… “I’m pretty consistent with what I eat,” Manning told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday during an appearance for the Gatorade Beat the Heat program at Wayne Valley High. “With my breakfast, whether it’s at home or at the facility, it’s pretty much the same thing every day. It’s not real exciting, but hey, I can tell the difference when I’m eating well and I’m not. It’s just kind of become a way of life. It’s not something I think about. It’s just what I know I need to do.”
So, what’s the breakfast of the two-time Super Bowl champion?
“Oatmeal, a ton of fruit, egg whites to throw in some protein, maybe mix it with some peppers or turkey or something like that,” Manning said. “That’s kind of the breakfast. It’s pretty basic.”
… Now two years removed from my collegiate football career at Michigan State, I find myself on a journey that would make the likes of Bilbo Baggins proud. Perseverance mixed with a little bit of luck allowed the hobbit to return to the shire, mission complete, and I aspire to do the same.
Work hard, do the right thing, treat others the way you want to be treated, give it your all, etc. are the type of mantras that can take you extremely far in your career, but what happens when a million people learned those same values and are on an eight-year mission for 2,000 jobs?
What happens when there are people who don’t have these values but still are afforded the same opportunity, if not a better chance, to land one of these jobs? How about being qualified, perhaps even overqualified for one of these jobs, and not getting that position you thought you would get?
… Jose Mourinho showed up at Old Trafford last year knowing he had to gradually phase Rooney out and promised that he would never play him in midfield either. But even then Mourinho did not know quite what to do with Rooney. He is not sharp enough in the box to play as a number nine any more but nor could he play with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as the pairing was too slow. But then Mourinho did not want him in his high-energy physical midfield either.
By the end of the season, with Mourinho focusing on the Europa League, Rooney was increasingly part of Mourinho’s Premier League B Team. And he never looked like he could cut it. His displays in the big away defeats at Arsenal and then Tottenham in early May were those of a player whose time at the top end of the top flight is up. At the Emirates Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain tore through him just like Rooney used to do to 30-something opponents back in an Everton shirt.
… “I remember Harry Redknapp calling me into the office saying, ‘you’re going to Bournemouth’,” he says. “I was like, ‘where’s that’?’” He recalls his mother, Sandra, being so baffled by the move that she phoned Redknapp to ask why her 18-year-old son was being sent to the south coast to aide Sean O’Driscoll’s struggling side in the old Division Two.
He recalls Eddie Howe, then captain, and Jason Tindall “just kicking people” and admits the experience forced him to “toughen up quickly. Even back then he was a natural leader, somebody I looked at and thought that he’d go on to be a manager,” Defoe says of his new manager.
“Sitting here like this, I feel like a manager already,” he laughs, sitting in Howe’s chair in the media suite at the club’s stadium. “I’d love to [follow in his footsteps].
Connor McDavid’s eight-year, $100 million contract extension with the Edmonton Oilers will take him through the 2025-26 NHL season. By then, the center may have more than 1,000 NHL points, based on statistical projections.
Even in the best of situations, projecting a player’s production over the course of a contract is difficult. In McDavid’s case, the projection is based on the 127 NHL games he has played and covers the next nine seasons, including this final season of the three-year, entry-level contract he signed on July 3, 2015. This projection begins from the level of an Art Ross winner at age 20, must encompass the rise to his prime, and the start of his decline by age 29.
One way to accomplish this goal is to look through NHL history for players with similar statistics at that same age, adjust those numbers to the modern-day standard, and then base a projection on the average performance of that group from ages 21 to 29.
… [Vanessa] Selbst is known for her incredibly aggressive style of play. Whether she’s holding the best hand or bluffing, she forces her opponents to make difficult decisions. It’s a style more common in today’s games, but there is more risk.
Effective aggression in poker requires an accurate read of the probabilities, a firm grasp of the opponent’s thought process, and a stable dose of self-belief.
Confidence is a necessity for success because it’s a game with the odds stacked against you in the short-term. To direct yourself towards a desirable long-term outcome, you have to be able to nurture a healthy source of conviction.
