Serena Williams turns 40 on September 26 and the arrival of that landmark birthday will be all the sweeter if she has at last equalled Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
The tennis legend could even hold the record outright if she wins both Wimbledon and the US Open but despite holding her own in the top 10, there is a fear that age is impacting on her powers.
… Already one of the planet’s richest athletes, Ronaldo’s relentless longevity serves to make him ever more lucrative.
“My body is my weapon,” he said in early June, apparently. “To be the best, you need the best recovery.”
The quotes were contained in a press release, hence the reticence to take them as gospel. They were accompanied by a 60-second advertisement that is pure, unfiltered Ronaldo. Long, lingering close-ups of him on a treadmill, then plunging into an ice bath in a room with floor-to-ceiling views of Lake Como, or somewhere equally extortionately priced, and shots of him lying on a bed in the briefest of briefs. Most important, there were many angles of him using a Theragun, a hand-held massage therapy device and system that had already partnered with all-conquering English champion Manchester City. Just another commercial link-up for a man who made an eye-watering $47 million (U.S.) last year through endorsements with the likes of Nike, Tag Heuer and Herbalife.
… When runners think about improving aerobic power they tend to rely on the old standby of pumping up their weekly mileage. But there is definitely more to running fast than mega miles if you want to activate your inner Beast Mode as an endurance athlete.
Coogan keeps Purrier’s weekly mileage at a level of “high 60’s to low 70’s depending on the time of year.” That’s because research shows there does not seem to be any significant increase in VO2 max when running more than 75 to 80 miles per week. Coogan’s practical approach to training continues the theme that Purrier’s college coach followed where she started off her freshman year running around 30 mile weeks. That rational philosophy in turn has given Purrier massive room to grow as an athlete, and continue to mature as a runner throughout her career. With that goal in mind, Purrier has gradually increased her mileage 10 miles per week each year, according to Coogan’s structured plan.
When adding volume, Coogan recommends using some creativity, such as adding more time to your warm up and cool down, and doubling up on runs during the week.
… The five-person difference makes all the difference in the world, 2019 World Cup breakout star Rose Lavelle said.
“Obviously the World Cup roster is 23, the Olympic roster is 18, and there’s a tighter turnaround in between games,” Lavelle told Insider. “Versatility is everything in that roster, because it’s a smaller roster. So you need people who can fill different roles. You have to be fit and healthy and ready to go because of the quick turnaround. And especially in the heat in Tokyo, it’s going to be very demanding physically.”
“It’s like a whole different beast,” she added. “I don’t know why it’s a roster of 18, but it definitely like adds a little bit more pressure leading into the roster announcement and who’s gonna make it.”
An athlete’s summer conditioning program should strike a balance between the need for physical and mental rest and the desire to stay in shape.
The temptation to wander into a nearby gym and use whatever equipment looks appealing or to put off conditioning until a last-minute crunch to get ready for fall sports can lead to more issues during the season.
“Structured training with a professional athletic trainer can help an athlete balance the need for rest with a desire to maintain conditioning,” said Ryan J. Krupp, M.D., orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist with Norton Orthopedic Institute and medical director of Norton Sports Health. “We see far too many athletes early in the fall who either didn’t stay in shape, focused on the wrong exercise or hurt themselves trying to catch up at the end of the summer.”
… Advanced sleep tracking is designed to recognize when you fall asleep, when you wake up and sleep stages as they occur during the night. This includes light, deep and REM sleep stages.
Sleep and sleep stages are identified using a combination of heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, body movement and other key inputs. Supported devices enable you to add body movement, respiration rate and oxygen saturation overlays to your sleep charts in the Garmin Connect™ app for a more complete picture of your night.
Your sleep score is a number (0-100) that summarizes the underlying data to reveal how you slept. A high sleep score means you are well-prepared for the challenges of the day ahead. You also get instant insight into significant factors that influenced your score.
