… “With all due respect, usually players of my age go to Qatar or China, so coming to such an outstanding club at this stage in my career makes me very happy,” he said.
“I’m different from all the other players who think their career is over at my age. I want to show that I’m not like the others, I’m different. It’s an emotional moment for me because I’m not 23, I’m 33.
“I’m not here on holiday,” he added. “I want to mark the history of Juventus. I hope I can surprise everyone one last time and I’m very, very confident.”
SB Nation, Turf Show Times blog, Sosa Kremenjas from
If you’re looking for a story of perseverance, look no further than Los Angeles Rams DE Dominique Easley.
Easley is a highly explosive and highly talented defensive lineman who has suffered three torn ACL’s dating back to college the last of which he injured last year in training camp. Nevertheless, he has consistently undergone rehabilitation effectively to return as a productive player. Originally a first-round pick with the 29th overall selection by the New England Patriots in the 2014 NFL Draft, he was released in 2016. Easley had a strong rebound season in 2016 after being picked up by the Rams registering 3.5 sacks, 24 tackles, one pass deflection and two forced fumbles as a rotational backup to Aaron Donald.
Easley re-signed with the Rams for a one-year $850k deal back in March. It’s a deal that made sense for both sides; the Rams return a key player off the bench who can provide juice but doesn’t need to be relied on to play major snaps, and Easley gets a chance to rehab his value with a strong performance before reaching free agency again at only 27-years old.
… “Kind of realizing what my stuff is actually doing and what my strengths are,” Cole said. “Just kind of leaning toward what my strengths are and attacking with that.”
The Astros have gained a reputation for using fewer fastballs, especially sinkers, and more offspeed pitches, as well as for providing their pitches with detailed information about maximizing their strengths. Pitch usage and sequencing are by no means entirely responsible for the Astros’ pitching success — Lance McCullers Jr. and Dallas Keuchel round out a talented rotation — but they have helped the starters compile a 3.02 ERA, 613 innings pitched and 10.4 strikeouts per nine, all of which lead Major League Baseball.
“When I got to Houston, they have all the analytics and they were able to show me how effective my four-seam [fastball] is,” Verlander said. “It’s something I was never taught. I just always did it naturally. It made a lot of sense. If it’s that good, OK, use it more.”
“Part of what I will do is make this journey uncomfortable for you, because the greatest teacher is adversity.”
It was my first meeting with the players after I had been hired as head coach of the United States Women’s National Team. And that is what I told them.
When I took the job, we had about a year to prepare for the 2015 World Cup – a tournament we hadn’t won since 1999.
The baseball world is mourning the loss of one of its pioneers in the mental-skills field after longtime sports psychologist Ken Ravizza died Sunday night after suffering a heart attack last week. Ravizza, 70, was a favorite of Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who knew and employed Ravizza for decades.
“He was the best at what he does,” Maddon said Monday afternoon. “I hear his voice in my head. He’s left an eternal impact on all of us.”
… In a new paper, Wang investigates whether “hot-streak” periods like Einstein’s are more than just a lucky coincidence—in science, and in other fields as well. He teamed up with visiting student Lu Liu and Kellogg post-doctoral student Yang Wang, as well as Chaoming Song of the University of Miami, Roberta Sinatra of Central European University, and Lee Giles of Pennsylvania State University.
Looking at the career histories of thousands of scientists, artists, and film directors, the team found evidence that hot streaks are both real and ubiquitous, with virtually everyone experiencing one at some point in their career. While the timing of an individual’s greatest successes is indeed random, their top hits are highly likely to appear in close proximity.
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all depend on comparisons between ongoing actual experiences and the brain’s modeled expectations.
People make decisions based on the information that is most readily available to them. Understanding how the availability heuristic works will help you design for the way people think.
