From The Sports Desk

[hellsapoppin]

poppin, if you are not already doing so, by way of helping preserve your mobility, lemme encourage you towards swimming/water exercise and some cycling

I do just a little bit of yoga every day, especially the breathing exercises but not much else. It's just too painful to do anything else darn it.

[bounty]

moving in water and on a bicycle are both easier than walking and because of that, there's a good chance one or both of them will be pain free for you, or at least, pain reduced.

[Sancho]

Oh yeah, I'm a big believer in swimming for health and flexibility. Evidently so is Kramer:

Exercises every muscle in the body. It's great for the back. 4 hours in this chop and I'm a full inch taller!

I can't say that I recommend swimming in the East River though.

https://youtu.be/0hK3pBcY3k0?si=Xed8DD_0WJJvMNf-

Is there anything not covered by Seinfeld?

[bounty]

I think all the characters had a sort of essentialness to them, but id vote for Kramer as the most valuable player in the show.

[Sancho]

No way, man. Newman was the MVP.

I remember a good article in Outside Magazine about the benefits of an impact workout. The writer looked at running vs cycling for the lower body, and boxing vs swimming for the upper body. The prevailing consensus of the day was to avoid impact workouts because that sort of thing would lead to the breaking down of your bones. (We all know someone who quit running because his “knees gave out”) The gist of the article was the contrarian view that the body needs impact to signal strong bone growth. He mentioned connective tissue, but the article was mainly about bones. The illustration introducing the piece was an artist’s rendition of two femur bones, one long and slender and the other massive and heavy. The bones were labeled: Swimmer’s Leg, Runner’s Leg. The runner’s leg looked like it belonged to a gorilla, and the swimmer’s leg looked like it might snap in a stiff breeze. Anyway the article made a lot of sense to me. And I still like to run, just not every day anymore.

In another part of the article he analyzed the mineral cost to the body a distance athlete pays. By distance athlete, he means someone under exertion for more than two hours, marathon runners, stage cyclists, backpackers, stuff like that. He essentially took an athlete’s jersey after the event and rung out the sweat. Then he analyzed what minerals had been leached out. What he found was that distance athletes are loosing a lot of calcium, and probably should be taking a supplement.

At any rate, I took the article to heart and have never shied away from “impact” sports. Even cycling for me involves impact. I impact the road on occasion and sometimes cars, or trees from time to time while mountain biking, but that’s really another subject.

I wish I could find the article. It’s from about 20 years ago. As I recall it was a two-parter.

[bounty]

nooooo, in baseball terms, id put newman as the best relief pitcher or pinch hitter.

I don't think ive ever mentioned it here before Sancho, and hopefully this doesnt come off as pretentious, i have a phd in the stuff youre talking about and taught it at the college level. I also studied eating disorders and coached track & field and cross-country.

going into grad school I was already carrying with me a love of literature. by the time I came out I was so enamored with it, especially for its potential vocationally, that I actually applied to a grad program in English. visited the campus, met with the dept head, had a good conversation and applied---but possibly amongst other reasons, they couldn't get over my not having an undergrad in English and alas I didn't get accepted.

on the topic of "impact"----my goodness any chance you read/saw/heard about the crash today in the tour of the alps? borderline horrific while it was happening and then nerve wracking immediately afterwards because the guy wasn't moving much after slamming head first into a light post. i'll do some looking to see if I can find it.

found it---all the more "exciting" for the foreign language commentary:

https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling/...the-alps-crash (scroll down towards the bottom)

[Sancho]

Naw, man,not pretentious, you did the work. But hey, you gotta research degree!? Holy moly. Now it seems like I'm the guy at a dinner party, patiently explaining to my table mate how the brain works **slap my belly and stab the air with a drumstick** “well, don’t’cha know, the brain is made up of these things called neurons and synapses, and the different parts of the brain specialize in different stuff, like language, or math, or where you left your car keys, and, well, don’t’cha know, that's how the brain works.” This goes on for quite some time and only later do I find out my table mate is a neurosurgeon. Ah well.

I think most of us here are drawn to literature in some way or another. I am and I don’t know why. It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed. I can't remember a time in my adult life when I wasn't reading a book. I much prefer reading to watching TV or a movie. Given the choice I’d’ve probably studied it in school, but college was vocational for me (Mechanical Engineering). And honestly at that time in my life I probably wouldn’t have survived the English Department. I could sit in the library during the wee hours working a Thermodynamics problem, but I doubt I’d’ve been very good at peeling the onion where great literature is concerned. A Thermo problem has an answer. This or that. Right or wrong. But great lit is nuanced. It can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s sometimes in conflict with itself. That would’ve bothered me when I was 20.

Concerning the video — Yeech! Having a hard head will carry you far in this world. When I was a kid there was a college professor in my town who killed himself doing a header from his bike into the back of a panel van. He was in the drops and hammering away, probably looking at his front wheel. Never saw it coming. Also no helmet. Nobody wore a helmet back then, unless it was one of those leather strippy things that were high on style and low on function. I think he was in Life Sciences, U of So Car.