Functional fitness

I've been rehabbing a groin pull and at my last session, I asked my physical therapist what his workout routine was. He said he does Olympic style lifting and body weight stuff (pushups, pull-ups, planks, etc) several times a week. He emphasized that he believes in "functional fitness." He said that a lift like the bench press is not a good exercise because you would never do anything like that in real life. The only purpose of the bench press is as a measurement of upper body strength, so you can compare to other people.. He thought that the true measure of fitness is: "can you pull a person out of a burning car?"... "if you're dangling off a cliffside, can you pull yourself up?" He's a huge fan of pushups (instead of the bench press). He also really likes squats and deadlifts, which work the posterior chain. I asked him about the TRX and he said it was a useful device because it allows you to work out your back, which is hard to do in bodyweight exercises.

Thought of the day: Being a minority

The problem of women in science (or whatever you want to call it) is a fundamentally a problem of being a minority. Many areas of life were traditionally run by white, straight men, and even in the 21st century, it's very hard to break in. Being a minority is always hard. I've been on a sports team where I was surrounded by people were 20 years older, with families, and middle class jobs. The fact that we were all female didn't really matter much. Then I played with a sports club where there were a lot of guys (some women) but they were all around my age and studying science. Much better!

A woman developer gave a talk about making the developing community more female friendly and she has some good examples to illustrate what it's like to be a minority.

So what does it feel like to be a woman in open source? Jono Bacon, at the Community Leadership Summit on the weekend, said — addressing the guys in the room — that if you want to know what it’s like to be a woman in open source, go and get your nails done at a salon. He did this a week or so back, and when he walked into the salon he realised he was the only man there, and felt kind of out of place.

Another example someone suggested is walking into a sports bar on game night wearing the wrong team’s jersey. It can be the most friendly sports bar in the universe, but you’re still going to feel pretty awkward.

So as a woman in open source, it can be a bit like that. You walk into a space, and you feel like you stand out. And there’s enormous pressure to perform well, in case any mistake you make reflects on everyone of your gender.

So if you're lobbying to make life better for women in science, don't make yourself look like a man-hater. Your colleagues are probably white, straight, male, and speak English. They've never been a minority so they just don't know what it's like. Talk to them and educate them.

Thought of the day: What is the progression?

When you're learning or teaching, a good question to ask yourself is: "what is the progression?"

I'm not sure where the term "progression" came from, but I've heard it used in reference to strength training and conditioning. One day, at the gym, I saw a new piece of equipment, a back extension bench. I asked the supervisor how to use the bench and I tried it. It was pretty damn hard and I realized that the exercise was too difficult/advanced for me. So I went back to the supervisor and asked him if there was an easier exercise that would help me build up to the back extension bench. He gave me another exercise and said, "That's the progression."

Recently, I having discussions on how to coach beginning adult hockey players. It's very tricky to teach adults hockey because there is just so much to learn and because hockey is one of the most difficult sports to become proficient in (let's not talk about being a master, it's hard enough just be decent). Through the course of the discussion, I realized that you need to design practices where the different drills reinforce each other, skills are applied in different contexts, and teach how skills are used in game situations -- all without making people frustrated or bored. There needs to be a progression to take people from not knowing how to skate to being able to play in a game with decent skating, stickhandling, shooting, and tactical skills.

The progression for learning hockey would be something like:

1. Learn how to use your edges
2. Skating in a straight line, stopping
3. Crossovers, tight turns, transitions
4. Skating with the puck
5. Simple dekes
6. Shooting
7. Tactics

The learner is often frustrated about making progress or overwhelmed by how much work there is to do. So it's important to give them just enough to chew on, but not get stuck or become intimidated. The teacher is often frustrated that the learner isn't improving quickly enough. The key to solving these problems is to identify what skills need to be mastered and to come up with a progression to tie everything together.

