With the beats of her heart pounding rapidly, Joanne Reid tried to steady her rifle.
A circle of less than two inches in diameter and 50 meters down range was her target, but her heart was going crazy, at nearly 220 beats per minute.
“That’s like trying to shoot in the middle of an earthquake,” she said. “My entire body was vibrating with the hammering beats of my heart.”
Diagnosed with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) last July, Reid could have seen the end to her budding career in biathlon, a sport that combines the skills of Nordic skiing and rifle marksmanship.
Two heart procedures and several grueling months of training later, Reid is on her way to the Olympics.
… I think where the biggest change is that they are now catching up athletically. They have sports science, strength and conditioning coaches. Now, not only are they able to keep up with us athletically, you are seeing countries like Nigeria – who are, in many ways superior to us athletically, just the way they maneuver themselves on the field; it’s just a different style.
From what I’ve seen is, again, we have some wonderful athletes and we have some wonderful, technical soccer players. Very gifted technically, especially the upper third. But I feel that where we really lack is tactically; that’s been an issue. Being able to break down. We have all these skills apps. All these people going to get skills training and all this individual training, and it’s awesome, but we have no understanding of how to use that technical ability when we get on the field. It’s great that somebody can trap, but if they can’t trap and break down pressure on the field, or know how to put themselves in a position to not go into a tackle once they receive it, that’s where we lack considerably.
Jet lag affects everyone, but for some — like business travelers, pilots, and Olympic athletes — not getting enough sleep and struggling to adjust to a new time zone can wreak special havoc on their ability to get the job done.
Now, while some scientists have suggested that those eager to keep fresh use flashing light treatment to fight jet lag, some Olympic ski jumpers are taking a different approach.
The strategy, being put to the test by some members of the U.S. team, is not to fight jet lag, but to lean into it instead.
After competing in Germany, the skiers will fly directly to South Korea to train, and then compete in Olympic qualifying and go into the first medal event—all within less than a week.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers admits the loan market is fast becoming the only way for his club to access the best of Europe’s young talents, with clubs from major leagues snapping them up as early as 10 years of age.
Far from being despondent about accepting Celtic’s place in the food chain as a development stop for young prospects in the grand scheme of Europe’s top clubs, Rodgers believes they have to embrace it. The approach has allowed talents such as Patrick Roberts, and now Charly Musonda, to spend extended periods of time at Celtic, when they would otherwise have been out of their financial reach.
… “The science is pretty slim for body composition testing,” Shell said. “Based on the few types of methods that are accepted, how do we make sure those methods are used appropriately, included in the policy, applied across the services, and that they are doable by the services?”
Whatever method is selected has to be economical and efficient enough to evaluate hundreds of thousands of people, as “it’s not feasible to do MRIs or CT scans on every service member,” Shell said.
Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to the Joint Chiefs chairman, acknowledged “there might be other methods out there beyond a tape test.”
Based on the current version of 1308.3, each service is required to report, on an annual basis, the number of personnel who failed its physical fitness and body fat tests, the number of troops placed in weight control programs, and the service’s separation policy for personnel who fail those tests.
If you ask Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer, there’s really no debate. His now-famous whiteboard chart clearly shows his strong preference for recruiting multisport athletes. For parents and student-athletes, however, the answer is not that simple. Is it realistic for your student-athlete to play multiple sports and do well in school? Is it still possible to make it to the highest level without absolute dedication and focus to one sport? Does sports specialization lead to more overuse injuries and burnout? Should every sport be treated the same? To help gain a little more clarity on the subject and to answer these questions in a more objective way, we took a good look at the data.
Nature, Scientific Reports; Logan Wade, Glen Lichtwark & Dominic James Farris from
The preferred movement strategies that humans choose to produce work for movement are not fully understood. Previous studies have demonstrated an important contribution of elastic energy stored within the Achilles tendon (AT) during jumping. This study aimed to alter energy available for storage in the AT to examine changes in how jumpers distribute work among lower limb joints. Participants (n = 16) performed maximal and sub-maximal jumps under two paradigms, matched for increasing total work output by manipulating jump height or adding body mass. Motion capture and ground reaction force data were combined in an inverse dynamics analysis to compute ankle, knee and hip joint kinetics. Results demonstrated higher peak moments about the ankle joint with added body mass (+26 Nm), likely resulting in additional energy storage in the AT. Work at the ankle joint increased proportionally with added mass, maintaining a constant contribution (~64%) to total work that was not matched with increasing jump height (−14%). This implies greater energy storage and return by the AT with added mass but not with increased height. When total work during jumping is constant but energy stored in tendons is not, humans prioritise the use of stored elastic energy over muscle work. [full text]
NNAISENSE, an artificial intelligence company based in Switzerland, beat out 441 other participants to win first prize in the “Learning to Run” competition co-organized by researchers from UC Berkeley, EPFL, and the Mobilize Center. The competition was part of the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 2017 Competition track. In the competition, participants were tasked with developing a controller to enable a physiologically-based human model to navigate a complex obstacle course as quickly as possible. NNAISENSE’s model ran at 4.60 m/s. The second prize winner’s model (Beijing University, China) ran at 4.17 m/s, and the third prize winner’s model (reason8.ai, USA) ran at 3.84 m/s. View a video summarizing the competition and showing simulations of the submitted models.
