… “I feel like last year I was more by myself, on the side, working. Now there’s a little more attention,” he continued. “I think that’s the only thing I’ve seen. It’s two games, (now three), so you can’t really tell. For what I’ve seen so far, it’s the help coming. … That’s a lot, a lot, a lot of turnovers. I’ve got to figure that out.”
The smart money says Siakam will do just that, and there were signs in Toronto’s blowout win Saturday against the Chicago Bulls that he’s already making some adjustments.
… It’s been a long, grueling year for Dunn, who has had both the good and bad fortune to be healthy the entire time. That’s how Dunn puts it anyway. “It’s a blessing to be healthy, but I will say I’ve been healthy going on four years,” she says, knocking on the wooden table to dispel any bad luck. “And I have not had a rest in four years I feel like.”
It’s interesting to hear Dunn frame it that way: if you’re healthy, it means you’re available, and if you’re available, you’re going to play, because your team needs you or your own competitive drive compels you or both. Of course no player wants to be injured or sit out, but at the same time, not all players have had to take on the same responsibilities Dunn has been carrying, with her acting as the Courage’s linchpin at the 10, and then taking on the serious weight of two-way defensive responsibilities for the national team. And at the World Cup, no less, although with how packed this season has been, France feels like it was years ago, not months.
“Literally I can’t even remember the World Cup. I mentioned it just now and I was like wait. Yep, that was this year,” she says.
The New York Jets have released guard Kelechi Osemele, the team announced on Saturday. Osemele has been out since Week 3 while nursing a shoulder injury, and earlier in the day his agents told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Osemele is considering taking action against the Jets’ team doctor, alleging a violation of state medical board regulations.
Osemele had surgery on the shoulder on Friday, though the operation was done without approval from the team. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Osemele said that he has visited three different doctors and that each of them — including the Jets’ team doctor — said that he needed to have surgery. He sent the full doctor’s report from the third doctor to the Jets on Wednesday.
The Jets were said to believe that Osemele can play through the injury and that he did so during his time with the Oakland Raiders, as well as earlier this season.
PLOS One; Hakan Claes Rundqvist, Andreas Montelius, Ted Osterlund, Barbara Norman, Mona Esbjornsson, Eva Jansson from
Aim
To examine global gene expression response to profound metabolic and hormonal stress induced by acute sprint exercise. Methods
Healthy men and women (n = 14) performed three all-out cycle sprints interspersed by 20 min recovery. Muscle biopsies were obtained before the first, and 2h and 20 min after last sprint. Microarray analysis was performed to analyse acute gene expression response and repeated blood samples were obtained. Results
In skeletal muscle, a set of immediate early genes, FOS, NR4A3, MAFF, EGR1, JUNB were markedly upregulated after sprint exercise. Gene ontology analysis from 879 differentially expressed genes revealed predicted activation of various upstream regulators and downstream biofunctions. Gene signatures predicted an enhanced turnover of skeletal muscle mass after sprint exercise and some novel induced genes such as WNT9A, FZD7 and KLHL40 were presented. A substantial increase in circulating free fatty acids (FFA) was noted after sprint exercise, in parallel with upregulation of PGC-1A and the downstream gene PERM1 and gene signatures predicting enhanced lipid turnover. Increase in growth hormone and insulin in blood were related to changes in gene expressions and both hormones were predicted as upstream regulators. Conclusion
This is the first study reporting global gene expression in skeletal muscle in response to acute sprint exercise and several novel findings are presented. First, in line with that muscle hypertrophy is not a typical finding after a period of sprint training, both hypertrophy and atrophy factors were regulated. Second, systemic FFA and hormonal and exposure might be involved in the sprint exercise-induced changes in gene expression.
… “I gather lots of data and lots of information,” Andonovski told ESPN recently. “And I try to simplify it as much as possible for the receivers, whether it’s players or coaches or someone in the organization. I think the more information you have, the more power you have, in terms of the decisions you’re going to make. That’s why I’m trying to get all of that.
“At the same time, I can’t give all the information to the players. They need specifics, they need the most important information.”
