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[ Wednesday, May 31, 2006 14:10 PDT ]
On the Clock or Wasting Time? Age Adjusted Swimming Metrics
Section:
Sports
Summary:
The evidence is in according to USMS, swimming performances tend to peak at 28, decrease 1% annually for about 40 years, and then begin to decline more rapidly.
Main:
The good news is that this data has led to an calculatated adjustment that can be used to compared times across gender, stoke, distance and age. For example, a 90 second 100 yard short course free style, would adjust to a one minute, 03 seconds for a fit and trained 28 year old male.
In addition, older trained swimmers tend to have a reduced cardiac reserve and a longer pulse rate recovery rate than their younger colleagues. Because of age related injury, and decreased in shoulder girdle, core and limb joint flexibility, stroke efficiency is progressively reduced over time. Timed intervals and pacing must be adjusted and individualized accordingly.
So, what are some appropriate strategies for the older swimmers, their trainers and their coaches?
* If you monitor you heart rate during swimming, be aware that cardiac stroke volume (pump work) is greater by 10% than when exercising on land in a standing position.
Therefore, comparative Cardiac Output calculations over time must be adjusted. For example, a HR of 130 bpm in the water is the equivalent of 140 bpm on land and may represent 80% of maximal CO. At that level of exercise, total muscle mechanical energy and heat output may easily be increase 5-6 fold over baseline.
* In addition ,over the course of one hour of near maximal effort, body chemistry parameters may excess the capacity of normal homeostatic mechanisms to maintain physiologic pH. Breath holding, forced anerobic metabolism plus fluid and electrolyte imbalances can contribute to dangerous cardiac arrhythmias in suseptible athletes. Overheating is less of a problem in 78 degree water than when it is in the bathtub temperture range.
* Active cool down at moderate (70% of max) ,at the end of a set reduces the clearance time of lactate.
* BTW, lactate is now seen at less of a Foe and more as a Friendly Fuel as also recently noted by Gina Koleta of the nytimes.
* Some use independent training self-directed training, using systems like Total Immersion. Others, seek out supportive coaching, settings,workouts and groups that are age appropriate.
* Some use aids, like fins to keep their place in line….or lane. Some of the winded, weary, bored, or just plain discouraged dropout or just fade away.
* Pregnant women and those on medication and substances with cardiac effects may need to modify their workout sets.
BTW: Blythe Lucero of Berkeley Adult Masters, swim team has a new senior swimmer appropriate book, Master Swimming: A Manual from Meyer & Meyer of Germany. Its tone is calm, its message is clear, and the quality of the writing and graphics are first rate.
More:
Calendar: • Davis Community: • Davis Aquatic Masters: • Exercise and Health: • Swimming: • Training: • UCDavis: • Athletics: • Aquatics: • Exercise Physiology: • Aging & Exercise: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:
[ Tuesday, May 30, 2006 16:27 PDT ]
Coaching for Life: A Story from the Heartland
Section:
Briefs
Summary:
“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment”—- John Wooden
Main:
There is a distinction between coaches and critics. The former tend to be concrete, plain spoken, positive leaders who consistently point out opporunites of improvement. The later are given to publically display their sense of the truth in a manner or style that disregards the impact of weightly works and inferences .
Examples of the former were on full display as the Speedo organizing team, USA Water Polo coaches, referees, aspirants to the US Women’s Youth National Team and parents completed four days of clinics and matches hosted at the UCDavis Schaal Pool facility. One out of six made the final cut on the last day. Yes, there were disappointments and some tears, but no tantums, hysterics or accusations.
What was on display for all to witness was the consistently appropriate poolside manners, encouragement and correction by the young coaches. Their deportment was business like, professional, and factual, Correction and feedback was rapid, respected and spot on.
Meanwhile, the competition for limited youth althletics time, talent and resources seems to be growing as smaller nuclear families headed by working parents make decisions with and for their kids.
BTW, Latinas, particularly from Southern California, will soon be making their appearance on the collegiate and the international water sport scene.
