Everson Griffen has not revealed exactly what led him to this moment. But whatever it was, it has caused the big, strong, Pro Bowl defensive end to seek help for something he freely admits is “bigger than football.”
Griffen returned to the Minnesota Vikings on Wednesday and, like many other high-profile athletes, he explained his five-week absence from the team, saying he had used it to learn “a lot about the man outside of football.” He offered no details on reported incidents that led to his hiatus or treatment, but he plans to use his platform to help others who may be struggling to maintain mental health.
“If you are, you know, you need to ask for help,” Griffen said in a news conference. “You need to go out there and find a good support team and do the right things to be able to take care of yourself. That’s what it’s all about. Take care of yourself and take care of your actions and doing the right things.”
… Gomez is still only 21 and it is rare to hear a young player talk so openly about a fundamental issue. But it is hard to argue. Really good teams don’t play on the hoof and so far this season there have been signs that Liverpool are moving to the next stage of development.
Ben Bishop entered his second season with the Dallas Stars assuming things would be different. In Year 1, his coach was Ken Hitchcock, who took the team’s defense from 29th in the NHL to seventh. But Hitch’s reunion with Dallas lasted only one season. Jim Montgomery left the University of Denver to replace the legendary coach earlier this year, taking his first NHL head-coaching gig with the Stars.
“It’s different,” Bishop told ESPN. “You get a chance to play for Ken Hitchcock, a Hall of Fame coach, all those wins. And then Monty comes in and he’s got a young voice, first-year coach in the league, brings a lot of energy and a different style of play. More offensive. More upbeat. Hitch was more defensive. They both work in their own ways, but it’s a new coach, new approach and a new attitude, I guess, around the locker room.
“Hitch’s system really limited the shots from other teams. You’re not really complaining about that, but sometimes you’d like a little more action. There’s pros and cons to every coach I’ve ever had. But you have to go out there and stop the puck. It doesn’t really matter what systems they’re running. At the end of the day, the goalie has to do his job, and that’s keeping the puck out of the net.”
Archie Knox has seen Steven Gerrard emulate the European record set by himself and Walter Smith.
And having matched the former Rangers management duo with statistics, the ex-Ibrox hero says the new man is doing the same with actions day in and day out at Murray Park as he instils old-school practices and ethics back into the club.
… “I want to try to enforce the idea of the team, because it’s what we are. We want to make each other better every day and at every moment,” head of fitness Antonio Dias says of the coaching and backroom staff.
“We have two close rooms – the physio room and the gym,” adds his colleague Joao Lapa, “and we do our best to keep [the players] away from the physio and closer to us and the pitch!”
As with most professional sports operations, there are no stones left unturned at Wolves.
… Nearly any situation can trigger performance anxiety, from competing in a sporting event, to taking a test in school, to parallel parking while your friends are watching. People who aren’t normally anxious can suffer from performance anxiety. For example, even elite athletes or musicians can choke under pressure.
BrainFacts.org spoke with Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College at Columbia University, about performance anxiety, choking under pressure, and what we can do to perform our best.
Background Since 2000, there has been a rapid growth in training load and injury research. In the past 5 years alone, a total of 38 studies (from as many as 24 different research groups, and 11 different sports) have investigated the relationship between loading profiles and injury. Despite the growing body of literature examining training load and injury, there is often a disconnect between this evidence and the actual training programmes prescribed in practice. In this paper, some common myths and misconceptions about training load and its role in injury and performance are reviewed.
We went from being a data collection team of 5 to a team of 85 in just over eight months – hiring, training, and monitoring new recruits at this pace has been a huge challenge! Every collector has to go through intense training, tests, they watch hours and hours of video, and are measured not only on their speed, accuracy and attention to detail but on their attitude, their ability to work closely with their team and contribute towards common goals – to motivate not only themselves, but their team members as well.
We encourage everyone to have and share ideas, to contribute towards the continuous improvement of our products. I have worked at many companies who create an ‘Innovation Team’ – at StatsBomb we purposely do the opposite. Everyone is encouraged to innovate – across our tech teams, data science and analysis teams, right through to our data collectors and helpdesk operators.
