Category: team sports

In Praise of Physically Aggressive Sports (Guest Post)
football · Guest Post · rugby · soccer · team sports

In Praise of Physically Aggressive Sports (Guest Post)

jessicas4 Comments

I’ll play football today for the first time. One of the women on my soccer team recruited me to play football. Until Sam suggested I write this post, I had not given much thought to my playing “physically aggressive” sports. (She suggested it after I noted that I would love it if she would buy an “Aggressive by Nature, Rugby by Choice” t-shirt for me if she ever found it again on her rugby travels.) When I stopped to think about it, however, I realized that there were all sorts of positive, feminist reasons for my choices of sport. Here are six of them with some commentary that is specific to my own personal experience as a former rugby playing, current soccer and football playing woman.

1. I can be loud; indeed, I am encouraged to be loud.
‘Talking’ on the pitch is a necessity. I am a player who talks constantly on the field of play: who is open, if there is space, when to shoot, the whole vocabulary of positioning and players. I’m confident talking on the field in part because I live and work in a space where my voice is heard, and I would argue that the reverse is just as true.
2. Aggression — in the sense of asserting one’s will, channeling one’s passion, and pursuing one’s aims forcefully — is typically rewarded .
I am on a first name basis with the cliché “work hard, play hard.” I do not want my team sports to be a romp in the park. I have legs that are often bruised (that’s what pantsuits are for, right?) and my osteopath on speed dial. I’m inclined to believe that toughness is a virtue (and I do yoga as often as soccer and football in recognition of this fact about myself).

3. I can take up space.
This is a big one for me, pun intended. I stand a rockin’ 154 cms tall. (That’s almost 5’2” … sounds more impressive in centimetres). I am a physically strong lightweight. I am now accustomed to being one of the smallest, if not the smallest, on any given pitch, and it is now part of my athletic identity that I can take on players who are bigger than me. (Tell me that does not translate into the non-sporting side of my life!) Also, since I might as well be truthful, I like the seeming contradictions of my size and choice of sports. People are genuinely shocked when I reveal I played rugby … unless they know the game, and therefore understand that the position of hooker (typically the smallest player on the field) is rather central to the whole business.

4. I am expected to hold my own and, often, to push back, as a normal part of the game.
I play Masters (+35) recreational soccer and touch football, so contact is not part of either game. But, both sports are physically aggressive, and there is a certain amount of “going toe to toe” in each of them. I like this. I like chasing down opposing players, and I like using my body to defend the ball. I’ve been known to chase down balls that were otherwise lost to possession, just to see if my speed could get me there (although I would never do this if it meant that my team would be compromised in some way). On corner kicks, I am the forward who stands in front of the keeper and does not move. My job is to prevent her from seeing the ball. It is legal for me to be in this position, and she has the option to push me away; I have the ability to get back into a similar position and continue to frustrate her.

5. Failure is an integral part of the game, therefore every game improves my resiliency and ability to bounce back from failures, the big and the small.
You’ll hear my team say “unlucky” frequently. I miss shots. Sometimes the net is wide open and I miss the shot. I flub passes. Sometimes the keeper makes a great save. Sometimes I can’t make the catch. Sometimes I get chased down. Sometimes I juggle the ball in the air and it gets intercepted. And sometimes I score. It’s the same for all of us. We aim for progress, not perfection. Note the active voice: it is a continual process of doing, and doing again, doing, and doing better.

6. I love my girlfriends.
My team sports are filled with other fantastic women who have also made a commitment to their own self-care through exercise and play. They are my role models, confidantes, and teammates. We all get joy from playing. Even if I am running hard for the whole game, getting knocked about, ending up bruised, I still look at the time I spend as self-care just as much as my meditative practice. In fact, when we used to play indoor soccer on Sundays, we’d joke that we went to “Church of Five a Side.” It’s some good therapy, sports.

So, I’ve got my gloves (Youth Medium!), cleats, and jersey ready to go for this afternoon. I’m about as excited as my almost-seven year old is for back to school. I’ll be learning as I go.

Jessica Schagerl is Fit, Feminist, and … well, almost Forty. But what’s a decade among friends? In a week, she’ll also be blogging about the Dirty Girl Run in Buffalo.

rugby · team sports

Canadian women’s rugby

Sam B

As you know from past posts, I love rugby. My son plays for a local club and this summer and last for the Ontario Junior Blues. You can read about that here: On being a sports parent.