Learning from other fields and cross-training

As I get older, I feel like scientists aren't really good at anything except science. Not that this is entirely surprising or that we should expect scientists to be amazing writers, speakers, etc. But if you're a scientist, you spend all your time immersed in the scientific community, thinking that the quality of writing or presentations that you see there are really the way things should be... well, you should go look at essays in the New Yorker or The Atlantic, or watch TED speakers or theatre performers or standup comics. The professionals of every field tend to have their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to shore up your weaknesses, go look for a field where that particular weakness is a strength, learn from those people, and use them as your inspiration. If you look outside your field, I think you'll have a huge leg up over others.

In sports, we call this cross-training. Athletes have no problem taking up yoga to help their hockey goaltending skills, for instance.

Link of the day: Coaching like a creative writing instructor

While in the bookstore sitting out a fire alarm, I picked an issue of Sports Illustrated. I came across the annual Sportsman of the Year issue. This year, the award was bestowed on college basketball coaches Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt. I was especially intrigued by descriptions of Krzyzewski's style of coaching. Writer Alexander Wolff claims that he thinks of coaching his players as writing a story.

For someone who doesn't read, Krzyzewski coaches an awful lot like a creative writing instructor. Two weeks ago, before Duke played Kansas in the final of the Maui Invitational, Krzyzewski gave his inexperienced team a kind of grammar to moot the burden of conscientiousness he feared they'd feel. The shots presenting themselves that night, he told them, wouldn't be their shots. "I told them they were my shots, and that I wanted them to take them," he says. "That they should shoot whenever they felt a shot, and I'd live with the result. Young players, if they thought of shots in a big game as theirs, they might hold back."

Krzyzewski tries to teach his players to see themselves honestly, to see themselves the way he sees them. That truthfulness helps them grow.

"I could recite a definition or quote some famous author on ownership, and they would never feel it," Krzyzewski says. "You tell stories, and you have a chance to feel the word."

Krzyzewski teaches his Blue Devils by arraying things around them that they can see. "If one of my guys can see himself honestly, that's the rite of passage to the place where he and I can have a trustful relationship," he says. "In a moment on the bench, he can see himself through my eyes. I'd say I've had that relationship with most of my players. Sometimes they never give you themselves. But sometimes they give you themselves that first day, and it just gets bigger."

The Sports Illustrated piece recounts a particularly poignant story about US Olympian Kevin Durant.

In August 2010 in Madrid, Krzyzewski gathered the U.S. national team before an exhibition game with Spain. As he addressed his players he noticed forward Kevin Durant staring at the floor. Afterward he took Durant aside to tell him the importance of eye contact.

"Coach," Durant replied, "I'm a shy person."

"Kevin, you can't be a shy person. I need you to be great. We need to be great together."

That night the U.S. beat Spain in the final seconds, and the next morning the team reconvened to view film. When he rolls tape, Krzyzewski often stops the action to make nontactical points—to flag a facial expression or a phrase of body language. And here was Durant in freeze-framed glory, looking like a basketball god come down in vengeance.

"Kevin! That's what I'm talking about!"

Krzyzewski wheeled on point guard Russell Westbrook. "Russell, when Kevin looks like that, how does it make you feel?"

"When Kevin looks like that, it makes me feel like we're gonna win," Westbrook replied.

"Kevin, if you look like that, before you make one shot or grab one rebound or stop one guy on defense, you've created a mood of winning."

Durant went on to dominate the worlds, averaging 33 points over the final three games. In his coach's judgment, no American has ever played better in an international competition. "Kevin had been lumped in with his peers and didn't know how to separate himself," Krzyzewski says. "Sometimes you have to show guys."

Link of the day: Why soccer seems boring

I've always wondered why soccer seems dull. The ball bounces back and forth all over the field and not much seems to happen. I love playing and watching hockey, which is similar to soccer. I played soccer as a child. Yet, I've never gotten into watching soccer, the only exception being the sensational 2011 women's World Cup final between Japan and USA.

Finally, I found this great essay on Grantland which answers exactly my questions.

First, why is soccer so dull?

