Female Sports Science newsletter – July 15, 2018

Female Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for July 15, 2018

 

athletes


It’s as if Wimbledon finalist Serena Williams never left the game at all

ESPN Tennis, Alyssa Roenigk from

Serena Williams is into the Wimbledon final. Stop and let that breathe for a moment. Really soak in the improbability of what the 23-time Grand Slam champion has accomplished so far this tournament. Yes, Wimbledon is a Slam she has won seven times and one where she hasn’t dropped a match since 2014. Sure, she was playing in her 11th Wimbledon semifinal and was 29-5 in Grand Slam semis before walking onto Centre Court to play world No. 13 Julia Goerges on Thursday. But there is no statistic fantastic enough to convey the implausibility of the outcome — a 6-2, 6-4 win over Goerges that at once felt predetermined, yet unthinkable just a short time ago.

“This was not inevitable for me,” Williams said after the match, which took 70 minutes to complete. “I had a difficult birth, multiple surgeries, I almost didn’t make it. There was a time I could barely walk to my mailbox. It’s such a pleasure and a joy [to be in the final] because less than a year ago, I was going through so much.”

 

Rebekkah Brunson continues to leave mark on Minnesota Lynx, WNBA

ESPN WNBA, Pat Borzi from

… Early in the season, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve tried limiting Brunson’s minutes to ease the strain on her 36-year-old knees. No longer. Thursday night Brunson went a season-high 37 minutes, the full 20 in the second half. She passed Catchings’ record with a defensive rebound with 7:17 remaining in the fourth quarter.

“If you were to cut her open and look at her heart, that’s what makes her great,” Reeve said. “[People think] it’s more than that. It’s always, ‘It’s analytic things,’ or ‘She studies the way it comes off.’ No. She just wants it more than you, and that’s the tenacity she’s always brought.”

 

Des Linden and the long run

The Athletic, Brendan Quinn from

Des Linden is who people want her to be, usually. She will play the part. She will stay in her lane: the archetype of an underdog. She’s 5 feet and barely 100 pounds. She acknowledges that the act fits: “I guess my story is like a Cinderella story, whatever. It’s nice.” That’s why, since last April, she has smiled through all the interviews, gone along with all the narratives and aw-shuck’ed her way to a place in the history books.

In this conversation, though, there are no pre-established narratives. The record books say that, prior to April, despite being without a career win in the marathon, Linden was a two-time Olympian with three career top-three finishes in the Boston Marathon and, in an amazing show of consistency, ran the fastest or second-fastest marathon time among U.S. women in eight of the past 10 years. This is no little engine that could. This is a defiant iron horse. So why in the world is Linden the perpetual long shot? For someone outside of the sectarian world of marathon running, it makes no sense.

Listening to this preamble, Linden draws a wry smirk and widens her eyes. She lowers her voice to half a whisper to disclose: “Like, I’m actually pretty talented, but if my success gives people a reason to believe in themselves, then, OK, I’m good with whatever they want to call me.”

 

What Happened When I Tried to Play Men’s Soccer

The Player's Tribune, Stephanie Labbe from

When you’re the only woman playing on a men’s soccer team, and you also happen to be a goalkeeper, here’s how things go down:

If you’re really, really lucky, your coach isn’t going to care if you’re from Venus or Mars. He’s not going to worry about things like if you prefer pink, blue, or yellow, or whether or not you pee standing up.

But he will expect you to prove you’re just as talented as the male keepers on the team. And for you to finish every single rep — probably more reps than you’ve ever done in any training session throughout your entire career.

Somehow, you gotta keep up.

 

Q&A with Katie Ledecky: On her National Geographic feature and going pro

The Stanford Daily student newspaper, Sophie Kroesche from

… Ledecky will continue to study psychology and train with her coach and teammates for the remainder of her time at Stanford. While maintaining student-athlete status is itself a challenge, Ledecky now must be able to manage the long hours of school and practice combined with new professional responsibilities once the fall quarter begins.

