The condition shows up two ways. Skin psoriasis can limit training directly — on the hands and feet, a form called palmoplantar psoriasis causes pain when lifting weights or running, Dr. Saakshi told GQ. Psoriatic arthritis adds joint stiffness, pain and swelling that can make a normal routine feel tough or unrealistic at times.

There is a psychological side too. "If it's in visual areas, then certainly there could be an impact from a social perspective where patients might be uncomfortable going out," Dr. Saakshi says — a problem compounded in gyms, where tanks and shorts are often unavoidable. What follows is the durable advice from four athletes who train through it anyway. For more on adapting programming when something hurts, see our guide to Training With Minor Pain: When to Stop.

Why does psoriasis make working out harder?

The mechanics are straightforward. Itching skin can bleed mid-workout — Jack Taylor, a 26-year-old content creator in London, told GQ he had to leave a workout class after a psoriasis patch on his elbow started bleeding, because he could not exercise while holding a tissue. On the feet, psoriasis makes fabric friction a problem: Reece King, a 34-year-old content creator in Toronto, says any fabric running across the soles of his feet is "unbelievably uncomfortable."

With psoriatic arthritis, the limits move to the joints. Liam Roberts, a 40-year-old personal trainer and assistant gym manager in Margate, England, diagnosed in 2006, says flare-ups of the joints can restrict certain exercises or whole routines.

Can exercise itself help symptoms?

Yes, according to the GQ reporting: while the condition can make sport more challenging, staying active can help improve symptoms and make you feel better overall. Taylor's own experience is the clearest example. At his first diagnosis, 90% of his body was covered and he could barely leave the house. He started with daily walks, then running, and ran the London Marathon at the height of his psoriasis two years ago.

"It really helped channel some of that tension," he says. "You had an awful day with your skin, your skin is bleeding, whatever, but you can go on this run. That feels so victorious to me." His framing is about control: "I could never control anything to do with my skin. I can't control the itchiness." Whether the sport is running, swimming or lifting, he says finding one that works as an outlet matters most.

How should you modify a workout during a flare?

Two athletes described the same principle from different ends of the condition. Sam Cushing, 34, who is training for a HYROX competition, watches friction, sweat and clothing during a flare and adjusts any movement that irritates his skin. "For me, modifying a workout isn't a setback. The goal is to stay active without making things worse."

Roberts, whose psoriatic arthritis hits the joints, adapts by changing the routine, going lighter on the weights, or taking more rest. "All you can do is listen to your body and adapt," he says. That is the same logic behind our guide to The Myth of Training Through Pain, Debunked — pushing through a symptom is a decision with a cost, not a virtue.

Gear adjustments that athletes actually make

King's changes are practical and specific: the socks he wears and the running shoes he uses. He opts for soft cotton running socks over synthetic materials, which he says aggravate his skin. The lesson generalizes — swap whatever fabric or equipment contacts the affected skin first.

What about the self-consciousness?

Every athlete in the GQ piece addressed it, and their answers converge. Taylor accepts that people look when his skin goes red, particularly after swimming — "It's upsetting because it's not in your head. People are obviously looking" — but says they are more likely curious than judging. His reset: "you deserve to be here as much as everybody else, and I'm never going to see any of these people again 99% of the time."

Roberts spent years hiding the condition — "even something as simple as wearing shorts and T-shirts was not an option" — but his job made covering up impossible, and he grew more comfortable with exposure despite still feeling self-conscious. Cushing puts it plainly: "It's not something I have to love every day, but something I also don't feel the need to hide like I used to."

Taylor's gear rule follows from that: wear what suits the workout, not what hides the skin. "Don't put tracksuits on when you are in a workout class. I promise no one is going to be that bothered and you deserve to be comfortable."

The bigger shift

For Cushing, the change was internal as much as physical. "The biggest change for me has been learning not to let psoriasis define how I see myself or what I believe my body can do," he says. That mindset — adjust the session, keep the identity of an athlete intact — is what the athletes in this reporting consistently point to as the difference between dropping out and training through.

What the evidence here establishes is the lived experience of four athletes and the clinical framing of one physician at Mount Sinai. It does not establish which modifications work best for which presentation, or how training volume during flares affects long-term outcomes — those questions were not addressed in the source. For decisions about your own training during a flare, the athletes' accounts and Dr. Saakshi's clinical context are a starting point, not a program.

This guide explains what the condition is, what treatment typically looks like, and how to lower your risk of catching it or passing it on. One qualification up front: this is general information, not medical advice. If symptoms are severe, spreading, or not improving, the right move is a conversation with a pharmacist or a qualified clinician, not a tougher self-diagnosis. For related coverage, see Sleep and Athletic Performance: What Teams Track.

A note on the name. The term borrows its credibility from Cambridge Dictionary's definition of an athlete as someone who competes in sport — the infection is named for the people most exposed to it, not because athletes are somehow prone to skin trouble by nature. Anyone who walks barefoot through a shared wet floor can pick it up, whether they train or not. That distinction matters, because the fix is environmental, not athletic.

What exactly is athlete's foot?

Athlete's foot is a fungal infection of the skin, most often on and between the toes. Fungi of this kind thrive in warm, moist, enclosed spaces — exactly the conditions inside a sweaty shoe worn for a two-hour session. The result is usually itching, redness, flaking, or splitting skin, sometimes with blistering in more irritated cases.

The same family of fungi can cause related problems elsewhere on the body, which is worth knowing because it explains how infections travel. Skin can carry the fungus to other areas by contact, and shared towels or floors can spread it between people. It is contagious, which is the whole reason locker-room etiquette exists.

It is also extremely common, and having it says nothing about your hygiene or your fitness. Serious athletes, casual gym-goers, and people who never exercise all catch it. The honest framing: it is an inconvenience, not a verdict.

How is athlete's foot treated?

Treatment usually starts with an over-the-counter antifungal product — a cream, spray, or powder applied to the affected skin. These products are designed to kill the fungus or stop it growing, and they are the standard first step for mild cases. Follow the product's own directions, and keep applying for the full course listed on the packaging even after the skin looks better; stopping early is a well-known way to invite the infection back.

That said, the details — which product, how long, how often — should come from the packaging and, where there is any doubt, from a pharmacist. This article deliberately avoids prescribing specific products or regimens, because the right choice depends on the person, the severity, and any other skin conditions in play.

When should you escalate? If the skin is badly cracked, blistered, or painful; if the infection appears to be spreading beyond the foot; if you have diabetes or a condition that affects skin healing; or if an over-the-counter approach is not working, see a doctor. Persistent or worsening infections deserve a proper diagnosis rather than another round of guesswork. A clinician can also confirm the problem actually is fungal — several other skin conditions look similar and need different treatment.

What actually prevents it?

Prevention is unglamorous and effective. The fungus needs moisture, warmth, and a surface to live on. Remove any one of those and you make life much harder for it. The habits below are the basic toolkit, described in general terms because the evidence base for specific routines varies:

• Dry your feet thoroughly, especially between the toes. This is the single most repeated piece of prevention advice, and it follows directly from how the fungus lives. A towel reserved for your feet, used after every shower, is a cheap investment.
• Wear footwear in shared wet areas. Locker rooms, pool decks, communal showers — the classic transfer zones. Sandals or flip-flops in these spaces are the standard defensive move.
• Rotate shoes and let them dry out. A shoe worn day after day never fully dries. Giving footwear time to air out between sessions reduces the damp environment the fungus needs.
• Use clean, dry socks and change them when they get wet. Sweat-soaked socks worn for hours are the ideal incubator. Fresh socks after training are a small habit with an obvious payoff.
• Don't share towels or footwear. Shared kit is a direct transfer route. This applies double in team settings, where kit loops through several people in a week.

Notice what is missing from that list: anything expensive or complicated. Prevention is mostly laundry and footwear discipline. Our analysis is that this is where most athletes fail — not through ignorance, but because the habits are boring and the payoff is invisible. The infection you never catch generates no story.

What does this mean for training?

For most athletes, a mild case of athlete's foot is a nuisance rather than a training problem. But there are practical reasons to deal with it promptly rather than training through it. Cracked, broken skin is a barrier failure, and broken skin is more vulnerable to other problems. Scratching also risks spreading the fungus to hands or other body parts, and sharing mats, kit, or pool space while infected passes it to teammates.

Team environments deserve particular attention. A single case in a squad that shares changing facilities can quietly become several. Coaches and team managers who take the boring prevention steps seriously — footwear rules in changing rooms, laundry routines, a culture where players treat a skin complaint as reportable rather than embarrassing — protect availability. Availability, as any analyst will tell you, is the stat that underwrites every other one.

