Footballogy: expertise in soccer

Weight gain caused by inconsistent exercise cannot be lost by simply resuming a previous exercise routine, suggests a study published in the February 2008 issue Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise®, the official scientific journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

In an eight-year study of more than 40,000 runners, researcher Paul Williams, Ph.D., found that weight gain among men and women who decreased their running distances per week was significantly more than weight loss among men and women who increased their running distances per week by the same amount.

“If you stop exercising with the intention of starting again later, you don’t get to pick up where you left off,” Thompson said. “You’re likely to gain weight and get stuck with it unless you exercise a lot more. It’s an ounce of prevention or a pound of cure, literally.”

Additionally, substantial weight loss in participants did not occur unless running distances were more than 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) per week for men, and 48 kilometers (29.8 miles) per week for women. Participants who already ran a long distance per week and decreased their running, still maintaining a long distance per week, gained significantly less weight than those whose running distances started shorter and decreased to even less.

“We saw the most weight gain in subjects who were approaching a very sedentary lifestyle,” Williams said. “This concurs with the vast amount of research showing that at least some daily activity is necessary to prevent significant weight gain.”

Williams believes that exercise has taken a back seat to controlling diet in addressing America’s obesity epidemic. The key, he says, is to start exercising before weight gain actually occurs.

ACSM and the American Heart Association recommend that healthy adults engage in physical activity for at least 30 minutes, five days per week, at a moderate intensity, or 20 minutes, three days per week, at a vigorous intensity. Individuals striving for weight loss may need to exercise as many as 60 to 90 minutes per day.

“Although this study showed weight loss when running at high levels, others may want to do a different type of activity,” Williams said. “Whether it’s running, cycling, swimming, or something else, the important thing to remember is that activity is needed for a healthy lifestyle that prevents weight gain.”

American College of Sports Medicine

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the weather begins to warm, major leaguers are not the only athletes reporting to spring training. Chicago’s south suburbs are home to one of the largest collections of youth sports clubs in the country. With baseball season approaching, area physicians anticipate seeing an increase in shoulder and elbow injuries in young athletes. “Over-use injuries are a very common problem for young athletes, particularly throwing athletes,” explained orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist Gregory Primus, M.D., of Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest, Ill. “Athletes, parents, and coaches can take steps to prevent over-use injuries by recognizing the symptoms and understanding the importance of proper technique.”

Over-use injuries can occur in any sport, but are particularly common in young baseball pitchers whose bodies are still developing. “Pitching is not a natural movement for the arm and forces stress on both the elbow and shoulder,” Dr. Primus explained. “Throwing a high pitch count that is unregulated can cause damage and inflammation to the growth plates in the arm. This is known as little leaguer’s elbow or shoulder.”

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) this condition occurs when repetitive throwing creates an excessively strong pull on the tendons and ligaments of the elbow or shoulder. Continued pulling can stress the ligament and tendons attachments to bone resulting in abnormal bone growth, small tears, or at worst deformity.

“When little league elbow occurs, there is pain on the inside of the elbow,” Primus explained. “At the first sign of pain or any restriction in the range of motion, the player should consult a sports medicine physician. Another symptom to note is if the child’s elbow joint locks when he or she throws.”

In rare cases, it may be necessary to discontinue pitching for a short period in order to prevent further damage and start the healing process. “Over-use injuries can be serious if the condition is not addressed early,” Dr. Primus said. “If the child does not take a break from throwing, his or her future ability to play the sport may be jeopardized. Serious complications can arise if the arm is not rested and treated.”

In most cases, over-use injuries can be treated with rest and icing of the affected area. “The athlete must not resume the activity until the pain is entirely gone,” said Dr. Primus. “Apply an ice pack to the affected area for 15 to 20 minutes, four to five times a day until the pain dissipates.”

A physical therapy plan will aid healing and get the child back in the game. “The child should work with his or her doctor to develop a plan with both strengthening and range of motion exercises,” Dr. Primus said. “When returning to throwing, the child must ease into the activity. The coach should be involved with developing a plan to gradually increase the numbers of pitches the player can make.” In extreme cases, some children may require surgery to repair damage. “Prevention is really key in avoiding over-use injuries,” Dr. Primus said. “Young athletes need to be trained in proper technique and form. They should always warm-up and stretch their muscles before pitching in practice or a game.”

Pitchers must limit the number of pitches that are thrown in a week. While there are not nationally standardized limits, most club leagues have set guidelines. “Coaches need to carefully track of the number of pitches thrown by young players,” explained Dr. Primus.

