… “It was awesome because it really took me out of my comfort zone,” Lake said. “I was supposed to experience it. That feeling of gratitude allowed me to play free. I’m really grateful for a coach like Heather (Olmstead) that pushed me and helped me to learn that playing sports isn’t always a walk in the park. I’m grateful that BYU got me prepared physically and mentally through competition.”
Dave Brailsford’s rest-day habit of provoking the French resurfaced again as the Tour de France took a 24-hour pause in Albi, a day after the home hero Thibaut Pinot had been unceremoniously worked over by Geraint Thomas and his Ineos teammates in gusting crosswinds.
While Pinot raged against his bad luck at his own team’s media conference, after an opening phase of the Tour in which he had hardly put a foot wrong, Brailsford appeared to relish the Frenchman’s predicament when he spoke to the media. “We are here to race,” the Ineos team principal said. “I live and breathe and think all day about sticking the knife in and, when you get the chance, twisting it.”
Brailsford’s blunt comments may yet come back to haunt him, despite a first part of the Tour that has lacked the bitterness of a year ago when French fans turned angrily on Chris Froome and what was then Team Sky throughout the Tour, after the four-time winner’s salbutamol investigation was dropped.
It’s 4:10 p.m. on Saturday in Portland, and Evan Jager finally has some free time. Already today, he’s spent 50 minutes running on an AlterG anti-gravity treadmill, another 50 minutes cross-training on the elliptical, and three hours doing rehabilitation work with physiotherapist Marilou Lamy, which includes deep-tissue massage, dry needling, and strengthening exercises.
“I’ve been so much more busy being injured than I ever was healthy,” says Jager, 30, the 2016 Olympic silver and 2017 World Championship bronze medalist in the steeplechase.
Yes, injured. That’s the reason why Jager has been conspicuously absent from the elite track & field circuit in 2019, why he hasn’t raced at all since August 30, 2018.
… In May, the World Health Organization announced that it is developing guidelines on mental well-being in the workplace and unveiled an expanded definition of “burnout,” based on new research in its International Classification of Diseases. Burnout is a syndrome resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed,” according to WHO’s description, characterized by feelings of exhaustion, reduced effectiveness, and negative or disconnected feelings toward one’s job.
Burnout is an issue for workers across the board, from highly paid executives to lower-wage workers who have to string together multiple jobs or deal with unpredictable schedules that can wreak havoc on arranging child care and paying bills.
In Japan, a country with such an intense work ethic that it has a word for “death from overwork” — karoshi — there’s a TV show called “I Will Not Work Overtime, Period!”
University of California-Los Angeles, Daily Bruin student newspaper, Martin Bilbao from
… About 64% of college students report feeling tired or sleepy during at least three days of the week, according to a fall 2018 research survey by the American College Health Association.
Despite the large percentage of cases similar to Ventura’s, sleep deprivation and its health consequences are often underreported, said Alon Avidan, vice chair of the neurology department and director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center.
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation journal from
Background
Ventilatory anaerobic threshold (VAT) is a useful submaximal measure of exercise tolerance; however, it must be visually determined. We developed a new mathematical method to objectively determine VAT. Methods
We employed two retrospective population data sets (A/B). Data A (from 128 healthy subjects, patients with cardiovascular risk factors, and cardiac subjects at institution A, who underwent symptom-limited cardiopulmonary exercise testing) were used to develop the method. Data B (from 163 cardiac patients at institution B, who underwent pre−/post-rehabilitation submaximal exercise testing) were used to apply the developed method. VAT (by V-slope) was visually determined (vVAT), assuming that the pre-VAT segment is parallel to the respiratory exchange ratio (R) = 1 line. Results
First, from data A, exponential fitting of ramp V-slope data yielded the equation y = bax, where a is the slope of the exponential function: a smaller value signified a less steep curve, representing less VCO2 against VO2. Next, a tangential line parallel to R = 1 was drawn. The x-axis value of the contact point was the derived VAT, termed the expVAT (VCO2) (calculated as LN (1/[b*LN(a)]/LN(a). This point represents an instantaneous ΔVCO2/ΔVO2 of 1.0. Second, in a similar way, the relation of VO2 vs. VE (minute ventilation) was fitted exponentially. The tangent line that crosses zero was drawn and the x-axis value was termed expVAT (VE) (calculated as 1/LN(a). For data A, the correlation coefficients (r) of vVAT versus VAT (CO2), and VAT (VE) were 0.924 and 0.903, respectively (p < 0.001), with no significant difference between mean values with the limits of agreement (1.96*SD of the pair difference) being ±276 and ± 278 mL/min, respectively. expVAT (VCO2) and expVAT (VE) significantly correlated with VO2peak (r = 0.971, r = 0.935, p < 0.001). For data B, after cardiac rehabilitation, expVAT (CO2) and exp. (VE) (mL/min) increased from 641 ± 185 to 685 ± 201 and from 696 ± 182 to 727 ± 209, respectively (p < 0.001, p < 0.008), while vVAT increased from 673 ± 191 to 734 ± 226 (p < 0.001). During submaximal testing, expVAT (VCO2) underestimated VAT, whereas expVAT (VE) did not.
