AFL ponders expanded finals series

March 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The AFL is considering whether to implement a nine or 10-team finals format for when the competition expands to 18 teams in 2012.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou confirmed the AFL is exploring the merits of expanding the home-and-away season to 23 or 24 rounds once the Gold Coast (2011) and greater Western Sydney franchises (2012) join the competition.

And Demetriou hinted the league is leaning towards creating a nine-team finals format, although the merits of 10 teams making the finals is also being discussed.

“We’re actually doing a huge body of work on 17 and 18 teams,” Demetriou said.

“As you know there’ll be a bye next year [and] we’re doing work around whether it’ll be a 22 or 23 or 24-round season when we go to 18 teams.

“They’re all options that we’re looking at.

“Our guys are doing a mountain of work with a sub-committee that involves clubs on what the structure of the competition will look like [so] hopefully by mid-year, probably towards August-September, we’ll have a better feel.”

The AFL has used a top-eight finals format since 1994 but Demetriou says that is likely to change in 2012.

“What do the finals look like? Do we still have a final eight? That’s being done at the moment,” he said.

“We have a top eight with 16 teams, which is 50 per cent of the competition. When you go to 18 teams someone could run the argument ‘why haven’t we got a top nine?’

“There’s no reason why we can’t have a top nine. Someone sent me a proposal the other day suggesting a top 10.

“We’ll look at all those things and we’d be remiss in our duties if we weren’t looking at and canvassing all the options.”

Meanwhile, former Essendon captain Matthew Lloyd says the preseason competition is unnecessary and called for a longer home-and-away season instead.

But Demetriou confirmed the preseason competition will remain.

“I think Matthew’s entitled to his opinion but every club tells us they need preparation to get these elite athletes ready for the season,” he said.

“They just can’t throw them into round one.

“I can assure you that…if we didn’t have a NAB Cup competition, particularly a NAB Regional Challenge, it would be to the detriment of the preparation of the players.

“We get to showcase the game, we allow people around the country to touch their players and connect to their teams that they wouldn’t normally see.

“Not having a NAB Cup or Regional Challenge would provide four or five weeks of no football coverage.

“And as other codes elongate their seasons we actually want football to be talked about.”

- AAP

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Short bursts of intensive exercise as good as hours of training

March 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 13 (ANI): The secret to staying fit is doing less exercise. Shocked? Well, a new study says short but intensive bursts of exercise lasting ten minutes are as effective as good as hours of training in fighting flab.

Boffins who have been studying interval training have found that it not only takes less time than what is typically recommended, but the regimen does not have to be “all out” to be effective in helping reduce the risk of such diseases at Type 2 diabetes.

The study appears in the March issue of The Journal of Physiology.

“What we”ve been able to show is that interval training does not have to be ”all out” in order to be effective and time-efficient,” says Martin Gibala, professor and chair of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University. “While still a very demanding form of training, the exercise might be more achievable by the general public—not just elite athletes—and it certainly doesn”t require the use of specialized laboratory equipment.”

Since Gibala”s first study on interval training was published five years ago, a growing body of research has zeroed in on this particular style of exercise in which you train hard but for less time.

Previous research by the McMaster group involved 30 seconds of maximal pedaling on a special bike followed by four minutes of recovery, and repeated 4-6 times. The new study involves eight to 12 one-minute bouts of exercise on a standard stationary bicycle at a relatively lower intensity with rest intervals of 75 seconds, for a total of 20-25 minutes per session. The workload was still above most people”s comfort zone —about 95percent of maximal heart rate — but only about half of what can be achieved when people sprint at an all-out pace.

“That is the trade-off for the relatively lower intensity,” says Gibala. “There is no free lunch; duration must increase as intensity decreases.”

While the total amount of exercise performed was higher than in Gibala”s previous interval training studies, the overall time commitment was still lower than what is typically recommended by public health agencies.

Subjects used in the study performed six training sessions over 14 days. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunflower oil may give 100m Olympic sprinters record speeds

June 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, June 29 (ANI): Feeding mice on a diet high in sunflower oil improves their running abilities by about 6.3 percent, which is equivalent to the 0.6-second improvement in the men’s 100m sprint that has been achieved between the 1932 and 2008 Olympic Games.

