The Reds’ quiet superstar keeps finding ways to improve his game outside the spotlight in small-market Cincinnati.
As Joey Votto entered the Rogers Centre on Tuesday, he did so with several trays of coffee, offering them to staff members as he entered the Cincinnati Reds clubhouse. Once Votto was safely behind closed doors, one staffer asked who had just offered him coffee. Here was Votto, the cause for increased media presence, the subject of a 16-minute press conference, and the recipient of his sixth Tip O’Neill Award as Canada’s best baseball player a day earlier, returning home and going unrecognized in the innards of his hometown stadium. Underrated as always, it would seem.
“I think he is,” Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin says. “He’s played on a team, it’s not a big-market team, I don’t feel like they get a lot of national coverage, and the last couple years, I don’t think they fared very well. But in the league, player to player, everybody knows how good this player is, how tough of an out he is.”
… [Ky] Hurst joined Oracle this year as a grinder, his first official gig in professional sailing. In a very basic sense, it entails cranking a heavy winch, or a spinning wheel, in a forward motion at ferocious speed. Technically speaking, the grinders pressurize the hydraulic system that moves the wing sail and the dagger boards. The 48-foot, twin-hulled catamarans have a 77-foot wing sail that rises out of the water on hydrofoils and can reach speeds of more than 50 miles per hour.
As the pressure builds, it becomes harder to grind. “We spin these pedestals to make energy, because there’s no motor or batteries on these boats,” Hurst says. “To transfer oil, it takes a lot of turning, spinning those pedestals, trying to produce as much oil as possible.” There are six guys on board, and everyone will spin the handles at some point. Once the hydraulic pressure builds and is stored in the accumulator, the helmsman, or “wingtrimmer,” uses it to move the wing sail and foil that makes the catamaran fly.
… Looking back, Ferguson says he has no regrets about his time abroad. He ate meat pies (liked them), had an experience with vegemite (“if you put too much on, it’ll ruin your day”), and went to see an Australian football match (“they tried to explain it to me and I was just sitting there wondering ‘when can I leave?'”) He loved the beach, and had his mother accompany him for support.
Best of all, Ferguson said, the experience forced him to mature more quickly off the court.
Muscle fatigue is a temporary decline in the force and power capacity of skeletal muscle resulting from muscle activity. Because control of muscle is realized at the level of the motor unit (MU), it seems important to consider the physiological properties of motor units when attempting to understand and predict muscle fatigue. Therefore, we developed a phenomenological model of motor unit fatigue as a tractable means to predict muscle fatigue for a variety of tasks and to illustrate the individual contractile responses of MUs whose collective action determines the trajectory of changes in muscle force capacity during prolonged activity. An existing MU population model was used to simulate MU firing rates and isometric muscle forces and, to that model, we added fatigue-related changes in MU force, contraction time, and firing rate associated with sustained voluntary contractions. The model accurately estimated endurance times for sustained isometric contractions across a wide range of target levels. In addition, simulations were run for situations that have little experimental precedent to demonstrate the potential utility of the model to predict motor unit fatigue for more complicated, real-world applications. Moreover, the model provided insight, into the complex orchestration of MU force contributions during fatigue, that would be unattainable with current experimental approaches.
… With this year’s expansion draft to fill the roster of the Vegas Golden Knights fast approaching, the Bruins hockey operations staff was in Buffalo over the weekend for the 2017 NHL Scouting Combine, the first step in what is sure to be a busy – and unusual – couple of months.
“It is an important time period for the league, for each individual team, particularly for the expansion club – an exciting time, a unique time,” said Bruins general manager Don Sweeney, who along with other members of the front office and scouting staff interviewed dozens of prospective draft picks.
“There will be a lot of discussion between now and the draft, potential trades or picks that will be exchanged. Everybody is trying to improve their club.”
Objectives To evaluate the effect of a gluteal activation warm-up on the performance of an explosive exercise (the high hang pull (HHP)).
