The Utah Crimson Collective has selected FTW360 to launch its new state-of-the-art collegiate streaming app, For The Win 360°- Utah. This platform promises fans, students, alums, donors, and sponsors a transformative way to engage with their beloved collegiate team, The Utah Utes. From in-depth player profiles and interviews to real-time game summaries, exclusive behind-the-scenes content, and original programming to get to know the personalities from the Athletic Department, the new app is the ultimate 360° hub for collegiate sports enthusiasts.

To celebrate their new custom app, the Utah Crimson Collective is making NIL history by bringing every scholarship football player an opportunity to drive away with new 2024 Ram 1500 Big Horn trucks, complete with the Night Edition package. The lease and insurance costs are being provided by donors to the Crimson Collective for as long as each student is on scholarship and eligible, ensuring every player is acknowledged and appreciated for their contributions and encouraged to give back to our local Utah communities.

To qualify, players only need to have a good driving record and be willing to promote awareness of the Collective to help other student-athletes benefit from their own name, image and likeness, and will be encouraged to give back to their communities.

FTW360 CEO Derek Mattsson believes the Crimson Collective needed its own video storefront to commercialize the opportunities for each student-athlete.

“The three biggest needs of every student are education, housing and transportation. No one has addressed this transportation need comprehensively before today. We’re here to enable change by celebrating the Crimson Collective, the athletes, and everyone who loves their school,” said Derek Mattsson, CEO at FTW360. “Today’s action of addressing student transportation needs cannot be overstated. #KeysFortheWin is just one example of how FTW360 is working with the Crimson Collective to create new opportunities to benefit every student-athlete.”

With nearly 100 trucks ordered, logistics are a mammoth undertaking. The trucks are leased and managed by United Fleet Management and underwritten by private donors.

The new app services are being provided free to everyone courtesy of the Utah Crimson Collective and will launch on October 14 at the Utah game against the University of California.

The Crimson Collective app, loaded with exclusive content, empowers student-athletes to open doors to promotional and financial opportunities through partnership with the Crimson Collective. Moreover, it introduces an innovative avenue for donors and sponsors to support universities and collectives, ensuring amplified visibility for brands backing these athletes.

*This is an issued press release from BusinessWire.com. 

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Previous research has shown that gender stereotypes can lead to a phenomenon known as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat occurs when individuals, aware of negative stereotypes about their group, experience anxiety or fear of confirming those stereotypes. This anxiety can hinder their performance, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A recent story from PsyPost.org detailed the study and what went into the research. Below is an excerpt from the PsyPost.org story.

“Our previous research (Mousavi et al., 2021; ‘You Kick Like A Girl!’ The Effects of Gender Stereotypes on Motor Skill Learning in Young Adolescents‏) showed that short exposure to negative gender stereotypes affected motor performance for approximately three days, and eventually, the effect disappeared,” explained study author Seyyed Mohammadreza Mousavi of the University of Isfahan.

“In fact, short-term exposure to negative stereotypes led to short-term outcomes. However, the single stereotype manipulation used in most studies may not be realistic and may not fully capture how negative stereotypes influence individuals in stereotyped societies. In reality, individuals may be exposed to stereotypical information many times a week via diverse sources, including advertisements, newspapers, or conversations.”

“Therefore, to gain a more comprehensive ecological understanding of the stereotype threat effect and its endurance, we investigated the impact of prolonged activation of gender stereotypes on the performance and learning of adolescent girls.”

To investigate the impact of negative gender stereotypes on girls’ sports performance, the researchers conducted a carefully designed study that last nearly two weeks. They recruited a group of 46 adolescent Iranian girls (average age 14) who were novice futsal players, a form of indoor soccer.

The participants were divided into two groups: one repeatedly exposed to stereotype threat (ST group) and another not exposed to stereotype threat (NS group). For example, girls in the ST group were told, “You are going to perform a task of natural athletic ability that has been shown to produce gender differences; boys have been shown to perform better on this task.” In addition, approximately 48 hours later, participants in the ST group received a card that suggested that men had historically dominated the sport. In contrast, girls the NS group were told that futsal is a sport where both men and women can perform equally well.

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The depth of the squat will be different for everyone, some people have the mobility to go below parallel (the thighs parallel to the floor) without sacrificing form. However others find this more difficult, and their end range of movement will be reaching parallel.

A recent story from Yahoo! Sports details the benefits of adding pause squats to your workout.

Below is an excerpt from the Yahoo! Sports story.

Usually the weight lifted is at a slight reduction in comparison to your normal sets. This is because the increased time under tension from the pause will also increase intensity. So aiming for 10%-20% weight reduction is suitable for pause squats.

Pause squats result in improved strength in the ‘hole’ of the squat – this means the bottom of the squat. Many lifters find this portion of the lift the hardest, due to the change from eccentric to concentric (lengthening the muscle to contracting the muscle). This can often result in lifters failing their rep at the bottom of the squat. By pausing in the most difficult part, with a slightly lower weight, you are gaining strength there and are more likely to progress.

