Driving to Dublin — it’s, well, a long way from Tipperary. Too long for Dean Gardiner, especially with a new baby and full-time university courses.
The Irish super heavyweight boxer tried to endure the grind of traveling and training for another shot at the Olympics, but he’s called it a career.
The four-time Irish champion said the Tokyo Olympics, delayed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, are no longer his top priority.
“I just couldn’t do it all,” the 32-year-old Gardiner said of his packed schedule, which included driving several times per week from Tipperary to Ireland’s high-performance training center in the capital 100 miles away.
On the eve of his 2020-21 NBA preseason finale in December, Victor Oladipo participated in a funeral for his injured knee.
The service was held to say goodbye to an injury mindset, which was weighing on the two-time All-Star guard’s pursuit of fully recovering from a ruptured quad tendon in his right knee that required surgery in 2019.
“I was feeling better, but my mind was so used to protecting me — and being hesitant because of my leg — that I had created a habit of doing that,” Oladipo told ESPN. “And burying my injury and letting myself know that I’m healed, I’m stronger than ever before, it gave me the courage, the strength to actually go out there and perform and not think about the leg. Not defer as much.
… [Hayley Daniels] said personally, the impact the pandemic has had on athletes has been a setback but she’s trying to stay hopeful.
“I’m 30-years-old and I thought that when I was 29 I’d hopefully be competing in my first Olympic Games,” she said. “There’s no other way to describe it, it’s a blow … but for me it was also an opportunity to really slow down and look at how I can be better.”
Daniels said this is the most time she has spent at home in Canada in 15 years.
… MLB gained the right to host a combine or combine-like event in either 2020 or 2021 last March, as part of its agreement with the MLB Players Association. (MLB also gained the power to reduce the draft in both years, with last year’s checking in at five rounds and this year’s requiring at least 20 rounds.)
The league was said to be “motivated” to make the event happen, though it needs to resolve the incentives aspect for invited players. A source suggested that MLB could implement rules similar to those used as part of its voluntary MRI program — players who partake and “fail” their physicals have to be offered a higher percentage of the slot’s worth (in order for teams to receive a compensatory pick) than their counterparts who do not partake and who later fail their own physicals.
Logistical issues, including the draft coinciding with the College World Series, prevented MLB from running a combine in the past.
Under commissioner Rob Manfred’s “One Baseball” plan, the league will be taking a more active role in the scouting process. In November, MLB announced the formation of the “MLB Draft League,” a six-team summer-league format that will allow draft-eligible players to raise their stock over a 68-game season. The league had previously repurposed the Appalachian League into a wooden-bat league for collegiate freshmen and sophomores who were not yet eligible for the draft.
The growth of women’s sport from grassroots to professional competition is an exciting movement. There is great potential to capitalise on this across several domains including sponsorship deals, industry collaborations, and increased youth community sport participation. In Australia, the initiation of Rugby League, Women’s Big Bash League, and AFLW, has paved the way for many women to achieve their elite sporting goals. Despite this, female-specific research in sport is relatively minimal compared to that on male participants, thus limiting the discovery of key knowledge which can be applied to coaching and competition practices.
Since the introduction of an elite women’s Australian Football competition (AFLW) in 2017, the skilled performances of athletes have improved each season. Although there are still several challenges in working towards long-term sustainable development of the league, research providing specific insights into aspects of women’s Australian Rules football (AF) training and competition could be an important aid in fostering athlete development. In elite soccer, several studies indicate that coaching of skills may need to be adapted to suit men’s and women’s kick biomechanics as several key differences were found between how curve and instep kicks are executed for example, see here. Progressive female focused research has identified and informed tailored soccer kick coaching cues with specific focus to address the fundamental points for accurate curved kicks based on the kinematics of elite female athletes.
… Orreco says the new investment will enable it to expand its product, engineering, data science and commercial teams, in addition to accelerating the development of its elite performance solutions, @thlete and FitrWoman.
PLOS One; Faraz Damji, Kerry MacDonald, Michael A. Hunt, Jack Taunton, Alex Scott from
Sport is becoming increasingly competitive and athletes are being exposed to greater physical demands, leaving them prone to injuries. Monitoring athletes with the use of wearable technology could provide a way to potentially manage training and competition loads and reduce injuries. One such technology is the VERT inertial measurement unit, a commercially available discrete wearable device containing a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis magnetometer. Some of the main measurement outputs include jump count, jump height and landing impacts. While several studies have examined the accuracy of the VERT’s measures of jump height and jump count, landing impact force has not yet been investigated. The objective of this research study was to explore the validity of the VERT landing impact values. We hypothesized that the absolute peak VERT acceleration values during a jump-land cycle would fall within 10% of the peak acceleration values derived simultaneously from a research-grade accelerometer (Shimmer). Fourteen elite university-level volleyball players each performed 10 jumps while wearing both devices simultaneously. The results showed that VERT peak accelerations were variable (limits of agreement of -84.13% and 52.37%) and had a propensity to be lower (mean bias of -15.88%) when compared to the Shimmer. In conclusion, the validity of the VERT device’s landing impact values are generally poor, when compared to the Shimmer. [full text]
Supersapiens’ real-time glucose-tracker could take the guesswork out of fuelling athletic performance. But can tracking blood sugar 24/7 help you eat right for success?
