Inspiring Our Children to Pursue STEM Through the Olympics | Vince Bertram The world's top athletes are competing at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Their talents and abilities are truly amazing. Their preparation and dedication to their sport and their country are inspiring. From the half pipe to the ice rink and the snowboard to the speed skating suit, STEM experts make the 2014 Winter Games possible. The clothing worn by our athletes is just as intricately designed and manufactured. Engineers also play a vital role in the stadiums, arenas and venues in which our athletes perform. Consider Shaun White and the half pipe. But to perfectly execute those tricks, the athlete and his or her coaches and trainers must be knowledgeable in STEM as well. STEM is the foundation of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. Athletics are important in our culture and in teaching our children life lessons and skills. Project Lead The Way is the nation's leading provider of STEM education programs for students in elementary, middle and high school.
The Best Body Recomposition Workout We can’t overstate the awesomeness of German engineering. The land that brought us jet planes, the Mercedes, and Heidi Klum also introduced perhaps the best method of body recomposition known to the fitness industry—that is, a timeless strategy to gain muscle and lose body fat simultaneously. Achtung! Hala Rambie, a scientist who defected to West Germany during the Cold War, found that fat loss could be accelerated by raising levels of blood lactate—an energy substrate. Perform the exercise pairs (marked “A” and “B”) as alternating sets. Each exercise is assigned a tempo. To increase intensity, decrease rest between sets by 15 seconds for every two weeks you repeat the workout. Alternate Workouts One and Two for three sessions per week, resting a day between each session. Click through below for the moves:
Cards: HSC PDHPE Core Two - Characteristics of the Learner What is the mnemonic for remembering the characteristics of the learner? Personality An individual's characteristic way of behaving Traits Characteristics or observable features of a person What are the things that make up the athlete's personality? level of motivation willingness to listen consistency reliability determination willingness to learn enthusiasm cooperativeness dedication What type of personality is the best learner? Learners whose personality reflects positive ways of behaving, because they are more receptive to advice, more cooperative and more helpful in creating a positive learning environment Heredity Genetic characteristics inherited from our parents What effect do inherited characteristics have on an individual's learning? These characteristics limit the dimensions of the athlete's potential What hereditary characteristics influence performance? percentage of fast/slow twitch muscle fibres somatotype (body shape) Gender Height Conceptual ability How does confidence develop?
SPEEDO LZR RACER - the world's fastest swimsuit Ryan Lochte (USA) swims in the new Speedo LZR RACER Image Gallery (2 images) February 14, 2008 Following three years of research that included input from NASA, tests on more than 100 different fabrics and suit designs and body scans of more than 400 elite swimmers, Speedo has launched its most hydro-dynamically advanced - and fastest - swimsuit to date. The SPEEDO® LZR RACER™ is made from a unique lightweight, water repellent and fast-drying fabric that has been developed to reduce drag and help hold the swimmer’s body in a more streamlined shape. The new suit has 10% less passive drag (meaning the drag present when the swimmer is gliding through the water after a dive or turn) than Speedo’s 2004 FASTSKIN FSII and 5% less passive drag than the FASTSKIN FS-PRO® - which has seen 21 swimmers break World Records since its release in March 2007. The specially engineered, highly flexible fabric called LZR PULSE™is ultrasonically welded so as to appear seamless. About the Author Related Articles
If You Want to Be Fit, Do Not Ignore Proper Body Alignment In a previous post, The Components of Physical Fitness, I broke down physical fitness into it’s component parts and provided a brief introduction of each part. In today’s post, I will investigate in further detail one of those components: Proper Body Alignment As I said in the previous article, proper body alignment involves the relative position and interplay of your skeleton, skeletal muscles, ligaments, tendons & fascia. If your body is out of alignment in one place, there will be adaptations elsewhere. Luckily for us, if things do get out of alignment, it’s not too hard to find a good physical therapist or an osteopath to help with analysis and/or re-balancing your out of balance body. If seeing a specialist is out of your price range or you’re just a DIY kind of person, there are a lot of body alignment gurus willing to post a ton of free info online: Each of these individuals have a unique approach to putting your body into balance. Most likely, this is what you are going to see.
