Yeah, it’s still bad for you – but see how good it can look!
What a great interesting catch line from Fancy Fast Food. They take regular fast food and show you how to dress it up to look like a fancy restaurant meal.
Just proves there is a niche market for most things….
Thanks to NZ Herald for the original story.
A recent publication titled “The association between motor skill competence and physical fitness in young adults” studied the ability of 18-25 year olds to throw, kick, and jump and compared this to their overall fitness.
What they found what that those who could throw, kick, and jump better had better fitness measures also. In other words, the less un-co the less fit they were likely to be.In some ways this result is not ground-breaking: playing regular sport surely makes you more co-ordinated, and ‘fitter’. Interestingly the only ‘fitness’ measure not correlated with co-ordination was flexibility.
Pretty good argument for developing motor skills (and encouraging participation in sport) in young people…
Innovative way to keep people active whilst at work: The Treadmill Desk.
I also like the “hold informal meetings in the halls or outdoors” idea!!
If you had to choose a sport – any sport – that you had to try to become a World Champion in, what would you choose?
I bet it would not be the 100m.
I have previously referred to how some sportspeople do not have a lot of competition in their sport, and so comparing them with other (more popular) sports is massively unfair. Say, for example, comparing the 100m Butterfly gold medalist to the 100m running gold medalist in any competition is a little unfair because the 100m runner has faced so much more competition than the swimmer in their career.
My point is emphasised when I hear yesterday Usain Bolt is considering taking up the Long Jump, and instantly people are discussing the 8.95m World Record (which is 18 years old). Admittedly there is a correlation between the requirements for these events, but could you imagine Tiger Woods announcing he was going to take up Baseball and people speculating if he would break the season home run record? Likewise if A-Rod announced he was going to try to play on the PGA Tour, no one would speculate that Jack Nicklaus‘ Major record was in danger.
I have to say I would be a little put out if I were the current Long Jump World Champion, as what people are effectively saying is: “Someone who has never competed in your event may take it up in the future, and if they do they will beat you by over 30cm”.
Another example is the occasional article we see in the newspaper or on the news about a World Champion sportsperson who is struggling to be able to afford to fund the requirements for their sport. I personally feel for these people because they have obviously worked hard to achieve the pinnacle of their sport – and I think this is excellent – but cynically think that if enough people really cared they would not be the feature of such articles.
This is not an attack on sports that do not face a lot of competition. In fact I personally enjoy participating and watching a number of such sports (most likely because I got beaten badly in SWIS Form-2 100m sprint final). Additionally, there is little people in these sports can do to overcome this. It is not like I think Rugby players should train to race in Track and Field to prove they are ‘better’ athletes. All they can do is to try and achieve the top of their sport, and all power to them to achieve this.
So what are the benefits of stretching?
Let me first ask: Do you stretch as part of a warm-up? To prevent injury? To help recovery? To relax (or as part of an exercise program – ie Yoga)? Or to try and gain flexibility?
It turns out, especially with regards to preventing injury and improving performance, that static stretching before activity is probably of no benefit. In fact there is some research to suggest that it may even be detrimental to certain athletic endeavors (the obvious exception to this is sports that directly benefit from holding static positions in extreme range of motion such as gymnastics). However the real kicker here is the type of stretching that you do – more dynamic stretching seems to be a lot better pre-activity than static. As time goes on, and more research in this area comes out I suspect we will find that specific dynamic stretches improve performance, and static stretching impairs it. I hope that saying “stretching” before activity is a good or bad thing will become a bit like saying “eating” before activity is a good or bad thing – it really depends on the type of stretching/food that you are talking about.
With respect to injury prevention there may well be an ‘optimal’ degree of flexibility, and if you are very flexible already then more stretching may make you more susceptible to injury! There is only minute evidence to suggest that pre-activity static stretching helps performance, and even the supporting evidence shows very small benefits. It currently appears that if you are interested in preventing injury then the type of static stretching you do before the activity is probably as relevant as the colour of your underwear.
When it comes to gaining flexibility though the story is a little different: As mentioned in a previous article, flexibility is very trainable. That is the more you do the more flexible you become. If you want to increase your flexibility PNF stretching is the more effective than static stretching, although not all research supports this claim.
Like exercise in general, the best type of stretching to do is the type that you enjoy – as you are most likely do this in the long term, and therefore experience gains in. If your aim is to increase flexibility then you could not go past a few sessions a week of PNF stretching with a friend/personal trainer or a yoga class, however if the thought of these repulse you then 30mins of static stretching in front of the tv will do the trick for you.
Why is “anticipation” not a skill to be rewarded in Track and Field? It is in most other sports I can think of – Rugby, Cricket, Football, Basketball, Hockey, Cricket, Baseball… But also individual sports like every Racket sport and Golf.
Usain Bolt recently ran 9.43 seconds for the 100m at the World Track and Field Champs in Berlin (first man ever under 9.50), but because it took him 0.146 of a second to react to the gun he was only awarded a time of 9.58. A logical thinking person may suggest Bolt needs to work on the start and look to lower the 0.146 seconds reaction time and then he would have achieved the better time. But in fact this is not the case, because you are not allowed to start within the first 0.100 of the race in the 100m. In fact if you do once you are warned, and twice disqualified!
In other sports your time does not begin until you do (for example you have an ankle bracelet of some form when running a marathon and your time starts once you cross the start line). I understand for the spectacle of a ‘race’ it is much more desirable that the athletes run at the same time and so I am not suggesting that athletes ‘go’ whenever they want and we subtract their start time from their finish time. What I am suggesting is that it seems strange that someone should be penalised for accurately anticipating the start. In 2010 the IAAF will have a no tolerance policy to false starting. I think at the same time they should change the rule so athletes are only ‘false started’ if they start before the gun (ie before 0.000 on the clock).
For other left field posts see:
Yodelling Diet (and you thought diets didn’t work – shame on you!)
Athletics vs Swimming (aka: Why running backwards should be an Olympic Sport)
19.19 a few days ago in the 200m makes it two golds and two world records for Usain Bolt at the World Champs.
There have been some interesting comments come out since the race from a German sprinter clearly suggesting Bolt is a drug cheat. What, and no one else in the final was too? Why pick on him? It seems to me the answer is obvious: Because he is winning and breaking world records by so much. So is some of the real annoyance in the quality and undetectability of the drug that he is taking?
In my cynical mind I have accepted that many of the top track and field athletes are on some kind of illegal performance enhancer. When I think about it, it bothers me….but I try not to think about it – kind of like the once happy animal that I often eat.
For me wasting energy on the drug debate is redundant simply because ‘trying to rid track and field of drugs’ is a aim right up there with achieving ‘world peace’ and ‘food and shelter for everyone’. That is to say honorable, desirable, legitimate cause that I fully support, but unfortunately totally and utterly unachievable.
Follow on from yesterdays world record in the 100m is analysis presented by The Science of Sport.
In it shows the 20m split times for each segment of the 100m. For those that are not familiar with the 100m you may be interested to learn that runners usually slow down in the race, and the winner is usually the runner that slows down the least!
Of note for me was Bolt’s 60-80m split time of 1.61 seconds. That means he covered this distance at an average speed of over 44km/hour!
Or put another way: If he could run every 20m split at this pace the total for the 100m would be 8.05 seconds! Totally unrealistic of course, primarily due to the required effort (and time) to accelerate from standing (or crouching) still…but still interesting.
