www.MichaelReid.ca

Elite Athletics & Classic Rock ...."These Eyes ..."

What does the classic rock song "These Eyes" by the Guess Who have to do with elite athletics?

Nothing really, other then it is a good song and they are also from my home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba among other great musicians like Neil Young ...

Or maybe there is a connection, here is a little story ...

This past summer (2009) I attended a Z-Health seminar in the USA. One thing I took away from the course was the importance of the eyes in sporting excellence. Eye sight as measured by how well you read an eye chart is only one aspect of using your eyes and doesn't take into effect the other functions (e.g. convergence or peripheral vision).

By the way, my eyes were not to good which may explain some of my athletic incompetence.

Then, this past week I was meeting with an international Water Polo coach who was in Copenhagen (my current place of residence) for the LEN Conference. We were talking training for Water Polo since he has heard I am fairly on top of the research in this field (see www.waterpolotraining.net).

One of the things he wanted to know was how do you train athletes to react quicker. As an example, you see something happen, process it, make a decision and act. How can you make this whole process quicker?

My great answer to him was "... Uhhh ...Uhhh ... good question"

But after a few more seconds of thought, I told him about the eyes and just this past few days I also came across this article.

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090910-top-tennis-players-science.html

For any sport that involves a moving object, athletes must learn the three levels of response for interceptive timing tasks. 

• First, there is a basic reaction, also known as optometric reaction (in other words, see it and get out of the way).

• Next, there is a perceptual reaction, meaning you actually can identify the object coming at you and can put it in some context (for example: That is a tennis ball coming at you and not a bird swooping out of the sky).

• Finally, there is a cognitive reaction, meaning you know what is coming at you and you have a plan of what to do with it (return the ball with top-spin down the right line).

This is very interesting information and could be the missing link in athletic development.

How many athletes have you coached or played with who just did not seem to meet their potential?

Maybe one of the road blocks were their eyes.

I will talk about more of this in future post and even show some simple eye exercises you can do.

Be Well,

Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca
www.waterpolotraining.net

VIDEO LINK - "These Eyes" as performed by my boys "The Farrell Bros".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AWvrCVwnvg

Music, Listening & Communication

Image via Wikipedia

I just watched this video of Evelyn Glennie talking about communication.

If you have never heard of her before she is a world renowned percussionist who just happens to be deaf (note: she is not deaf from playing the drums!).

One of my teachers, Paul Chek, says very often regarding communication "you have 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason!" (i.e. you should listen twice as much as you talk, now there is a challenge for some people).

In the video below, Evelyn Glennie talks about how you listen with your whole body and not just the ears.

Maybe it should be you should listen 100+ times as much as you talk.

She is a very intelligent lady and great musician and demonstrates in this video an uncanny ability of explaining the art of listening and communication through drums and other percussive instruments.

She teaches even more than this ... like never giving up, perseverance, having no limitations and just the power of music which is really sound which is really vibrations which you do not need the ability of hearing to sense.

Very cool.

Be Well,

Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca

www.waterpolotraining.net

VIDEO LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3V6zNER4g

Screwing on the Floor

This is a really cool video.

I feel so inspired by watching the fluid movement this athlete displays. I thought to myself after watching it the first time, "hey, that doesn't look that hard". I was dead wrong, I could not get passed the first move where you squat down and drop one knee in-toward the floor.

I am going to practice this.

Be Well,

Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca

www.waterpolotraining.net

VIDEO LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO33I-Qbc9k

RE: "Choose your Parents Wisely"

I forgot to put this into my last post.

In the book "Essentials of Exercise Physiology, 3rd edition" by McArdle et al. on page 438 they state that it was back in the 1960's when a Swedish physiologist named Dr. Astrand said "to be an Olympic-caliber performer, you must choose your parents wisely."

Be Well,

Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca
www.waterpolotraining.net

"Choose your Parents Wisely"

Have you ever heard this before?

It is a very common saying with coaches and exercise physiologists. It basically means that you cannot change your genetics and that your parents genetic pool will determine your athletic success.

So, if your parents are very nonathletic, then the chance of you becoming a good or great athlete is essentially ZERO.

My thoughts on this ... it's completely a bunch of BULL SH*t!!!!!!!

It is true that you cannot change your genes BUT we all have the ability to change how our genes are expressed.

As an example, most of us will get fat and die young if we eat crap food and sit on the couch all day. But if we all ate healthy food and exercised properly the opposite would happen (gene expression at work?).

If you want to be strong you need to lift heavy weights but if you all you do is run 30-60 minutes a few times/week you cannot say "oh, I just have bad genes, that is why I am not getting stronger".

I know this example is kind of ridiculous. I use it to make the point that what you do day in, day out matters. You may not get as strong as the world's strongest man but then again he who holds that title didn't get there from just having "good" parents.

We are all athletes, just some of us have never been exposed to proper training, nutrition and healthy lifestyle practices.

You could be Michael Jordan but if you never run, jump, climb, throw/kick a ball, ect ... then you will never realize your potential as an athlete. Michael Jordan's success as an athlete was not just because he had good genetics. He did the things necessary to express the genes he had to there full potential.

I end my little rant with these two quotes:

"It's not where you start - it's where you finish that counts."

-- Zig Ziglar

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."

-- anonymous

Be Well,
Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca
www.waterpolotraining.net