Becoming a professional athlete often affords more opportunities to interact with sports apparel companies that improve performance. Christine Brennan, the USA Today sports columnist who wrote the National Geographic cover story, explains how the development of high-tech track shoes, better time-keeping and even racing swimsuits contributes to the advancement in sports standards.

Like many professional athletes, Ledecky works with a company who develops sports apparel designed to cut racing times and improve performance. She partnered with the brand, TYR Sport, on June 8 and will continue the contract until the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024.

 

Global ace Monica Abbott on her return to Team USA and her quest for Olympic gold

espnW, Graham Hays from

… Like much of rest of the U.S. team that won silver in 2008, Abbott returned and won gold in the 2010 world championship. Then, like those teammates who didn’t retire, she stepped away from the national team to try to fill the Olympic void with a sustainable domestic outlet for players to continue competing professionally beyond college. She is still at it. In addition to continuing a long and successful career in Japan, she is the cornerstone of the Texas-based Scrap Yard organization, which acrimoniously separated from the NPF after winning that league’s title last season and is now an independent organization, with two teams which employ 14 of the 29 professional players on the two U.S. national-team rosters this summer.

And for the first time since 2010, Abbott is back among those competing for the national team. With softball back on the Olympic program for at least 2020 in Tokyo, when Abbott will be 35 years old, she might yet be the ace who brings gold back to the United States. Her performance in every setting available to her makes clear she remains the world’s best.

Prior to this week’s International Cup in Irvine, California, a warm-up event for next month’s WBSC World Championship that offers Team USA its first chance to qualify for the Olympics, Abbott spoke with espnW about the summer and her return to international competition.

 

training


First half of the WNBA season has been the best in league history

ESPN WNBA, Pat Borzi from

… “You think about so many players discovering earlier in their careers how to take care of their bodies,” said Indiana Coach Pokey Chatman, who recently signed 35-year-old Cappie Pondexter to tutor her young guards. “Not just eating better during a season, but prior to. Even finding places to go that help their body. People don’t think about this, but Cappie went to Australia one year. That’s one game a week. That’s less wear and tear on your body. Now she’s what, 35 going on 30?

“You learn how to use the fuel that’s in your tank. I’m not saying on the court that they rest. They learn how to get their bodies ready, their minds ready. They play a game at a higher level mentally, and that helps them physically.”

 

IIHF hold Women’s High Performance Camp in bid to close gap on North America

Inside the Games, Nick Butler from

More than 300 budding players from 41 countries are participating in an International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Women’s High-Performance Camp in Vierumaki.

The week-long event is taking place at the Sport Institute of Finland.

Some of the leading female under-18 players in the world from both national and development squad will be present to receive “top-level education in various aspects of athleticism and running a national team”.

The focus is particularly on female junior players outside North America in an attempt to narrow the gap between Canada, United States and the rest of the world.

 

Shorter Ground Contact Time and Better Running Economy: Evidence From Female Kenyan Runners

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from

Previously, it has been concluded that the improvement in running economy (RE) might be considered as a key to the continued improvement in performance when no further increase in V[Combining Dot Above]O2max is observed. To date, RE has been extensively studied among male East African distance runners. By contrast, there is a paucity of data on the RE of female East African runners. A total of 10 female Kenyan runners performed 3 × 1,600-m steady-state run trials on a flat outdoor clay track (400-m lap) at the intensities that corresponded to their everyday training intensities for easy, moderate, and fast running. Running economy together with gait characteristics was determined. Participants showed moderate to very good RE at the first (202 ± 26 ml·kg−1·km−1) and second (188 ± 12 ml·kg−1·km−1) run trials, respectively. Correlation analysis revealed significant relationship between ground contact time (GCT) and RE at the second run (r = 0.782; p = 0.022), which represented the intensity of anaerobic threshold. This study is the first to report the RE and gait characteristics of East African female athletes measured under everyday training settings. We provided the evidence that GCT is associated with the superior RE of the female Kenyan runners.