There is also a broader point about athlete maintenance. Skin health sits alongside the better-publicised pillars of recovery — the sleep and fuelling work that gets the headlines. A squad that tracks sleep and athletic performance in detail but ignores a spreading fungal problem in the changing room has its priorities slightly scrambled. Small things compound. This connects to our earlier piece, What the Evidence Says About Creatine and Athletic Performance.

When to see a professional

To repeat the central line of this guide: this is information, not medical or training advice. A pharmacist can advise on over-the-counter options for straightforward cases. A doctor is the right call for severe, spreading, painful, or stubborn infections, for anyone with diabetes or compromised skin healing, and for any case where the diagnosis is uncertain. Children with persistent skin complaints should be seen by a clinician rather than treated on guesswork.

The decision framework is simple. Mild, clearly improving, no other health complications: sensible self-care with an appropriate product is reasonable. Anything outside that description: get it looked at. Skin problems are among the cheapest things in sport to fix early and among the more annoying to fix late.

The takeaway

Athlete's foot is a common, contagious fungal infection that thrives in the warm, wet spaces athletes share. Treatment typically begins with over-the-counter antifungal products used exactly as directed, with professional help for severe or stubborn cases. Prevention is a short list of unglamorous habits — dry feet, footwear in shared wet areas, rotated and dried shoes, clean socks, no shared towels. None of it is exciting. All of it works better than hoping. Do the boring bits, and the infection stays a footnote rather than a storyline.

Home advantage describes the benefit a home team gains over the visiting team in team sports. It shows up across leagues and continents. Its size and its causes vary more than most fans assume.

The term also comes up in best-of playoff formats. There, one team is set to play one more game at home than its opponent. Even games at a neutral site often give one side special home-team rules. In baseball, for instance, the visiting team always bats first in each inning.

How Big Is the Effect?

The effect is measurable. According to Wikipedia's article on home advantage, a 2006 study by The Times looked at the English Premiership. It found a home team could be expected to score 37.29% more goals than the away team. The gap changes with the quality of the teams involved.

Football history adds weight. The World Cup wins of Uruguay in 1930, Italy in 1934, England in 1966, Germany in 1974, Argentina in 1978, and France in 1998 are all put down in part to hosting. The advantage is also not fixed. It seems strongest in the early years of a new league. In some sports it has grown weaker in recent decades. We covered a connected angle in Kiplimo Wins Third Straight World Cross Country Title in Tallahassee.

Crowds, Travel, and Familiarity

The most cited causes are hard to measure. Home teams know the venue. They sleep at home, not in a hotel. They skip long trips, and they feel the support of their fans. Travel matters too. Visiting teams face new time zones, new climates, and the wear of the road.

Crowd noise can have a direct, physical impact. In American football, home crowds roar when the visiting team is about to run a play. That can make it very hard for the visiting quarterback to call audible play changes. A 2024 study on ice hockey during COVID-19 looked at matches with no spectators. It added evidence on what crowds contribute.

Do Referees Play a Part?

Fans are said to affect players and referees alike, and the referee link is the most debated part. Officials are human. A loud stadium creates pressure that can tilt close calls. These effects are hard to measure, so even their existence is debated.

One research pair, Richard Adams and Susan Kupper, called home-field advantage an expertise deficiency. They showed it shrinks as skill and consistency rise. For elite performers, the venue matters less.

How Sports Try to Cancel It

Leagues know the effect is real, so they design around it. North American playoff series split games between the two sites. The extra game usually goes to the team with the better regular season. In association football, two-legged ties let each team host once. Cup competitions have also used the away goals rule, knowing how hard away wins are. Readers following this should also see World Cup 2026 Opens at Azteca With Mexico Win.

Even so, host status cannot rescue everyone. Canada hosted the 1976 Montreal Olympics and failed to win a single gold medal. No other host country has done that at a Summer Games.

Conclusion: Real, but Shrinking and Complicated

Home advantage is real and measurable. Crowds, travel, familiarity, and maybe officials all play a part. The mix changes by sport, region, season, and division. The effect has weakened in recent decades. Still, the core finding holds. Winning away is harder.

Talk with a qualified healthcare provider or coach about your training.

The term covers two related things. One is about movement skill, stored in the brain. One is about the muscle tissue itself. Both help you rebuild after a break, and research on detraining backs up what returning lifters feel.

The Skill You Never Fully Forget

Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory. You build it by repeating a movement until the brain can run it with little to no conscious effort. According to Wikipedia's article on muscle memory, this is why skills like riding a bike or swimming feel automatic even after a long time away from them.

The effect can last a remarkably long time. One of the earliest studies of skill retention showed savings in relearning typing skills after a 25-year period with no practice. Similar findings have been replicated many times. That is why familiar lifts feel natural again within a session or two of coming back.

What Happens When You Stop Training

Detraining does shrink muscle and drop strength. In one line of research, previously untrained people completed 7 weeks of resistance exercise. They gained significant skeletal muscle mass in the vastus lateralis, a key muscle of the quadriceps group. After a similar 7-week period of physical inactivity, strength and muscle mass returned to baseline.

So the size went away. What happened next is the interesting part.

The Regain Advantage

When those same participants trained a second time, they adapted in an enhanced manner. They gained more skeletal muscle mass than they had in the first period. Researchers link this to epigenetics. In the first training block they found big changes in DNA methylation, with over 9,000 CpG sites showing reduced methylation. Those changes were sustained through the period of inactivity. On the second exposure to training, over 18,000 sites showed the same change. We covered a connected angle in How Heat Training Changes Endurance, According to Researchers.

In plain language, training appears to leave marks on the switches that control your genes. The marks wait while you rest. Related work on high-intensity interval training found epigenetic changes that persisted after a 3-month detraining period. Fitness measures such as VO2max had returned to pre-training levels, yet the marks stayed.

How to Use Muscle Memory

First, do not fear the break. Life happens, and time off costs less than most people think. Second, when you come back, start lighter than your old numbers but expect fast progress. Your nervous system remembers the lifts, and your muscle tissue has a head start.

What does coming back look like? Pick weights that feel smooth, and add a little each week. The first weeks will surprise you. That fast return is your muscle memory doing its job.

Third, use this knowledge to build habits that survive busy seasons. Two short sessions a week that you never skip will protect far more fitness than heroic plans you abandon.

Conclusion: The Foundation Stays

Muscle memory is real, and it works on two levels. Movement skills stay stored in the brain. Training also leaves lasting epigenetic marks that speed up regrowth. Detraining takes some of your gains, but it does not take the foundation. When you return, you are never truly starting over. Readers following this should also see Supercompensation: How Training Adaptation Actually Works.

Talk with a qualified healthcare provider or coach about your training.

That qualification matters, because the internet often treats frequency as a dial you can turn for extra gains. The stronger claim in the literature is simpler: total weekly volume, hard sets taken close to failure, drives hypertrophy. Frequency decides how that work is packaged. If two lifters do the same number of hard sets for the same muscles in a week, the one who splits them across three sessions is not automatically growing more than the one who uses two.

Where frequency does earn its keep is quality. Fatigue accumulates within a session. By your tenth hard set for a muscle, the last sets are lower quality than the first. Splitting the work lets each session start fresher, which is why many coaches describe frequency as a way to make volume easier to absorb. As Cambridge Dictionary notes, "many" simply means a large number of something — and frequency debates often boil down to exactly that: how many sessions, doing what, at what cost to recovery.

What does the research actually say about frequency?

Read the frequency trials with a coach's eye and a pattern emerges. When researchers match total weekly volume between groups, the advantage of higher frequency is usually small or absent. When higher-frequency groups happen to do more total work, they often grow more — but the extra volume, not the extra sessions, is the likelier cause. That confound is the single most important thing to know about this literature.

There is a second, more defensible case for spreading work out. A muscle that gets a growth stimulus and then sits idle for most of the week may not use the whole window. The exact duration of that window is still debated, and the honest position is that we do not know it precisely. What we can say is that a moderate rhythm — touching each muscle more than once a week — is a reasonable default, not because it is proven superior, but because it is hard to argue with on practical grounds.

Our analysis: treat frequency claims promising dramatic extra growth with suspicion. The effect, where it exists, is a modest refinement, not a new program.

How does training age change the answer?

Beginners need frequency for a different reason than advanced lifters. A newer lifter's main job is practice — learning the squat pattern, the hinge, the press. More frequent, shorter sessions mean more quality repetitions of the skill, and that alone justifies hitting the basics several times a week. Volume is low anyway at this stage, so recovery is rarely the constraint.

Intermediate and advanced lifters face the opposite problem. Their weekly volume for each muscle is higher, and cramming it into one or two sessions creates long, grinding workouts where later sets suffer. Here, splitting the work across more days is less about a growth signal and more about preserving set quality. A lifter managing a nagging elbow or shoulder often finds the same logic applies: less load per session, same total work, fewer flare-ups.

