The no-look pass, the left-handed throw, the deep bomb. The Chiefs QB is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the passing game. The secret, as Mahomes, his teammates, and coaches explain, is practicing the impossible throw until it becomes ordinary.
… Curry is halfway through his 10th season in the NBA. It took him only 655 games to catch Terry, who required 1,410 games to make 2,282 3s. Allen made his last 3-point shot in 2014 when he was 38 and playing in his 1,300th game. At his current pace over the past five years, Curry should surpass Allen’s mark when he’s just 32, and should become the first NBA player to hit over 3,000 triples just a few games later. If Curry stays healthy, there’s no reason to believe he won’t get to 4,000 or even 5,000 made triples by the time he’s done.
One of the keys to his greatness is his range. Look at how many of those 3s occur way beyond the arc. Simply put, Curry isn’t just the best 3-point shooter ever, he’s the best deep 3-point shooter ever.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: Ivo Karlovic is amazing. The Croatian didn’t play his first tour-level match until he was 22 years old, and he didn’t crack the top 100 for two years after that. Yet he eventually reached No. 14 in the world, won over 350 career matches, and claimed nine tour-level titles. Now, a few weeks shy of his 40th birthday, he’s coming off an ATP final in Pune, where he came within two points of ousting top-ten stalwart Kevin Anderson and ensured that he’ll remain in the top 100 through his milestone birthday next month.
The fact that Karlovic is one of the tallest men ever to play the game and that he holds a wide array of ace records is beside the point. (Though it’s certainly worthy of discussion, and I hope to dive into aging patterns and playing styles in a future post.) Yes, his first-strike brand of tennis, avoiding the bruising rallies that have worn down the likes of David Ferrer, may make it easier to compete at an advanced age. On the other hand, he remains of the few men on tour to regularly serve-and-volley, a tactic that scores of younger, quicker men can’t execute effectively. He is, quite simply, one of a kind.
… Most of us are not free to choose our work or school hours; we have little control over the lighting in our public spaces and external environment; and we are even forced to reprogramme our internal clock twice a year because of daylight saving time. The question that the idea of the “ChronoCity” raises is what changes could society make to better accommodate our body clocks?
Michael Wieden, Bad Kissingen’s business manager, came up with the ChronoCity concept in 2013. Having followed scientific developments in the field of chronobiology with interest, Wieden realised that not only could weaving these principles into the town’s fabric benefit its residents, it would also make Bad Kissingen stand out from rival spa towns. Bad Kissingen has always been about healing and health, he reasoned; so what better way to heal our modern society than by bringing it back into contact with natural light and sleep. Tourists could come and learn about the importance of internal time, then return home and implement the lessons in their everyday lives. Wieden contacted a chronobiologist called Thomas Kantermann, who was similarly enthused by the idea of launching a revolution in the way that society prioritises sleep.
Regardless of their education, income or race, most parents say a child-centered, time-intensive approach to parenting is the best way to raise their kids, a Cornell researcher has found.
The findings suggest intensive parenting has become the dominant model for how parents across the socio-economic spectrum feel children should be raised – regardless of whether the parent has the resources to actually do so.
“This points to exceptionally high standards for how parents should raise their kids. It suggests that parents are experiencing significant pressure to spend great amounts of both time and money on children,” said Patrick Ishizuka, the author of “Social Class, Gender, and Contemporary Parenting Standards in the United States,” published Dec. 22 in Social Forces.
… What drives healthy behaviours? Understanding this is standard practice in health communication. While knowledge of a given health issue is important, we all know our behaviour is rarely determined just by this. After all, many of us engage in unhealthy behaviours we know aren’t good for us.
Looking beyond the accurate facts that inform healthier choices, we need to explore whether attitudes and beliefs – i.e. what people think or feel about something – could shape health behaviour. For example, if you don’t think you are at risk of contracting an infection, then you are unlikely to do something to prevent it.
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, people were told that traditional burial practices, such as washing a body before burial, were very dangerous. But the belief in the importance of this practice and what it meant for a loved one’s afterlife was far more powerful than being told it was a life-threatening behaviour from a medical view.
These deeply rooted beliefs needed to be addressed head-on.
