… While the league marches on, the U.S. program cannot rest: The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo are a little more than a year away.
Whether Jill Ellis will continue to coach the team remains unresolved. Ellis, the first coach to win two Women’s World Cups, is entering the option year of her contract.
Because the next major competition is so soon, both she and the U.S. Soccer Federation would probably want to keep the status quo.
… Zach took a few days off to take in some Summer League, attend a team dinner Tuesday, and then get back to the business of continuing to establish his bona fides as the Bulls Wednesday played Charlotte. Zach, he’s ready.
“In Minnesota we were rebuilding like we are here, but now I feel we are getting to the stage where we have to push and start to be able to win and solidify ourselves in the league,” LaVine said. “I’m getting my body ready. Working on the explosive things, getting my legs and body ready for the whole 82. I haven’t played a whole 82 since my second year in the NBA and I’m aiming for that.
“Plus, I’m working on different facets of my game,” LaVine said. “I think I did a really good job of getting to the free throw line, but I can improve that.”
When Hyun-Jin Ryu started Game 1 of last year’s National League Division Series for the Dodgers, it was explained as a strategic decision meant to juggle rest, a circumstance that did not impact Clayton Kershaw’s ability to pitch a potential decisive Game 5. When he was named the Opening Day starter five months later, it was a byproduct of others — namely Kershaw and Walker Buehler — not being ready enough or healthy enough to begin the season.
Now Ryu will start the All-Star Game, picked ahead of every other pitcher in his league, and there is no need to justify it. Dave Roberts, the Los Angeles Dodgers manager who will lead the National League All-Stars into Tuesday’s Midsummer Classic, called it “a no-brainer.”
Football will always be a team sport, but clubs are increasingly realising the need to focus on the individual.
This summer, the role of Head of Player Development has been in vogue, with more and more clubs creating the role. Southampton have just appointed one (David Hughes), as have Blackburn Rovers (Damien Johnson) and Fulham (Liam Rosenior).
Huddersfield are currently recruiting for the position and Bristol City actually had one last season, with Rhys Carr moving from Head of Fitness and Conditioning to Player Development Coach.
Paul Caldbeck, MSC, ASCC, CSCS, is currently a consultant performance coach, and doctoral candidate at Liverpool John Moores University, where his research centers on contextual sprinting in soccer. He previously held the position of Physical Preparation Lead at a Premier League soccer club. Caldbeck has extensive experience in strength and conditioning and sport science across a range of sports.
Freelap USA: Contextual sprinting is important for coaches in sports such as soccer, lacrosse, American football, and rugby. Can you explain how to get started analyzing a sport beyond passing the eyeball test? How does one break down the small events during a game to summarize the patterns of the sport better?
Paul Caldbeck: Sprinting occurs during the most crucial moments of field-based team sports. This is typically as a result of an offensive player seeking separation from a defensive counterpart and vice versa, a defensive player attempting to maintain distance. These efforts often determine the eventual outcome of the match, and, ultimately, effectiveness in these key moments is how a player will be judged.
While these sports are obviously chaotic in nature, we can attempt to reduce match activities into key, defining contexts.
… UNC Asheville over the weekend confirmed the team is here, noting that in mid-2018 Triathlon Gold started looking for a new home, with Asheville being the last of 16 cities they visited. Clearly, Asheville rose to the top quickly.
“I had a meeting with (UNCA Director of Athletics) Janet R. Cone and she was very open to the idea of supporting a USA Triathlon elite program and combining with UNC Asheville’s athletic facilities,” Evans said in a release provided by the university. “The reasons we chose Asheville are many and varied, but probably the top of the list is that we wanted to find a place that the athletes could live year-round that also had world-class facilities and a good sense of community.”
… Although he is managing a team in the Tour de France for the 10th time, Brailsford refused to rule out leaving the sport behind. “You are constantly looking for things to challenge you and push you on. I don’t want to leave cycling, I love it too much, but equally I think this could be quite a challenge and it feels really invigorating.
