After 15 years as a professional football player, Arsenal player Per Mertesacker is hanging up his boots. Plagued by injuries and stressed by the game, he argues that it’s time for people to understand its human cost.
… As captain, Getzlaf used to be tasked with running the Ducks’ tournament pool. He’s thankful for a digital age in which the brackets are maintained online. “No more shuffling through those damn papers,” he said, laughing.
He has more pressing matters than keeping track of his teammates’ Final Four picks, with the Ducks desperately trying to finish among the Western Conference’s final eight. They have 86 points and sit in third place in the Pacific Division but are only two points up on the Dallas Stars, who are on the outside looking in.
I spoke with Getzlaf, 32, about the playoff race, why Anaheim stumbled early this season and how he balances being a Duck and a dad.
… While all indications suggest he almost certainly will not, the tiniest glimpse of Hayward’s rehab routinely creates a buzz that ripples across the NBA. That attention spawned what has become affectionately known as the “Haywatch,” with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols concocting a “Baywatch”-themed segment on The Jump to monitor the latest on Hayward’s recovery (often with graphics that have Hayward’s face photoshopped onto David Hasselhoff’s body).
The Haywatch has not lacked for activity. Here are some of the more notable moments and milestones from the past five months.
… “I think he’s been very strong,” Robinson told MLSsoccer.com Wednesday. “He’s shown maturity for a young player, which is good. I thought last year he showed a lot of naivety being a young player, but this year, since the start of preseason, he’s made better decisions.”
Of course, Davies played a big role at the start of last season, too. He scored a goal while playing all but 22 minutes of Vancouver’s four Concacaf Champions League Knockout Round matches and started three of their first four regular season games in 2017. He hit a wall shortly thereafter, however, starting just one of the Whitecaps next seven matches and finishing the season with three goals and two assists in 13 starts and 33 appearances across all competitions for Vancouver.
While he didn’t get as much time as some initially hoped, moving him in and out of the lineup was all according to the Whitecaps’ plan. Robinson applied the same type of blueprint Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger used on his former Wales teammate Aaron Ramsey at the start of his career, taking Davies in and out of the XI to help him understand of the highs, lows and in-betweens of being a pro.
When we lie awake at night, unable to sleep, we usually blame stress, depression, anxiety, adrenaline or the memory of something stupid we said in 2003. But what if our guts were actually the culprit? What if the trillions of microbes sitting in our small intestines – known collectively as the microbiome or microbiota – were actually affecting our mood, digestion, overall health and ability to get a full eight hours’ shut-eye? Scientists are beginning to suspect there is a strong, if as yet unproven, link between gut health – the diversity and wellbeing of bacteria in the stomach, small and large intestines – and sleep health.
“This is an embryonic field right now in the annals of sleep research,” says Matt Walker, the author of Why We Sleep and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. “We know an enormous amount about the relationship between a lack of sleep and appetite, obesity and weight gain, as well as aspects of insulin resistance and glucose regulation. What we don’t fully understand yet is the role of the microbiome in sleep.”
Lower extremity muscle strength tests are commonly used to screen for injury risk in professional soccer. However, there is limited evidence on the ability of such tests in predicting future injuries. Purpose:
To examine the association between hip and thigh muscle strength and the risk of lower extremity injuries in professional male soccer players. Study Design:
Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods:
Professional male soccer players from 14 teams in Qatar underwent a comprehensive strength assessment at the beginning of the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 seasons. Testing consisted of concentric and eccentric quadriceps and hamstring isokinetic peak torques, eccentric hip adduction and abduction forces, and bilateral isometric adductor force (squeeze test at 45°). Time-loss injuries and exposure in training and matches were registered prospectively by club medical staff throughout each season. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs. Results:
In total, 369 players completed all strength tests and had registered injury and exposure data. Of these, 206 players (55.8%) suffered 538 lower extremity injuries during the 2 seasons; acute muscle injuries were the most frequent. Of the 20 strength measures examined, greater quadriceps concentric peak torque at 300 deg/s (HR, 1.005 [95% CI, 1.00-1.01]; P = .037) was the only strength measure identified as significantly associated with a risk of lower extremity injuries in multivariate analysis. Greater quadriceps concentric peak torque at 60 deg/s (HR, 1.004 [95% CI, 1.00-1.01]; P = .026) was associated with the risk of overuse injuries, and greater bilateral adductor strength adjusted for body weight (HR, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.57-0.97; P = .032) was associated with a lower risk for any knee injury. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses indicated poor predictive ability of the significant strength variables (area under the curve, 0.45-0.56). Conclusion:
There was a weak association with the risk of lower extremity injuries for 2 strength variables: greater quadriceps concentric muscle strength at (1) high and (2) low speeds. These associations were too small to identify an “at-risk” player. Therefore, strength testing, as performed in the present study, cannot be recommended as a screening test to predict injuries in professional male soccer.