… Jones et al. (2009) identified the high-performance environment (HPE) model to consist of four core components and several subcomponents: leadership (vision, support, challenge); performance enablers (information, instruments, incentives); people (attitudes, behaviors, capacity); and, organizational culture (achievement, well-being, innovation, internal processes).
Clearly, there are a wide range of factors that influence the HPE and sport performance. Based on what we currently know, however, there are several gaps in this research area which should be of interest to multiple stakeholders in sport, including: practitioners who need to effectively intervene toward long-term athlete development (LTAD); transdisciplinary teams in sport science and medicine; and, lastly, sport administrators and coaches who assist in the shaping of culture toward agreed goals.
You are forgiven for letting le Tour slide from your attention. Much of the race is no longer on prime-time television, there hasn’t been a compelling American contender for years, and the near constant stream of doping scandals is enough to make anyone tune out. But there are still reasons to care. Everyday athletes can learn a lot from cyclists who pedal 2,188 miles in 23 days at an intensity most of us would have trouble sustaining for two city blocks. On the eve of the 104th running of the world’s biggest bike race, we reached out to a few Tour stalwarts for the best (legal) training hacks for the rest of us.
Martin Buchheit, International Journal of Sports Physiology Performance from
Purpose: To compare the peak intensity of typical Small Sided Games (SSGs) with those of official matches in terms of running demands and mechanical work over different rolling average durations and playing positions.
Method: Data were collected in 21 players (25±5 y, 181±7 cm, 77±7 kg) belonging to an elite French football team. SSG data were collected over two seasons during typical training sessions (249 files, 12±4 per player) and official matches (n=12). Players’ locomotor activity was recorded using 15-Hz GPS. Total distance (TD, m), high-speed distance (HS, distance above 14.4 km.h-1, m) and mechanical work (MechW, a.u) were analysed during different rolling average periods (1 to 15 min). The SSGs examined were 4v4+Goal Keepers (GKs), 6v6+GKs, 8v8+GKs and 10v10+GKs.
Results: Peak TD and HS during 4v4, 6v6 and 8v8 were likely-to-most likely largely lower than during matches (ES: -0.59,±0.38 to -7.36,±1.20). MechW during 4v4 was likely-to-most likely higher than during matches (1-4-min; 0.61±,0.77 to 2.30±,0.64). Relative to their match demands, central defenders (CD) performed more HS than other positions (0.63±,0.81 to 1.61±,0.52) during 6v6. Similarly, central midfielders (CM) performed less MechW than the other positions during 6v6 (0.68,±0.72 to 1.34,±0.99) and 8v8 (0.73,±0.50 to 1.39,±0.32).
Conclusion: Peak locomotor intensity can be modulated during SSGs of various formats and durations to either over- or underload match demands, with 4v4 placing the greatest and the least emphasis on MechW and HS, respectively. Additionally, CD and CM tend to be the most and least overloaded during SSGs, respectively.
Perhaps the most haphazardly tossed around term with athletes is “explosive,” as both the coach and casual fan label talents with it. Explosiveness sounds great to the ear and to the ego, but it’s also very easy to claim the quality without assessing it properly. In addition to measuring explosiveness, training the strength characteristic is even more of a crapshoot, since it is difficult to manage the very limited science and practice.
If you want to build better athletes, it is necessary to learn the neurophysiology as well as the coaching needs with explosive training. In this article, I will outline the most pragmatic ways to improve explosive strength with the more demanding sport science available.
Cyclists tend to dominate the top ten highest ever recorded VO2 max. Though a few runners also make a welcome appearance.
Steve Prefontaine who in the 1970’s with a VO2 max of 84.4 held the American record in seven different distance track events from 2,000 to 10,000 meters.
This begs the question, should all runners be aware of their VO2 max? Is it something we should be trying to improve, or something best left to the elites? To answer these questions, let us first take a closer look at what VO2 max actually represents.
An anthropologist who had the unenviable task of sitting through academics’ meetings and reading their email chains to find out why they fail to change their teaching styles has come to a surprising conclusion: they are simply too afraid of looking stupid in front of their students to try something new.
Lauren Herckis was brought in to Carnegie Mellon University to understand why, despite producing leading research into how students learn best, the institution had largely failed to adopt its own findings.