Conclusions
Two new mathematically-derived estimates to determine VAT are promising because they yielded an objective VAT that significantly correlated with VO2peak, and detected training effect as well as visual VAT did. [full text]
This study investigated the relationship between the ground reaction force-time profile of a countermovement jump (CMJ) and fatigue, specifically focusing on predicting the onset of neuromuscular versus metabolic fatigue using the CMJ. Method
Ten recreational athletes performed 5 CMJs at time points prior to, immediately following, and at 0.5, 1, 3, 6, 24 and 48 h after training, which comprised repeated sprint sessions of low, moderate, or high workloads. Features of the concentric portion of the CMJ force-time signature at the measurement time points were analysed using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and functional PCA (fPCA) to better understand fatigue onset given training workload. In addition, Linear Mixed Effects (LME) models were developed to predict the onset of fatigue. Results
The first two Principal Components (PCs) using PCA explained 68% of the variation in CMJ features, capturing variation between athletes through weighted combinations of force, concentric time and power. The next two PCs explained 9.9% of the variation and revealed fatigue effects between 6 to 48 h after training for PC3, and contrasting neuromuscular and metabolic fatigue effects in PC4. fPCA supported these findings and further revealed contrasts between metabolic and neuromuscular fatigue effects in the first and second half of the force-time curve in PC3, and a double peak effect in PC4. Subsequently, CMJ measurements up to 0.5 h after training were used to predict relative peak CMJ force, with mean squared errors of 0.013 and 0.015 at 6 and 48 h corresponding to metabolic and neuromuscular fatigue. Conclusion
The CMJ was found to provide a strong predictor of neuromuscular and metabolic fatigue, after accounting for force, concentric time and power. This method can be used to assist coaches to individualise future training based on CMJ response to the immediate session. [full text]
… Daily monitoring of a player’s workload has become crucial, and GPS technology has provided coaches/sport scientists with the necessary tools to quantify the physical demands of their sport, meaning they can make decisions based off objective data rather than previous experiences and subjective opinions (3).
The use of STATSports Apex system allows both coaches and practitioners to monitor players training to effectively manage player conditioning levels and prevent injuries by exposing athletes to the right amount of training on the right days.
The use of thresholds is an effective method of ensuring your athletes are exposed to the correct amount of training leading up to match day (MD) and allowing you to make real-time decisions based on these workloads.
… The smart patch in question was developed by researchers at GE Global Research, Binghamton University, UConn, NextFlex, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Featuring flexible electronics, it attaches to the body and continuously measures its wearer’s hydration levels. It does this by analyzing potassium and sodium in the sweat, in addition to their sweat rate. As well as helping soldiers, its creators think it could be used to help battle dehydration in people working outside as well as athletes.
“What is special is that these measurements are done in real-time and on a continuous and non-obtrusive basis,” Azar Alizadeh, principal scientist at GE Global Research, told Digital Trends. “The raw electrical signals corresponding to the sweat volume sensor and the two electrolyte sensors are transmitted wirelessly to an external mobile device, where through an app the person can track his or her sweat rate and sweat electrolyte levels without any interference with what he or she was doing. Just like we can track heart rate or steps with a fitness device in real time, our device can seamlessly measure sweat. Today, this can’t be done as readily without stopping to take measurements such as a urine sample.”
In this tutorial, you will learn how to perform video classification using Keras, Python, and Deep Learning. … This tutorial will serve as an introduction to the concept of working with deep learning in a temporal nature, paving the way for when we discuss Long Short-term Memory networks (LSTMs) and eventually human activity recognition.
… With the stakes so high, understanding fan loyalty and behavior is crucial. In his book “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are,” Seth Stephens-Davidowitz explores why he is a die-hard Mets fan and his brother Noah hates baseball. Examining Facebook data on who “likes” baseball teams, he found that the probability of being a male Mets fan depends crucially on your year of birth, with those born in either 1962 or 1978 being the most likely to root for the Mets as adults. The reason, he argues, is that fan behavior solidifies at around age 7 or 8, and the Mets won the World Series in 1969 and 1986. World Series wins also affect 19- and 20-year-olds, but only with about one-eighth the force they exert on an 8-year-old. Stephens-Davidowitz likes the Mets because he was the right age in 1986; his brother was not.
These patterns may soon fade, however, because the core consumer of sports is changing. The new report, from the Sports Innovation Lab, co-founded by former Olympic gold-medal-winning ice hockey player Angela Ruggiero, suggests we are entering an era of the “fluid fan,” whose allegiances and attention shift rapidly. In the U.K. already, almost half of younger fans now support more than one soccer team — something that would have been hard to imagine decades ago.
With all entities competing for talent and $, while tacitly working together, the worst environment arises: Selling dreams to more players ($$) and involving talent in more events (HS to AAU to USAB to NCAA camps to NBA camps back to HS).
This schedule all but eliminates opportunities for multiple sports, vacations, recovery, etc. These entities may aim to educate on importance of these things, but their actions all but prohibit them.
… The rule is, the batter/baserunner may steal first base on any pitch not caught in flight. Basically, it’s the dropped-third-strike rule widened to seatbelt-extender size. The defensive play at first base is a force. The batter must have both feet out of the batter’s box and have made an affirmative move toward first to be considered in the act of stealing the base. This is the umpire’s judgment. Any runners on base are at that point in play as well, meaning, for example, an existing runner at first may be forced out at second base. Also, the batter/baserunner must commit before the first defensive player fields the ball.
A successful steal of first base is, again, recorded as a fielder’s choice, so as an out, with no stolen base awarded. It is, therefore, a selfless act, not unlike chopping a two-hopper to the second baseman with none out and a runner at second base, which is worth a few half-hearted high fives and an uncomfortable turn in the arbitration hearing.