And therein lies the other half of Andonovski’s skill set. He can impress a conference room of U.S. Soccer technical gurus with how he thinks about the game. He can get players to see it, too.
Instruction: Effective playing time in soccer is typically < 60 min per game and while players may reposition themselves when the ball is out of play, it is likely the physical demand decreases during this period. Therefore, if this period is included in data when quantifying match demands, it may under-report the physical requirements of soccer players. This study investigated an alternative method for quantifying external workload called ball in play (BiP), which analyses the data excluding stoppages, and thus potentially offers a more insightful analysis of match demands.Methods: Whole match demands as typically recorded via GPS, were compared to those based on BiP, and maximum BiP, with the latter representing worst case scenario phases of play. The 25-elite male youth soccer players (age: 17.9 ± 0.6 years; height: 174.8 ± 6.2 cm; body mass: 66.3 ± 8.1 kg) who participated in this study were also categorised in to positional groups (defender, midfielder, and forward) to assess differences in positional demands.Results: While no differences were noted based on position, whole match metrics were significantly lower than mean and maximum BiP metrics (p < 0.05). There was also a significant difference for maximum BiP outputs across different in-play durations, when comparing 30-60 seconds, 60–90 seconds, and > 90 seconds.Conclusion: This data allows practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of the physical demands imposed on players and plan sessions using targets that better represent match demands.
The dawn of the robot umpire is near, and it is time. Game 5 of the World Series exemplified this. Plate umpire Lance Barksdale actually called a decent game by the current standards for umpires, but the combination of an untimely blown call and a hot-mic video of his rationale behind another poor judgment illustrated why automated balls and strikes must be part of baseball’s future sooner than later.
MC10, Inc., the developer of BioStamp nPoint, an end-to-end system for physiological data collection and analytics, announced today a collaboration with the University of Vermont, a leading academic research institution. This initiative will utilize BioStamp nPoint’s biometric data captured from the lower limbs and the University of Vermont’s biomedical engineering and data science capabilities in creating methods to quantitatively track and analyze changes in gait patterns across a spectrum of disorders, including Huntington’s Disease.
“One’s ability or inability to walk has long been recognized as a key aspect of their health status. Recent advances in objective gait analysis have led to metrics such as gait speed being described as the ‘sixth vital sign’”, commented Dr. Arthur Combs, MD, MC10’s Chief Medical Officer, “In the past, evaluation of gait impairment has largely been subjective, instantaneous, and assessed in a laboratory. The use of BioStamp nPoint will allow researchers to monitor a patient’s gait continuously as they go about their daily lives enabling a better understanding of the patient’s health status.”
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism from
Food-based diet indices provide a practical, rapid, and inexpensive way of evaluating dietary intake. Rather than nutrients, diet indices assess the intake of whole foods and dietary patterns, and compare these with nutrition guidelines. An athlete-specific diet index would offer an efficient and practical way to assess the quality of athletes’ diets, guide nutrition interventions, and focus sport nutrition support. This study describes the development and validation of an Athlete Diet Index (ADI). Item development was informed by a review of existing diet indices, relevant literature, and in-depth focus groups with 20 sports nutritionists (median of 11 years’ professional experience) from four elite athlete sporting institutes. Focus group data were analyzed (NVivo 11 Pro; QSR International Pty. Ltd., 2017, Melbourne, Australia), and key themes were identified to guide the development of athlete-relevant items. A modified Delphi survey in a subgroup of sports nutritionists (n = 9) supported item content validation. Pilot testing with athletes (n = 15) subsequently informed face validity. The final ADI (n = 68 items) was categorized into three sections. Section A (n = 45 items) evaluated usual intake, special diets or intolerances, dietary habits, and culinary skills. Section B (n = 15 items) assessed training load, nutrition supporting training, and sports supplement use. Section C (n = 8 items) captured the demographic details, sporting type, and caliber. All of the athletes reported the ADI as easy (40%) or very easy (60% of participants) to use and rated the tool as relevant (37%) or very relevant (63% of participants) to athletes. Further evaluation of the ADI, including the development of a scoring matrix and validation compared with established dietary methodology, is warranted.
