Wow! There’s a lot of good reading out there on the health & fitness front. I can’t comment on all of it but I’ll refer you to several articles that may pique your interest. I’ll get back to recovery strategies for endurance athletes later.
- Protein Sports Drinks Proven to Give Best Performance: This is pertinent to the recent discussion on endurance training recovery. This article from Science Daily profiles an analysis of carbohydrate-only recovery drinks vs. carbohydrate-plus-protein recovery drinks. According to one of the study’s authors, “Liquid carbohydrate and protein supplements given early during a six hour post-exercise recovery period helped subjects better maintain subsequent time trial performance and power output, compared to supplements with carbohydrate alone”
- Negative Phys Ed Teacher Can Cause a Lifetime of Inactivity: Science Daily again gives us a profile of an interesting study–one that may illuminate why so many of us in the Western World have an aversion to exercise.
- Running Shoes May Cause Damage to Knees, Hips and Ankles, New Study Suggests: Once more we turn to Science Daily. The question of whether or not running shoes are actually healthy for us has yet to be answered. Here we have evidence that in fact barefoot running results in less stress to joints of the lower body.
- Stop Doing Sit-ups: Why Crunches Don’t Work: Most of us in the fitness business gave up crunches and similar type movements long ago. If you’re still doing them you’re wasting your time. This article from Newsweek offers a decent explanation of why.
- Exercise & Weight Loss: The remarkably well-informed and eloquent lads of the Science of Sport give us a four-part look at the most popular issue in health & fitness.
All this time I never really put my finger on it: 7th and 8th grade PE class with Mrs. Duck. I’ve never liked sports or exercise since then. Now you know.
I think it makes a lot of sense. I’m aware of an effort to offer a different version of PE where the activities aren’t always win-or-lose athletic competitions. Kids participate in things like indoor rock climbing or skateboarding; or they’re shown how to use exercise equipment. The kids with a drive to play competitive sports will filter towards those sports one way or the other. I don’t know how much traction this new PE ever got, but it sounds like a good way to engage kids in exercise without making them lose out.