More:
Calendar: • Davis Community: • Davis Aquatic Masters: • Exercise and Health: • Immigration: • Science and Technology: • Social Sciences: • Demography: • UCDavis: • Athletics: • Aquatics: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:
[ Monday, May 29, 2006 13:15 PDT ]
Memorial Day Connections
Section:
Commentary
Summary:
“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others. ”——Winston Churchill
Memorial Day in Davis is all about BBQ, swimming and a little remembering of the way it was in times and places far removed from the Heartland.
Main:
* In addition showing the colors and waving the flag, some like to stepback and remember those who wore the uniform and served overseas.
For example, download ,look and listen to an MP3 clip from Memorial Day 2003 in Santa Rosa.
Or, step back in time to the WW II, battle for the Pacific and the occupation of Japan from the bridge of LSM 371 as recalled of two young Naval officers from Oregon and Alabama.
More:
The local news is that the first place game of the USA Youth Women’s Water Polo Zone meet at the UCDavis Schaal Pool will be a NorCal vs SoCal event. The Central California team, including three young women from Davis, will face Central California Coast team that includes Santa Barbara, Ventura and part of Los Angeles Counties. Following cuts,Tuesday’s Games will be between mixed and matched teams. Another round of cuts will be made before offers are extended to those qualifying for the July Junior Women’s camp in Los Alamitos. There, team members for the 2006-7 National Junior Women’s Water Polo team will be selected.
Calendar: • Monday: • Family: • LegacyJournal:MyWeblog: • Personal Pearls: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:
[ Sunday, May 28, 2006 15:32 PDT ]
Memorial Weekend in the Heartland
Section:
Briefs
Summary:
Memorial Weekend is all about the end of school, the beginning of summer activities and the start of swimming. At the UCDavis, Schaal Pool over one hundred of the best high school aged women water polo players in California are being rated by USA Water Polo officials over three days of matches. The ratings will select the 18 best who will attend the July National Training Camp in Los Alamitos for the final selection of the U.S. Youth Women’s Water Polo Team.
Main:
2006 Pan American Games competition in Montreal will follow in August.
More:
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[ Saturday, May 27, 2006 13:27 PDT ]
Foreign Fire Fighters: Contract Workers in the National Forests
Section:
Feature
Summary:
Today, the PBS program NOW from New York City, featured foreign contract workers in the Lolo N.F. of Montana who were replanting tree seedlings in a burned area. The ernest young woman reporter on the scene appeared to have little personal experience and even less understanding of the value, utility and necessity of manual labor and reforestation. She was light years removed from the Montana youth of writer, Norman Maclean and his acclaimed, Young Men and Fire. The good news balance was provided by young female F.S. Ranger on scene who added a seasoned and reasoned tone to the dry, but important factural details of the operation on the ground.
Whether, the young reporter followed the example of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and went fishing, hiking or boating in beautiful western Montana near the college town of Missoula is unknown. We note that the local forecast today is for snow.
Main:
I was recently reading the 1907 Forest Service journal entries of Ranger Grandpa Dan, the first of three generations to work as U.S.D.A empoyees during the summer. the fire season in the Malheur National Forest in Grant County, Oregon. Two previous generations had been pre Forest Service volunteer firefighters. His entries tell the story of mill workers from the Utah based, David Eccles founded and controlled, Oregon Lumber Company at Bates and contract Japanese Sumpter Valley narrow gauge railroad work gangs out of Baker City joining forces when “recruited” into the fight against lightening strike or right of way fires.
At one time, college students for around the country willingly worked as summer employees in the west. We did the hard work of planting trees, piling brush, building trails, clearing streams, maintaining camp sites and generally having a great shared out of doors experience. At the end of the summer students returned from fields, the construction job and the forests fit, tanned and ready for some football.
That reserve source of student labor for the well paid work of fighting wild fires has long left for foreign travel planned and led by campus faculty, for office internships, for summer camp counsellor positions, for youth athletic camps and for a wide variety of less physically challenging opportunities.
Those of us who “gandy danced” and ate with hardy and hard working Mexicans on summer railroad maintenance trains benefited from the experience. Fitness and the ability to handle hard manual labor was a matter of pride. The tools of the trade including the Pulaski and the spike driving hammer. Today, the equivalent is found in the garage, the gym, the Athletic Cub or the Activity Center complete with the latest soy supplement for cancer prevention and steamed rock message to help manage the stress of final exams.
