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Ahead of Super Bowl, Trump Raises Doubts on Tackle Football for His Son

Games, Sports

ATLANTA — Hours before the sport’s biggest game, President Trump joined the growing ranks of parents anxious over tackle football, saying in an interview he “would have a hard time” letting his 12-year-old son play.

“I mean, it’s a dangerous sport and I think it’s, I, it’s really tough” if his son wanted to take up the game, Mr. Trump said in an interview with CBS ahead of its Sunday evening broadcast of the Super Bowl.

The president’s concerns are at odds with his previous criticism that the N.F.L. has been making the game too soft to avoid concussions and other injuries, and suggest that he is struggling with many of the same questions that parents across the country are asking about the safety of youth tackle football.

Mr. Trump said he would ultimately let his youngest son, Barron, who plays soccer, decide if he wanted to play tackle football and would not steer him away from the sport.

But the president said he had seen reports about the dangers of playing tackle football, and heard that some N.F.L. players were not letting their sons play tackle football.

His comments added another wrinkle to his ambivalent relationship with the game he often celebrates, but also laments. His doubts about the safety of the game come five years after President Barack Obama said that if he had a son, he would not let him play professional football.You have 4 free articles remaining.Subscribe to The Times

Some studies have suggested that playing tackle football before age 12 puts athletes at a higher risk of developing cognitive problems later in life, but the issue has not been widely studied. In general, there has been growing awareness of C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease many former players have developed from repeated hits to the head.

As a result of such concerns, participation in flag football has exploded.

Yet while Mr. Obama held a forum at the White House on the dangers of concussions, Mr. Trump has repeatedly said the N.F.L. is being overprotective.

In September 2017, for instance, Mr. Trump complained that the N.F.L. was ruining the game because the referees were trying to control unnecessarily rough tackles.

“Today if you hit too hard — 15 yards! Throw him out of the game!” he said, adding: “They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game. That’s what they want to do. They want to hit. They want to hit! It is hurting the game.”

At a campaign rally in 2016, Mr. Trump referred to a woman in the audience who fainted, but returned to the crowd.

“The woman was out cold and now she’s coming back,” he said. “See? We don’t go by these new, and very much softer, N.F.L. rules. Concussion. Oh, oh! Got a little ding on the head. No, no, you can’t play for the rest of the season. Our people are tough.”

Trump also called the N.F.L. “soft” for penalizing helmet-to-helmet hits.

In the CBS interview, however, he sounded more cautionary notes.

“I hate to say it, because I love to watch football,” Mr. Trump said. “I think the N.F.L. is a great product, but I really think that as far as my son — well, I’ve heard N.F.L. players saying they wouldn’t let their sons play football. So, it’s not totally unique, but I, I would have a hard time with it.”

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Robots will control everything you eat

Technology

It starts with a seed. That seed — maybe it’s a tomato seed — gets planted into the ground. Then it grows. And grows. Slowly, the plant pierces through the soil, emerging into the light. Weeks to months later, this seed becomes a plant, waist-high, bearing dozens of ripe tomatoes. Someone picks the fruit and packs it into a box. Someone else ships those boxes to warehouses where a restaurant or grocery buys the tomatoes. Later, a cook will take one, cut it up and put it in a salad.

Today, this process is still pretty low tech. Sure, there are cars and trucks involved, but robotics? Not as much. People are still key players at every step. But that may change, and soon.

“There are major technologies coming in the next 10 years to make each part of farming more efficient, more productive and hopefully healthier and less expensive,” says Dan Steere. He heads up a company called Abundant Robotics in Menlo Park, Calif.

In other words, robots increasingly are going to play roles in growing and preparing our food.

By time the time kids in middle school become adults, the entire food cycle may be robotic. Even now, robots help farmers. Some plant fruits, vegetables and grains in a more efficient way. Soon, they’ll help harvest that food more quickly. Some food warehouses already have self-driving trucks. Robots will even help get that food onto our plates. In fact, a robot named Sally is already doing just that. The goal is to make the way food is produced and prepared faster, easier and more efficient.

Getting seeds in the ground

Every field has some areas that are naturally less fertile than others. Farmland may not be level, either. It can have areas that rise or are lower than their surroundings. There may even be ditches. Plowing evens out the ground somewhat, but never completely. If a creek runs through a field, there’s always going to be land near that creek where it’s difficult — or impossible — to plant. Soil quality also varies throughout a field.

All of these things can impact how much food the land can produce and how good that food will taste. And the amount of food produced affects how much money a farmer makes.

Math helps farmers calculate how many seeds to plant and where. But land also changes over time, so these calculations must be done over and over again every year.

A quadcopter drone moves over a farm, taking pictures from the air. This can map the quality of the soil, any crops and even pests.ackab1/Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

Theo Pistorius is head of a company called DroneClouds. It’s in Cape Town, South Africa. His is one of many companies using drones to help farmers know where to plant. Drone is slang for unmanned aerial aircraft — a flying robot. The craft that DroneClouds uses has five cameras. Pistorius says each camera “is essentially [like] a camera on an iPhone.” But not a normal iPhone. He says think of each as “a very specialized, aerial iPhone, with a very specialized, calibrated camera.”

As the drone’s cameras fly overhead, they take pictures of the land. These show field size and the different lays of the land. They also reveal soil variation and any irrigation problems. They even show where insects and fungus might cause problems.

Next, DroneClouds processes those images to create a map of the field and what’s growing in it. “We then do analyses to interpret it for the farmer,” explains Pistorius. If the images come from an apple orchard, for instance, they might look at how the trees are growing. They’ll note where tall weeds might cause a brand new tree to struggle.

A farmer in Zimbabwe holds a drone used for aerial crop mapping. This is just one of the ways in which robots are becoming involved in food production.International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center/Flickr (CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0)

To pinpoint problems, analysts compare these pictures to others of the same crop. This is called comparative analysis. Pistorius says it’s like running a race, then comparing your time today to what it was earlier in the season. That lets you measure how much you’ve improved. But runners also compare their time against other runners. So farmers compare pictures of their field to those of other farmers. This is known as a signature-based analysis.

“The ideal pictures come from labs all across the world,” Pistorius says. “Every four years, scientists from the Agricultural Research Commission

meet with labs [in the United States], and take a bunch of signatures.” This way farmers in both countries can help each other.

Picking fruit

Consistently monitored, the little plants grow. Day after day, the sun rises and falls. Sometimes it shines, other times there’s rain. Finally, harvest time arrives. And with it comes new, cutting-edge work in farm robotics.

For two years, Abundant Robotics has been developing a robot that picks apples. Two years? Isn’t picking apples easy?

Not if you’re a robot.

To understand why apple picking is hard for a machine, let’s break down the process. When you see an apple hanging on a tree, your eyes send a signal to your brain. The brain processes the data in this signal — such as the apple’s color and where it is on the tree. Instinctively, you’ll know when the apple’s ready to pick. Your brain then tells your arm to reach out and your hand to pull the fruit away from its branch. You hold the apple like you would a bird — gently enough not to bruise it, but firmly enough that it doesn’t fall away.

For people, picking an apple is so easy, even a kid can do it. But for robots, this simple activity used to be impossible.bubutu-/iStockphoto

When you pick an apple, you make all these decisions quickly. But if you needed to pick an entire field’s worth of apples, it would take a very, very long time. After you picked one apple, you’d have to put it in a basket. The next apple would go in there, too, and the next, until your basket was full. Then down the ladder you’d go, where you’d have to empty your basket before climbing back up to start again.

Doing this for hundreds of trees would be incredibly time consuming. That’s why people are seeking help from robots. When Abundant Robotics is done, farmers will be able to plant more trees. And they won’t be worried about part of their crop rotting in the field because people weren’t able to pick it all in time.

The first problem Abundant Robotics had to solve was acquiring the right signals. “If you don’t have a good pair of eyes, it’s hard to do a lot of tasks in the real world,” Steere says. So the company had to give their robot what Steere calls “a better pair of eyes.” This system — and how it connects to a robot’s brain — is known as computer vision. Computer vision helps the robot see “every surface of an apple,” says Steere, in addition to judging its size, color and weight. It can even scout for any defects in the fruit. Such systems are rapidly improving what robots can do.

Yet even with super eyes, the apple robot still had to learn how to physically pick the fruit without hurting it. In robotics, movement is called animation. Steere says, “Heavy animation damages the fruit.” If it bruises the apple or cuts through the skin, the fruit may look bad and likely won’t sell. Rough handling also can damage trees.