“The culture and the dynamic around it chimes with me as a person. I don’t think anyone has said: ‘Here is the endgame’ but certainly the opportunities are there and clear to see and it is up to us to get our heads together and say: ‘How can we maximise the performance of each team, given the collaboration potential among all of us?’ That feels like an incredibly exciting opportunity.”
… “I saw athletes who have experienced overtraining syndrome and were still dealing with the consequences of it many years later. It not only ended their triathlon careers, but has also impacted their ability to perform normal, healthy physical activity as a retired athlete.”
Seeing this firsthand in her fellow triathletes, as well as realizing her own slippery slope of overtraining, made [Alexandra] Coates realize something had to give. Though she had an impressive career as an elite triathlete, including four podium finishes on the ITU circuit, she felt compelled to leave it behind to better understand the overtraining phenomenon that affects so many in her sport.
Since then, Coates has run headlong into her studies, publishing seven journal articles on overtraining as a PhD candidate. “I do feel like I am in a good position to study the physiological consequences of overreaching and overtraining,” says Coates.
Follow Timberwolves guard Josh Okogie on an exclusive behind the scenes tour of the Mayo Clinic Square facility and get a glimpse into the best-in-class training equipment available. [video, 5:29]
A recent study published in PLOS Medicine confirmed that a fitness tracker can help keep you accountable for years to come regarding maintaining activity levels.
Researchers found that after using a fitness tracker for 12 weeks, participants were more likely to increase their levels of physical activity years later.
Those who tracked their activity were also 44 percent less likely to have a bone fracture and 66 percent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.
… On a recent media event held in Beijing, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) introduced some contents and details of the recently launched Core Specification 5.1, amongst which, the direction finding function is a long-awaited new feature that helps devices know the direction of the Bluetooth signal, which in turn helps to develop centimeter-level, real-time positioning and indoor positioning solutions. I believe this is a major breakthrough in technology and a big wave of new applications is already on the road!
ACL injuries risk lifelong knee problems! There is a lot of evidence supporting ACL prevention programs yet very few programs adopt them. The FIFA11 program should be mandatory in kids sports.. From the level of modified through club teams. You tear your ACL… what’s next?
Health Canada has launched a crackdown on clinics offering unproven, potentially unsafe treatments that inject a patient with their own cells, ordering three dozen of them to stop offering the services immediately.
The clinics, located in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, advertised a variety of stem cell and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatments for numerous conditions, including heart problems, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, hair loss and skin rejuvenation. Many clinics claim stem cells can be extracted from individuals and injected back into the individual to promote healing. Platelet-rich plasma treatments involve getting a concentrated amount of platelets from a patient’s blood and injecting it back into the person, which is also supposed to encourage healing.
The crackdown comes after Health Canada published a position paper in May stating that most autologous cell therapies – those that use a patient’s own cells – have little evidence showing they work and can pose risks, such as cross-contamination between patients if equipment isn’t sterilized properly or potentially dangerous immune reactions.
Unlike some of their classmates, who stick to three main food groups—instant noodles, cold cereal and dining hall French fries—Division I athletes generally adhere to a strategic meal plan to ensure top-end performance on the field and for training. Prominent athletic programs are now investing in what their student-athletes put in their bodies in the form of millions of dollars.
Totaling more than $7 million dollars in 2016-17—the two most recent years that reports are available from most programs—the University of Arkansas spent the most of any public school on student-athlete meals. Housed in the new $23 million, 55,000-square-foot Jerry & Gene Jones Family Student-Athlete Success Center, Arkansas’ sports nutrition department spares no expense in feeding its athletes. Members of any sports team, even those not on scholarship, are provided two meals a day, in an effort to “fuel and refuel” the athletes.
Arkansas is not the only school focused on food. More than two dozen other programs spent more than $2 million in the two-year period, with Ohio State University, University of Michigan, University of Iowa and Texas A&M University rounding out the top five of the highest spending programs (full list below).
The United States women’s team has always played against its history as much as flesh-and-blood opponents. On Sunday, the current edition raised the bar ever higher.