Athletic mastery depends on understanding official gameplay rules, optimizing equipment technology, and implementing sport-specific conditioning drills.
With 265 million participants worldwide, soccer attracts players of almost any size and shape. It’s no coincidence that the sport has such high participation rates given that it requires neither height like basketball nor brawn like American football.
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Ankle injuries account for about 20 percent of all sports injuries, notes Roald Bahr, a prominent researcher of sports medicine at Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center in Norway.
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Soccer players at the recreational level come in all shapes and sizes. At the higher levels of the game, though, players tend to have a very fit physique, lean and muscular without being too skinny or overly muscled. Professional male forwards -- and the occasional female, such as former U.S.
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Sizing Cannondales, a range of road bikes known for quality and innovative design, involves standard sizing techniques as well as Cannondale-specific adjustments.
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While Cannondale has more of a Rolls-Royce reputation among certain cyclists, Trek has Tour de France bragging rights, with nine victories on its models. Lance Armstrong, for example, winner of a record seven consecutive Tours, rides a Trek.
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Soccer players typically take getting ready for the game fairly seriously. At the adult level, the game lasts 90 minutes, and that’s a long, long time to try to compete athletically if you misplaced a critical element of gear or have neglected your warmup.
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Players who try to play indoor soccer in tennis shoes or cross-trainers often find that they don't have sufficient control over the ball. That is because those shoes are not designed for indoor soccer.
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You may look at your bicycle tires as something you are fully happy with as long as they don’t go flat. But important components of their construction enable tires to contact the road safely, hold their shape and protect the inner tube.
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Soccer typically offer options of team training with a team of 12 to 18 players; semi-private training, where two to five players contract with a pro for lessons; and private training, where you get one-on-one attention from a top teacher.
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The best stretches before playing softball prepare your body for the practice or game ahead and help you prevent injury. You’ll be doing fancy stepping to get your lower body stretched with dynamic movements that increase your range of motion.
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In its early years, Major League Soccer in the United States briefly modified FIFA’s Laws of the Game to avoid ties in the regular season. As of 2010, soccer in the United States had dropped this and other modifications to stay in step with FIFA.
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Debating the best sport for exercise for the overall body is a bit like discussing whether you like Mary Ann or Ginger -- or even Gilligan -- best on “Gilligan’s Island.” No definitive answer exists. Still, qualified experts including “Forbes” magazine, ESPN.
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Whether in soccer, in rugby or for football punts, kicking a ball primarily engages the muscles of the upper leg -- the quadriceps and hamstrings -- as well as the glutes. In addition, your core, hip and foot muscles, as well as the shoulders, see action in your kick preparation, contact and follow-through.
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Famous soccer players who have played with a cast on their right arm include Chelsea forward Didier Drogba, who represented his home nation, the Ivory Coast, in the 2010 World Cup. Drogba wore a soft cast under a long-sleeved shirt in the wake of an injury days earlier.
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Millions of passionate fans follow two ball sports, one the favorite of Americans and the other the favorite of the world. Each is played on a large rectangular field and based on rules that evolved in the 19th century. “Soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts.
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Outdoor soccer cleats come in four different outsole patterns -- soft ground, firm ground, hard ground and turf -- each matched to a type of playing surface. You’ll want to invest in a sufficient number of surface-specific shoes to cover the types of fields you typically play on.
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Only about 113,000 people worldwide earn their living playing soccer, and of those, only about 7,000 play in CONCACAF, the region including North and Central America and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, more than a quarter-billion people play soccer worldwide, including more than 44 million in CONCACAF.
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A hockey puck can scorch across the ice at 110 mph, as measured by all-star contests in 2011 in the U.S. and Russia. The fastest pitchers can launch a baseball at 105 mph, as the Cincinnati Reds' Aroldis Chapman managed in September 2010.
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The answer to whether you can wear soccer cleats for soccer is, “it depends.” If you're the parent of young athletes tearing from one recreational league to another, the soccer cleats can do double duty for softball.
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The sight of a kickstand on a road bicycle is bound to annoy a cycling purist. “A racing cyclist would never have any kind of kickstand,” wrote noted cycling author Eugene A. Sloane in “Popular Mechanics,” capturing the snobbery against kickstands that was well under way in the 1970s.
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