… I’ll tell you another secret. Before I go up against the best forwards in the world — Messi, Neymar, Cristiano — I study their strengths and weaknesses like an obsession, and then I plan how I am going to attack. My goal is to show the world that Dani Alves is on the same level. Maybe they will dribble past me once or twice. Sure, O.K. But I will attack them, too. I don’t want to be invisible. I want the stage. Even at 34 years old, after 34 trophies, I still feel I have to prove this every time.
But it goes even deeper than that.
Right before every match, I have same the routine. I stand in front of a mirror for five minutes and I block out everything. Then a movie begins to play in my mind. It is the movie of my life.
… Those 2010 workouts dripped with enthusiasm. “I remember some of those, we don’t even get water breaks,” [Rob] McClanaghan told The Crossover. “People ask me why these guys are so good and it’s just that. They work. It’s not rocket science.” The results of this labor are obvious: Likely a third MVP award when Westbrook claims the trophy on June 26 and tens of collective All-Star appearances and All-NBA selections. What wasn’t as evident: with each jumper and each drill, the tectonic plates of the NBA were shifting beneath the hardwood and Hollywood Boulevard.
Seven years later, the manifestation of the NBA’s pace-and-space era has culminated in this NBA Finals matchup. Durant won that first scoring title as the Oklahoma City Thunder’s two-guard, yet on Sunday evening clamped the Cavaliers’ offense as a small-ball center for Golden State. Once bound by the block, Love has matured into one of the most feared three-point shooters in the league, capable of draining jumpers as efficiently off the bounce as off catch-and-shoot opportunities. Those 2010 sessions set the tone for each player’s shift into positional versatility and quintessential offensive efficiency.
… Times have changed. The last teenage Slam champion was Maria Sharapova in 2006, and we haven’t had a teenager in a major final since Caroline Wozniacki in 2009. Since then, only four players–Ostapenko, Sloane Stephens, Eugenie Bouchard, and Madison Keys–have reached Grand Slam semifinals before their 20th birthdays. (To simplify matters, I’m defining tournament age as age at the beginning of the event, so Ostapenko is a 19-year-old for the purpose of this discussion.)
By just about any measure you can dream up, the sport is getting older. In 1990, the average age of the women in the French Open main draw was 21.8 years. In 2000, it was 23.5. This year, the average age at the start of the tournament was 25.6, just a tiny bit short of last year’s record–set at Roland Garros and Wimbledon–of 25.7. Veterans are sticking around longer, and it takes longer for young players to develop tour-ready games.
… “I am going to miss this,” he said, taking in the view of Bayern’s sun-bleached Säbener Strasse training complex a few weeks ago. “The grass, the sound of the ball, the jokes with my teammates. That’s what I will miss most. That is what fulfills you most on a daily basis.”
But he knew that the time was right. “I read that leaving is like buying and selling stocks,” he said. “It is either too early or too late. In football, it is similar. It is hard to find the right moment, but I feel in peace. I am a mature fruit, and I have dropped from the tree.”
It is a ripening so subtle as to be virtually imperceptible. At his peak, Alonso was always said to be one of those players who had time, on the ball, on his side, and that was the case in what turned out to be the last year of his career, too.
… The creation of an interdisciplinary staff in athletics gave me a perfect opportunity to implement my athlete management system, Voyager. Our staff had spent considerable time designing and scheduling our process within our unique high performance team: Ryan has developed a customized screening process as a physical therapist, Erik has multiple assessments and performance tests he implements as a performance coach, and I had elected to use a simplified approach to assessing readiness and recovery. Voyager would allow us to connect each department within our staff into a single hub for our athletes.
Whether by phone, tablet, or computer, each staff member had ready access to key performance indicators daily, and these were simultaneously stored in a database. Perhaps the best part about our athlete management process with Voyager is that it is customized to fit our needs; only the information we wanted to collect was included, and we could create new metrics, forms, and surveys quickly and easily.
… England manager Gareth Southgate arranged the trip to a Commando Training Centre in Devon as part of their preparation for Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Scotland, and a friendly with France three days later.
Twenty England players were taken out of their comfort zones in the 48-hour boot camp designed for Marine recruits.
“It was the perfect thing to do if you want team-bonding,” added Defoe, who is on the verge of joining Bournemouth from Sunderland after completing a medical.
This is the fourth installment of The MMQB’s “24 Hours” series, inside-inside, multimedia stories for the 2017 NFL season, chronicling a day in the life of an important figure in pro football.
After seven years in Washington, the last three as Jay Gruden’s offensive coordinator, a soon-to-be 31-year-old Sean McVay took over the Los Angeles Rams in January, becoming the youngest head coach in NFL history (modern era). It’s been a whirlwind first off-season, though if you observe McVay running the team, you’d think he’s been at it for a decade. In May, during the Rams’ third OTA session (which meant full days with the players and live practices), McVay welcomed us behind the curtain.
You are awaiting your commuter train after a crushing day, and decide you need a pick-me-up. A large coffee should do it, maybe paired with a sugary treat. A donut kiosk adjoins your gate, so you join the line, only to find that when you reach the counter, a tray of bananas stares you in the face. Inertia and rebellion war briefly with your better judgment, but in the end you grab a banana, priced ridiculously at US$1.50, virtuously choosing to forgo the donut.
