… So aside from his otherworldly leg, what sets Dickson apart from his punting peers? The answer comes not from the limbs, but the brain.
“Michael is very confident in his abilities, he’s not intimidated by the crowds, not intimidated by the NFL, by any older players” Seahawks special teams coordinator Brian Schneider said. “He’s 100% himself, and he’s able to shut out everything and keep his routine regardless of the situation.”
Texas special teams coach Craig Naivar echoed Schneider’s sentiment. “Mistakes do not bother him,” Naivar said. “He trusts his process, he doesn’t overanalyze, it’s onto the next kick which is different than a lot of guys I’ve worked with.”
While the physical tools were present since his nascent days at Prokick, Dickson’s mental edge took time to develop.
Blackhawks’ starter Corey Crawford still isn’t back to 100 percent after suffering a concussion last December, and that’s cause for concern as Chicago looks to battle its way back to the post-season.
Here’s the good news for the Chicago Blackhawks: they know what has been ailing Corey Crawford. Since last December, the 33-year-old goaltender has been battling concussion symptoms. And while he hasn’t seen game action since Dec. 23, 2017, when he was yanked after little more than 13 minutes of work, Crawford has been taking the ice for pre-practice workouts with Chicago’s goaltending coach Jimmy Waite and the hope is the Blackhawks will have their No. 1 netminder back this season.
But here’s the bad news: neither the Blackhawks nor Crawford knows exactly when a return can be expected. It might be the season opener, it might not be. He could make his first appearance by mid-October, or he could still be on the shelf. There’s no timeline for recovery, and that’s incredibly worrisome for a Blackhawks group that is entering this season not just fighting to return to the post-season, but attempting to stay relevant in a division and conference that appears primed to leave them in the dust.
Being able to hold your pace in the final stretch of a race or long run isn’t just about doing enough miles and speedwork. You also need to be able to keep running with your best form, and doing so probably includes strengthening your Achilles tendons, two new studies suggest.
In one study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 25 runners did a treadmill 10K at close to race pace for the distance. Researchers measured the work being done by the runners’ ankle, knee, and hip joints approximately twice a mile throughout the 10K.
The researchers found that, over the course of the 10K, some of the work initially done by the runners’ ankle was increasingly picked up by the runners’ knees and hips. This switch in loads likely leads to less efficient form. According to the researchers, this finding could explain why running economy, or how much oxygen is needed to maintain a certain pace, gets worse as we fatigue.
Do you want to run faster? Jump higher? Train longer?
Electric brain stimulation may be the answer, after a University of Canberra study found increases in physical endurance in testing the method. Even Wallabies coach Michael Cheika endorsed the technique.
University of Canberra assistant professor Andrew Flood demonstrates the transcranial direct current stimulation device used to deliver electric current to the brain.
In the pursuit of marginal gains in elite sport, athletes and professional teams are constantly on the look out for something that can give them that extra edge.
Whether it’s the ancient Greeks trying to divine one’s character from the stars, or modern surveys that purport to tell you what type of person you are, experts have struggled to come up with a trustworthy personality test. Now, the largest study of its kind suggests people reliably shake out into four major personality types—including a brand new one that, surprisingly, most people will possess at some point during their life.
“I think this is an extremely impressive study,” says Richard Robins, a social psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who has been researching human personality for decades. Until now, “The field was plagued by relatively small samples and the use of different methods and data sets,” he says. “We needed somebody to come along and clean things up.”
The primary focus of this study was to determine whether scores obtained from the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) can predict dynamic balance in young, healthy adults. Thirty-four physically active participants completed the FMS, and balance was assessed using measures of composite reach (CR) distance and overall stability indices (OSI) derived from Y Balance and Biodex Balance System testing, respectively. Results indicated that higher overall FMS scores were associated with better CR and OSI, and participants with FMS composite scores greater than 14 exhibited better CR compared to those with composite scores less than or equal to 14. In addition, lasso penalized regression demonstrated that (a) scores of 2 on the deep squat and 3 on the trunk stability push-up movements predicted a greater CR and (b) higher shoulder mobility scores and a rotary stability score of 3 predicted better OSI. We conclude that dynamic balance in young, active men and women can be predicted by specific FMS item scores
Continuous monitoring of the central blood pressure waveform from deeply embedded vessels such as the carotid artery and jugular vein has clinical value for the prediction of all-cause cardiovascular mortality. However, existing non-invasive approaches, including photoplethysmography and tonometry, only enable access to the superficial peripheral vasculature. Although current ultrasonic technologies allow non-invasive deep tissue observation, unstable coupling with the tissue surface resulting from the bulkiness and rigidity of conventional ultrasound probes introduces usability constraints. Here, we describe the design and operation of an ultrasonic device that is conformal to the skin and capable of capturing blood pressure waveforms at deeply embedded arterial and venous sites. The wearable device is ultrathin (240 μm) and stretchable (with strains up to 60%), and enables the non-invasive, continuous and accurate monitoring of cardiovascular events from multiple body locations, which should facilitate its use in a variety of clinical environments.