So the robot must coordinate its vision and motor skills. Think back to the apple-picking process: You have to know which apple to pick. You have to pick it quickly and gently. But what else? You can’t disturb apples on the tree that still need time to grow. “The vision has to … recognize fruit,” Steere says, and “recognize whether it’s ripe or not.” And it has to do all that in a fraction of a second.

“People have wanted to automate this type of agriculture for decades. It’s just never been possible,” he says. Even after two years, his team’s work still is not done! Abundant’s robot won’t go on sale until later this year. Developing great tech is like farming — it takes patience.

Sorting the harvest

Coffee berries come in many colors. A new robot can quickly sort the good ones from the bad.Bonga1965/iStockphoto

Once the crop been picked, good fruit must be sorted from the bad. That’s what a company called bext360 does. Instead of apples, its robot works with cocoa, nuts, cardamom (a spice) and coffee cherries (the fruit that holds coffee beans). Daniel Jones heads the company, based in Denver, Colo.

Take those coffee cherries. “The farmers would harvest their coffee and place it in our machine,” Jones explains. “Then the machine drops [the fruit] through a visioning system.” Picture a waterfall of cherries falling. That’s what the machine stares at, all the while taking pictures of the passing fruit. The robot then uses those pictures to sort good coffee cherries from bad.

Machine vision and computer vision are essentially the same thing. Abundant and best360’s robots do different tasks. Still, the same core technology helps both of them do it.

Before building a robot, engineers draw a design of what it will look like. This is the design for bext360’s coffee robot.Garrett Ziegler

Both robots also need more than computer vision to succeed. Vision can tell bext360’s robot how to sort, but then the robot actually has to do it. Farmers harvest coffee cherries — up to 30 kilograms (66 pounds) — from one section of their field at a time. Then they load cherries holding some 18,000 beans into a chute on top of the robot.

Within about 3 minutes, the robot will have individually sorted every cherry. To do that, the robot has to take a picture of each one. Then it analyzes them all in a mere 22 milliseconds or so. “We’ll know everything about them in that split second that they fall through [the chute],” says Jones. Puffs of air then push the cherries into different bins — one for good fruit, another for rejects.

After the coffee cherry falls, the robot shares its analysis with the farmer. “The main things [the robot measures] are size and color and density,” says Jones. It also checks the inside and outside of the cherry for signs of rot or disease. This is why farmers only put cherries from one part of their field in at a time. This information helps them know if something they tried in one part of a field worked better than something they tried elsewhere.

The robot from bext360 is still new: Sales only started about six months ago.

Onto the plate

Picked, analyzed and sorted, a harvest now goes to a warehouse. One day, it might get there in a self-driving semi-truck. And a self-driving forklift might move the pallets off the truck and onto another that is destined for a restaurant or store. Amazon already has a grocery store just for employees that doesn’t have any human stockers or check-out clerks: They’re all robots.

This forklift doesn’t need a driver. It can drive itself.StraSSenBahn/Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Finally, the food might end up with our last robot: Sally. Sally makes salads. From the outside, she looks like a box. There’s a touchscreen and a hole where a bowl can be placed. Inside, though, this robot’s more complicated. “Sally is a box with the robotic components on the inside,” notes Deepak Sekar. He heads up Chowbotics, in Redwood City, Calif. It’s the company that makes Sally.

“There are cylinders inside the robot that are filled with prepped ingredients,” Sekar explains. People activate Sally by pressing the touchscreen. Diners can customize their salads by calorie count and ingredients.

At $30,000 per robot, Sally isn’t designed to be used at home. Chowbotics sells the robot to schools and offices, which use Sally in cafeterias and breakrooms. Observes Sekar: “We hear all the time that students in schools don’t like eating from salad bars.” Why? Sekar claims they’re gross. “Because all the ingredients are inside Sally, you don’t have to wonder if someone sneezed on the tomatoes an hour ago — ew!,” he says. “Your salad is always fresh and healthy.”  

Robots aren’t in every part of the field-to-plate process yet. But soon they will be. This will make the food process cooler for us. Even more importantly, robots could one day even out the world’s food supply. Think about it: Today, DroneClouds helps farmers know how to plant more. bext360 helps them know how to plant more efficiently. Abundant Robotics helps growers harvest more quickly — which means farmers can plant more. Then Chowbotics stores that produce in a healthier way.

Says Steere, “If there was ever a time [for] a young person going into farming — this has gotta be one of the most amazing times in history. The kind of things that automation can do is going to continue to change and to evolve quickly.” 

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Stop Sitting There and Start Boating: Daylight is Burning

Travel

I’m sure a lot of you Bay Area folk remember when the BART workers threatened a strike in August 2013. The walkout was avoided, but for an entire day the state of public rail transit across San Francisco was shaky at best.

In that dark hour it was Uber who came to the rescue…well, halfway to the rescue. They actually partnered with a local San Francisco startup called Boatbound to send people off to work on boats across the bay.

Uber never would have been able to orchestrate this singlehandedly: Boatbound was the crucial element that made it all work. Here we are now, almost two years later, and Boatbound is both still kicking and thriving.

In short, Boatbound is the Airbnb for boats. It’s an idea that founder Aaron Hall cooked up thanks to a life spent boating with family and friends.

“We were always out boating, and when we traveled it was something we’d do on vacation too. It was always an integral part of my growing up,” says Hall.

On one of those vacations, in 2012, they tried to rent a boat for the weekend. They walked into an old, clunky marina in North Dallas that was so desolate it didn’t even have a website.

The drive was to get there was long and arduous, and when they finally arrived the last available boat had already been rented out. However, Hall saw hundreds of owned boats just floating in the marina, not being used and not available for rent.

Surely there was a service out there that let people rent these owned boats. Well, long story short, there wasn’t, so Hall built Boatbound.

They initially launched in 2013 and only serviced San Francisco, which highlights the strategic prowess Boatbound showed by teaming up with Uber in 2013. That, paired with the hard work of a dedicated team took Boatbound to South Florida, and ultimately across the rest of the US in 2014.

Hall would say they’ve “exploded”, and I have to agree. I pressed him about what contributed to this massive spike in growth:

“Think about it: nobody goes out on a boat themselves unless they’re a lonely fisherman,” Hall explains. “When one person books on our platform a lot of other people find out about Boatbound while on the actual, rented boat. The opportunity for it to spread like wildfire is unprecedented.”

Currently, Hall and his crew are spending a lot of time with boating events and dry land fun to keep the hype fueled. It’s fascinating: they still haven’t turned on the marketing magic, so to speak, but have over 10,000 boats registered for rental on the platform.

Not only that, the list of people waiting to sign up seems to get bigger every day. There was even one man who rented his boat out eight times in the first week it was listed on Boatbound.

“We can’t activate boats quickly enough. It does take some time to get the boats ready, which is why we’re still picky on markets we launch in,” Hall says. “Though, it’s mainly because there are boats there already waiting for us to activate them before we even arrive.”

Consider what this means for boat owners. Effectively you can offset a sizeable portion of monthly expenses by renting your boat just a few times in a given month.

That’s huge, considering that about 80 percent of boats just float unused over one calendar year. Hall tells me that people who rent their boats on the platform can finally view their crafts as tangible assets and not sinkholes to throw money in.

For all of us who don’t own boats, it’s a steal to get out on the water for about $30 a day. What are you waiting for? Daylight is burning, my friends, and summer is already halfway over. Go have some fun already!

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10 Places in Thailand That Backpackers Rarely Visit

Design, Travel

Thailand is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations on the planet receiving an estinated 15.9 million tourists in 2010. Perfect marketed images of tuk-tuks, long-tail boats, glimmering temples and glamorous Thai dancers are what the mind conjures up when someone says Thailand.

Living here for two years, I have had the immense pleasure of seeing many different sides of this fascinating country, the hugely celebrated and the unassuming, the popular and the forgotten.

Each place has its unique surprises and my experience makes me cringe when I hear some stuck up backpackers say that Thailand has nothing for them in way of adventure anymore. As someone once said, “only boring people get bored.” Especially in Thailand.

10 Unique Places in Thailand

1. MaeKlong Market, Samut Songkram

MaeKlong Market in the province of Samut Songkram is an unbelievable example of Thailand’s ability to thrive in regardless of circumstances. The market is situated on the train tracks of MaeKlong Railway and eight times a day, seven days a week, the train passes in and out happily.

The train literally goes directly through the middle of the market stalls and over the goods on sale. Rather than relocate a market which had been running for decades in this area, locals adapted superbly so that daily life was not interrupted.

