The Benefits of Yoga

http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/yoga/Benefits.html

Yoga is an exercise that benefits the organism, mind, and body. Especially for women, yoga is a useful tool to lose body weight. Muscles that are never worked on get stimulated, increasing metabolism. Yoga tones the muscles without the need of weight lifting or other strenuous exercises. I think people who want to lose weight or control their diet should start practicing yoga at least once a week. It is unique because strength and speed are not included in the workouts, and similar body results are obtained with this relaxing practice.

Yoga ≈ Meditation

It is important to get the mind to work in sync with the body in order to defeat stress.

China-Brazil Basketball game ends in a basket-brawl

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11531996

       

The China-Brazil basketball game on Tuesday resulted with kicks and punches. The referee called a foul by the Chinese players, and this occasionated protests from the Chinese players and coach. The Brazilians refused to continue playing after the huge fight. The Chinese Basketball Association has apologized to the Brazilian side for the incident which caused serious consequences. Penalties will be given to the Chinese players and many will be penalized. These players are attending to classes about sportsmanship and will reflect about what they did. Meanwhile, there is no word from the Brazilian federation.

Comment:

The behavior of the Chinese on Tuesday's basketball game against Brazil was unacceptable. What makes the case even worse is that it wasn't even a championship game or for competitive gain, but a "friendly" game. The Brazilians, on the other hand, defended themselves; which is probably what any other team would've done. What was also surprising in the game is that the Chinese coach also complained to the referee, instead of calming and handling his players. With their wrong behavior, the Chinese have earned a bad reputation for their team and there may be a possibility for their exclusion to more important games, against other international teams.

The only positive side of the incident was that the Chinese team is attending to classes on good sportsmanship and the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) has recognized their mistake, apologizing to the Brazilian side. The Brazilians have stayed quiet; they must be disappointed to have the game stopped because of the brawl. They might not consider the Chinese anymore to play against them, especially after being the visiting team and getting attacked on their way to the locker room.

Running outdoors vs. the treadmill

          The weather and daylight are two factors that may require the use of a treadmill instead of running outdoors. Both benefit your training in different ways, but at least 60% of it should be outdoors, advises the famous marathonist Mindy Solkin. The best option is to compose your training with outdoor runs and treadmill runs. This applies to all types of training, short-distance and long-distance. The greatest benefit of practicing outdoors is that all races occur in outdoor fields like pavement, grass (cross-country) or dirt; training in these places will help your body get used to the tracks.    The number of calories burned is another benefit of outdoors running. Running at speeds under 9 miles an hour (6:40 min-mile-pace) in a treadmill burns about the same number of calories as running at this same pace outdoors. If you ran faster than 9 mph, you'll burn fewer calories on the treadmill. There can be a difference of up to 8% with the amount of calories burned. Indoors, there is no wind resistance or curves to overcome.Factors like this are important to burn more calories and get more strength on the legs.  After all, the treadmill belt does propel you along a bit.

          It is always more interesting to look at nature. The trees, lakes, birds and flowers are better things to watch than a wall or machines at the gym. However, when it's raining, snowing or there is high humidity, it's better to make use of the treadmill and even better if these are long runs, instead of fast runs. If weather forces you to do more training indoors than out, jus do it: Christine Clark, a runner from Anchorage, Alaska, won the 2000 women's Olympic marathon trials after doing the majority of her training on the treadmill.