 

Footwear and Sex Differences in Performance and Joint Kinetics During Maximal Vertical Jumping

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from

This investigation examined the effects of footwear and sex on vertical jump displacement and joint power contributions. Twenty-three young adults with basketball experience performed 3 maximal countermovement vertical jumps in minimal and standard footwear. Ground reaction force and 3D kinematic data were collected during jumping. Footwear by sex analysis of variance for all dependent variables and effect sizes (d) was computed. An interaction effect showed that men produced greater lower-limb–positive work than women in standard footwear. Men jumped higher than women (d = 2.53) and produced greater peak ankle, knee and hip joint moments (d > 0.99), positive joint powers (d > 1.07) and, positive knee and hip joint work (d > 1.04) with no sex differences for negative joint powers and work (p > 0.05). Minimal footwear produced less peak-positive knee power (d = 0.27) and less positive ankle (d = 0.34) and knee (d = 0.21) joint work than standard footwear. Because negative joint power and work were similar between sexes, men may be better able to use the stretch-shortening cycle compared with women. Higher joint mechanical demands may provide a better vertical jumping training stimulus in standard compared with minimal footwear. Future studies should investigate footwear training effects on performance and joint mechanics during jumping.

 

Training the Female Volleyball Player: Q&A with Donnie Maib

Perform-X from

Volleyball consists of dynamic, multi-directional movements in a confined space. The physical demands include reacting, accelerating, jumping, landing, pivoting, decelerating, and hitting. Therefore, the physical preparation of the volleyball player should consider aspects of vertical and horizontal training, rotational movements, and upper body strength to improve on-court performance and also decrease the risk of knee and shoulder injuries in the developing and veteran volleyball athlete.

In this blog, we are fortunate to interview University of Texas Volleyball strength and conditioning coach Donnie Maib, who shares his thoughts on program philosophy and methodology on training the female volleyball player.

 

USWNT and Coach Jill Ellis are gearing up for World Cup one year away

The Washington Post, Steven Goff from

Jill Ellis’s World Cup is another summer away, her calendar packed with training camps, tournaments and roster decisions. The thought of being in France for the women’s version of soccer’s global championship — one that her top-ranked U.S. national team will seek to defend — has seemed a thousand years away.

But upon visiting the Russian capital this week as part of a brief promotional visit arranged by Fox Sports, the Americans’ head coach took in the World Cup spirit that will resurface on a smaller scale in 2019.

“It’s been so far on the horizon, now it starts to come into focus,” she said. “I was walking around [Wednesday] and those are things you are not privy to when you are on the inside [of the team bubble]. Seeing the fans, hearing the buzz, even being a fan to watch the games and the excitement of the competition, our World Cup will have all of the exciting narratives this one has had.

 

technology


How to Lock Down Your Privacy in Your Fitness App

Lifehacker, Beth Skwarecki from

Who knows where you ran last week? If you’re privacy-minded, perhaps just you…and your running app. But our fitness apps often share more information than we realize. The Strava app, and now Polar Flow, have released maps that gave away potentially sensitive military locations.

It’s not just militaries that should be worried. A lot of us—women in particular—are wary of letting the world know where we live. (If you write things on the internet that sometimes make people mad, you may be especially wary.)

 

Our bodies talk to us — and these implantable devices can help listen

STAT, Alex Hogan from

It’s a fascinating voyage: A patient swallows a capsule. Once it reaches the stomach, the capsule dissolves and the thin strip inside unrolls and adheres to the stomach lining.

Canan Dagdeviren, who leads the “Conformable Decoders” team at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., likens her team’s device to “a Fitbit for the stomach.”

“You see how your stomach is doing while you are eating, while you are sleeping, while you are talking, while you are under stress or you’re happy,” she said.

 

nutrition


How Does a Pro Soccer Player Fuel Up

Breaking Muscle, Lauren Barnes from

I’m Lauren Barnes and I’m a professional soccer play with the Seattle Reign FC. I’m also a plant-based athlete, which has been quite the adventure. There have been so many obstacles that have tested me both on and off the field – physically and mentally. My meal planning is still a work in progress because I continue to find things that work better than others as I evolve each and every day.

