… “Getting hurt sucked, and the timing was even worse,” said the 24-year-old middle blocker from Burnsville, Minnesota, via email. “But when I got hurt, it was always about the next step. I tore my knee, now I have to pack to get back to the U.S., now I have to get surgery, now heal the wounds, now get the swelling out, etc. There was no real down time or anything to think about how bad the situation really was.”
Dixon might not have even been in the position to make an Olympic team, however, had she not opted for a different type of surgery four years ago.
… Webb’s success was built on confidence, which had its benefits and its drawbacks. At its best, Webb’s confidence was a snowball rolling downhill, building on itself and flattening everything in its path. But once its momentum had halted, it could be very hard for Webb to get the snowball moving again.
Embed from Getty Images
Part of the reason for that was the system in which Webb operated. Working with Scott Raczko, who coached Webb as a high schooler from 1998 to 2001 and again as a professional from 2002 to 2009 after Webb went to the University of Michigan for a year, Webb’s training program was an intricately structured combination of running, lifting and drills. Webb likened it to the story of Goldilocks. When the pieces fit together “just right,” the results were incredible, such as in 2001 when Webb ran 3:53.43 for the mile at the Prefontaine Classic to break Jim Ryun‘s legendary U.S. high school record.
… For veterans maintaining jobs and hoping for bodily cooperation, a personal trainer and the occasional massage simply aren’t enough. The new formula for NFL spending: reduce inflammation, increase tax write-offs, play longer.
“The great ones who last, it’s all about recovery,” said retired offensive tackle Ryan Harris, who played from 2007 to 2016. “Hydrations, IVs, meditation, yoga.”
The yearly budget can vary wildly. There’s James Harrison … and then there’s everyone else.
Like most British athletes Laura Muir has vivid memories of London 2012 – except that hers involve pedalling to a dairy farm in Perth at 5.30am every day to milk cows for hours before dashing home to watch the Olympics on the sofa. Back then she was a talented teenage runner in the first year of a veterinary degree at the University of Glasgow with wistful dreams of making it big. Five years on she enters the world championships in London as indisputably Britain’s best young athlete and, potentially, a huge crossover sporting star.
However, Muir knows the challenge she has set herself is steep and parlous. Not only is she tackling the 1500m and 5,000m in London, which could mean five tough races in 10 days, but she is up against stellar fields in both events. Yet the prospect of that famous line in Macbeth – “double, double, toil and trouble” – becoming a prophecy does not faze her. As she points out, she is used to a packed schedule because she has spent years combining vigorous training with studying to be a vet.
“I thrive on doing both,” she says. “I’m very lucky that I have a lot of support and the vet school work hard to help me manage everything. We have had to plan things two or three years down the line – what year can I do part-time, what year can I do a gap year, when I can do placements. But I just want to get the most out of myself and be the best person I can be. You have to see what you are capable of. It’s a lot to take on but they are the two things I love.”
… Last season, Roberson shot a career-low 42.3 percent from the free-throw line. The Thunder guard bottomed out in a five-game playoff series loss to Houston, making 3 of 21 free-throw attempts. Late in games, the Rockets turned to intentionally fouling Roberson to send him to the line.
As a result, Roberson said, he gets unsolicited free-throw shooting advice “all the time.”
“I’ve heard it all, to be honest,” he said. “‘Take a step back. Take a step to the right. Foot back.’ You get it all. ‘Elbow in!’ Everybody has their own. But everybody’s shot’s different. You just got to figure out what’s right for you.”
While people’s willingness to work hard can be reduced in teams (i.e., effort losses in teams as compared with individual work), it is less recognized that teamwork can also stimulate additional efforts (i.e., effort gains). Building on and extending existing theory, we (a) suggest an integration of these two research streams, and (b) provide evidence for team-related effort gains in action teams. In a first study, we tested our predictions by reanalyzing a field data set of 302,576 swimming performances in individual and relay races (Neugart & Richiardi, 2013). Consistent with our hypotheses, we observed a linear increase in effort across the relay. The first relay swimmers showed effort losses in the relay as compared with the individual competition whereas the remaining relay swimmers showed effort gains. However, this was only evident (a) when team members could realistically expect meaningful team outcomes in return for their performance, and (b) when the valence of these outcomes was equivalent to individual competitions. If such favorable conditions were not given, we found effort losses in team as compared with individual competitions at all relay positions. Results of a second study (N = 228) showed that the linear increase in effort across the relay was indeed attributable to the team members’ serial position and not to their relative strength. Together, the studies demonstrate the motivating potential of teamwork even in the high performance contexts of action teams, such as competitive sports relays, where athletes are already highly motivated in their individual competitions.
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez et al. from
Human beings are often faced with a pervasive problem: whether to make their own decision or to delegate the decision task to someone else. Here, we test whether people are inclined to forgo monetary rewards in order to retain agency when faced with choices that could lead to losses and gains. In a simple choice task, we show that participants choose to pay in order to control their own payoff more than they should if they were to maximize monetary rewards and minimize monetary losses. This tendency cannot be explained by participants’ overconfidence in their own ability, as their perceived ability was elicited and accounted for. Nor can the results be explained by lack of information. Rather, the results seem to reflect an intrinsic value for choice, which emerges in the domain of both gains and of losses. Moreover, our data indicate that participants are aware that they are making suboptimal choices in the normative sense, but do so anyway, presumably for psychological gains. [full text]
The present study aimed to examine the effects of fatigue and surface instability on kinetic and kinematic jump performance measures. Ten female and 10 male elite volleyball players (18±2 years) performed repetitive vertical double-leg box jumps until failure. Pre and post fatigue, jump height/performance index, ground reaction force and knee flexion/valgus angles were assessed during drop and countermovement jumps on stable and unstable surfaces. Fatigue, surface condition, and sex resulted in significantly lower drop jump performance and ground reaction force (p≤0.031, 1.1≤d≤3.5). Additionally, drop jump knee flexion angles were significantly lower following fatigue (p=0.006, d=1.5). A significant fatigue×surface×sex interaction (p=0.020, d=1.2) revealed fatigue-related decrements in drop jump peak knee flexion angles under unstable conditions and in men only. Knee valgus angles were higher on unstable compared to stable surfaces during drop jumps and in females compared to males during drop and countermovement jumps (p≤0.054, 1.0≤d≤1.1). Significant surface×sex interactions during countermovement jumps (p=0.002, d=1.9) indicated that knee valgus angles at onset of ground contact were significantly lower on unstable compared to stable surfaces in males but higher in females. Our findings revealed that fatigue and surface instability resulted in sex-specific knee motion strategies during jumping in elite volleyball players.
