Should the NBA set a plan to restart in the coming months, it will need to include a runway of “at least” three or four weeks for players to prepare to play games, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul said Wednesday.
“I’m just letting you know — and I don’t think the league would do it anyway — but if they were like, ‘Hey, you got two weeks, and then we’re going,’ that’s not going to happen,” Paul, who is serving his seventh year as National Basketball Players Association president, said during a conference call. “That’s not going to happen. Whatever the amount of time is, just know that players will have the input, the say-so, because we’re the ones playing. That comes first. We don’t ever want to put guys in a situation where their injury risk is higher than ever before.”
… I can still remember being in West Palm Beach with the Yankees on March 12. I was catching for us that day and talking to the umpire Angel Hernandez behind the plate. He was saying, “Oh yeah, they’re about to shut this thing down.” And they did, that day. I know Angel said to the press afterward, “See you in June.” He was saying the same thing during the game. I was saying, “I don’t know. It can’t be that long.” But now he could be right. Actually, at this point, I hope he’s right.
I would say I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a baseball season. I think everybody is on board in trying to pull for a season, trying to figure out some way to get it done, but there definitely are a lot of obstacles. I can’t deny it’s going to be difficult to pull off, but I think as a whole, we’d be pretty happy to play a season in any capacity, maybe just try to provide everyone a chance to heal through baseball. Baseball has kind of been there through everything. However, I am concerned that we may not get a chance to play in New York this year because of how badly it has been hit by the virus.
The other day, we had a team Zoom call with the players, Aaron Boone and the coaches. It was good to see everybody and catch up. It was pretty funny to see a lot of guys with beards.
Abby Wambach and Jessica Mendoza are getting back into the game.
Icons in their respective sports – Wambach is a World Cup and two-time Olympic champion in soccer while Mendoza has Olympic gold and silver medals in softball – the two are part of a star-studded advisory board for Athletes Unlimited, which is launching two new professional women’s leagues.
Might just turn sports on its head in the process, too.
“Re-imagining is really important right now. Re-imagining what could be possible,” Wambach told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday. “When you look at all the sports, especially women’s sports, there is so much more potential that has yet to be understood and figured out. This is, I think, a perfect solution.”
… “You can continue to analyse a lot, but when you start delivering you have to be crystal clear in what you want to get through. The biggest thing that Rassie got through to the players in the World Cup was clarity – there wasn’t white noise,” Nienaber says.
“There were only one or two things. The motto was, ‘let the main thing remain the main thing’. But the main thing could be 20 things, or it can be three things.
“The key is how you simplify it. Simplicity is the power. Having 100 things that are very important but then having the ability to narrow it down that you are prepared to put your life on these three things. These three things will win or lose us the game.
… In this article, we provide guidelines for returning from the COVID-19 shutdowns and the possible consequences on both player performance and health as part of the return-to-sport process. We’ve already been working with many professional teams and universities to prepare for such circumstances, consulting with them about various scenarios and contingencies. We want to ensure we maximize player health while establishing rational and pragmatic guidelines around performance training and sport-specific practice. While there is no perfect way to handle this matter, we must focus attention and care on the preparation and requirements for both sport training camps and competitive demands when returning from a health crisis never experienced before.
International Universities Strength and Conditioning Association (IUSCA) from
… There has also been a recent surge in sport technology, increasing the need for S&CCs to be knowledgeable in sports science and analytics. This multi-faceted growth can be attributed to the increasing literature and improved availability of information, methods, modalities, and technology surrounding performance training. Additionally, with the development of integrated multidisciplinary performance teams, the modern S&CC no longer works in isolation. These diverse teams may now involve sport coaches, team doctors, sports medicine personnel, nutritionists, psychologists, and more. In order to not only keep up, but grow and evolve within this diverse profession, it’s vital for S&CCs to lean on relevant research, while collaborating with both direct and indirect professionals to guide decision making.
If we don’t have the right information, we can’t make the right decisions. So how do we know what the “right” information is? And how can we make the “right” decisions? Adopting an evidence-based practice (EBP) should be the first step when determining the best intervention in any situation. EBP is a 3-step process first initiated in clinical health care that involved finding the best scientific evidence, using clinical expertise, and extrapolating that based on individual patient needs (1).
International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism from
Exercise-associated muscle cramps (EAMCs) are thought to be caused by dehydration and/or electrolyte losses. In this multicenter, cross-sectional study, the authors determined whether sweat rates (SRs), sweat electrolyte concentrations, or sweat electrolyte content differed in athletes with (i.e., crampers) and without (i.e., noncrampers) a history of EAMCs and whether these variables could predict EAMC-prone athletes. Male and female collegiate athletes (N = 350) from 11 sports with (n = 245) and without (n = 105) a self-reported history of EAMCs completed a typical exercise or conditioning session. SRs, calculated from body mass, and posterior forearm sweat were analyzed for sweat sodium concentration ([Na+]sw), sweat potassium concentration ([K+]sw), and sweat chloride concentration ([Cl-]sw). The authors used SRs and sweat electrolyte concentrations to calculate sweat electrolyte content lost. Within each gender, no differences in SRs (204 males, p = .92; 146 females, p = .24); [Na+]sw (191 males, p = .55; 126 females, p = .55); Na+sw content (191 males, p = .59; 126 females, p = .20); [K+]sw (192 males, p = .57; 126 females, p = .87); K+sw content (192 males, p = .49; 126 females, p = .03); [Cl-]sw (192 males, p = .94; 77 females, p = .57); and Cl-sw content (192 males, p = .55; 77 females, p = .34) occurred between crampers and noncrampers. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that sweat electrolyte content and SRs were predictive of EAMC-prone athletes in American football (area under curve = 0.65-0.72, p ≤ .005), but not in any other sport. EAMCs may not be solely caused by fluid or electrolyte losses in most athletes. Fluid and electrolyte replacement may help American footballers. Clinicians should individualize fluid and electrolyte replacement and understand different etiologies for EAMCs.
