Thursday, May 29, 2008
Friday, November 09, 2007
Band of Brothers
There was a time when ordinary men were asked to do extrodinary things. (DVD box set subtitle)
I've recently finished watching the miniseries Band of Brothers... again. It retells the story of one U.S. paratrooper division from D-day (June 6th 1944) when Allied forces first invaded mainland Europe to the end of the war.
Heartbreaking, heroic, and inspiring are the words that come to mind to describe this series. As opposed to trying to sum up the WII experience in 2 hours, this series spreads out the various experiences of a handful of soldiers over 10 hour long episodes. For those who have not seen it, I highly recommend it. I find myself wistfully wondering when I'll rewatch the series.
As we come towards another Rememberance Day this weekend, I am reminded of incredible heroes and sacrifices made when ordinary people rose to face extrodinary circumstances.
The title of the miniseries is based on a quote from Shakespeare's Henry V, and it touches on the special bond of those who battle together.From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother (King Henry, V.iii)
The time for ordinary men to act extrodinarily has not ended though. My days may not present opportunity to storm German MG42 positions, and I might not have thousands of soldiers counting on me to knock out fortified artillery positions (as the soldiers in Band of Brothers did). Yet there are many battles to be fought, the battles for truth, love, and purity, and we all need our brothers (and sisters) in those times. As Oswald Chambers reminds me again:It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God — but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people — and this is not learned in five minutes.
Below: A few actual pictures from WWII.
-Oswald Chambers, Oct 21st entry from My Utmost for His Highest
1. Soldiers on D-Day June 6th, 1944 assaulting Omaha beach
2. The landing of supplies at Normady beach after establishing a beachhead
Monday, August 27, 2007
A perspective thing really...
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
GK Chesterton (b. 1874)
British writer and thinker
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Defying all Hollywood Odds
Ratatouille - Two thumbs up
Pixar - Thanks for Toy Story, Incredibles, Nemo, Monsters Inc, Bug's Life, etc
Rest of Hollywoord - Why can't you consistently make good movies?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Let the People Choose
"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want."
Clive Barnes (b. 1927)
Broadcaster, Chief Dance, Drama and Opera Critic (New York Post)
I wonder what Clive would said about the Internet...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Rejuvenation
Rest is important - it rejuvenates, clears one's perspectives and reminds us not to take life too seriously...
Oh and something about having fun too :P
Back from my vacation and back to work.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Resources on Learning Ultimate Frisbee
This year I started playing regularly on an Ultimate Frisbee team (wooo 30 Foot!) through our local organization MODS. I've always loved throwing a disc and have thrown regularly with friends over the past 4 or 5 years. I'm completely new to team sports with offensive/defensive strategies and formations, so its been a lot of learning and fun so far.
There's a lot to learn about the game, so I thought I'd post up links to some of the various guides I've found really helpful in teaching me backhand and forehand throws/grips, as well as introducing me to different offence and defence strategies. If you're like me, instruction, technique and practice is what its all about. Think, you might hear an amazing musician, but his or her music is the product of hours of unseen practice, mistakes, correction, hard work, and instruction. The same goes with most things in life, including Ultimate.
Read on and enjoy! There's stuff from learning to throw for the first time, to playing a rabbit 1-3-3 zone defence.
Learning to Throw
This is the most essential part of the game, fortunately its also the easiest to practice and improve on. Instead of needing a dozen people to team practice all you need is 2 people to effectively practice throwing. In fact 2 is best as you get in the most throws.
If I could only give one piece of advice to those hoping to improve their throw, its this: you have to change your throw to improve it. This sounds so obvious, but all the time I see people throwing exactly the same way 10 times in a row hoping that the result will be different. Throwing 100 times with bad technique will develop a bad habit and will take you that much longer to correct that technique. So keep experimenting by modifying grip, disc angle (left/right as well as up/down), wrist snap, arm position, weight shifting/rotation. That being said, be patient too! It took me several summers before I felt confident with my backhand and forehand.
Below I've listed the best guides I've come across in throwing. Careful reading them though, I almost broke something in my room when I went through it (you can probably imagine the situation).