The vendors simply pull back any awning that sticks out too far within centimeters of where the train will pass and usher shoppers to step back. Locals know the exact time each day the train arrives and once it has passed through, the awnings are recoiled and they are back on the tracks laying out their fruit, meat and seafood as if nothing happened.

2. The Forensic Museum, Bangkok

Have you always wanted to see a scrotum with elephantiasis? Er… no, us neither! Bangkok’s forensic museum holds a bizarre collection of everything that is weird, outrageous and just downright freaky about Thailand.

For anyone looking to investigate a very different side of Thailand, look no further… though be warned this place is not for the squeamish or faint of heart!

With macabre interest in death and illness, the museum displays a collection of gruesome photographs of decapitations, deformed feotus’s in glass jars, an exhibition of skulls with bullet wounds through the head and the star attraction, the embalmed body of 1950’s Chinese cannibal, Si Quey. Next to the cabinet read the handwritten words “because he loves to eat human’s organ not because of starving”.

3. Phuket Town

Most people head to Phuket strictly for beaches and all night parties, however, what most people fail to appreciate is Phuket town itself. Dating back to the 16th century, colonial powers had an interest in Phuket’s natural resources, namely its booming tin mining industry.

As a result, the architecture of the town is a mix of Sino-Portuguese shop-house and Sino-Colonial mansion style. Despite it being home to the cheapest digs in town (the famous On-On Hotel was featured on the opening scene’s of the movie, The Beach!) there is a surprising lack of backpackers roaming the town.

Artsy tea-shops and atmospheric jazz bars have now taken residence in the old shop-houses and there are some great (and cheap) Chinese-influenced eating houses. Visitors heading there in October are in for a treat as the Vegetarian Festival takes place with incredible feats of self-flagellation and body piercing.

4. Mae Sot or “Little Burma”

Nicknamed “Little Burma,” due to the presence of over 200,000 Burmese refugees living in the area, the border town of Mae Sot doesn’t really feel like Thailand at all.

Walking around the local market you will see women with a yellow paste, ‘thananka’ bark smeared on their cheeks and men, wearing the traditional Burmese wrap-around skirt, the longyi.

The town is fascinating in the sense that it makes you realize just how complex the Burmese nationality is with ethnic minorities from Karen, Kachin, Mon, Arakanese; each with their own separate customs, cultures, dress and cuisine.

Eat chapatis and dal in the Muslim quarter in the morning for breakfast and then feast on Karen curries in the evening. For backpackers who are considering  visiting what is now called ‘Myanmar,’ Mae Sot is an intriguing taster.

Plus, the bridge over the River Moie has just opened for border runs so the town may well be seeing more backpackers here in the coming months. 

5. Nan Province

The remote province of Nan is a mountainous, forested area that for many years was an autonomous kingdom cut off from the rest of Thailand and the outside world.

The area remains somewat separated from the rest of Thailand in the fact that very few tourists venture here. Home to the largest national park in Thailand, the beautiful Doi Phu Kha National Park, the area has an abundance of impressive limestone caves, karats and waterfalls, not to mention the ancient salt mine village, or ‘Ban Bo Klua’ as it is known in Thai.

The best way to get to Nan province is by motorbike from Chiang Mai on roads which are superb for riding passing through spectacular mountain scenery. The town of Phayao, located on the picturesque Phayao Lake is the perfect stop off point to explore more stunning mountain scenery and nearby hill-tribe villages.

6. The Trang Islands

Just four hours by bus from the tourist hotspot, Krabi, lie the ‘secret’ islands of Trang, a group of 47 separate craggy isles each one blessed with raw, unspoilt beauty.

The area which consists of 120-mile coastline remain untouched by tourism and you will find no fast food restaurants, internet cafes or tacky souvenir shops here. During low season (June-September) the islands are completely deserted and you will have to persuade the local fisherman to take you out from the main port of Trang to the outer islands.

It is quite possible that you will be the only Westerner there as you explore the beautiful white sandy beaches, limestone caves and waterfalls that were recently designated a national parkland.

The accommodation is cheap and very basic but with a location so idyllic, the Trang islands are like Thailand 20 years ago. If it is true escapism you are after, the Trang Islands just may be your adventure playground.

7. The White Temple and the Black House, Chiang Rai

It is true that with such an abundance of noteworthy temples in South East Asia, at times during your trip you may feel guiltily ‘templed out.’ After coming from Thailand’s capital of culture, Chiang Mai with its 300+ temples, the last thing you want to do in Chiang Rai is see another!

Yet, the White Temple just may be different from anything you will have seen before with its eerie concrete hands and ghostly heads surrounding the entrance of the temple and its huge silver tusks reflecting the light as you walk up to the daunting doors.

The temple is like something out of a strange gothic fairy tale and was built by artist ‘Ajarn Chalermchai Kositpipat’ as a Buddhist offering. Less than 2km from the White Temple, you will find the mysterious ‘Baan Dam’ or the Black House, built interestingly by Kositpipat’s former student, artist Thawan Duchanee.

With an extensive collection of taxidermy, including the entire skeleton of an elephant, the Black House is a bizarre contrast to the pure White Temple. An antagonistic creation by the artist perhaps?

8. Khao Yai National Park and Bat Cave

Every night without fail as the sun begins to set in Eastern Thailand, a thick black cloud spouts from the mouth of an eerie cave on the edge of Khao Yao National Park.

They are thousands upon thousands of ‘wrinkled lipped’ bats who come out to hunt at twilight creating what seems like one giant living organism in a ribbon pattern across the sky.

Just four hours from Bangkok, the park is also home to 67 species of wild mammal including the Asiatic black bear, Asian elephant, gaur gibbon and even tigers! Visitors can walk the many hiking trails in the area to spectacular waterfalls, observation points and even a dinosaur footprint (a four day trek!).

9. Doi Inthanon National Park

It was this time last year when hoards of Thai people raced to the peak of the highest mountain in Thailand (2565 metres) to get their first experience of frost! Whilst English people find this incredulous, the park does have more to offer than its cold winter temperatures.

Riding a motorbike through the park is the best way to explore a landscape that changes with each turn; at times rugged, misty, cold and eerie and then almost mediterranean with lush rolling hills, rhododendron bushes and smiling farmers waving as they plough the fields in the sun.

On the way up the mountain (you can reach the summit by road) there is a Hmong hill-tribe settlement where visitors can stay overnight in a homestead and observe the organic farming practices here which are a Royal Project initiated by the current King of Thailand to stop the hill tribes from growing Opium.

Although the area of Doi Inthanon is well set up for tourists, it is rare to spot backpackers here.

10. Tarutao National Marine Park and the Deep South

Right on the border with Malaysia, Thailand’s deep south is very underdeveloped compared to Krabi and the Gulf islands. Today, it remains an area which tourists are wary of due to continued travel warnings because of the Muslim fighting in the area.

However, this area has more than one surprise up its sleeve, not least the stunning Tarutao National Marine Park, an archipelago of 51 exquisite islands which were the setting for Thailand’s version of the Survivor TV program.

One of the first national marine parks in Thailand, its sparkling beaches, coral reefs and virgin rainforest remain in pristine condition. It is hard to believe that the largest island, Koh Tarutao was once a huge prison with over 10,000 prisoners sent there.

One of the islands here, Koh Lipe has managed to evade park protection and is beginning to develop into a popular resort. Go now before pressure from developers to build more resorts becomes too much! The park is closed May-November.

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Hiring the Nutrition-Fitness Hybrid Pro

Fitness, Sports

What are consumers looking for when they come to your gym or studio? Sure, they want great workouts and access to the latest equipment in a welcoming, fun environment. But above all, they really want to attain their health and fitness goals.

At our gym—One on One Fitness in State College, Pennsylvania—we’ve learned that lasting, consistent client success depends on intelligent nutrition and habit-change strategies. Thus, we’ve pivoted from workouts to wellness to help clients succeed—and to differentiate our business. We focus on three areas: fitness, nutrition and lifestyle habits.

We’re making this happen with a new job title: the nutrition–fitness hybrid pro. We recruit registered dietitians who love fitness, and then we train them to be fitness professionals.

It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for the right people. These RDs interact with clients in ways that they wouldn’t normally, as clinical dietitians. Moreover, they help clients in ways that a dietitian or personal trainer, individually, could not.

“I became an RD because I have a passion for helping others,” says Haley Golich, RDN, LDN, a recent addition to our team at One on One. “The nutrition–fitness hybrid position enables me to promote healthy living, help clients set and achieve health goals, and contribute to the prevention of chronic disease. It is the ongoing interaction with clients that intrigued me the most.”

