I once wrote that before a nation or league attempts to “produce” its own Lionel Messi, it would be well-served to produce the next James Milner. On the surface, such a statement reads like a joke laden in sarcasm. Some might say it’s bordering on mockery. But one must be cautious to assume a player like James Milner is not as valuable or less important on the football pitch than the stars and playmakers that garner the attention. That would be a massive misstep in judgment. In essence, it would put the joke back on you.
As Milner enters preseason number 20, it’s no secret that his professionalism, fitness, versatility and threshold for physical output is still off the charts. As Liverpool’s players who were not off on international duty report back for pre-season fitness testing, there’s a general acceptance about who dominates each gruelling running-based assessment like the lactate threshold run – which measures a player’s aerobic endurance – or the insufferable bleep test.
Milner is not only able to push the pace of these efforts, he does it consistently year after year. While not effortless by any stretch, his training ground footage shows a steely look of determination as he leans into the fitness tests, dropping several players all of whom are younger as he finds yet another gear to push the upper limits of his output.
Novak Djokovic pulled out of the Western & Southern Open on Monday, meaning the next time he will be in action will be as he tries to complete a calendar-year Grand Slam at the U.S. Open.
The top-ranked Djokovic wrote on social media that he needs “a bit longer to recover and recuperate after quite a taxing journey from Australia to Tokyo.”
He is 21-0 in Grand Slam action in 2021, winning the titles at the Australian Open on hard courts in February, the French Open on clay courts in June and Wimbledon on grass courts in July. No man had even won the first three major tennis championships — let alone all four — in one season since Rod Laver’s true Grand Slam in 1969.
… She’s is a former university soccer player who attended an RBC Training Camp qualifier in September of 2017.
Training Ground is the creation of the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Olympic Foundation, CBC Sports, national sport institutes and the bank sponsor.
The goal of the program, open to athletes between the ages of 14 and 25, is to widen and deepen the pool of high-performance athletes by recruiting them from all levels of different sports.
Their speed, power, strength and endurance are measured via a series of tests, which are then made available to national sports federations.
A Cycling Canada recruiter witnessed Mitchell generate 1,300 peak wattage on a stationary bike wearing running shoes, without the aid of clip-in shoes.
The purpose of this paper was to quantify internal and external loads completed by collegiate volleyball athletes during a competitive season. Eleven players were sampled (using accelerometers and subjective wellness surveys) during the practice (n = 55) and game (n = 30) sessions over the 2019 season. Longitudinal data were evaluated for trends across the preseason, non-conference play, and conference play periods. Data were also analyzed with respect to positional groups. Longitudinal analysis of accelerometer data showed higher workload demand during practices than games. Positional group differences were most when evaluating jump count and height. Setters accrued over twice as many jumps in a practice than during a game and had similar overall jump counts in practice to attacking positions. Average team wellness values varied with time in the season, especially during times of congested travel. This is the first study to look at both game and practice workload and wellness measures in collegiate women’s volleyball. The results suggest athlete monitoring can be used to understand the demands of volleyball and used in the future to enhance practice and recovery day design to optimize athlete well-being.
Pep Lijnders’ insight will be missed when the season gets underway. His pre-season diaries have been providing a unique look into Liverpool’s preparations, and the latest entry is no different. Among the most interesting insights in this edition is the revelation that the coaching staff have welcomed some free-kick and penalty specialists into the camp, specifically focusing on the mental side of set pieces.
Neuro11, a sports psychology company from Germany, claims to help athletes “learn to control [their] minds and perform at [their] best.” Training exercises are specifically designed to help develop mental strength — and the work with Liverpool has honed in on set pieces.
Lijnders explained what the exercises entailed:
“They give the right input for players to find the right flow and, with this, more accuracy. They help with putting the players in the right frame of mind and how to reset.”
A little of this and a little of that leads to a lot…Practice makes perfect if you want to excel at something. But practicing in a variety of disciplines — rather than specializing in a single one — might yield better results. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of more than six thousand athletes, including 772 of the world’s top performers. They wanted to answer this question: What explains exceptional human performance? “Does a focus on intensive specialized practice facilitate excellence,” they asked, “or is a multidisciplinary practice background better?” Studying the histories of these highly skilled athletes, they found that intense, specialized practice was associated with initial mastery. But a multi-disciplinary approach, where athletes were dabbling in other types of sports, was associated with long-term excellence. Good news for the dabblers among us.
