In the middle of recounting his varied excursions in Costa Rica this summer to a group of reporters — the jet skiing, the snorkelling, the jungle adventures and all those howler monkey encounters — Justin Holl stops and stares directly into the soul of a rolling camera from a national outlet.
He wants to make something abundantly career.
“I was still in the weight room every day. They had a nice facility there,” Holl clarifies, fighting back a coy grin as his audience chuckles. “No days off.”
Eight days away from his most legitimate crack at an NHL lineup, the 26-year-old late-blooming defenceman is hoping to break the Toronto Maple Leafs’ opening-night roster as smoothly as he breaks the fourth wall.
… (2) The worst part of a broken nose, as a professional athlete, isn’t the pain — it’s the wait. Our team doctor, Adam Pourcho, did an amazing job of resetting the bone right away. And so just in terms of how I felt, I mean, I could’ve gone right back out there. But then there is the whole “can’t play if you’re bleeding” part, because of the nasty little medical stuff that you don’t even think about: For example, if you’re not careful, I think you can start to, like, leak fluid….. from your brain?? (Sorry, I’m not a doctor — just someone who breaks her nose a lot). Anyway, because of those and other risks, there’s a rule where you’re not allowed back into the game while you’re bleeding.
… As snow fell on Soldier Field last Christmas Eve, he stood in the south end zone, conflicted about how to celebrate. Snow angels with Josh Bellamy and Kendall Wright? Or give the ball to Cody Whitehair and let the big man spike it?
“What I’ve learned,” Trubisky said recently, “is that there’s always somebody watching me. Fans are watching. Little kids are watching. My teammates are watching. I definitely want to keep that in mind with every little thing I do. I have to carry myself in a way that’s positive.”
Wait. The Bears quarterback cares about body language?
Actually, he cares deeply. And that’s only part of his dedicated pursuit to develop into an effective leader.
The midfielder is starring for Villarreal after a horror injury ended his Arsenal career. He tells of being cut up and put together again, his feelings for his former club and how close he came to retiring
“Every single person, every single person has a genetic potential ceiling. And it’s not the same, it’s not the same,” new Indiana strength and conditioning coach David Ballou said.
Reaching that pinnacle takes a commitment out of the pads, with no fans watching.
“A good strength coach can always elevate a guy,” Ballou said.
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Research Blog from
… In Freakonomics, there’s a chapter on why, if drug dealers make so much money, why do so many of them live with their mothers? (The chapter is reprinted here.) The answer is that drug dealing (like professional sports or acting) is a “lottery” — many people try and make no money, and very few people get to the top and make lots of money. All those high school and college football players who are waking up early to pump weights have a growth mindset — they believe that their effort will take them to the NFL. However, the vast majority are *wrong*. They won’t make it. There is no apparent connection between growth mindset and success.
That’s how I saw the ICER paper on fixed and growth mindset. If the outcome variable is academic success, growth mindset isn’t going to always pay-off. Sometimes the deck is stacked against you, and even if you think you can win, you won’t.
YouTube, Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute from
It’s no secret that the teen brain is unique, and recent research from Daphna Shohamy, a neuroscientist at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, has confirmed striking differences in the brains of adolescents as compared to adults.
These differences shed light on the biology behind their reward-seeking behavior, and reveal that it actually evolved to help teens navigate the world around them during a pivotal time in their lives.
Pittsburgh’s Liquid X Printed Metals has announced a new partnership with Bonbouton to build temperature and pressure sensors directly on textiles.
Bonbouton, based in New York City, has become a leader in thermal sensing using the smart textile platform. Through the company’s inkjet-printable graphene technology licensed from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Bonbouton is developing thin and mechanically flexible sensors for wearable physiology monitoring.
MoBi, developed by John Foxe at the University of Rochester, combines VR, EEG, and motion capture sensors to study movement difficulties associated with neurological disorders.
According to Foxe, “The MoBI system allows us to get people walking, using their senses, and solving the types of tasks you face every day, all the while measuring brain activity and tracking how the processes associated with cognition and movement interact.”
Motion sensor and EEG data, collected while a subject is walking in a virtual environment, are synchronized, allowing researchers to track which areas of the brain are being activated when walking or performing task. Brain response while moving, performing tasks, or doing both at the same time, is analyzed.
StarTribune.com, Access Vikings, Ben Goessling from
Six years ago, when Adrian Peterson returned from a torn ACL in just under nine months to start the Vikings’ Week 1 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, his comeback was considered a miracle of modern science.
And what Peterson did that season, after rehabbing with Russ Paine in Houston, still stands out as one of the great feats in the modern NFL: 2,097 yards, 13 rushing and receiving touchdowns and a MVP award as the Vikings went from 3-13 to 10-6 and a playoff berth.
Peterson’s comeback also had the effect of demystifying ACL recovery to some degree, and perhaps that’s why few have batted an eye at Dalvin Cook’s return, just over 11 months removed from his knee injury, to the Vikings’ starting lineup. Cook had more time to recover than Peterson, and he was only 22 at the time of his injury.
… Their rehabilitations from major surgery, which has spanned less than six months, are as remarkable as they are surprising — but Auburn coach Gus Malzahn believes they could make a big impact after once hoping publicly one of the two receivers might be healthy by the halfway point in the season.
“The last two weeks they’ve been practicing full speed with everything that goes with it,” Malzahn said. “It just kind of one of those deals. They’ve been cleared for two weeks and we just felt like to try to get their feet wet a little bit. But, no, they’re going to be ready to play. They both had very fast recoveries and I think it was good to get them out there and get their feet wet.”
Malzahn announced Tuesday both players had been cleared for a full return to practice, but said he did not know when they would return. Fans received their answer quickly in the first half when both players returned to the field.
… it’s clear: tennis careers aren’t what they used to be. In the last decade, tennis players have become far more likely to extend their time in the professional circuit into their late 20s and 30s. A decade ago, the typical male player in the top 50 was about 25 years old; today, he’s almost 30. For women, the median age of a top-50 player jumped up from about 23 in 2008 to 27 in 2018.
… [Lu] Liu said that there are many cases when the most famous works of an individual came in sequence. She cited Peter Jackson, director of “The Lord of the Rings” film series; Vincent Van Gogh, whose most famous paintings were completed late in his career; and Albert Einstein, whose four published papers in his “miracle year” of 1905 contributed significantly to the foundation of modern physics.
“[A hot streak] doesn’t just matter to these individuals,” said Liu. “It matters to society as well.”
Liu said that this could help to understand the innovative process, and have the potential to discover and cultivate individuals during a hot streak.
As the research shows that hot streaks do in fact exist in creative careers, the researchers hope to apply the research methods to more domains, including musicians, inventors and entrepreneurs.
… Simon Sinek is a bestselling author and leadership expert whose TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” has been viewed over 40 million times, making it one of the most popular TED Talks of all time. He recently joined Jordan Harbinger on The Jordan Harbinger Show to discuss how to build trusting relationships, and why we all get by with a little help from our friends.
Jordan: I would love it if we could go over how trust is influenced by shared values and culture, and the role that trust plays in groups. The example you give in Find Your Why was how you run into Americans overseas and you’re like, “Hey, you’re from New York, I’m from Michigan—we should totally hang out for the day!” Whereas if I met somebody from New York here in Silicon Valley, I would not care at all.
Simon: Trust is essential because we want to know that somebody’s got our backs. Like how do you know your friends are your friends? Love and trust and all of these things, they’re feelings, not instructions. You cannot order people to trust each other. They are feelings, and they are born out of the environment. The environment comes from shared values and shared belonging.