… “I work hard in the offseason to create a base that serves me well throughout the season, and then I rework the base time and time again throughout the season,” Federer said to the press Sunday. “I think that’s very important.”
Federer is waving his racket like some magic wand and clearly relishing the chance to add to his Grand Slam title count of 19. Gil Reyes, the trainer and mentor who guided Andre Agassi to the No. 1 ranking at age 33, calls Federer the “perfect athletic mechanism.”
What is it that keeps him that way after all these years? Here are some clues.
… The 6-foot-4 guard is now healthy enough to practice, but he can’t shoot straight.
“It’s reclaiming the shot that he used to have,” Brown said. “The timeline of when that happens, none of us know. But I feel like there is discomfort in his shoulder and it does affect his shot.”
Brown, who calls himself “a shooting coach at heart,” vows to help Fultz rediscover his shot. He plans to spend extra time with him at practice. The team has shielded Fultz from reporters since he was sidelined.
… “There are ways of wheeling yourself out there. The index fingers on both hands hurt constantly. Even if I’m in pain, if I can physically get through the start of a game the pain goes with concentration. The way my body works is that I’ve only got room for one serious bit of pain. If it’s my ankle at the moment the stiffness in my lower back goes.
“Gary Lewin [the West Ham medic] was telling me that Oleg Luzhny [at Arsenal] had chronic back pains, and went back to Ukraine, came back and said, ‘I’m fully cured.’ They got a bowl, filled it with bees, put it on his back and stung the life out of him, which took all the shooting pains in his back away because the pain focused on the stings.”
The 30-year-old understands the risks of his profession. He winces at the memory of the injury sustained by Petr Cech when colliding with Reading’s Stephen Hunt in 2006. “That could have been it for him, a straight knee inside of his skull,” Hart says. “It could have been not just the end of football but the end of him. The fact that he’s getting on with what he’s doing is massive respect for him.”
… Gaskin and quarterback Jake Browning have developed a close kinship during three years together as starters that have seen the Huskies soar back into national prominence, yet still lacking the signature victory that would seal UW’s stature as a powerhouse. Come back to an already-loaded team with a strong freshman class coming in, and that possibility looms in front of you.
Are those factors enough of a lure to put aside the inherent risks of another grueling college season, and the financial penalty that would accrue to a serious injury? Two recent standout Washington running backs have faced a similar dilemma. Chris Polk and Bishop Sankey both opted to forego their senior seasons, with mixed results.
… There is evidence that fitness adaptations occur not so much in proportion to how much time you spend exercising but rather in proportion to how much time you spend exercising beyond the point of initial fatigue in workouts. So-called key workouts (runs that are challenging in their pace or duration) boost fitness by taking your body well beyond the point of initial fatigue.
Recovery workouts, on the other hand, are performed entirely in a fatigued state, and therefore also boost fitness despite being shorter and/or slower than key workouts.
The Guardian, These Football Times, Alex Clapham from
… “Youth football is a fundamental area for Benfica, with sporting, social and financial benefits,” says Nascimento. “We do not talk exclusively about ‘training’, we refer also to ‘educating’. The academic performance of our players is monitored and encouraged at all levels. The mission is to guarantee the quality of technical training and educational enrichment of players of all age groups, with a focus on the integration into the first-team, promoting human values such as respect, responsibility, solidarity, justice and tolerance.”
The Under-15 team arrived to the training ground for their session and every single player walked across the office to shake my hand. They all greeted me with “boa tarde” – including the pair who were busy making fun of the security guard’s slightly balding hair, all in good fun. I was struck by the feeling that this is a special place and that I was lucky to be there, so just imagine how special these youngsters feel.
There’s a level of respect around the club. Players are on first-name terms with staff, exchanging pleasantries with kitchen workers and holding doors for cleaners. While Benfica have gained a reputation as a selling club, these youngsters know their development is in good hands.
… Seemingly ubiquitous computer interfaces—on our phones and laptops, not to mention our cars, coffee makers, thermostats, and washing machines—are blurring the lines between our connected and our unconnected selves. And it’s these relationships, between users and their computers, which define the field of human–computer interaction (HCI). HCI is based on the following premise: The more we understand about human behavior, the better we can design computer interfaces that suit people’s needs.
For instance, HCI researchers are designing tactile emoticons embedded in the Braille system for individuals with visual impairments. They’re also creating smartphones that can almost read your mind—predicting when and where your finger is about to touch them next.
Understanding human behavior is essential for designing human-computer interfaces. But there’s more to it than that: Understanding how people interact with computer interfaces can help us understand human behavior in general.
Observed response to regular exercise training differs widely between individuals even in tightly controlled research settings. However, the respective contributions of random error and true interindividual differences as well as the relative frequency of non-responders are disputed. Specific challenges of analyses on the individual level as well as a striking heterogeneity in definitions may partly explain these inconsistent results. Repeated testing during the training phase specifically addresses the requirements of analyses on the individual level. Here we report a first implementation of this innovative design amendment in a head to head comparison of existing analytical approaches. To allow for comparative implementation of approaches we conducted a controlled endurance training trial (one year walking/jogging 3 days/week for 45 min with 60% heart rate reserve) in healthy, untrained subjects (n=36, age=46{plus minus}8; BMI 24.7{plus minus}2.7; VO2max 36.6{plus minus}5.4). In the training group additional VO2max tests were conducted after 3, 6 and 9 months. Duration of the control condition was 6 months due to ethical constraints. General efficacy of the training intervention could be verified by a significant increase in VO2max in the training group (p<0.001 vs. control). Individual training response of relevant magnitude (>0.2*baseline variability in VO2max) could be demonstrated by several approaches. Regarding the classification of individuals only 11 out of 20 subjects were consistently classified, demonstrating remarkable disagreement between approaches. These results are in support of relevant interindividual variability in training efficacy and stress the limitations of a responder classification. Moreover, this proof-of-concept underlines the need for tailored methodological approaches for well-defined problems.