Supplements Vitamin and mineral supplementation continues to be a contentious issue amongst health professionals. The common catch-cry of the medical community is that vitamins and minerals are adequately available from our food. It’s hard to appreciate the credibility of this advice, when it is delivered from a profession that receives negligible nutrition training. In Australia, this claim contrasts in stark hypocrisy against laws prescribing the mandatory fortification of bread with thiamine and salt with iodine. In addition, folic acid supplementation in pregnant women is a recommended requirement to protect an unborn child from developing spina bifida. The inconvenient reality is that food ‘ain’t what it used to be. Whilst sustainable agricultural practices such as biodynamic farming aim to restore our soils to health, we have considerable work to do before this option is universally adopted and available to everyone. Whole Food vs Synthetic Supplements Designing a Supplement Program Vitamin C
Making Sense of Modern Fitness Data | Fitness - Health and Fitness Advice All that data poses a singular question: Which metrics are worth paying attention to? In the former Soviet Union, global sports domination was so vital to the propaganda machine that the regime employed an army of 5,500 elite sports doctors to analyze every aspect of their athletes, from heart rates to sleep cycles to cortisone levels. “It was very complicated,” says Val Nasedkin, a Russian track-and-field athlete during the 1980s. Nasedkin, who went on to study sports science and became a coach with the Ukrainian Olympic development team, recalls dreading the testing process. “You had to go to the lab, where you’d exercise almost to exhaustion while they took muscle-tissue samples, blood samples, hormone panels, and so on.” Of course, the system was rudimentary at best. Fast-forward 25 years and the dream has become reality. If you’re more motivated by competition, look for something that quantifies your effort rather than just your distance. Halson’s advice?
Internal Strength: Silk Reeling, aka Six Harmonies Movement Once, a Chinese friend and I were discussing the differences between “internal martial-arts” and “external martial-arts”. He mentioned that in earlier China, many martial arts used the six-harmonies method of movement that is the hallmark of the so-called “internal martial arts”. Even today you can find a goodly number of old, pedigreed Chinese martial arts that contain the term “Liu He” (“six harmonies”) in their full title, but over time many arts have devolved to less pure usage of the use of qi, jin, and dantian, regardless of the name they use and the classics that they espouse. Today, because body movement must be completely repatterned, only a small number of arts attempt to use the full six-harmonies movement principles and of course not everyone practicing those arts fully complies with traditional requirements. The “reeling silk” movement of Taijiquan is actually just another way of describing focused six-harmonies movement. The Six Harmonies Basic Theory Connections in animals
Internal Strength The Pelvic Floor Paradox Massage TodayDecember, 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 12 By Leon Chaitow, ND, DO When I started writing this periodic column, I mentioned that every now and then, a "wow-factor" enters my life; synchronistic events and pieces of information coincide to illuminate what was previously foggy. As the fog lifts, simultaneous thoughts often occur. The Problem Let's start with a clinical fact I have been aware of, but have been unable to explain. Now, clearly, the patients I was seeing were the ones in whom such treatment had failed. Structural evaluation often revealed very well-toned musculature. In the United Kingdom, my license as a doctor of osteopathy allows me to conduct internal examination and treatment with informed consent, but this was not part of my usual assessment protocol - until recently, that is. Nowadays, with a clinical chaperone or member of the patient's family present, such examinations are always suggested (and sometimes declined) in such cases. What changed my approach? References
Finding and activating pelvis floor muscles Pelvic floor muscles can be hard to feel when you are exercising or moving through daily life. "Engage the pelvic floor" or "Activate the pelvic floor muscles" are common instructions in Pilates as well as in Internal martial arts, but many students are unsure about how to get that to happen. My favorite image for getting the pelvic floor muscles in on an exercise is to think of bringing the sit bones together and up. The sit bones are the bony parts that you feel under you when you sit up straight on a firm surface. This is what is erroneously described as squeezing your anus. Correct description is lifting your perineum. Here a Bagua teacher talks about this from the Internal martial arts point of view: Importance of Down
Pilates News and Articles: Ode to the Pelvic Floor by Angela Barsotti You know how there's no one more evangelical than those who were saved by the thing they initially resisted? That's me with both the pelvic floor and Pilates. I had to live in a body that was steadily devolving for some time before I listened to the myriad voices recommending Pilates to me as a cure for my seventh whiplash incident. I knew better after all, I was a jock. Then the doctor agreed with everybody and said "well, you might as well try Pilates, pain management is a nine or ten month waiting list..." so I did it. Thus it continued with teacher after teacher cueing this pelvic floor thing and me understanding it so little that I didn't even hear the words most of the time. At the same time I was still having issues with continence (think three years since I started the work) and sexuality in that I still couldn't tell the difference between needing to pee and being horny. Around this time I went in search of my sex drive. He finished the job for me. So what about men then?