Heading for the train, you pause to reflect: Why is a donut shop pushing bananas? Perhaps profit margins are higher on the overpriced fruit. Or maybe the shop is attempting to proclaim its good corporate citizenship by providing an uncharacteristically nutritious snack. How you feel about this — whether you’re grateful to have been prompted to make a healthier choice or irritated that even a donut shop feels the need to try to improve your diet — probably serves as a good indication of how you will feel about the work of Cass Sunstein.
… Michael: Every year, I’m fortunate to be part of a team that works on a selection process for the next generation of NFL athletes. I’ll ask this question often: “What’s some tough stuff that you’ve been through?” This year, [one athlete] said, “You know, it wasn’t what you think it was. The toughest part was not when I would come home and all of my family’s stuff would be on the front lawn because it’s the fourth or fifth time we’ve been evicted. The hard part wasn’t trying to figure out where we’re going to go and the family splitting up, because we knew we’d eventually come back together as a family. We’d figure it out. The hard part was that everyone else knew that we were evicted again, and it was because my mom was out on drugs and running the streets again. The embarrassment was the hardest part.”
I share that with you because the ingenuity, the creativity, the gumption to figure out the next moment of survival is a real thing. Those internal resources that are built over time can be depleted or magnified for what they’re going to go through next.
Tina: I think of creativity [and] innovation being influenced by your knowledge, your attitude, and your skills. You’re going to go into any situation and you’re going to have your mindset. Are you looking at yourself as a victim? Are you going to look at yourself as a hero?
Are you going to say, “I can solve every problem” or are you going, “Oh my gosh, this happened again. I feel so mortified. I need to crawl under a rock?” Your mindset is really important, but also your skills. You need to have some tools that you can draw upon. The more creative problem-solving skills you have, the more you’re going to be able to use that engine of your mindset to actually do something.
PLOS One; Brian M. Lee and Markus Kemmelmeier from
In light of recent challenges to the strength model of self-control, our study re-examines the effects of self-control training on established physical and self-report measures of self-control. We also examined whether beliefs about the malleability of self-control qualify any training effects. Participants in the training condition were assigned to increase use of their non-dominant hand for two weeks, and did comply mainly if they held high-malleability beliefs; yet, compared to a control condition, the physical measure of self-control did not improve. This was also evident in a secondary objective measure of self-control, a Stroop task, as well as in self-reported self-control. The discussion focuses on the lack of replication of training effects on self-control.
The first day of Apple’s annual worldwide developers conference called attention to some upgrades for its Apple Watch with the OS4 smartwatch software, particularly for health and fitness, in a livestreamed version of the event. Most significantly, built-in Bluetooth has been added so the Apple Watch will be able to better work with other connected devices such as DexCom’s continuous glucose monitor, a move that rocketed DexCom’s share price.
The move makes the smartwatch apps less dependent on the iPhone to be in range.
The launch of the bluetooth API for developers stands to expand the number of medtech applications for the Apple Watch and boosts its relevance in the healthcare space at a time when making it more relevant to a wearable landscape.
… Joyce Wu, a member of the Analog Garage’s Emerging Business team, is laser-focused on solving the problem of the quantified athlete. She just attended two Boston-area forums on the topic, the Rise of the Quantified Athlete at Harvard Innovation Labs, and MIT Sloan’s Sports Analytics Conference. So the Master Mechanic thought it was the perfect time to tap into her insights.
Q: The quantified athlete is potentially a very lucrative market, and it has attracted a lot of entrants. How do elite athletes, team and sports organizations view what they have to offer?
A: They certainly are excited by the prospects of getting an edge by monitoring their progress in new and exciting ways. And they see the data as a potential tool they could use to improve their performance and market themselves.
… For as long as people have been creating technology, people have been saying it’ll never amount to anything. As we create more and more – as ‘software eats the world’, the urge to dismiss seems only to get stronger, and so does the urge to defend. However, these conversations tend to follow a fairly predictable sequence, and quickly become unhelpful:
That’s just a toy
Successful things often started out looking like toys
That’s just survivor bias – this one really is a toy
… In this article I’m going to take a detailed look at how EPL clubs utilized their squads throughout the season. I’ll compare the rate at which managers ‘rotated’ their teams (which I define simply as the number of changes made to their starting lineup) and the number of players they used in doing so. I’ll then investigate some of the factors that may have influenced a manager’s decision to fiddle with his starting lineup. Finally I’ll discuss whether rotation had an impact on results.
PLOS One; Javier Brazo-Sayavera , Pedro R. Olivares, Georgios Andronikos, Russell J. J. Martindale from
This study aimed to translate the Talent Development Environment Questionnaire into Spanish and provide an initial validation. A recommended methodology for translation and cultural adaptation of questionnaires was applied. Once this had been completed, three hundred and thirty-two young athletes completed the Talent Development Environment Questionnaire. The results revealed that the five factor solution Talent Development Environment Questionnaire was confirmed. With the exclusion of one item due to low factor loading, the Talent Development Environment Questionnaire-5 had robust statistical support for its factor structure (χ2 (df = 305) = 499.64, p<0.01, CFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.045, SRMR = 0.055). It also demonstrated adequate convergent and discriminant validity. While the internal reliability was lower than in previous studies, it revealed acceptable levels. Specifically the overall 27 item Talent Development Environment Questionnaire-5 had a Cronbach α score of .877, and the reliability scores for individual factors 1–5 were .622; .761; .658; .605; .602 respectively. As such, it is recommended that the Spanish Talent Development Environment Questionnaire-5 can be used with confidence in Spain in both applied and research settings.