Rugby is the sport I would have played and maybe even been good at if I’d discovered my athletic self earlier in life and if rugby for girls had been an option. Read more about that here: Indoor Soccer, Team Sports, and Childhood Regrets.

And you can also read about why I prefer prom dress rugby to lingerie football, Prom dress rugby and lingerie football: what’s the difference?

So when I got an email asking me to share this promotional video for Canadian women’s rugby, I thought, yes, sure, I’ll post it to the blog.

Here it is. Enjoy!

Work-Family Balance and Participation in Sports
accessibility · family · fitness · Guest Post · health · inclusiveness · team sports

Work-Family Balance and Participation in Sports

avivashiller4 Comments

Attention directed at the inequalities between men and women has tended to focus on the realms of politics and economics. What percentage of CEOs are women? How many members of parliament? How much do women earn on average compared to men?

Feminist work in political philosophy shifted the focus a bit to the home, to the gendered division of work in the home, both in terms of housework and dependent care. Feminist political philosophers think this matters for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. It’s a good thing in and of itself if work in the home is shared. But there are also spill over effects. the unequal division of work in the home is part of what explains why women do less well in political and economic terms.

The family is also where children learn about equality and justice and in terms of raising and educating future citizens, justice in the home matters.

So economics matters, politics matters, and sharing work in the home matters too.

But what about physical activity? Does it matter that inequality between men and women extends to the time one has available for sports and physical leisure?

Here are some of the relevant facts: A study by the government of Canada published in 2013 reports that Canadians are less active in sport than they were in previous iterations of the same study and that participation rates have declined across age and gender but that women continue to participate at much lower rates than men in every age bracket.

Moreover, participation rates correlate with household income.  The more money in your household the more likely you and your children are to participate regularly in sports.  The report also describes the benefits of participation in sports and these range from relaxation and fun to improved mental and physical health as well as increased life satisfaction.  One of the main barriers to participating is lack of leisure time.[1]

Given that women still do the bulk of household tasks even when they are engaged in paid labour outside the home it is not at all surprising that they participate in sports at roughly half the rate of their male counterparts.   Hirschmann reports: According to … data from an ongoing National Science Foundation study, married women still do two to three times more childcare and housework than men (17-28 hours per week for women, versus 7-10 hours for men).  Indeed having a husband apparently creates about seven additional weekly hours of housework for women.[2]

The data on sports participation mirrors data on public health and is related to increased risk of morbidity and mortality for women, especially those from poorer households.  Reduced access to health services through lack of income but also through lack of time disproportionately affects women because they are more likely than men to be poor.[3]  If we look at health in the broadest terms possible then surely this outlook must include leisure time, and access to recreational facilities given the impact on well being and the maintenance of health.  The younger a person is the more likely it is that they will participate in sports.  The lack of participation of older segments of the population is related less to lack of interest than to lack of time due to family and work responsibilities.

There are a number of ways to engage the problem of unequal participation in sports including community initiatives, subsidies for sports, access to equipment and facilities, etc.  What the research demonstrates is that people are interested in sports and that as soon as they have enough time and money they prioritize sports.  As a society we should be actively encouraging programs that support families in achieving their goals.  Women place a high value on creating social bonds through sport so this should figure into strategies for public policy formation.

What kinds of activities do you find easy or more challenging to incorporate into your lifestyle and does this have to do with the intrinsic features of the sport or other external factors like cost or having to travel long distances to participate?  I find it is much easier to be involved regularly in an activity when it is located very close to home and has a social aspect.  I spend most of my days alone so I crave a sense of community at my activities.  Also, the schedule of the activity has to be convenient and it has to be relatively budget friendly.  Some of Samantha’s recent posts deal with some of the challenges of having to travel and the costs associated with certain activities.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the some of the reasons inequalities in time available for physical activities matter:

1. It’s good for women’s health and well being.
2. It’s good for children to see their mothers as physically active and competent.
3. I also think it’s good for women’s agency for women to experience ourselves as embodied and competent.

See earlier posts on role models and family fitness for more on this.

Hirschmann, Nancy J. “Mothers Who Care Too Much: What Feminists Get Wrong About Family, Work, and Equality.” Boston Review 35, no. 4 (2010).

Rogers, W. A. “Feminism and Public Health Ethics.” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 6 (2006).

“Sport Participation 2010: Research Paper.” Statistics Canada, February 2013.

[1] “Sport Participation 2010: Research Paper,”  (Statistics Canada, February 2013).

