… Since the day he arrived in Santa Barbara, Doncic had the anthropometric measurements (reach and weight) that fit the new-age NBA wing player. At 6-feet-8 and 228 pounds, he ranked in the 86th percentile of guards in the league, according to the data recorded and evaluated by P3.
However, the real case for Doncic comes from the drastic improvements he’s shown during his time away from California. Between the 2015 and 2016 summer evaluations, Doncic registered two significant upticks.
This is surprising, according to Eric Leidersdorf, P3’s director of biomechanics, because athletes usually have some “in-season mechanical degradation” when they are away from the facility. Naturally, players have to relearn techniques when they come back next summer to gradually sustain their offseason improvements. But Doncic showed improvement, not regression, in some key areas.
… “He is one of the few guys that I have had to coach that I know I am going to have to keep my hand on to hold back,” Williams said, via Pat McManamon of ESPN.com. “One of the things with him is his overworking. He works so hard because he does not want to be good; he wants to be great. Sometimes he can be his own worst enemy in that respect because he works so hard physically that he has to do a good job with recovery also. The next thing is this — and he knows — if he stays healthy, watch out.”
Garrett had seven sacks in 11 games during his rookie season. If he’s on the field more often and the team’s moves to improve the secondary pay off, that number could get a good deal bigger in his second run through the league.
When Peruvian soccer player Paolo Guerrero’s drug test showed trace amounts of metabolite benzoylecgonine last October, it seemed unlikely the star player would make it to the 2018 World Cup.
That’s because metabolite benzoylecgnine is found in cocaine, and FIFA, the entity that functions like a governing body for global soccer, has strict consequences for players caught using illegal drugs. Guerrero was slapped with a year-long ban, meaning he would be benched during the the premier international sporting event, which is only held once every four years.
Claiming the penalty was unjust, Guerrero fought the decision, saying he had likely been served coca tea by mistake after requesting tea to soothe a cold. With sugar and various spices added to the tea, the coca taste would have been difficult to detect, he and his lawyers told FIFA.
Luckily for the 34-year-old athlete, he had the support of outraged Peruvian soccer fans, biochemistry, and 500-year-old Incan mummies.
… Today, part of yoga’s appeal is that it continues to be seen as a mystical, ancient tradition. However, as I’ve discovered in my research, the practice of yoga has gone through some profound shifts. Here are four.
1. Yoga for health and happiness
It was a Hindu reformer, Swami Vivekananda, who first introduced yoga to a larger audience. Vivekananda originally came to the United States to seek funds to relieve poverty in India. Several electrifying addresses he delivered at the World’s Parliament of Religions, the world’s first global interfaith dialogue held in 1893 in Chicago, brought him instant fame. He then traveled around the US for the next several years, giving lectures and teaching yoga.
This is one of the world’s great cities, a magical mix of colors and canals that sparkle, especially in June, when the sun does not dip behind the Baltic Sea until around midnight. Visitors and residents wander the streets and embankments through the small hours of what is night during the rest of the year but these days is just a brief dawn.
A favorite, middle-of-the-night activity is strolling to the harbor, where thousands pack the banks of the Neva River to watch the bridges rise so boats can enter. The nearly uninterrupted light this far north acts as a kind of human power plant, continuously fueling millions of bodies but preventing them from getting the signals they need to begin the daily wind down that eventually leads to sleep.
These so-called White Nights make St. Petersburg during the World Cup a truly captivating place to be but a potentially problematic location for players, especially those whose teams are based here. The tension of the competition robs them of rest, and shouldering the weight of the country they represent can be nerve-racking. Factor in the almost never-ending light and the result is an under-rested team whose players’ bodies have no idea what time it is when kickoff arrives.
Did you sleep well last night? If not, you’re in good company. About a third of American adults don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many people don’t get enough sleep or sleep poorly because of their jobs or hectic schedules — they work long shifts at night or have to rush to get their kids ready to catch a 6 a.m. school bus. Some 50 million to 70 million Americans have a chronic sleep disorder such as insomnia or sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts throughout the night.
