.. “Sometimes you’re in this place where it just feels so overwhelming. I can’t walk. I can’t do my sport. When I was in those places, what I did was I tried to focus on what I could do that day.” For instance, she says, a recent goal was to complete one full rotation on a spin bike. “It doesn’t matter that I can’t walk yet. Having little milestones can help you from feeling this overwhelmingness.”
Quinn Meinerz from Hartford and UW-Whitewater is expected to be selected in next month’s NFL Draft.
The offensive lineman solidified his spot on scouts’ radars at the Senior Bowl after his season at UW-Whitewater was wiped out by the pandemic.
“Since the Senior Bowl, my time management skills have kind of had to increase a lot,” says Meinerz. “I’ve had a lot of interviews with teams, I’m trying to stay on top of training every day and people try to reach out to me on social media, so I try to get them attention as well. So my time management has been having to increase a lot.”
Kenley Jansen said he doesn’t take any of his 17 years in the Dodger organization for granted.
When Sept. 30 arrives later this year, the three-time All-Star will turn 34 years old — exactly twice the age he was when he first arrived with the club as a free agent in November 2004. In that time, his improbable journey has seen him rise from light-hitting catching prospect to the franchise’s all-time saves leader. Jansen is grateful for each of his 12 Major League seasons in a Dodger uniform, including the latest that saw his club win the World Series.
After what he described as a down year personally in a championship season for his team, the three-time All-Star spent this offseason determined to put himself in position to be the stabilizing force he still believes he can be at the back end of the Dodger bullpen.
“At the end of the day, I know who I am,” Jansen said. “I know what I’m capable of doing.”
… Less than four years later, [Jason] Preston looms as one of the potential breakout stars of this NCAA men’s tournament. The Ohio University guard wound up ditching J-School after one summer for prep school, earned a scholarship offer based on his Twitter highlights and is on the cusp of completing the contorted career arc from NBA blogger to NBA player. “They are going to be writing a movie on his life,” Ohio coach Jeff Boals told Yahoo Sports. “This is the American dream.”
So how exactly did Jason Preston go from blogging for Piston Powered to potentially picked by the Pistons – or some other NBA team – this spring? Well, it’s a story that involves perseverance, relentless devotion to basketball and a player confident enough to bet on himself.
I’m drowning at the gym. We’re four hours into the Art of Breath clinic, run by coach and trainer Rob Wilson, and right now I’m “dryland swimming,” which involves carrying kettlebells across the floor with no oxygen in my lungs. Turns out that’s really freaking hard.
Practicing breathwork isn’t exactly groundbreaking. The ujjayi breath, with its dramatic “ha” exhale, is an integral part of yoga, and athletes have been limiting their oxygen intake during workouts for decades. Wilson developed the Art of Breath four years ago to help deliver a mix of these drills to the masses. During a one-day session last November, he taught me and 41 other participants how to perfect this basic life function with innovative exercises like dryland swimming and inflating a balloon while holding a static pull-up. I went to see if such drills could help me get faster on the bike and stronger in the gym. According to Wilson, it’s possible. But only if I stop breathing through my mouth.
… In this article I outline how we at Real Salt Lake attempted to make our match-day reserve group sessions as beneficial as possible. We established a framework that we could easily modify based on the needs of the players in the session, as well as the total number of players participating. The example session given in this article is based on having six players, which was a common number we had in the sessions this year.
As with real estate, location matters greatly for cells. Douglas Strand confirmed that truth last year when he used a new technique to map gene activity in bladder cancers. Until recently, scientists wanting to know all the genes at work in a tissue could analyze single cells without knowing their position, or they could measure average activity levels of genes across thousands of cells. Now, an emerging technology called spatial transcriptomics combines precision and breadth, mapping the work of thousands of genes in individual cells at pinpoint locations in tissue. That, Strand says, has been a “total game changer” for his research.
The virtual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting this month was a big coming-out party for the technique, which is revealing whole new landscapes of gene expression.