Learning to throw Backhand [UltimateHandbook.com]
Learning to Throw Forehand [UltimateHandbook.com]
Various Disc Throws [Wikipedia.org]
Throwing Various Articles by an Australian Ultimate group
Learning the Game
Ultimate really appealed to me for its regard for sportsmanship and that its really accessible to new players (like myself who hadn't played other competitive sports). Here's some guides on introducing the game of Ultimate (rules, the field, players, history, etc):
Ultimate in 10 Simple Rules [UltimateHandbook.com]
Article on Ultimate [Wikipedia.org]
Learning to Play as a Team
I don't have much 2 cents to put in here. I come from a solo classical musician background, who got into solo endurance sports, who studied computer science. LOL so not much working for me there :P. Having watched and played good teams has taught me how essntial team skills are. Here's some guides on different team strategies that I've read and are really good:
Offence and Defence - Various articles by an Australian Ultimate group
Ultimate Basics [Ultimate Handbook.com] - Use the toolbar on the left, a bunch of articles covering basic offence, defence, marking, cutting, catching, etc
Most of All
Love the game and have fun =)
Got something to say or add? Post a comment below.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
What does it mean to follow Christ?
Jane: Have you ever thought of asking God why He allows such suffering in the world?
John: No.
Jane: Really? Why not?
John: I'm scared to.
Jane: What are you scared of?
John: I'm scared He'll ask me the same question.
The following is one of the most moving testimonies I've heard. Shane Claiborne is a American Christian who's "interned" with Mother Teresa, worked in a leper colony, lived among the homeless in Philadelphia, and was ministering with other Christians in Iraq just as the Shock and Awe campaign started. Hear his story and how he came to answer the tough question: So what about being a believer in Christ, what does it mean to become a follower of Christ? Its not a short video, so set aside some time for this one.
I personally need to discover some "Calcuttas" of the world. I'll be picking up Claiborne's book The Irresistible Revolution soon (also available at Chapters/Amazon), and will post up a book review.
Read More
The Simply Way - Shane's 'church' formed with some friends
Other Videos - Some other YouTube videos of Shane Claiborne
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Forefoot Running
Have you ever considered that you may have been running incorrectly your entire life?
This was the tough but alluring question I faced as I was first introduced to forefoot running. That was a month ago and now I only run forefoot. If you've ever been injured running, want to increase your running mileage, or am simply interested in the subject matter, do read on. I think that modern shoes and improper training has taught us to run incorrectly, and this causes all sorts of injuries and problems and prevents us from enjoyable, injury free running.
The term forefoot refers to which part of the foot strikes first while running. We have three typical types:
1. forefoot strike - ball of your foot strikes the ground first
2. midfoot/neutral strike - foot is almost flat
3. heel strike - heel strikes the ground first
Before all this I was a heel strike runner, and by far this is the most popular type of running I see today on the street. In elite athletes its quoted that around 90% of them run with a forefoot/midfoot strike instead. We need to look at why this is.
The Simple Test:
I've thought about the easiest way to demonstrate the difference both in terms of comfort and efficiency, here's what I've come up with:
1. Take off your shoes
2. Jog on the spot
3. You'll notice one thing right away, people who jog on the spot naturally switch to forefoot and are gently bouncing on the balls of their feet. If you are an exception to this, then consciously switch to landing on the balls of you feet. You'll find the heels of your feet do not even touch the ground.
4. Now switch to landing on your heels. Feel the difference? Its a lot less comfortable as there's much much more shock and vibration. Instead of a gentle bouncing you'll find landing on the heels has a dull pounding that really kills momentum.
Simple test? If you can feel the difference over just 10 paces, imagine the difference if you're running 5KM using thousands and thousands of paces.
The Story
So the million dollar question is why do we run heel strike instead of forefoot strike? I think there's 3 prominent reasons for this:
1. Mimics Walking
Even though I've switched completely to forefoot strike for running, when I walk I heel strike. Forefoot strike requires a certain amount of speed and momentum that walking simply doesn't have. So if all our lives we've been walking heel strike, when we start to run we may simply mimic our walking and our running technique simply becomes fast walking.
2. Shoes
Modern shoes do not give your feet the feedback they need to learn to run properly. If you had to run barefoot on concrete, you would learn very quickly that heel strike really hurts. You would then develop a forefoot run because you would realize there's a problem. With all the thickly padded shoes out there we do not realize there is a problem. They mask the pounding that we saw in the simple test we did.