A Massachusetts-based partnership aims to create a common workplace for healthcare providers and researchers using mHealth sensors in wearables and other devices.
The Open Wearables Initiative (OWEAR), launched last September by Nextbridge Health, Shimmer Research and Dr. Vincent van Hees, announced that it is now “actively soliciting” open-source software and datasets from wearable sensors and other connected health technologies. The group wants to create a platform from which researchers and care providers can share digital health source codes and algorithms.
The initiative builds on the popularity of mHealth sensors and platforms designed to help care providers and researcher collect biometric information outside the hospital, clinic or doctor’s office, for use in remote patient monitoring programs and other efforts. The growing market includes smartwatches and fitness bands, smartglasses and hearing aids, sensor-embedded clothing, ingestibles, patches, tattoos, bandages and other form factors.
Plantar flexion is critical for ambulatory function but there are few wearable solutions to monitor loading. Research question
The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a method to calculate plantar flexion moment using a commercially-available instrumented insole. Methods
Seven healthy young adults completed a battery of functional activities to characterize a range of plantar flexion loading which included single leg heel raise, step down, and drop jump as well as walking and running at comfortable speeds. Lower extremity trajectories were captured using motion capture and ground reaction forces were recorded with embedded force plates as well as the instrumented insole. We compared plantar flexion moment calculated by the instrumented insole to ‘gold standard’ inverse dynamics. Results
We found that estimating plantar flexion moment using our instrumented insole algorithm compared favorably to moments calculated using inverse dynamics across all activities. Errors in the maximum plantar flexion moments were less than 10% for all activities, averaging 4.9%. Root mean square errors across the entire activity were also small, averaging 1.0% bodyweight * height. Additionally, the calculated wave forms were strongly correlated with inverse dynamics (Rxy > 0.964). Significance
Our findings demonstrate the utility and fidelity of a simple method for estimating plantar flexion moment using a commercially available instrumented insole. By leveraging this simple methodology, it is now feasible to prospectively track and eventually prescribe plantar flexion loading outside of the clinic to improve patient outcomes.
Recent advances in technology have enabled the development of head impact sensors, which provide a unique opportunity for sports medicine researchers to study head kinematics in contact sports. Studies have suggested that video or observer confirmation of head impact sensor data is required to remove false positives. In addition, manufacturer filtering algorithms may be ineffective in identifying true positives and removing true negatives. Purpose:
To (1) identify the percentage of video-confirmed events recorded by headband-mounted sensors in high school soccer through video analysis, overall and by sex; (2) compare video-confirmed events with the classification by the manufacturer filtering algorithms; and (3) quantify and compare the kinematics of true- and false-positive events. Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods:
Adolescent female and male soccer teams were instrumented with headband-mounted impact sensors (SIM-G; Triax Technologies) during games over 2 seasons of suburban high school competition. Sensor data were sequentially reduced to remove events recorded outside of game times, associated with players not on the pitch (ie, field) and players outside the field of view of the camera. With video analysis, the remaining sensor-recorded events were identified as an impact event, trivial event, or nonevent. The mechanisms of impact events were identified. The classifications of sensor-recorded events by the SIM-G algorithm were analyzed. Results:
A total of 6796 sensor events were recorded during scheduled varsity game times, of which 1893 (20%) were sensor-recorded events associated with players on the pitch in the field of view of the camera during verified game times. Most video-confirmed events were impact events (n = 1316, 70%), followed by trivial events (n = 396, 21%) and nonevents (n = 181, 10%). Female athletes had a significantly higher percentage of trivial events and nonevents with a significantly lower percentage of impact events. Most impact events were head-to-ball impacts (n = 1032, 78%), followed by player contact (n = 144, 11%) and falls (n = 129, 10%) with no significant differences between male and female teams. The SIM-G algorithm correctly identified 70%, 52%, and 66% of video-confirmed impact events, trivial events, and nonevents, respectively. Conclusion:
Video confirmation is critical to the processing of head impact sensor data. Percentages of video-confirmed impact events, trivial events, and nonevents vary by sex in high school soccer. Current manufacturer filtering algorithms and magnitude thresholds are ineffective at correctly classifying sensor-recorded events and should be used with caution. [full text]
… Nearly every team has guaranteed baseball-operations employees payment through May 31 — a date, sources said, that is no accident. The next month could provide a number of answers to issues baseball is considering as it plots its return, and the long-term retention of employees across the sport may depend on having a known, or at least expected, revenue generator. The end of May isn’t a drop-dead point to have a plan in place, sources said, as much as it’s a reasonable and logical one.
… The Premier League plans to take ideas about what does and doesn’t work from competitions like Germany’s – if they are played at all.
Some connected sources in the Bundesliga and European football are dubious. They feel Spain and Italy could yet be voided, and that the German league will – at least – be delayed. It is currently the subject of huge debate, right up to government level. One source feels the Bundesliga may have to wait until schools re-open in some way, and that “there’s no way they’re going to start on 9 May”.
To the average football fan, the name Matthew Benham may not mean anything. One or two might correctly identify that he owns Brentford FC, currently punching above their weight in the Championship and regarded as a hotbed of talent in recent years, ripe for plucking by Premier League clubs when the time is right.
Ask Danish football fans who Matthew Benham is, and you get a completely different outcome. This isn’t surprising – although the professional gambler turned football analyst prefers to avoid the limelight, his exploits with FC Midtjylland are now infamous.