In a feat of nanoengineering, scientists have developed a new technique to map electrical circuits in the brain far more comprehensively than ever before.
In the brain, dedicated groups of neurons that connect up in microcircuits help us process information about things we see, smell and taste. Knowing how many and what type of cells make up these microcircuits would give scientists a deeper understanding of how the brain computes complex information about the world around us. But existing techniques have failed to paint a complete picture.
The new technique, developed by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, overcomes previous limitations and has enabled them to map out all 250 cells that make up a microcircuit in part of a mouse brain that processes smell – something that has never been achieved before.
Motion capture through inertial sensors is becoming popular, but its accuracy to describe kinematics during changes in walking speed is unknown. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of trunk speed extracted using an inertial motion system compared to a gold standard optical motion system, during steady walking and stationary periods. Eleven participants walked on pre-established paths marked on the floor. Between each lap, a 1-second stationary transition period at the initial position was included prior to the next lap. Resultant trunk speed during the walking and transition periods were extracted from an inertial (240 Hz sampling rate) and an optical system (120 Hz sampling rate) to calculate the agreement (Pearson’s correlation coefficient) and relative root mean square errors between both systems. The agreement for the resultant trunk speed between the inertial system and the optical system was strong (0.67 < r ≤ 0.9) for both walking and transition periods. Moreover, relative root mean square error during the transition periods was greater in comparison to the walking periods (>40% across all paths). It was concluded that trunk speed extracted from inertial systems have fair accuracy during walking, but the accuracy was reduced in the transition periods.
As a sports nutritionist, I observe the diets of lots of endurance athletes. After more than a decade of doing so, I can say that perhaps the most important pattern I’ve noticed is that athletes whose diet is consistently working for them (i.e., delivering the results they seek) pay relatively little attention to the details of nutrition, whereas athletes who struggle with diet-related barriers to better fitness tend to be hyper-focused on nutritional minutiae. I’m not saying that all athletes who micromanage their diet struggle with such barriers or that all athletes who struggle with such barriers micromanage their diet, but the pattern I speak of is clear and pervasive. Why?
I believe that excessive attention to detail thwarts the very thing it is meant to promote—consistent healthy eating—in two ways, one practical and the other psychological.
The practical issue is that, for the most part, it is not necessary pay attention to the details of nutrition to maintain a healthy diet that supports the pursuit of fitness goals.
Here is a prediction. Every time Maria Sharapova steps on to court at the Australian Open this year she will be greeted with shrieks of: “Come on Maria!” and elongated waves of goodwill. There will be smiles. And, before even the Russian’s first practice stroke, the unease generated when she received the honour of parading the women’s trophy at the draw last week will be ancient history – much like her positive test for meldonium at Melbourne Park two years ago, and her 15-month suspension.
The thing is, we – the public – talk a good game when it comes to doping. Survey after survey reminds us that high numbers of us think it is bad and those who perpetrate it should be punished. We also know it perverts the spirit of sport – or whatever is left of it – ruins honest people’s careers and can potentially damage an athlete’s health. Yet while we talk the talk the research suggests we do not necessarily walk the walk.
Chelsea’s frenetic fixture list continues on Saturday with a home Premier League game against Leicester City at Stamford Bridge. Contesting silverware on four fronts, the Blues have been playing at least two matches per week in all competitions since mid-November, an agenda which will continue through to the end of January.
On the plus side, the London club sit a comfortable third in the table, have progressed to the knockout stages of the Champions League, the semifinals of the Carabao Cup and are still in the FA Cup.
On the negative side, while Antonio Conte’s squad have remained relatively unscathed by injury there is a creeping sense of unease among Chelsea supporters that the lack of respite is starting to affect the Blues boss and his players.
… If you were to look at previous sport psychology research, you might have reason to believe that a good defense was more important than offense when it came to winning a championship.
Most studies of why athletes might either “choke” or be “clutch” under pressure had tested fine motor skills such as field goal kicking in football and free throw shooting in basketball. On the other hand, defensive skills typically require more footwork and continuous movement, and – in the case of a defensive lineman or a linebacker in football – physical strength.
For this reason, it was generally assumed that defensive play might be more stable, and less susceptible to pressure when seasons are on the line. If this were true, then the play of good defensive teams would remain steady during the playoffs, while good offensive teams would be more vulnerable to pressure-packed situations.
So what might explain why our findings suggest otherwise?
SSRN; Imanol Arrieta Ibarra, Leonard Goff, Jiménez Hernández, Jaron Lanier, E. Glen Weyl from
In the digital economy, user data is typically treated as capital created by corporations observing willing individuals. This neglects users’ role in creating data, reducing incentives for users, distributing the gains from the data economy unequally and stoking fears of automation. Instead treating data (at least partially) as labor could help resolve these issues and restore a functioning market for user contributions, but may run against the near-term interests of dominant data monopsonists who have benefited from data being treated as ‘free’. Countervailing power, in the form of competition, a data labor movement and/or thoughtful regulation could help restore balance.