Advantages to This Professional Model

We employ four RDs and are recruiting more. Here’s what we’ve observed since implementing this strategy:

Our Pool of Hiring Candidates Is Wider

Hiring/recruiting quality fitness professionals can be a significant challenge because it’s so hard to find that “gem” of a personal trainer who is competent, professional and (of course) looking for work. The nutrition–fitness hybrid position lets us recruit outside the pool of personal trainers and kinesiology students.

“When I went off to college, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to study kinesiology or nutrition,” says Bethany Paszkowski, RDN, LDN, another member of our team. “They both interested me, and both would allow me to achieve my longer-term goal of helping people. This position is perfect for me.”

RDs Have Advanced Skills

When hiring an RD, you’re getting someone who is dynamic, smart and organized. Five years of vigorous education forces a person to develop many of the professional skills required to succeed in this role. Although RDs don’t have a degree in kinesiology, they quickly develop an intellectual understanding of the science and prove that they can consistently apply it in a fitness setting. Bottom line: You’re not hiring a “project.”

RDs Enjoy Career Satisfaction

This position has a strong allure for the right kind of RD. After all, RDs rarely encounter so much diversity in their tasks and such a committed client base in clinical or community nutrition jobs. “I’ve worked as a registered dietitian in both the public health and clinical settings. These settings can be challenging to impact change,” says Golich. “By combining nutrition counseling along with fitness consulting, I am able to impact clients in a comprehensive way to elicit the most positive change.”

It’s Easier to Turn RDs Into Trainers Than Vice Versa

Teaching RDs about fitness is a time-consuming but straightforward process. Conversely, dietetics is a complicated, multifaceted subject that will soon require a master’s-level education. Thus, the model works only if you start by hiring RDs. Turning trainers into RDs is rarely achievable.

The Investment Will Pay Off

RDs are used to making a healthy salary, so you will have to pay them competitively. You will have difficulty competing against the pay of a clinical setting. However, we don’t try. Instead, we attract people strongly motivated to engage in our holistic wellness opportunity. We provide a 5-week training program whose value is clear to the people we hire. They recognize that our team will teach them a trade and that we’ve made an investment in them—knowing we won’t see a return until well after they start.

How the Nutrition–Fitness Model Improves Your Business

In a competitive marketplace, fitness businesses have to differentiate themselves and generate new sources of revenue. In our market, a lot of gyms and clubs are doing the same things: offering different spins/pricing on group training and selling supplements. Although many businesses succeed tremendously on this path, we think the competition will only get stiffer.

We believe that creating a one-stop shop focusing on fitness, nutrition and habit change is a win-win that helps our business while giving our clients the best opportunity to succeed. We hired our first full-time RD in 2015, and our nutrition program became profitable after about a year, mainly through individual counseling sessions.

Some of the most significant benefits are intangible. Having RDs on staff clearly differentiates us from our competitors and solidifies our position as leaders in our field. RDs also get nutrition clients interested in fitness, educate our community and contribute to our social media updates.

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Sports court delays Caster Semenya verdict until April

Games, Sports

LAUSANNE: The Court of Arbitration for Sport said Thursday that it was delaying until next month its ruling on a challenge filed by South African double Olympic champion Caster Semenya against the IAAF.

A decision in the controversial case had been due next week, but the world’s top sport court said it would not issue a verdict “until the end of April” because both sides had filed additional material since the hearing in February.

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Semenya is challenging proposals by the International Association of Athletics Federations that aim to restrict female athletes’ testosterone levels.

The IAAF is seeking to force so-called “hyperandrogenic” athletes or those with “differences of sexual development” (DSD) to seek treatment to lower their testosterone levels below a prescribed amount if they wish to continue competing as women.

The athletics governing body has argued the moves are necessary to create a “level playing field” for other female athletes.

A wide coalition has rallied behind Semenya’s cause, including the government in her native South Africa and rights activists worldwide.

Some scientific experts have argued that barring Semenya from competition due to naturally high testosterone levels would be like excluding basketball players because they are too tall.

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How to Build the Ultimate American Football Player

Games, Sports

One of our favorite times of the year at my facility is when our college football sessions begin in May. What makes our job unique when it comes to this 12-week program is our near absolute control over what Mike Robertson and Patrick Ward call the athletes’ stress bucket. When these guys come to train, there’s no external stress. Aside from a girlfriend and a landscaping job, their lives are a piece of cake. And it shows every day during the warm-up. We simply cannot get them to shut up (a very simple way to determine their level of central fatigue or lack thereof).

What do I mean when I say we control their level of stress? To today’s physical preparation coaches, the figure below is nothing new, but it demonstrates how we truly are the organisms’ stress managers over the course of the summer. We structure our athletes’ training around the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) by the day, by the week, and by the month. Seems simple enough, right? Apply a stimulus to the point of fatigue and watch the athlete recover and supercompensate leading to the next training session.

Wrong. In reality, each athlete has his own GAS, if you will. Different positions (lineman, receiver, etc.) require not only different stressors but also varying levels of intensity and volume. Our program fills the need for the application of unaccustomed stress. I believe this system is the ultimate guide for building today’s American football player.

The Summer Macrocycle

Before we dive into the daily training sessions, let’s look at a 10,000-foot view of the whole program for the three months we have these guys in-house. Let it be known, I in no way consider myself a “programming sensei,” I simply try to instill what others much smarter than I have found successful.

At first glance, you’re probably rolling your eyes with the assumption that there are too many moving pieces to this puzzle. It is much simpler than it appears. I like to refer to it as Modified Block Periodization where we’re linearly building athletic movement, meaning triphasic, concurrently raising all aspects of athleticism, all while respecting residual training effects (aerobic endurance, maximal strength, maximal speed, etc.). The big picture is nothing more than transitions from slow to fast, general to specific, and simple to complex using legend Al Miller’s suggested prescription of volume first, intensity second.

Mesocycle One

When the session begins in early May, some of the guys have been keeping up on their training since the end of spring ball while others have kept up with Call of Duty and Taco Bell. With that in mind, we adhere to the least common denominator and take everyone through two weeks of anatomical adaptation.

The benefits of this period are two-fold:

  • It raises work capacity.
  • It increases resiliency in the connective tissue while preparing the players for the more violent demands to come, i.e. sprinting.

Our speed work for the four weeks focuses on starts from a static position and is incredibly simple. Our go-to is two-point starts with the emphasis on front side arm mechanics and, most importantly, posture. We also emphasize posture, rhythm, and relaxation through extensive tempos during this block. In the weight room, we want the speed of the barbell to maintain relatively high speed. We are constantly cueing the guys to “rattle the plates,” as athletic movement starts from the ground up.

The first four weeks is a fan favorite (sarcasm) as we employ slow eccentrics to the main movement in the weight room, and we perform them in a cluster fashion. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Cal Dietz and his work greatly influenced the resistance portion of our training session.

The goals of the eccentric phase, or block, are:

  • To reach a level of hypertrophy necessary for the sport’s violent demands.
  • To improve neuromuscular synchronization of the afferent/efferent pathways between the muscle spindles and central nervous system and desensitizing the Golgi tendon organ (GTO), which will then allow the organism to absorb high levels of force all while not triggering the over protective mother (GTO).

The only problem with eccentrics? They’re extremely stressful to the organism, which is why we use cluster sets during this block. Clusters are phenomenal for performing each rep at or near maximal velocity during the movement’s concentric contraction. This results in maximal power output, ultimately leading to greater improvements over time.

If you’re familiar with Coach Joe Kenn, you are without a doubt acquainted with his Tier System Strength Training template. I’ll explain why we implement it later in the article. For now, know our focus is on hypertrophy (“R” for repetition effort, or in our case, slow eccentrics and time-under-tension), then max effort, followed by a dynamic movement which could be a jump, throw, or use of accommodating resistance.

As for jumps during this block, we’ve had tremendous success with max effort, single response jumps. More specifically, static overcome by ballistic jumps (seated box jumps) with knee bends of at least 90 degrees to mimic the start of the acceleration phase.

Mesocycles Two and Three

June

As we progress further into the summer, the program becomes more demanding. The emphasis continues to center on the one biomotor ability that separates the terrible from the bad, the bad from the good, and the good from the great: speed. From a bioenergetic standpoint, we focus on alactic power rather than capacity. Why? It does not matter how many times a guy can run a 5-flat forty, he’s still slow. We find it more prudent to start building a Ferrari rather than a Ford Bronco.