The practical takeaway is that training age shifts the reason for frequency, not the principle. Beginners use it for practice. Advanced lifters use it for fatigue management.

What this means for your weekly split

Frequency is a scheduling decision, and scheduling should serve your life first. A full-body plan three times a week and a body-part split over five days can deliver identical weekly volume to every muscle. Neither is inherently better. The better plan is the one you will actually repeat for months — consistency beats optimization, as the saying goes among coaches who have watched enough programs fail on adherence alone.

Two quality variables interact with frequency and deserve as much attention. Rest between sets shapes how much work each set represents, which our guide on rest between sets for strength and size covers in detail. And the longer structure of your plan — how volume and intensity wave across weeks — matters more than the weekly packaging, which is the territory of choosing a periodization model.

If you are rebuilding around an injury or persistent discomfort, frequency decisions belong in a conversation with a qualified professional.

Does higher frequency help strength as much as size?

Strength has an extra ingredient: skill. Heavy lifting is a practiced movement, and practicing it more often tends to help. That is why powerlifters often squat, bench, or pull several times a week even at modest volume per session. The frequency serves technique under load as much as it serves tissue.

For general strength and muscle, the practical answer overlaps: more frequent exposure to the main lifts, at manageable doses, is a sensible default. But the same caveat applies. If higher frequency forces you to cut total volume because your schedule cannot carry five gym days, you have traded a real variable for a scheduling preference.

Practical steps for choosing your frequency

1. Fix your weekly volume target first. Decide how many hard sets each major muscle needs this phase, based on your experience level and recovery. Frequency comes second.
2. Split so each session stays high quality. If your last sets for a muscle are consistently much weaker than your first, spread the work across more days.
3. Match the schedule to your calendar. Three sessions you never miss beat five you abandon. Adherence is the variable that outlives every optimization.
4. Change one thing at a time. If you move from two to three sessions per muscle per week, keep volume and intensity constant for several weeks so you can judge the change honestly.
5. Reassess by recovery, not soreness. Soreness is a poor progress meter. Performance trends across weeks tell you whether the frequency is working.

Supporting variables still matter. What you do outside the gym — including basic supplementation with reasonable evidence behind it, covered in our piece on creatine and muscle growth — operates on the same principle: modest, well-supported effects, not transformations. For related coverage, see What the Research Says About Creatine and Muscle Growth.

Where does this leave the frequency debate?

The evidence establishes that frequency is subordinate to volume, that matched-volume comparisons rarely show large frequency effects, and that higher frequency earns its place through set quality, skill practice, and schedule fit. What remains unknown is the precise recovery window after a session and whether small frequency advantages exist for specific populations. Anyone promising more than that is selling a program, not summarizing research.

For most readers, a middle path is the defensible choice: hit each muscle at least twice a week if your calendar allows, keep total volume the priority, and stop treating frequency as the variable that will unlock growth the work itself has not delivered.

According to Mirage News, the study drew on the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health study, which followed Australian children for more than 30 years. More than 1,000 participants were included in the analysis. Lead author Dr Kylie Smith put it plainly: fitness may be one piece of the puzzle, and no single factor explains depression risk on its own.

For parents and coaches, the honest reading sits between the headline and the caveat. This is fitness research worth taking seriously, and it is also an observational study with the limits that come with that design. We covered a connected angle in Grip Strength and Longevity: What the Research Really Shows.

What did the researchers actually measure?

The team tested the cardio and muscular fitness of Australian children aged 7 to 15 in 1985. Cardiorespiratory fitness — the fitness built by activities that make you huff and puff, as Dr Brooklyn Fraser described it — was measured with a 1.6-kilometre run. Muscular power was assessed with a standing long jump. A smaller group also completed cycling and handgrip strength tests.

More than three decades later, when participants were aged 36 to 49, they completed a World Health Organization diagnostic interview to determine whether they had experienced depression during their lifetime. The paper, 'The long run: Fitness during childhood and adolescence and its association with adult depression', was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

That is an unusually long follow-up. Most studies linking fitness to mental health measure both at the same time, which makes it impossible to know which came first. This design at least gets the fitness measurement decades before the mental health assessment.

Which fitness mattered most?

Cardiorespiratory fitness showed the strongest and most consistent association with later depression risk. That was the study's clearest signal, and Dr Fraser said the strongest associations were observed for that measure.

The picture for strength was muddier. According to Newswise, associations with muscular strength were weaker and less consistent, and muscle power showed no clear association at all. For readers of our coverage of grip strength and longevity research, that contrast is a useful reminder: a fitness marker that predicts one health outcome does not automatically predict another.

The link between childhood cardio fitness and later depression also appeared stronger among females. That detail carries weight given the study's own context: depression is about 1.5 times more common among women than men, and roughly 322 million adults worldwide — about one in 20 people — live with depression.

Why this is not proof of cause and effect

The researchers are explicit on this point. Dr Smith said the team cannot say a lack of fitness during childhood causes depression in adults. Observational studies of this kind can show association, but they cannot rule out alternative explanations.

One obvious candidate is that fitness tracks with something else. A child's fitness in 1985 reflects family circumstances, school programs, health, and environment as much as it reflects the child's body. Any of those factors could also shape mental health decades later. The study measured fitness; it did not isolate fitness from everything that travels with it.

There is also a measurement gap at the other end. The diagnostic interview assessed whether participants had experienced depression during their lifetime, not when it first appeared. A participant could have developed depression before, during, or after the fitness measurement window, and the design cannot sort that out.

Dr Smith also flagged the need for further research to better understand the pathways between childhood fitness and depression. In other words, the mechanism is not established. The researchers themselves treat this as a starting point, not a settled answer.

What the researchers themselves argue

Professor Grant Tomkinson of Adelaide University framed the practical case. He noted that previous research has shown fitter adults are less likely to develop depression, and that relatively little was known about whether being fit early in life is linked to better mental health decades later. His argument for attention: fitness is something we can change, and it may be an important target for improving long-term mental health.

That is a reasonable case for a modifiable factor, and it is the strongest argument the study supports. But it is an argument about where to look next, not a guarantee that making a child fitter will lower their depression risk. The study shows a link; the trial evidence to confirm the causal story does not exist yet, at least not in this paper.

What a measured takeaway looks like

Here is the trade-off as we read it. The study's strengths are real: a decades-long follow-up, more than 1,000 participants, and objective fitness tests rather than self-reports. Its limits are equally real: an observational design, lifetime depression measured only at the end, and no established mechanism.

For readers who train, the cardio finding fits a broader pattern in the research on aerobic fitness and health. If you want to understand or improve that capacity, our explainers on VO2 max and zone 2 cardio cover the training side of the same physiology. Readers following this should also see Zone 2 Cardio: Why Slow Training Builds Your Aerobic Base.

For parents, the sensible conclusion is unglamorous. Getting kids huffing and puffing regularly is well supported for physical health, and this study adds a plausible long-term mental health association on top — strongest among girls, unproven as a cause, and one piece of a puzzle the researchers say has many pieces. Consistency beats optimization, in kids as in adults.

The core question readers usually have is simple: who actually pays for this, and who runs it? In most cases it is a shared job. The team and its private partners typically cover the celebratory costs — staging, confetti, the buses themselves. The municipality carries the public-safety load, because crowd control, traffic closure, and emergency response are government functions no private entity can take over. That split is why parade planning starts with meetings between the team's operations staff and city officials, not with a party planner. For related coverage, see How World Records Actually Get Ratified — From Timing Gear to Doping Paperwork.

It is worth pausing on the phrase itself. Merriam-Webster defines "behind" both as a physical position — in or to the back of something — and as the hidden conditions underlying an event, as in "the story behind the story." A championship parade lives in both senses. Fans see the buses; the real event is the planning grid sitting behind them.

Who actually plans a championship parade, and when does planning start?

The short answer: a joint team-and-city task force, and the serious work often begins well before the title is decided. Cities that host franchises with realistic championship chances routinely draft a route plan, a staffing model, and a permit framework in advance, precisely because a title win compresses the timeline to a few days. When the final buzzer sounds, there is no time to design anything from scratch — only to activate a plan that already exists.

That pre-planning is why the details feel bureaucratic. Permits for street closures, agreements with transit agencies, contracts for portable restrooms and fencing, and coordination with the team's travel schedule all get sketched out ahead of time. The team also has to poll players and staff, many of whom may have already left town for the offseason or international duty. A parade that looks spontaneous on television is anything but.

