… When the Heat called [Duncan] Robinson up, they introduced a loose ball drill to his practice regimen. A coach would roll the ball, and demand Robinson dive for it, tip it to another coach, and sprint to the corner for a catch-and-shoot jumper. Robinson got good at cushioning falls. “It’s a skill,” he said. “Don’t fall on your hip.”
Heat coaches loved Robinson’s appetite for work.
“Persistence is a talent,” Spoelstra said. “Nine out of 10 players would have quit somewhere along Duncan’s path.”
Victor Oladipo was just rounding into form when the NBA season was suspended.
His expected increased playing time, his hopes of chasing a home playoff series and taking the Indiana Pacers on a deep postseason run went on hold — at least a few more weeks.
Now, 14 months after suffering a serious knee injury, he’s back home in Miami again, away from teammates again, doing what he can to be ready when games resume.
“It hurt just because it took me a while to come back and then, obviously, this happens and now you miss more,” Oladipo said Thusday on a conference call. “I was out there playing, going as best I can, as hard as I can. To say if I was 100 percent out there, I don’t know if I could say that. I’m just going to try and do my best to get better and get stronger.”
… In today’s day and age, there’s a recovery tool for every aspect of recovery – all delivered with guarantees of decreasing muscle soreness, aiding repair and facilitating a quicker bounce-back.
But we’re taking a step back from the recovery gadgets and gizmos for this blog and focusing on the ‘core’ recovery practices of eating, drinking and sleeping.
… Coming off back-to-back appearances in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game, the 2011-12 Butler University team was on a west coast trip. While in Palo Alto to play Stanford in late December, youthful coach Brad Stevens called me to find out if I knew Stanford sleep researcher Dr. [Cheri] Mah.
I was already aware of her sleep research and athlete performance findings, which sparked an enthusiastic and lengthy discussion on how we could transform her research into actionable steps Stevens’ team.
I’m pleased to share what we came up with. Once you understand how sleep is a factor of athlete performance, you can take steps to ensure the health of your players.
To measure the change in tackling technique of rugby union players following an acute bout of physically fatiguing exercise. Design
Randomised cross-over study design with a physical fatigue condition and no-physical fatigue condition (control). Methods
Nineteen male amateur club rugby union players (n = 19) and a total of 887 tackles were analysed. During each condition, each player performed four sets of six tackles (three dominant and three non-dominant shoulder) on a contact simulator. Between each set of tackles in the physical fatigue condition, players performed the prolonged high-intensity intermittent running ability test. Using video, player’s tackling proficiency for each tackle was measured by awarding either one point or zero points depending on whether a particular technique was performed or not. The sum of these points represents player’s tackling proficiency (score out of 9, measured in arbitrary units (AU)). Results
In the non-dominant shoulder, a difference between fatigue and control was found at set two (Fatigue 7.3 [7.1-7.6] AU vs. Control 7.6 [7.4-7.9] AU, p = 0.06, ES = 0.3 small) and set three (Fatigue 7.3 [7.0-7.5] AU vs. Control 7.7 [7.5-7.9] AU, p = 0.006, ES = 0.5 small). During the control condition, tackling proficiency scores improved from baseline for non-dominant tackles (Baseline 7.4 [7.2-7.6] AU, vs Set two 7.6 [7.4-7.9] AU, p = 0.08 ES = 0.3 small; vs Set three 7.7 [7.5-7.9] AU, p = 0.05, ES = 0.4 Small). Conclusion
In conclusion, this study shows that physical fatigue can potentially affect rugby union players’ tackling technique. Therefore, players should develop technical capacity to resist the effects of physical fatigue during the tackle.
The process obviously had to for Colorado State’s sports performance staff, regardless of the area of expertise. Medical needs and physical therapy had to continue. Nutritional challenges of being quarantined without consistent workouts had to be addressed. The mental strains of remote learning and the pandemic were of great concern, as well.
Terry DeZeeuw, the senior associate athletic director for health and performance, was in the same position as the rest of the country, with a constant stream of updates and dos and don’ts coming in waves. He and his staff not only navigated the present, but understood they needed a plan for a future where the rules were likely to be rewritten.
That’s how they spent their spring break. With so much remaining unclear, the idea was to start with what could and should remain consistent. What they gained was a starting point.
… During learning, the brain is a prediction engine that continually makes theories about our environment and accurately registers whether an assumption is true or not. A team of neuroscientists from Ruhr-Universität Bochum has shown that expectation during these predictions affects the activity of various brain networks. Dr. Bin Wang, Dr. Lara Schlaffke and Associate Professor Dr. Burkhard Pleger from the Neurological Clinic of Berufsgenossenschaftliches Universitätsklinikum Bergmannsheil report on the results in two articles that were published in March and April 2020 in the journals Cerebral Cortex and Journal of Neuroscience.
