Sports Science

Sporting history is littered with tales of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Famously, the US golfer Doug Sanders was a three-foot putt away from winning the 1970 Open Championship in St Andrews. He missed. Not only did it lose him the championship, it cost him several sponsorship and endorsement deals too. Sanders later recalled that he missed the crucial shot because he was wondering where to bow first when he’d won. The golfer failed to direct his attention to the information that mattered most before he took his shot. His mind had wandered. Sanders was no longer concentrating on…

There’s a thin line between working hard enough and working too hard. Pushing your body to reach new levels of fitness requires commitment, effort and a willingness to put yourself through intense, challenging workouts on a regular basis. But more isn’t always better. Without the right balance of rest and recovery you could end up spiralling into a long-term fatigue condition called overtraining syndrome. The condition results in long-term reduced physical performance, and may be accompanied by other physiological and psychological symptoms (such as low mood or poor sleep) – though this isn’…

March is the time of year when even people who aren't college basketball fans get involved - because of March Madness pools, online or in the office.  Most, even experts will fail, because they do one thing wrong - they start in the beginning, which this year is March 17th, with dozens and dozens of teams, and work their way toward the NCAA Final. Yet that is the wrong way to go, according to a new study. Most people will be lured by the prospect of an upset along the way and are out of it by the Final Four. The better strategy is to pick the Final Four right away, then work your way…

On most comedy television shows with episodes dealing with kids and sports, there is likely to be a joke about snack culture; it has to be organic, free-range juice boxes, etc. The jokes are there because for the script writers, snack culture wasn't a thing for most of them when they were children, nor was it for most parents. The audience will laugh but the screenwriters and the audience are the ones who made snack culture during and after sports the cultural norm. Gatorade was only invented at the University of Florida (home of the Gators football team) when they were adults and didn't…

Any time is a good time to start exercising but a great time to start exercising is today. Share this article on Facebook first, though.  Don't be intimidated by those people who hiss about Crossfit or their Peloton, a new study shows you have the same ability to build muscle mass as highly trained master athletes of a similar age. Even older people benefit right out of the gate. A new study compared muscle-building ability in two groups of older men. The first group were classed as 'master athletes' - people in their 70s and 80s who are lifelong exercisers and still competing at top…

Exercise is recommended for people who are overweight or obese as a way to reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But people don’t always have time to exercise as much as they would like, so finding ways to increase the health benefits of exercise is important. Our latest research has found a way to do just that, and it’s to do with timing. This means you might be able to get away with doing less exercise if other commitments, such as family and work, always seem to get in the way. To explain how this works, it helps to know a bit about insulin. Insulin is…

Wind tunnel experiments to determine the role of asymmetry caused by the orientation of a volleyball on its aerodynamic characteristics found that it would be easy to make a volleyball more predictable; with a hexagonal or dimpled pattern instead of six panels, each made with three parallel rectangular strips - but that would eliminate some of the fun. Aerodynamics, the behavior of air as it flows around objects, plays a huge role in volleyball, golf, baseball, tennis, and soccer.   Aerodynamics is why soccer players like David Beckham could "bend" kicks into the goal, and why…

The 'mind-muscle connection'. Ancient lore for bodybuilders, latest buzz for Instragram fitness followers, or more for aesthetes than athletes? A new analysis in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living suggests that to lift heavier, or longer, it is better to focus on moving the weight itself - not your muscles. It's not a new concept to focus one's attention on a particular muscle when lifting but does thinking about it promotes its activation - and by extension, its development? If the goal is muscle performance rather than growth, the paper says this carries weight. Think outside the bod…

In 2007, a documentary about a 1981 game appeared. You wouldn't think a film about grown men trying to be the best in the world in a game from 1981 could be fascinating, but it is. The center of the plot pf "The King of Kong" is that a player in a live "Donkey Kong" game scored what should have been a record...but then the record holder submitted a tape of himself achieving an even higher score. The record holder's score is accepted but he refuses to play live.  The story of Kilian Jornet reminds me a bit of that. Jornet is an extreme athlete - he can ski, he is the greatest…

Advertised as the “greatest thing you’ve never seen,” the 2019 U.S. Air Guitar Championships will take place this summer. Competitors from around the country will don elaborate costumes, construct fantastical personas and perform comedic pantomimes of famous rock solos. Impaling themselves with their air guitars, swallowing them and smashing them to smithereens, they’ll elevate guitar playing to heights only imagined by real guitarists. The winner will go on to represent the U.S. in the Air Guitar World Championships, which will take place in Oulu, Finland, in late August. As an…