Methods Seventeen professional rugby union players performed one set of three HHPs (with 80% of their one repetition maximum load) following both a control and activation warm-up. Peak electrical activity of the gluteus maximus and medius was quantified using electromyography (EMG). In addition, the kinematics and kinetics of nine players was also recorded using force plate and motion capture technology. These data were analysed using a previously described musculoskeletal model of the right lower limb in order to provide estimates of the muscular force expressed during the movement.
Results The mean peak EMG activity of the gluteus maximus was significantly lower following the activation warm-up as compared with the control (p<0.05, effect size d=0.30). There were no significant differences in the mean peak estimated forces in gluteus maximus and medius, the quadriceps or hamstrings (p=0.053), although there was a trend towards increased force in gluteus maximus and hamstrings following the activation warm-up. There were no differences between the ground reaction forces following the two warm-ups.
Conclusion This study suggests that a gluteal activation warm-up may facilitate recruitment of the gluteal musculature by potentiating the glutes in such a way that a smaller neural drive evokes the same or greater force production during movement. This could in turn potentially improve movement quality. [full text]
After a two-year-long production process, a wearable has hit the mass market that doesn’t attach to your wrist.
The Nadi X Pant & Pulse, from connected apparel company WearableX, is a pair of leggings equipped with a “pulse” power device that retails for $299. (The pulse only needs to be purchased once. Additional leggings, equipped for the device, retail for $199.) The leggings, meant to be worn while practicing yoga, are embedded with fibers that react to the user’s movements, guiding them into positions and helping to prevent injury through a series of vibrations.
… The Texas trip was hosted by LaunchPad City, which works with startups and has been in talks to bring a branch of Stadia Ventures to town. Its vision focuses around sports and e-sports.
“We see technology and sports converging at a speed never seen before,” LaunchPad City co-founder Nahid Giga said.
The hope is that the connections made through the Frisco trip will not only help these small startups but also bring some of their offerings to fans, families and athletes here.
Using a plantar plating technique to treat proximal fifth metatarsal fractures in elite athletes offers better stability than intramedullary screw fixation, according to a recent paper published by surgeons from the Houston Methodist Orthopedics & Sports Medicine in Houston, Texas in the May/June 2017 issue of Orthopedics.
Proximal fifth metatarsal fractures also known as Jones fractures are common in elite athletes and while intramedullary screw fixation is the most common surgical treatment, nonunion and refracture remain a concern with this technique.
… Four trends represent the digitization of healthcare and a so-called “virtuous cycle of innovation:
Digital inputs, with rapid growth in the sources of digital health data, from digital X-rays and wearable sensors for ECGs to digital blood pressure devices and remote health monitoring in the home
Data accumulation, the proliferation of digitally-native data sets
Data insight, which follows the accumulation then integration of data, and
Translation, having an impact on therapeutics and healthcare delivery, the report asserts
… Alabama has a huge staff. Each assistant coach has an analogous analyst—either a young coach trying to break into the business or a veteran living that buyout life—who provides another set of eyes as the coaches break down opponents, review practice video and create game plans. Another set of staffers works in the recruiting office, breaking down video into only the most digestible chunks so the on-field coaches can evaluate prospects in the most efficient manner possible. Some of these people also offer opinions on the quality of various recruits even though the NCAA officially bans anyone but the head coach and the nine on-field assistants from evaluating prospects. (This is the ultimate in stupidity. It’s quite silly to ban someone from having an opinion on a Hudl clip they watched, and it’s impossible to enforce such a ban.)
Does Alabama’s huge staff give it an advantage over opponents? Sure. So does its huge stadium and its decades of tradition. Other schools have followed suit, adding analysts and recruiting staffers. Former Alabama coordinator Kirby Smart is building a similar machine at Georgia. Former Alabama coordinator Jim McElwain began staffing up the moment he became the head coach at Florida. The Gators’ previous coach, former Saban (LSU vintage) coordinator Will Muschamp, had asked to expand his staff and met with resistance. In the Big Ten, Harbaugh has beefed up his staff. Tom Herman is bulking up his staff in his first year at Texas.
… This is the cheat code of today’s NBA: the fouled 3-pointer, delivering, on average, 2.5 points per play — a king’s ransom compared to the average payout of a 3-point attempt (1.1 points). It is, simply put, the most profitable play in the game.