There are two reasons, basically, why soccer lends itself to spectatorial boredom. One is that the game is mercilessly hard to play at a high level. (You know, what with the whole "maneuver a small ball via precisely coordinated spontaneous group movement with 10 other people on a huge field while 11 guys try to knock it away from you, and oh, by the way, you can't use your arms and hands" element.) The other is that the gameplay almost never stops — it's a near-continuous flow for 45-plus minutes at a stretch, with only very occasional resets. Combine those two factors and you have a game that's uniquely adapted for long periods of play where [the ball bounces around chaotically and nothing seems to happen]...

Second, if soccer is dull, why is it the world's most popular sport? Why the crazed fans?

Following soccer is like being in love with someone who's (a) gorgeous, (b) fascinating, (c) possibly quite evil, and (d) only occasionally aware of your existence. There's a continuous low-grade suffering that becomes a sort of addiction in its own right. You spend all your time hoping they'll notice you, and they never do, and that unfulfilled hope feels like your only connection to them. And then one day they look your way, and it's just, pow... I watch soccer to be amazed.

Oh, and check the footnotes of Brian Phillips's fantastic piece to hear his meditations on how American sports (football, baseball, etc.) have rules which promote regularity and prevent the kind of chaos observed in soccer.

Link of the day: "Advice on Getting Better from an Accomplished Piano Player"

I follow Cal Newport's blog, whose theme is something along the lines of how to live your life, so that you are creative and get a lot of (real) work done while staying sane.

I liked one of his recent posts where he discussed a piano player's strategy to becoming better. The strategies of "Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy; To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder; Systematically Eliminate Weakness" -- they all fit the general strategy of deliberate practice, which I've discussed in the past here and here.

The last strategy "Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness" fits into the general strategy of visualization. In sports, coaches talk a lot about visualizing your success or visualizing your strategies to deal with a particular situation. For example, if you are a forward playing ice hockey, you could visualizing the three different moves you'd use to score a goal on a breakaway. But visualization can be extended to so many other situations beyond athletic and musical performance. When you get up in the morning, you can script your day and visualize how you want things to go.

Link of the day: "The Once and Future Way to Run"

I enjoyed this New York Times article investigating what is the best -- most natural and injury free -- way to run.

The author purports that the best way to run goes back to the roots of human civilization when we ran barefoot.  The key is to land lightly on your forefoot and not on your heel.  Here are some quotes from the article.

The “one best way” isn’t about footwear. It’s about form. Learn to run gently, and you can wear anything. Fail to do so, and no shoe — or lack of shoe — will make a difference.

Back at the lab, Lieberman found that barefoot runners land with almost zero initial impact shock. Heel-strikers, by comparison, collide with the ground with a force equal to as much as three times their body weight.

Sports analogies to deliberate practice

Being an athlete and training for a sport confers skills that are easily transferred to many kinds of work. Many employers like athletes because they know how to be part of a team (unless it's a solo sport), and they understand what it's like to work towards a goal.

The nice thing about sports is that training and the results of that training are tangible and easy to see. When you train for a sport, you aim to be consistent in your performances. You also pace yourself so that you peak at competition time. Each sport is different. For instance, playing basketball requires you to peak several evening a week for games, but a marathoner might only run a race every few weeks. However, the ideas are the same. Pacing is important because you don't want to get injured. This is just like in a knowledge worker type job. If you work too hard, you'll burn out. So pace yourself.

The reason that athletes become really good is because athletic training is a form of "deliberate practice." The idea is that you figure out what are the key things you need to work on so that you can perform at the highest level during competition. For a hockey player, that might mean trying to take shots from many different angles, off different feet, in awkward positions, so that during a game, you can score. For more information about deliberate practice, check out this post about deliberate practice at Psychology Today and this discussion of Geoff Colvin's book on the subject.

Sasuke / Ninja Warrior

Sasuke is a Japanese TV show that features contestants running through timed obstacles courses. There are four stages and only three people have completed all four to achieve "total victory." It looks really cool and a nice test of athleticism. The male competition (Sasuke) seems to heavily challenge arm strength. The female version (Kunoichi) appears to focus more on agility as opposed to arm strength.