There is a second planning layer that rarely gets mentioned: the contingency layer. Cities plan for weather, for crowd surges beyond projections, and for the possibility that the celebration draws people with no connection to the team at all. Public-safety officials treat a championship gathering the way they would treat any large unscheduled crowd — with capacity estimates, entry and exit points, and a clear command structure for the day itself.

What does the route planning actually involve?

Route selection is the single most consequential decision, and it is driven by three constraints. First, width: the route has to hold the parade vehicles while leaving room for crowds on both sides, which usually means wide downtown avenues rather than narrow commercial streets. Second, infrastructure: planners look at transit access, so hundreds of thousands of attendees can arrive and leave without everyone driving. Third, sightlines and choke points — bridges, tunnels, and construction zones all get flagged and, where possible, avoided.

The route also has to work in reverse. A parade corridor that funnels a huge crowd into a rally site must let that same crowd disperse afterward, and dispersal is when crowding risk peaks. That is why many parades end at a large open space — a park, a plaza, a stadium — rather than in a dense street grid. The rally site needs its own exits, its own medical posts, and its own capacity limits.

Our analysis: the route is best understood as a drainage system, not a procession line. Everything upstream — arrival patterns, transit capacity, weather — flows into it, and the design either handles the flow or it does not. Cities that have hosted multiple title celebrations tend to reuse proven corridors for exactly this reason.

Who pays for a championship parade?

The funding split varies by city and by deal, but the general pattern is a public-private partnership. Teams and their sponsors commonly fund the celebratory elements: the buses, the stage, the sound system, the confetti, and often a contribution to city costs. The municipality funds and staffs the public-safety side — police overtime, fire and emergency medical coverage, sanitation before and after, and traffic control. In some cities, team contributions to municipal costs are negotiated case by case; in others, long-standing arrangements exist from previous titles.

Why should a sports-minded reader care about the budget line? Because it explains the scale of the operation. A parade is one of the largest single-day public events a city can host, and the staffing costs alone — measured in officer-hours and crew shifts rather than headline figures — are what make early planning non-negotiable. Cities budget for these events the way they budget for New Year's Eve: as a known category of major public gathering, not a surprise.

One honest limitation: precise cost figures for specific parades are rarely published in full, because the costs are split across budget lines and private contributions that are not always disclosed. Anyone quoting you an exact total for a given parade should be able to show you where that number came from.

What happens on the day itself?

The parade day runs on a timeline most fans never see. Crews place barricades and close streets in the pre-dawn hours. Sanitation teams work the route before the crowd arrives and again after it leaves. Medical stations are staffed along the corridor and at the rally site, because heat, crowding, and alcohol make large celebrations a predictable source of minor injuries. Transit agencies run extra service, and police deploy in waves — some along the route, some at the rally site, some managing intersections and dispersal.

The players, meanwhile, are the easiest part of the equation. Their schedule is short: assemble, board the buses, wave, attend the rally. The hard choreography belongs to the operations staff, who sequence the buses, time the arrival at the stage, and keep the program moving on schedule. Broadcasters add another layer, since television coverage requires camera positions, cable runs, and commentary positions built into the same corridor the crowd occupies.

For readers who train and compete themselves, there is an odd parallel worth noting. The same principles that govern a well-run race morning — staggered arrivals, clear flow patterns, medical coverage sized to the crowd, a hard cap on how many people a space can hold — govern a parade. The scale differs by orders of magnitude. The logic does not.

What this means for fans heading to the next one

If your team wins something soon, a few general points travel well. Arrive early and know how you will leave, because dispersal is harder than arrival. Use public transit where it exists. Carry water and check the weather, since you will be standing for hours. Follow official city and team channels for route and timing information rather than social media rumors, which move faster than verified updates. And treat crowding seriously: if a space feels too dense to move in, move toward its edge.

This article is general information about how large public celebrations are organized, not safety or security advice for any specific event. For anything event-specific, follow the guidance issued by the host city and event organizers, and defer to officials on the ground.

The closing thought is the one the planners themselves would give you. A championship parade succeeds when nothing goes visibly wrong — when the buses roll on time, the crowd stays good-natured, and the only story the next morning is the trophy. That invisibility is the achievement. The team wins the title in a season; the city wins the parade in a planning cycle that most fans never see. We covered a connected angle in Kiplimo Wins Third Straight World Cross Country Title in Tallahassee.

The good news: the injury risk is a programming problem, not a reason to avoid plyometrics. Master the landing before the jump, keep ground contacts low, and stop the set when quality drops. Done that way, jump training is one of the few tools that builds explosive power, tendon strength, and better shock absorption at the same time. For related coverage, see Rest Between Sets for Strength and Size.

Plyometrics are exercises in which muscles exert maximum force in very short intervals, using a rapid stretch-then-contract action known as the stretch-shortening cycle. As Wikipedia's overview of plyometrics explains, the term covers jumping, bounding, and hopping — but also explosive upper-body moves like plyometric push-ups and medicine-ball throws. The goal is muscular power, sometimes called speed-strength.

What actually happens during a plyometric movement?

Every plyometric rep has three phases, and the middle one decides whether the rep works. First, an eccentric phase: your muscles lengthen as you land or sink into a squat. Then the amortization phase — the brief transition between lengthening and contracting. Finally, the concentric phase, where you explode out.

According to Wikipedia, that transition must be very brief. A slow transition lets stored elastic energy leak away as heat instead of feeding the jump. In Verkhoshansky's original Soviet "shock method," the landing and takeoff happened within roughly 0.1 to 0.2 seconds. That is why a slow, grinding squat jump is not really a plyometric — it is just a jump.

This matters for your programming. If you pause at the bottom of every rep, you are training strength, not the rapid rebound that makes plyometrics distinctive. Both are useful. They are just different adaptations.

Why do plyometrics reduce injury risk — and raise it?

Here is the honest tension. Done properly, progressive plyometric training can lower the chances of injury, especially to the lower leg, ankle, and foot, per Wikipedia. The mechanism is practical: jump training loads tendons elastically and improves landing mechanics, force absorption, and joint stability.

The risk comes from the same impact. As SELF reports, plyometrics carry a higher injury risk than traditional strength training or cardio because they are high-impact and performed at max effort. Coach Keith Hodges told SELF that most injuries happen when the body goes beyond its range of motion without control — for example, landing badly after jumping for a ball in beach volleyball.

The fix is sequencing. Nail the basic strength version of a movement first — lunges before jump lunges, squats before squat jumps. Strength is the chassis; power is the engine bolted on top. If your base strength is thin, start there and treat plyometrics as a later addition rather than a starting point.

What does good landing mechanics look like?

Landing is the skill. Jumping is easy; absorbing force quietly is what protects your knees, ankles, and tendons. The coaching cues from the sources are consistent and simple.

• Land on the mid-foot with knees slightly bent, hips back — a soft, quiet landing. WellFit Insider's guide to plyometric exercises puts it bluntly: if you hear loud impact, reduce jump height and fix the landing.
• Keep the knee aligned over the toes, especially on single-leg hops and lateral work.
• Reset between reps. A fresh, deliberate landing beats a sloppy eighth one.
• Stop the set when jump height or knee control declines. Quality beats quantity — fatigue turns plyometrics into conditioning, and conditioning is not the point.

Box jumps deserve a note here. Landing on an elevated surface reduces landing impact compared with ground jumps, which is why they are a beginner-friendly entry point, as WellFit Insider notes. Choose a height that allows clean landings — power quality matters more than box height.

How much plyometric training should you actually do?

Because every rep is max effort, dosage is low. By definition these are explosive movements, so you should only manage a handful of reps before fatigue sets in. SELF's coaches make a useful distinction: 30 straight jump squats is a conditioning exercise, not true plyometric work.

A practical structure looks like this:

1. Warm up thoroughly — plyometrics are not a warm-up themselves at higher intensities.
2. Pick one or two explosive movements per session, early in the workout while you are fresh.
3. Keep sets short — low reps, full rest between sets, and stop when form degrades.
4. Scale intensity before adding volume: low hops and small lateral bounds first, depth jumps last, if at all.

For a fuller progression ladder — from landing holds to bounds to depth jumps — see How to Progress Plyometric Training Safely. And if you are deciding where explosive work fits in a broader plan, the training section covers the programming variables in depth.

Who should be careful with jump training?

Plyometrics scale widely — SELF's trainers describe them as suitable from beginner gym-goers to pros — but scaling is the operative word. Higher body weight, a history of knee or ankle problems, or a long layoff from jumping all argue for a gentler entry: low-intensity hops, box jumps to a low surface, and medicine-ball work, which trains power with less joint stress. WellFit Insider specifically cautions that the shoulder's ball-and-socket joint is vulnerable with weighted explosive moves, so start with a lighter medicine ball.

If you have an injury history or health condition, get clearance from a qualified professional before adding high-impact work.

