The first time K.J. Hamler put on the Catapult vest before a practice at Penn State, it didn’t feel like something suited for football. It felt rather restrictive.
What is this? Hamler thought to himself. It’s like I’m wearing a bra.
After a few days with the harness under his pads, Hamler didn’t even notice it anymore. The Nittany Lions wide receiver carried it with him while running routes, taking the ball on end-arounds, returning kicks and blowing past defenders in the open field on the way to the end zone — all the while, the GPS tracking device inside the vest relayed his speed to the Penn State sports-science staff, who track Catapult data output for all players, during practices and games.
Now, with the 2020 NFL Draft less than a month away, Hamler — a projected second-round pick by many, including Chad Reuter in his latest NFL.com mock — is thankful for that once awkward-fitting vest.
… “It’s crazy how the Celtics have been on us about the staying in shape thing,” Kanter told reporters in a conference call Friday afternoon. “Right now, the strength coach calls us on FaceTime a couple of times a week and making sure we’re getting our stuff and getting in shape and not cheating. Obviously we’re at home and it’s a little more chill, but the Celtics have been on us to stay in shape.”
Brad Stevens outlined some of that effort last week.
“There’s been bikes delivered, there’s been the individual weights delivered, there’s some voluntary virtual training sessions,” Stevens said. “Because now, obviously, we can’t do workouts in person because the facilities are closed, so anything basketball related for us right now is just a voluntary strength and conditioning session.”
… With no tennis, Dart has structured a daily plan which she tries to adhere to in a very uncertain time for many players, including herself. The LTA have loaned her equipment while she receives ongoing support from their Sports Science team.
“I’ve been trying really hard to stay in my daily routine. Obviously it’s a little bit different because I’m not playing tennis so I usually get up around 7.30 in the morning, get dressed, eat breakfast and do everything as normal,” Dart said. “I’m a creature of habit so I will usually just have a big bowl of porridge with loads of fruit and some boiled eggs. It’s not very interesting but it gets the job done.
… The goal is to maintain a basic level of fitness during a very uncertain period, and to ensure that, players are getting programs from their fitness teams.
“It’s very similar to our offseason program,” Matt Besler wrote in an email. “Lots of circuit-based workouts and high-intensity interval training with a couple longer runs sprinkled in throughout the week.”
Roldan and his teammates are generally following what the Sounders staff sends, but he says he’ll occasionally mix it up based on how he’s feeling: “I have the privilege of having a bike here, so I mix and match.”
NYCFC’s Mackay-Steven typically runs early in the morning, wearing headphones and avoiding people, learning routes around his neighborhood that he never thought he would explore. In the late morning or early afternoon, he’ll work out on his own with weights or join his teammates on a Zoom call. “We had a yoga class today,” he said. “It was a little bit more high-intensity, a full-body workout and a shock to the system. It was tough and a little bit different, but it’s what’s needed in these times.”
Background It has been hypothesised that injury risk after return to play following an injury absence is influenced by the amount of training completed before return to competition.
Aim To analyse if the number of completed training sessions between return to play and the first subsequent match appearance was associated with the odds of injury in men’s professional football.
Methods From a cohort study, including 303 637 individual matches, 4805 first match appearances after return to play following moderate to severe injuries (≥8 days absence) were analysed. Rate ratios (RRs) were used to compare injury rates in the first match appearances with the average seasonal match injury rate. Odds ratios (ORs) were used to analyse associations between the number of completed training sessions and general (all injuries), muscle, and non-muscle injury odds.
Results Injury rate in the first match after return to play was increased by 87% compared with the average seasonal match injury rate (46.9 vs 25.0/1000 hours, RR=1.87; 95% CI 1.64 to 2.14). The odds of injury dropped 7% with each training session before the first match (OR 0.93; 95% CI 0.87 to 0.98). The same association was found for muscle injuries (OR 0.87; 95% CI 0.79 to 0.95) but not for non-muscle injuries (OR 0.99; 95% CI 0.91 to 1.07).
Conclusions Injury rates in the first match after injury are higher than the average seasonal match injury rate, but the propensity for player injury is decreased when players complete more training sessions before their first match.
When MLS games return after the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphia Union head coach Jim Curtin has a clear sense of what could give his team an edge.
Fitness, Curtin said in a wide-ranging interview on Sons of Ben: The Pod, will be at a premium. That’s especially the case when considering MLS Commissioner Don Garber’s commitment to playing the full 34-game regular season, likely prompting a condensed schedule.
“We’re going to be playing – the commissioner is pretty adamant about playing all 32 games that are left, so it’s going to be Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday and you better be in shape,” Curtin said. “We’re going to need our whole roster to be in shape, too, so it puts a real premium on home games.