The Red Sox pitching staff is coming off a tremendously disappointing season in which it forged a 4.70 ERA and endured the sort of inconsistency that made repeating as world champions almost impossible. Not only did the team’s well-compensated rotation struggle, but its ability to plug rotation holes with solutions from inside the organization proved glaringly inadequate, as the Red Sox continued their years-long struggles to conjure homegrown starters.
Against that backdrop, the arrival of Chaim Bloom as chief baseball officer seems particularly timely. After all, when the Tampa Bay Rays helped reshape their sport’s landscape in May 2018 with their commitment to introduce “The Opener” to Major League Baseball, Bloom was there.
The value of data has grown exponentially in the last few years. As people realise that good data and analysis leads to good decisions, there’s a virtuous cycle that calls for more and more data.
In digital technology (e.g. cellphones or websites), it’s pretty easy to collect data at every point in a system. In the “physical” (i.e. analogue) world, however, it’s not that easy. Sensors aren’t connected to every part of each system, and there are billions (or trillions?) of systems out there. Think of every car, river, garbage bin, home, tree and indeed, person. Each is itself a system, and a part of a larger system – and each has the potential to produce valuable data. My own interest here is in the sustainability of these systems, and the need to measure and track things usually bumps up against this constraint. Many organisations are finding the same.
So, when data is available, there is potential to be hugely disappointed by the results of analysis. This disappointment will largely be felt by decision makers relying on the data, and not by data analysts. This is because a data analyst will understand the limitations of data, and its power – without mixing up the two.
The new La Masia is very different from the old. After the move out from the centre of the city 10 years ago, the traditional farmhouse has been replaced by a modern office block. And as Javier Fernandez, data scientist for FC Barcelona, showed me round the corridors of the new centre, it felt that I could be in the high-tech headquarters of Google or a world-renowned University department. It was easy to forget that, at the very same time as this tour was taking place, only a few hundred meters away, Messi and company training in preparation for the coming season.
The tour completed, we got straight down to the doing Science. That was what I was really here for. Javier and other members of his team are leading a rigorous scientific attempt to understand football. The focus is on looking at the data created by football players as honestly and rigorously as possible.
Javier sees football data more clearly than most. A few months before my first visit to Barcelona in August 2018, he published a paper, together with Luke Bornn of the basketball team the Sacramento Kings, about how Barcelona control space. The key idea behind their work is breathtakingly simple. Javier’s method involves painting the pitch a colour that reflects who will get to the ball first. Areas painted green are controlled by Barcelona, areas painted red are controlled by the opposition, as in the picture below.
Do you believe this is the year Buffalo, under Ralph Krueger, finally gets back to the playoffs for the first time in nearly a decade? Are the Tampa Bay Lightning just a shell of the 62-win team that dominated the regular season in 2018-19? Will Edmonton and Vancouver claim two of the top three spots in the Pacific Division?
Before drawing any grand conclusions three weeks into the NHL season, make sure you refer to the “luck” stat: aka PDO.
For the uninitiated, PDO is the number you get by adding up a team’s shooting percentage and save percentage. In a short window, teams can wildly over- or under-shoot this number, but over time everyone will settle somewhere around 100. By the time 82 games are over with, some good teams will come in above 100 and some bad ones below, but not to any extreme. Generally, almost everyone will end up somewhere between 98 and 102.
The NCAA’s top decision-makers will meet Tuesday in Atlanta for their first formal discussion about modifying rules that currently prohibit college athletes from making money by selling the rights to their names, images or likenesses.
The association’s long-held policy regarding that aspect of amateurism is under increasing pressure from state and federal legislators who believe college athletes deserve an opportunity to collect money from endorsements. The NCAA board of governors is expecting to hear recommendations on how to move forward from Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith and Big East commissioner Val Ackerman, who are spearheading a committee that has spent the past five months evaluating options for a more modern path forward.