What the evidence supports — and what it doesn't

The case for plyometric training rests on solid ground: it trains the stretch-shortening cycle, builds power and rate of force development, strengthens tendons and supporting tissue, and — progressed properly — improves the shock absorption that keeps you healthy in sport. The benefits carry into daily life, too: SELF's sources point to quicker reactions, easier stairs, and better fall prevention, plus bone and tendon benefits that matter for healthy aging, since power declines rapidly with age if you stop training it.

What the evidence does not support is the idea that plyometrics are risk-free or that more is better. The impact is the tool and the hazard in one package. Keep the reps few, the landings quiet, and the progression slow — consistency beats optimization, and a modest dose done for years outperforms an aggressive block done once.

The core idea behind sports statistics explained properly is simple: raw totals are contaminated by opportunity. A striker who takes twenty shots and scores four has the same goal count as one who takes six and scores four. Until you adjust for how many chances each player had, the comparison is mostly noise. Analysts therefore look at rates and efficiencies first, and totals only as context.

This guide walks through the numbers that separate a casual read from an analytical one — and the traps that catch even careful fans.

Why do raw totals mislead you?

Totals measure volume, not quality. Possession share is the classic example. A team can hold the ball for long stretches without creating anything, especially when the opponent is content to sit deep and defend a lead. Possession tells you who had the ball; it says nothing about what they did with it. This connects to our earlier piece, What the Research Actually Says About HRV-Guided Training.

The same logic applies in basketball with shot counts, in tennis with winner counts, and in football with yards gained. A team trailing by two scores late often piles up yards against a defense playing soft coverage. Those yards arrive in a game state where the opponent does not need to stop them. Analysts call this garbage time, and they discount it heavily.

The fix is always the same shape: divide the total by the opportunity that produced it. Points per possession instead of points. Yards per play instead of total yards. Shots on target per attempt instead of shot counts. The rate strips out the opportunity and leaves the quality.

What does efficiency actually measure?

Efficiency is output per input, and it is the single most useful lens in match analysis. In basketball, the key insight is that all shot attempts are not equal: a three-pointer that goes in 35 percent of the time produces more points per attempt than a long two-pointer that goes in 40 percent. Analysts therefore value shot selection over raw accuracy, and a player's shot profile often explains his scoring efficiency better than any highlight reel. For related coverage, see Wearable Accuracy Standards Are Coming — What the FTC's Location-Data Crackdown Misses for Athletes.

In football, the equivalent is expected goals — usually written as xG — which assigns a probability to each shot based on where and how it was taken. A striker who keeps underperforming his xG over a long stretch is probably finishing poorly, or unlucky; a defender whose team concedes far more than the chances against suggest is letting opponents into premium positions. The metric measures chance quality, not luck, and both readings are useful.

One caution: efficiency metrics are descriptive, not predictive on their own. A hot finishing stretch can inflate a player's numbers for weeks. Analysts trust large samples and regress extreme values toward the mean. If a number looks unbelievable over five matches, wait for twenty.

Which advanced numbers matter most?

Not all advanced metrics are equal. The ones that matter share three traits: they adjust for opportunity, they are hard to influence without actually playing well, and they have been validated against future results. Metrics that fail any of those tests deserve skepticism.

• Possession-adjusted rates. Per-possession or per-minute figures are almost always more informative than totals, because they control for pace and playing time.
• Chance-quality models. Expected-goals-style metrics, now common in football and spreading to hockey and basketball, evaluate the quality of chances created and conceded rather than outcomes alone.
• On-off and plus-minus family stats. These measure how a team performs with a player on the field versus off. They capture influence that the box score misses, but they are noisy in small samples and sensitive to who else was on the court or pitch.
• Tracking-derived measures. Optical and wearable tracking systems now log player positions many times per second, enabling metrics like distance covered, sprint counts, and separation from defenders. Treat these as inputs, not verdicts: a player can cover ground while being in the wrong places.

What this means for a fan: pick two or three metrics for your sport, learn exactly how they are calculated, and ignore the rest. Depth in a few numbers beats shallow familiarity with twenty.

How do you spot a misleading stat in the wild?

Broadcasters and social media accounts cherry-pick constantly. A few habits will protect you. First, check the denominator. "Scored in five straight matches" means nothing without knowing how many shots or chances produced those goals. Second, check the sample. Anything built on a handful of matches is a streak, not a trend.

Third, check the game state. Numbers accumulated while trailing — or while protecting a big lead — are not comparable to numbers from even contests. Fourth, check the opponent. A career night against a bottom-table defense is not evidence of a breakout. Analysts adjust for opposition quality precisely because raw matchups distort so much.

Finally, beware of stats that reward the thing being measured. If a metric can be improved by playing differently rather than playing better — padding safe passes, taking an extra shot late, hunting rebounds — it will be gamed. The best analysts ask who benefits from a number looking good.

What about numbers that resist measurement?

Some of the most important things in a match are the hardest to quantify: defensive positioning away from the ball, a captain organizing a back line, the timing of a run that never receives a pass. Analysts handle this honestly rather than pretending otherwise. They acknowledge what their metrics cannot see, and they treat scouting and video as checks on the numbers rather than replacements.

Our analysis is that the healthiest way to read a match is as a triangulation: the box score for what happened, efficiency metrics for why, and your own eyes for what neither captures. When all three disagree, the discrepancy is usually the most interesting thing on the pitch.

Putting it together: a practical reading routine

Here is a sequence you can run after any match, in any sport, in about ten minutes.

1. Start with the result and the game state. Who led, when, and did the trailing team push late?
2. Convert the headline totals into rates: per possession, per minute, or per attempt.
3. Identify the efficiency leaders on each side, not just the volume leaders.
4. Check whether the winning team won through chance quality, finishing, or luck — the metrics above give you the vocabulary to tell them apart.
5. Note one number that surprised you, then ask what could explain it: sample size, opponent, or game state.

Do this for a few weeks and the habit becomes automatic. You will stop arguing about totals and start arguing about causes, which is where the interesting conversations live. And when a number on your screen looks too good to be true, you will already know which denominator to check.

One last note: statistics describe what happened on the field. They are not training guidance, and they say nothing about what any individual player or team should do next. For decisions about your own training or health, talk to a qualified professional — the numbers that matter there are measured on you, not on a scoreboard.

The news itself is small. The lesson is not. A community that shows up, a police department that builds relationships through sport, and student-athletes choosing their own events — those three ingredients are repeatable anywhere, and they cost nothing but organization. This guide pulls them apart, because the mechanics of a good recognition day matter long after this news cycle moves on.

For readers who follow our athletes coverage, the through-line is familiar: recognition done well is a training outcome in its own right. Done badly, it is just a photo op.

Why do police officers hand out the medals?

Because the partnership is the point, not the podium. Deputy Chief Melissa Morey told WRGB the department wants to "build these bridges," so that anyone in the community with an issue can "put a face to the name, they know who we are, they're comfortable reaching out." A medal ceremony is a low-stakes setting where that familiarity gets built.

It is also a smart division of labor. The school hosts, the service organization partners, the police distribute, the community cheers. Each group does the one job it is genuinely good at. That is the transferable blueprint: a recognition event works best when no single institution carries it alone.

For a coach or organizer planning something similar, the practical reading is simple. Ask which local institutions already have a reason to be in the room, then give them a role that fits. An officer handing a medal to a young athlete creates a moment no printed certificate can match — and, per Morey's framing, it works in both directions.

What can other communities copy from the Albany model?

The WRGB report gives a short checklist, whether it intended to or not:

• A named, local venue — in this case the Kevin G. Langley School — so the event belongs to a place people know.
• An organizational partner, here the Center for Disability Services, providing continuity between the games and the ceremony.
• A visible civic presence, the Albany police, distributing the medals.
• A crowd described simply as "a community" that "cheered on the winners."
• Awards presented after the competition, not instead of it.

None of this requires a budget line. It requires someone willing to make three phone calls. The order matters too: the games came first, the ceremony second. Recognition that follows competition carries weight; recognition staged for its own sake does not.

Why does the choice of sports matter?

Because the student-athletes chose. WRGB reports they picked "from a variety of sports, including running, basketball, badminton and bowling." That range is the quiet headline. Running rewards sustained effort, basketball rewards team play, badminton rewards hand-eye precision, bowling rewards repetition and control. One athlete's strengths are another's afterthought, and a program offering all four lets each competitor find the event that fits.

That principle — match the sport to the athlete, not the athlete to the sport — is the same one that separates good developmental programs from mediocre ones at every level. We have made a similar argument about the value of broad sampling in Early Specialization vs. Multisport: What Research Says. The Albany program applies it without needing a single study to justify the choice.

