… “Obviously I didn’t go to the World Cup, missed out on that, and in my head, I’m like, ‘Can I pull a Crystal Dunn? Can I make it back and go to the Olympics?’ And I felt like I was on that path to do that and had a great chance — not that I don’t still, I’m obviously still working toward it. But it was definitely disappointing to know that the Olympics were pushed back,” Williams said.
“At the end of the day, I think we have to look big picture,” she added. “For me, it was now we have a year to prepare and I have a year to work on things that maybe I was rushing to work on.”
Why does the mouse sleep five times longer than the elephant? Why do babies sleep longer than adults? If these sound like riddles, that’s because they have been. Sleep, in spite of its ubiquity, holds mysteries that have perplexed scientists for decades.
Now, using data from humans and other mammals, a team of scientists including researchers from the Santa Fe Institute has developed one of the first quantitative models that explains why sleep times across species and during development decrease as brains get bigger. Crucially, the model identifies a sharp transition at around 2.4 years of age, where sleep patterns change in humans as the primary purpose of sleep shifts from reorganization to repair.
Sleep undergirds every aspect of our physical and mental health, which we need to support now more than ever. Cultivating healthy sleep behaviors during this nightmarish time can get you closer to the sleep of your dreams.
Healthy sleep behaviors support the two physiological processes that interact to foster consolidated episodes of sleep at night and wakefulness during the day: the homeostatic drive (which regulates pressure to fall asleep) and the circadian drive (which determines our daily rhythm of feeling alert).
You can walk into any local “fitness boxing” gym in your area and hear all about the benefits of picking up the activity. Boxing, real Boxing isn’t an “activity”. It’s a very specific set of movements with a very specific goal in mind. That goal is to put yourself in a position in which you can land a punch without your opponent being able to hit you back. This is it, plain and simple.
I specialize in working with hockey players, both in the NHL and with players in the developmental programs of various NHL franchises. Being in Detroit, I have gotten to do quite a bit of work with the Detroit Red Wings over my many years of owning Watters Performance. One of the hardest things to do is convince a professional athlete that they should be competent in any other sport than the one they are paid to perform in. Any of the hockey fans reading this will certainly remember the names of famous Red Wing enforcers Bob Probert, Joey Kocur, and even more recently, Darren McCarty. These are all past Red Wing enforcers that worked with the legendary Emanuel Steward at the even more legendary Kronk Gym in Detroit in the late ’80s and early ’90s. They were learning to box, but they were also training their bodies to become better hockey players. This was simply by accident. Their purpose was simply to fight. Sports science is different today, and we’re able to take the activity and break it down into a reason.
… “We just really have similar views in human performance and how aggressive we are in sort of outside-the-box thinking, and analytics — the sports science and data part of it,” [David] Ballou said. “We just really meshed well right off the bat.”
That was at IMG Academy in Florida, where current Crimson Tide players like Evan Neal, Trey Saunders, Thomas Fletcher, Stephon Wynn Jr. and Dylan Moses all suited up before signing on to Alabama. Moses even gave Saban a recommendation during the hiring process because during his time there he got stronger, leaner and faster, and also avoided any significant injuries.
“We had the resources, we had the athletes, we had the different levels of athletes because from a football perspective we had NFL guys who were there all year, in-and-out,” Ballou said. “We had college guys who came for the combine training that we have three months there. Obviously we had our high school team there.
… You can figure out your limits by trial and error, but those limits are going to keep shifting from week to week if your training program is working. Ideally, you want to be able to reliably anticipate failure in real time before it happens. You want to be able to feel it.
A new study from Israel Halperin’s group at Tel Aviv University, led by Aviv Emanuel and published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, tackles precisely this question. While lots of previous studies have assessed subjective effort after sets of strength training, Halperin and his colleagues asked their subjects to rate their effort after every single rep. This allowed them to track the progression of perceived effort as the subjects got closer and closer to failure.
… The club has seen a lot of changes over the last couple of years including significant upgrades to their performance analysis department lead by Steve Rands. When Rands came to Swansea in 2019 he wasted no time in bringing in SBG, a system he has relied on since his time at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola when challenging for the title and competing in multiple competitions.
This past season Rands has been intent on streamlining the Swans’ analysis workflows to better implement Cooper’s football philosophy. One of his primary targets has been to update the in-game setup and bring multiple angle video access to the bench. While this is now commonplace in the Premier League, Rands wanted to ensure the coaches have all the best tools to exploit fine margins and make quick decisions. He set about providing all his staff with tablet devices running Focus, an app which streams video at low latency, allowing them to review key events in the game from every available angle.
Examining data from the first six weeks of their landmark DETECT study, a team of scientists from the Scripps Research Translational Institute sees encouraging signs that wearable fitness devices can improve public health efforts to control COVID-19.