… The existing [sleep disorder] diagnostic procedure is labor-intensive and expensive, making it inaccessible to many people. It is also cumbersome and unpleasant; sleep labs haven’t changed much since the 1970s, said Reuveny, “You sleep outside your house. You are wired to 10-20 different electrodes. People are watching you, monitoring you during the night.”
While home diagnostic tests are cheaper ($200 per night compared to $1,000-$5,000 in-lab) there is still a lot of friction in the process: waiting lists can be long, patients may damage the device or fail to return it to the clinic, or they may have difficulty assembling it at home.
“If you combine all things together, you understand that something doesn’t work properly in the way people diagnose and manage sleep disorders today and this is where we come into play,” said Reuveny.
… Stem cells have already helped Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal to recover from knee injuries. What else could biotech do to help big sporting names that are stuck in the treatment room?
Broken bones are one of the most common sports injuries, especially in the ankle, foot, and wrist, with severe fractures taking up to 6 months to heal. Not only does it leave sportsmen and women waiting impatiently to get back on their feet but it also places a major burden on healthcare services around the world.
Swedish biotech company, Bonesupport, has developed an injectable ‘putty’, Cerament, that fills gaps in bone to promote healing. Since it arrived in hospitals in 2015, over 25,000 patients have benefited from the technology. Another biotech, Bone Therapeutics, is working on allogeneic and autologous cell therapies to treat broken bones that haven’t healed correctly, or delayed union fractures.
In the lab, scientists at the University of Birmingham have mimicked the body’s natural healing process using vesicles that stimulate stem cells to form new bone.
Technology isn’t an industry, it’s a method of transforming the culture and economics of existing systems and institutions. That can be a little bit hard to understand if we only judge tech as a set of consumer products that we purchase. But tech goes a lot deeper than the phones in our hands, and we must understand some fundamental shifts in society if we’re going to make good decisions about the way tech companies shape our lives—and especially if we want to influence the people who actually make technology.
Even those of us who have been deeply immersed in the tech world for a long time can miss the driving forces that shape its impact. So here, we’ll identify some key principles that can help us understand technology’s place in culture.
… Headspace has forged a partnership deal with the NBA that gives the league, its players and its employees subscriptions to Headspace. In return, the NBA has agreed to produce guided training content with Headspace and feature the content on its app and platforms. Employees and players at the WNBA and the G League, the NBA’s official minor-league organization, will also get access.
No money changed hands as a result of the partnership, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In striking the deal with the NBA, Headspace is banking on the fact that the endorsement of the NBA and distribution on its platforms will prove to be a low-cost alternative to expensive TV spots and other pricey brand advertisements, Mr. Hoffman said. As part of the multi-year deal, Headspace is giving away about 7,000 annual subscriptions to its app, which normally cost $96 per year.
The Journal & Courier confirmed that Purdue sports medicine has reached out to Purdue mechanical engineering about working on a solution. Doug Boersma, associate athletic director for sports medicine, declined comment, citing student-athlete medical privacy laws.
Fred Hoiberg has a couch in his Advocate Center office on which he occasionally will try to snag a 20-minute nap.
The pursuit is a nod to the stresses and demands that engulf NBA head coaches, a fact underscored Monday when Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue became the second coach this season to take a leave of absence.
… The NBA and Major League Baseball have been asking states to give them 1 percent of the total amount wagered on their games, calling it an “integrity fee” so they can protect their products and snuff out attempts at cheating and game-fixing.
“Now, let’s be clear — that’s just a euphemism for a cut of the action,” Joe Asher, CEO of William Hill U.S., a sports book operator, told New York state lawmakers in January. “There will be plenty of financial benefits to the leagues.”
Gambling proponents say kicking back that much to the leagues would make sports books unprofitable and prevent a legal, regulated betting market from developing. They’re seeking an arrangement similar to what exists in Nevada, where the state takes 6.75 percent of winnings on top of a federal tax of 0.25 percent of the amount wagered.
Casinos have a built-in edge when it comes to battling in statehouses. Casinos are legal in 40 states; the commercial companies and American Indian tribes that run them are well-versed in dealing with regulators and state lawmakers.
OregonLive.com, Jeff Manning and Brad Schmidt from
… The [NCAA] scandal shines a harsh light on grassroots basketball — the barely regulated frontier between youth and college competition. In this world, players align with club teams in hopes of winning the attention of college coaches, agents and sneaker company scouts.
Bagley’s odyssey offers a glimpse of the challenges and life-changing opportunities afforded the nation’s top prep players. It also shows how the pursuit of elite athletes has trended younger and younger. By the time top prospects reach college, some of have been adherents of Nike, Adidas or Under Armour since before they could drive.
Anyone involved in high-level youth sports has seen the pervasiveness of the sneaker companies: They sponsor the best teams, they stage all-star camps, they run entire leagues – always with their logos front and center. By 2017, Nike completed a near-sweep of Oregon’s largest public high schools, signing up more than 90 percent of those with sneaker company deals. All it wanted in return – and got — was total brand exclusivity. Call it the Swoosh Effect.