As far as biodynamics are concerned, we begin to push the alactic envelope with longer accelerations and sprints. A staple in our program is flying 10’s (build 30, sprint 10) and medicine ball starts with great awareness on the height of their hips and their front side mechanics.
The fun part for my staff and me during this block is to witness the athletes realizing that as their speed increases, they’re able to generate more force with each ground contact. It’s even more rewarding to explain that the challenge they face as speed increases is that there’s less time available to apply force. A cue that’s worked time and time again for us is, “The only difference between flying and sprinting is ground contact.”The only difference between flying and sprinting is ground contact. Click To Tweet

Once they meet the sprinting requirements, they transition to the weight room with isometrics as well as true dynamic effort a la Westside Barbell. Isometrics seem to be all the rage again in the industry, so I’ll spare you the physiology lesson. Here are the benefits from isometrics that deserve mention:

  • Motor unit recruitment which will increase the number of muscle fibers that will engage or fire.
  • Rate coding will increase the rate at which the motor units fire, which then leads to a spike in muscular tension.
  • Isometrics will divert maximal energy from the eccentric phase directly to the concentric phase with minimal (or no) loss of energy.

During this block, we’ve had great buy-in and greater success with max effort, double response jumps to mimic the acceleration phase by still employing a somewhat deep knee bend. A tried and true variation we love is double broad jumps–effective and efficient. That’s a win-win.

July and August

Moving into July, we progress toward sport specific or what I prefer to call sport transferable. Our tempos become more intensive, and we center sprints on absolute speed. Bioenergetically, by having shorter distances and rest times for the tempos while giving the athletes a more powerful engine and larger speed reserve, we’re giving them the best opportunity to not only survive during a game but to thrive. Football is an alactic-aerobic sport with an emphasis on capacity.

Here’s how we prepare our athletes on a typical Saturday afternoon:

  • Average play is 5 seconds.
  • Average rest between plays is 28-37 seconds.
  • Average series is 5-6 plays.
  • Average rest between series is 9-10 minutes.
  • Average special teams play 7-8 seconds.

The game dictates what we do bioenergetically. While we’re not perfect, I’m confident we’re on the right track.

It doesn’t take an MIT graduate to understand we’re now placing a premium on “displaying your strength quickly” in the weight room, with the institution of the concentric or reactive phase, the short and multiple response jumps and plyometrics, and the priority Tier being dynamic.
A quick note on deloads: use them before your athletes need them. We back our guys down once a month. As Dr. Bryan Mann said, “Our body runs in three-week adaptation waves.” With that, we extract as much as we can from a given stimulus and then rejuvenate the organism. It’s not what you can do; it’s what you can recover from.

High/Low CNS Training

We use the high/low approach made famous by the late Charlie Francis. We are our athletes’ stress managers for the twelve weeks they’re with us, and this approach allows them to supercompensate constantly rather than seek homeostasis.

High CNS Training

After reviewing our weekly template, one could safely assume that our program revolves around sprinting. Why shouldn’t it? Speed kills. Allow me to quell your concerns regarding having only one day that addresses agility and jumps/plyometrics. We’re able to improve agility without venturing into that realm through linear acceleration and sprinting. How? Having your athletes sprint farther and faster in training allows them to reach higher speeds, thus achieving higher ground force. As we all know, high velocity=high force. Derek Hansen has touched on the multitude of benefits sprinting has when it comes to agility:

  • Improved change of direction.
  • Improved jumping ability (sprinting is a plyometric due to the flight phase).
  • Ability to decelerate quicker.
  • Less wear and tear (due to a decrease in agility/COD training).

When the organism is in a state of high velocity and high force, they reap the rewards of agility training without any of the risk. If we’re honest, we know agility and change of direction are hard on the organism. Knowing that, why venture into that realm of risk when it’s accomplished by sprinting full-speed?Linear acceleration and sprints train agility, allowing us to reduce risky plyometrics. Click To Tweet

Real world example: when Michael Vick was in his prime, he achieved maximal speeds at over 20 miles per hour (21.63 mph to be exact). When he was achieving at least 95% of his best times in max velocity speed training, submaximal velocities would be that much easier on him.
I believe that all team sport athletes need to tap into max velocity (absolute speed). Forget the benefits it has regarding jumping and change of direction, sprinting alone has a plethora of benefits, including:

  • If it’s strength you seek, max velocity sprinting will drive up weights, because it is 5x ground reaction forces, 7x muscle-skeletal forces, and the organism is applying anywhere from 600 to 1,000lbs of force with each stride.
  • It’s the safest expression of fight or flight. Derek Hansen said, “When a cheetah is chasing a springbok, does either animal pull a hamstring?”
  • Sprinting enhances the organism’s speed reserve. Simply put, as we increase an athlete’s absolute speed, their submaximal velocity (or game speed) raises as well. Sprinting builds endurance; endurance does not build speed.
  • Performing max velocity sprinting is a method of injury prevention. We’ve all seen a breakaway run in American football where the player blows his hamstring. This is because he did not do max velocity sprinting in training or practice, which led to a neurological misstep in his recruitment patterns.

Aside from the benefits of exposing our athletes to sprint work thrice during the work week, there are also substantial costs. The most glaring is the residual training effect of maximal speed. The benefits gained from training at or above 95% of maximal speed last a measly two days (depending on the athlete) as the residual training effects of this biomotor ability are five days ± three days.

A Typical CNS Day

On a typical high CNS day, we use my friend Mike Robertson’s R7 protocol:

  • R1: Release
  • R2: Reset
  • Dynamic Warm-Up
  • R3: Reactive
  • R4: Readiness (Game Changers)
  • R5: Resistance
  • R6: Resiliency
  • R7: Recovery

Release–For the release portion, we prescribe no more than three areas for the athletes to perform self-myofascial release. We stick to three because I believe if we prescribe more, we start to venture into the parasympathetic realm. As all of you know, we’re trying to shift to sympathetic dominance on a high CNS day.

Resets–I admit we’re not postural restoration wizards, nor are we great with functional movement screening when it comes to resets. However, my director of performance, Thomas Bowes, is a mobility guru on all things Supple Leopard. We know what we’re proficient at, and our guys feel good, mobile and stable, and that’s all that matters.

Dynamic Warm-Ups–After we’ve relieved some tension and moved the guys into more advantageous positions, we start our dynamic warm-up. Trust me, it’s nothing earth shattering. Again, I may not be the smartest guy in the room; I just apply what the best have done. We have great success with flowing yoga movement patterns as well as Buddy Morris’ high CNS warm-up.

Reactive–The optimal volume for a world-class sprinter is 600 meters of max velocity. Newsflash, I do not work with world-class sprinters, so we adjusted our sprinting volumes based on position to meet the demands of our athletes. Our reactive segment taps into 100-300 meters of sprint volume. Dan Pfaff says, “Acceleration is a skill.” We believe that any skill needs to be addressed daily. The lineman will do at least 60 meters every single day, big skill will perform at least 100 meters every single day, and skill will be exposed to at least 150 meters every single day.The closer an athlete is to the football, the more he requires strength. Click To Tweet

This is where our program may be unique: a linemen’s exposure to the reactive segment is rather brief, but his time during our resistance segment is much more extensive. This is because the closer an athlete is to the football, the more he requires strength. The relationship between strength and speed is inverse for our skill players. Their time during the reactive portion will be far greater than time spent in the weight room as their position demands more sprint volume with less of a premium on strength and weights.

Readiness–The bridge from sprint work to the weight room is what we call game changers, or readiness. Joe Kenn calls it halftime. Vernacular does not matter, substance does. This portion consists of:

  • Posterior chain–hinge, knee flexion, or spinal erector
  • Posterior shoulder–abduction, adduction; downward, upward rotation; protraction, retraction, or elevation, depression
  • Abdominals–anti-extension, flexion, rotation
  • Neck

We’ve found this is highly effective at the beginning of the weights segment to ensure the proper muscles are firing before the “meat” of the lift. For example, hinging before a deadlift or performing a knee flexion variation before squatting. From a more practical standpoint, as the workout nears the end, what athlete is going to be fully engaged if we place this portion at the end?

Resistance–We love Coach Kenn’s Tier System for resistance; this game is played head-to-toe, toe-to-head. I have yet to see a football player use only his upper body in the first half and his lower body in the second half. That alone provides enough rationale to address the total body each weight session. Our weights are extremely simple, efficient, and effective. We only use three exercises each workout–yes, only three. Volumes are adjusted based on position, but we make it known that we are concerned with speed, not weights. A typical session would look similar to this:

Resiliency–For us, resiliency means bringing the athletes through movements that are cyclical (running A’s, ankle jumps) because of the following:

  • Typically all movements in the weight room are acyclical.
  • Sport is cyclical. We want to bring them back to what they’ll face on the field.
  • Cyclical movements re-establish proper intermuscular coordination between the agonist and antagonist. As Charlie Francis once said, “It is not how fast you can contract a muscle, it is how quickly you can relax.”