[2] Nancy J. Hirschmann, “Mothers Who Care Too Much: What Feminists Get Wrong About Family, Work, and Equality,” Boston Review 35, no. 4 (2010): 3.

[3] W. A. Rogers, “Feminism and Public Health Ethics,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 6 (2006).

family · team sports · traveling

On being a sports parent

Sam B4 Comments

A rugby parent, to be specific.

There are many signs that I’m a rugby parent.

I have a copy of Rugby for Dummies on my Kindle from when I set out to learn the basic rules a few years ago.

(I noticed early on that rugby parents on the sidelines were nicer than hockey parents. There was very little second guessing the refs, yelling at the players, or arguing with the coaches. I mentioned this to my son’s coach, saying how pleasant I found it and he burst my optimistic bubble, “Oh, they just don’t understand the rules of rugby so they keep quiet.”)

You can also tell we’re sports parents because our car has collapsible camp chairs in the trunk for watching games.

We also keep the car well stocked with Gatorade and sun screen. Oh, and there’s a cleat tightening tool in the glove box. That’s a dead give away.

July is rugby month in our house. Actually it begins in June and ends mid August but July is all rugby all the time.

My son plays with a local club two practices and one game a week. He also plays with the competitive Ontario team, the Junior Blues U15. That’s one more practice and another game each week.

He started playing in Australia while I was on sabbatical there four years ago. He kept it up, and played for a school team in New Zealand on my sabbatical in Dunedin, NZ last year.

I’m super proud of his athletic achievements. One hundred and fifty kids tried out for the Ontario team and forty made it. After a month’s play the coaching team chose twenty of them to travel to British Columbia for the national rugby championships in Victoria. My son is going. That’s great that he was selected but I also think there’s real value in putting yourself out there in a competitive process and facing failure.

The day that I wrote this I only had to drive to Guelph. That’s about 120 km away. But the day before was Markham, add another 100. Next up, Belleville, add another 150 km. There’s a lot of driving involved.

A friend who is a hockey dad recently got deep vein thrombosis in his left calf. “Ah, the 401,” says the doctor knowingly, “Does it all the time.”

It’s a huge commitment. Parents have to make a large investment of time, money, and energy. Lots of money, lots of fuel, lots of driving, lots of meals on the road, lots of laundry. You name it. There’s more of it.

More than other things in our life it brings home to us how privileged our children are. It’s hard to imagine many families being able to afford this.

Rugby even affected our car choice. Our purchase of a hybrid was sparked by the realization we’d be making many trips to Toronto and environs in the months ahead.

Luckily it’s a sport I love watching.

Phew. My standing rule is that I watch games but not practises.During practises I do university work, blog, surf the internet, jog, ride my road bike, do burpees. Sometimes I shop.

It also matters that team sports are a force for good in this child’s life. He’s polite, punctual, a team player and these are all lessons he’s had reaffirmed by his involvement in sports.

What are the gender politics of being a rugby parent?

It’s been pretty impressive so far. The coaching crew refer to us as “parents.” No one calls me a “rugby mum.” They don’t seem perturbed by the different last names in our house.

And there seems to be good mix of mothers and fathers involved. I love that so many dads take on this aspect of parenting. I also love that mothers aren’t asked to bake, cook, or clean etc.

The main coach for my son’s team is a woman, a former member of the Canadian national team, and I like that.

My son is also pretty respectful of my own athletic achievements. We’re the early rising exercisers in our house and we frequently compare how much we can lift, how far and fast we run, etc. These days he’s ahead in just about everything, of course. He also always asks how my own games go.

Oh, and I also like non gendered team names. All the boys teams are the Blues and the girls’ teams are all called Storm. So my son plays on the Junior Blues U15 team but if I had same aged daughter she’d be playing on the Junior Storm. I like that!

 

aging · Guest Post · inclusiveness · team sports

Full Contact Over Forty (Guest post)

Laura Rainbow Dragon10 Comments

image

One year ago today I drove out to a parking lot in Chatham, laced up a pair of quad roller skates, and joined Crow City Roller Girls. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I had no idea if I’d even be able to do it.

I was 41 years old. I’d not worn roller skates in over two decades. Everyone else in the league was younger than me. And they were all far, far, better skaters. They turned corners by crossing their outside leg over the inside one. They transitioned from forwards skating to backwards without breaking stride. They lined up in a column, each skater’s hands on the hips of the skater in front, and one skater pushed the entire “train” of eight people around the track. Even as a teenager tooling around the school playground in my high-heeled, blindingly-white, tall-booted skates I’d not been able to do any of that. Plus: there was the mouth guard.