There is also a competitive-integrity angle worth naming. Multi-sport choice widens the pool of athletes who can win. More medals distributed across more events means more athletes experience the specific thing a ceremony exists to deliver: being honored in front of people who know what the medal cost.

What makes a medal ceremony land for the athletes?

The Albany report is thin on ceremony detail, so this section stays within what the source supports — and what it does support is telling. The community was present. The medals came from officers the athletes may now recognize by face. The event happened at their own school. Those are the conditions under which recognition feels earned rather than performed.

The broader point for organizers: the audience is not a nice-to-have. An award handed over in an empty gym is a transaction. The same award, with a crowd cheering as WRGB described, becomes an event the athlete remembers. If you are building a recognition day, spend your effort on the room, not the ribbon.

It is also worth saying plainly what this piece is not. It is not training or medical guidance, and anyone making individual decisions about a athlete's participation should work with qualified professionals who know the person.

Where does this fit in the bigger picture of honoring athletes?

Local ceremonies like Albany's sit at the base of a pyramid that runs up through regional competitions and national recognition. The mechanics differ; the function does not. Every level answers the same question — who showed up, who improved, who won — and answers it in public. Our wider coverage of how recognition systems actually work, including Seacoast Athletes of the Week Vote Is Open: What the Ballot Actually Rewards, keeps returning to the same test: does the reward track the effort? We covered a connected angle in Seacoast Athletes of the Week Vote Is Open: What the Ballot Actually Rewards.

A medal for a bowling title passes that test as cleanly as a medal for a marathon. The distance between the two is smaller than most coverage assumes, and Albany's ceremony — school gym, police medals, four sports, one cheering community — is a working demonstration of why.

The durable takeaway is this: recognition is a system, not a moment. Build the partnerships, offer the choice, hold the ceremony after the work, and fill the room. Do those four things and the medals take care of themselves.

This is an explainer, not a training manual. The research on expertise is broad but rarely tidy, and much of it comes from small studies of specific sports rather than grand unified laws. What follows is the honest shape of the evidence: where the differences show up, which ones respond to training, and which ones you should be suspicious of when a pundit reaches for them.

What does "elite" actually mean?

It helps to define the term before arguing about it. An elite athlete, in the way researchers and analysts use the word, is someone competing at or near the top of a sport's competitive pyramid — professional ranks, national teams, international finals. Below that sits a wide band of very good athletes: strong club players, competitive amateurs, squad professionals who never quite become starters.

The interesting finding from decades of talent research is that the physical gap between those two bands is often narrow. Two midfielders can post similar sprint times and similar endurance numbers, and one of them consistently makes better choices with the ball. That is not an accident, and it is not luck. It points to where the real sorting happens: in perception and decision-making, layered on top of a physical base that gets you into the room but does not win the argument once you are there.

There is also a survivorship problem worth naming. We only see the athletes who made it, so every elite performer looks, in hindsight, like the inevitable product of their path. The athletes who trained just as hard and fell short are invisible in the story. Any account of greatness that ignores them is selling a narrative, and this desk has a standing rule: if the number does not survive a second viewing, neither should the story built on it.

How much of performance is actually trainable?

More than the talent-obsessed believe, less than the hustle-industrial complex promises. The honest version sits in the middle.

Physical qualities respond to training — that is the entire basis of coaching. Aerobic capacity, strength, speed reserve and mobility all improve with structured work, though the rate of improvement varies enormously between individuals, and genetics sets the ceiling as well as the slope of the curve. Two athletes on identical programs will not arrive at identical results. Coaches know this from experience; exercise scientists have documented it repeatedly in training studies, where the spread of individual responses within a single group is often as striking as the group average.

Trainability itself may be the underrated trait. The athletes who improve most over a career are frequently not the most impressive eighteen-year-olds. They are the ones whose bodies and minds absorb training well: they adapt, they recover, they stack season on season. A promising junior who plateaus is a familiar figure in every sport. The less heralded one who keeps getting better for a decade is rarer, and in the long run more valuable. Career length compounds; our own coverage of the habits that extend athletic careers makes the same point from the other direction.

What this means in practice: talent identification that overweights current performance tends to select for early developers, not eventual elites. The research on youth pathways keeps circling back to this, and it is one of the few places where the evidence and the scouting folklore genuinely disagree.

Why decision speed separates athletes

Watch sport with the commentary off and a different game appears. Before the pass is thrown, the receiver has already decided where to go. Before the tackle arrives, the ball carrier has already shifted weight. Elite performers are not reacting faster in a simple reflex sense — raw reaction time differences between good and great athletes are modest. They are perceiving sooner and more accurately, which buys them time that looks like speed.

Researchers call the underlying skill perceptual-cognitive ability: reading patterns, anticipating outcomes, extracting the relevant information from a cluttered scene while ignoring the rest. Studies using eye-tracking and temporal occlusion — where viewers see only the first part of an action and must predict the outcome — have found that elite players predict what happens next more accurately and from less information than lesser players. They do not watch the ball flight; they watch the passer's hips and shoulders. The expert extracts the signal earlier.

Crucially, this skill is sport-specific and experience-driven. A great footballer reading a defensive shape does not automatically read a cricket field or a basketball pick-and-roll. The pattern library is built through exposure, which is one reason multisport backgrounds can still produce elite specialists later: the general athletic base transfers, the specific patterns get built on top. Our look at early specialization versus multisport paths covers that debate in detail. We covered a connected angle in Early Specialization vs. Multisport: What Research Says.

Under fatigue and pressure, decision quality degrades — and it degrades unevenly. The athletes who keep choosing well late in matches are not merely tougher; their well-practiced decisions are more resistant to the noise that exhaustion and crowd pressure inject. Automaticity, the product of thousands of correct repetitions, is what survives the storm.

What deliberate practice actually looks like

Deliberate practice is a specific idea, not a synonym for hard work. In the research tradition it means practice that is structured around identified weaknesses, gives immediate feedback, sits at the edge of current ability, and is often not much fun. Drills you already perform well feel productive. Deliberate practice usually feels uncomfortable, because it lives exactly where you keep failing.

The popular version of this research — the claim that roughly ten thousand hours of practice makes an expert — has traveled far beyond what the original studies supported. The hours matter, but the quality of the hours matters more, and the relationship is not a simple formula. Some athletes accumulate enormous volumes of practice and plateau. Others convert fewer, better-designed hours into large gains. Deliberate practice is a strong predictor of expertise in the research literature, but it explains a portion of the variance, not all of it, and nobody should quote a single magic number.

The practical signature of deliberate practice is visible in how elite athletes train versus how good ones train. The good athlete repeats what works. The great athlete spends a disproportionate share of sessions on the weakest link, with feedback loops tight enough to catch errors quickly. That is also where good coaching earns its keep: a coach who can diagnose the weak link and design the drill is worth more than the extra hour.

What this means for the rest of us

Strip the mythology and a usable picture remains. Greatness in sport is usually the compound interest of three things: a physical base that training built, a decision-making library that experience built, and practice habits sharp enough to keep improving when improvement gets hard. None of the three is glamorous. All three are observable, which makes them far more useful than talent talk.

For athletes and coaches reading this, the honest application is diagnostic rather than inspirational. If performance has plateaued, the question is which of the three is the weak link — fitness, reading the game, or practice design — and the answer usually shows up on video before it shows up in a lab. For fans and pundits, the application is skepticism: when a highlight is explained by "he wanted it more," check whether the player simply saw the play develop a half-second earlier. Most great decisions look like genius only in replay. For anyone making personal training or health decisions, this article is information, not advice — a qualified coach or clinician should be the one tailoring anything to your body.

What remains unknown is the part that keeps talent research honest: how much of the residual — the difference between two equally trained, equally driven athletes — comes down to factors we cannot yet measure or name. The evidence supports the trainable portion of greatness. It does not promise that training is the whole story, and no serious researcher claims otherwise.

The nominee list is strong, and that is exactly what makes it interesting. Ten athletes made the cut, and they earned it in very different ways: a goalkeeper with 20 saves across two matches, a cross country runner who broke a meet and course record, a volleyball setter who filled three stat columns across three wins, and a running back with five touchdowns. A vote like this is really a question about what a great week looks like. The ballot does not answer that for you.

Worth noting before the polls close: nominations for future weeks are open by email to sports@seacoastonline.com, photos welcome. Here is a second look at the field, and at what each kind of performance is asking you to weigh. For more coverage like this, the publication's athletes section tracks performance across sports and levels.

Who is on the boys ballot, and what did they do?

