A modified TRIMP to quantify the in-season training load of team sport players

The aims of the study were to modify the training impulse (TRIMP) method of quantifying training load for use with intermittent team sports, and to examine the relationship between this modified TRIMP (TRIMP(MOD)) and changes in the physiological profile of team sport players during a competitive season. Eight male field hockey players, participating in the English Premier Division, took part in the study (mean+/-s: age 26+/-4 years, body mass 80.8+/-5.2 kg, stature 1.82+/-0.04 m). Participants performed three treadmill exercise tests at the start of the competitive season and mid-season: a submaximal test to establish the treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol . l(-1); a maximal incremental test to determine maximal oxygen uptake ([V]O(2max)) and peak running speed; and an all-out constant-load test to determine time to exhaustion. Heart rate was recorded during all training sessions and match-play, from which TRIMP(MOD) was calculated. Mean weekly TRIMP(MOD) was correlated with the change in [V]O(2max) and treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol x l(-1) from the start of to mid-season (P<0.05). The results suggest that TRIMP(MOD) is a means of quantifying training load in team sports and can be used to prescribe training for the maintenance or improvement of aerobic fitness during the competitive season.     

Improving Performance Without Training: A Three Step Approach

Condition 1 showed that employees recorded high percentages of completed tasks; and task performance was shown to slightly improve. At that point in the project, recording accuracy was at it's highest level. Condition 2 illustrated a continuance of high employee records of completed tasks but also showed that actual task performance considerably increased so that there was greater self-recording accuracy. Then, during Condition 3, actual task performance increased more so that it even more closely reflected self-recorded measures. Each of the steps discussed thus far could be sufficient individually to facilitate accurate self-recording and task performance gains, although each appeared to have gained additional strength by being collectively applied. The cost of the present organizational intervention was very low. The costs included material duplication costs and approximately 30 minutes of management time per day. Management time was used to make concession observations (management records), compute performance data, and provide feedback to the employee. Employees worked the same number of hours as in Baseline. Based on this breakdown, the approximate weekly cost of this project was about $30.00. The total cost could be reduced further, perhaps, by monitoring less frequently and reducing the frequency of feedback sessions as employee performance stabilized at higher levels. Thus, the longer this project would run, the less expensive it might become. The steps implemented during this project might easily be applied to other jobs that produce easily observable outputs and could also be applied to other work settings. Future research efforts that would identify cost-effective ways to stimulate and maintain high levels of accurate self-recording might provide today's managers several options that could all yield accurate data for organizational management. Other research efforts centered on specific analyses of participatory standard setting, peer reinforcement, and self-reinforcement for task performance could provide additional insight into the areas of job analysis and employee productivity. Lastly, increased knowledge about the long term effects of self-recording could be gained through future research methods that first established high recording accuracies and task performance levels, then evaluated maintenance procedures for these methods. Implications of successive research studies which clearly show that employee performance can be improved by rewarding performers for accurate self-recording could be profound.     

The history of the unspeakable: Shimokawa Masaharu’s The forgotten history of evacuation

ABSTRACT

Histories of wartime Japan often focus on the Japanese home islands after Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on 15 August 1945. Japanese citizens living in Korea, Manchuria, and elsewhere in the far-flung Japanese Empire are usually left out of the historiographical record. In a new book about the evacuees—hikiagesha—from the defunct Empire, Shimokawa Masaharu presents a vivid, harrowing portrait of the suffering of those who had to make their way back to Japan after the end of the Greater East Asia War. In particular, Shimokawa focuses on Izumi Sei’ichi, who established a sanatorium and abortuary in Fukuoka for women who had been raped by enemy soldiers.     

Mumford on aesthetic–moral interaction in sport

Stephen Mumford argues that aesthetic and moral values in sport are interdependent, focusing on cases where immorality taints beautiful performance. This interdependence thesis is insightful but, I argue, in need of refinement, as its normative implications are unclear and perhaps implausible (e.g. the Nazi aesthetics problem). I also challenge Mumford’s perspective on the infamous Dynamo Kiev death match. Whereas Mumford claims that the match’s morally oppressive circumstances detract from it so that ‘it was not something knowingly we should have admired aesthetically’, I argue that, on the contrary, and in light of what Mumford says about other cases, such circumstances actually enhance the game’s aesthetics such that it would be wrong not to appreciate it aesthetically.     