I’d never worn a mouth guard before.

I’d lived through my share of accidental collisions in recreational soccer and ultimate frisbee leagues in my youth and knew well how to protect my ribs from the stray elbows of other runners on crowded race start lines. But a sport in which the other players were going to deliberately hit me? Hard. With the intention of knocking me down. A sport in which I was meant to attempt to do the same thing to them? While skating. Nope. I’d never tried that before. I wasn’t even certain that I wanted to.

But I needed to do something.

I needed to do something because I was 41 years old and not getting any younger. I needed to do something because a plague of injuries had kept me from running for the past nine years. I needed to do something because I was gaining weight and losing muscle mass at an alarming rate. And because, when I’d told my physician recently that I was still plagued with back problems from a weight-lifting injury I’d suffered nine years previously, he’d shrugged his shoulders and said:

“You’re forty, Laura.”

And that wasn’t acceptable to me.

Additionally: I was living in a new place where I had no friends and had thus far not succeeded in finding a community I wanted to be a part of. So when a facebook acquaintance sent me an invitation to participate in the skate practice of a nascent roller derby league, I bought myself a pair of roller skates, a helmet, knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, and that scary mouth guard, and I drove out to that parking lot.

I had no idea.

I had no idea I was going there to meet the most amazing, diverse, creative, hard-working and welcoming group of women I’ve ever been blessed to know. I had no idea everyone would be so supportive in helping me to improve my skating skills. Or that I’d soon be travelling to neighbouring leagues to NSO (volunteer as a non-skating official) at their bouts.

I had no idea I’d drive to London to learn how to penalty wrangle from a skater from Toronto or that the Head NSOs from both London’s and Windsor’s leagues would train me up to become the Head NSO for Crow City. I had no idea the leagues in Windsor and Sarnia would invite Crow City out to train with them (on their nice shiny arena floors) to help our skaters improve.

I had no idea that today my back would be pain free, my physical strength would be back at a level I’d not seen for a decade and my cardio-vascular health would be well on its way to returning to pre-injury levels. I had no idea that within one year I would lose 60% of the weight nine years of injury-plagued reduced activity had piled onto me or that so much muscle definition would return to my body I’d need to replace most of my wardrobe. Even my wrists—which were starting to show signs of strain from two decades of desk jobs—are pain free now, thanks to the upper body conditioning I’ve been doing for roller derby. And my body is finally ready to try running again.

I had no idea how much work it would take to present Crow City Roller Girls’ first public bout. (CCRG—like most roller derby leagues—is skater owned and operated. Nothing happens unless we make it happen.) I had no idea that referees and NSOs from Windsor and London would travel to Chatham at 9:15 on a Thursday night to help us. No idea we’d be playing a team from Windsor, or that skaters from Sarnia would drive down to fill out our still short roster. And I had no idea how amazing I would feel afterward, faced with the evidence that all of that hard work and wonderful community support had paid off, and we’d done it! We’d brought roller derby to Chatham, Ontario!

I had no idea when I first laced up my new roller skates in that parking lot in Chatham one year ago that today I would be on the Board of Directors of Crow City Roller Girls. I had no idea I’d be on the league’s training committee, helping other skaters to improve their skills. I certainly had no idea that I’d be the one saying, “We need to do more hitting in practice. We need to be hit more. I need to be hit more!”

I’ve been an athlete most of my life. I’ve participated in both team and individual sports. I’ve played in rec leagues and competed internationally. But I’ve never before found a sport as much fun, a community as welcoming and supportive or an experience as empowering as I have found with roller derby.

Is there a new experience out there waiting for you? An activity that intrigues you, that you think might be worthwhile to try… but you’re just not sure? I urge you to get out there and try it! Until you do, you have no idea.

—

Laura Rainbow Dragon writes, dances, cooks, runs, and makes wine–amongst other pursuits–in a way-too-small town in Southwestern Ontario.  She skates with Crow City Roller Girls out of Chatham and plays roller derby wherever and whenever she’s invited.  Laura has moved house far too often but found a home she loves in the roller derby community.

team sports

Bubble soccer! Maybe this could solve my desire for more contact ……..