Ask any of the footballers who have ever been managed by Luiz Felipe Scolari and they will all say the same thing: Felipão is not to be messed with. But, on a sunny morning in São Paulo, behind his aviator sunglasses and neatly trimmed moustache, he looks relaxed and content. Well he might. We are talking before the coronavirus pandemic shook the world and Scolari has been kicking back at home. “I’ve been on the beach for two months, every day,” he says. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to do that in 50 years.”
Scolari has been out of work since being sacked by Palmeiras in September and has been spending time in his native Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, to plan his next steps and mull over the last half century. There is rather a lot to reflect on. As a manager he has worked in eight countries and been to three World Cups. There was a winner’s medal in 2002 and two more semi-final appearances, the second of which we will come to later.
After a profound development project, we are now getting ready to launch Movesense sensor firmware 2.0. It is a major update and brings loads of new capabilities to the system.
We are first publishing a sneak preview to let you try out your own code with it and to leave us an opportunity to root out any remaining issues before the official release. You can find the preview on Bitbucket in movesense-device-lib repository in a branch release/2.0-preview.
… In his conference call, Saban said that his new strength and conditioning coaches David Ballou and Matt Rhea were “very instrumental in setting up this whole program of what we’re doing with the players in terms of Apple watches for their workouts and apps on their phones for weight training programs.”
Taken at face value, that statement would appear to be in direct conflict with the NCAA’s rule as written. The Athletic, however, reported that the data from the watches was only being reviewed by Jeff Allen, the head of sports medicine for the football program, and was “limited in scope to sleep patterns and activity level” and isn’t being used to oversee workouts.
… The bubble is an outside-the-box idea that actually does have some roots in the NBA ecosystem. … To properly shield its teams and league personnel, the NBA would have to establish extensive precautions to ensure the health and safety of those inside the bubble. It’s not enough to think about the 450-or-so NBA players and the surrounding staffs of all 30 teams. According to Dr. Caroline Buckee, an associate professor of Epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the NBA is just one piece of a very complicated puzzle.
Olympic swimming champ Allison Schmitt has been a very public advocate for mental health, talking openly about her own struggles and lobbying the Olympic movement to do more to help athletes. She is almost done with her master’s in social work, and has interned as a counselor.
Yet as she and other Tokyo hopefuls try to manage the upheaval and uncertainty in their lives stemming from the postponement of this summer’s Games, even Schmitt isn’t sure where to turn for help.
“I hope changes are made quickly and soon, especially at this time,” she said. “Olympians and Olympic hopefuls are really struggling with what to do next. You have a lot of time to get in your mind.
The raft of technologies and digital tools used in Personalised Nutrition (PN) represents a scalable approach that could help transition to a service based on individual prevention and self‐care.
FanGraphs Baseball, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel from
Among the many significant repercussions of yesterday’s agreement between the MLBPA and MLB in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic were alterations to the amateur talent acquisition processes, changes that will have both immediate and long-term effects on all stakeholders (owners, players, people in scouting, agents, college coaches and staff, international trainers, etc.) in that arena. Last night, after the details of the agreement were reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN and Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, I spoke with several of those stakeholders for their immediate thoughts and reactions.
The splashy news, and the detail of yesterday’s agreement that will impact team personnel and the player population soonest, is the soft rescheduling of the 2020 draft — the specific date will be determined by MLB, but it will occur by “late-July” — and the straight razor shave it was given by the owners and player’s union, cutting the 2020 draft to five rounds with the option to trim the 2021 draft to 20 rounds, down from the usual 40. MLB can choose to add rounds to the draft if they wish, and a few people in scouting told me they thought it was a real possibility that MLB will, though there’s no clear financial incentive for them to do so.
American Soccer Analysis, Eliot McKinley & John Muller from
On March 30, 2019, the 16-year-old midfielder Gianluca Busio came on for Sporting Kansas City in a rout of Montreal. He didn’t do a whole lot in his half hour on the pitch—seven of his eight completed passes went backwards—but in the 78th minute he poked the ball away from a center back and slotted home his team’s sixth goal. The next week Busio was rewarded with a full 90 minutes and he scored again. The week after that, another appearance, a third straight goal. Coach Peter Vermes was sticking with the red-hot kid and it was paying off.
Alas, not all breakthroughs go as smoothly as Busio’s. On July 17, a teenage striker named Theo Bair earned his second career start for Vancouver. He made a couple of promising runs where he held off a New England defender and found a shot from a low cross, but neither chance connected. The first hit the far post and ricocheted out. Two minutes later, Bair reached back for a bouncing pass at the top of the six-yard box but couldn’t quite corral it. The shot sailed over the crossbar from embarrassingly close range and Bair tumbled head over heels into the goal, where he slapped the grass in frustration. He was subbed off, and next game he only appeared for the last 14 minutes.
The Paralympics are hugely inspirational—and, increasingly, big business. With more money at stake, more athletes are finding ways to cheat the system to win. Heading into Tokyo, legendary U.S. swimmer Jessica Long says it’s time to fight back.