GoPro has announced that it has become a title sponsor for the Vail Valley Foundation’s extremely popular Mountain Games, a celebration of mountain sport, lifestyle and music. The GoPro Mountain Games will be held June 6-9, and will see athletes from around the world compete in nine sports and 25 disciplines including running, cycling, climbing, rafting and slacklining. We’re sure this year will see GoPro provide even more ways for athletes to share the experience with the world.
Category: Pro Sports
Pro Stance
Even if you can’t dunk like a pro you can take to the court with socks that evoke the pros. Sock maker Stance has introduced its NBA Legends Collection with 10 socks paying homage to basketball greats including Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dennis Rodman, Kenny Smith, John Stockton, Bill Walton and James Worthy. These might not help your game but you can feel like the pros are with you in spirit and on your feet.
Helmet Study to Include Hockey and Baseball
Much has been made about concussions and football helmets, but now the Virginia Tech – Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences is looking to expand its ground-breaking research to include hockey, baseball, softball and lacrosse. The five year plan will look to rate helmets worn in those sports and determine the ability the helmets have to lessen the likelihood of a concussion resulting from head impact.
The ratings for the helmets will begin with hockey in the fall of this year, followed by youth football in 2015, and then baseball, softball and lacrosse in 2016.
[Via Product Design & Development: Sports Concussion-Risk Studies to Include Hockey and Baseball]
gForce Tracker Adds Up Trauma
Head injuries are getting a lot of attention, all the way from little league teams to the pros. While the focus is primarily on football, other sports including baseball come into play on the issue. A new device, the gForce Tracker (GFT) will help athletes (and parents of younger athletes) track cumulative trauma to help tell players when they need a time out. Continue reading gForce Tracker Adds Up Trauma
Best and Worst of 2012
Another year is (almost) behind us. Here are look at the best and worst of 2012 in fitness and well-being.
Best of 2012 Spirit of Competition – The London Olympics
Best of 2012 Tech Trend in Fitness – Rugged/Wearable cameras
Best of 2012 Minimalism – Barefoot running trend
Best of 2012 Software – Fitness apps
Best of 2012 Sustainability -Recycling and Upcycling
Best of 2012 Software – Fitness apps
Best of 2012 Sustainability -Recycling and Upcycling
Best of 2012 Equipment – Ultegra Di2 and Electronic Shifting
Best of 2012 Know When to Fold – Foldable skateboard
Best of 2012 Brain Buckets – Improved helmet technology
Worst of 2012 for Fair Play – Lance Armstrong Doping
Worst of 2012 in Sour Grapes – New York Times Magazine profile of Lolo Jones
Thank you for your support. KineticShift will see you in 2013!
Hockey Stick Tech
The times are changing in hockey, and as we’ve noted previously so are the materials used in making sticks. This week TheStar.com noted that even peewee players are taking to the ice with high-tech hockey sticks:
A generation ago… an elite team of 12-year-olds might have been lucky to have two players who could give a goalie pause when they pulled the trigger… Those days, when players carried sticks hewn largely from the forests of Ontario and Quebec, are gone. Today, sticks are made in factories from Mexico to China to Vietnam. Constructed of high-tech composite materials and bearing price tags that can reach $300, the sticks can now put dents in both goalie masks and in wallets. Continue reading Hockey Stick Tech
Holiday Gift Idea: Handmade Baseball
Baseball bats come from Louisville – except for those that don’t. But what many fans of America’s pastime don’t likely know is that most – if not all – baseballs are made in Costa Rica or Haiti. In fact most major league balls are produced by Rawling in Costa Rica. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have an American made ball.
Bergino Handmade Baseballs are made in America by the company founded by former sports agent Jay Goldberg. The company makes a range of specialty balls including city maps, and ones with world themes. There are even options for custom balls. So while you may never own a ball signed by Babe Ruth or other greats you can have a ball that is truly all your own.
Latest Air Jordans Take Flight
Michael Jordan has been off the court for a while now, but don’t expect his signature “Air Jordans” to come down anytime soon. The shoes, which were first launched in 1985 have evolved over the years, and the latest have been spotted – a bit like a UFO. The Air Jordan XX8 fittingly has an “other-worldly” look thanks to the Schoeller mesh that provides a snug fit. Designed for serious basketball, these feature a molded carbon fiber heel counter and Jordan Flight Plate that will help wearer’s react on the court. The Air Jordan XX8 will be ready to take off this winter.
Nike Goes to the 8s with Kobe
We’ve seen a lot of unique – even “signature” – basketball shoes but we have to admit, we’re not sure what to make of the Nike Kobe 8 System Basketball Shoes, which were developed in collaboration with Bryant. These are made of Nike Engineered Mesh and feature a graphic snakeskin print – thus evoking Kobe’s Black Mamba nickname. Of course you might need to play like Kobe to pull these off.
Adidas Brings Big Color
Want to look like the NBA pros on Christmas Day? Adidas will help you out with the new Adidas Big Color NBA Jerseys, which are $90 each and are available for all 10 teams that will take to the court. These feature the same monochromatic color scheme with just a hint of accent color in the solid color logos, names and numbers. These are available now from the NBA Store
Composite Repair Coming to Hockey Sticks
A good hockey stick – especially one made of composite materials – isn’t cheap, and unfortunately it isn’t the sort of the thing that is treated with the utmost care and respect. It is in fact a tool that can be beat around pretty hard, and this in turn can get expensive when it breaks. One-piece composite sticks, made of layers of carbon fiber, can cost $300 or more, so not exactly cheap to replace.
But Randy Langille of Vancouver just sees this as an opportunity. He’s been repairing composite sticks since 2009 and now has 23 locations across Canada. His company Integral Hockey has adopted a process and special tools used in the manufacture of aerospace components to repair composite hockey sticks. Continue reading Composite Repair Coming to Hockey Sticks
U.S. Naval Academy Researchers Look to Improve Brain Buckets
The military has often created new technology that trickles down to everyday products, and now researchers at the U.S. Naval Academy may have paved the wave towards making a more robust helmet. However, this isn’t a military helmet, although there is no reason why their research couldn’t help soldiers on the battlefield, but rather a football helmet.
Physicist Murrary Korman and student Duncan Miller reportedly developed a simple experimental model to study helmet-to-helmet collisions – the types that happen regularly during a football game. The pair were able to get a pair of helmets from the football program and then created a ring of plastic that was just a 16th of an inch and six inches in diameter (about the size of an average skull) to place inside. Continue reading U.S. Naval Academy Researchers Look to Improve Brain Buckets
New Technology Reduces Football Related Head Trauma
One would think that something called “Unequal” would return mixed results. But in fact Unequal CRT, an uneven supplemental helmet padding designed by UNEQUAL Technologies, has been found to reduce the occurrence of concussions during the season.
The Unequal CRT padding – CRT stands for Concussion Reduction Technology – dampens and disperses energy associated with blunt force trauma. This occurs enough to register significant drops in the Severity Index, a measurement of the hazard or risk of injury associated with helmet impacts. Unequal CRT has already been used by some pro athletes in the NFL, and is now available for high school and college football teams.