Brockton Enterpries, The Patriot Ledger, Eric McHugh from
… Mewis felt she needed to demand more out of herself, especially after tearing her ACL during the 2018 National Women’s Soccer League campaign with the Houston Dash.
“I just told myself, ‘This is what you want. You want to get back with the national team. You want to be successful at Houston. You want all of these things that you’ve wanted since you were a little kid,’” said Mewis, a 29-year-old midfielder who grew up in Hanson. “I think I had to do some self-reflection there.”
Baltimore Ravens defensive end Calais Campbell said that he spoke to Jacksonville Jaguars running back Ryquell Armstead, who is battling coronavirus symptoms and is not expected to play again during the 2020 NFL season.
Armstead has already been hospitalized twice over the complications he has suffered because of the coronavirus, ESPN reported on Sunday. Armstead had been on the Jaguars’ reserve/COVID-19 list this season with the second time coming in September.
The seven teams excluded from the NHL’s return-to-play postseason over the summer will get to hit the ice sooner to get back into the groove of things.
The NHL and NHLPA have tentatively agreed to allow the Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, New Jersey Devils, Ottawa Senators, and San Jose Sharks to get extra training time before regular training camps resume for all teams, TSN’s Pierre LeBrun reported on Tuesday’s edition of “Insider Trading.”
… With all this, preventing hamstring injuries requires a comprehensive approach, in which the sprint movement itself should be the at centre of the prevention programmes. This coincides with the data from a study that showed that those athletes who performed actions at more than 95% of their maximum speed were less likely to get injured than those who performed at 85%.7 It seems that regular exposure to sprint actions act like a “vaccine”, reducing the risk of muscle injury.4
This methodological proposal is in accordance with a recently published consensus study8 carried out with the participation of members from FC Barcelona’s medical staff, which suggests that the sprint training might be one of the most effective strategies to reduce injury rates. In spite of being a coherent proposal at a conceptual level, there is not still experimental evidence that confirms that the sprint helps reduce the incidence of injuries in the hamstring muscle zone. Because of that, prestigious researchers such as Jurdan Mendiguchia or Pedro Jiménez-Reyes have recently published a study in which they compare the effects of the performance in high speed actions and the muscle architecture of the eccentric hamstrings training (“Nordic” group), one of the most used methodological proposals in sprint training (“sprint” group) (sprint training programme attached, Table 1).9
This MLS season has been anything but normal. What has remained constant, however, is the excitement MLS can generate once summer turns to fall. Great goals, close games, and teams jockeying for playoff position are what this time of year is all about. One of the biggest storylines of this season, once again, is the league’s ability to develop an abundance of young players.
While some teams have been better at this than others, MLS as a whole has done a very good job nurturing teenagers who often go on to do great things. After all, the whole point of MLS when it began 25 years ago was to establish a national pro league with an eye towards creating a talent pipeline that would help the US become more competitive at the World Cup. The league has largely done that since 1996 with some clubs making it almost foundational. FC Dallas is almost synonymous with player development in MLS. The New York Red Bulls have also been very good at developing players.
One of the highlights so far this season includes four players between the ages of 16 and 17 who were able to score their first MLS goals.
Only the Tokyo Olympics were postponed, not the humidity. That still awaits.
Canadian athletes can thank Wendy Pethick if they acclimatize well to the 30-plus degree summer temperatures expected next year in Japan for the pandemic-delayed 2020 Plus One Olympics and Paralympics.
The manager of the Canadian Sport Centre-Pacific’s performance lab, located at the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence on the Camosun College Interurban campus, has been named Canada’s sport scientist of the year for 2020 by Own the Podium.
The last 10 years have seen enormous technical progress in the field of indoor positioning and indoor navigation; yet, in contrast with outdoor well-established GNSS solutions, no technology exists that is cheap and accurate enough for the general market. The potential applications of indoor localization are all-encompassing, from home to wide public areas, from IoT and personal devices to surveillance and crowd behavior applications, and from casual use to mission-critical systems. This special issue is focused on the recent developments within the sensors and sensing technologies for indoor positioning and indoor navigation networks domain. The papers included in this special issue provide useful insights to the implementation, modelling, and integration of novel technologies and applications, including location-based services, indoor maps and 3D building models, human motion monitoring, robotics and UAV, self-contained sensors, wearable and multi-sensor systems, privacy and security for indoor localization systems. [full text]
… Now comes the hard part – figuring out the finances and determining a salary cap for the next year.
Tatum said the NBA is still working through the auditing process with the National Basketball Players Association. The parties also need to agree on a start date for the next season.
Tatum said the league learned a lot from its bubble environment and envisioned new capabilities because of 5G availability, which wireless carriers have been installing in sports arenas and stadiums around the country.
The NBA partnered with AT&T to create holograms interviews during telecasts on Turner Sports and ESPN. This could open up the door for more marketing revenue as businesses could use the NBA’s teams and players to activate sponsorships and incorporate fan engagement.
