… I retired last year after spending seven years as a goalkeeper in the NWSL (and three offseasons playing abroad). And though I and so many teammates managed to fulfill our childhood dreams of playing professional soccer, I can’t help but look back and think that while my generation may have followed in the ‘99ers footsteps, it’s unclear if we made it that much further down the path.
Washington Football Team Quarterback Alex Smith was fighting for his leg and his life in November 2018 after he suffered a gruesome on field injury. Following thousands of hours of rehab and help from the US Military, he defied expectations to make a return to the NFL, in one of the greatest sports comebacks ever. [video, 13:27]
… [Angelique] Kerber is among the 72 players doing hard quarantine for 14 days after a five positive coronavirus tests were returned from charter flights that brought almost 1,200 players, coaches, officials and media to Melbourne for what has previously been dubbed the Happy Slam.
That means those players won’t be allowed to leave their hotel rooms or practice for 14 days, creating a two-speed preparation period for the tournament. Others in less rigorous quarantine will be allowed to practice for five hours daily.
Those outdoor sessions started Monday in Melbourne. A smaller group of players who landed in the South Australia capital of Adelaide, including Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, are also allowed outside to practice under bio-secure protocols.
The physical reaction was to be expected in Thompson’s first game action since suffering a season-ending shoulder injury in November 2019. Thompson, a 23-year-old winger, averaged 18:24 of ice time across the Sabres’ two games against the Washington Capitals, both of which he began on the team’s top forward line.
“Getting back in game shape, there’s nothing like it,” Thompson said after the morning skate Monday. “I’ll start to get my legs here soon. I was a little winded there the first two games, but I’m starting to get my legs under me.”
Regardless of performance, though, Thompson may not be in the Sabres’ lineup every night. Coach Ralph Krueger plans to manage the workload of his young forwards du
… It takes a big blow to your psyche to have prepared months, even years for an event and only to have it taken off the schedule. Whether this is due to injury or factors out of your control, it can hurt all the same. Life is not predictable, as much as we like to believe we have some type of control over it. We plan to the day what our training will look like, and then all of the sudden the train is off the tracks. Best option: stay in the present moment while also keeping a focus on your long term goals. Sports psychologist Dr. Julie Emmerman suggests,
In recent years, increasing the midsole bending stiffness (MBS) of running shoes by embedding carbon fibre plates in the midsole resulted in many world records set during long-distance running competitions. Although several theories were introduced to unravel the mechanisms behind these performance benefits, no definitive explanation was provided so far. This study aimed to investigate how the function of the gastrocnemius medialis (GM) muscle and Achilles tendon is altered when running in shoes with increased MBS. Here, we provide the first direct evidence that the amount and velocity of GM muscle fascicle shortening is reduced when running with increased MBS. Compared to control, running in the stiffest condition at 90% of speed at lactate threshold resulted in less muscle fascicle shortening (p = 0.006, d = 0.87), slower average shortening velocity (p = 0.002, d = 0.93) and greater estimated Achilles tendon energy return (p ≤ 0.001, d = 0.96), without a significant change in GM fascicle work (p = 0.335, d = 0.40) or GM energy cost (p = 0.569, d = 0.30). The findings of this study suggest that running in stiff shoes allows the ankle plantarflexor muscle–tendon unit to continue to operate on a more favourable position of the muscle’s force–length–velocity relationship by lowering muscle shortening velocity and increasing tendon energy return.
Skeletal muscle is the protein reservoir of our body and an important regulator of glucose and lipid homeostasis. Consequently, the growth or the loss of muscle mass can influence general metabolism, locomotion, eating and respiration. Therefore, it is not surprising that excessive muscle loss is a bad prognostic index of a variety of diseases ranging from cancer, organ failure, infections and unhealthy ageing. Muscle function is influenced by different quality systems that regulate the function of contractile proteins and organelles. These systems are controlled by transcriptional dependent programs that adapt muscle cells to environmental and nutritional clues. Mechanical, oxidative, nutritional and energy stresses, as well as growth factors or cytokines modulate signaling pathways that, ultimately, converge on protein and organelle turnover. Novel insights that control and orchestrate such complex network are continuously emerging and will be summarized in this review. Understanding the mechanisms that control muscle mass will provide therapeutic targets for the treatment of muscle loss in inherited and non-hereditary diseases and for the improvement of the quality of life during ageing. [full text]
… “Athletic trainers by design are the master builders of healthcare in collegiate athletics,” Northern Arizona director of sports medicine Cherisse Kutyreff said. “We tend to juggle so many different balls anyway. It was a little chaotic to start, but it’s our natural tendency when emergencies come up or crises arise, athletic trainers are the ones who sit, try and troubleshoot and come up with solutions. That’s our wheelhouse to be under fire.”