… When I compare these visual, holistic stories to the health records I’ve encountered, I can say with confidence that data aggregation alone cannot produce a person’s whole health story. Here are a few reasons why.
It is with great pleasure that I read the commentary by Casals and Finch on the role of the Sports Biostatistician in injury prevention (1). Thank you to the authors for considering this important area of focus. With that said, I hope my additional comments, despite being a relatively new Sports Injury Epidemiologist in the field (receiving my PhD in 2014), can continue the discussion and dialogue that the authors have generated since this publication.
First, as noted above, I prefer to describe myself as a “Sports Injury Epidemiologist” and not the term Casals and Finch use (“Sports Biostatistician”). Casals and Finch are forthright in denoting that their term is not well known and includes “the combination of statistics and epidemiology and public health or medicine and sports science (1, p.1457). Still, I am hesitant to use this term myself as my training was in epidemiology and not in biostatistics (although the expectation is that I have a good working knowledge of the latter as much as the former). I would not feel comfortable using a term that describes a role for which I was not trained. And although I cannot express the opinion of my former advisor and mentor, Dr. Steve Marshall, I would believe that he would agree, particularly as his faculty webpage describes himself as an epidemiologist and not a biostatistician (2).
The NCAA Sports Science Institute announced Monday a partnership with Hilinski’s Hope, the foundation set up last year in memory of Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski, to support the foundation’s work to improve mental health screening and awareness among student-athletes.
The announcement comes two days short of the first anniversary of the death of Hilinski, who ended his life shortly after returning to the Pullman campus for spring semester. His death stunned everyone who knew him. Hilinski had given little indication that he was struggling.
Women's Sports Foundation, The She Network, Kristen Gowdy from
Mental health is currently a hot topic that has especially manifested itself in the athletic world. At the Women’s Sports Foundation’s most recent Athlete Leadership Connection in October, we hosted a panel discussing mental health among champion athletes, and research published in November from the U.S. Center for Disease Control found that physical exercise tends to lighten mental health burdens.
But what about student-athletes? It would be easy to understand that those who have to balance a full load of college classes with commitment to their varsity sport would struggle with finding time to work on their mental health. However, a new study from the University of Wisconsin—Madison suggests the opposite. The research, which was published by the American Journal of Health Promotion in late December, found that Division I athletes reported stronger mental health than their non-athlete classmates.
I think your quote: “That first point is worth repeating. The condition of the surface matters a lot” invalidates a lot of the rest of the research. There’s not enough research on the effect of surface hardness & friction on injury risk as turf ages.
This is just a little research piece, nothing really. For research that I am hoping to do later, I needed an answer to questions of this nature:
If a player is active and in the major leagues at ages 25 and 34, how likely is it that he is more valuable at age 25 than at age 34?
I considered all players to be eligible for the study who (a) batted 400 or more times in a season (b) between 1900 and 2017. This excludes (most) players from 1981 and 1994, for example, but that doesn’t matter. Those who aren’t in the study don’t influence the conclusion of the study.
The exact answer to that question is that there were 333 players who had 400 or more plate appearances in a season at age 25 and also at age 34. Of those 333 players, 214.5 were credited with more Win Shares at age 25 than at age 34, and 118.5 were credited with more Win Shares at age 34 than at age 25.
… There’s a perception out there that playing on artificial grass increases the risk of injury, and Zlatan had hurt his knee not long before (not on turf).
The superstar is not alone in his perception. I remember being disappointed not to see Thierry Henry play at CenturyLink Field in 2013. In fact, a group of Canadian researchers surveyed 99 MLS players back in 2011 and found that the vast majority (93%) said they believe third-generation artificial turf (FieldTurf) increases the risk of injury.
But here’s the rub (heh): it doesn’t.
Over the next who-knows-how-many-words-this-will-end-up-being, I’ll try to convince you that there’s no difference in injury risk playing on FieldTurf vs natural grass. I’m going to do it the only way I know how: with science.
There’s a space on the basketball court called “mid-range.” It’s in between the three-point line and the key (the rectangular area around the basket). You never see players shoot from this “mid-range” area, but it’s actually not off-limits. In fact, people used to shoot these “mid-range” shots.
I know, I know. It’s crazy. But look at this shot chart that shows relative frequency by season for the National Basketball Association, compared against the 2009-10 season.