For example, one of the university’s online courses in statistics, which has been shown to be “incredibly effective at teaching students in half the time,” was not adapted by the statistics department for use on campus, said Richard Scheines, dean of the department of humanities and social sciences. “This is a source of real frustration,” he told the Global Learning Council Summit 2017 in Berlin last month.
The New York Times, Well blog, Gretchen Reynolds from
If athletes practice meditation for a few minutes a day, they may become better able to withstand the mental demands of hours of strenuous physical training, according to an interesting new study of Division I college football players.
The study, which compared different types of mental training for stress resilience, could have relevance for anyone planning to start exercising or competing more intensely this summer.
BACKGROUND:
Mindfulness as a present-oriented form of mental training affects cognitive processes and is increasingly considered meaningful for sport psychological training approaches. However, few intervention studies have examined the effects of mindfulness practice on physiological and psychological performance surrogates or on performance outcomes in sports. OBJECTIVE:
The aim of the present meta-analytical review was to examine the effects of mindfulness practice or mindfulness-based interventions on physiological and psychological performance surrogates and on performance outcomes in sports in athletes over 15 years of age. DATA SOURCES:
A structured literature search was conducted in six electronic databases (CINAHL, EMBASE, ISI Web of Knowledge, PsycINFO, MEDLINE and SPORTDiscus). The following search terms were used with Boolean conjunction: (mindful* OR meditat* OR yoga) AND (sport* OR train* OR exercis* OR intervent* OR perform* OR capacity OR skill*) AND (health* OR adult* OR athlete*). STUDY SELECTION:
Randomized and non-randomized controlled studies that compared mindfulness practice techniques as an intervention with an inactive control or a control that followed another psychological training program in healthy sportive participants were screened for eligibility. DATA EXTRACTION:
Eligibility and study quality [Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro)] scales were independently assessed by two researchers. A third independent researcher was consulted to achieve final consensus in case of disagreement between both researchers. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) were calculated as weighted Hedges’ g and served as the main outcomes in comparing mindfulness practice versus control. Statistical analyses were conducted using a random-effects inverse-variance model. RESULTS:
Nine trials of fair study quality (mean PEDro score 5.4, standard deviation 1.1) with 290 healthy sportive participants (athletics, cyclists, dart throwers, hammer throwers, hockey players, hurdlers, judo fighters, rugby players, middle-distance runners, long-distance runners, shooters, sprinters, volleyball players) were included. Intervention time varied from 4 weeks to over 2 years. The practice frequency lasted from twice daily to just once a week, and the mean session time covered 50-60 min. In favor of mindfulness practice compared with the control condition, large effects with narrow confidence limits and low heterogeneity were found for mindfulness scores [SMD 1.03, 90% confidence interval (CI) 0.67-1.40, p < 0.001, I 2 = 17%]. Physiological performance indices depicted wide confidence limits accompanied with very large heterogeneity. However, the effect sizes remained very large, with confidence limits that did not overlap zero (SMD 3.62, 90% CI 0.03-7.21, p = 0.10, I 2 = 98%). Moderate to large effects were observed for both psychological performance surrogates (SMD 0.72, 90% CI 0.46-0.98, p < 0.001, I 2 = 14%) and performance outcomes in shooting and dart throwing (SMD 1.35, 90% CI 0.61-2.09, p = 0.003, I 2 = 82%).
CONCLUSIONS:
Mindfulness practice consistently and beneficially modulates mindfulness scores. Furthermore, physiological and psychological surrogates improved to a meaningful extent following mindfulness practice, as well as performance outcomes in shooting and dart throwing. It seems reasonable to consider mindfulness practice strategies as a regular complementary mental skills training approach for athletes, at least in precision sports; however, more high-quality, randomized, controlled trials on mindfulness practice and performance improvements in diverse sport settings are needed.
Ingrid Rockovich remembers signing a contract with her club volleyball team stating she would not play any other sport. No basketball, no soccer, just volleyball. She was in high school at the time. … For every athlete who benefits from this type of contract, however, there is another athlete who can actually be harmed by it. So, how do you know if signing an exclusivity contract is best for your athlete, and what options are out there?