Scientists still fiercely debate sleep’s fundamental biological purpose. In people, however, plentiful evidence suggests that sleep performs a range of vital functions, including restoring damaged tissues, boosting learning and memory, and flushing toxins from the brain. Sleeping too little can have serious long-term health consequences, increasing the risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A new study in Pediatrics highlights the importance of sleep for teenagers, who often struggle to get the recommended eight to nine hours per night of shut-eye. Out of the more than 800 adolescents in the study, only 2.2 percent got enough sleep, and less than half achieved desirable rates of “sleep efficiency” — the percentage of total time in bed actually spent asleep.
This study investigated differences in generic and soccer specific motor coordination, as well as speed and agility depending on age and maturity in elite youth soccer players (U10-U15, N = 619). Measurements included body height, body weight and sitting height to estimate age at peak height velocity (APHV); three Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder subtests (i.e. jumping sideways (JS), moving sideways (MS), balancing backwards (BB)) to assess generic motor coordination; the UGent dribbling test for soccer specific motor coordination; a 5m/30m sprint and T-test for speed and agility, respectively. Age specific z-scores of the predicted APHV identified players as earlier, on time or later maturing. (M)ANOVA analyses showed significant age by maturity interaction effects for the speed and agility test cluster, revealing maturity related differences in U14 and U15 players. Next to an overall higher performance with age for all test clusters (η2 0.080–0.468), earlier maturing players outperformed their later maturing peers in 5m/30m sprinting. The opposite was seen for JS and BB. So, players’ maturity status should be taken into account to adequately value performance in talent identification. Also, the focus on characteristics that appear to be minimally biased by an earlier maturational timing (i.e. motor coordination) should be increased.
Purdue University researchers have developed soft contact lenses that not only correct vision but also can monitor glucose and medical conditions and be used for ocular pain relief or drug delivery.
Sensors or other technology previously couldn’t be used for soft contact lenses because the technology required a rigid, planar surface incompatible with the soft, curved shape of a contact lens.
The Purdue University team, led by Chi Hwan Lee, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, created a novel method for attaching sensors and other small devices to soft contact lenses.
“We developed a very unique technology that enables the integration of thin film sensors with a commercially available soft contact lens,” Lee said. “These current hydrogel-based contacts serve as the perfect platform for smart lens systems due to their high degree of comfortability, biocompatibility, breathability and long-term wearability. Before our discovery, it was challenging to fabricate high-performance electronics on commercially available soft contact lenses.”
… DorsaVi technology provides medical professionals, patients and athletes with real-time data to speed recovery, prevent injury and enhances physical performance. The wearable sensor technology was developed by an Australian compaony and only recently became available in Kentucky.
Reyes’ Strength and Conditioning Specialist Michael Ballback suggested she undergo the evaluation to better pinpoint the issues impeding her recovery and get her back on track.
The short 20-minute test is essentially “physiological surveillance,” which can help physical therapists more precisely diagnose what’s going on in a patient’s body.
“Before we had to eyeball everything but using this technology we now we have a way to accurately measure what is going on in the body from the inside out,” said physical therapist Josh Bixler, who works at Kentucky Orthopedic Rehab Team, 9880 Angies Way.
The largest annual gathering of the football medicine community took place in Barcelona, Spain, from 2-4 June 2018 as part of the “Football Medicine Outcomes – Are We Winning” conference.
With the iconic Camp Nou stadium providing the backdrop, more than 2,500 medical professionals from around 90 countries came together to exchange ideas on how to improve outcomes for those who sustain football injuries.
It marked the 27th edition of the conference, which is led by the Isokinetic Medical Group – an internationally recognised leader in sports medicine and rehabilitation – and organised this year in collaboration with FIFA, the FIFA Medical Centres of Excellence and FC Barcelona.
“The Isokinetic meeting is always one of the sports medicine highlights of the year – and this year was no exception,” said Mark Fulcher, Editor-in Chief of the FIFA Medical Network.
