Sports Science News Alert #014

Combine Edition

Bringing you the latest news in sport, science, fitness and nutrition

Welcome to the sport science alert newsletter brought to you by Topend Sports, the ultimate online sport and science resource. With the Super Bowl over, interest in NFL is now centered on the draft combine, which has just finished up in Indianapolis on the weekend.

Even for the non-US readers, such as myself, the professionalism, passion, intensity and athleticism of American football is of interest to all sports and fitness fans. There are some great athletes in this sport, and the annual pre-draft fitness combine enables us to qualitatively see how their athleticism stacks up against athletes in other sports.

In the News

Broad Jump World Record: At the 2015 NFL combine on the weekend, Byron Jones smashed the existing combine record, and may have broken a world record for the standing long jump (also called the broad jump). His jump of 12' 3" (3.73m) surpasses the world record held by Norwegian Arne Tvervaag, who jumped 3.71 meters (12' 2.1") in 1968. Read more.

Technology & NFL: Advances in technology and sport science have made radical changes to the modern American football player. For example, Philadelphia Eagles players now consume individually-designed smoothies and wear various monitoring devices throughout each day. The modern player is better protected with scientifically designed protective gear, and perform better with 3-D designed footwear. All these things would have been unheard of even a few years ago. See more in the article How Much Better Has Technology Made Modern NFL Teams?

On Topend Sports

• The NFL draft combine: What's involved in the NFL draft combine? See examples of the physical, skill, psychology and medical testing.
• Other sport combines: the NFL are not the only sport that does combines, see the similar events for Australian Rules, NHLand NBA.
• check out the NFL Combine Results for 2015, and the NFL Combine top list for each year.

SPEED is what you need in NFL

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading. 

If you have any feedback or suggestions for the content of future newsletters, please let me know. If you are new to this newsletter, you might want to browse the archive of past newsletters. Use the links below to contact me on my website, via email or on social media. See you next time. Rob