The iPhone has changed us in a fundamental way. Smartphones have been described as the culprit responsible for wrecking attention spans, disturbing sleep patterns and affecting eyesights. As part of our week-long coverage of the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, we consult with three experts to help us disentangle fact from fiction when it comes to how the iPhone has affected our brain, our sleep and our eyesight.
WIRED talks to University of Oxford sleep researcher Russell Foster, who has co-authored the book Sleep, a very short introduction.
Stereo vision allows individuals to perceive depth differences in their surroundings. Important to pedestrians and drivers, for example, depth perception plays a key role in many sporting activities. If the ability to accurately determine the distance and speed of a fast-moving object can be improved, athletes have the potential to improve their performance. In a new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers found that by training athletes using repetitive stereoscopic stimuli, their reaction speed to those stimuli could be significantly improved.
We’re taking a look at the most freakish athletes in college football in the latest installment of CFB 24/7’s 17 for ’17 series. Freak athletes come in all shapes and sizes, but this year’s group has a heavy representation on the line of scrimmage — seven linemen in all — and these big guys have a lot more than size and strength on their athletic palettes. You can expect all of these players to turn plenty of heads when they eventually make their way to the NFL Scouting Combine. This list was compiled in consultation with NFL scouts, NFL.com analysts and sports information directors.
… MOCACARE is a Silicon Valley based outfit with a mission to make heart health monitoring an easy, intuitive, and reliable experience. Its range of smart cardiovascular monitoring devices includes: the MOCACuff, a sleek FDA-approved wireless blood pressure monitor; and MOCAheart, a device that uses thumb scans to measure heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and pulse wave velocity.
MOCAheart is arguably the more interesting of the two considering there is no shortage of connected blood pressure monitors on the market today. Some of the bigger brands are even on their second or third generation devices!
After a successful Kickstarter campaign a couple of years ago in which it raised over $120,000, MOCAheart is now available for anyone to purchase.
Google released its Cloud Video Intelligence API to the world today by making it available in public beta, as part of the company’s ongoing push to make AI accessible.
The Video Intelligence API is designed to let users upload a video and get information back about what objects are in it, using a system called label detection.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a computer that can understand and track body movements in real time, including individual fingers.
The computer could allow robots to read body language, helping them better perceive your mood and interact with you in social settings, said Yaser Sheikh, an associate professor of robotics leading the project. Robots could better understand what we mean when we point at something or do other hand gestures like putting our finger to lips to tell someone to keep quiet.
We’re excited to announce we closed on $30 million in funding from our world-class team of investors, including Accel, Jeff and Tricia Raikes, and Nelnet.
We plan to use the funds to pair innovations in machine learning and computer vision with our in-house group of professional analysts, providing teams around the world quicker access to the insights they need for training and game preparation.
All of the fitness trackers on the market, and indeed your existing smartphone, will be able to track your steps and calorie burn for you, but after that don’t take anything for granted. You can find fitness trackers with a pile of differing features, all the way up to the smartwatches that are essentially mini computers on your wrist, which we’ll mention last.
Tonsser, the Copenhagen-based startup that offers a vertical social network aimed at youth soccer players who want to build their own online profile and potentially get discovered by a bigger club, continues to grow at a clip, both in terms of signups but also the influence it wants to have on the beautiful game. The company is collaborating with Nike for its first brand channel, and now has 380,000 youth players registered, up from 100,000 just over a year ago.
The Danish startup has also raised a new round of funding as it gears up for a 2018 expansion to the U.K., home to the English Premier League and a huge potential youth football market for the startup. It is also quite a fragmented one, in terms of youth leagues, so it will be interesting to see how quickly Tonsser can grow here. The app is currently live in France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
… “Hybrid electronics involve a mix of elements such as logic, memory, sensors, batteries, antennas and various passives which may be printed or assembled on flexible substrates,” says Manos Tentzeris, an electrical engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in flexible electronics.
“Combined with low-cost manufacturing processes, flexible hybrid electronics will present an entirely new paradigm for a wide range of automotive applications,” adds Tentzeris.