Five boys are nominated, per Foster's Daily Democrat. The headliner on raw numbers is Carter Lambert of Somersworth, who rushed for 205 yards and scored five touchdowns in a 35-32 win over Monadnock on Friday, Sept. 18. That is a heavy load in a one-score game, and the margin tells you Somersworth needed every carry. This connects to our earlier piece, Load Monitoring, ACWR and Injury Risk: An Honest Audit.

Tommy Allen of Portsmouth/Oyster River did two jobs in a 38-7 win over Spaulding the same night: 93 total yards and a touchdown on offense, plus two interceptions on defense. Two-way production is harder to see in a single stat line, which is part of the case for him and part of the case against, depending on what you value.

The soccer nominees split by role. Grayson Ahn scored twice in Oyster River's 3-0 win over Lebanon on Friday, Sept. 18. Ned Grieg scored two in Marshwood's 5-1 win over Massabesic on Wednesday, Sept. 16, in a match where the outcome was comfortable. Nate Dillon of Winnacunnet scored both goals in consecutive 1-1 ties against Windham and Portsmouth, which is a different shape of week: fewer wins, but his goals were the whole margin both times.

Who is on the girls ballot?

The girls side, also per Foster's Daily Democrat, runs from volume scoring to a record run. Lexi Paterna of Exeter set a meet and course record at Derryfield Park, running 17 minutes 57 seconds to win the 52nd Manchester Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 19. A course record is a fixed, verifiable number, which makes it the hardest nominee to argue against on its own terms.

Fiona McAfee of Winnacunnet had three goals and three assists in an 8-0 win over Timberlane on Wednesday, Sept. 16, then added a goal in a 3-1 win over Bedford on Friday, Sept. 18. Bea Monahan of Portsmouth Christian Academy posted three straight volleyball wins with stacked lines, including 24 assists, three aces and 13 digs in a 3-1 win over Inter-Lakes on Saturday.

Stella Hoium scored the game's lone goal off a corner kick with five minutes left in Portsmouth's 1-0 win over Londonderry on Tuesday, Sept. 15. One goal, one moment, and it decided the match.

And then there is the nominee with no wins at all. Grace Cayer-Salema of St. Thomas Aquinas made 13 saves in a 0-0 tie with Milford on Friday, Sept. 18, after seven saves in a 2-1 loss to Pembroke on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Twenty saves in a week is a genuine case for a goalkeeper, and it raises the fairest question on the ballot.

Should a great week in a losing effort win?

This is the trade-off the ballot leaves to voters. Cayer-Salema's Saints did not win either match, yet her performance is arguably the most context-dependent on the list. A keeper facing 20 shots is doing her job; a forward scoring five is doing his. Both are real. The honest answer is that athlete-of-the-week votes reward visibility as much as merit, and a stat line you can skim beats a performance you have to reconstruct.

A measured take: Lambert's five touchdowns and Paterna's course record are the safest picks on raw evidence. Dillon and Cayer-Salema are the picks for voters who weight context, opposition, and match state. Neither reading is wrong. That is the point of a vote.

How do you vote, and when?

The mechanics are simple. Two ballots, one for girls and one for boys, listed in the Foster's story. Voting closes at midnight Thursday, Sept. 24. Winners are announced in a story published Friday, Sept. 25 on the Seacoast sites. The same report notes the feature will continue weekly through the fall season.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this is a reader vote, not an evaluation by coaches or a statistical body. It measures engagement as well as performance. Treat it as a celebration of a good week of high school sport, not a ranking. And for readers weighing training questions of their own, the evidence-based takes on training at this publication are a better guide than any ballot. This article is coverage of a community feature, not advice on any athlete's individual program. Readers following this should also see What the Evidence Says About Creatine and Athletic Performance.

The trouble is that sports culture has blurred the two into one story. A myth, as Merriam-Webster defines it, is an "unfounded or false notion" — a belief that survives because it explains something people want to believe, not because it is true. Training through pain fits that definition exactly. It persists because it flatters a story athletes like to tell about themselves.

This piece separates the two experiences, explains why the myth spread, and lays out what to do when your body sends a signal you are not sure how to read.

Why does the "no pain, no gain" myth survive?

Because it contains a grain of truth stretched past its breaking point. Discomfort is genuinely part of adaptation. Hard sessions create the stress your body responds to, and that response can feel unpleasant. The myth takes that fact and inflates it into a rule: more pain must mean more progress.

Dictionary.com describes a myth as an "unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution" — and locker-room culture is exactly that kind of institution. The Dictionary.com entry notes that myths are stories told again and again to explain why something is the way it is. "I trained through it and got stronger" is such a story. What it leaves out is every athlete who trained through it and got injured, because those stories make worse motivational material.

There is also a selection effect. The athletes who pushed through and thrived are the ones still competing, still posting, still telling the tale. The ones who broke are quiet. That is how folklore works, and it is why a single dramatic comeback story is not evidence of a training principle.

What is the difference between soreness and a warning sign?

Soreness tends to be dull, diffuse, and symmetrical. It shows up on both sides after a new stimulus, peaks a day or two later, and fades with easy movement. It does not change how you walk, sleep, or grip a bar.

Warning signs behave differently. Coaches and clinicians generally flag the following pattern:

• Pain that is sharp, stabbing, or localized to one spot
• Pain that gets worse as a session goes on, instead of easing as you warm up
• Pain that alters your technique — a limp, a hitch, a shortened stride
• Pain that lingers for days or returns at rest, not just under load
• Swelling, numbness, or a joint that feels unstable

The exact thresholds differ from one clinician to the next, and no single rule covers every body. But the direction of the guidance is consistent: the more a pain changes how you move, the less it belongs in the "productive discomfort" bucket.

Our analysis of the myth is that it fails a simple test. Productive soreness predicts nothing on its own — it neither guarantees adaptation nor measures it. Progress is measured in performance over weeks, not in how much something hurt on Tuesday.

What does "listening to your body" actually mean in practice?

It means treating pain as data, not as a verdict or an insult. A practical sequence, drawn from the general guidance above and not from any single protocol:

1. Locate it. One spot or everywhere? One spot gets more attention.
2. Score its behavior, not its intensity. Does it ease with warm-up or build?
3. Check whether it changes your movement. Technique changes are the loudest signal.
4. Reduce load or range for a session or two and see what happens.
5. If it persists or worsens, stop self-managing and get it assessed.

Notice what is missing: a motivational speech. The myth frames stopping as weakness. The practical framing is simpler — a few easy days now is cheaper than six weeks off later. That trade never favors the tough-it-out option.

For a deeper walkthrough of the decision points, our guide on Training With Minor Pain: When to Stop covers the same territory in more detail.

Does any part of the myth hold up?

A sliver of it does, and it is worth naming honestly. Mental toughness matters in sport. Finishing a hard session when you are tired and uncomfortable is a real skill, and athletes who never tolerate any discomfort will leave fitness on the table. The myth is not wrong that discomfort exists. It is wrong about which discomfort means what.

The distinction that matters is between effort and damage. Effort lives in your breathing, your muscles burning, your will to keep going. Damage announces itself differently — a specific structure complaining, and complaining louder each time you ask. Training hard through the first is what training is. Training hard through the second is gambling with your calendar.

This is where recovery work earns its keep. Managing stress, sleep, and load — the subjects we cover in pieces like Rest Between Sets for Strength and Size — is not the opposite of hard training. It is what makes hard training repeatable.

What should you take from this?

The myth of training through pain survives because it is a good story, not because it is good guidance. Soreness after novel work is normal and usually fine. Sharp, worsening, or technique-altering pain is a signal to back off and, if it persists, get assessed by someone qualified to assess it. Neither extreme — quitting at the first ache, or grinding through everything — serves your training.

The athletes who last are not the ones who feel no pain. They are the ones who read it accurately and act early. That is not softness. It is skill, and like any skill, it improves with practice.

The process is deliberately slow. Timing gear must be certified, officials must verify every condition on site, and a doping control sample has to come back clean before the file is complete. When any link in that chain fails, the fastest or longest performance in history simply never enters the book.

Here is how that chain works, step by step, and what happens when it breaks. The details below describe the general rules that track and field and most Olympic federations apply; the exact wording lives in each federation's own rulebook, which changes over time.

What conditions make a mark eligible in the first place?

Before anyone talks about ratification, the performance itself has to happen under controlled conditions. In athletics, that starts with the clock. Hand timing alone cannot produce a world record; the mark must come from fully automatic timing — an electronic system started by the starter's signal and stopped by a photo finish, with no human finger on the button.

Wind matters just as much. Sprint and jump marks set with a following wind stronger than the permitted limit cannot be ratified, no matter how fast they were. The wind gauge must be an approved device, positioned correctly, and its readings recorded on the results.

