Being here in America, people are only exposed to the popular sports like football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. Well there’s a whole world of sports out there that we don’t know about. Some may seem a little weird, but in different cultures it is just as popular as football. Here I’m going to give you 5 interesting sports from around the world.

1. Caber Toss

“Ooh this sounds like a technical sport, what is a caber?” you may ask. While it sounds rather exotic and refined, it’s really not. Caber toss is just a fancy term for Scottish Log Throwing, that is also renowned in Ireland. These rather large Scots and Irishmen merely throw this log as far and high as they can. Nothing else to it. Of course not every average Joe can just go and pick up a 150 pound, 18 foot long pole, toss it and win. It takes some serious strength to hurl that thing, not to mention you have to toss it with precision so it can’t tilt either way or there will be a deduction of points, yes they have points… They look at it as a clock, you launch the log at 12 o’ clock and if it doesn’t land at 12 o’ clock, you don’t get as many points. Form is also a big part of the scoring process, I suppose that the better you look while launching the log, the better your score will be. Some people think that this is one manly sport, but since the Scots wear kilts it makes it less manly. All I can say is, it takes one heck of a man to wear a skirt in front of a crowd.

2. Ear Pull

This one is more of a tradition of the Inuit Indians. So there isn’t much to it; the participants put one rubber band over each of their ears and it goes around the other person’s ears too. The participants then lean back which stretches the string on their ears, the winner of this contest is whoever doesn’t give up. As you can imagine, this puts the contestants through a lot of pain. They say that this helps prepare you for the harsh conditions of their homeland.

3. Pato, or Horseball

This is the national sport of Argentina. It is a team sport that takes place on horses, there is a ball-like object that is called a “duck”. It is thrown in the air and the competitors on horse-back try to grab it. After they have the duck, it is their goal to throw it into the opponents net to score points. It is kind of like Rugby on horses. Teammates pass the duck to each other and try to keep it from the other team and score a goal. It sounds kind of crazy when you throw horses into it, and it is very crazy.

4. Cricket

This is a sport that is pretty popular around the world, except for in America. It is most popular in Great Britain, and Australia. Cricket is a bat-and-ball type game, much like baseball. Like in baseball, a person from one team “bowls”(pitches) the ball to the person at bat. It’s different from pitching though in that it is actually bowled on the ground, like a bowling ball. The person hitting the ball must time his hit to one of the ball’s bounces. The rest of the game is pretty similar to baseball.

5. Bowls

This game is also popular in Australia. It is a lawn game version of the winter sport: Curling. There is a small white, or yellow, ball placed a certain distance from the competitors. The goal of each team is to roll their bowls to get as close that small ball as they can.  However many of your bowls are closest to the small ball, is how many points you are going to get, after each end; much like curling. Unlike curling, there is no way to control where your bowl goes after you roll it.

Well I hope you enjoyed this brief exposure to foreign cultures. Maybe some of these interest you and you want to start a club in your city, wouldn’t that be great? I think we should give a little more of our attention to these less-known sports, rather than having it all about football and basketball. There is a whole other world of sports out there that we have no idea exists!

Christmas is a time where there is great food, and time to relax.  This makes it very difficult to remain in your exceptional physique.  It’s much too easy to bag your fitness routine and just pig out on all of the delicious Christmas food.  This is not recommended.  It will ruin the performance of any athlete.  You need to keep your fitness level up, even during the holiday season.

I suggest you take up swimming.  This exercise is not only fun, but gives your body one heck of a workout.  You may be thinking that this is an exercise that one should not do during the Winter season.  When it is quite the contrary, for most swimming organizations the season goes through Winter.  Now obviously they don’t compete outside during the Winter time, that’s what indoor pools are for!  Granted these pools are still freezing cold, but not to the point of hypothermia.  Now you may be thinking: “Uh, I’m a football player, how is this going to help me?”.  The answer is that swimming helps your body in so many ways; how many cardio exercises give your whole body a workout as well?  Swimming improves your physical fitness, endurance, and is also an aerobic exercise which helps with flexibility; every sport requires some flexibility.  Having been a fairly successful high school swimmer; I’m going to give you some tips on getting the right swimming technique to optimize your workout.  I’ll break it down into the four main strokes and explain correct technique for each.

Freestyle/Backstroke

These two strokes are pretty similar except one is done facing down on the water and the other is done on your back. As it goes for all strokes, kicking is very important. If you don’t have a good kick, then you don’t have a very good stroke; it’s kind of a tradeoff type thing, you can’t do well at one without doing well at another. You want to start off working on your kicking by taking a kick board to the pool and just doing some laps just kicking. A common mistake that most people do is that they want to kick from their knees; this is not the correct way. In order to have good technique and to get the most out of each kick, you want to kick out from your thighs rather than your knees. Having your whole leg move instead of just from the knee down is much more beneficial. The next thing to work on is your stroke. It’s a pretty basic concept, but if you don’t do a couple of things it can really ruin your stroke. The basic idea of stroking is, with your arms, reach out and grab a handful of water and throw it down towards your feet. That’s a primitive way to stroke, but for the best results it would be a little more refined than that. You want your arms to pull back as if you were going to punch someone, then reach out to the water and pull it down towards your feet; do this with alternating your arms, otherwise it is pointless. Those are the two foundations of freestyle of backstroke, without those it’s hard to go anywhere. A couple more things to remember for freestyle is to always keep your body level with the water, to act as if there is a pole going through you; keep your body straight and your head down, this will make it easier to keep your whole body level with the surface of the water. A couple things to remember when you do backstroke as well; obviously you are in a different position so you need to adjust your stroke accordingly. Remember to rotate your body as if you had a pole going through you.