This is the finding reported by researchers at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Austria at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting on Monday.

The researchers attribute their finding to n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids present in sunflower oil.

They revealed that the mice fed for two weeks on a diet high in sunflower oil, which contains n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, ran on average 0.19m/s faster than mice fed a diet rich in linseed oil, which is high in n-3 fatty acids.

They said that their finding suggested that, over a 2 second sprint, a mouse fed on a high n-6 fatty acid diet would have a 0.4m advantage, representing a 6.3 percent improvement which equals that achieved in the 100m world records over more than 75 years.

According to them, for a mouse or other small mammal, this would be significant in evolutionary terms when escaping from a predator or catching prey.

“The results of the current study on mice suggest that moderate differences in dietary n-6/n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake can have a biologically meaningful effect on maximum running speed”, says Dr. Christopher Turbill, who presented the research.

“The application of this research to the performance of elite athletes (specifically those in sports that involve short distance sprints, including cycling) is uncertain, but in my opinion certainly deserves some further attention,” he says. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FIFA firm on rejecting WADA doping rule

March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Copenhagen – FIFA president Joseph Blatter remained adamant Wednesday in opposition to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) out-of-competition testing rules.

“We are the international federations which probably undertake the most but we need some private sphere for our footballers,” Blatter said while attending the UEFA congress in Copenhagen.

Blatter said the federations were jointly combating doping but this should not turn into a “witch hunt.”

WADA had said Tuesday it was “surprised and concerned” to read of FIFA and UEFA’s opposition to the “whereabouts” requirements that took effect on January 1, 2009.

WADA president John Fahey accused FIFA and UEFA of ignoring reality on their opposition to out-of-competition drugs testing.

“One of the key principles of efficient doping control is the surprise effect and the possibility to test an athlete without advance notice on a 365 day basis,” he said in statement.

“Alleging, as FIFA and UEFA do, that testing should only take place at training grounds and not during holiday periods, ignores the reality of doping in sport.

“Experience has demonstrated that athletes who cheat seize every opportunity to do so and dope when they believe they won’t be tested.”

Since the beginning of January, the world anti-doping code requires elite athletes to give notice of their location on a chosen one-hour period each day, seven days a week.

FIFA and UEFA formally rejected the notion of having to inform doping officials of the individual location of team-sport athletes.

In a statement they said there were “fundamental differences between an individual athlete, who trains on his own, on the one hand, and a team-sport athlete, who is present at the stadium six days out of seven, and thus easy to locate, on the other hand.”

The federations said they would like to see the individual “whereabouts” rule replaced by collective location rules, within the scope of the team and within the stadium infrastructure.

It also said it wanted “to draw attention to the fact that, both on a political and juridical level, the legality of the lack of respect of the private life of players, a fundamental element of individual liberty, can be questioned.” (dpa)

Filed Under: Sports News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Exercise does not increase osteoarthritis risk

January 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 28 (ANI): Regular exercise has no adverse impact on joints, says a new study.

Regular exercising is beneficial for weight control, disease management in cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and for improving psychological well being of an individual.

However, it has been claimed that it is potentially deleterious to one’s joints, in particular those of the lower extremities.

In a new study, the researchers from Boston, USA, and Ainring, Germany, reviewed existing studies on the relationship between regular exercise and osteoarthritis (OA).

They found that in the absence of existing joint injury there is no increased risk of OA from exercise.

“We found that in elite athletes where there was more likelihood of obtaining sports injuries, there was an increased risk of OA in the damaged joints, but in most people vigorous, low-impact exercise is beneficial for both it’s physical and mental benefits,” said lead researcher David Hunter MD PhD, New England Baptist Hospital.

“The largest modifiable risk factor for knee OA is body weight, such that each additional kilogram of body mass increases the compressive load over the knee by roughly 4kg,” he added.

The study is published in the Journal of Anatomy. (ANI)

Filed Under: Health News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,