… We haven’t played a game for 11 weeks now but for Harry, that number extends to 21.
Needless to say, having recovered from his hamstring problem in the intervening time, he’s lapping up every second at Hotspur Way as the squad starts to come together once more in preparation for the return of Premier League football.
“It’s been great!” he smiled, reflecting on the phased return to training which this week saw the resumption of group work. “Obviously it’s been an unusual two months or so, having to adapt to the situation but it’s great to be back out here now with the lads, good to just feel that team building, getting back to competing a little more and get the fitness back. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do some team work, so it’s nice to be able to do that again now.
… So it helps explain why Belichick, who basically copyrighted the maxim “get rid of a player a year too soon instead of a year too late,” is bringing Chung back for a 12th NFL season (11 with the Patriots), even though all signs pointed to the Patriots moving on.
Chung will be 33 years old in August. He’s coming off an injury-plagued season in which he missed three games and was hobbled in several more. The Patriots also added two similar players this offseason at his safety/linebacker hybrid position: free agent Adrian Phillips and second-round pick Kyle Dugger.
Yet not only is Belichick bringing Chung back, he gave him a pay raise. Chung was set to make up to $4 million this season, but signed a new contract May 19 that will pay him up to $6.25 million.
… The dithering over a decision on whether to curtail the league season left most clubs, players and fans fatigued to the point that they saw no alternative to cancellation. These are extraordinary times and mistakes will be made. However, there have been 10 weeks to find a way to play, to find a way to fund and safely manage a return, to find a way to prevent a complete halting of the progress that has been made.
All we have been told by the Football Association is that the decision to end the season was made “in the best interest of the women’s game”. A statement read: “This will also enable clubs, the FA Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship Board and the FA to plan, prepare and focus on next season when football returns for the 2020-21 campaign.” As fans prepare to gorge on a feast of Premier League football, some of which will be broadcast on terrestrial television, women’s football has been put out of sight and out of mind for the foreseeable future.
Women’s football needs bold and innovative leadership to navigate this period. Increasingly it seems like the FA is unable to provide it. Why? Because, despite some extremely talented and passionate staff working with the best of intentions, women’s football cannot help but be shackled by the FA’s other commitments.
Premier League clubs have been told games will still go ahead once the season restarts even if they are down to only 15 fit players, it has emerged.
West Ham vice-chair Karren Brady has revealed the subject of depleted squads was discussed in Thursday’s conference call between clubs after Bundesliga teams reported a spike in strains and short-term muscle injuries following the resumption of football in Germany.
Apart from the likelihood of more injuries after a three-month lay-off, clubs are aware that anyone testing positive for coronavirus would have to be withdrawn and isolated, so it is not inconceivable that 25-man squad lists could quickly lose half a dozen or more players.
“There are obvious concerns about what happens if you cannot field your usual or strongest starting XI,” Brady said. “It seems as long as you have 15 fit players including a goalkeeper from your main squad or your under-21s you will be deemed to have a team fit enough to fulfil the fixture.”
… To understand and explain this, it is possible to lean on a recent study investigating the impact of mid-season winter breaks on technical performance levels across European football and the associated question of whether a break in play generally affects team momentum.
The study by Mikael Jamil, Stuart A. McErlain-Naylor and Marco Beato of the School of Health and Sports Sciences at the University of Suffolk was recently published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport (20:3, 406-419), and concluded that a break in play any longer than 13 days can act as a catalyst that may ‘halt momentum and cause performances to deteriorate’.
The use of force platforms, otherwise known as force plates,as a central tool in screening, profiling, monitoring, and rehabilitating elite athletes has become prevalent among the majority of teams in the NBA. Force plate testing becomes especially useful in leagues like the NBA with irregular and congested competitive schedules as a tool to evaluate athlete readiness, via standardized movements intended to reliably evaluate neuromuscular status in lieu of sports-specific movements. Where injury risk stratification, physical development,and fatigue monitoring are all areas which support staff wish to draw frequent and detailed insights, force plates offer a versatile, fast, and simple solution. They also offer superior individualization to and less invasiveness than measures of external and internal load, respectively. In the NBA, where the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) does not presently require athletes to comply with performance testing or other technological prescriptions of the support staff, the culture,communication, and administration of testing protocols are at least as important as the science and techniques themselves.In this brief commentary, we summarize best-practice concepts to deliver effective use of force plates within an NBA environment.