A meta-analysis of maturation-related variation in adolescent boy athletes’ adaptations to short-term resistance training

This meta-analysis investigated the maturation-related pattern of adaptations to resistance training in boy athletes. We included studies examining the effects of 4–16-week resistance training programmes in healthy boy athletes aged 10–18 years. Pooled estimates of effect size for change in strength across all studies (n = 19) were calculated using the inverse–variance random effects model for meta-analyses. Estimates were also calculated for groups based on likely biological maturity status (“before”, “during” and “after” peak height velocity). Using the standardised mean difference, resistance training increased strength across all groups (effect size = 0.98, [CI: 0.70–1.27]). Strength gains were larger during (1.11 [0.67–1.54]) and after (1.01 [0.56–1.46]) peak height velocity than before (0.5 [?0.06–1.07]). Adaptations to resistance training are greater in adolescent boys during or after peak height velocity. These findings should help coaches to optimise the timing of training programmes that are designed to improve strength in boy athletes.     

Understanding key performance indicators for breast support: An analysis of breast support effects on biomechanical,physiological and subjective measures during running

To assess the effectiveness of breast support previous studies monitored breast kinematics and kinetics, subjective feedback, muscle activity (EMG), ground reaction forces (GRFs) and physiological measures in isolation. Comparing these variables within one study will establish the key performance variables that distinguish between breast supports during activities such as running. This study investigates the effects of changes in breast support on biomechanical, physiological and subjective measures during running. Ten females (34D) ran for 10 min in high and low breast supports, and for 2 min bare breasted (2.8 m·s^?1). Breast and body kinematics, EMG, expired air and heart rate were recorded. GRFs were recorded during 10 m overground runs (2.8 m·s^?1) and subjective feedback obtained after each condition. Of the 62 variables measured, 22 kinematic and subjective variables were influenced by changes in breast support. Willingness to exercise, time lag and superio-inferior breast velocity were most affected. GRFs, EMG and physiological variables were unaffected by breast support changes during running. Breast displacement reduction, although previously advocated, was not the most sensitive variable to breast support changes during running. Instead breast support products should be assessed using a battery of performance indicators, including the key kinematic and subjective variables identified here.     

Surveying the Aspect of the Medieval West Anatolian Town

The aim of this short article is modest: it means to fill a lacuna in scholarly output by offering a concise and accessible survey of the physical structure of the typical west Anatolian town in the High Middle Ages. Attempts to locate such a study meet with disappointment. If one wishes to look through the eyes of medieval travellers in Anatolia, whether they be merchants, pilgrims or soldiers, and discover what type of construction they witnessed when approaching and entering a typical town, one is compelled to trawl through a great number of specialist articles and monographs dealing with specific archaeological sites or particular narrow periods of history. This laborious exercise will be made somewhat redundant by a brief synthesis of the appropriate evidence which historians and archaeologists have addressed and compiled since the late 1950s when attempting to reconstruct the development of the Byzantine city. The article traces the slow development of the typical Anatolian urban form and aspect from the late fourth century, through the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, and then through to a period of urban recovery until the latter part of the twelfth century. The choice of periods separated by some 800 years is not arbitrary: the physical character (and function) of the typical town began to change in the late fourth century, and the form it obtained during the seventh and eighth centuries continued to be the one retained (with inconsequential variations to the general pattern) during the intermediate periods of Byzantine recovery     

Cultural plan implementation and outcomes in Ontario,Canada

Since 2005 there has been a surge of cultural planning initiatives in Canada, especially in the Province of Ontario. However, very little research has been conducted in the more established cultural planning contexts of Australia, Great Britain and the United States let alone in Canada to support the assertions that underlie much of the movement's continued success. In particular, there has been an absence of research on the actual outcomes of the cultural planning strategy. This article examines whether the wide range of strategic goals presented in most cultural plans are being met. The method for assessing the effectiveness of cultural plans involved analyzing which strategic objectives were implemented as recorded in progress reports and as reported on by cultural planners. The research findings show that cultural plans are being effectively implemented and the majority of strategic goals contained within most cultural plans are being achieved. In addition, it is observed that the strategic objectives being implemented are not limited to traditional arts sector concerns.