Primus also wants to remind young athletes to play for fun and not let competitiveness get in the way of safety. “Club sports are very competitive and some athletes might not speak up if they are feeling pain because they don’t want to miss playing time,” said Dr. Primus. “What they have to remember is that the longer they wait to treat an injury, the more serious it will become. In the end, this is going to lead to even more missed playing time.”

http://www.advocatehealth.com/southsub.

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Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people’s spirits. And many believe that the body’s own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proved until now. Researchers at the Technische Universität München and the University of Bonn succeeded to demonstrate the existence of an ‘endorphin driven runner’s high’. In an imaging study they were able to show, for the first time, increased release of endorphins in certain areas of the athletes’ brains during a two-hour jogging session. Their results are also relevant for patients suffering from chronic pain, because the body’s own opiates are produced in areas of the brain which are involved in the suppression of pain. The researchers, some of whom are also members of the German Research Network of Neuropathic Pain (Deutscher Forschungsverbund Neuropathischer Schmerz, DFNS), which is also funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), thereby show that jogging not only makes you high, but can also relieve pain. The results of the study have now been published in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex.

Runner’s high

Endurance sports have long been seen as reducing stress, relieving anxiety, enhancing mood and decreasing the perception of pain. The high that accompanies jogging even led to the creation of its own term, ‘runner’s high’. Yet the cause of these positive effects on the senses was not clear until now. The most popular theory was and still is the ‘Endorphin Hypothesis’, which claimed that there was increased production of the body’s own opioids in the brain. However, since until now direct proof of this theory could not be provided; for technical reasons, it was a constant source of controversial discussions in scientific circles. The result was that the myth of ‘runner’s high through endorphins’ lived on.

Scientists confirm the endorphin hypothesis for the first time

Scientists from the fields of Nuclear Medicine, Neurology and Anaesthesia at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Bonn have now subjected the endorphin theory to closer scrutiny. Ten athletes were scanned before and after a two-hour long-distance run using an imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET). For this they used the radioactive substance [18F]diprenorphine ([18F]FDPN), which binds to the opiate receptors in the brain and hence competes with endorphins. ‘The more endorphins are produced in the athlete’s brain, the more opiate receptors are blocked,’ says Professor Henning Boecker, who coordinated the research at TUM and who is now in charge of the ‘Functional Neuroimaging Group’ at the Dept. of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. And further: ‘Respectively the opioid receptor binding of the [18F]FDPN decreases, since there is a direct competition between endorphins in the brain and the injected ligand’. By comparing the images before and after two hours of long distance running the study could demonstrate a significantly decreased binding of the [18F]FDPN-ligand. This is a strong argument in favour of an increased production of the body’s own opioids while doing long-distance running. ‘We could validate for the first time an endorphin driven runner’s high and identify the affected brain areas’, states Boecker. ‘It’s interesting to see that the affected brain areas were preferentially located in prefrontal and limbic brain regions which are known to play a key role in emotional processing. Moreover, we observed a significant increase of the euphoria and happiness ratings compared to the ratings before the running exercise.’ Professor Thomas Tölle, who for several years has been head of a research group called ‘Functional Imaging of Pain’ at TU Munich, adds: ‘Our evaluations show that the more intensively the high is experienced, the lower the binding of [18F]FDPN was in the PET scan. And this means that the ratings of euphoria and happiness correlated directly with the release of the endorphins.’ In addition, as a spokesman of the ‘German Association of Neuropathic Pain’, he feels happy for patients suffering from chronic pain. ‘The fact that the endorphins are also released in areas of the brain that are at the centre of the suppression of pain was not quite unexpected, but even this proof was missing. Now we hope that these images will also impress our pain patients and will motivate them to take up sports training within their available limits.’

Running down the pain?

It is well known that endorphins facilitate the body’s own pain suppression by influencing the way the body passes on pain and processes it in the nervous system and brain. The increased production of endorphins resulting from long-distance running could also serve as the body’s own pain-killer, a therapeutic option which is not only of interest to the German Association of Neuropathic Pain. ‘Now we are very curious about the results of an imaging study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which we are currently carrying out in Bonn in order to investigate the influence of long-distance running on the processing of pain directly,’ Professor Boecker says. Further research is required so as to investigate the exact effects on depression and states of anxiety but also on possible aspects which may promote addiction. That is why the relation between genetic disposition and opiate receptor distribution in the brain is being currently investigated at TU Munich. ‘A scary thought,’ Thomas Tölle comments, ‘if we ran because our genes wanted us to do so.’ The first step towards researching these connections has now been made.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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This research was supported by the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) (SFB 391, TP C9 Tölle, Boecker: ‘Integration nociceptiver Signale im ZNS des Menschen’), as well as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the German Association of Neuropathic Pain.

