One week ago today, I got drafted to play pro soccer for the North Carolina Courage. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. But there’s a bit more to the story than just that.
It’s interesting, the difference between hearing about something and seeing it for yourself. I remember thinking that during an anatomy lab last month. As a premed student in her senior year at Duke, I’ve taken a fair number of difficult classes. But Anatomy 333L turned out to be one of the toughest of my four years. It was also the most fascinating.
Some people might get queasy at the sight of a cadaver, but I was captivated. It is mesmerizing to be able to see the more than 650 muscles that make up the human body. Bodies are made up of thousands of parts, and most important, are home to the soul.
That class has really stuck with me. Beneath the surface we are all so complex. There’s so much we don’t see.
Malcolm Jenkins, the Philadelphia Eagles’ star safety, was dragging Monday afternoon, and for good reason.
The previous night, he helped the hometown team earn a trip to the Super Bowl with a 38-7 thumping of the Minnesota Vikings. He left the stadium at 11 p.m. After a brief appearance at a team party, he went home and played poker with some college fraternity brothers until 3 a.m. His alarm went off at 6 a.m., as it always does. He looked in on his 5-day-old baby and got ready to take his 4-year-old daughter to school. Then it was off to the Eagles’ training facility for rehab, Super Bowl planning and to discuss his other full-time job — fighting for criminal justice reform and addressing racial inequality.
“There’s a huge emphasis for me on time management,” Jenkins said with a shrug. “Sometimes it requires burning the candle on both ends.”
The New York Mets have substantially revamped their medical staff by restructuring their training staff, as well as bringing in someone to oversee the entire medical side of the operation.
The biggest move, reported by Anthony DiComo of MLB.com, is the hiring of former US Army supervisor Jim Cavallini to serve as director of performance and sports science. Cavallini is expected to oversee all medical matters from sleep science to injury rehabilitation. Previously, he has worked as a strength coach at the University of Virginia and the University of Iowa.
Purpose: To survey practices and perceptions of training load monitoring among soccer coaches and practitioners.
Methods: A questionnaire assessed factors influencing training planning, training load practices, and training load feedback and usefulness. The questionnaire was distributed via email and as an online version (Bristol Online Survey Tool) to relevant staff working within elite English Soccer.
Results: Respondents represented two groups; those involved with player tactical (coach, n = 94) or physical (practitioner, n = 88) preparation. Coaches worked predominantly with younger players at lower standing clubs while practitioners worked with older players at higher standard clubs. With exception for the influence of current match schedule in training planning, there was coach-practitioner agreement for all training planning questions. There was agreement on some purposes for training load monitoring (maximise fitness, evaluate training) but not others (enhance fitness, reduce injury). For load monitoring methods, the greatest proportion of coach answers was for coach perception (22%); whereas the greatest proportion of practitioner responses was for GPS (22%). Largely, load reports were perceived positively and 84.1% of respondents felt training load monitoring was beneficial to their club.
Conclusion: This survey shows coaches and practitioners perceive training load monitoring as worthwhile, with differences in practices and perceptions likely reflecting club infrastructure.
USA TODAY High School Sports, Des Moines Register, Matthew Bain from
… Griffin’s rise in the recruiting world was remarkable. He was a fringe mid-major prospect before July, and a Bill Self target by August. Some of that boils down to luck — playing your best at the right time in front of the right people.
More than anything, though, Griffin’s profile blossomed as a result of offseason work on one glaring hole in his game: He developed a 3-point shot.
“In college, nobody wants a 6-foot-5, 6-foot-6 center,” Griffin told the Register before practice at Hinsdale South on Tuesday. “So I’m like, ‘I’ve got to do something to get out of the center spot.’ And my (AAU coach) told me, ‘If you don’t want to play the five anymore, you’ve got to show me you can do something other than that.’ So I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get in the gym, put up as many reps as I can in a day until it gets consistent.’”
The Morning Call (Allentown, PA), Nick Fierro from
… On Tuesday, offensive coordinator Frank Reich put it back on the players.
“I think there’s no doubt a level of commitment by the players,” he said. “I think winning breeds that. When you’ve got something going, I think it comes from leadership on the team. I think it comes from obviously the head coach, first and foremost and then the staff in general, just the detail that we talk about in executing.
“… It’s about exhausting every resource [to prepare]. And I think our players have a good understanding that we not only do it as a group, but the responsibility that they bear to do some stuff on their own, I think it’s a good mix.”
It flows from the top, too, quarterback Carson Wentz having set the tone long ago with his eagerness to get into the video room and break down tape at any and all hours. Sometimes he would have to be kicked out by coaches for fear of violating the collective bargaining agreement.
Zach LaVine’s return has been more prosaic than anticipated, which is a good thing as the Bulls Wednesday prepare to play the Philadelphia 76ers. LaVine is averaging 12.8 points in about 20 minutes in five games. He’s shooting a pedestrian 40 percent, 35 percent on threes with a few dunks and the Bulls 3-2. Perhaps the most surprising part of this comeback from anterior cruciate ligament surgery and 11 months away from basketball is how little excitement there is. It’s more of a seamless transition.