Biarticular muscles have traditionally been considered to exhibit homogeneous neuromuscular activation. The regional activation of biarticular muscles, as revealed from high-density surface electromyograms, seems however to discredit this notion. We thus hypothesize the regional activation of biarticular muscles may contribute to different actions about the joints they span. We then discuss the mechanistic basis and methodological implications underpinning our hypothesis. [full text]
A USC Exercise Science academic who has worked as a strength and conditioning coach in Brisbane soccer has won a national award for his research that furthers understanding of the brain’s role in how well athletes recover from hamstring injuries.
USC Moreton Bay Lecturer Dr Rob Buhmann, who teaches motor control and learning received the $4,000 early career researcher award at last month’s Exercise and Sports Science Australia conference.
Dr Buhmann’s research, conducted for his recent PhD in Brisbane under the supervision of QUT academics Associate Professor Tony Shield, Dr Gabriel Trajano and Professor Graham Kerr, investigated the neuromuscular function of the hamstring muscle group following strain injuries.
The researchers used non-invasive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) – involving a magnetic coil held near the head – to gauge how neurons in the brain activated or inhibited hamstring muscles.
Australia’s Olympians will be offered an unprecedented level of mental-health support during a pressure-laden stint in biosecurity bubbles.
The COVID-19 pandemic has understandably dominated planning discussions for Tokyo 2021, at both the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) and International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Preparing for sapping conditions at what is set to be the most heat oppressive Olympics has — and will continue to be — vital for athletes.
Professional athletes are turning to cannabis products to help them manage pain, but leagues such as the NFL aren’t yet ready to get on board.
Last week, the league said it wants to see more studies of how cannabis affects fitness. At the moment, there’s no scientific evidence that the products work, or that they’re safe, NFL officials said. Additionally, elite professionals aren’t your average jock — a lot of money is at stake and the NFL wants to know exactly how cannabis will affect their performance.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Joseph B. Bak-Coleman et al. from
Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans, information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet are increasingly structured by emerging communication technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of collective behavior must rise to a “crisis discipline” just as medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for the stewardship of social systems. [full text]
When it comes to our senses, we frequently focus on the external—the crack of thunder, the glare of sunlight, the fragrance of flowers—that captured our attention in the first place. But our bodies also have a whole host of internal senses that tell our brains whether our hearts are beating at the right speed, for example, or whether our blood pressure is too high. These signals travel constantly via hormones and nerves, including a mysterious 100,000-fiber network called the vagus nerve.
Now, new techniques are helping scientists map the thin, twisting branches of the vagus nerve—which connects the brain to the heart, intestines, and other internal organs—and make surprising discoveries about its role in memory and emotion. These findings have spawned investigations into treatments for everything from Alzheimer’s disease to post-traumatic stress disorder and have led to the approval of medical implants to help treat epilepsy and depression. When it comes to understanding the brain-mind connection, a gut check might not hurt.
Four doctoral students at the University of Birmingham are working alongside the research team at Rangers Football Club, designing projects to enhance training and technical skills development at the club.
It’s the first time the Glasgow-based club has supported PhD research in this way. The aim is to not only gain some valuable insights into how to enhance the future performance of the team, but also to invest in skills and expertise that will make an enduring, valuable contribution to the game.
The research projects, currently in their early stages, will all focus on informing strategies to support the development of players.
The Peterborough Examiner (Canada), Doug Smith from
… Those meetings, which were out of the question a year ago because of the raging global pandemic, are once again allowed, giving president Masai Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster and a handful of other executives a chance to meet young players and look them in the eye before deciding whether they are worthy of the selection.
Make no mistake: Getting to know young players, seeing how they react in interview sessions, getting a “feel” for them is vitally important to the process.
The NFL has informed its teams that it will accept bids from cities other than Indianapolis to host its annual scouting combine beginning in 2023, a source confirmed to ESPN on Wednesday.
According to the source, all NFL teams will have the opportunity to let the league know whether they have interest in hosting the combine as well as upcoming NFL drafts and Super Bowls.
The combine has been held in Indianapolis since 1987, though only the medical portion was held this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 combine is scheduled to be held there as well. Indianapolis is expected to make a bid to continue hosting the event, but starting in 2023, it will have competition.