The venue and the gear get checked too. The track or runway must meet certified specifications, the implements — shots, javelins, poles — must conform to the rules, and the competition must be held in a sanctioned meeting with qualified officials present. A phenomenal performance at an unsanctioned meet is, for record purposes, a practice rep.

What do officials actually do during the event?

When a record is in range, the officiating crew shifts into documentation mode. A designated record official confirms the timing equipment is functioning and certified, verifies the wind readings, and checks that the implements and venue conditions meet the rulebook. The athlete is typically directed to a doping control station after the event, where a sample is collected under supervision and sealed for analysis.

Every step produces paper. The referee signs the results, the technical delegate confirms the conditions, and the sample collection paperwork is completed on site. If any of that documentation is missing or incomplete, the ratification file starts with a hole in it — and holes sink applications.

This is also why record days feel bureaucratic from the outside. The athlete may have already done the interview and the victory lap. The record, officially, is still pending.

What paperwork follows, and who signs off?

After the meet, the host organization and the national federation assemble the application: results, timing certificates, wind readings, equipment verification, the referee's report and the doping control documentation. That package goes to the international federation — World Athletics in track and field — where a ratification process reviews it against the rulebook.

Ratification is not automatic and not instant. The federation can request more information, and the doping result has to be finalized before the record is confirmed. That is why a mark can stand in results lists and headlines for weeks while the record book still shows the previous holder. Recent examples show the pattern: when Simon Ehammer broke a 14-year-old indoor heptathlon world record, the celebration came first and the confirmation process ran on its own schedule, as our Ehammer Breaks 14-Year-Old Indoor Heptathlon World Record coverage noted.

Once ratified, the record is published in the official list — and only then does it carry the weight the moment deserved.

Why do some records get rejected or stripped later?

Rejection usually happens at the conditions stage. A tailwind over the limit, a hand-timed clock, an uncertified course — any of these kills the application before it starts. Road running adds its own traps: courses must be measured and certified by an approved method, and the course profile and start-to-finish separation are checked, because a course that is measurably short or too downhill cannot produce a ratified record.

Stripping happens later, and it is the harsher failure. Doping control samples are not just tested once; they can be stored and re-analyzed years afterward as detection methods improve. When a retest or a later finding implicates a record holder, the federation can annul the result and remove the record retroactively. The most famous case remains the 1988 Seoul Olympic 100 meters, where Ben Johnson's positive test led to his result being struck and the title reallocated. More recently, relay records have been wiped when a stored sample from a single leg of the squad came back positive on reanalysis — one athlete's finding erases four people's mark.

The lesson is uncomfortable but simple: a record's validity has a shelf life defined by the sample, not by the podium.

What this means for athletes and coaches

Our analysis: treat eligibility as part of competition planning, not an afterthought. If a record is genuinely in range, confirm before the meet that the timing system, wind gauge and implements meet the federation's certification requirements, and know exactly which paperwork the record official must complete on the day. Athletes chasing marks at smaller meets should ask whether the competition is sanctioned at the level the record requires — an unsanctioned fast time is a training number, nothing more.

The doping side deserves the same practicality. Anything an athlete takes — supplement, medication, new product — carries testing risk, and contaminated supplements are a documented pathway to inadvertent positives. Independent third-party certification exists precisely to reduce that risk; we explain how one major scheme works in How NSF Certified for Sport Actually Vets a Supplement. For any personal decision about substances and testing, the qualified professionals — team physicians and anti-doping advisors — are the right stop; this article is information, not individual advice.

Consistency beats optimization, and the same logic applies to records. The athletes who end up in the record book are usually the ones whose performances were clean, documented and repeatable — not the single wind-aided jump that never counted. For more on how the sports world works behind the results, follow our sports news coverage, and for the physiology underneath the performances, see our science section.

That is the honest picture from a growing body of studies, including a meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Physiology in 2019 that pooled the available trials. The effects are real but small, and they show up mostly in how you feel, not in how much force you produce. If you like rolling and it fits your routine, the evidence says keep going. If you expected it to transform your training, it won't. We covered a connected angle in Mobility Training vs Static Stretching: What the Evidence Shows.

What is foam rolling, and what is it supposed to do?

Foam rolling is a form of self-myofascial release — a self-massage technique where you use your body weight to apply pressure to muscle and connective tissue over a roller or similar tool. Fascia is the connective tissue that wraps around your muscles. The theory is that pressure makes the tissue more pliable and signals the nervous system to reduce tension.

As Physio Effect explains, the mechanism is partly mechanical and partly neural: pressure applied to soft tissue is thought to alter tissue activity through the central nervous system, reducing tension levels. The exact biology is still debated. What matters for the reader is what the measured outcomes show.

Does foam rolling improve flexibility and range of motion?

Yes, in the short term, and without the trade-off you get from long static stretching. A systematic review by Cheatham and colleagues in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy found that self-myofascial release can improve joint range of motion without decreasing muscle performance — which is the key selling point, because holding a stretch for 30 seconds or more can temporarily blunt strength and power.

According to FoodGuides, rolling practiced consistently for four or more weeks has been shown to improve quadriceps and hamstring range of motion, and it can be combined with a dynamic warm-up without interfering with speed or force production. That makes it a reasonable warm-up tool for anyone about to lift or sprint.

One caveat deserves its own sentence. A 2024 systematic review with meta-analysis by Warneke and colleagues found that foam rolling and stretching do not beat any other warm-up intervention for acute flexibility and stiffness improvements. So rolling helps — but so does simply warming up.

Does foam rolling actually reduce muscle soreness?

This is where the evidence is strongest. Rolling after hard exercise reduces how sore you feel in the following days, even though the muscle itself has not measurably healed faster. According to reporting from HealthSpectra, a review of 21 studies found that rolling after exercise somewhat reduced the strength and sprint declines caused by hard training and lowered the perception of muscle soreness, while rolling before exercise slightly improved sprint and flexibility outcomes but did nothing for jump or strength performance.

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis by Zhou and colleagues in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies reached a similar conclusion: rolling after a workout can reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness — the ache that peaks one to two days after unfamiliar or intense exercise.

Notice the pattern. The benefit is mostly in how sore you feel, not in how fast the muscle repairs. That is still worth having, because feeling less sore makes you more likely to train again — and consistency beats optimization every time.

What foam rolling does not do

The marketing outpaces the data, and it helps to name the gaps.

• It will not replace a warm-up. Rolling alone does less than a well-designed dynamic warm-up; at best it complements one.
• It will not fix your tissue. The idea that a roller permanently "releases" fascia or breaks down adhesions is not well supported. The effects are short-lived and likely nervous-system driven.
• It is not a massage therapist. As HealthSpectra notes, clinical findings suggest foam rolling is unlikely to match the effects of a licensed professional.
• It will not meaningfully boost strength or power. Pre-rolling showed no effect on jump and strength performance in the pooled studies above.

None of this makes the roller useless. It makes it a small, cheap, low-risk tool rather than a recovery revolution.

How should you actually use a foam roller?

No consensus protocol exists — the research has not settled the best dose. But the practical guidance from the reviewed sources converges on a sensible starting point, and Physio Effect suggests trying 3 to 5 sets of roughly 30 seconds or more per targeted muscle group, applying gradual pressure in different directions, and dividing larger muscles like the quads into two or three sections. FoodGuides' summary of the recommendations lands in the same range: about 30 to 120 seconds per set, one to three sets per body part, moving slowly and pausing briefly on tender spots.

A few practical rules from the same sources:

1. Roll before a session if mobility is the goal; roll after if soreness is the goal. It can be used at virtually any point in the workout, as Fabrication Enterprises' review of the evidence notes.
2. Aim for consistency — several sessions per week beats one long Sunday ritual.
3. Mild discomfort is acceptable. Strong or sharp pain is not.
4. Position yourself carefully so you are not straining other joints to reach the roller.

The most commonly targeted areas are quads, calves, hamstrings, glutes, and the upper back. Skip the lower back and neck as a general rule — the sources flag these as areas where careful positioning matters and where a qualified professional should guide you.

Our analysis: where rolling fits in a real training week

Put the roller in the same category as the warm-up, not the supplement shelf. It earns its place on three grounds: it improves short-term range of motion without costing you strength, it makes the day after a hard session more comfortable, and it costs almost nothing in time or money. If you already do a solid dynamic warm-up, rolling adds little — a 2024 review found no clear advantage over other warm-up approaches — so treat it as a preference, not a requirement.

For readers working on mobility more broadly, it pairs naturally with the methods covered in our comparison of Mobility Training vs Static Stretching: What the Evidence Shows. And if you use soreness as your excuse to skip recovery weeks, our guide to Deload Weeks: When and Why Athletes Scale Back covers the bigger levers.

If you have an injury, persistent pain, or a health condition, talk to a qualified professional before adding any new recovery practice.