Recovery–Again, nothing ground breaking when it comes to recovery. We prescribe the guys elevate their feet and achieve a parasympathetic state, or “rest and digest” to help kick-start the recovery process. With early 20-year-olds, this is a popular time for Snapchat sharing and selfies–not a bad promotion for our facility. If it gets them to relax, I’ll take it.

Low CNS Training

On the low days, we prescribe tempos based on position. Larger athletes (lineman) won’t have the same volume that a cornerback performs. Our ranges will vary anywhere from 1000-2000 meters; at the beginning of the summer we focus more on extensive tempos and progress toward (slightly) more intensive and glycolytic tempos in July and August.

Along with the tempos, we prescribe upper body circuits that include medicine ball throws. This accomplishes a few things for the athletes:

  • The nutrient rich blood, or the pump, will flush out any toxins and waste accumulated from the previous day’s high CNS session. And let’s be honest, it provides a psychological benefit as well. The guys feel good after a brief upper body workout.
  • The low volume from the circuit will aid in recovery for the next day’s high CNS session.
  • If you pay attention to Charlie’s system, you can have a high CNS component on a low CNS day as long as it’s brief. With that in mind, we moved our medicine ball throws (with indirect transfer to sprinting based on the specific variation) to our low days a la Buddy Morris.

Conclusion

By the end of the summer, these young men have developed bonds that carry over into the season as they mention one another on Twitter, post pics of their new friends’ success on Instagram, and are truly invested in each other’s careers. It’s one of the best parts of being in the private sector–the relationships.

My goal for this article is not to brag or boast, but to simply shed light on how we’ve found great success. And, speaking candidly, I hope this will encourage other coaches to be as open as I am so we may all benefit and continue to learn from one another. I am not naïve to the fact that, with this article, may come criticism. I have zero issue with this, as there is no perfect program. The program I presented to you is different from what we did in years past and will continue to change and evolve because training, by nature, is incomplete. In fact, as Buddy Morris once told me, “The best program is the one you’re not on!” With that in mind, let us professionals continue to pay it forward, grow, and ultimately help those we serve. This is truly what this industry is all about.

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What you need for an Alpine adventure – written by expert guide Kathy Murphy

Fitness, Travel

Kathy Murphy, IFMGA Guide (she was the second British woman to achieve this status), runs our mountaineering and glacier trekking holidays in the Alps. She guides many of these trips herself and her particular brand of leadership, described variously by clients as ‘highly professional’, ‘fun’ and ‘kick-ass’, makes her a very popular choice. Here she gives a no-nonsense guide to her Alpine essentials for trips which involve carrying your equipment throughout.

1). Comfy boots – stiff enough to hold a crampon well, comfortable enough for long descents back to the valley and warm enough for early starts from high huts. My favourite boot is the La Sportiva Trango Alp GTX. It’s a B2 boot, so it’s got a bit of flex in the front half, as well as good support around the ankle. Worn in a bit to avoid blisters – it does the job well.

2). Ankle gaiters/mini-gaiters – these keep the snow out of my boots and are not as heavy, bulky, hot or as expensive as full-size gaiters. Grasmere DRY Gaiters by Trekmates are my mini-gaiters of choice.

3). Crampons – I use Grivel G10’s with anti-balling plates already fitted. They have the ‘new-matic’ system – a plastic cup at the heel and toe which means they fit any boot – even my ski-mountaineering boots in winter. Plus, the flexible central bar means they’re more comfortable than a rigid crampon and don’t pull on your heel and cause blisters.

You will notice that the first three essentials are all to do with my feet – if my feet aren’t happy then neither am I!

4). Travel sized bits and pieces – these are easily found in the UK and at the airport shops – so a travel-sized toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, sun cream etc. And to go with this – a pack towel – these dry quickly and pack up really small.

5). Drinking water – It’s always important to stay hydrated when in the mountains. Make sure you take a reusable bottle you can fill up along the way!

6). Pack of cards – great for passing the downtime in the huts. It’s sociable and I have a whole selection of card games that anyone can quickly learn and a few tricks up my sleeve! Obviously, 1 pack per group is enough!

7). Rucksack – my new pack for this season is a Millet

Prolighter 32 in the shorter back length womans version. It fits well to my back, close, no fancy frames – when I’m carrying a pack I want the load to be stable against my back, not wobbling several inches away from it. Importantly, it has 2 compression straps on each side which effectively make the pack smaller when it’s not full and are also useful for stashing walking poles or ice axe. It’s also light at around 1kg. Avoid packs with gimmicky features such as back systems which add weight. Why else did I choose it? It’s blue – my favourite colour!

8). Waterproof overtrousers –the clue to these is in the name – they should fit over everything you are already wearing, including your harness! Again, I go for light weight but with a full-length zip that comes up to my hip which means I can put them on over my boots and crampons. When I’m back in the UK I always buy a new pair of Goretex Packlite Overtrousers made by Berghaus.

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SRAM Force eTap AXS unlocks 12 speed, Red-like performance for less

Fitness, Games, Sports, Travel

SRAM has clearly been busy. Less than two months after launching the new RED eTap AXS group to the world, they’re already onto the next. That of course being the new SRAM Force eTap AXS group. As is often the case, the group is extremely similar to RED, but with some key differences that will be significant to many consumers – particularly when it comes to price.

The newest member of the AXS (access) wireless family, SRAM Force eTap AXS is an electronic drivetrain with wireless shifting and options for either hydraulic disc or mechanical rim brakes. Other than a few very small details, Force is nearly identical in performance to the new RED AXS, with the main differences being materials, construction, and therefore weight. That means that the batteries are the same between the two groups (and older eTap groups as well) which is good news for teams or individuals with multiple bikes. Even the motors and chipsets are the same meaning the shift speed is identical between the two groups. Ultimately, Force ends up about 300g heavier than RED, but it’s also over $1000 less expensive which seems like a worthy trade off.

Force also has a completely different look which comes down to a difference in finishes. While forged aluminum parts can be polished to a beautiful shine, cast pieces can’t be polished – which requires a coat of paint. Overall, the finish on Force is less sophisticated which is where SRAM was able to drop some of the price.

AXS App

Like RED, Force is able to take advantage of the AXS app and component integration system which allows you to monitor and customize the performance of individual components. From checking each battery’s power level to customizing your shift patterns, updating firmware, and more, Force is joining the way of the app-based world.

Also like RED, this is a completely new group, so other than the mechanical rim brakes, none of the new parts will be compatible with older SRAM components – except of course the new SRAM RED eTap AXS. These two groups are completely interchangeable – which is good news for those who were upset by SRAM’s choice to integrate the power meter and chain ring on RED (but for a good reason, more on that below).

New gearing options just like RED… mostly

Following right along, gearing is also one of the biggest changes for SRAM Force. Yeah, they’ve gone to 12 speed in the rear, but as usual, it’s about more than just adding another gear. The new X-Range gearing ends up wider on both ends while the added cog results in better gear progression. The addition of the 10t cog allows for an increase in gear range without an increase in overall size of the drivetrain package with SRAM pointing out that smaller drivetrains will be lighter, less costly, and simpler overall.

In terms of chainring options, Force will see 48/35 and 46/33t double combinations with the largest 50/37t combination only available in RED. By moving to a 13t jump between chainrings, SRAM says this 20% reduction in jump size results in better shift quality and better front shifting overall.

To keep the overall range, the rear cassettes move to a 10t at the small end, and up to 26, 28, or 33t as the largest cog with 260, 280, and 330% range respectively. Even the smallest cassette at 10-26 offers a wider range than an 11-28t. Moving the range from the front of the bike to the rear should mean you can stay in that current front chainring longer without having to shift. Obviously, if you’re running 1x, wider range in the rear is also a very good thing. The new cassettes also offer more single-tooth jumps between cogs for better shift progression when you’re moving through the gears.

Cassette options

In terms of construction, the XG-1270 cassette uses a Mini-cluster/Pin-Dome configuration with the first four cogs machined from a steel billet, and the remainder of the cassette using their Pin-Dome technology similar to their GX mountain bike cassettes. Looking at the cassette in profile, Pin-Dome makes more sense as you can see the pins that hold all of the steel cogs together after the first four cogs. The largest cog is aluminum which cuts down on weight and allows for a secure connection between the cassette and the freehub body that won’t dig into the new XDR drivers. The Mini-cluster/Pin-Dome cassette ends up about 50g heavier than a comparable RED cassette.