Potential applications include antennas, body parts, cockpits, loudspeakers, mounted structures and sensors. Flexible electronics can be incorporated into bumpers, head-up displays, instrument panels, seats, tires, windows and many other auto parts.
… Grant Lipman, MD, director of Stanford Wilderness Medicine and an extreme athlete himself, began to notice while working as medical director for RacingThePlanet ultramarathons that racers were popping the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug like M&M’s before during and after these intense events. He wanted to know if this was a safe practice.
“Running these races tends to hurt,” said Lipman — probably an extreme understatement. These particular ultramarathons are 150-mile weeklong races over rough terrain in deserts around the world from China to Chile to Antarctica.
Grant Lipman, MD, director of Stanford Wilderness Medicine and an extreme athlete himself, began to notice while working as medical director for RacingThePlanet ultramarathons that racers were popping the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug like M&M’s before during and after these intense events. He wanted to know if this was a safe practice. “Running these races tends to hurt,” said Lipman — probably an extreme understatement. These particular ultramarathons are 150-mile weeklong races over rough terrain in deserts around the world from China to Chile to Antarctica.
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports from
Hip flexor injuries account for one third of acute groin injuries; however, little is known about specific injury characteristics. The aims of this study was to describe acute hip flexor injuries using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in athletes with acute groin pain, and to compare specific muscle injuries with reported injury situations. Male athletes with acute groin pain were prospectively and consecutively included during 3 sports seasons. MRI was performed within 7 days of injury using a standardized protocol and a reliable assessment approach. All athletes with an MRI confirmed acute hip flexor muscle injury were included. 156 athletes presented with acute groin pain of which 33 athletes were included, median age 26 y (range 18-35). There were 16 rectus femoris, 12 iliacus, 7 psoas major, 4 sartorius, and 1 tensor fascia latae injury. Rectus femoris injuries primarily occurred during kicking (10) and sprinting (4), whereas iliacus injuries most frequently occurred during change of direction (5). In 10 (63%) rectus femoris injuries tendinous injury was observed. The iliacus and psoas major injuries were mainly observed at the musculotendinous junction (MTJ), and two included tendinous injury. We have illustrated specific injury locations within these muscles, which may be relevant for the clinical diagnosis and prognosis of these injuries. Most proximal rectus femoris injuries included tendinous injury. In contrast, distinct acute iliacus and psoas injuries predominantly occurred at the MTJ. Only the iliacus or psoas major were injured during change of direction, whereas rectus femoris injuries occurred primarily during kicking and sprinting.
… Serious questions are now being raised about the benefits of the arthroscopic procedures that millions of people endure in hopes of delaying, if not avoiding, total knee replacements.
The latest challenge, published in May in BMJ by an expert panel that systematically reviewed 12 well-designed trials and 13 observational studies, concluded that arthroscopic surgery for degenerative knee arthritis and meniscal tears resulted in no lasting pain relief or improved function.
Three months after the procedure, fewer than 15 percent of patients experienced at best “a small or very small improvement in pain and function,” effects that disappeared completely within a year.
… Look no further than the menu at IHOP, where dessert for breakfast reigns. You can find such items as New York cheesecake pancakes or raspberry white chocolate chip pancakes, which come with a whopping 83 grams (nearly 21 teaspoons) of sugar. Remember that the government recommends no more than 12 teaspoons of sugar per person per day (though the average American consumes 23.)
But you don’t need to go to IHOP to get a day’s worth of sugar in your morning meal. The muffins that greet us in the bakery aisle and at the coffee shop can contain about 37 grams of sugar — or a little more than 9 teaspoons.
Interactions between gut bacteria and the brain may play an important role in human health and behavior.
In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have discovered that microbiota in the gut interacts with brain regions associated with mood and behavior in healthy humans. The findings add to the growing body of evidence of a significant link between the gut and the brain.
Earlier studies have shown that microbiota, a community of microorganisms in the gut, can influence behavior and emotion. Rodent models have demonstrated the effects of gut microbiota on emotional and social behaviors, such as anxiety and depression, but there has been little scientific evidence in humans.
