In the early days of the coronavirus shutdowns, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and his throwing coach, Tom House, sat down to have their annual conversation regarding Brees’ goal for the offseason.
Brees’ goal was football-oriented: throwing a 60-yard pass. But the steps he normally took to get there had been eliminated because there were no open fields, and gyms were closed.
“What are we gonna do?” House recalled Thursday, speaking to Caroline Gonzalez on the Saints’ in-house podcast. “How the heck are we going to get a workout in today? What tools do we have available?”
Red Sox ace Eduardo Rodriguez will sit out the rest of the season because of a heart issue, which the team believes is related to the southpaw’s recent contraction of COVID-19.
Rodriguez was diagnosed last week with myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart. The 27-year-old tested positive for the novel coronavirus before spring training 2.0, but was cleared to return to team workouts on July 18. Five days later, an MRI revealed Rodriguez’s heart condition, prompting the team to shut him down. Doctors told Rodriguez that up to 20 percent of people who’ve been infected with COVID-19 are diagnosed with myocarditis.
“That’s the most important part of your body, so when you hear that, the first time I hear it I was kind of scared a little,” Rodriguez said. “Now that I know what it is, it’s still scary, but I know exactly what it is. Just talk to my mom, talk to my wife, they know what I have and everything. Now we just gotta take the rest. That’s hard, but you gotta take a rest.”
Zion Williamson is losing minutes as the New Orleans Pelicans are losing games.
The top pick in the 2019 NBA Draft played just 29 total minutes as the Pelicans dropped their first two games of the NBA bubble restart of the season in Orlando. It’s difficult to develop a rhythm when constantly in and out of the game.
“It’s very tough, to be honest, because as soon as I start to break that sweat, I look over and that horn is for me and I have to come out the game,” Williamson said. “Also, when I do catch the flow of the game, like I said, that horn goes off and it’s for me.”
… Heartache, a packed fixture schedule and injuries didn’t stop Liverpool delivering the prize they all craved and a club-record points tally of 99 along the way.
Following the mantra of Jürgen Klopp, the squad and its support structure knuckled down as part of a ‘no excuses’ culture.
Pepijn Lijnders, assistant manager: “Without changes and adaptability, there’s no improvement. But not all changes create improvement. It’s about creating a balance between our way, the structure, the principles, the rules and always finding the right things in the right moment of the season.”
Andreas Kornmayer, head of fitness and conditioning: “The challenging part is that we have a team on the one side but we also have individual players on the other side; we need to make this quite a good set-up to address both of them. That means that we have our individual programmes for all our players gym-wise, but also extra bits that we need to do with them on the pitch. On the pitch, it’s about them bringing everything together and making them as strong as possible; not in a muscular way, more in a robustness way.”
… How to get faster then? You need to train your mind/body system to turn over quicker. “It is important to get people used to a higher turnover to avoid the reach — because there is so much down side to reaching.” Heiderscheit says. “Yes, you may run faster, but there is a definite mechanical cost to your body associated with that, in terms of load on your tissues.”
Striking a balance between mental health and this moment is even harder for student and youth athletes, who have even fewer options to participate in physical activity. And made even especially harder are unserved and underserved communities, who have always lived on the margins of sports, with little to few options.
Alabama on Friday shared the fifth of a series of short videos that show off its new Sports Science Center located at the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility. This time, Crimson Tide athletic trainer Jeff Allen provided a tour of the university’s new sensory deprivation area.
… The Golden State Warriors haven’t shied away from their location at the heart of Silicon Valley. They are renowned as one of the more innovative franchises when it comes to new technology and data.
What you might not know though, is that Santa Cruz plays a pivotal role in testing out new technology, as Murphy explains. “It’s probably no surprise to anybody that there’s countless technology companies out there trying to get access to Golden State. I think Kirk Lacob [Assistant General Manager] up there probably turns down more than I can even think of. But for those that are of interest, that really kind of pique the mind and they see as potential for Golden State, a lot of times we execute that in Santa Cruz first.”
That’s not just to see if the tech actually works. A critical component in any partnership is getting to know who you’re dealing with. “I think that’s a big part of it too is, obviously these people, these companies are gonna be provided access to Golden State and their players” Murphy outlines. “To understand a little bit more about how they operate, who they are, while they’re in Santa Cruz, I think really can give them the right lens to make those decisions better in Golden State.”
