No mat­ter where you scull, win­ning does not require the stroke of a genius

Sports are an essen­tial part of my life, and I think they can be a fun and reward­ing activ­ity for any­one. Since my early child­hood, sports and other phys­i­cal recre­ation have been an almost daily part of my rou­tine, and this con­tin­ues through today. I played three var­sity sports in high school, one in col­lege, and have won com­pet­i­tive tour­na­ments in all three. I have been coached by pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing the coach of a pre­vi­ous top 5 ten­nis player. I have per­son­ally coached in three sports, ten­nis, vol­ley­ball and hockey, and con­tinue to coach vol­ley­ball today. I truly believe that any­one can be suc­cess­ful at any sport; that’s not to say you can be a pro­fes­sional, but that you can learn a sport, play it well and reap the ben­e­fits, includ­ing the eustress might want to add a wiki or news arti­cle link here — not every­body knows what this is of a com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, the cama­raderie of team­mates and other like-minded indi­vid­u­als, and win or lose, the sat­is­fac­tion from know­ing you played to your max­i­mum poten­tial. Read More

Hey, it was a long way to Marathon for the Greeks, too.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to cross the fin­ish line of a marathon, or you look guiltily at the run­ning shoes under your bed that your boyfriend bought you as you get dressed in the morn­ing, but for what­ever rea­son, you’ve always wanted to be a run­ner. Unfor­tu­nately, the con­cept always seemed so daunt­ing and out of char­ac­ter for you.  Now is as good a time as any to step back and take a look at that wor­thy goal anew.  Run­ning can be an abun­dantly enjoy­able, healthy, and stress-relieving pas­sion if you fol­low some basic steps to get started.  I’ve been run­ning seri­ously for only about five months now and just fin­ished my first half-marathon, but I’ve dab­bled with it on and off for three or four years, and I have been able to dis­till some key tenets for success.

First Things First — Get the Right Equipment

It’s a commonly-held myth that run­ning has to be ardu­ous and painful, but that’s sim­ply not the case.  Most novice run­ners just start run­ning with­out prop­erly prepar­ing, and this can lead to unnec­es­sary sore­ness and dis­com­fort, which can then lead to quit­ting soon after starting.

There is an ongo­ing debate about what role run­ning shoes play in injury pre­ven­tion.  Some aca­d­e­mics have argued that there is evi­dence to sug­gest that run­ning shoes have lit­tle or no effect on injury pre­ven­tion.  On the Aus­tralian blog “Bare­foot vs. the Shoe” the author goes so far as to pose the ques­tion, “Is there a run­ning shoe mafia?” This fan­tas­ti­cally thor­ough arti­cle even alleges that “Run­ners wear­ing top-of-the-line train­ers are 123 per cent more likely to get injured than run­ners in cheap ones.” Read More

Clean up your den­tal habits and get the respect you truly deserve.

John Wooden was an extremely suc­cess­ful bas­ket­ball coach at UCLA.   He has writ­ten numer­ous best-selling books that con­tain his beliefs on excel­lence in life; win­ning on the court was only sec­ondary in his eyes.  Wooden is a man who is con­cerned about char­ac­ter over all else, so why is he con­cerned to always “Be neat and clean?”  A major part of char­ac­ter is inter­act­ing with the peo­ple around you, and that requires an approach­able appear­ance.  Whether con­scious or not, body lan­guage and per­sonal upkeep are intan­gi­bles that every­one judges.  Would you trust a doc­tor that hadn’t show­ered in days, con­temp­tu­ously kept their arms crossed, and didn’t give an easy smile?  As stated by my friend’s sis­ter who is a den­tist, good teeth seem to sep­a­rate the suc­cess­ful from the not.  While tooth care is not exactly some­thing to be pas­sion­ate about, it is some­thing that can only help your chances of success.

Oral health is a big­ger part of over­all health­care than you might real­ize.  As tight ham­strings may cause back issues, its been proven that gum dis­ease is also been cor­re­lated to seem­ingly unre­lated prob­lems.  A while back I read an arti­cle that stated heart attack vic­tims have an unusu­ally high inci­dence of gum dis­ease.  After doing some research it turns out that that peo­ple with peri­odon­tal dis­ease are almost twice as likely to suf­fer from coro­nary artery dis­ease as those with­out peri­odon­tal dis­ease (http://www.perio.org/).  Sci­en­tists the­o­rize gum dis­ease either causes inflam­ma­tion in the arter­ies, or the bac­te­ria from the infected gums also attaches itself to coro­nary arter­ies.  A sim­i­lar con­nec­tion has been found in stroke vic­tims.  With the rate of med­ical research, the num­ber of con­di­tions seem­ingly unre­lated  to oral health can only increase.

Don’t let a neg­a­tive out­look knock the wind out of you.

Too often we go through life and take things for granted.  Not just the fragility of the good times, but that the mediocre ones can­not be improved.  Stoic com­pro­mise is never a  good solu­tion.  It is bet­ter to max­i­mize the enjoy­ment of activ­i­ties you choose voluntarily.

I reside in Buf­falo NY, where hockey is a big part of life.  Rein­forc­ing this stereo­type, I played var­sity high school hockey and am a big fan of my local NHL team, the Buf­falo Sabres.  Cur­rently I play in a com­pet­i­tive league with an orga­nized team, and with a recre­ational group on Thurs­day nights.  The com­pet­i­tive team is moti­vated, goal-oriented, and gen­er­ally pos­i­tive about hockey and life.  The other group is sadly different.

Even if you have no inter­est in hockey:

• There are things to learn from any situation
• Most sit­u­a­tions have some­one to admire
• There is a way to excel at and be proud of every­thing you do

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Car­avag­gio encour­ages you to eat your fruits and vegetables.

The other day I walked into an office I where I occa­sion­ally work, and a col­league came up to me and exclaimed “Brian, have you lost weight?  You look like skin and bones!”  Con­sid­er­ing I am 6’1″, ath­letic, and weigh about 180 pounds, I know that I am of a healthy weight.   Amer­i­can per­cep­tions of a healthy weight are com­pletely skewed. Even a week­end trip to Mon­treal will show that this is true.   Regard­less of mis­con­cep­tions, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of bad diet are profound:

• Increased death rate from heart dis­ease and can­cer
• Low­ered aver­age lifes­pan
• Cost of health­care due to obe­sity and other diet-caused conditions

And those are just three broad phe­nom­ena that affect the pop­u­la­tion as a whole.  Per­sonal sto­ries have more impact.  I was lis­ten­ing to a adver­tise­ment for a gym the other day, and the woman they were inter­view­ing said “I didn’t real­ize how lim­ited I was by my weight.”  How­ever seden­tary Amer­i­can cul­ture is, most activ­i­ties peo­ple find fun and reward­ing require mobility.

Main­tain­ing a healthy diet can be hard.   Your body craves the foods that are the worst for it, and this is a prod­uct of mil­lions of years of evo­lu­tion.  Fats have the high­est caloric den­sity, are there­fore felt as the most valu­able by our sur­vival instincts.  Luckily, some sim­ple obser­va­tions and recog­ni­tion of habits can let you see how easy it can be to over­come diet problems.

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