… Nobbs has missed a lot of camps over the past 12 months, though she has been invited into several of them given her stature and leadership role within the group and traveled to the World Cup in France to do some media work, but could only watch as her teammates took to the field.
After missing a major tournament, the team’s SheBelieves Cup win in March, and the first camp back post-World Cup last month, the midfielder admits it was nice to feel a sense of excitement again after such a lengthy spell without a call-up.
“It was weird because I forgot what the excitement of being called up again is like. I can’t believe it’s been so long but it was exciting, I even asked Beth [Mead], ‘Have you got that email yet?’ because I was wondering if this was the camp I was going to come to — it was a good moment.”
Kristaps Porzingis hasn’t played in an NBA game since Feb. 6, 2017, when he tore his ACL after landing awkwardly from a dunk over Giannis Antetokounmpo. In the time since, he’s worked hard on his health, not just rehabbing from that injury, but reshaping himself into a more powerful player. Oh, and he was also traded from the New York Knicks to the Dallas Mavericks, and signed a five-year, $148 million contract with his new team this summer.
Now, he’s completely healthy, and at media day on Monday he raved about how he’s feeling heading into the season. In continuance of his efforts in the weight room, Porzingis has bulked up to 242 pounds, which is the heaviest he’s been in his career.
… His progress isn’t solely football-related. He’s brushing and flossing his teeth with his right hand again, he told WWL’s Bobby Hebert on Wednesday, adding he’s strong enough to grip a glass of water, too. Brees said to Zach Strief earlier this week that he’s already thrown a Nerf football at his surgeon.
“I’m not rushing back just for the sake of rushing back,” Brees told Hebert. “I’m trying to get back as quickly as I can, as healthy as I can and as effective as I can. So I’ll evaluate that as I go along here.”
But Brees’ speedy path to recovery isn’t unprecedented.
He owes his flossing capabilities to Arthrex’s miniscule medical device called InternalBrace. Originally developed in 2013 in Scotland to combat the ankle sprains of rugby and soccer players, the hand and wrist-specific FDA-cleared device launched in 2015.
… Over the past year, William & Mary has assembled a dream team to launch a new training model that promises to promote the same level of excellence in athletics as the university does in academics. Already the department has seen significant reductions in injuries and greater performance from student-athletes.
Called the “high-performance model for sport,” or HPMS, the training regimen aims to reverse-engineer what it takes to perform at an elite level while improving the student-athlete experience and promoting wellness and increased safety.
Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Elton Brand announced today promotions and staff additions for the team’s basketball operations department ahead of the 2019-2020 NBA season.
Body composition testing is a valuable tool if you’re looking to lose weight, put on muscle mass or want to improve your sporting performance. Nick Beer explains three popular body composition tests
The last line of defense and the beginning of attacks – goalkeepers are integral pieces of all successful teams, if not overlooked. To gain insight into a quite misunderstood position and their training methodology, we interview Mirza Harambasic, a goalkeeper coach for the academy of MLS’ Real Salt Lake.
That Alberto Salazar – one of the world’s most famous athletics coaches – has been found guilty of doping violations will send shockwaves through the sport. Here, Mark Daly – the BBC reporter whose Panorama programme sparked the United States Anti-Doping Agency investigations – reveals the inside story of Salazar’s downfall.
Any athlete will stress the importance of training in the offseason. Strength and conditioning is a vital part to any level of athletics, and even small changes in workout programs can have a significant impact on player performance.
Assistant strength and conditioning coach Miguel Rivera is hoping that his approach to training athletes will have a sizable impact on Penn’s athletic performance. Rivera has stressed high-frequency workouts he calls “micro-lifts,” as senior wide receiver Kolton Huber noted.
“Coach Rivera breaks workouts up into micro-lifts. Instead of being in the weight room twice a week lifting for an hour or an hour and a half, we’re doing a lot more explosive exercise that is spread out over four or five days,” Huber said. “We’re doing less reps and less sets but there is more mobility emphasized. His workouts help get us warmed up right before practice, and we don’t have to spend as much time on warm-ups as a result.”
Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine from
Purpose Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury prevention programs have been shown to have mixed success in reducing injury rates, raising the question whether these programs are effectively targeting biomechanical mechanisms of injury. The current study examined the efficacy of a biomechanically informed ACL injury prevention training program in reducing injury risk and injury incidence and investigated its effect on athletic performance.
Participants Twenty-six elite female field hockey players participated in this study.
Methods Athletes participated in a 2-yr injury prevention training program. Injury incidence (i.e., lower limb and ACL) and athletic performance (i.e., strength, speed, and aerobic power) were measured during a control season and after two intervention seasons. Biomechanical ACL injury risk factors were recorded during unplanned sidestepping at baseline and after intensive (9 wk: 4 × 20 min·wk−1) and maintenance (16 wk: 3 × 10 min·wk−1) training phases for a subset of athletes (n = 17).
