Penn State University, Daily Collegian student newspaper, Madeline Lapreziosa and Ryan Lam from
… Riehl attributed her remarkable durability to Penn State’s training staff.
“Whenever I have any little problem, [Andra Thomas] is there for me and she keeps me healthy and back on the field,” Riehl said. “Same with Rhian [Davis], our strength trainer who, we’re in the weight room, doing preventative things in season.”
“I’m very fortunate to have that kind of staff and that kind of support that has kept me healthy and allowed me to be on the field.”
The newly minted head coach of the United States women’s national team doesn’t want that to come across too strong. He knows that he’s been given the keys to the most highly tuned machine in women’s soccer. But he also knows that he can make it run sharper, faster, better.
So even after a 6-0 rout of Costa Rica on Sunday — the first shutout of his tenure and last game of 2019 — Andonovski was focused on what to improve.
… These results are a poor reflection of the program we have in place for coaching girls.
The NPLW system was supposed to address these issues, but Former Alamein FC coach Sinisa Cohadzic believes there are some glaring problems that are not easily resolved.
“The whole system is wrong,” he says.
“The way they think of developing these players through NTC programs and now emerging Matildas programs is simply wrong. All they teach them there is to play possession football.
Australia’s high-performance sports system has been strengthened, following institutes and academies from all Australian states and territories approving the 2024 National High Performance Sports Strategy (NHPSS).
This will mark the first time Australia’s high-performance institutes, academies, athletes and coaches will all fit under a national framework, which will work to strengthen relationships with communities, academic institutions, government, industry and the private sector.
Australia’s Minister for Youth and Sport, Richard Colbeck, said the timing of this agreement shows Australia’s commitment to international sporting success in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
… Ahead of this year’s final, we spoke to Sounders Performance Data Analyst Dr. Amber Rowell and touched upon several topics, including how Apex – our soccer GPS trackers – have aided their preparations, and the sport science industry in general.
STATSports: You’ve been a sport scientist for eight or nine years now. How has the industry, and the technology itself changed since you started?
The advances in technology over my time so far in this industry has been massive. Not only has the validity and reliability of the data improved with increased unit sample frequency but also the ability to now have live feedback during training and match play gives a huge advantage for the preparation and recovery of players.
The addition of accelerometers and gyroscope-based metrics has also added to a deeper understanding of load patterns for each player especially assisting with fatigue indicators.
We got an exclusive first look at Gatorade’s newest invention—and it isn’t fuel. It’s a sweat-collecting patch worn on the forearm during a training session. When you’re done, you scan it with your phone so a special Gatorade app can tell you your sweat rate and sodium concentration. The app will then tell you what you need to take in now to recover, what you should use on a workout of similar intensity and weather conditions—for one or three-hour sessions—and what you should do nutritionally to prep for your next bike or run. Each sweat patch is single-use. [video, 2:28]
… With so many ways to deal with heat and implement a combination of conduction, convection, and radiation, you might think that there is little more to investigate. But that’s wrong: given the importance of heat removal, the techniques and components for doing so are a big area of research, especially among the universities. I am always looking out for innovative heat-management investigations, even if most of them turn out to be ineffective or impractical, as they are almost always interesting.
A University of Virginia student-athlete has been nursing a strained hamstring and is anxious to return to game action. She seems to be moving well in practice. Confidence is high. Imaging results look good.
But how does anybody – the doctors, the athletic trainers, the coaches – truly know if she is physically ready?
Jay Hertel believes the answer is at our fingertips.
For the last couple of years, the Joe Gieck Professor of Sports Medicine in UVA’s Curry School of Education and Human Development and two kinesiology Ph.D. students, Alexandra DeJong and Natalie Kupperman, have been examining data from sensors worn by Cavalier student-athletes in basketball, volleyball and cross country.
… “We can’t be a PT that’s putting their hands on your body and watching you move, but we can replicate the types of measurements that those motion capture spaces are getting,” says [Ivonna] Dumanyan.
Similar to the way movies like Avatar get made, Fathom AI uses motion capture data inputs to analyze human movement for injury prevention. They worked with UNC and Duke to use their motion capture laboratories with high-speed cameras and force plates.
The technology grabs the athlete’s motion data from three quarter-sized sensors — two for your ankles and one for the small of your back — that adhere to your skin like a Band-Aid.
Spending for consumer digital healthcare companies is set to explode in the next few years; the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is currently reviewing the requirements for data sharing with the Department of Health and Human Services, and their initiatives will unlock a wave of data access never before seen in the U.S. healthcare system.
Already, startups and large technology companies are jockeying for position over how to leverage this access and take advantage of new sensor technologies that provide unprecedented windows into patient health.
Venture capital investors are expected to invest roughly $50 billion in approximately 4,500 startups in the healthcare industry, according to data from CB Insights. In all, there have been 3,409 investments made in the healthcare market through the third quarter of 2019, with 31% of those deals done in what CB Insights identifies as digital health companies.
… Science forgetting about the existence of anyone who isn’t a cisgender male isn’t exactly a brand new subject. So, what got me thinking about it now? Well, earlier this week, The Guardian published an eye-opening article about breast injuries going unreported in women’s contact sports.
According to reporter Clare Watson, PhD candidate Brooke Brisbine visited 30 women’s rugby and football training sessions in Australia, and asked the players if they ever suffered a breast injury.
Sounds not very notable, right? Well, it wouldn’t have been. Except that Brisbine discovered that most players had never, ever been asked that question.
“It was quite nearly the first time that any of these players had ever been asked about a breast injury,” Brisbine said. “And certainly the first time a vast majority of them had ever said anything about it at all.”
A “striking lack of leadership” at Garden City Community College helped lead to the death of defensive lineman Braeden Bradforth, according to an independent investigation.
Bradforth died of heat stroke on Aug. 1, 2018. He was declared dead approximately two hours after he participated in an extremely rigorous conditioning test administered by the Garden City football coaching staff that included 36 50-yard sprints.
“A cause of Braedon Bradforth’s death was a poorly designed and administered conditioning test for an unconditioned, non-acclimated student-athlete,” the report states.
… According to Dr Andrew Higginson from the University of Exeter, this is an evolutionary response: “Storing fat is an insurance against the risk of failing to find food, which for pre-industrial humans was most likely in winter.”
A study in Massachusetts tested this theory in 2006 when 593 research participants were followed for a one-year period. Not only did people eat more in the fall compared spring (on average an extra 86 calories per day), but they also did less physical exercise when the temperature fell. As a result, body weight also peaked in winter months, though the researchers added: “Greater seasonal variation was observed in subjects who were male, middle-aged, non-white, and less educated.” Similar results were found in Brazil and the Netherlands.
Ben Cherington earned three World Series rings with the Boston Red Sox, the last as general manager of the 2013 club that raced from worst to first.
The challenge that lies ahead for Cherington with the Pittsburgh Pirates will be different.
The market is smaller. So are the resources Cherington can draw from. The chance to supplement the major league roster with expensive free agents — as Cherington did in Boston — likely will not exist. Yet the 45-year-old does not appear to be intimidated by the financial realities his new job presents. Two decades in the business have taught him that while budgets may vary, the tenets of successful teams do not.
Bleacher Report, Gridiron Digest, Mike Tanier from
Gridiron Digest took a field trip to the Wharton Sports Business Summit at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday to learn what insights NFL experts had to offer the next generation of business leaders.
One theme kept recurring throughout the day of seminars and panel discussions: NFL coaches make less-than-optimal decisions all the time, for a variety of fascinating reasons.