior prospects fell short at the Under-20 World Cup in South Korea, losing in extra time in the quarterfinals.
… As Kerr is the first to acknowledge, none of these entrances and exits seem to make a whit of difference to the graceful raptor that is the Warriors. They’ve won every game in this postseason. And in Game 1 of the finals, they planted tire tracks on the backs of the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers. They also won almost all of their games last year when Kerr was at the helm (save for the finals, when the LeBronettes made one of the more improbable comebacks in finals history).
And of course, the Kerr-led team won the championship the year before that.
It’s enough to make me wonder if coaches are all that important. If I had a modicum of true basketball knowledge and I was bequeathed Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and the spindly and graceful 7-foot force that is Kevin Durant, not to mention a host of smart role players, perhaps I could close my eyes and wake up in the N.B.A. finals.
… Conte’s main task now will be developing his squad for next season for a Champions League challenge and he may even prioritise European competition as a personal mission, considering his inability to take Juventus past the quarter-final stage. Either way more rotation will be required. Chelsea appear well‑stocked in defence, with Nathan Aké and Kurt Zouma likely to play a more significant role next season, but Chelsea are woefully short of midfield back-ups after the mid-season departure of Oscar to Shanghai SIPG. Up front, Michy Batshuayi provided some decisive contributions from the bench but Conte will need to use him more next season.
In a tactical sense, too, Chelsea may need to evolve. If it would be unfair to suggest that opponents have found out their system, it is clear the 3-4-3 did not work quite so effectively after Christmas, with Tottenham, Manchester United and then Arsenal all genuinely outplaying Conte’s side. It is notable that Chelsea went 11 games between January and the end of April without keeping a single clean sheet, an amazing statistic considering they kept six in a row immediately after the change of system.
What if you put on the TV to watch Game One of the NBA Finals Thursday night, or even bought tickets to the game, and discovered that LeBron James or Stephen Curry wasn’t there? Fans were not exactly thrilled earlier this season — and expressed their sentiments freely on social media — when several top players on the Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs were kept from playing in some televised Saturday night games.
This practice of “resting” healthy players so they can regain their energy and reduce the chance of injury isn’t new, said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver during his keynote at this year’s Wharton People Analytics Conference. He described a recent business meeting with Magic Johnson, the three-time MVP award winner who in February was named the Los Angeles Lakers’ president for basketball operations. Someone else in the meeting had commented, “Magic, no one ever rested in your day, right?” (Johnson won fame during the 1980s.) He answered, “Actually, we rested. There were games where Pat Riley used to rest me.”
Silver believes there may also have been games in the past when fatigued players were simply put in for fewer minutes, or “frankly, didn’t play as hard … and it wasn’t noticed.”