Goalkeepers often appear to live in a binary world. A shot on target is either saved or results in a goal. On-field decisions are either right or wrong. Mistakes oftentimes end up in the back of the net.
The same is true for U.S. players that head overseas. A player succeeds and spends multiple years in foreign climes and is hailed as a success, or the performer in question quickly heads back home, the assumption being that they couldn’t hack it.
Zack Steffen is proof that there is a grey area to both.
… Cousins is all of that: nerdy, obsessive, frugal. And yet that portrait, while vivid, is incomplete. It misses why he is all those things. It fails to account for how he turned a career of low expectations into an experiment that, come March, could earn him the largest contract in NFL history. Football pundits can argue about how good the 29-year-old is. But they can’t argue that he’s not as good as he can be.
Which brings us back to the office. On a desktop sits a small computer monitor on which Cousins analyzes opponents’ film. Opposite that is a whiteboard crowded with diagrams of new plays scribbled below lists—so many lists—of tasks to complete and books to read and important points to remember. There’s a bin, underneath the desk, below the whiteboard cleaner, containing game plans and manila folders overstuffed with notes dating to 2010, when he was still at Michigan State. “There’s gotta be 50 folders in there,” Cousins says, beaming with pride.
Shabazz Napier has earned consistent playing time with impressive shooting, darting drives and hounding defensive pressure.
The groundwork for his larger role in his second season with the Portland Trail Blazers was laid this summer in a high-tech training facility and on the steep slopes of sand dunes where he sharpened his game and his body.
“I felt this whole summer was a big jump for me,” Napier said while seated in front his locker after an 11-point, four-rebound performance in a win over the Sacramento Kings last Saturday. “I felt I worked myself out to exhaustion. There was nights and days I didn’t want to go in to work out because I was so tired but I told myself, ‘Man it’s gonna be the right thing to do.'”
She always sleeps great. Then she ate two fried eggs, plus toast, no coffee, as she does every morning. Now it’s 9 a.m. on this bright June Thursday, the fourth day of the third week of her six-week early-summer training block. Her schedule prescribes a morning strength session, so off we drive from her parents’ house in Avon, Colorado, to the Westin Beaver Creek, where she works out when she’s in town.
First: a warm-up on a spin bike. Ten minutes, moving her legs in circles in her Lululemon shorts, much like half the women here are moving their legs in circles in their Lululemon shorts—no big deal. Then we go into a small glass-doored room labeled MIKAELA’S CORNER. The Westin didn’t know what to do with this space, so the hotel gave it to Mikaela so she could do Olympic lifts.
Metrifit Athlete Monitoring System, Eunan Whyte from
… A recent report suggests that the coaching style isn’t just important in terms of the mental approach but it has physical consequences also. Is there a correlation between coaches’ leadership styles and injuries in elite football teams? A study of 36 elite teams in 17 countries concludes that the approach of a manager can have an impact on the level of injuries within a squad.
The study, carried out by Jan Ekstrand, Daniel Lundqvist, Lars Lagerbäck, Marc Vouillamoz, Niki Papadimitiou and Jon Karlsson, set out to see if leadership style could have a negative impact on players and affect their health and well-being. To do this they received information from players among 36 elite football clubs in 17 cities across Europe in order to assess the leadership style of the head coach. The Global Transformational Leadership scale, a reliable and appropriate tool for assessing transformational leadership, was used to assess their coaches’ leadership styles. In tandem with this, the authors also tracked each player’s exposure to football and time-loss injuries.
The study concluded that there is an association between injury rates and players’ availability and that of the leadership style of the head coach. The authors explained that the main finding was that clubs where coaches used a transformational or democratic leadership style had a lower incidence of severe injuries, although they did point out that the variation was just 6%.
International Journal of Sports Physiology & Performance from
The purpose of this investigation was to: (a) quantify the training load practices of a professional soccer GK, and (b) investigate the relationship between the training load observed and the subsequent self-reported wellness response. One male goalkeeper playing for a team in the top league of the Netherlands participated in this case study. Training load data were collected across a full season using a global positioning system (GPS) device and session rating of perceived exertion (session-RPE). Data was assessed in relation to the number of days to a match (MD- and MD+). In addition, self-reported wellness was assessed using a questionnaire. Duration, total distance, average speed, PlayerLoadTM and load (derived from session-RPE) were highest on MD. The lowest values for duration, total distance and PlayerLoadTM were observed on MD-1 and MD+1. Total wellness scores were highest on MD and MD-3 and were lowest on MD+1 and MD-4. Small to moderate correlations between training load measures (duration, total distance covered, high deceleration efforts and load) and the self-reported wellness scores were found. This exploratory case-study provides novel data about the physical load undertaken by a goalkeeper during one competitive season. The data suggest there are small to moderate relationships between training load indicators and self-reported wellness. This weak relation indicates that the association is not meaningful. This may be due to the lack of position-specific training load parameters we can currently measure in the applied context.
