If you were to take a tour through any number of physical therapy clinics or chiropractic offices in this country, you would be amazed to find a startling trend. Pull out any number of patient charts. Pull out their corresponding billing slips, or whatever financial information is submitted to the insurance company. Compare the two.

It is amazing how many treatments will take exactly 8 minutes. Soft tissue massage? 8 minutes. Treadmill running? 8 minutes there too. Strengthening exercises? Wow, imagine this, 8 minutes.

Is 8:00 the exciting new, super-special parameter for treatment these days? Or is there something else that drives all of this?

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I am admittedly a little bit old-“school”. Though I have fully embraced technology, I do still appreciate the simplicity and peace of reading the morning newspaper and having a cup of freshly-brewed java along with it. I might be one of the 10 or so people left on the planet that are still reading the paper the old-fashioned way.

When you read the news, and ponder what you’re actually reading, you’re oftentimes left wondering. Did someone really say that? Really? Seriously? Surely you jest. Truth can, at times, be stranger than fiction.

Some of these “newsworthy" items (and I use that phrase loosely) make you want to laugh. Or throw up. Or something in between the two. They may not deserve a full blog post to themselves, but do deserve the light of day.

Today, I am starting a new feature called “Rhubarb Ruminations”. You’ve seen the occasional “Playlist Pondering” as I have reflected on music. Similar concept, different topic. A rhubarb is a “quarrel, fight or heated discussion”, and I think that there are some things that merit a little bit of discussion in our world. Rhubarb is also a plant that is also known for it’s medicinal qualities – as a laxative, among other things. Rumination is simply the act of pondering, or perhaps even more appropriate, the “act or process of chewing cud”. This, of course, is stimulated by the presence of roughage, something that rhubarb would certainly provide. Suffice it to say that “Rhubarb Ruminations” will provide some hot and tasty news briefs, regurgitated Rhubarb-style, to keep you thinking, discussing, and maybe even laughing.

So today I bring to you a few classic items from the last 24 hours. And they just happen to revolve around, imagine this, the Party Of No.

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Athletes are always looking to optimize their training. Student athletes are no different. But the demands on the student athlete may be very different above and beyond the actual imposed training demands.

One thing that serves as a positive: student athletes tend to be highly motivated to train. They will train, and they will train hard. And let’s face it – students are already in an environment which requires a high level of motivation to succeed academically.

Intense academic coursework places a high demand on the central nervous system. Students can be stressed by those demands, and may not have good strategies to alleviate the stressors functionally. If they are active, they may use training sessions as a means of stress relief.

Recovery-Centered Training proposes that training is only as good as the athlete’s ability to recover from and adapt to the training session(s). This is where the student athlete can run into difficulties.

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We are faced with our own mortality on a regular basis. We may build a bucket list - a list of things you want to do before you die – because of this sense of “holy crap, I need to do some things while I have time remaining on this planet”. The phrase became more widely used after the release of the movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

In principle, the bucket list makes good sense. I understand that people may have a list of items that they want to experience prior to departing this world. Or things they want to see or do. And I get that. Hell, I probably have a few of my own.

But it's the modern-day interpretation of it that loses me. You complete the bucket list item, say “I did that”, scratch it off the list, and move on to the next item. It’s done. It’s so 21st century.

In my humble opinion, there is so much more to life than just knocking a bunch of items off a to-do list. And therein lies the incongruity for me. Is the bucket list about “the journey” or “the destination”? Is the bucket list about “doing things”? Or is it about the journey of self-actualization, context and growth? Is it about our “instant gratification” mentality, our drive to achieve and to accomplish, our need for a defining moment that gives us meaning? Or is it about leaving a legacy for the world to enjoy when we are gone?

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