… Using the many hours of video that are available on all the talent, there are techniques for studying player positioning and movements in order to judge how well they move and what their injury risk might be. According to
Sanjay Chopra, the co-founder of the firm Cognistx,
“we have body posture techniques where we can figure out where the joints are, how far the joints are, where is your hip, how much does the shoulder tilt, the height of the knees, the separation of the knees, the separation of the feet, where the angles are pointed … the system can now look at multiple frames of information and then begin to analyze and bring insights, which humans might have missed. And now you can use those insights to better train your players.”
Through a detailed analysis of body movement and positioning, it is possible to anticipate play calls and train players to react to specific formations. Some players may provide telltale signs of a running or passing play, or of a bootleg by the quarterback, and all of this material can offer advantages to those who must defend against those options. Split-second decisions often matter quite a bit in the success or failure of particular plays.
… The sports world has advanced with technology for data collection in recent years, but relevant information at the fingertips of coaches and athletes quickly has been a challenge to get. The 3DAT performance data is provided through video, which provides a simpler way for them discover that information to know what the body is doing to perform better.
A plethora of athlete performance trackers have been developed on the market. FitBit has a watch to slip on the wrist to measure steps. Apex has a performance vest for athletes to wear to measure speed and distance.
The difference, though, between the 3DAT technology for athletes compared to others is that it’s hands-free and doesn’t require them to put on cumbersome straps or belts. It uses a camera to film athletes during drills, so they don’t fidget with a device, watch or sensor while they’re training. The camera sends video data at 60 frames per second to a cloud computing system for analysis. The coaches then receive reports, and the data helps them understand any adjustments.
Detroit Free Press, Dave Boucher and Kristen Jordan Shamus from
School-related COVID-19 outbreaks are rising in Michigan, and many are tied to youth and high school sports, Michigan’s leading epidemiologist said Wednesday.
“The largest number of outbreaks are in K-12 school settings at 162, with 54 new outbreaks reported this week,” said Sarah Lyon-Callo, the director of the Bureau of Epidemiology and Population Health at the state health department.
That comes as the majority of pandemic metrics in the state — including case rates, test positivity rates and hospitalizations — are trending in the wrong direction. Some of these figures mirror rates seen in late October, when trends spiked, prompting the state to issue a ban on indoor contact sports in mid-November.
… Dr. Philip Skiba has worked with elite athletes for two decades. Marathon runners, NFL players, and NBA players … everyone, he says, from “your grandma running the local 5K to the fastest runners on the planet.”
The director of sports medicine at AdvocateAurora, and sports physician for the University of Illinois-Chicago, Skiba says the long-term effects of COVID-19 have stumped doctors and wishes he had better answers for players like Tatum—who is not a client, but sounds like one. “He’s not the exception,” Skiba says. “I see that at least a half dozen times a week.”
“A lot of it is a mystery,” Skiba says. “It’s like having a fleet of Ferraris. It requires a certain amount of know-how and mechanics to be able to take care of that fleet. And right now, no one’s got the owner’s manual.”
Over the last two months of the 2020-21 men’s college basketball season, no team was more impressive than Illinois. Not even No. 1 Gonzaga. Not even Big Ten champ Michigan. The Illini won 14 of their last 15 games in America’s toughest conference, and won its postseason tournament.
Their reward?
A top-10 opponent in the second round of the NCAA tournament – and, as a result, an early exit.
The top-seeded Illini fell to No. 8 seed Loyola on Sunday. They won’t make excuses for themselves, nor should they. First and foremost, they have to look inward. Their offense wasn’t prepared. Their defense was undisciplined. They weren’t at their best.
But they would’ve beaten most No. 8 seeds with the exact same performance. Heck, they might’ve beaten Oklahoma or North Carolina by double-digits.
Youth sports have become a $19 billion industry centered around suburban life, propped up by the ubiquity of mega-complexes, pay-to-play leagues, personal trainers and constant travel.
Why it matters: The status quo has created a system that disproportionately affects children of color, who already seem to have two strikes against them before even stepping into the batter’s box.
What they’re saying: “In general, kids want to explore, they want to try things, they’re curious,” Aspen Institute executive director Tom Farrey tells me.