Among the unknowns about the NHL returning amid the coronavirus pandemic is what the on-ice product might look like. In a team sport that demands rhythm and chemistry, players will have to quickly adapt after so much time apart to recapture what it takes to jump right into the playoffs and compete for the Stanley Cup.
To quantify and compare workloads encountered by basketball players during individual games played across 1-, 2-, and 3-day periods in the same week, and during weeks where 1, 2, and 3 games are scheduled. Eight semi-professional male players were monitored. External workload was determined as absolute and relative (·min-1) PlayerLoad (PL), and total and high-intensity jumps, accelerations, decelerations, and changes of direction (COD). Internal workload was determined as absolute and relative summated heart rate zones (SHRZ), session-rating of perceived exertion (sRPE), and RPE. Game workloads were tabulated considering the order in which they were scheduled weekly (game 1, 2, or 3), and each week considering the number of games scheduled (1, 2, or 3 games). Analysing weekly workloads, duration was higher during 3-game than 1- and 2-game weeks (P <0.05, ES = 6.65-18.19). High-intensity decelerations and COD were higher during 3-game than 1-game weeks (P <0.05, ES = 1.26–1.55). Absolute PL, jumps, accelerations, decelerations, COD, and high-intensity jumps and accelerations were higher during 3-game than 1- and 2-game weeks (P <0.05, ES = 0.69–2.63). Absolute SHRZ and sRPE were higher during 3-game than 1- and 2-game weeks (P <0.05, ES = 0.86–2.43). Players completed similar individual game workloads regardless of the number of games played on consecutive days in the week. Workloads were similar during 1- and 2-game weeks, while the addition of a third game significantly increased the overall weekly workloads encountered. [full text]
This study seeks to evaluate the effect of periodized fluctuations in training load on wellness and psychological questionnaires, perceived exertion, performance, and neuromuscular measures in team-sport athletes. Thirteen amateur Australian rules football athletes completed 6 weeks of periodized training, consisting of 2-week normal training (NT), intensified training (IT), and taper training (TT). Training sessions were quantified using global positioning system devices, heart-rate, and session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE), with wellness (general soreness, sleep quality/quantity, readiness to train, fatigue, stress, mood, and motivation) questionnaires collected daily. Psychological (Recovery-Stress Questionnaire for Athletes) and physical performance (countermovement jump, cycle ergometer peak power, 30-m sprint, and 2-km time trial) markers were measured after each training period. Perceived (sRPE) and mechanical loading were higher for IT than NT, and IT than TT (p < 0.03; d = 0.65–25.34). Cycle ergometer peak power, 30-m sprint, 2-km time trial, and countermovement jump height showed reductions in performance after IT compared to initial testing (p < 0.02; d = 0.51–1.46), with subsequent increases in performance after TT (p < 0.04; d = 0.66–2.27). Average wellness was higher during NT compared to IT (p = 0.005; d = 1.11). Readiness to train did not significantly differ from NT to IT or TT (p < 0.55; d = <0.59); however, readiness to train did improve during TT after the IT (p = 0.01; d = 1.05). The disturbances in performance, perceptual, and mood states may indicate a state of functional overreaching. The findings suggest that an averaged wellness score may be useful in potentially identifying overreaching. However, despite the popularity of wellness in monitoring systems, these measures overall demonstrated a limited capacity to differentiate between periodized fluctuations in load.
Stanford University, Stanford Medicine, News Center from
A simple blood test may be able to determine how physically fit you are, according to a new study conducted by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The test could complement treadmill tests, a more traditional clinical evaluation of fitness, and provide individuals with far more nuanced information about their body’s molecular response to exercise.
The blood test is an offshoot of a complex study conducted by a team of researchers that took hundreds of thousands of molecular measurements from a group of individuals before and after exercising.
“Everybody knows exercise is good for you, but we really don’t know what drives that at a molecular level,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, professor and chair of genetics. “Our goal at the outset was to conduct a highly comprehensive analysis of what’s happening in the body just after exercising.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic brought mass spectator sports and team training to a grinding halt this spring, football clubs faced a dicey challenge: How could they keep their players in top shape while still adhering to social distancing? For thousands of players around the world, at-home training programmes provided the answer.