Some really cool videos: Makoto Nagano winning Sasuke and Ayako Miyake winning Kunoichi

Link of the day: "It's all about anticipation"

Recently, there was a neat article from Sports Illustrated about the role of anticipation and experience in world class athletes.

An important concept is that experts "chunk" information into meaningful pieces rather than looking at all the little details.

Before occlusion studies shed light on perceptual expertise in sports (the first significant tests were performed by Canadian researcher Janet Starkes on volleyball players in 1975), studies of chess masters were beginning to illuminate the underlying processes. In famous experiments starting in the 1940s, Dutch psychologist and chess master Adriaan de Groot gave grandmasters and club chess players five seconds to look at chessboards with the pieces arranged in game scenarios. Then the arrangement was taken away, and De Groot had the players reconstruct the board they had just seen. Grandmasters could remember the position of nearly every piece, while decent club players could reconstruct only about half the board. De Groot and subsequent researchers determined that the masters were "chunking" information—rather than remember the position of every piece separately, the grandmasters grasped small chunks of meaningful information, which allowed them to place the pieces. We all use this strategy to an extent in daily life. For example, while it would be difficult to remember 15 random words, it's much less difficult to remember a coherent 15-word sentence because one need only recall bits of meaning and grammar, which coordinate the order of words in your head...

What major league players and pro tennis and cricket athletes seem to do is to synthesize and group information about the human body based on their playing experience...

Being able to process the information in smaller, but larger pieces allows the expert to process information much more quickly. This is especially important for athletes, who don't have time to think.

... Peyton Manning would probably have trouble recalling the exact position of randomly distributed players in the Colts' locker room, but show him those players positioned on a football field, and he would be better at recalling the arrangement because each segment—the positioning of the defensive backs relative to his receivers, for example—has an underlying, unifying meaning for him. That's why crafty defensive coordinators attempt to disguise a defense: They try to forestall Manning's ability to predict the future using cues from patterns he's seen before.

... Additionally, a quarterback, like a baseball batter, does not have time to consciously analyze everything he sees...

... Phillip L. Ackerman, a professor of psychology at Georgia Tech who studies skill acquisition, uses a military analogy to describe a quarterback's decision-making process: "It's an if-then task. If you recognize a certain pattern, you react to it. And you have to do it without thinking about it. It's like a soldier taking apart a weapon when it jams. You learn it to the level where you can do it without thinking, because people are shooting at you."

This idea about the value of experience and how it separates experts from beginners is something that I've seen before and that I find really interesting.

Experience allows you to take mental shortcuts. Like the difference between an expert and a student solving a classical mechanics problem. The expert quickly guesses what is the best and most efficient way to solve the problem (use energy conservation), whereas the student is worrying about the details (how do I connect mass, velocity, and energy?) Or a native vs a ELS student reading English text. The native reads chunks of text whereas the student has to read each word.

That's not all. The Sports Illustrated article also notes that since the anticipatory processes are sub-conscious, this needs to be taken into account in high pressure situations.

This science contradicts some of sports' hoariest beliefs. The exhortation of every Little League coach to "keep your eye on the ball"? Impossible. "If you monitor the eyes of batters, the gaze stops tracking the ball before they hit," Abernethy says. "You don't have a visual system fast enough to track the angular changes that occur over the last few meters of the flight." Nonetheless, he says, keep your eye on the ball is probably sound advice, because it keeps your head still and pointed in the right direction to gather the necessary information from the pitcher's body.

"The real advice would be, 'Watch the shoulder,'" Abernethy says, "but [even] that doesn't help. It actually makes [players] worse." That's because forcing an athlete to think consciously about an automated task destroys his ability to anticipate and puts him back in the realm of reaction.