The use of digital health products has gained considerable interest as a new way to improve therapeutic research and development. While these products are being adopted by various industries and stakeholders, their incorporation in clinical trials has been slow due to a disconnect between the promises of digital products and potential risks in using these new technologies in the absence of regulatory support. The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Biomarkers Consortium hosted a public workshop to address challenges and opportunities in this field. Important characteristics of tool development were addressed in a series of presentations, case studies and open panel sessions. The workshop participants endorsed the usefulness of an evidentiary criteria framework, highlighted the importance of early patient engagement, and emphasized the potential impact of digital monitoring tools and precompetitive collaborations. Concerns were expressed about the lack of real‐life validation examples and the limitations of legacy standards used as a benchmark for novel tool development and validation. Participants recognized the need for novel analytical and statistical approaches to accommodate analyses of these novel data types. Future directions are to harmonize definitions to build common methodologies and foster multi‐disciplinary collaborations; to develop approaches towards integrating digital monitoring data with the totality of the data in clinical trials, and to continue an open dialog in the community. There was a consensus that all these efforts combined may create a paradigm shift of how clinical trials are planned, conducted and results brought to regulatory reviews. [pdf fulltext available]
To determine the prevalence and impact of non-time loss injuries in semi-professional football. Methods
218 players completed the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre (OSTRC) Questionnaire on Health Problems weekly during the 2016 season (35 weeks), recording the prevalence and impact of time loss (TL) and non-time loss (non-TL) injuries. TL injury and exposure were also collected by a third party as per the Football Consensus statement. The relative risk (RR) of a TL injury within 7 days of a self-reported non-TL injury was determined, with associated predictive power calculated. Results
The risk of TL injury was 3.6 to 6.9 × higher when preceded by ‘minor’ and ‘moderate’ non-TL complaints, respectively, and good predictive power (22.0–41.8%) was observed (AUC range = 0.73 to 0.83). Compliant responders (80% of completed OSTRC questionnaires) showed a mean self-reported weekly injury prevalence (TL and non-TL combined) of 33% (95% CI – 31.4% to 34.6%) with 28% (CI – 26.4% to 29.6%) attributed to non-TL injury. Conclusion
Over a quarter of players on average, report a physical complaint each week that does not prevent them from participating in training or match play. A non-TL injury was shown to be useful in identifying individual players at an increased risk of a TL injury.
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation journal from
Background
Low back pain (LBP) is a common problem among young basketball players in addition to lower extremity injuries. However, studies that focus on LBP with lower extremity pain are limited. From the perspective of the kinematic chain, disrupted lower extremity function can lead to LBP. The association between these two symptoms in basketball players, however, has not been reported. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify the association between lower extremity pain and LBP among young basketball players. Methods
This cross-sectional study was conducted on school-aged basketball players (n = 592). Information regarding their sporting activities was collected using a self-reported questionnaire. Musculoskeletal pain such as low back, knee, and ankle pain was assessed. The sports players with knee and/or ankle pain were defined as having lower extremity pain. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to assess the association between lower extremity pain and LBP. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated. The associations of knee or ankle pain with LBP were similarly assessed. Results
School-aged basketball players had a point prevalence of 12.8% for LBP. Compared with the players without lower extremity pain, the players with lower extremity pain had higher rates of LBP, with an adjusted OR (95% CI) of 6.21 (3.57–10.80). There was also a significant association of knee and ankle pain with LBP. Compared with the players without knee or ankle pain, the adjusted ORs (95% CI) for LBP were 4.25 (2.55–7.07) in the players with knee pain and 3.79 (2.26–6.36) in the players with ankle pain. Conclusions
Lower extremity pain was associated with LBP among school-aged basketball players. Further research is needed to clarify the mechanism of this association, which will provide useful information for prevention and treatment of LBP among young basketball players.
As the Broncos welcomed their veteran players back to UCHealth Training Center, the team held an extensive meeting Sunday on the team’s COVID-19 protocols.
The two-hour meeting, which was held in a socially distant manner with most of the team in the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse and others joining virtually from the team room in the main facility, featured Head Coach Vic Fangio, Director of Sports Medicine Steve “Greek” Antonopulos and a number of the team’s top executives.
During the presentation, more than a dozen members of the Broncos’ staff discussed topics that ranged from how to identify symptoms of COVID-19 and how the team will remain socially distanced at the facility to the team’s new-look media policy and a player’s return to play following a positive diagnosis.
… ask yourself: How could Durant or any other professional athlete – including those who are ripped to the gills during the games – control somebody like LeBron James, or Giannis Antetokounmpo, if they weren’t incredibly fit, strong, nimble, and clear-headed? And how could all of these amazing athletes, with their incredible willpower, discipline and motivation, be unable to overcome their “addiction” or “dependence” on cannabis?
It’s possible, of course, that some athletes might be able to play even better if they weren’t stoned. But don’t ever accuse Kevin Durant of that, at least not face-to-face. He’s bigger than you.
Even in 2015, though, the environment for cannabis in sports was still light-years better than it had been 20 to 30 years earlier.
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism from
Rugby is a high-intensity collision sport that involves low-intensity aerobic activities (e.g., standing, walking, and jogging) combined with frequent periods of intermittent, intensive anaerobic activities (e.g., sprinting, side stepping, passing, and collisions; Austin & Kelly, 2013; Twist et al., 2014). In 1895, the game of rugby was split into two variations—“league” and “union”—and, despite differences in laws, the two games share many common modalities with both based around frequent high-speed collisions. As a consequence of these repeated collisions, players from both codes of rugby experience increased markers of inflammation (Cunniffe et al., 2011) and muscle soreness (Twist et al., 2012). The muscle soreness in rugby is particularly pronounced, given it is a combination of both exercise- and impact-induced muscle damage (Naughton et al., 2017). This pain is often debilitating, affecting everyday function, and can last several days postgame and remain throughout the entire season (Fletcher et al., 2016). Players and support staff, therefore, constantly strive to improve recovery strategies and reduce pain with an emerging method being the use of cannabidiol (CBD). [full text]
… “I think everyone is scared of the opt out right now,” said a Power Five head coach. “The fact that we can present no clear answers to anyone. If you have no certainty, how many games [we are playing] and when there’s practice. At least opting out provides clarity for them.”
One industry source predicted to Yahoo Sports that 10 to 12 players could follow Farley’s lead. Prominent quarterback tutor Quincy Avery said that number could be around 35 or 40. Guessing a number is difficult, of course, because the college football season is shaping up to be a moving target. But the longer it’s pushed back, the more players are expected to follow.