Winter Olympics Part III: Ice Hockey

One of the most popular sports in the winter Olympics is ice hockey.  Until yesterday, it looked like the USA was in great position to win the gold medal.  But, things can change rather quickly in sports, especially when there are elite athletes competing.

In my motor learning class, one of the topics we have discussed recently are motor abilities.  A motor ability is a trait or underlying characteristic that a person possesses that allows them to be successful at a certain skill.  It obviously does not guarantee success, as many talented athletes have not reached their full potential, and many less talented athletes have done very well.  When you look at the sport of ice hockey, there are many underlying abilities that will help an athlete be successful in that sport, so let's discuss some of them.

In order to play ice hockey, a person first has to be able to ice skate.  In order to ice skate, one must have dynamic balance, or the ability to maintain their balance while moving.  This is even more difficult when skating on a thin blade on a sheet of ice.  Dynamic balance is an ability that can be improved some through practice, but some people just have better balance than others.  Another underlying ability necessary for hockey is control precision.  This is the ability to make rapid movement adjustments of control objects, such as a hockey stick, primarily using the large muscle groups.  Another important ability would be rate control, which is the ability to make continuous speed and and direction adjustments when tracking.  Hockey players obviously have to track the puck.  Other important abilities would include multi-limb coordination, reaction time (especially for the goalie), and response orientation.  Response orientation is the ability to quickly select a response from a number of alternatives.  Hockey players must quickly decide what to do with the puck during a game.

There are many other abilities that underlie hockey performance; these are just a few.  As you watch Olympic or professional hockey, you can see that these athletes possess many different motor abilities.

Winter Olympics Part II: Curling

One of my favorite sports to watch in the Winter Olympics is curling.  While many people find curling to be boring, I find it to be quite fascinating.  Each game consists of 10 "Ends," which are pretty similar to innings in baseball.  Curling can be pretty slow paced and there is a lot of strategy involved, which is also similar to baseball.  The basic goal of curling is to have more "stones" closer to the "house" than your opponent when each "End" concludes.  You receive a point for every stone that is closer to the house than your opponent, so if your team ends up with 3 stones closer than your opponent, you get 3 points for that end.

Since I am also an athletic trainer, I find the injury aspect of these different sports to be interesting as well.  As you can read in this article here, the United States men's and women's curling teams have their own certified athletic trainer.  Now, it may seem like curlers do not need an athletic trainer, but if you have ever watched a game, you will see that these athletes place a lot of stress on their knees, hips, and low backs if they are throwing the stone, and the sweepers put a lot of stress on their shoulders, arms, and upper backs.  While there is rarely a traumatic injury in curling when compared to a sport like hockey, there are many potential injuries and issues that will keep an athletic trainer busy.

Winter Olympics Part I: Slopestyle Skiing

One of the winter Olympic events I had the chance to watch today was slopestyle skiing.  The athletic ability of these Olympic skiers is remarkable, especially in this event.  We have been discussing projectile motion in in my Sport Biomechanics class, and this event is a great example, in which the skier is the projectile.  We have discussed how the distance a projectile will travel is primarily dependent on two things: the projectile's velocity at takeoff, and the angle at which the projectile leaves the ground.  In addition to projecting themselves, these skiers also perform spins and other tricks (I'm not familiar with all the skiing terminology), and then they have to land and continue down the course.

During today's competition, Canadian skier Yuki Tsubota failed to land from one of her take-offs and suffered a bad injury.  You can watch the video here.  It is difficult to tell exactly what happened to her, but it appears that she gets her base of support (her skis) down behind her center of mass, and this causes her to collapse, fall forward, and hit her head.  They are saying she sustained a broken jaw, which is a bad injury, but after watching the video, it could have been much worse.  The amount of body control these athletes must have to land from these long projections at such a high velocity and then continue down the course is amazing.

Friday Night Tykes

The other night I was flipping through the channels on TV when I came across the show "Friday Night Tykes".  It follows a few 8-9 year old youth football teams located near San Antonio, Texas.  After watching for just a few minutes, I had a hard time believing some of the things that I saw.  Specifically, a coach made an obviously out of shape kid run up and down the field the entire practice because he had missed a previous practice.  Another coach encouraged one of his defensive players to hit the center as hard as he could before he snapped the ball.  In general, the coaches of all the teams were acting like they were college of NFL football coaches.  The entire emphasis seemed to be on winning, and not on having fun and enjoying the game of football.  One of the coaches on the show was recently suspended for encouraging his team to hit the other team in the head.

The biggest issue I have with the show, and they are portraying is happening, is the complete disregard for player safety.  The National Athletic Trainers Association released a statement last week voicing their concerns over player safety.   I saw examples of players nearing or becoming dehydrated and players likely suffering head trauma that were allowed to continue playing.  Youth sports are a wonderful thing that can teach kids many valuable lessons, but player safety must be the number one concern.  Hopefully this show will bring to light many of these issues, and they will be addressed in youth sports programs around the country in order to increase player safety.