Coaches who call timeouts to ice free throw shooters and field goal kickers are trying to exploit what researchers have codified: Break up the routine; get the player thinking. University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, author of the book Choke, has demonstrated that, in golf, pressure-induced poor putting can sometimes be overcome with simple remedies such as singing to yourself or counting backward by threes. For automated tasks like putting or placekicking, mild distraction, rather than intense concentration, may be the best approach because it keeps the process out of the higher-conscious areas of the brain, where what Beilock calls "paralysis by analysis" takes root.

At this rate, I might as well copy the entire article, but yeah, there is a lot of good stuff in it.

NFL Films

NFL Films is making the news since its founder Ed Sabol was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I found it fascinating to learn that the company pioneered sports film making and even had an influence on Hollywood. This is a company started by a 45 year old overcoat salesman whose only experience was shooting his 14 year old son's football games! Ed Sabol was uncompromising in his artistic vision. NFL Films has shot over 100 million feet of film (Sabol jokes that no other subject has been shot as much on 16 mm film, except WWII.) Some even claim that NFL Films was the propaganda machine that transformed the NFL from a middling sport to the billion dollar money making machine it is today.

This is an amazing American success story and an inspiration to artists. Since I started doing photography a couple years ago, I have developed a better visual eye and am starting to appreciate great camera work more and more.

Here are some quotes from various articles around the web. First, CNN's article:

Big Ed calls that first film his favorite and points to the end scene as something that set his group apart. The last shot is of the empty stadium after the game. Wind blows newspapers and programs around the lonely goal posts.

"I had a saying that I always told all of our cameramen: 'Finish like a pro,' " he said, "and this cameraman got this memorable shot because he finished like a pro."

"NFL highlight reels had a real impact on how movies get made, particularly montages," two-time Academy Award winning director Ron Howard told the New York Times in 2000. "Lots of different images. Images on images. Using the slow-motion, combined with the live action. The hard-hitting sound effects, juxtaposed against incredible music, powerful music, creating a really emotional experience for the viewer."

From the Canton Repository:

The company’s methodology was — and is — mythology, with innovation and creativity its foundation. Sabol told the stories of professional football through close-ups, various camera angles, hypnotic slow-motion, the wiring of coaches and players for sound, unique narration and musical scores.

Fans saw football in a way never displayed before. Action was not shot from a single angle high above the field. There were multiple angles, including ground-level. There were zoom shots of live action. There was slow motion. Montages of highlights were put with composer Sam Spence’s scores and narrator John Facenda’s haunting voice.

Players went from distant, almost indistinguishable figures to instantly recognizable heroes. Images of Jack Lambert’s teeth-challenged snarl and Gale Sayer’s graceful strides became imbedded in fans’ minds.

They saw Willie Brown’s zoomed-in stare — eyes on the end zone, helmet bouncing ever so slightly — as he returned an interception from Fran Tarkenton in Super Bowl XI. They heard Chiefs coach Hank Stram, who became a close friend of Ed Sabol, offer his famous line, “Just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys,” as Kansas City won Super Bowl IV. They witnessed the spiraling flight of the football and the carnage of line play. They even saw blooper films.

The power of positive thinking

It is well known in psychology that visualizing your success is a very good way to improve your performance. This is especially true in sports, which is why professional athletes sometimes hire a sports psychologist.

Take hockey, for example. A goaltender can visualize how to stop a player on a breakaway. A forward can think about how to win a faceoff or where to go when attempting a one-timer. According to an article in USA Hockey Magazine, a big part of the mental game is "focus and elimination of negativity, no matter what happens."

The article emphasizes over and over again the importance of being even-keeled and mentally tough. Larry Lauer is a coach who works with the USA Hockey National Team Development Program (USNTDP) on the mental aspects of the game. He says:

I try to eliminate the triggers that create negativity. If you missed an open net, or if you're a goalie and you let in a weak shot, focusing on those things can lead to negative thinking. When you get caught thinking in the past or in the future, you're unable to do your best in the present.

You like players that don't ride the emotional rollercoaster.