XDR Required

The addition of a 12 speed cassette meant that SRAM had to move to the XDR freehub standard like RED, which is just like XD, just 1.85mm longer. The added width is needed for the road since the largest cogs aren’t nearly as big as those on a MTB cassette and can’t be dished over the spokes. It also now matches up with the width of HG 11 speed freehub bodies for road.

Importantly, you can still run cassettes meant for XD freehubs on XDR freehubs with the addition of a 1.85mm spacer. You can’t however run cassettes meant for XDR freehubs on XD freehubs. SRAM points out that any Zipp wheels post April 2015 (176, 177, Super 9, and Cognition hubs) are XDR ready meaning you can add an XDR freehub. Also, the SRAM 900 hubset has included an XDR drive for awhile now – before you really needed it.

One Rear Derailleur to Rule them All

When it comes to choosing your drivetrain, you can run any cassette with any chainring combination all with the same rear derailleur – 1x or 2x. The new rear derailleur has been optimized to work with all of the cassette options in either chainring configuration and includes larger X-Sync pulleys with steel bearings, and the Orbit fluid damper in place of a mechanical clutch. Note that there is no longer a Cage Lock feature, but the Orbit damper works a bit differently and doesn’t really affect wheel changes. Compared to RED, the Force rear derailleur uses an aluminum derailleur cage instead of carbon, and steel hardware in place of titanium and aluminum.

Front Derailleur is Still There, and Better Than Ever

Up front, the new Force front derailleur is very similar to RED, but it swaps in a stamped steel derailleur cage for the CNC machined aluminum cage on RED. Riders who are pushing larger tires will be happy to hear that the derailleur has been streamlined to offer better tire clearance at the rear as well.

Force gets a Flattop

Completing the gearing is the new FRC-D1 Flattop chain. This new chain style is required for the group with SRAM stating that this chain represents their biggest investment in tooling on their part when it came to the new group. While it did get narrower to fit another cog, there is more to the story as usual. The shape of the chain is purely driven by their strength testing – the top of the chain never rides on a gear, so it can be shaped differently to provide increased strength.

Proportionately, the chain is also narrower to the cog spacing than a comparative 11 speed group which SRAM claims results in a quieter ride overall. The FRC-D1 chain is interchangeable with the SRAM RED chain, with the Force chain using solid pins as the only noticeable difference. Note that Flattop chains require a specific Flattop PowerLock. Also note that you definitely don’t want to run the new chain on 11 speed cassettes (think putting your bike on a direct drive trainer with an 11 speed cassette mounted). Apparently, the new chain will destroy the cassette, which is why companies like Wahoo are quickly working to add XDR driver capabilities to their trainers.

Acronym Glossary

If you haven’t already picked it up from RED, the new SRAM Force group comes with its own lingo, so here’s the breakdown:

  • AXS – Refers to the new digital family of wireless/electronic components that will all work together. Check our AXS overview story for everything you need to know on that. Basically, anything with the AXS logo can communicate with each other.
  • X-Range – The name for this entire new gearing concept.
  • Orbit Chain Management – A new fluid damper system that improves chain retention while still allowing for fast shifting.
  • AXS app – Lets you customize the setup and integrate cross-category components, check riding time, battery level, how many times you’ve shifted, and when you’re due for service.
  • FlatTop – The new, narrower chain that’s also stronger, quieter and more durable. It’s not backwards compatible (nor is any other component), everything here is designed as a system to maximize performance.

SRAM Force Cranks

With the launch of RED AXS, one of the things that seemed to catch everybody’s attention was the decision to integrate the power meter into the chainring. Yes, this means that when the chainring is dead, so is your power meter. But SRAM stands by the design, and here’s why: SRAM RED is meant to be the highest tier group for pro racers and consumers willing to pay top dollar in exchange for the lightest system possible.

The integration of the power meter into the chainring meant that SRAM could add power to the same crankset at a weight penalty of just 36g. It also ends up with a more accurate power reading because you’ve eliminated one of the connections at the spider/chainring interface. SRAM also claims that the new drivetrain offers much longer chainring and component life than previous groups, with field testing showing a whopping 2-4x increase in longevity – so it should take you much longer to wear out those rings.

Is it wasteful to create a one-time use power meter/chainring? Sort of. But that all depends if you take advantage of the SRAM support program where they take your old power meter/chainring back and recycle it while providing a new one to you supposedly at or near the cost of standard chainrings. That integrated power meter/chainring is starting to sound a lot better all of a sudden.

Change your rings without changing your power meter

BUT… what if none of that matters and you simply want to run power on your SRAM AXS crank without an integrated power meter/chainring?

You’re in luck. The Force chainrings and DZero power meter are not one piece, and the Force DZero power meter spider is compatible with SRAM RED crank arms using the same 8 bolt direct mount interface. That means if you buy a SRAM RED AXS crank with power and wear out the chainrings super fast (or just want to upgrade a non-power model), you can purchase a Force power meter spider and the Force AXS asymmetric 107 BCD (same as RED 1x) chainrings to go with it. This also allows for mixing and matching 1x chainrings from the RED group or their aero 1x chainring for TT/Tri bikes.

SRAM Force cranks will be available with or without power meters in 1x or 2x configurations, both of which separate the chainring from the power meter.

Keeping in line with all of the new cranks from SRAM, the Force cranks will include a  DUB spindle option, but they will still offer a GXP version for Trek’s BB90 frames, Pinarellos with Italian threaded BBs, and other frames that require it.

SRAM Force eTap AXS brake/shift levers

At the controls, Force eTap AXS is all about wireless shifting – though not necessarily about hydraulic brakes. For those keeping the rim brakes alive, the Force eTap AXS group will be available in two versions; wireless shifting with mechanical rim brakes, or wireless shifting with hydraulic disc brakes.

The hydraulic option uses their Hydro HC platform specifically developed for eTap which means these brake calipers are different than those found on Force 1. The Force group uses a two piece caliper design with steel hardware, and the same brake pad as RED. Also, the Force brakes are flat mount only. Still running a post mount frame? The RED brakes are available in post mount as well as flat mount.

SRAM’s new Centerline XR (CLX-R) rotors are a thing of beauty and are the same rotors that you’ll find with SRAM Red. The rotors use an aluminum carrier and a steel CenterLine braking surface with rounded edges to be UCI-Compliant.

Rim Brakes Still Stop

The new Force group even includes a new mechanical rim brake if you are retrofitting an older bike or just don’t want to switch to disc. The brakes use a dual pivot design that is updated to fit wider rims and tires (up to 28mm), and include Swissstop Platinum Flash Pro pads for carbon or BHP pads for aluminum rims.

Offering independent reach and contact point adjustment, the levers are nearly identical to RED other than they have just one Blip port rather than two on each shifter. You’ll also find a composite lever blade rather than true carbon fiber which makes a negligible difference in weight. While the derailleurs get their own rechargeable batteries (which are the same as all eTap groups), the levers use a CR2032 coin cell battery housed in the bottom of the lever. Since these simply have to power a single button, the batteries should last quite a while. How long? We aim to find out (maybe) in a long term review.

The AXS app offers the same tuneability with this group, letting you switch the way the buttons and levers work the derailleurs, switch shift modes between regular, compensating and sequential, and even pair with a dropper seatpost or whatever else comes down the pipe.

Tri HRD

There’s also a complete 1x TRI HRD group available with hydraulic aero levers for the hydraulic disc brakes and a new, smaller Blip Box. SRAM states that running a 1x drivetrain with a 48t chainring and the 10-33 cassette would give you the same range as a 53/39 with 11-26. That happens to be the most prevalent Ironman gearing combo they see on 11-speed bikes, only now you don’t have a front derailleur to shift, you have a lighter drivetrain, and you still get six 1-tooth gear steps on the cassette.

Availability, pricing, and actual weights

As much as we love knowing about new products ahead of time, it’s much better when you can go out and buy a new product as soon as you read about it. That’s the case with Force eTap AXS – groups are shipping as of today and you’ll find more than 150 different bike models equipped with the group hitting showroom floors. Initially, Force will only be available as a complete groupset, but in a few months you’ll have the ability to purchase individual parts.

In the U.S., complete groups will run from $2,078 to $2,678, well under the price of RED.

We got all of the loose parts we could find on the scale at Road Bike Connection, but because of all the options and things like the fact that the FD and RD didn’t include batteries, SRAM has provided the list of weights above. As mentioned, the group should work out to be about 300g more than SRAM RED eTap AXS.