Brigham Young University, The Daily Universe, Max Clark from
BYU tennis captain David Ball was left dumbfounded following a shocking announcement from the NCAA on March 12, 2020. “Today, NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors canceled all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships. This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat (and) our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to the spread of the pandemic.”
Ball, who worked his entire life to compete at the collegiate level, unexpectedly had his fourth-and-final season stripped away from him without notice.
“I was devastated,” Ball said. “You work your entire life to compete at this level and seemingly overnight it all gets stripped away.”
Ball launched an Instagram page called “Untold Athletes” on March 16, 2020, just four days after the NCAA’s announcement canceling college sports.
A highly sensitive wearable sensor for cardiorespiratory monitoring could potentially be worn continuously by cardiac patients or others who require constant monitoring.
The small and inexpensive sensor, announced in Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, is based on an electrochemical system involving two ionic forms of iodine, I– and I3–. A solution containing these electrolyte substances is placed into a small circular cavity that is capped with a thin flexible diaphragm, allowing detection of subtle movements when placed on a patient’s chest.
Small motions that arise from the heartbeat and breathing cause the flexible diaphragm to move the I–/I3– solution into a narrow channel in the device, where it is electrochemically detected by four platinum electrodes.
TeachAids, a non-profit focused on health education, announced the launch of its new Institute for Brain Research and Innovation on Tuesday. TeachAids was founded by Stanford Graduate School of Education lecturer and 2016 recipient of the Stanford Alumni Excellence in Education Award Piya Sorcar M.A. ’06 Ph.D. ’09. Sorcar is also an Adjunct Affiliate at the Stanford School of Medicine and Faculty Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health.
The Institute will focus on identifying methods to improve concussion education and attempt to change the culture around concussion reporting. Daniel Daneshvar, who previously worked as a founding scientific advisor on the TeachAids team, will serve as the director of the Institute. Daneshvar will be joined by numerous scientists across the country who conduct research on this topic.
High levels of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, which have been linked to heart disease, are still a health concern.
But evidence shows people no longer have to be concerned about eating foods that are high in cholesterol. What’s changed is that many researchers and physicians believe that eating cholesterol-rich foods such as eggs may not affect the cholesterol that is in your blood.
“However, people with certain health problems, such as diabetes, should continue to avoid cholesterol-rich foods,” says cardiologist Steven Nissen, MD.
… Anti-nutrients are substances that naturally occur in plant and animal foods.
The name comes from how they function in your body once you eat them. They block or interfere with how your body absorbs other nutrients out of your gut and into your bloodstream so you can then use them. Thus, anti-nutrients may decrease the amount of nutrients you actually get from your food. They most commonly interfere with the absorption of calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium and zinc.
Plants evolved these compounds as a defensive mechanism against insects, parasites, bacteria, and fungi. For example, some anti-nutrients can cause a food to taste bitter; animals won’t want to eat it, leaving the seed, for instance, to provide nourishment for future seedlings. Some anti-nutrients block the digestion of seeds that are eaten. The seeds disperse when they come out the other end in the animal’s fecal matter and can go on to grow new plants. Both of these survival tactics help the plant species grow and spread.
A PhD in computational astrophysics, developing trading systems for a £30bn hedge fund and policy advisor for the British government: not your typical CV for a member of backroom staff at a football club.
These are just some of the credentials of Laurie Shaw, who has been appointed Lead AI Scientist by Manchester City.
For the last three-and-a-half years, his job has been as a Research Scientist and Lecturer at Harvard University, specialising in the analysis and applications of spatiotemporal data in team sports.
This is all part of an intriguing contest taking place away from the pitch between City and Liverpool – to be the best in data science.
Global spending on transfer fees in women’s football has surpassed $1 million in a year for the first time.
The money spent in the women’s game in 2020 was still dwarfed by the $5.63 billion spent on men’s football transfers, according to an annual report published by Fifa.
But while the men’s game saw a spending decrease of nearly $2 billion compared to 2019 – with men’s clubs seemingly tightening their purse strings amid the pandemic – the total money exchanged for women’s transfer fees rose sharply from $0.7 million in 2019 to $1.2 million in 2020.