Many coaches agree that the many of the best hockey players are "mentally strong." Don Lucia, the head coach of the University of Minnesota men's hockey team, says:

They have short memories. They don't allow what happened yesterday or a previous play or the previous period inhibit what they're going to do in the future. You can't get caught up in what happened, you've got to always be looking ahead.

But what about the successful people we know, who are emotional? It seems like they can get away with this.

The top players are better able to play a more emotional game because they come with a reservoir of confidence that few people have.

Sports photography tips

1. You need to know the sport you're shooting. That means you want to be standing in the right location. For example, hockey is very different from baseball. In baseball, the athletes are mostly in fixed positions. So you point your camera at the pitcher/batter/baseman. In hockey, the players are constantly moving so you point the camera at either the attacking zone (stand at the end boards) or the defending zone (stand at the blue line). It helps to do research on the sport (reading the rules, watching footage), or even better: play the sport yourself.
   
2. Put autofocus and shutter release on separate buttons, if your camera has this function. For Canon users, this is known as AF-on back button focusing. The idea is that you spend most of your time following a particular player or action and trying to maintain focus. So you should have a separate button for AF and only release the shutter when you have a good shot.
   
3. People frequently recommend that you use the center AF point because it's usually the most sensitive. But sports are too fast. You'll have to keep the subject on the center AF point all the time, because you don't have time to focus and recompose. If the subject is always in the center, the composition will be off and you'll have to crop the photos. A friend of mine, who did professional sports photography, says that he recommends uses the AF-on back button focusing to establish a focus on the right ballpark (for instance, focus on a faceoff dot on the hockey rink). Then as the play happens, make minor adjustments in focus with the manual focus ring on the lens. If your lens has this option, you can manually focus while the AF is on.
   
4. Practice right before the game starts. I learned this from listening to a pro sports photographer (Ron Wyatt) speak at B&H Eventspace. He said that he practices shooting before the event. Doing sports photography is a sport in itself. You should warmup first.
   
5. Like any kind of event photography, you should have a shot list. When I shoot hockey, my list is something like this: wide angle shot of rink, skater shooting puck, goalie making save, closeup of puck on faceoff, players pushing each other in front of the net, referee escorting player to penalty box, closeup of player's face, players celebrating after a goal, crowd shots, players lining up for post-game handshake, etc. You would like to have a variety of shots planned. This is also helpful if you're having trouble getting a particular kind of shot, then you can move on to the next item on your list and come back to it later. In sports, people tend to take the same kind of shot over and over again. To avoid this problem, you want to think ahead of time and think creatively.
   
6. Try to get the white balance right while you're shooting. It will be a nightmare to fix afterwards. For indoor sports, the lighting is usually fixed, so you can do a rough white balance (I like the Expodisc) and then set that as your custom white balance for the rest of the game.
   
7. Use photo-processing software. After you come back from the sporting event, you will have hundreds of photos. Your life will be much easier if you use something like Lightroom to process them. The software will allow you to batch operations like adjusting white balance and quickly sort the good photos from the bad.
   
8. Use a camera with a fast frame rate (at least 5 fps or higher) and a good auto-focusing system. That means don't try to take sports photos with a point-and-shoot camera. These types of cameras use contrast detection AF which is very slow. You need something like an SLR, which uses phase detection AF. Semi-pro and pro-level SLR cameras will have much better AF systems than entry-level ones.
   
9. Use fast (large aperture) telephoto lenses. You want as fast a shutter speed as possible. It is pretty much impossible to shoot dark indoor sports without such a lens.
   
10. Bring lots of memory cards and storage space (photo viewer or laptop). I recommend bringing an Epson P-3000/P-5000/P-7000 Multimedia Storage Viewer. It's possible to open the P-3000 case and upgrade the hard drive yourself. Between cards, you put a filled card into a slot on the viewer and dump all photos from the card into the viewer's hard drive. This is a good way to backup photos and also view them on a small screen. The Epson device is much smaller and easier to use than a laptop.
    
