Tag Archive for 'età'

Sit less and move more

Age is just a number, and though we are helpless to stop the progress of time, we can easily affect the age we feel.

Sit less and move more to age better.

The right exercises for your age

Immagine correlata

Keeping fit: how to do the right exercise for your age

With muscles, ‘use it or lose it’ rings true

This study included 40 recreational masters athletes between the ages of 40 and 81, who trained 4 to 5 times a week for running, swimming or cycling. Neither leg muscle size nor strength declined significantly with age among the subjects…

Mark Sertich, 96, is the oldest hockey player still active

Mark Sertich, 96, is by all accounts the world’s oldest active ice hockey player. And when we say active, we mean active: The video above shows his morning routine three times a week, when he drives himself from his house to the rink to lace up his skates in early morning pickup games in his hometown of Duluth.

“I very seldom think of what my age is,” he says. “It’s not really a big factor, unless you let it be a factor.”

Risultati immagini per Meet the World's Oldest Hockey Player

Youth sport: problems and solutions

Youth sport is becoming a great problem and an article published in the magazine of US Olympic Committee helps to understand what might be the reasons and proposals for solutions. I wrote in a short summary but the  article by Christine M. Brooks (Summer 2016) is certainly wider and interesting to read.

  • There is a high pediatric dropout rate from sports (between 2008 and 2013 there were 2.6 million fewer six to twelve year-old kids participating the six traditional sports).
  • Coaches are using higher training intensities at younger ages than ever before possibly causing long-term harm to young athletes (the LTAD model attempts to guide coaches about the appropriate training for children who are at different maturational phases).
  • There is an increase in childhood obesity and subsequent health problems (in the United States, 17 to 31 percent of children and adolescents are obese).
Goals
  • The principle of enjoyment embraces Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s notion of ‘FLOW,’ that in turn, explains why individuals enjoy an activity. Approximately 40 percent of pediatric athletes in one survey claim they dropped out of sports because they were not having fun. The coaching goal is to train athletes in small, manageable learning steps so they remain in the zone of FLOW. Research indicates that educated coaches lower kids’ anxiety levels and lift their self-esteem.
  • The principle of striving for improvement involves enticing young athletes to constantly strive for the upper limits of their genetic potential while concurrently keeping them in FLOW. If they are out of ‘FLOW,’ it is theoretically impossible to motivate ongoing practice and striving, and therefore progress toward full genetic potential will be blunted.
  • The principle of appropriate training goes hand-in-hand with the child’s growth and maturation. The LTAD model attempts to match structural growth and maturation to the appropriate motor skill complexity and intensity of physical training.
  • The principle of doing no harm is at the basis of coaching. Four million school-age children in the US are injured while playing sports every year. The reason can partly be attributed to stressing a body that has immature balance and coordination beyond its capacity.

If Roger Federer & Valentino Rossi show that talent is ageless

“Yeah, I’m still here,” sings Vasco Rossi and the same they say Valentino Rossi and Roger Federer. Both came second, proving once again to be worth the first and second place in the world ranking. Many of them have given up for dead on many occasions, stating that they did not know winning no more, they were old or the physical was not  holding them more.

Probably these objection for a while time were true, but any athlete goes through moments like these, often the champions exceed them by changing something in the way they train and live competitions. Most likely the other sink, because they use these negative moments as an excuse to withdraw, because of something they consider superior to them. People often focus their comments on their age, as if it was an essential limit, a characteristic to which we must surrender.

I heard to say: “Federer is old and no longer able to hold that little exchange, otherwise he loses the point.” But how many would like to have this trouble just to be second in the world? They also say that because of this threshold has had to change how you play. True, but why interpret this change as a negative connotation? And instead to emphasize his determination to change to stay on the top of the world ranking. The same it was said until last year for Valentino Rossi: “Why does he not withdraw rather than collect disappointing results?”

The chorus of “why he/she does not abandon” has been told also about other sport champions. In Italy Giovanni Pellielo, in shooting, after three medals in three different Olympics, in London, at age 42, he did not enter the finals and also here the same voices, he has not noticed them, he has trained and the following year again won the world championship. Valentina Vezzali, 41, fencer, she won everything repeatedly, and she wants to go to Rio. Not to mention Andrea Pirlo and Gigi Buffon and the dream they are living in these days with Juventus. We have to evaluate these men and women for their performances but not to the age. Above all we have to learn from them, because they are an example of fighting mentality in the face of difficulty and humility in dealing with the daily sacrifices, that are needed to return to excel in their sports, without being sure to succeed in this venture.

Easy to do it, years ago!

Has it ever happened that what it was easy for you a few years ago,

now you do not do it anymore!

27 Shocking And Unexpected Facts You Learn In Your Twenties

Sport e età

Le scienze dello sport si occupano delle prestazioni di quei soggetti giovani, chiamati atleti, che devono fornire le cosiddette prestazioni eccellenti. In nome di questo risultato è previsto che qualsiasi forma legale di allenamento sia ricercata e giustificata. Si gioca sul concetto che lo sport è un’attività scelta volontariamente e che pertanto gli allenatori e gli scienziati sono nel giusto quando decretano allenamenti che a loro avviso dovranno produrre questi risultati eccezionali. Chi non vuole adeguarsi può fare solo della poesia ma non vincere.
Quando gli stessi scienziati e allenatori si interessano invece a coloro che non sono classicamente identificabili come atleti (definizione ottenuta principalmente guardando l’età cronologica) il paradigma precedente non vale più. L’ideologia dominante diventa quella del benessere (chi lo definisce?) che prevede un’attività moderata da svolgere al massimo a giorni alterni. Se poi si supera la mezz’età lo sport è spesso considerato come pericoloso.
Questa concezione dell’essere umano è per forza semplificata e ambedue sono sbagliate ma la scienza (psicologia compresa) partecipa a diffondere questa immagine riduttiva. Commenti?