… “There is only one reason and one reason alone soccer fans are reluctant to introduce any technological advancement into our game,” says former MLS player Kyle Martino, who is now an English Premier League analyst for NBC. Fear of change. “Like the person who still uses a BlackBerry when the rest of us are interacting on devices that make life easier and more enjoyable,” he says, “purist soccer fans are willing to handicap the game to assuage their concerns that any change will take away what they already love rather than make what they love even better.”
Those naysayers will have to get used it because technology in football is here to stay. Sure, it took IFAB and FIFA longer than others to join the 21st century, but at least they seem to be going in the right direction. And when, not if, in-game fitness wearables are approved, soccer may even end up being ahead of other sports. No one would’ve imagined that.
There is a crowded category of gear meant to be worn on users’ wrists. From Fitbit, Garmin and Samsung, the competition is steep – we only have two wrists after all.
Moore’s Law contends that as components get smaller, products gain efficiency and become more powerful. The law is part of a continuum of exponential expansion of computational power that extends back hundreds and hundreds of years. This means, as technology shrinks in size and comes down in price, wearables will increasingly go beyond your wrist. The future will be more about sensing all around the body.
The future of football game preparation is being developed right here in Maryland using the Microsoft HoloLens. Towson technology company Mixed River has designed software specifically meant for game prep.
“In our particular case we’re projecting holographic images from this device into this space, where it recognizes the surface and the walls and things like that in front of you, and it’s football players,” said Mixed River CEO Jim Pietila while holding the HoloLens at Route 1 Athletics in Elkridge. “This is a holographic device that allows you to project holographic, 3-D images anywhere you want.”
What Mixed River has designed is mixed reality. As opposed to virtual reality, mixed reality lets you to blend your surroundings with what comes up in the lens. It’s perfect for players to use on a field or at home.
Optimizing nutrition during the rehabilitation process is a new frontier in sports science. Studies are ongoing and while the current research cannot directly correlate specific nutrients with a faster return from the disabled list, science consistently demonstrates the positive role nutrition plays in muscle and bone tissue health and recovery. Studies also show that deficiencies of energy, micronutrients, and macronutrients, particularly protein, will impair wound healing and provoke loss of muscle and tendon mass and function1.
Therefore, nutrition interventions that alter the response of muscle and tendon to injury, with or without immobilization, may support a faster return to full activity and training. An injured athlete has an opportunity to use nutrition as medicine to repair and strengthen the body against future injury; athletes without a nutrition plan may create additional and potentially avoidable damage. Without proper nutrition, an athlete may lengthen his stay on the DL, experience unwanted weight gain, accelerated muscle loss, and increased risk for future injury.
Athletic trainers working with any injured athlete should know that the number one nutrition priority during reduced muscle activity and/or immobility is to avoid nutrient deficiencies.
When Alex Kungu wrote an article earlier this month entitled, “do the Boston Celtics have too much versatility?”, I laughed a little. He quickly qualified that hot take with a “nope,” but it really got me thinking about the potential of this roster and reflectively, how limited last season’s team was.
In four summers, Danny Ainge has torn down the Big Three era and built not just a winning team, but a roster with the modern NBA in mind. It’s chock full of athletic wings that can score from anywhere and defend multiple positions. It’s got the prototypical stretch-5 in Al Horford that makes the rest of the team sing. It’s got youth and sustainability on its side. All that adds up to one of the most versatile teams in the NBA that can challenge the Golden State Warriors.
… To date, the French club has not balked publicly at the reported prospect that it is willing to meet the 222 million euro ($258 million) release clause in Neymar’s contract, a figure that would more than double the current transfer record.
P.S.G. also appears willing to pay the player a salary of €30 million every year, for five years, as well as guaranteeing his father, who acts as his agent, a fee that could rise as high as €40 million. Some estimates put the total cost of any potential transfer at around €450 million ($523 million).
But just as telling is the club’s willingness to contort itself into a shape that Neymar might find appealing. Dani Alves, Neymar’s former teammate at Barcelona, has already been signed from Juventus, and Lucas Moura, a friend of Neymar, will be retained. P.S.G. is also considering reigniting its interest in Liverpool’s Philippe Coutinho, another of Neymar’s confidants, before he can move to Barcelona. That all three are Brazilian — as are the P.S.G. defenders Thiago Silva and Marquinhos — is neither coincidental nor insignificant.
Will a £300,000-a-week salary change a hot prospect’s attitude to the game? Will that promising full-back relish being thrown deeper into the public spotlight? What if the £200m superstar doesn’t settle in Paris?
These are the types of questions being asked by clubs as they consider investing eye-watering sums on new players. An emerging field of analysts and experts believe they have the answers. But how do they find them?