Exerting cognitive control results in mental fatigue, which is associated with impaired performance during physical endurance tasks. However, there has been little research on the effects of mental fatigue on people’s perceptions or behaviors involving lifestyle or recreational exercise. Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of mental fatigue on intended physical exertion and exercise performance reflective of current physical activity guidelines. Methods
Using a counterbalanced design, participants completed two 50-min experimental manipulations (high vs. low cognitive control exertion) before exercising at a self-selected intensity for 30 min. At visit 1, participants performed a graded exercise task to gain familiarity with a range of exercise intensities and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) while exercising. At visits 2 and 3, participants rated their intended RPE for the exercise session, performed the experimental manipulations, re-rated their intended RPE, and then completed 30-min of exercise on a cycle ergometer. Total work performed while exercising was recorded for each session. Results
Compared with the low cognitive control condition, the high cognitive control manipulation resulted in significantly greater mental fatigue (d = .73), significantly greater reductions in intended RPE (mean difference = –0.62), and significantly less total work (–12.7 kJ) performed during the exercise session. Conclusions
Mental fatigue alters the amount of physical effort people are willing to invest in an exercise workout and follow through with those intentions by doing less work. These are the first results showing people may deliberately adjust their physical effort to cope with mental fatigue.
Introduction: Laterality (i.e., handedness, footedness, and eyedness) could have an impact on highly repeated soccer movements and thus, could influence performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the laterality of high-level football players and its effects on 180∘ left and right U-turn movements.
Materials and Methods: Handedness, footedness, and eyedness were determined in 72 elite football players (EFP, 18.2 ± 2.2 years) from the Stade Rennais Football Club (French League 1) and 9 amateur football players (AFP, 19.6 ± 2.1 years). Players performed a visual-motor task on a synthetic pitch consisting of 180∘ left and right rotations as fast as possible in response to a visual light on a computer screen. Movement times and reactive times for each left and right rotation were recorded with an accelerometer and video display.
Results: Laterality profiles showed a majority (χ2 = 9.42, df = 2, p = 0.031) of crossed formulas (i.e., dominant leg or hand is controlateral to the dominant eye) for EFP (53 ± 7%) and a majority of non-crossed formulas for AFP (63 ± 9%). Reaction times were significantly faster (p = 0.028, effect size = 0.148, trivial) in EFP right-eyed (568.2 ± 55.5 ms) than in AFP (610.0 ± 43.9 ms). For the left rotation and for right-footed players, movement times were significantly different (p = 0.043, effect size = 0.413, small) between EFP (1.15 ± 0.07 s) and AFP (1.17 ± 0.07 s). A significant difference (p < 0.033) was observed between footedness and rotation movement times in the EFP.
Conclusion: Our results showed that laterality profiles differed between EFP and AFP. Hence, in EFP, reaction times depended on the side of the visual stimulus. Moreover, leg laterality of EFP influenced 180∘ left or right rotation speed. Our results indicate the importance of determining laterality in soccer players and identifying deficits in performance when turning. [full text]
In recent years Vitamin D has received a lot of attention. The numbers of publications on Vitamin D have sky rocketed as have the sales of various vitamin D supplements. However, there is a lot of confusion and misinterpretation of the available evidence. This has resulted in unguided supplementation of sometimes very large quantities of vitamin D, especially in sports.
Vitamin D is mainly obtained through exposure of the skin to UVB through sunlight, and a small amount typically comes from the diet. Studies indicate that during the winter months, athletes who live at latitudes above 30°N do not get sufficient sunlight to synthesize vitamin D3 in their skin and consequently may develop inadequate or deficient vitamin D status. However, there is still discussion, even amongst scientists, what inadequate or deficient is and how it can be measured. For a more comprehensive review of the literature the reader is referred to an excellent review by Owens et al.
The intentional ambiguity of the R language, inherited from the S language, is one of its defining features. Is it an interactive system for data analysis or is it a sophisticated programming language for software developers? The ability of R to cater to users who do not see themselves as programmers, but then allow them to slide gradually into programming, is an enduring quality of the language and is what has allowed it to gain significance over time. As the R community has grown in size and diversity, R’s ability to match the needs of the community has similarly grown. However, this growth has raised interesting questions about R’s value proposition today and how new users to R should be introduced to the system.
That quote is a decade old, but the league looks ready to listen to the professor. Today I started with the @NFL as their Director of Data and Analytics
The Conversation, Lionel Page and Romain Gauriot from
… We isolated situations in which negligible differences in performance gave rise to very different outcomes in a game: that is, when players hit a post or crossbar while trying to score.
We collected the data from more than 13,000 shots that hit a post – in 10,679 cases the ball bounced away, but in 2,387 cases it deflected into the goal.
Using the location from where the shot was taken, we matched all scoring shots with non-scoring shots taken from a location within 45cm of each other.
We found that when comparing such shots, there are no visible differences in a player’s skill or performance. But the effect of this single shot on the assessment of their match performance was substantial.