Sam B2 Comments

I’ve written here before that I missed my chance to play rugby (even though I think I’d be good at it) and that I play soccer with friends instead. But since I do martial arts and I’m not afraid of contact, I often find myself wanting more contact in soccer than is, strictly speaking, allowed.

Maybe “bubble football” could be my sport! Thanks to someone on my team for sharing this. It’s hilarious. And I know I’m late to the party so if you’ve seen it before, I’m sorry.

“Football players are regularly criticised for being over delicate and falling over at the slightest hint of a challenge.

In order to protect them more, as if they needed it, two Norwegians have come up with a novel idea for the game.

The new type of football, created by Henrik Elvestad and Johan Golden, sees players run around the pitch wearing giant inflatable bubbles.

The participants then have to try and play a match inside the contraptions, while trying to constantly collide with each other.”

From Footballers wear huge bubbles in game which actually encourages contact

athletes · health · stereotypes · team sports

Top athletes aren’t just faster and fitter, they’re also smarter

Sam B5 Comments

I’ve written before about how I wasn’t a high school athlete. Yet, these days most of the people I hang out with have fond memories of high school sports. Often people are surprised that this is all new to me, that I wasn’t on the volleyball team, for example, in high school. Or that I’ve never played rugby. Sigh, rugby. (See my post on team sports and regrets.)

Why not?

Well, in my time–I did most of my schooling in the 70s, finished high school in 1982–you were either smart or you were an athlete. You could only excel in one of those areas. Most of the smart kids were geeky and uncoordinated and glasses wearing. (Of course, there were exceptions, even then.) I declared my allegiance to the bookmobile early. I was in advanced academic classes, I read a lot, and I was clearly headed for university.

And if wasn’t fit, I was smart and well read. And I took solace in thinking ‘each to his own,’ jocks could have the fields behind the high school, I’d rule the library.

I thought, they were faster and fitter but I was smarter.

And that stereotype of athletes continues on. I certainly hear versions of it from faculty members talking about college athletes.

The only problem is that it’s false. Here’s a headline from the Huffington Post, Elite Athletes Have Better Thinking Skills Than University Students, Study Finds. According to the article, “A new study in the journal Scientific Reports shows that the brains of elite athletes have greater visual perceptual and cognitive abilities than those of non-athlete college students — that is, they’re better at learning to track objects moving at a fast speed.”

I knew that already about soccer players. I read lots of articles last spring like this one, Why Soccer Players Are Smarter than You.

Soccer players are significantly smarter than, well, pretty much everyone, according to a new study in PLoS ONE. When professional soccer players were tested on “executive function”—a key aspect in memory, multitasking, and creativity—they scored significantly higher than the general population. In fact, elite players belonged to the best 2 to 5 percent of the total population, says Predrag Petrovic, Ph.D., the lead researcher and professor at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Here’s some quick thoughts.

First, I wonder how, or if, it’s different for different sports. In cycling for instance road races seem to require more smarts than time trials. The former takes strategy and the latter seems more like a battle of the fittest, a drag race. Though even the time trial takes psychological endurance, focus, and concentration.

Second, I wonder if the amount smarts matter for sports performance changes under different conditions. When cyclists are wearing headsets and taking direct orders from a team coach and strategist, is it still the case that the best are the smartest?

Third, I wonder about other connections between smarts and sports. Does the training boost academic performance or is it the other way round? Maybe it’s ask just genetic good luck. The folks who do well in one area are likely also to do well in the others. They’re just the best all round.

And fourth, maybe it shouldn’t be a shock that the best in any field are smarter than the rest of us. They’re the best after all.

Finally, I’m very happy to see the stereotypes change for my own children. I have a teenage son who hasn’t met a team sport be hasn’t liked. He plays rugby on the provincial boys team, football on his high school team, and basketball whenever wherever, six hours a day. He also lifts weights. He’s a member of the high school gifted class and hasn’t felt it hard, so far, to excel in both. Best yet, he’s not alone.

Aikido · competition · Crossfit · cycling · fitness · racing · Rowing · team sports

Things you learn from working out with others

Sam B19 Comments

I really enjoyed Tracy’s post about solitude and working out alone. It offered a very different perspective to my own approach to physical activity. There’s so much we agree about and yet in some areas, we’re ‘chalk and cheese’ as my mother might say. I’m enjoying exploring our differences in light of our shared starting points.