… InnovationMap: Why is Texas a market for sports tech?
Jon Nordby: We have the great fortune of living in a part of the country where sports are not a hobby — they are a way of life. There are 10 professional sports teams across the Texas Triangle covering every major league sport. More importantly, the Texas business community has for decades worked at the intersection of industry and technology and there is a huge knowledge base here that can use the sportstech industry as a vehicle to have a major impact on the world.
The inventions, product, and discoveries being made on the field today will make their way to commercial markets within the next five years or so. These discoveries are possible only if these startups have access to experts in health, materials, analytics, and communications — all of which Texas has in droves.
Ryortho, Orthopedics This Week, Tracey Romero from
Return to play is a big concern for athletes after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Standard post-operative rehabilitation has shown good results; however, a new study suggests that an enhanced return to play program can be cost-effective.
In “Safer and Cheaper: An Enhanced Milestone-Based Return to Play Program After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in Young Athletes Is Cost-Effective Compared With Standard Time-Based Return to Play Criteria,” published on March 17, 2020 in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers used a decision-analysis model to compare standard rehabilitation with an enhanced return to play strategy, one that includes additional neuromuscular retraining, advanced testing, and follow-up physician visits.
Cost-effectiveness was determined from a payer perspective and included costs of surgical procedures and rehabilitation protocols, risks of graft rupture and contralateral ACL injury, and risk reductions.
Over the last few years probiotics have become an increasingly hot topic, and it’s likely that you’ve heard that they can help with training along with offering a cluster of other health benefits.
Manufacturers and marketers have clearly caught onto the trend, resulting in the supermarket shelves you might have noticed packed with products touting their probiotic properties: Kombucha, kimchi, kiefer, ‘live culture” yogurt, probiotic supplements, etc.
In this third episode, we will shift from the club scene and discuss with analysts that work for national football teams. What are the differences? How do they prepare for the final stage of a championship? How do they interact with the players? We will discover the particularities of working as an analyst for a national team. [video, 1:06:00]
The billions of dollars that MLS clubs and their owners continue to invest in star players, academies, new stadiums and training facilities typically claim the headlines. But there’s another level of investment happening behind the scenes that also promises to pack a long-term impact on the game in North America.
MLS owners are dedicating significant resources to build out a data and performance tracking infrastructure that if successful will allow its clubs to take another step in their rapid evolution.
The latest development came just days before the launch of the 2020 MLS season when the league announced a partnership with Second Spectrum for new advanced tracking data. It was the latest mark of the league’s intent on being a leader in data, analytics and new technologies. This deal is on top of the league’s long-term existing partner in Stats Perform (formerly Opta) going back to 2010, which provides event-data for MLS matches. They also do all MLS academy matches and are the official data for sports betting.
Making Sense Of: Diversity and Innovation
Different is better. Diversity increases innovation. But there’s a paradox. Underrepresented groups, the sources of diversity and of innovation, don’t succeed at the level they should based on what they contribute.
This diversity-innovation paradox is one conclusion from a new Stanford computational sociology study (link). Bas Hofstra and colleagues examined the career work by more than 1.2 million science Ph.Ds and found that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. Majority groups advanced further despite making fewer significant contributions.
Every sport and every sport organization is different, but the progress to increase diversity across professional sports is an undeniable trend. Female coaches and trainers have earned crucial roles in male pro sports. International rosters are the rule, not the exception, in both mens and womens professional sports leagues.
Academic scientific research, the scope of the Stanford research, has grown increasingly inter-disciplinary during the past 25 years. Standard practice is to create adjacencies, neighborhoods populated with life scientists, data scientists, programmers and engineers close enough to find one another. The payoff comes when the graduate students mix, and they learn who among their peers knows the things they’re eager to learn.
Sports science has benefited from moving away from silos that stood between management, coaches, analysts, trainers, doctors, nutritionists, technologists, etcetera. But there’s still a noticeable lack of intellectual diversity compared to academia. Sports scientists are often tasked with cutting across disciplines, but the organizations and environments don’t necessarily allow for easy mixing among colleagues. Advancement, for many, still means staying in your lane.
As complexity ramps up in sports science and in sports, the need for innovation and for diversity also increases. The benefits from diversity come from the work people get to do, and whether or not they are set up for success. Diversity boosts innovation, but there’s more to innovation than good hiring practices.