ESSI will host its annual symposium where attendees can network and discuss the latest trends and innovations in sport science. This year’s agenda and focus will feature a full day of talks and panel discussions related to athlete rest and recovery, strength and conditioning in athletes, safety in sport and exercise, and youth sports, among other topics. The symposium is geared toward industry partners, athletic leaders and U-M faculty, researchers, clinicians and staff who work in exercise and sport science.
… this watch comes with an electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor, which has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to monitor a user’s heart’s electrical activity at any given time. It can observe a user’s heart rate, as well as atypical beating patterns. The first company to receive FDA clearance for something similar was AliveCor, which used a smartphone app and a small monitor to provide users with an ECG. (AliveCor also partnered with Apple to make an Apple Watch wristband that could carry out the same function.) Apple’s newest watch, which will go on sale later this month, is capable of conducting its own ECGs, and sending alerts to its wearer if their heart rate seems too low, or if it detects a specific kind of irregular heart rate tied to a condition called atrial fibrillation, or AFib for short.
But these capabilities don’t mean much.
An ECG is used by a physician to see how the electrical system of your heart is working, Andrew Moore, an emergency department physician at the Oregon Health and Science University, told Quartz. In a health care facility, a patient would have 12 different stickers, or leads, placed all over her chest and on certain spots on her arm and leg, to give doctors a clear picture of the four chambers of her heart’s movement.
The new Apple Watch, however, has the equivalent of one lead on your wrist,
The National Football League Players Assn. got in on a nearly $23 million Series A round for Miach Orthopaedics and its knee repair technology, the Boston-based company said today.
Miach is developing bio-engineered implants for surgical connective tissue repair, aiming first at anterior cruciate ligament repair with its Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair product, a sponge that’s designed to act as a scaffold to stimulate healing.
The $22.5 million A round, co-led by Amzak Health Investors and DSM Venturing, also included the NFLPA and other investors, Miach said. The proceeds are earmarked for ongoing clinical work and fast-tracking the manufacturing process for the BEAR implant, the company said, noting that it’s treated nearly 100 patients in a clinical study.
The NCAA Innovations in Research and Practice Grant Program supports research and data-driven pilot projects designed to enhance student-athlete psychosocial well-being and mental health. Research topics may include, but are not limited to, managing transitions (e.g., from recruit to first-year student; transferring between universities; adapting from youth sports to college sports environment; developing independence from parents), identity development, stress management, substance use, bystander intervention, cultivating healthy relationships, career exploration and sport exit strategies. Funded projects must demonstrate potential to result in campus-level programming that can positively impact the well-being of NCAA student-athletes at a range of member institutions.
Texas Health Resources has entered an agreement with Qatar-based Aspire Zone Foundation to explore a North Texas partnership. A news release from the Arlington-based health system says the partnership would expand its sports medicine services and create a “center of excellence” in North Texas.
The memorandum of understanding, signed on Wednesday, does not necessarily promise future collaboration. A Texas Health representative said there’s no timeline on next steps and that the details of how a partnership would present itself are yet to be determined. The spokesperson didn’t say where a center of excellence might be located or what it would entail.
For the time being, the Buffalo Bills appear to be taking a methodical approach to the use of analytics in their football operation.
General Manager Brandon Beane said the team’s coaching and player-personnel staffs are steadily enhancing their day-to-day work interaction with Luis Güílamo, whom the Bills hired in January as their director of analytics and application development.
As Beane pointed out in a recent conversation with The Buffalo News, there’s a growth period continuing as Güílamo gains greater familiarity with the coaches.
“He assists with game-plan stuff, so he’s learning, ‘This coach likes these stats and likes them organized like this … This coordinator likes it like this,’ ” Beane said. “He’s currently building his template for those guys from a game-plan standpoint so that he can deliver them a product on Mondays, and then off he goes.”
The Los Angeles Clippers are hiring senior Sports Illustrated fawning-profile-writer Lee Jenkins for … some sort of front office basketball operations position?
Wondering what the hell an “Executive Director of Research and Indentity” is? First of all, “indentity” is probably a typo. Wojnarowski’s first tweet—since deleted—described the job as “Executive Director of Research and Insight,” which was even more vague and confusing.
Wednesday was a historic occasion for Juventus Women. Everyone knows the men’s team have been synonymous with success in Europe over the years and that’s certainly what the women are trying to build as well after we began our Champions League campaign with a 2-2 draw against the Danish champions, Brondby.
This is the first time Juventus have been in this competition and we are not seeded, so that meant we could have been drawn against anyone including the reigning champions, Lyon, or Wolfsburg. At this stage you want to feel confident you can at least compete so Brondby was a good draw in that sense.
Because the Women’s Champions League doesn’t have group stages, there is a lot of pressure on the draw to be favourable