Excercise .. a re-think!

Exercise ..... mmmmm.... a hard cardio work-out I mean  ... I love to exercise -- the burning lungs ... the sweat ... the feeling you are going to collapse .......yuk yuk yuk, don't be silly.

I see the cardio side, as a chore a lot of the time. The dull repetitive tasks are not far off working on an assembly line. And like the latter you only do it for the outcomes - the benefits being health related.

Ways around the repetitive nature of exercise in martial arts, can be to do moves and drills that also look like the moves you do in your art and there is overlap. < This is what I do now, with my mini-weights.

But to do these moves burns up the energy store you have. In training with my colleges Slippers and Sleeve, you can see after a 3 minute round the effects hitting a pad has on you. Pufff, pufff puff. (Sometimes the sensation to vomit). This is why cardioid-exercise is a necessary evil for self-defence. No engine, no gas ... can't run off even!

This web page on the BBC and the supporting Horizon program, really fascinated me. It shows how individual differences in people will affect the responsiveness we have to exercise regimes. Blanket advice is 'exercise is good for you'. The implications of the program are - types of exercise need tailoring to types of people whose genetic makeup makes them responsive to some types of exercise, not others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq

(If you are outside the UK in theory you cannot see the program - but there are ways).

What interested me is the short intensive exercise of 3 x  20 second all-out bursts on a bike..... And that is it!  I had been told about tabata exercise before - is this that ? Look at the evidence for the benefits given. See also what did not change.

I will explore the related academic paper soon:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h774562781l24jq0/

BBC 4 radio program on Kung Fu

Here is a link to a BBC Radio 4 program of the impact of Bruce Lee and Kung Fu in the 70s.
He is seen as the catalyst in diffusing martial arts to the West.

The program is called 'In Living Memory - Kung Fu'.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c7rgs


Also, in here they interview an academic from Cardiff, who has an interesting blog, too:

http://theorizingbrucelee.blogspot.com/

I liked the way in the radio program they mention how the film 'Enter the Dragon' (1972), promotes Lee like a James Bond character. Also, noted is the representation of the Orient in this type of genre (thinking David Carradine's series Kung Fu), which uses stereotypes of Eastern philosophy which are just not realistic outside a California beach. This type of representation is a form of 'othering' that sets apart people as being distinct. (In the blog above there is a picture of Chinese characters in English pantomimes - have a look for that). The program ends saying that the martial art shown in the film is 'a fake' simulation not authentic martial arts. A film's symbolic construction.