 

analysis


Why Are WNBA TV Ratings Rising?

Forbes, Jerry Barca from

… ESPN expected a dip in the ratings for the championship game. The game’s marquee brand, UConn, had been eliminated. Plus, the championship aired around dinner time on Easter Sunday.

The ratings didn’t fall. When Notre Dame played Mississippi State, 3.5 million people saw it. That number spiked to 5.2 million in the final 15 minutes when Ogunbowale hit the buzzer-beating championship-winner, capping the biggest comeback in championship game history.

People took notice. They had to. The NCAA had issued 773 credentials for the Final Four, the most in the tournament’s history. Ogunbowale ended up on Ellen. During the appearance she met Bryant. She competed on Dancing with the Stars.

All this attention rolled into a WNBA Draft which saw its ratings rise by 25 percent, according to Carol Stiff, vice president of ESPN Programming & Acquisitions.

 

Should All Sports Go Gender-Neutral?

OZY, Opinion, Matt Foley from

Tom Hanks, Madonna and Geena Davis made the Rockford Peaches famous in A League of Their Own back in 1992, but the team’s real-life equivalent — the most successful team in the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — is still playing ball 75 years after first taking the field. A 75th anniversary celebration took place in early June, with games at Rockford’s newly renovated Beyer Stadium and a campaign by the International Women’s Baseball Center to preserve Rockford as the home for “baseball for all.”

Professional women’s baseball is not as popular as the MLB, but that’s not the point, says Dr. Kat Williams, professor of women’s sports history at Marshall University and IWBC president. “Baseball saved my life,” she says. “We don’t want to eliminate softball or force the men to compete with women. But if any woman is good enough, nothing should impede her rise to the top.”

 

Did Flawed Data Lead Track Astray on Testosterone in Women?

The New York Times, Jere Longman from

Researchers have found flaws in some of the data that track and field officials used to formulate regulations for the complicated cases of Caster Semenya of South Africa, the two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters, and other female athletes with naturally elevated testosterone levels.

Three independent researchers said they believed the mistakes called into question the validity of a 2017 study commissioned by track and field’s world governing body, the International Federation of Athletics Associations, or I.A.A.F., according to interviews and a paper written by the researchers and provided to The New York Times.

The 2017 study was used to help devise regulations that could require some runners to undergo medical treatment to lower their hormone levels to remain eligible for the sport’s most prominent international competitions, like the Summer Games.

The researchers have called for a retraction of the study, published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study served as an underpinning for rules, scheduled to be enacted in November, which would establish permitted testosterone levels for athletes participating in women’s events from 400 meters to the mile.

 

fairness


US women’s coach says her players have an equal right to VAR

Associated Press, Ronald Blum from

Female players have an equal right to have FIFA use video review for their tournament next year in France, U.S. women’s coach Jill Ellis said Wednesday.

FIFA is using Video Assistant Referees for the men’s World Cup for the first time this year, and it has led to several key call reversals and an increase in penalty kicks.

“I can’t see them not having it. I think it would be a little bit insulting if we weren’t afforded the same opportunity,” Ellis said during a round-table discussion with American reporters. “There’s too much at stake to not have it, and I think our game, our passion, our drive, our motivation is at the same level as the men.”

 

The Tour de France only allows men. So women are biking it themselves.

Women's Media Center, Aviva Stahl from

The Tour de France starts Saturday on the west coast island of Noirmoutier, but today about a dozen women gathered at the starting line to embark on their own 2000-mile journey.

“We consider it a sporting adventure but also an activist and human adventure,” rider Claire Floret told NPR in an interview published Thursday. “We’re trying to get our message out about the need for a women’s tour, so we ride together.”

Unlike in soccer or a host of other sports, cycling’s most prestigious race does not have a women’s competition. So for the last few years, a group of women have biked the same course as the men, one day before them, to draw attention to the issue. They climb the same mountains, endure the same bumpy cobblestone streets, and push through the same three-week course—only without the road closures and other benefits that make the men’s race a little easier.

 

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