Results Training was effective in reducing ACL and lower limb injury incidence after the 2-yr program, where zero ACL injuries occurred after implementation (vs 0.4 per 1000 player hours in the control year). High-risk athletes reduced their peak knee valgus moments by 30% (P = 0.045) and demonstrated improvements in desirable muscle activation strategies after intensive training. The majority of benefits elicited in intensive training were retained during the maintenance phase. One-repetition max strength, beep test scores, and sprint times improved or were maintained over the 2-yr intervention period.
Conclusions Biomechanically informed injury prevention training was successful in reducing both biomechanical ACL injury risk factors and ACL injury incidence while maintaining and/or improving athletic performance. It is important to consider the biomechanical mechanisms of injury when designing injury prevention programs.
The new high-accuracy tactical-grade STIM318 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) from Sensonor is designed to provide greatly increased accelerometer performance to support demanding guidance and navigation applications. Its performance can in many applications competitively replace fiber-optic gyros (FOGs).
Offering improved system performance with respect to robustness, reliability, size, weight, power and cost, it is designed for use in autonomous machine control, UAV payloads, satellites, portable target acquisition systems, land navigations systems, turret stabilization, missile stability and navigation, and mortar aiming systems.
Marathon runners and race walkers at the world athletics championships in Doha have been offered pill thermometers to monitor their reaction to the severe heat, IAAF president Sebastian Coe said on Thursday.
The road races will take place at midnight to alleviate the effects of the brutal conditions although the IAAF has predicted that the air temperature will still be around 30 degrees Celsius. Track and field events will take place at the Khalifa stadium which is air-conditioned and will not be affected.
… Both Groner and Dimoff chose to participate in a study being undertaken by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations), and they swallowed electronic pills that measured their core temperature during the race, an effort by by the sport’s governing body to understand more about the condition of competitors racing in extreme heat.
“It’s good data for the sport,” Groner said. “I’ll do anything for research. I’m a nurse!”
The former New England Patriots star backtracked after recent comments about brain trauma. But there are plenty of misunderstandings about the condition
Elevated levels of GFAP, a marker of axonal injury and traumatic brain injury, may help triage patients with more subtle injury undetected on CT, a new analysis suggests.
… Some advocates want a temporary substitute, which would give doctors and players enough time to evaluate the injury before deciding to use a permanent substitution. Others advocate for a head injury sub where it wouldn’t cost the team a substitution to take off a player who shows signs of a concussion. There are other creative possibilities, like having the opposing team take a player off so each team is down a player during the concussion test to keep the competition level.
“I’m fine trying anything but it’s got to be the correct rule,” North Carolina Courage coach Paul Reilly told Yahoo Sports. “I don’t know what the correct rule is though – I’ve not the foggiest idea what you’d do. It’s the same with VAR, they tried it in the Women’s World Cup and it didn’t work so well, but it will eventually be something we have to have in our league.”
Whatever the changes look like, they are clearly needed – especially in the NWSL. Some studies show concussions have a greater impact on women, and female soccer players suffer concussions at a higher rate than their male counterparts.
The Miami Heat have opened a new sports medicine center in Coral Gables, marking the first time an NBA team has bought the rights to a medical facility.
The Miami Heat Sports Medicine Center stands on the campus of Doctors Hospital at 5000 University Drive.
… “These papers provide a nice counterbalance to the current norm in nutritional epidemiology where scientists with strong advocacy tend to overstate their findings and ask for major public health overhauls even though the evidence is weak,” said Stanford meta-researcher John Ioannidis, a longtime critic of nutrition science who was not involved in the research.
… If you drink more than 130 mg of caffeine (3 or more cups of coffee) per day, your body’s sensitivity to the drug decreases, which hampers its performance-enhancing benefits. If you want to reap the rewards of caffeine, you need to reduce your caffeine intake in the weeks leading up to a sports performance. To maintain your sports performance at optimal levels, consider reducing your caffeine intake or switching to non-caffeinated beverages entirely.
When the New England Patriots decide to go for it on fourth down, or attempt a two-point conversion, how much does head coach Bill Belichick rely on analytics?
“Less than zero,” Belichick said Friday morning.
Belichick, who is preparing his 3-0 team for a road game against the 3-0 Buffalo Bills on Sunday, was asked the question in the aftermath of a notable decision by Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson on Thursday night. Pederson elected to go for a two-point conversion with 9:12 remaining in the third quarter. The attempt failed, with the Eagles going ahead 27-20 en route to a 34-27 victory over Green Bay.
Amid relocation rumors, rock-bottom payroll, stagnant attendance, and another playoff push, the Tampa Bay Rays continue to have to justify their existence. But inside the oft-derided Trop awaits both unexpected charm and a team that’s changing the way baseball is played. Can the Rays get fans under the dome to watch?
The first wave of NFL games is in the books. Le’Veon Bell is a Jet. Odell Beckham Jr. had to turn over his blue uniform for a brown (Browns) one. How many players did your favorite team lose this offseason? Who did they pick up? Where’s everybody going?
Every year, hundreds of players switch teams and sign big contracts in a mass exodus called NFL Free Agency. If you’re just tuning in for the beginning of the NFL season, your team might look very different from when you last saw them.
How do you make sense of player movement across teams and see the whole picture? I wondered the same thing, so I created a node network to visualize all of NFL free agency on one page.