Breaststroke

This one is a little more difficult to master. Again, kick technique is essential; so just grab a kick board and practice at the pool. This kick is a little difficult to explain, but here goes, you want to have your legs straight, then sort of flick them out and bring them back together; I guess just try making the shape of a heart with your feet. Bend your knees slightly to bring your feet up, then extend them quickly and snap your feet together. The only thing I can really compare it to would be the way a frog kicks in the water; if you know what that looks like. Okay now for the stroke. Bend your arms at the elbow and position them under your chest, reach out in front of you and scoop the water down to your feet again. One thing to remember while doing this stroke is to alternate your kick and stroke so that you don’t do them at the same time. Also, just like freestyle, you want to keep your head down to not cause any unnecessary drag.

Butterfly

I never really got good at this stroke. I understood how to do it and everything, but when it came to actually performing, I didn’t do so great. So I’ll just explain it to you and you can try it out for yourself. Once more, kicking is key. This kick is what a mermaid does with her tail. Instead of moving both legs independently, you actually keep them together; a good way to ensure your legs stay together, that my coach came up with, is to tie them together with something! It sounds like a dramatic thing to do, but some people really have trouble with this. Now the stroke is what a lot of people find difficult and combining the stroke with the kick is even harder. For the stroke, your arms aren’t together like your legs, but they are doing the same motions at the same time. It’s like doing the freestyle stroke with both arms at the same time. Putting all of these things together into a smooth rhythmic motion is very difficult. Check out this video for a more in depth look at the butterfly.

Hopefully this has inspired you to try swimming. It’s a fantastic cardio exercise that gives your whole body a workout. Remember to not get lazy and forget your workout routine through the holidays, be safe and have a Merry Christmas!

As many of you know, the New York City Marathon took place last Sunday on the 6th of November.  It was about 45 degrees that day, some consider “the perfect running weather”.  The top five male finishers were: Geoffrey Mutai, Emmanuel Mutai, Tsegaye Kebede, Gebre Gebremariam, and Jaouad Gharib; all of African ethnicity. The top five female finishers were: Firehiwot Dado, Buzunesh Deba, and Mary Keitany from Africa as well; Ana Dulce Felix, from Portugal, and from the USA Kim Smith. Congratulations to all those runners for completing this marathon in under 2 hours and 30 minutes, and the men who finished under 2 hours 10 minutes.  That is an incredible feat to finish a marathon in that amount of time.  Some scientists say that we are only about15-25 years from witnessing a runner break the 2 hour mark. They also predict that it will be someone from Africa to break that record; seeing that the top five finishers of this marathon were African, I’d say we aren’t too far off from this record-break from happening.

The course starts on Staten Island, goes across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge; it makes it’s way up Brooklyn, through Bay Ridge and Sunset park, moves up to Queens and crosses the bridge to Manhattan.  The course then makes a loop up to the Bronx, then coming back into Manhattan and runs next to Central Park, finishing on the lower-Eastern part of the park.  Now that is one heck of a course.  It never ceases to amaze me how dedicated these runners are.  I could never imagine putting my body through the torment of a marathon.  I suppose it is a good way to get out and see the sights of New York, since the course covers a lot of it.

If you’re interested in training for a marathon, or even just to get into shape; check out this coupon for the NordicTrack T7.0 treadmill and save some money on a treadmill! Good Luck!

Now many of you may not think that bowling is a sport, so I’m about to shatter your universe! Bowling is as much a sport as football, basketball, and baseball. Now it may not require as much physical strength and endurance as these sports. But good technique and mental quickness are present in this sport.  Also, exceptional hand and wrist strength is required because the bowling ball is heavier than you think. In this sport you must have decent hand-eye coordination so you can do the same routine every time you hurl the ball down the alley.

The St. George Marathon has officially come and gone. It began at 5 A.M the Saturday morning of October 1st. I was there at an aid station 19, handing out gallons upon gallons of water and Gatorade. Despite the heat, energetic youth in my group, and the long hours volunteering, it was a great experience. It’s amazing watching these people accomplish such a feat. I think it sparks inspiration inside all of us to watch people accomplish something amazing. I know it does for me. After the marathon it makes me feel like I should be out there climbing Mt. Everest, or even running a marathon myself.

The weather wasn’t too bad. The morning started off cool, the temperature that marathon runners prefer. But as the day went on it transformed into a sweltering afternoon. The heat was affecting all of the runners; some of them were running to the tables of water themselves, instead of taking them from us volunteers. And some even had to take a break from all of the running. There were also more serious cases, people suffering from heat exhaustion. I recall one lady who, just by the look of her, wasn’t doing so well. She looked almost delirious and about to cry, one of the men from my group helped her over to the emergency aid station to get her escorted out by the emergency shuttles they had available. While it is sad she did not get to finish, it is phenomenal to get that far. 19 miles is an incredible distance to run.

Now the best part of the marathon is always the clean-up, sarcasm of course. Crushed water and Gatorade cups seem to stretch on for miles with no end. This is definitely one of the most tedious parts of volunteering at the marathon, especially if you have youth in your group that like to play around instead of cleaning up!