Furthermore if you look at the design of our modern shoes, we see that running shoes are heavily padded at the heel, encouraging (and assuming) heel strike. Walking shoes should be made this way, while running shoes should be ultra flexible with the padding at the forefoot. There aren't many shoes that do that, there are a few such as the Nike Free, or Newton Runners.
3. Pre-shoe Man
The thought that immediately struck me the more and more I thought about running was: "duh! How did people run before Nike?" The truth is we don't need all this shoe technology, it has made our feet weak, needy and untrained. A great example of this is a guy who runs barefoot. He's done a few dozen marathons barefoot, as well as many other distances. Check out his website for his take on what I've been writing about in this article. The other day on one of my runs, at the end of my run I did about 1km barefoot on concrete. My feet were a bit unaccustomed to the rough concrete, but it did not cause any joint or other discomfort as I ran it. I like to think that before all the concrete jungles and Nike shoes, I suspect most people who ran any significant distances would have ran forefoot.
Biomechanics
In the Simple Test we did above, we noticed a big difference in momentum. While on the balls of the feel there's a springing action while on the heels the momentum is stopped with each step. If we consider the shape of the foot we see why this is: the arch is simply a big spring. By landing on the front of the spring you allow your foot arch to cushion the landing, and spring you forward to your next step. This is why forefoot running feels so springy compared to heel strike. You'll also notice big differences in the amount of shock to the joints as well, giving you another reason to consider forefoot running.
How to do it
I sincerely hope I've at least convinced you to try out a little forefoot running, instead of merely looking like an idiot jogging on the spot in front of your computer. In order to run forefoot your entire posture and form while running needs to change.
With heel strike, your leg strides forward in front of your body. This really gives you no option but to land on your heel. With forefoot running you should land on your foot as it is right underneath your body. In order to help land like that try these different tips:
1. Kick up your legs higher behind you (this one worked best for me), this changes the timing of your stride and I found that my foot was now landing beneath my body instead of in front.
2. Imagine leading with your body instead of with your legs
3. Keep your back straight and head up. Fight the temptation to look down at your feet. You'll feel it when you're switched to forefoot.
4. At first try taking shorter but quicker steps.
If you still find this hard, try sprinting for 50m and most likely you'll switch to forefoot. The challenge is developing it at slower speeds for longer distance running. The fact that sprinting automatically makes you run forefoot is a good clue: that's the way our bodies were meant to run.
In terms of your actual foot, you should land on the forefoot, and the heel should come down and just kiss the ground for a moment before you're springing forward again. Feel good? If you're already sold, I recommend taking it slow in changing to forefoot. Your calves and achilles tendon won't be used to the new load, so give them time to adapt. Muscles/tendons will heal and strengthen. Joints and ligaments that suffer from the pounding of heel strike do not heal so easily. I've quoted some articles below that touch on forefoot running as well, that people who run this way were able to very long periods of time everyday, and right into their senior years.
Still having trouble? NewtonRunning.com has a flash animation comparing the two styles of running, see it here.
My Story
I'm not a hardcore runner. I come from a biking background and was an aspiring tri-athlete. 3 years ago I hurt my knee when I suspect I ran too hard (and I'm sure heel strike contributed to that injury). I took more than a year off, not allowing myself to even run for more than 5 minutes. I was really discouraged and considered giving up my triathlon dream, concluding that perhaps I just wasn't born with the tough joints required for serious running.
A month ago I started doing forefoot. It used completely different muscles as your calves become your main supporters. After a few weeks of doing part heel and part forefoot strike I've now completely switched to forefoot running. I completed my first 10km doing forefoot just a week ago and I didn't experience any joint pain whatsoever (a first for me). I'm now currently training for a half marathon which is about a month away. When I used to run heel strike, I used to have this nagging thought in the back of my mind as I pounded the pavement: "running is really terrible for my body, why am I am doing it?" Now as I spring along the pavement I feel more free than ever to enjoy the running, confident that I'm safely using my body as it was designed.
Read More:
I do not pretend to have discovered forefoot running myself. Special thanks to my friend Oz who introduced it to me, as well as several articles and websites that taught me about it. I merely hoped to provide a brief summary on the subject.
Men's Health Magazine - The Men Who Live Forever
RunningBarefoot.org
Gordon Pirie's Ebook: Running Fast and Injury Free
Triatheletes-uk.org on Forefoot Running
Medical Study - Does foot arch affect benefits of forefoot running
Article on Pose method of running using forefoot strike
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