People hit plateaus with their squats for a variety of reasons. However, when the plateau is caused by poor lifting mechanics and a lack of strength, the pause squat can help iron these out by building strength and control in the most challenging portion of the movement, allowing us to make use of the full range of movement again and then increase weights.

To read the full story from Yahoo! Sports, click here. 

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Shark Week is eight hours across five days and features a bevy of conditioning drills to prepare the Wildcats for the Division 1 grind.

Defensive slides, conditioning ladders, tug-of-war games, distance running, fast-twitch running, timed running — the K-State basketball team does it all, and then some.

A recent feature story from K-State Sports offers insights into the Wildcats’ training tactics.

Below is an excerpt from the K-State Sports story.

It’s all-encompassing. It’s taxing. It’s Baier, already an early riser, in his element with every K-State basketball player at 6 a.m. And like we said, they undergo eight hours of training total during the week, or between 45 minutes to 90 minutes per morning session, so every moment is precious, and every line must be touched, and every hand must be clapped, or they’ll do it until it’s right because there can be no player heading home, head down, saying, “I didn’t win the day,” because that means nobody won the day, and that’s, well, that’s not even an option in Shark Week.

Shark Week, the brainchild of K-State head coach Jerome Tang. Shark Week, the brainchild of Jerome Tang, National Coach of the Year. Shark Week, the key to outlasting the other guys, the anchor to K-State going 5-0 in overtime games last season, including that 98-93 thriller over Michigan State to advance to the 2023 Elite Eight.

“There’s always Shark Week on the Discovery Channel,” Tang says. “We call it Shark Week because our guys are going to discover some things about themselves and each other.”

“I don’t want to dive into it too much because it’s family secrets,” Baier says. “But there’s time lengths on the floor and there’s ladders, which is a progressive deal where you go down-and-back and down-and-back and so on, and everyone in basketball runs that. We’ll have some variations of that. We’ll do some things that are a little different. We ran the hill this Shark Week. We had a certain distance they had to run and a certain amount of time to go up and down.”

Then there’s the holy grail to the entire week, the key to unlock the next level, the final obstacle before the start of official practice.

“Coach has the Championship Run, which is the hardest thing, and I’m not going to say what it is, but I can say there are 30 reps to it, and they have to get it done,” Baier says. “It’s a big deal. I have a hard time thinking the Championship Run will change. It’s a challenge. The guys have to come together. By any means necessary, they have to complete all their reps.”

It runs further than Shark Week. It’s about Kinexon technology, which in simple terms, is a GPC device players wear on their shorts. It tracks total mileage so Baier knows distance and speed variance, understanding fully that if a player runs six or seven miles-per-hour for four miles, it’ll create different stress than if he runs 2 ½ miles but is 0.9 miles of over 16 to 17 miles-per-hour, which is a fast pace in basketball. Baier utilizes the device in part to measure the amount of stress exerted in practice — “actually comparing Shark Week and practice is kind of fun,” Baier says — and he posts players’ individual practice speeds and jump heights, which are measured through Force Plate technology.

“The jump test, they have their foot on each plate and jump on the plates, and that spits out a ton of different metrics — jump height, how fast a player jumps off the ground, whether the player pushes more with his left or right leg, and whether he landed with more pressure on his left or right leg,” Baier says.

To read the full feature from K-State Sports, click here. 

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Ultrasounds, or musculoskeletal (MSK) ultrasounds can assess injuries by visualizing muscle, tendon, ligament, and joint integrity in real-time. They can additionally detect early symptoms of overuse injuries and monitor rehabilitation progress.

A recent story from Soner Matt Haci’s Medium details the potential of AI-integrated ultrasounds. Below is an excerpt from Haci’s story.

While a powerful tool, traditional ultrasound has barriers limiting its wider adoption for athlete performance:

• Requires years of training for accurate image capture and analysis
• Limited workflow integration and data accessibility
• Qualitative rather than metrics-driven information

Now, AI automation makes ultrasound’s benefits achievable anywhere by anyone. Intelligent algorithms guide ultrasound usage, enhance imaging, and extract biometrics to provide actionable insights.

PONS: Next Level Ultrasound Powered by AI

PONS exemplifies the potential of AI-guided ultrasound. Their solution transforms MSK ultrasound with features like:

• Easy-to-follow scanning instructions for precise positioning without extensive training
• Automated image enhancement for superb visualization
• Integrated with training load monitoring and electronic health record (EHR) systems
• Quantitative data pulled from ultrasound scans showing tissue changes and biomechanical stress
• Cloud-based reporting dashboard with alerts for coaches and physicians
• Ability to share key metrics across the care team for coordinated health optimization

PONS unlocks continuous, metrics-driven ultrasound access, replacing guesswork with data-based decision-making for injury prevention and performance.

To read the full story from Soner Matter Haci, click here. 

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