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Peekaboo Boxing | The Fading Art of ‘Aggressively Safe’ Boxing

Fitness, Games, Sports

The peekaboo style is as misunderstood as it is notorious. But the fact that it’s so widely misunderstood could actually work in your favor.

The core peekaboo principles give boxers a safe and loaded “base of operation”, enabling the fighter to move where they want, when they want, and thus, controlling their opponent and the fight with minimal risk. Now, this luxury of control doesn’t come easy. There are a few things you need to be aware of if you’re going to implement the best parts of the peekaboo style into your boxing skill set.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to capitalize on Cus D’Amato’s boxing philosophy without falling into the pitfalls that many boxers criticize the peekaboo style for.  I’ll discuss the criticisms shortly, but first, I think it’s important to highlight the man behind the peekaboo boxing style and how he engineered it.

Cus D’Amato was born in 1908 to a blue collar, Italian family in The Bronx, New York. Cus briefly boxed as an amateur in the featherweight and lightweight divisions, but an eye injury prevented him from obtaining a professional license. However, as we know, thankfully, this was only the beginning of his legendary career. Cus’s dedication to training up-and-coming boxers led him to literally sleeping in his gym in New York. Cus believed in positive thinking. He would have his students memorize things like, “The mind always makes things worse than they really are.” And, “A professional always does what needs to be done no matter how he feels.” Getting up at 5 am to do roadwork or going to the gym to train, a professional does not follow their feelings. He wanted his young students to always remember that, “Your feelings will lie to you.”

Cus was one of the first boxing trainers to implement psychological training. He brought Zen to boxing before most people in the western world even knew what Zen was. He said, “Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. Heroes just react to it differently.” He spent a lot of time teaching emotional control. Example: Tyson eventually admitted that he was terrified before every fight, but looking at him, he was often the source of his opponents’ terror. D’Amato genuinely cared for his boxers, developing father-son bonds with many of them. Even after Floyd Patterson decided to part ways with Cus, he would never talk negatively of Floyd, nor would he let any of his fighters. Eventually, Floyd would come to admit that he regretted nothing in his life except the time he was apart from Cus.

He took care of his fighters so much so that Cus filed for bankruptcy in 1971, but it was never apparent that any of his fighters felt such financial pressure. In fact, Jose Torres estimated that he had earned roughly $1 Million in his career, “and Cus never took a penny.” Cus also fought and protected his boxers from the politics of boxing at the time, many times refusing to take fights because of who the opponent was associated with and their perceived backroom dealings.

What was less publicized, but perhaps most intriguing is that he served as an occasional adviser for the late, Greatest, Muhammad Ali. The city of New York renamed the street where his Gramercy Gym was located to “Cus D’Amato Way”. There’s been books and documentaries done on his life, and still, his impact on boxing doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. The man has undeniably left a massive, well-respected legacy in the boxing world. Now, on to the style he dedicated his life to perfecting…

There’s something incredibly intriguing about the peekaboo style that seems to get lost or at least overlooked in today’s complex world of boxing. There’s so much information and so many videos to study that it’s easy to lose sight of the essence of what made the peekaboo style so effective. Cus said, “Slipping punches is the hardest thing to learn. But once you get it, that’s when boxing starts to become fun!”

Very few boxers have been able to incorporate the style as Cus himself had engineered it. Most notably, obviously, is Mike Tyson. If we go back even further, other Gramercy alumni include: Floyd Patterson, a 1952 Olympic Gold Medalist and former World Heavyweight Champion. Jose Torres, a 1956 Olympic Silver Medalist and former World Light heavyweight Champion. Joey Hadley, a 6-time Golden Gloves winner. And Kevin Rooney who trained Tyson after Cus passed in 1985 until 1988.

During his time training under Rooney, Tyson accrued 35 wins (31 by knockout), and set a record as the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history just 4 months after his 20th birthday. Despite the obvious success of his students,  a good amount of criticism has been hurled at the style. Most notably, many believe:

– An efficient attack cannot be launched from the stance
– It relies too heavily on power
– The fighter eats too many punches on the way in
– It doesn’t utilize the length of taller fighters

Now, not to say there’s no validity in these critiques. But most of these problems that boxers run into when trying to adapt to the peekaboo style can be avoided.To get the most out of the style, we need to be conscious of a couple things:

First: The peekaboo learning curve is steep. Many fighters will give up before they fully understand the key principles of the style. I think this is largely due to a lack of coaches who know how to teach it.

Second: When most people think of peekaboo boxing, they think of Mike Tyson, and rightfully so. Tyson displayed, for the entire world, in spectacularly brutal fashion just how effective the style can be. The problem is, while Tyson is solid proof that peekaboo boxing can be a viable style, even at the highest levels, his idolization has unintentionally led many boxers down the wrong path.

Here’s why:

A lot of boxers who try to incorporate the peekaboo style try to mimic Tyson. The issue is that Tyson’s style was a flavor of peekaboo that was tailored to his unique physical attributes.  His exceptional speed and power allowed him to slip punches at high volume and capitalize on counter punching opportunities that the average peekaboo fighter would have difficulty with.

The fundamental version of the style takes advantage of a high guard with minimal openings for opponents to attack.  If you strip away the exceptional speed and power of fighters like Tyson or Patterson you would have a more modern example.  One such example is Winky Wright…

Strip away all of those preconceived ideas of what you think peekaboo looks like and work on the core principles and philosophy that Cus engineered.The secret is in the details.  Learn to hold your gloves at the exact angle needed so punches either can’t fit through or they glide off the outside of the glove and miss.

Here’s a few quotes from Cus himself that should give you an idea of just how dedicated he was to the peekaboo fundamentals:

“Now, in my style, you cover up all the time. You never gamble. The right arm is always covering the liver, the left, the solar plexus, and the hands are protecting the chin.”

“You gotta be protected, not part of the time, not most of the time, but all the time. You cannot gamble by using open stance because every time you gamble and lose, you get hurt. And when a fighter gets hurt, he is intimidated. He thinks he is tired and covers up.”

“Always keep your chin tucked down into your chest. I don’t care if you are running roadwork or just walking around school or watching t.v. Keep that chin tucked down and your eyes looking up and out.”

And he wasn’t kidding…

Here’s a recent video I made that covers one aspect of this approach

A 1985 New York Times article highlighted an incident involving Jose Torres. Torres had gotten into trouble prior to one of his big fights and this was his phone conversation with Cus from the police station:

“Cus,” said Torres, embarrassed and apologetic, “I’m in the police station. I got into a street fight.”

“Jose,” said Cus, with concern in his voice, “did you keep your chin down?”

Here’s how to adopt the ‘aggressively safe’ style:

The proper way to implement the peekaboo style and truly get the best out of it requires just two things which many boxers miss completely:

1. An unwavering dedication to its fundamental philosophy (not just mimicking a specific move set).  Meaning hands up protecting the chin, forearms protecting the body and learning to maintain this position in all situations.

2. A proper adaptation to the fighter’s unique physical attributes.  If you have quick feet then take advantage of them.  If you have great visual reaction and slipping ability, then use it.

To get you started, here’s some of those core principles and philosophies for you to consider:

– A Stoic approach to controlling your emotions, when in the ring, in your day-to-day training, and even life in general.

– Active defense. Remain alert and protected 100% of the time, no relaxing or passiveness.

– Off-rhythm attacks that force opponents to be cautious, even when you’re defending.

– Intense, ‘aggressively safe’ movement and pressure, always using angles and balanced movement.

– Impenetrable defense that forces opponents to waste energy on ineffective punches.

– Draw out punches from opponents, leaving them vulnerable to rapid counters with what Cus called “bad intentions”.

If you are able to implement a more dynamic approach then move your head before and after you throw, and add angles for compound attacks.  Never give your opponent a free opening, keep your guard tight when you move so you automatically block as you pressure your opponent. Jabbing and closing the gap is often coupled with a slip in anticipation of the straight counter. Further protection can be achieved by lowering the body in conjunction with the slip; this extra bend can add even more power to rising uppercuts and hooks.

Obviously, these are a simplified breakdown of what Cus’s peekaboo style can do for you…

If you want an in-depth look at different techniques and attacks that arise from the few foundations we’ve covered here, I strongly recommend checking out my Head Movement and Getting Inside instructional video.

This training will give you:

– The essentials of slipping and ducking; how to use these motions to set up your offense while maintaining rock-solid balance.

– How to use lateral motion to create angles and close the gap; sneak attacks that catch your opponent off guard.

– How to sync your footwork with your head movement to wind up and throw once you enter the best position.

– A little trick with your back foot to create sharp angles that set you up for quick attacks with “bad intentions”.

– And plenty more.

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