The psychology involved in this is fascinating – how do you create a motivating culture that includes leaders, innovators, young team members, experienced team members?
The NFL allocates its resources to acquire players, and the teams don’t have to use facilities as an inducement in recruiting. If only there was enough money…
Neilsen Norman Group, Kate Moran and Kim Flaherty from
… In our studies for the Life Online project, many participants had similar experiences: they were interacting with a site or an app with goal in mind, but got distracted by other “temptations” in the online world. We call this phenomenon “the Vortex,” borrowing one of our participants’ own language.
The Vortex is a user-behavior pattern that begins with a single intentional interaction followed by a series of unplanned interactions. This unplanned chain of interactions creates a sense of being “pulled” deeper into the digital space, making the user feel out of control.
The phenomenon we describe here has a significant relationship to the concept commonly referred to as “digital addiction.” That language is inherently problematic, as it implies some sort of moral failing or weakness. It conflicts with the spirit of user-centered design — shaping products to serve humans, rather than changing humans to use a product. We define the Vortex as a user-behavior pattern, rather than a mental disorder.
University of Massachusetts Amherst, News & Media Relations from
Computer science researchers Deepak Ganesan and Tauhidur Rahman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as part of a multi-institution team, have received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore how work performance may be affected by shift work and disrupted circadian rhythm, the 24-hour internal body clock that cycles between sleepiness and alertness.
Among other outcomes, cognitive performance, lost productivity and an increased incidence of accidents at work have been associated with shift work and disrupted sleep/wake patterns. This research is part of NSF’s “Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier” program. Ganesan and Rahman of UMass Amherst’s College of Computer and Information Sciences expect to receive about $630,000 for the study, which they’ll conduct with colleagues at Rice and Cornell.
In recent years, the term “concussion protocol” has become such a part of the NFL lexicon that everyone refers to it — from players to coaches to those of us who cover the league to all the fans who watch. But how many of us could actually describe the different elements of the protocol? Or identify the roughly 30 medical personnel present at every game?
Even as a medical professional who understands the terminology involved and has followed the evolution of the NFL concussion protocol over the years, it wasn’t until I had the opportunity to see the various elements and personnel in action that I could fully appreciate the working mechanics of the protocol on game day.
During the preseason, I had the opportunity to spend time before, during and after a game with Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, to get a close-up view of the league’s game-day protocol. While there were some components with which I was very familiar, there were also some revelations.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recognized the importance of sleep in wellness. He noted, “Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.” He equally recognized the value of nutrition, as he also said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” And so the deep roots of medicine established the vital nature of nutrition and sleep to well-being, and now emerging science shows how they are interrelated.
Sleep research scientist Teresa Arora, PhD, said, “Sleep doesn’t waste time, it’s good for the waist line.”1 But while much is known about the effects of sleep deprivation and its links to weight, what about the flipside? That is, nutrition has effects on sleep health and sleep disorders too. Researchers have accumulated a mouthful of science on how nutrition impacts sleep quality, circadian rhythms, and sleep architecture, and also plays a role in disorders such an insomnia, hypersomnia, and sleep apnea.
No conclusive studies point to one particular diet that is best for sleep. But various sources suggest that a variety of whole foods and a low-glycemic diet is helpful in improving sleep quality.
The Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers face off at the start of baseball’s World Series today (Oct. 23). They won’t be in a hurry to finish it.
The Red Sox and Dodgers were the two teams that played the longest average games in Major League Baseball’s regular season this year. Both averaged three hours and thirteen minutes per game, nine minutes longer than league overall.
… “In the good old days, you maybe didn’t have the organizational depth that you have now,” Real Salt Lake general manager Craig Waibel told ESPN FC in a phone interview. “I think what’s most overlooked in MLS is the staffing.”
The front office and coaching staffs are the most forward facing, but they’re not all that Waibel is referencing. Even small-market Salt Lake, for example, has 12 folks on its performance and medical staff alone.
“These little factors,” Waibel said, “these little positions that make a 3- to 5-percent difference, they add up, more than ever in the last three to five years. … It’s no longer a league where you just hire the head coach, and that’s that. It’s all about how all of those little puzzle pieces come together.”