Source: Dr. Henning Boecker
University of Bonn

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By Mick Hoban While it is generally accepted that professional soccer is a business activity and as such, relies on a multitude of commercial activities to stay solvent, it’s clear that not all business decisions have served the game well. FIFA’s scheduling of kick-offs to correspond with television timeslots in Europe’s largest markets during the 1994 World Cup in the U.S. was one example where business overshadowed the game. The games on the field, played in the oppressive heat of summer afternoons, were, resultantly of lesser quality.

Jersey sponsorship is the equivalent to mobile advertising. Most professional leagues limit sponsors logos but in other leagues e.g. Primera División de México, jerseys are starting to look Formula One racing cars! Is it possible to safeguard the identity and integrity of club brands when the most visible element (club uniform) is surrounded by a multitude of, often, disparate logos?

Furthermore, should soccer allow companies from industries that bring into question the integrity of the game to be featured as sponsors on club jerseys e.g. betting, alcoholic beverages and tobacco companies?

Stadium signage has permeated every nook and cranny in and around soccer facilities and is a valuable, accepted, source of income for clubs and federations. I do, however, question the use of moving billboards at games as anything that interferes with players’ sight-lines and fans’ viewing experiences during the game should be seriously re-considered.

Naming rights have become the vogue with leading European clubs. Again, I’m a traditionalist here. In my mind stadiums such as Villa Park in England will always be Villa Park regardless of who purchases the stadium naming rights and wherever the stadium may be relocated in the future. Other stadium names, linked to a specific location e.g. Highbury, the home of Arsenal FC, need to be changed when a club moves to a different location. While this provides a club with a substantial commercial opportunity I wonder how the club’s long-term brand equity will be affected by the frequent changes in the name of its stadium? Would Carnegie Hall, La Scala or The Royal Albert Hall have retained their brand equity if their names had changed every five years or so - in connection with a commercial sponsor?

I have observed many ball, apparel and footwear contracts where quality has been overlooked for a big fat check. I believe that the quality of the game ball should never be compromised. Similarly, players should be allowed to choose their own footwear products as should goalkeepers when it comes to their gloves. We’ve watched the proliferation of “accessories” on and around the field increase dramatically over the years e.g. logos on field ambulances. This brazen commercialism, however, is not a new phenomenon. Les Cocker, a famous trainer at Leeds United in the 70s, was renowned for checking camera angles as he placed his trainers bag, with logo of course, between the cameras and the injured player.

With the advent of global soccer brands the game’s leaders will have to constantly balance the needs and desires of fans who attend games with those fans who watch the game on television e.g. as it relates to kick-off times. When the number of fans outside a club’s country of origin far outweighs the number of fans in attendance or ‘in-country’ should a club, or league, consider kick-off times that favor fans outside the country?

For someone who has spent a lifetime as a fan and a career in the business of soccer many of my comments may appear anti-commercial, naïve or less than supportive. However, I readily acknowledge the necessity for commerce in the professional game and understand that without such revenues many grassroots activities and indeed some clubs themselves could not exist but I believe the game must come first and anything that detracts from the performance of players, the quality of games or the enjoyment of fans, must be treated with a healthy dose of suspicion and scrutiny.

That’s why it’s important for soccer organizations to have a senior soccer person (e.g. Director of Soccer and/or board member) in their organization and/or an external, objective, experienced resource whose responsibility it is to safeguard the game when others are, primarily, arguing the case from a financial perspective.

A native of England, Mick started his professional career as a player with Aston Villa and played for three clubs in the North American Soccer League. He served as Community Relations Director for the Portland Timbers, is an “A” Licensed Coach, a former coach at college and club levels, a former member of the NSCAA’s Governor’s Council and has worked, in the soccer industry for Nike, Umbro and adidas, for whom he served as a consultant.

www.worldsoccerconnection.net

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The pre soccer season is not fun but it will define your entire season. Properly done your fitness will be carrry out all along the season. There is no quick fix.
these aerobic sessions are probably the most boring part of training but they have to be done.

A pre-season drill example :

All sessions should begin with:

From Soccer fitness.

www.worldsoccerconnection.net

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Filed under: Aerobic/anaerobic, Fitness