Discover.com, Science & Food blog, Earlene Mulyawan from
Yogurt is an ancient food that has been around for several millennia. One theory of the discovery of yogurt is that during 10,000 – 5,000 BC, when Herdsmen began the practice of milking their animals, they stored their milk in bags made of the intestinal gut of the animals. The intestines contain natural enzymes that cause the milk to curdle and sour. The herdsmen noticed that this method of storing milk extends its shelf life and preserves it. When they consumed the fermented milk, they enjoyed it and so they continued making it. Whether or not this theory is true, the consumption of fermented milk has survived into modern times, and spread throughout the world. The word “yogurt” is believed to have come from the Turkish word “yogurmak,” which means to thicken coagulate, or curdle. Today, the FDA defines yogurt as a milk product fermented by two bacterial strains: a lactic acid producing bacteria: Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophiles.
… When we talk about the sport getting older, this is what we really mean — the best guys are getting up in years.
When we calculate the average age of a draw, or the number of 30-somethings, we weight every player equally. Democratic as it is, it gives most of the weight to guys who are looking for flights home before middle Sunday. As substantial as the overall age shift has been over the last decade, the shift at the top of the game has been even more dramatic.
… Playing abroad had traditionally been a foreign concept for Spanish footballers. But I explain that, for many of the country’s young stars, playing in other European leagues brought opportunities they weren’t getting back home.
British football, in particular, helped La Roja to dominate at the three major tournaments between 2008 and 2012, with Joan Capdevila acknowledging that the Spaniards who played in England learned to become hardy competitors, as well as skilful footballers. [audio, 31:58]
… The statistics are really sobering. Out of all the boys who enter an academy at the age of 9, less than half of 1% make it. Or a make a living from the game either.
The most damning statistic of all is only 180 of the 1.5 million players who are playing organised youth football in England at any one time will make it as a Premier League pro.
… xG models vary widely. Some like this one from Paul Riley use a small number of shot features to estimate the probability of scoring; others like this one from Michael Caley use complex feature transformations and systems of stacked equations; this one by Martin Eastwood uses a non-linear machine learning algorithm.
Not all models created equal. All are incomplete and imperfect; simplifications of the real world that help us understand it. So which xG model should we prefer? Is Paul Riley’s model too austere? Is Michael Caley’s model over-complicated? This is the first of a two-part post about assessing how well xG models describe the conversion of shots into goals. In this part I look at modelling individual shots. In Part 2 I will look at the more complex issue of modelling match scores.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has told Slovenian magazine Mladina that he is considering the introduction of a salary cap in order to close the gap between football’s biggest clubs and the rest.
Ceferin said he feared a growing gap in football and wanted to address the problem with what he said would be “an historic change.”
He has previously said European football’s governing body must “be prepared to tackle the decrease in competitive balance within European club competitions and secondary effects affecting domestic competitions.”
This year, we’ve seen the debut of two 24-year-old lefties who have taken their own paths to the big leagues. Jordan Montgomery in New York and Sean Newcomb in Atlanta both look like they’re dealing, but they’ve had to work to get here. Listed at 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-5, respectively, it’s worth wondering if their height has slowed down the development of their command, if it’s taken them longer to get their impressive levers in the right places. There’s some evidence that might be the case. But these two pitchers remind us that there are very few absolutes when it comes to mechanics, and that even tall pitchers are as different from each other as they are from the general population.
This isn’t a trivial decision, and this post is my attempt to summarize my opinions and arguments for this position. Overall, they mirror my opinions about ggplot2: packages like dplyr and tidyr are not “advanced”; they’re suitable as a first introduction to R.
Start with y. Concentrate on formalizing the predictive problem, building the workflow, and turning it into production rather than optimizing your predictive model. Once the former is done, the latter is easy.
There is no debate on how a well-functioning predictive workflow works when it is finally put into production. Data sources are transformed into a set of features or indicators X, describing each instance (client, piece of equipment, asset) on which the prediction will act on. A predictor then turns X into an actionable piece of information y_pred (will the client churn?, will the equipment fail?, will the asset price go up?). In certain fluid markets (e.g., ad targeting) the prediction is then monetized through a fully automated process, in other cases it is used as decision support with a human in the loop.