The DETECT study, launched on March 25, uses a mobile app to collect smartwatch and activity tracker data from consenting participants, and also gathers their self-reported symptoms and diagnostic test results. Any adult living in the United States is eligible to participate in the study by downloading the research app, MyDataHelps.
In a study published October 29 in Nature Medicine, the Scripps Research team reports that wearable devices like Fitbit are capable of identifying cases of COVID-19 by evaluating changes in heart rate, sleep and activity levels, along with self-reported symptom data—and can identify cases with greater success than looking at symptoms alone.
Sport Profiler insoles from Digitsole are the first connected insoles for running that allow athletes to improve their performance by adopting a healthy gait. They are designed to analyze and interpret stride technique via multiple biomechanical parameters, prevent the risk of injury, and monitor and improve performance. The dedicated application, available on iOS and Android, allows users to connect their insoles to their smartphones via Bluetooth. Runners can track their performance directly from the dashboard, and the data is saved to accurately analyze daily improvements. Coming soon is a walking application and a dedicated application for cycling, which will allow cyclists to improve their pedaling performance, optimize energy consumption, as well as reduce the risk of injury. These Digitsole insoles are made with antibacterial fabric and are water resistant. They provide strong arch support, a shock heel system, and foot stability while facilitating movement.
… Dr. Lyle Cain, who is an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at the Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center in Alabama, has studied the data — in both college football and the NFL — to this point and believes there’s a clear connection.
“Back when COVID was getting started in March, April, May, most of us were worried about soft-tissue injuries — hamstrings, Achilles and things like that, where you have to have a certain amount of elasticity and tissue compensation built up in your system to be able to handle really quick, explosive movements,” Dr. Cain recently told Yahoo Sports.
“We’ve certainly seen that. There probably have been more soft-tissue injuries to date in college and NFL than we normally see this time of year.”
As the colder months approach, runners are thinking about how to keep themselves and their families healthy this winter. While supplementation to stave off deficiency is already a hot topic among those who run, this winter in particular, runners will be interested to know the areas where they can help protect themselves.
Jen Sygo is a registered dietitian who specializes in sports nutrition. Sygo says there are several key vitamins she has been recommending for runners to supplement with this fall and winter. Those are vitamin D, Omega-3s, vitamin C and zinc.
The American Hockey League is planning to drop the puck on its next season on Feb. 5 in hopes of syncing up its schedule with the NHL and getting some fans into arenas for most, if not all, of its 31 teams.
AHL President and CEO Scott Howson said “everything’s on the table” when it comes to divisional alignment, formats and how many games are played, though beginning in early February answers one question after it became unrealistic to start the season Dec. 4 as initially planned because of the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This gives us the best chance to have a significant season with fans in the building and we’ll just see what happens here in the next two months,” Howson said by phone after the AHL’s Board of Governors voted to approve the Feb. 5 start date. “We’re going to be flexible and we’re going to do everything we can to play.”
… many organizations have taken radically different approaches to building their analytics capability for reasons ranging from budget to capability to commitment. Some are analyzing baseball data with R and Python to leverage AI and machine learning; some are pushing spreadsheets to their limits with sabermetrics; and others are just beginning their journey to find what works for them. Our DataRobot team has worked with many different organizations, ranging from MLB to NCAA to sports service providers, looking to build their baseball analytics capabilities. Along the way, we’ve learned many best practices and principles for a successful and productive operation.
In this post, I’ll briefly discussed what we’ve learned about why baseball analytics are so important to organizations at any level who are serious about winning, the common failure modes that sink baseball analytics efforts, the organizational building blocks that lay the foundation for a strong baseball analytics capability, and the framework for a baseball analytics use case development cycle to consistently and reliably generate impact from data and insights.
… It’s not always the biggest or most talented players who make it to the NHL. Instead it can be those with the highest compete level.
The Canadiens’ Brendan Gallagher — a fifth-round pick (147th overall) at the 2010 NHL Draft — is a perfect example. The 5-foot-9, 184-pound right-winger was en route to his third straight 30-goal year before COVID-19 shut down the NHL regular season in March when he had 22 goals in 59 games. The Canadiens rewarded the 28-year-old last month with a six-year, US$39-million contract extension.
Rob Ramage, the Canadiens’ director of player development, spoke about the importance of compete level last Thursday during a 40-minute Zoom conference call with Montreal media members.
“They have the skills coach, the skating coach, the strength guy, what about a compete coach?” Ramage said when speaking about the team’s prospects. “And that is actually where Franky (player-development coach Francis Bouillon) and I do come into play because they need to compete. They need to learn to compete on a consistent and regular basis.