In contrast to Tracy, almost all the physical activities I do involve communities and teams. Aikido, rowing, and Crossfit are all group efforts. I suppose I could ride my bike alone but I don’t. It’s more fun with others. Crossfit style workouts (this morning was 60 sec box jump, 45 sec rest, repeat x 4, followed by 10 min of ‘on the minute every minute’ 7 push press, 7 pull ups) I can’t imagine doing by myself. I’d give up and quit half way through, I think.

For me working out meets social needs. I like meeting people with similar goals and values. Healthy living abounds in running, cycling, and martial arts communities. I like that and I find support for my goals and lifestyle choices in these communities. I also spend so much time doing various physical activities that I often find myself getting friends to join in. That’s especially true with road cycling and Aikido. I’m passionate about both and I want to spread the joy.

I’ve also learned a lot about physical activity from other people and it’s that value I thought I’d try to articulate here. I’ve written about some of the training advantages of running and riding with others here.

An aside: I’m not writing with the goal of persuading anyone that my way is the right way. Mostly I’m trying to articulate for myself what I get out of the company of other athletes because lots about Tracy’s alone time sounds attractive too. I’m a professional philosopher and spend a fair bit of time offering arguments for my conclusions and trying to show that I’m right. That’s not what I’m up to here at all. I’m offering reasons in a much more exploratory fashion, trying to understand what works for me and showing those reasons to others to see if they fit.

Here goes.  What I’ve learned from working out with others:

  • Fitness comes in all different shapes and sizes. When I first started cycling, I assumed that cyclists were thin and that speed and size were correlated. But I’ve been passed enough by bigger people and done lots of passing of smaller people to know that’s false. Ditto assumptions about size and strength in the case of weightlifting. I no longer assume that people smaller than me can’t lift heavier. It’s one thing knowing intellectually that fat people can be very fit and that thin people can be very strong, but having the actual embodied reminder chat with you after a ride or after a round of power cleans, is another thing all together. I see people in the world in a different way and make almost no assumptions about size, shape, and physical abilities.
  • I’ve also been shocked by how different we all are when it comes to responsiveness to physical training. We all  follow various plans for fitness that are written in a ‘one size fits all’ way but in every group there are outliers.  In my first 6 weeks to 5 km group there were people who did all the workouts but couldn’t manage 5 km at the end, and people who could run 5 km, within a  couple of weeks, without much effort at all. It seems that in each sport there are people who can do half the workouts and still make gains. I hate those people! They’re blessed with bodies that are extremely responsive to training. Others slog along, working very hard, doing everything exactly as prescribed, but never seem to get much fitter or faster.  They’re known as the “non-responders.” That would be so sad. I first heard about this when a friend took part in a study on the effects of training as a research subject. And I  read about this in Gretchen Reynolds’ book The First Twenty Minutes but again it’s much more striking to see it in action.  Gretchen Reynolds blogs about this here. You can read a bit about it in this blog post too, Are You a Non-Responder? It Could Be Your Genes.
  • Most of what I’ve learned about the value of competition comes from training and racing with others, but so too the value of teamwork and cooperation. I love in team sports that a group of people with very different skills, strengths, and abilities can all contribute something to the mix. In soccer, I don’t have the drive or killer instinct to play forward. I’m one of those people who when shooting for the net seems instinctively to aim for where the keeper, or goalie, is rather than where she isn’t. It would be funny were it also not tragic. Luckily I don’t have to play forward.  I play defense and I can guard our net and keep other players away with intensity and focus. In defense, I don’t have to run too far with the ball. I get it up the sides to our midfielders, strong and agile runners, who get it up the field to the other side’s net, to our forwards. Teamwork is key.
  • I’ve also learned about the sport that I’m doing from participants who’ve been it much longer than me. My favourite example of this was racing with the Vets in Canberra. Some of the older guys had been racing their whole lives and they loved to pass on wisdom and tactics. Yes, I’ve taken classes and had coaches for various sports but you learn a lot more, I think, from the people who run/ride/row with you. I often encounter this over breakfast after a run or a ride, but sometimes, these days, it happens in online discussion forums with teammates. Where can I get a spare battery for my old polar bike computer? Someone will know and they might even bring the battery in to the next ride and swap for coffee!

In praise of rest days
Aikido · diets · martial arts · Rowing · running · team sports

In praise of rest days

Sam B4 Comments

Fridays are my new rest days and I’m liking it. I’m a bit of a weekend warrior (running, cycling, rowing, soccer, AikIdo!) and it’s nice to start out Saturday fresh. Traditionally I’ve rested on Mondays–post weekend–but now I’m doing Crossfit that doesn’t quite work with my schedule.