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal from
PURPOSE:
To evaluate common modelling strategies in training load and injury risk research when modelling continuous variables and interpreting continuous risk estimates; and present improved modelling strategies. METHOD:
Workload data were pooled from Australian football (n=2,550) and soccer (n=23,742) populations to create a representative sample of acute:chronic workload ratio observations for team sports. Injuries were simulated in the data using three pre-defined risk profiles (U-shaped, flat and S-shaped). One-hundred datasets were simulated with sample sizes of 1000 and 5000 observations. Discrete modelling methods were compared to continuous methods (spline regression and fractional polynomials) for their ability to fit the defined risk profiles. Models were evaluated using measures of discrimination (area under ROC curve) and calibration (Brier score, logarithmic scoring). RESULTS:
Discrete models were inferior to continuous methods for fitting the true injury risk profiles in the data. Discrete methods had higher false discovery rates (16-21%) than continuous methods (3-7%). Evaluating models using the area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve incorrectly identified discrete models as superior in over 30% of simulations. Brier and logarithmic scoring was more suited to assessing model performance with less than 6% discrete model selection rate. CONCLUSIONS:
Many studies on the relationship between training loads and injury that have used regression modelling have significant limitations due to improper discretization of continuous variables and risk estimates. Continuous methods are more suited to modelling the relationship between training load and injury. Comparing injury risk models using ROC curves can lead to inferior model selection. Measures of calibration are more informative when judging the utility of injury risk models.
FIFA and World Cup hosts Russia are plunged into fresh doping turmoil, as The Mail on Sunday reveal new evidence of state-sponsored doping and cover-ups the world governing body have buried.
The incredible details include new information about how Russia’s Sports Ministry covered up the positive test of one of the players initially named in their World Cup squad and then swapped his tainted urine for a clean sample.
This comes as fans around the world, including Russia, have renewed doubts about the trustworthiness of the national team following their record-breaking start to this World Cup.
When the Phoenix Suns made DeAndre Ayton the first selection in Thursday’s draft, the 2017-18 season officially came to a close. The year was filled with bizarre storylines that included secret tunnels into locker rooms, thrown bowls of soup, and multiple social media gaffes. Unfortunately, the 2017-18 campaign was also marred by injury. The problems began on opening night when Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward suffered a gruesome ankle fracture just five minutes into the game.
It didn’t stop there as Brooklyn’s Jeremy Lin ruptured his patellar tendon in his first outing, number one selection Markelle Fultz missed substantial time with a “scapular muscle imbalance” in his right shoulder, and Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard appeared in just nine games largely due to a mysterious quadriceps tendon problem. Multiple All-Star players, including DeMarcus Cousins (ruptured Achilles), Kyrie Irving (hardware removal and infection), and Kristaps Porzingis (torn ACL), also saw their seasons cut short by injury. In the end, the number of games lost to injury or illness for the year surpassed 5,000 for the first time, making it the highest total since the NBA moved away from the injured reserve prior to the 2005-06 season.
The Oklahoma City Thunder led the league in fewest games lost for the second time in three years. The team finished with 63 total games lost with nearly 70 percent of those games attributed to guard Andre Roberson. Roberson, the Thunder’s top defender, suffered a torn patellar tendon in late January and missed the time’s final 33 outings.
… [Diego] Costa had felt a mismatch with his adopted national team: unable to score in the 2014 World Cup, unable to make the Euro 2016 squad.
He is now spearheading both the side and the revival of the traditional No. 9. It would be an exaggeration to say the false nine had rendered him an endangered species, but the old-fashioned striker is back with a vengeance and not just because vengeance is one of Costa’s hobbies. He may not have scored against Morocco, but acted as the focal point – and pivot – for the attack that led to Isco’s goal and already has three goals to his name in any case. He is one behind Romelu Lukaku, who is waging a battle for the Golden Boot with Harry Kane (five). Their rivals also include Cristiano Ronaldo (four), who has long had a striker’s selfish mentality, if not always status as the furthest man forward.
With all that’s been said, tweeted, ranted and written on these pages and elsewhere about the Rays’ odd, unorthodox, weird and some days downright wacky pitching plan, this might be the craziest thing yet:
It’s working.
Like, really well.
After shutting out the mighty Yankees 4-0 on Saturday, the Rays — literally redefining roles in using openers, relieving starters and consecutive bullpen days since going all in on this plan May 19 — have since posted the best ERA in the majors, 2.98.