11. Try using a monopod. Sometimes it can be useful if you know exactly where the shot is going to be. For example, photographing an Olympic archer from a fixed position. Other times, it can get in the way. I don't use a monopod for shooting hockey.

Social sports

I was reading a New York Times article which mentioned a multiple-sport complex in Brooklyn called Aviator Sports. The Aviator Sports website had a link to dodgeball and I started searching for dodgeball which brought me to the New York Social Sports Club. They offer kickball, inner-tube water polo, broomball, and ultimate in addition to dodgeball. It sounds like an awesome concept. Playground sports and drinking/hanging-out afterwards. I wish there was something like that around where I live.

Sports photography

I had the opportunity to photograph my hockey team at a tournament this past April. I haven't had time to really look through my thousands of photos or edit them, but here are a few I liked. My teammates are in the white jerseys.

To me, this photo shows the rough and tumble nature of hockey. It's kind of funny that the girl in pink gloves looks so nonchalant.



This is a pretty classic action photo. My teammate is skating up the ice with the puck in a commanding stride.



A nice defensive shot. I'm happy I got the puck in the photo. The capture really shows how quick your reflexes neat to be, when playing hockey.



A decent photo, but probably not my best.



This is a great shot because you can see my teammate's face so clearly. Too bad I didn't get the puck in the photo.



I really like this shot because I didn't expect to get it. I was shooting with a 135 mm fixed focal length lens. The action was too close for me to take any photos involving the puck. So I fooled around and looked around the defensive zone. I caught my teammate having a "friendly chat" with an opponent.



Again, this photo is the result of having the long focal length lens. I was limited in terms of what I could shoot, which turned out to be a blessing. Since I couldn't really shoot whole players with the puck, I focused on faces.



I really love this photo. Some people might say that it's not perfect because the player's face is partially obscured by the referee's arm. However, I think it's okay because it isolates the eyes, which you can still see!



I so so wanted a photo of a player shooting the puck. This is my best shot. The blur on the bottom part of the stick is great because it conveys a sense of motion. Unfortunately, the puck is hard to see because it's black and the stick tape is also black. I can't really go to my teammates and tell them, "please tape all your sticks white for me, so I can see the puck on my shooting action photos."

Quote of the day: Anders on the "perfect throw"

In a flashback before the nuclear bombing of the Twelve Colonies, Anders, a star professional athlete, is interviewed by a news reporter. She congratulates him on his Hall-of-Fame worthy career. Then she asks him about how he feels about the fact that he hasn't won a championship yet.

If you want to know the truth... I don't really care about the stats. Or the cup, or the trophy, or anything like that. Um, in fact, even the games aren't that important to me, not really. What matters to me is the perfect throw... making the perfect catch... the perfect stepping block. Perfection is what it's about. It's about those moments when... you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty of physics, the wonder of mathematics. And all the relation of action and reaction. And that is the kind of perfection I want to be connected to.
- Samuel T. Anders, "Daybreak, Part I," Battlestar Galactica

I love this quote. It's beautiful. It encapsulates how I feel about life. The moments matter more to me than the end result.

I play hockey for that magical moment when I see the puck, I know I'm going to get it, I know what I'm going to do, and everything happens the way I planned without conscious thought.

I do physics for that moment when I'm working with a colleague and I'm overwhelmed by the spiritual experience of sharing such intellectual passion.

This is a tangent, but I thought I'd mention a special moment for me. Many of my undergraduate physics classes were taught by these brilliant particle theorists. I remember one day, sitting in class, tuning out the lecture and just marveling at the professor's genius, passion, and gifts of communication. But it wasn't just that one guy, there were four of them!

Baseball song trivia

I've had an interest in baseball music since I heard "Go Cubs Go" at Wrigley Field. Here are some of the songs I know about.

Chicago Cubs
Victory song - Go Cubs Go by Steve Goodman

Boston Red Sox
Middle of 8th inning - Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond
Victory song - Dirty Water by The Standells

The lyrics "dirty water" refer to the Charles River which has a notorious reputation for being so dirty that if you fell in a few years ago, you had to go to the hospital.