Placing sensors inside the body can allow researchers and clinicians to understand and treat a variety of medical conditions. But, while implanting a sensing device can be easy, having it stay in the body long enough to perform its task and then to be safely removed is a substantial challenge. Now a collaboration between researchers in Italy and Greece has embedded so-called “fiber Bragg gratings,” a type of device that reflects certain light wavelengths and that can be used as a sensor, inside of dissolvable optical fibers. The technology may allow for long-term monitoring of both biomechanical and chemical characteristics of various organs and anatomical features inside the body.
These days fiber Bragg gratings inside of optical fibers are used to measure stresses placed on bridges, commercial airliner wings, and other areas where detailed, real-time monitoring is important. The newly developed fiber Bragg gratings are able to break down, much like absorbable sutures, and because they have been embedded into fiber optics that are themselves bioresorbable, they should be safe for use inside the body. Ideally, they would be implanted and then left inside the body to perform sensing tasks, eventually disappearing altogether and not requiring excisions.
As Team USA preps for the Winter Olympics festivities to kick off this weekend, it’s not only the 243 athletes who are getting ready for action — it’s also a crew of medical volunteers who undergo a grueling selection process of their own.
The official U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Division recruits a crew of volunteer doctors — as well as orthopedists, chiropractors, nurses, sports therapists, massage therapists, and more — every two years. Those selected will work with Olympic teams during training and practices and ultimately at the games themselves — some caring for one team exclusively; others moving around as the need arises. And they do it all uncompensated.
It’s a lot to ask from a volunteer, but former Olympic physicians say the experience is worth it. “I knew I wasn’t going to make it there as an athlete,” said Dr. Mark Hutchinson, an orthopedist in Chicago. “But I thought that as a doctor, I could go and enjoy Olympic glory vicariously.”
… As an athletic trainer who has worked with college athletes, I’ve used many Western training techniques to aid injured athletes. But during my 15 years of practice, I’ve started to wonder if many of the techniques I’ve used are truly effective.
With this year’s Winter Olympics taking place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, it wouldn’t be surprising to see athletes talking about other Eastern treatment methods – acupuncture, herbal treatments and Chuna manual therapy – that have become increasingly popular around the world.
In practice risk management is a rational, means-end based process: risks are identified, analysed and then “solved” (or mitigated). Although these steps seem to be objective, each of them involves human perceptions, biases and interests. Where Jill sees an opportunity, Jack may see only risks.
Indeed, the problem of differences in stakeholder perceptions is broader than risk analysis. The recognition that such differences in world-views may be irreconcilable is what led Horst Rittel to coin the now well-known term, wicked problem. These problems tend to be made up of complex interconnected and interdependent issues which makes them difficult to tackle using standard rational- analytical methods of problem solving.
Most high-stakes risks that organisations face have elements of wickedness – indeed any significant organisational change is fraught with risk. Murphy rules; things can go wrong, and they often do. The current paradigm of risk management, which focuses on analyzing and quantifying risks using rational methods, is not broad enough to account for the wicked aspects of risk.
I had been thinking about this for a while when I stumbled on a fascinating paper by Robin Holt entitled, Risk Management: The Talking Cure, which outlines a possible approach to analysing interconnected risks.
… And as Belichick has proven time and again over the last 18 years, no team prepares better, and no team alters its attack more on a week-to-week basis, than his Patriots.
“It’s a ton of fun,” offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said. “If you didn’t enjoy it, it’d be hard to do this job, because there’s not many things in your life that you spend 19 hours doing.”
This week in Minneapolis, Patriots coaches and players offered rare insight into the game-planning process — how they study the opponent, develop a plan, teach it during the week, adjust it as necessary, and execute on Sundays.
“You have to start with a plan, and then you go out there and try to get your guys to execute it,” McDaniels said. “And the marriage of those two things, if it ends in the result you’re looking for, it’s the greatest feeling you could have as a coach.”
Coach Mike Rhoades said that the team uses analytics a lot. He said they use a lot of the Synergy Sports Technology, and also some things from KenPom.com. The analytics can help VCU learn, for instance, that certain players have a higher success rate going to their left than their right. Also, certain spots on the court where a player may be more aggressive or more efficient compared to other spots.
Rhoades said the team has a pretty good balance with its use of analytics this year, knowing what’s important and what the players are going to carry over to games. It’s not just throwing numbers out.
“I make sure we really break it down so our guys understand it,” Rhoades said. “Because, you don’t call a timeout to let them know analytically what they might do. But you give them ideas.
… The 2019 change will mark a return to the way seeding use to be done, a time that some stalwarts of the game, like Roger Federer, can still remember. Federer has actually embraced the return to former times but most players have been critical of the move. The whole point of introducing 32 seeds way back when was to provide more protection for the top 30 players, at least through the first two rounds, as they would be assured not to have to player another top 30 player before the 3rd round. Without that protection, players are concerned that it will become that much harder for the best players to advance to the second week.
While there are multiple reasons why players are feeling frustrated with this planned change, one of the main ones is that the consequences of the change are so unclear. If an impact study was done, it was not made available to the public or to the players, leaving us all to guess at whether 16-seed Majors will be better or worse for the sport.
Since we do have ways to simulate the outcomes of tournaments with reasonable accuracy, we can use this method to test how reverting back to 16 seeds could change outcomes at Grand Slams.