Intense and continuous physical training in sports is related with psychological and physiological stress, affecting the health and well-being of athletes. The development of non-invasive sampling methodologies is essential to consider sweat as a potential biological fluid for stress biomarker assessment. In the current work, the identification in sweat samples of potential molecules that may be used as stress biomarkers was pursued. Methods
A sweat pool sample from football players after a 90-min intense training game was studied. Results
An analysis method using liquid chromatography with detection by tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MSMS) to attain a screening profile of sweat composition is presented. The major focus was on neurotransmitters (e.g. monoamines and metabolites) and other biological molecules related with physical training, such as precursors of biogenic amines (phenylaniline, tyrosine, etc.). Conclusions
This study allowed the identification of small biomolecules, neurotransmitters and other related molecules in sweat that are potentially associated with stress conditions. The developed methodology intends to contribute to the assessment and study of physical and psychological stress biomarkers related with intense sports using non-invasive methods. [full text]
Detroit Free Press; Orion Sang, David Jesse and Kristen Jordan Shamus from
… “It is our understanding the state did not recommend changes beyond athletics,” university spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told the Free Press.
There are now five cases now confirmed with B.1.1.7, the highly contagious COVID-19 variant, in Washtenaw County. The outbreak traces back to one female student athlete, sources said.
“Canceling competitions is never something we want to do, but with so many unknowns about this variant of COVID-19, we must do everything we can to minimize the spread among student-athletes, coaches, staff, and to the student-athletes at other schools,” said Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel.
… Whether you’re a competitive or lifestyle athlete, the approach is no different; both have to adhere to the same tenets in order to sustain our passions. For me, training is not about how I feel or what my results are at the end of the session. It’s about the condition of my body when I begin.
Unfortunately, as coach and nutrition advisor Sinead Fitzgibbon points out, most people come from the school of “pushing through the pain,” unable to determine where the line between threshold and injury exists.
These athletes, according to Fitzgibbon, become “patients being sidelined by injury.” As a result, the majority of an athlete’s focus and understanding about injury is centered on tending to the problem after it has already happened. Recovery is no fun when you’re on the couch for the start of your favorite race.
… New Director of Football Matt Crocker explained: “From watching the Under-23s last season, when I was at the FA, the style of play looked very different.
“There was definitely a void between those two styles of play. One of the big wins was to come in and really remove the U23s from the Academy and place it as a B team connected to the first team.”
Data science has played a big role in modelling that style of play and then making sure it’s aligned between the two teams, as Southampton’s Lead Data Scientist, Alex Kleyn, outlined at TGG’s Big Data Webinar last month.
Kleyn, who has worked for the club since September 2017, revealed that the club use three ‘waves’ of metrics to measure team performance: traditional event data, XY data and tracking data.
… The league this week issued a memo to its 32 teams to announce the cancellation of the in-person components of the event. More than 300 college players usually travel to Indianapolis each year for a series of mental and physical tests before NFL team decision makers.
PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: Alterations in jump kinetics has been linked to lower extremity injuries, secondary to abnormal force dissipation. However, injury causation in athletes who have normal jump kinetics has not been investigated, nor has an explanation for athletes which altered kinetics who do not sustain injuries. This study investigates if changes in vertical jump kinetics is related to injuries in collegiate football players. SUBJECTS: All healthy varsity football players who were active during the 2019 season at a Division I institution. MATERIALS/METHODS: Vertical jump testing using a commercially available force plate system with dedicated software was performed by all healthy varsity Division I football players at several intervals throughout the 2019 season. Injuries were documented by the team athletic trainers and verified with the health care organization’s electronic medical documentation system. Injuries were defined as occurring no more than 60 days after a jump, defined as lower extremity by OSICS 10 code, and non-macrotraumatic in nature. Twenty-two injuries were identified, and 128 jumps were analyzed. Vertical jump variables used were average eccentric rate of force development (EFD), average relative concentric force (RCF), and concentric relative impulse (CRI), indicating the athletes’ ability to load movements and generate force, the ability to explode/transmit force, and finish movements forcefully for each jump, respectively, which were normalized to T scores. Change score calculated as the absolute value between the jump immediately preceding the injury, and the jump before that. Logistic regression was used to determine if the variables could predict whether or not an athlete would sustain a lower extremity injury. RESULTS: Mean change scores (standard deviation) for the uninjured/injured groups were: EFD: 5.5(5.3)/7.5(6.4); RCF: 3.7(3.1)/6.3(4.5); CRI: 3.9(3.6)/3.9(2.9). ERF, RCF, and CRI change score were able to predict lower extremity injury, ꭓ2=11.8, P<0.01. RCF change is an independent predictor at P<0.01. CONCLUSIONS: The magnitude of change in vertical jump kinetics is predictive of injury in collegiate football athletes. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Changes in vertical jump kinetics can be used to identify football athletes who are at risk of sustaining an in-season lower extremity injury. Football athletes with altered jump kinetics who maintained the same kinetics through the season may be less likely to sustain an injury secondary to compensatory mechanisms.
… Whether it’s been via the MLB draft, trades or on the international market, Cherington’s credentials and comfort doing this sort of stuff have been extremely evident.
“We still need more players and opportunities,” Cherington said. “Not all the players in the minor-league system are going to pan out, so we need a lot of them and to pour into development.”
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin invoked the definition-of-insanity line during his season-ending news conference when talking about his team’s propensity for late-season collapses. For Cherington, the definition of insanity would’ve been keeping the same minor-league and developmental system in place and hoping for different results.
So he blew it up.
Out went former farm director Larry Broadway, shifted into a different role. In came John Baker from the Cubs, given the title of director of coaching and development as a way to meld his unique background as a former big-league player and trained mental-skills coach.