LaVine has groused a bit about his finite playing time, like having to sit out the two overtimes in Monday’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. But otherwise he’s been more inconspicuous than prominent. He hasn’t scored 20 points yet, though his per minute average is remarkable. He’s had a few dunks, but nothing of the highlight kind. Again, however, it’s exceptional that he’s dunking without stress or strain. Which suggests something else that is mostly overlooked in this unexpected Bulls season.
Sure, there are a lot of young players, which accounts perhaps for better health. Starting point guard Kris Dunn is out now, though with a concussion from a freakish fall. Nikola Mirotic did miss 23 games, though with certainly an uncommon injury. But this Bulls team has been perhaps healthier than any in the last five or six years, and the returns to play have been extraordinary.
… “All the texture you see on the shoe is done computationally,” says Bret Schoolmeester, Nike’s senior director for global running footwear. “We started with what we call an envelope, which is just a generic form, and then we add all the texture you see there through generative design.”
The latest running shoes, dubbed the Epic React Flyknit, are the first to use Nike’s new React foam, which is partially made of rubber. The foam itself is being seen as a competitor to adidas’ Ultraboost and Nike has included more of it on the shoe’s base than in other models.
Where things get really interesting is in the design of the shoe’s sole. The foam on the underside is mostly exposed to the surface below it, but also partly covered by additional rubber protection on the points of highest impact. Beneath this, the new React foam has a number of grooves, dents, and tracks running along it.
Novel video feature extractor uses 20 times less power than existing chips and could reduce the size of untethered vision systems down to the millimetre range
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a novel microchip, named EQSCALE, which can capture visual details from video frames at extremely low power consumption. The video feature extractor uses 20 times less power than existing best-in-class chips, and hence requires 20 times smaller battery, and could reduce the size of smart vision systems down to the millimetre range. For example, it can be powered continuously by a millimetre-sized solar cell without the need for battery replacement.
… researchers led by Jihun Park, a materials scientist at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, designed a set of components out of soft and flexible electronic materials that—wherever possible—were also transparent. They included two devices, an antenna and a rectifier, that capture radiofrequency signals from a nearby transmitter and convert them to a small amount of electricity. That charge powers a glucose sensor and a tiny green light-emitting diode (LED), which shines outward so it’s visible in a mirror but doesn’t interfere with the wearer’s vision. If the glucose sensor registers elevated levels, the LED turns off, warning a wearer that they may need to adjust their insulin levels.
… Yet, wary of his injury record, and of the litany of fractures and sprains suffered by former NBA big men such as Yao Ming and Bill Walton, the Sixers continue to restrict Embiid’s playing time. The star center has missed some games this year due to back tightness, and sits out for others that are scheduled on consecutive nights, due to a surgically repaired knee. All told, he has appeared in three-quarters of the team’s contests, and is on the court for an average of 31 out of 48 minutes in each.
Too cautious? Probably not, experts in orthopedics and biomechanics say. The conventional wisdom — that larger bodies are at greater risk of injury — is correct.
There are exceptions to the rule, and Embiid, 23, a superb physical specimen who once protested, “I’m not made of glass,” may well enjoy a long and fruitful career. But he would be wise to play it safe for three main reasons.
The AIS has enhanced its commitment to mental health and wellbeing in sport by establishing the Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement team, to be led by newly appointed AIS Deputy Director Matti Clements.
As the peak agency for high performance sport in Australia, AIS Director Peter Conde said it was vital the AIS with the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) led the way by prioritising athlete wellbeing.
The focus at this time of year is often on investing in players who can help us win in the short-term. However, it is investment in non-playing staff that ultimately creates the processes and culture that drive sustainable success.
Investing in non-playing staff is rarely straightforward. Firstly, there’s the pressure to win the next game – and that’s mostly down to the players we’ve bought or developed. Secondly, talent in non-playing staff is less observable than talent in playing staff, so it can be hard to hire the right people.
What is apparent though is that leagues – and by extension clubs – who invest more in non-playing staff also tend to have more young players, who generally cost less (below).
… Nowadays it is the norm for managers to bring in their own men. When David Moyes took over at Manchester United, he opted to sack Mike Phelan despite the advice of his predecessor Alex Ferguson and probably regretted it when finding himself lasting less than 12 months in the job.
The biggest and most important factor in a back-room staff is trust and loyalty to the manager. Shankly assessed the playing side, dispensed with the services of two dozen players but kept faith with the back-room men. He made his demands crystal clear to his inherited lieutenants; loyalty to each other as well as himself, and no back-biting.
… What can the past tell us about how well top players bounce back from an injury break?
Since the 1990s there have been 28 men’s players who were in the top 10 and had a gap in play of 90 days or more. This group is the best placed to give us an idea of what the typical comeback looks like for a top player after a notable gap in play.
Using player Elo ratings in the 30 matches before their break and the 30 matches after, we can see how well they performed in the pre-gap and post-gap period. Each player’s rating is compared to their baseline at the start of the pre-gap period, so a 0 would mean they are playing equal to their level before the absence.