Perspectives on Psychological Science journal from
What explains the acquisition of exceptional human performance? Does a focus on intensive specialized practice facilitate excellence, or is a multidisciplinary practice background better? We investigated this question in sports. Our meta-analysis involved 51 international study reports with 477 effect sizes from 6,096 athletes, including 772 of the world’s top performers. Predictor variables included starting age, age of reaching defined performance milestones, and amounts of coach-led practice and youth-led play (e.g., pickup games) in the athlete’s respective main sport and in other sports. Analyses revealed that (a) adult world-class athletes engaged in more childhood/adolescent multisport practice, started their main sport later, accumulated less main-sport practice, and initially progressed more slowly than did national-class athletes; (b) higher performing youth athletes started playing their main sport earlier, engaged in more main-sport practice but less other-sports practice, and had faster initial progress than did lower performing youth athletes; and (c) youth-led play in any sport had negligible effects on both youth and adult performance. We illustrate parallels from science: Nobel laureates had multidisciplinary study/working experience and slower early progress than did national-level award winners. The findings suggest that variable, multidisciplinary practice experiences are associated with gradual initial discipline-specific progress but greater sustainability of long-term development of excellence.
International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy from
Despite decades of efforts, running injury prevention programs continue to fall short of achieving a reduction in running injury rates1 and most running injuries are notorious for their high recurrence.2 Prevention and treatment efforts often focus on a sole factor, such as muscle strengthening or biomechanics, despite the multifactorial nature of running injuries. Additional emphasis on low-value interventions such as footwear to prevent injury often detracts from more effective prevention strategies.3 Not surprisingly, most running injury prevention programs fail to reduce running injury rates and, in the case of advising on running biomechanics, may actually increase the risk of running injury.1 The purpose of this international perspective is to describe how a causal framework approach can help to prevent and treat running injuries.
2/We know HSI is the most common injury in athletics
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26887415/
We know that the sprinters are more at risk of HSI
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33632663/
and lastly we also know if you have had previous HSI you are at much greater risk
3/ We also know that if you achieve >80% of your planned training in elite aths you are 7x more likely to achieve your performance goals
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26839047/
Bottom Line: when it comes to elite athletics, you do not want a hamstring injury…ever… if you can manage it!
Growing numbers of Americans aren’t getting enough iron in their diets most likely due to changes in farming practices and a shift away from red meat, researchers report.
The upshot: Rates of iron-deficiency anemia are on the rise.
“Iron deficiency remains a major public health issue even in a developed country such as the United States,” Dr. Ian Griffin and Dr. Marta Rogido wrote in an editorial published along with the new research.
Harvard Data Science Review, Jessica Hullman and Andrew Gelman from
Research and development in computer science and statistics have produced increasingly sophisticated software interfaces for interactive and exploratory analysis, optimized for easy pattern finding and data exposure. But design philosophies that emphasize exploration over other phases of analysis risk confusing a need for flexibility with a conclusion that exploratory visual analysis is inherently “model free” and cannot be formalized. We describe how without a grounding in theories of human statistical inference, research in exploratory visual analysis can lead to contradictory interface objectives and representations of uncertainty that can discourage users from drawing valid inferences. We discuss how the concept of a model check in a Bayesian statistical framework unites exploratory and confirmatory analysis, and how this understanding relates to other proposed theories of graphical inference. Viewing interactive analysis as driven by model checks suggests new directions for software and empirical research around exploratory and visual analysis. For example, systems might enable specifying and explicitly comparing data to null and other reference distributions and better representations of uncertainty. Implications of Bayesian and other theories of graphical inference can be tested against outcomes of interactive analysis by people to drive theory development.
The people who spread new and controversial ideas—changes in diet, exercise routine, political leaning, or even attitudes about vaccination—may not be the Kim Kardashians and Paris Hiltons. According to a recent study in Nature Communications, those with the most actual influence are often on the periphery of the social network. Coauthor and computational sociologist Douglas Guilbeault says that what makes these people special is that they are embedded in a tight-knit group with many connections to other tight-knit groups, even if each individual has fewer contacts than the most popular or famous person in the network.
“Think of a blue-collar worker at a car factory, who, let’s say, starts to adopt a vegan diet and is surrounded by people who don’t eat that way,” says Guilbeault, at the University of California, Berkeley. Maybe the factory worker has one or two good friends who also decide to try veganism in the lunchroom. Their small group, though not famous or particularly aware of their influence, would likely spread positive attitudes about veganism through the workplace much more effectively than a famous person on YouTube. “If it comes from someone embedded in the network,” Guilbeault explains, “it can spread in a peer-to-peer fashion.”