There is nothing like it in sports. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.

In an era of pro sports going 80 games (or more) just to decide who makes the playoffs ... it's hard to get terribly excited anymore. Big salaries, no team loyalty by the players - it's all become a little boring. There are few pro team sports that I will bother to watch anymore. But the Stanley Cup finals always gets my attention - especially if it goes seven games.

If you're a kid growing up in Canada, you play it in your head over and over again ...

You're out playing street hockey in the fall, or on the frozen river in the winter. You probably just finished shoveling the fresh snow off the ice. There are a couple of rudimentary goal posts. They might be a spare pair of mittens, or a couple of small piles of snow. You might be out in the moonlight, or perhaps the glow of some fluorescent lights that make the bay look just like the inside of Maple Leaf Gardens - at least to those who are there, ready to play. It might have been just a pick-up game amongst the kids in the neighbourhood, but to everyone there, it was always game 7.

And every time you hit the ice, you play the scene over and over and over ... 

Read more...

For many, losing weight is a roller coaster experience. They lose it, they regain it, they lose it, they regain it. People start looking for quick fix solutions. Many people never succeed in losing weight. Worse yet, many become obese without ever really understanding why.

We now have boot camps and countless products that are “the best solution to losing weight”. And then we are exposed to TV shows like “The Biggest Loser”, with obese participants being yelled at by personal trainers who have almost militaristic and fanatical approaches to exercise.

Do these type of fanatical approaches just attempt to sell more product and prey on an unsuspecting, desperate, and highly fearful public? Does effective weight loss really require such drastic measures?

Effective weight loss has, at it’s core, a very simple premise. It is a simple math equation:

Read more...

It's time for sine die in the Texas Legislature. In all honesty, Sine Die is Latin for "without day", but I digress. And if everything holds according to what I am reading right now, lawmakers will not be called back for a special legislative session this summer. Maybe.

Not that that should really be a problem anyways. Legislators are here for 140 days - every two years. According to my calculations, that would be 24 weeks of five-days-per-work-week like the rest of the world. Yes, in Texas, legislators do their work for 140 days, then disappear from Austin for the remaining 590 days of the two-year period. So now, legislators won't be doing anything again until - 2011. Wow ... a mere 76 weeks away. Now that is vacation!

So if you had a bill or piece of legislation that died in committee, or was left pending ... guess what? You get to wait 590 days ...

Read more...

Training for any sport involves building a framework that will foster success. Program design is the most critical building block for a successful training plan. Periodization, an integral part of program design, can help build this foundation if used correctly.

An effective training program should foster four main goals: build the desired performance level, prevent detraining, prevent under-recovery (and injury), and provide for a standardized and methodical progression of mechanical loading.

Though many coaches will agree on the types of workouts needed for success, there is great disparity in the application of the principles of periodization. This could, in effect, be the difference between success and failure, or between optimal performance and injury.

There are 5 key concepts underlying any optimal training program:

Read more...