This particular one was notable for reasons far beyond the clock and score. Hayward’s trip to the line marked the 72nd three-shot foul of the postseason, tying the record set last postseason, which itself shattered the previous high mark of 51 set in 2014.
… You spent over a decade in senior executive roles at Real Madrid, arguably the most successful football club in the world. What makes Real Madrid so successful?
At Real Madrid we focus on maximizing value and return on investment. We put a lot of thought and effort behind finding the right players to fit with the club’s culture and fulfill our overriding mission, to win trophies and entertain our fans. We also partner with the best sponsors who enhance our global brand and we embrace innovative technologies to provide the best facilities. This gives Real Madrid a competitive advantage over our opponents, and provides the best opportunity to win.
To what extent has innovation and technology played a role in evolving the sports industry in recent years?
Innovation in technology and analytics has had a huge impact on professional sports. In every area, from facility management to fan engagement, and of course in the area of performance analytics.
… If both teams field their expected lineups — Navas, Varane, Ramos, Danilo, Marcelo, Kroos, Modric, Casemiro, Ronaldo, Benzema and Isco for Real Madrid and Buffon, Chiellini, Alves, Sandro, Bonucci, Barzagli, Pjanic, Khedira, Dybala, Madzukic, Higuain for Juventus — Juve are 58 per cent more likely to win the tournament.
“This is mostly due to the negative impact that missing key players like Bale, Carvajal and Pepe,” Luis Usier, quantitative analyst at 21st Club, says. This is according to a statistical model that uses machine learning to isolate the contribution of every individual player to the team, assessing their recent performances, the opponents faced, among other factors, and computes how many goals each team is expected to score — a measure called “pre-match expected goals”. In this case, Madrid has 1.16 expected goals against Juventus’ 1.45.
PLOS One; Clive B. Beggs, Simon J. Shepherd, Stacey Emmonds, Ben Jones from
Ranking enables coaches, sporting authorities, and pundits to determine the relative performance of individual athletes and teams in comparison to their peers. While ranking is relatively straightforward in sports that employ traditional leagues, it is more difficult in sports where competition is fragmented (e.g. athletics, boxing, etc.), with not all competitors competing against each other. In such situations, complex points systems are often employed to rank athletes. However, these systems have the inherent weakness that they frequently rely on subjective assessments in order to gauge the calibre of the competitors involved. Here we show how two Internet derived algorithms, the PageRank (PR) and user preference (UP) algorithms, when utilised with a simple ‘who beat who’ matrix, can be used to accurately rank track athletes, avoiding the need for subjective assessment. We applied the PR and UP algorithms to the 2015 IAAF Diamond League men’s 100m competition and compared their performance with the Keener, Colley and Massey ranking algorithms. The top five places computed by the PR and UP algorithms, and the Diamond League ‘2016’ points system were all identical, with the Kendall’s tau distance between the PR standings and ‘2016’ points system standings being just 15, indicating that only 5.9% of pairs differed in their order between these two lists. By comparison, the UP and ‘2016’ standings displayed a less strong relationship, with a tau distance of 95, indicating that 37.6% of the pairs differed in their order. When compared with the standings produced using the Keener, Colley and Massey algorithms, the PR standings appeared to be closest to the Keener standings (tau distance = 67, 26.5% pair order disagreement), whereas the UP standings were more similar to the Colley and Massey standings, with the tau distances between these ranking lists being only 48 (19.0% pair order disagreement) and 59 (23.3% pair order disagreement) respectively. In particular, the UP algorithm ranked ‘one-off’ victors more highly than the PR algorithm, suggesting that the UP algorithm captures alternative characteristics to the PR algorithm, which may more suitable for predicting future performance in say knockout tournaments, rather than for use in competitions such as the Diamond League. As such, these Internet derived algorithms appear to have considerable potential for objectively assessing the relative performance of track athletes, without the need for complicated points equivalence tables. Importantly, because both algorithms utilise a ‘who beat who’ model, they automatically adjust for the strength of the competition, thus avoiding the need for subjective decision making.