Throne is a platform for sports prediction using machine learning. It provides users with live competitions, data, features, backtesting modules, and many more features to facilitate the use of quantitative methods in sports. This post introduces Throne, its motivation, and how you can get started.
Scientists in San Diego have achieved a major goal in the effort to craft artificial organisms: A microbe whose genetic material included some lab-made instructions was able to live, reproduce and synthesize proteins that included molecules never before used by life.
The development, described Wednesday in a paper in the journal Nature, is a step toward a world in which scientists can engineer organisms capable of producing highly specialized proteins that may be used to improve medicines, construct new materials and perhaps even change the functions of cells.
“It’s wave front stuff; this is the edge of science,” said Andrew Ellington, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the research. “We are better learning how to engineer living systems.”
The NFL is joining Major League Baseball as an AWS customer, announcing a deal today to provide real-time statistics running on AWS.
The tool is part of the NFL’s Next Gen Stats program, which will take advantage of AWS machine learning and data analytics tools to enhance its current offering. MLB has had a similar deal in place with its StatCast tool.
… This is Stanford’s virtual reality training room: a little glass box above the locker room where a virtual reality headset — a foamy black box flanked by three limp elastic headbands — dangles midair, suspended by a thick black cord. A desktop computer displays VR footage simulations used by almost every player position. Toner picks a simulation, clicks “Play” and slides goggles down his face. Instantly, high definition pixels surge out of the black vacuum. His flip-flops melt into cleats; his brain believes he is back at practice. He can pivot 180 degrees and watch Coach David Shaw making clipboard tallies, or look straight ahead and count a lineman’s eyelashes.
This training VR is not animated — it’s real video.
“I was pretty blown away by how immersive it was,” Toner says. “I was hesitant it would be helpful. After using it I was like, ‘Wow, this is a whole different angle that you just don’t get when you’re watching a typical film with your coach.’”
Fans have long wondered whether tracking chips inside footballs could allow officials to make exact first-down calls and determine with certainty whether a ball crosses the goal line. The tech’s not there yet, but chipped balls this season are yielding useful player-performance info
The NFL isn’t making the in-game data from balls public, but many teams are using them in practice to monitor such factors as a quarterback’s throwing motion, velocity and rotation
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed an ultrathin, flexible microfiber sensor that can be worn on or placed next to the skin. The device can provide information on heart rate, blood pressure, and stiffness in blood vessels, and may one day replace bulky blood pressure and heart rate monitors. The technology might also be useful as a component in wearable devices that provide continuous health monitoring, or could help doctors with diagnostics.
“Currently, doctors will monitor vital signs like heart rate and blood pressure when patients visit clinics. This requires equipment such as heart rate and blood pressure monitors, which is often bulky and may not provide instantaneous feedback,” says Lim Chwee Teck, a researcher involved in the study.
… football analytics might get a little more traction if it abandoned the endless nitpicking over names, metrics and models and refocused its efforts on more mid-to-long term diagnosis and treatment.
In general, this would mean less adding up xG totals after individual games, and more looking at 5-10 game trends. It would mean less relying solely on xG and it’s derivative stats (xA etc.), and more using xG in tandem with other statistical tools, as well as video and tactical analysis, to present a more vivid theory as to why a team may be underperforming. It would mean less obsession with which teams are ‘riding their luck’ or are ‘unlucky,’ and more to see why certain clubs fail to create or prevent dangerous chances in the first place.
By far, the most frequently mentioned factor in the uptick in scoring this season.
Because of some significant injuries last season, the NHL told officials to enforce and emphasize slashing penalties this season — specifically, the quick tap on the hands or using the stick to disrupt plays or obstruct other players.
… The NCAA has conducted studies on student-athlete gambling behavior every four years since 2004. The most recent in 2016 surveyed more than 22,000 current college athletes across all three NCAA divisions about their attitudes toward and engagement in various gambling activities, including sports wagering