One way to help players achieve peak performance is to train their brains to quickly respond to the events unfolding around them. To that end, Applied Cognitive Engineering (ACE) has developed a software-based brain training platform called IntelliGym.
Developed long before COVID-19 emerged, the platform has benefited from a surge in demand for at-home training, with ACE recently inking deals to bring the technology to the St. Louis Soccer Club and the Texas Association of Soccer Coaches. CEO Danny Dankner says that coaches and players have been won over by IntelliGym’s empirically-backed approach to improving performance.
Running is a common exercise with numerous health benefits. Vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) influences running injury risk and running performance. Measurement of vGRF during running is now primarily constrained to a laboratory setting. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a new approach to measuring vGRF during running. This approach can be used outside of the laboratory and involves running shoes instrumented with novel piezoresponsive sensors and a standard accelerometer. Thirty-one individuals ran at three different speeds on a force-instrumented treadmill while wearing the instrumented running shoes. vGRF was predicted using data collected from the instrumented shoes, and predicted vGRF were compared to vGRF measured via the treadmill. Per cent error of the resulting predictions varied depending upon the predicted vGRF characteristic. Per cent error was relatively low for predicted vGRF impulse (2–7%), active peak vGRF (3–7%), and ground contact time (3–6%), but relatively high for predicted vGRF load rates (22–29%). These errors should decrease with future iterations of the instrumented shoes and collection of additional data from a more diverse sample. The novel technology described herein might become a feasible way to collect large amounts of vGRF data outside of the traditional biomechanics laboratory.
In elite football (soccer), periodic health examination (PHE) could provide prognostic factors to predict injury risk. Objective
To develop and internally validate a prognostic model to predict individualised indirect (non-contact) muscle injury (IMI) risk during a season in elite footballers, only using PHE-derived candidate prognostic factors. Methods
Routinely collected preseason PHE and injury data were used from 152 players over 5 seasons (1st July 2013 to 19th May 2018). Ten candidate prognostic factors (12 parameters) were included in model development. Multiple imputation was used to handle missing values. The outcome was any time-loss, index indirect muscle injury (I-IMI) affecting the lower extremity. A full logistic regression model was fitted, and a parsimonious model developed using backward-selection to remove factors that exceeded a threshold that was equivalent to Akaike’s Information Criterion (alpha 0.157). Predictive performance was assessed through calibration, discrimination and decision-curve analysis, averaged across all imputed datasets. The model was internally validated using bootstrapping and adjusted for overfitting. Results
During 317 participant-seasons, 138 I-IMIs were recorded. The parsimonious model included only age and frequency of previous IMIs; apparent calibration was perfect, but discrimination was modest (C-index = 0.641, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.580 to 0.703), with clinical utility evident between risk thresholds of 37–71%. After validation and overfitting adjustment, performance deteriorated (C-index = 0.589 (95% CI = 0.528 to 0.651); calibration-in-the-large = − 0.009 (95% CI = − 0.239 to 0.239); calibration slope = 0.718 (95% CI = 0.275 to 1.161)). Conclusion
The selected PHE data were insufficient prognostic factors from which to develop a useful model for predicting IMI risk in elite footballers. Further research should prioritise identifying novel prognostic factors to improve future risk prediction models in this field. [full text]
Premier League players may “pay the price” for Project Restart with a rush of muscle injuries when the season resumes on 17 June. This is the warning from Professor Jan Ekstrand, the lead expert from Uefa’s Elite Club Injury Study Group, who cites a new 15-year study of pre-season training programmes when suggesting that the condensed preparation time for clubs is “probably not enough”.
The Uefa study, published this year in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, considered the correlation between the number of pre-season training sessions and in-season injury rates and proposed that even the standard six-week pre-season was insufficient owing to overseas tours. Hence Ekstrand’s reservations about the restart date for Premier League teams who returned to contact training only last Thursday.
“Three and a half weeks is what you have, so you have to accept it but they should be prepared for some more muscle injuries,” he told i. “Maybe that’s a price you have to pay.
We are in full-on offseason-abyss mode right now. With the 2020 NFL Draft almost a month in the rearview mirror and free agency in the distant past, it’s time to talk about one of the remaining points of contention among players, teams, fans and media members — what to do about quarterbacks like Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes and eventually Deshaun Watson.