This paper presents an energy-optimized electronic performance tracking system (EPTS) device for analyzing the athletic movements of football players. We first develop a tiny battery-operated wearable device that can be attached to the backside of field players. In order to analyze the strategic performance, the proposed wearable EPTS device utilizes the GNSS-based positioning solution, the IMU-based movement sensing system, and the real-time data acquisition protocol. As the life-time of the EPTS device is in general limited due to the energy-hungry GNSS sensing operations, for the energy-efficient solution extending the operating time, in this work, we newly develop the advanced optimization methods that can reduce the number of GNSS accesses without degrading the data quality. The proposed method basically identifies football activities during the match time, and the sampling rate of the GNSS module is dynamically relaxed when the player performs static movements. A novel deep convolution neural network (DCNN) is newly developed to provide the accurate classification of human activities, and various compression techniques are applied to reduce the model size of the DCNN algorithm, allowing the on-device DCNN processing even at the memory-limited EPTS device. Experimental results show that the proposed DCNN-assisted sensing control can reduce the active power by 28%, consequently extending the life-time of the EPTS device more than 1.3 times. [full text]
Hamstring strains are the most common injury in elite football and typically occur during high-speed running. Despite its important contribution to power production in the late swing phase, injury to the semimembranosus (SM) is less common than to the biceps femoris, but may involve the free tendon and depending on the degree of retraction, warrant surgical repair. Few case reports detail clinical reasoning, supported by objective data during rehabilitation in elite footballers, and none have described the return to sport (RTS) process following this type of hamstring injury. In this article, we outline the management and RTS of an English Premier League (EPL) footballer who suffered a high-grade SM proximal tendon tear during training. Due to the degree of retraction of the free tendon, the player underwent surgical reconstruction at the recommendation of an orthopaedic surgeon. Early physiotherapy care, nutritional support, on- and off-pitch injury-specific reconditioning and global athletic development are outlined, alongside strength and power diagnostic and global positioning systems data, assessment of pain, player feedback and MRI informed clinical reasoning and shared decision-making during the RTS process. 18 weeks post-surgery the player returned to team training, transferring to a new club 3 weeks later. 2.5 years post RTS, the player remains free of re-injury playing regularly in the EPL. [full text]
… The sports stoppage, however, came with steep costs for those who’ve dedicated their lives in pursuit of victory. According to a study released Tuesday from Stanford University and Strava, a social network of exercise enthusiasts, 22.5% of professional athletes reported feeling down or depressed on more than half of the days of the week in the period between mid-March and August of this year, while COVID-19 restrictions on athletic training and competition were in place, compared to 3.9% of athletes reporting the same struggles earlier this year before the pandemic hit. That’s an increase of 477%. Researchers also found that those surveyed—who were endurance athletes like cyclists, runners, and triathletes—were 5.9 times more likely to report feeling nervous or anxious for more than half the days of the week during the pandemic period than beforehand; they were 7.1 times more likely to report little interest in doing things.
We often hear from the scientific community of the importance of sports science within football, but too often the voices of coaches are not heard in the best practice guidelines, when they could offer valuable insight. The goal of any elite team is high performance—to win as many matches as possible over the duration of the season. There are myriad factors involved in the achievement of such performance, including technical, tactical, mental and physical qualities. One area that I have emphasised for many years (as early as the 1980s) that can help us achieve our performance goals is nutrition, an area that has grown in importance within the game.
Football is a global game which is constantly evolving, showing substantial increases in physical and technical demands. Nutrition plays a valuable integrated role in optimising performance of elite players during training and match-play, and maintaining their overall health throughout the season. An evidence-based approach to nutrition emphasising, a ‘food first’ philosophy (ie, food over supplements), is fundamental to ensure effective player support. This requires relevant scientific evidence to be applied according to the constraints of what is practical and feasible in the football setting. The science underpinning sports nutrition is evolving fast, and practitioners must be alert to new developments. In response to these developments, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has gathered experts in applied sports nutrition research as well as practitioners working with elite football clubs and national associations/federations to issue an expert statement on a range of topics relevant to elite football nutrition: (1) match day nutrition, (2) training day nutrition, (3) body composition, (4) stressful environments and travel, (5) cultural diversity and dietary considerations, (6) dietary supplements, (7) rehabilitation, (8) referees and (9) junior high-level players. The expert group provide a narrative synthesis of the scientific background relating to these topics based on their knowledge and experience of the scientific research literature, as well as practical experience of applying knowledge within an elite sports setting. Our intention is to provide readers with content to help drive their own practical recommendations. In addition, to provide guidance to applied researchers where to focus future efforts. [full text]
The Danish champions – who play Liverpool on Tuesday – have been the poster child for using metrics to gain an advantage, with some techniques in common with their English counterparts
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Charles Hallman from
Racism remains a top concern on college campuses as well as in the country at large, says a new study. The Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), a national nonprofit started in 2015 by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, last week released results from a three-year data-gathering project that began in 2017.
Study authors talked to over 6,200 college athletes and 1,200 coaches and athletic staff from 50 U.S. colleges and universities about their perception of, among other things, racism and social justice issues.
Major League Baseball’s 30 clubs have amassed an unprecedented $8.3 billion of debt from their various lenders and will post $2.8 billion to $3 billion in operational losses this year, Commissioner Rob Manfred told Sportico Monday in an exclusive interview.
The debt was accrued so the clubs could fund their businesses during this COVID-affected season without fans in the stands and negligible ballpark revenue.
“We are going to be at historic high levels of debt,” Manfred said. “And it’s going to be difficult for the industry to weather another year where we don’t have fans in the ballpark and have other limitations on how much we can’t play and how we can play.”