New York Yankees
Mariano Rivera coming out to mound - Enter Sandman by Metallica
Victory song - New York, New York performed by Frank Sinatra

I don't like the Yankees, but you have to include them for historical reasons. I've attended Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees games.

Giving as good as you get

A couple times I've heard the phrase "give as good as you get." It refers to the idea that if someone insults you, you insult them back equally. Is this a staple of American culture? If so, I condemn it.

Yes, I agree, if you are 100% sure someone is a complete jerk and is doing it on purpose, then hit back hard, verbally, physically, whatever. But what happened to human decency and cutting people slack? Maybe it's because I'm Asian and Asian people have doormat culture? The idea to "give as good as you get" without any kind of reflection is incredibly rude. What happened to those Christian ideals about "turning the other cheek" and not retaliating?

This is something to keep in mind when playing competitive sports. I like what judoka Ronda Rousey said in an NBC Olympic interview titled "International competition":

People on the mat are a completely different personality from when they are off the mat. When someone is roughing me up and trying to bust my lip or whatever or doing cheap stuff on me on the mat... I won't hold it against them because they could be the coolest person to go out with on a Friday.

Lang Ping, Chinese volleyball hero

The Beijing Olympics have been good for me. I learned a bit of history from the opening Ceremony ("who the heck is Zheng He?") and discovered judoka Ronda Rousey. Last week, I read about Lang Ping (郎平) in the New York Times.

Being Chinese-American, I should know more about my "other half." China made its first appearance at the Olympics in 1984. So it was a big deal when the Chinese women's volleyball team defeated USA in the gold medal match. Due to her team-leading performance, Lang Ping became a huge celebrity and a living historical icon. Her nickname is the "Iron Hammer" 「鐵榔頭」. (I want a nickname like that!)

Apparently, the celebrity eventually became suffocating and Lang Ping decided to leave her home country for a "normal" existence. Life has now come full circle for Lang Ping. She returned to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as the USA women's volleyball head coach. The USA women eventually won silver, defeating China on the way to the gold medal match.

I found this amusing interview with Lang Ping. Most people probably won't understand why I find it funny, but Lang Ping talks a lot like my dad and my dad's sister. It's not just the strange grammar and word choice of a non-native speaker. Something about the innocent and earnest yet frank tone that I find refreshing and familiar.

Here is a humorous example:

Yes, many people were concerned about my safety when I went to carry the torch in San Francisco. Apart from friends and relatives, the person most concerned was the chairman of the United States Volleyball Association. He called me daily. Before I flew to San Francisco, he even told me that I could give up my position for safety reasons. But I was very calm. How can a Chinese person give up her right? I told him not to worry. If someone should try to grab my torch, they should know who I am! "The Iron Hammer"! I will strike him down with my torch!

The part of the interview I found most relevant to myself was the cultural differences between China and the United States. My parents ingrained in me some of those oft-stereotyped Chinese mannerisms -- stoicism, putting too much pressure on yourself, not celebrating small accomplishments because you're still working towards a bigger goal -- but like Lang Ping, I have gradually come to appreciate the "relaxed" American attitude which "puts the emphasis on participation and whether you have done your best." Perfectionism makes me unhappy and creates "excessive nervousness" as Lang Ping notes. Most importantly, perfectionism is not emotionally sustainable. You have to stop and smell the flowers regularly.

There are aspects of Chinese culture that I do like and that I want to keep. For example, Lang Ping says

When I criticize them for not playing to their potential in games, they usually respond by saying that they are "not in shape." This is somewhat distressing. In China, you cannot use the excuse of "not being in shape" for a lousy performance. You are not allowed to relax because the eyes of the nation are watching you. The honor of the state needs your success to sustain, and you cannot be emotional as if you please.

Being mentally disciplined to do things that need to be done despite your feelings is a great, great skill. All good leaders and athletes have this skill. Mental discipline is a wonderful Chinese tradition and I hope to keep it up.