My, how times have changed! Meanwhile, the battle of obesity associated diabetes, heart disease, peripheral athersclerosis, and hypertension continues.
The good news in 10 sq. mile Davis is that the Unfied School District and the taxpayers are spared the expense of school bus system. The majority of kids and UCDavis student have bikes and do ride them to class, to the playing fields and to shop, socialize and just plain workout.
More:
Meanwhile, yesterday Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. was reportedly paralysed by fear because of noise generated at a real work site.
Calendar: • Demographics: • Immigration: • News: • Retrospect: • (0) Comments: • (0) Trackbacks: • Permalink:
[ Wednesday, May 24, 2006 16:10 PDT ]
An Inconvenient Truth: the Man, the Movie & the Book
Section:
Movies
Summary:
It is not what we do not know that gets us in trouble. It is what we believe to be true that ain’t so. .... Mark Twain
Today, the lastest sequel to one of the longest running myths in the long history of human oral language opened in Hollywood and New York after a kickoff at Cannes on the French Riviera. The 92 minute “documentary is a combination of Power Point lecture and film clips with an Earth in the Balance update narrated by Al Gore.
The original story line is by Roger Revelle out of the biblical tests of the Flood that was visited on those who failed to heed a prophetic warning to mend their sinful ways or suffer the wrathful consequences.
Main:
As it turns out, Gore was lectured (to a degree) ° at Harvard by a patrican San Diego Oceanographer, Dr. Revelle on the science of CO
2
and the dangers of human population growth. He also had a turn a divinity student, a journalist and wrote a foreward to one edition of Rachael Carson’s, Silent Spring.
* What is missing is an analysis of the Keeling Curve and the cause and effect realtionship between that 25 year record of CO
2
from the permafrosted and frequestly snowy 13, 780 ft. summit of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. That data shows a 0.005% rise in the supposedly “deadly, toxic and contaminating” “GreenHouse Gas ” indicator at that altitude. Even the average body temperture of humans will vary +- .5 of a degree over the course of the day.
* What is lacking is a junior high school level explaination of the global carbon cycle and the enormous buffering capacity of the world’s oceans.
* What is not defined is the premise of the argument. That premise appears to be that “inconvenient ” human population growth is associated with generally increasing levels production, consumption and atmospheric fossil fuel carbon production.
* What is not mentioned is nuclear power for the generation of electricity.
* What is ignored by Vice President Gore is the clear and present reality of massive loss of life, crops and property from natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, tornados. tsunamis, mud slides, lowland flooding, big flu,and yes, locust plagues abound the world, including Yogyakarta Java Indonesia and other places far from FIMA, American shores and the American Heartland.
What is predicted is a 10 year window of opporuntiy for a mandated prescription for change. The content of that political pill is not in the package insert , on the jacket of the accompanying 2 lbs $24 book from Rodale Press, or the credits of the teaser movie/soon to be DVD.
The PBS evening news predictably featured Gore acolytes, including his former Chief of Staff, who seemed to agree that the long hard road of old line precinct primary politics is not on the horizon for their man. The new big issue advocacy politics build on the Internet, quick media and timely publishing is now seen as “the newest next big thing” in the upcoming opportunity to be drafted into An American Idol like Presidential sweepstakes in 2008.
On the Sunday, June 4 Newwork TV News Al Gore was at his moral certainty best during an at home in Carthage, Tennessee by former Clinton administration insider, George Stephanopaulos.
Once again, he evoked the arresting image of the New York World Trade Center Memorial Site been submerged by the 20 feet rise of thermally expanded Oceans augmented and diluted by fresh water from melted Greenland and Antarctic glaciers.
Meanwhile, in the heartland of Davis, the Da Vinci Code is the most discussed movie of the week. The reviews are mixed. ” A long, dull, disappointing 2 ½ hr. lecture.” seems to be the prevailing exit opinion. Two out of five was the Aggie student film critics rating.
More:
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