I’m looking forward to a weekend of active fun. I’m doing test review in Aikido and I enjoy the intensity and focus of that process. My indoor soccer team plays our 3rd game Sunday afternoon and so far we’ve lost one and won one and I’d like to kick the stats back into our favour.

I’m especially happy today that it’s a rest day because I did a bit more than I bargained for on Thursday. Crossfit included rowing and then rowing practice included weights. Too many deadlifts!

It’s also a sleepy, grey rainy day with snow in the forecast.

What does this mean for me? First, I get to sleep a bit later (though not this morning, spouse’s early morning train to Toronto alarm woke me up, followed by a phone call from teenager at basketball practice who’d forgotten a much needed item.) Second, I try to eat very well on recovery days, lots of protein and colourful veggies. And third, I do keep moving but just regular stuff like walking the dog, housework, stretching etc.

In the spirit of feeling good about rest and recovery days, I thought I’d read some other women fitness bloggers on the practice of rest days:

Sit yo ass down! The importance of rest  by Krista Scott Dixon at Stumptuous

What does rest day mean to you? by fitknitchick

Focus on rest days by Fitnessista

How To: Incorporate Rest into Your Fitness Routine by Fitblogger

Enjoy your Friday! I will. Back on the mats at Aikido tomorrow morning.

team sports

Indoor Soccer, Team Sports, and Childhood Regrets

Sam B13 Comments

It’s November and I’m gearing up for the start of the indoor soccer season. I’ve been playing recreational soccer for a few years now with women from my neighbourhood. The success of women’s soccer is phenomenal.  Many of us didn’t ever play as children and we learned the rules by watching our kids compete. Now it’s our turn!

We play both the indoor and the outdoor sorts of soccer and while I love being outside, I prefer the indoor game.

Our league plays indoor soccer in hockey stadium with astro turf over where the ice would usually be. It’s a short field–which I like–and that makes for much faster play. Also, for extra fun, you had use the boards for rebounding the ball. And in indoor soccer, you can switch players without a pause in play and so when things get really busy we sometimes play 5 min, 5 min off.

I love playing on a team and I wish I’d learned about this earlier in life. There isn’t a lot in my past that I regret. I’m just not the “regretting” sort. Mostly I treasure the valuable stuff, try to forget the bad, and if there’s lessons to be learned from mistakes I’ve made I try to learn them and move on.

But as an adult-onset athlete I do occasionally regret that I didn’t discover my athletic self earlier in life. When I was growing up there was still the split between “smart” and “sporty.” You could be one or the other, but rarely both. I was definitely the bookish sort. I loathed gym class, team sports, and especially the Canada Fitness Test (on which I scored Bronze every single year.)

And I didn’t play team sports at all. For a short while I took figure skating classes (good brand new Canadian that I was) and I remember trying T-ball as a child. I did some swimming classes along the way but I think that might have been it other than casual outdoor play, walking to school, swimming in oceans and lakes, and bike riding with friends. Not bad, but not particularly athletic either.

I had also an idea that I was a chubby child. I joined Weight Watchers for the first time in Grade 6. I still remember how much I weighed when I stepped on their scale, 133 lbs. At the time I was the tallest kid in my class and I don’t think I was that much shorter than I am now. My parents meant well. They wanted me to avoid the lifetime of weight gain, and dieting, that’s plagued other family members. But now I look at back at Grade 6 me and think there was nothing that a little sports plus growing a few inches wouldn’t cure.

Sometimes now though I watch teenage girls playing rugby and wish that were me. I’ve ridden with several groups of women cyclists and I really loved racing as a team. There’s a community and a camaraderie in team sports that I didn’t know existed. I love that each person has strengths and weaknesses and working as a team means you find a way to contribute the thing that you do best.

I do wish that schools did a better job of encouraging children who are not particularly athletic to be active (yoga, dance etc). I wish we did a better job with individual, rather than team, sports for children. I’m thinking here of running, biking, swimming, etc. With girls, I’m glad our idea of appropriate sports is getting more broad. There wasn’t rugby for girls when I was growing up. But I also wish in my own case that I’d discovered how much I love team sports when I was younger. I might have avoided a lifetime of dieting! But more importantly, there was a good that my life could have contained that it didn’t.

I’m making up for lost time now!