Physical Training - In Your Dreams?

Janet’s Reading Challenge: Put the following activities in order of BEFORE, DURING or POST reading order FIND SOMEONE WHO........ ......thinks they are a bit of a COUCH POTATO ......takes exercise every day ......never takes exercise ......thinks taking exercise is a great way to keep fit ......thinks people who exercise will probably live longer than those who don’t ......believes that taking exercise could reduce the crime rate (how?) ......agrees that you can become better at a sport simply by visualising yourself playing it ......dreams of becoming a super fit athlete one day!

WORDSEARCH The following wordsearch puzzle contains some key words to a text that you are going to read. How quickly can you find them? What do you think the article is going to be about?

You can do a more interactive and dynamic version by pressing the link below: http://www.wordsearchmaker.net/wordsearchplayer.aspx?puzzleid=99d871cb-f8de-4654-a3b8-90cf4ac87bfc

RANKING ACTIVITY In pairs put the following jobs in order of who you both think deserves to earn

the most / least money and why:

TWENTY QUESTIONS GAME

Guess the object / place or person! Your teacher can only answer with YES / NO. See if you can beat the teacher and guess what is on the photo that your teacher is looking at. You have a maximum of 20 questions. If you can’t guess, then your teacher will be the winner!! REVEAL THE PHOTO below after 20 questions game! Fun alternative suggestion: Play the same game, but this time place 20 stickies all over the picture to cover it. If you answer YES to a question, you peel off the sticky to reveal more of the image gradually.

Picture taken from Google images by searching “couch potato”

VOCABULARY FOCUS Which words in the article can you find which mean:

GUESS THE STORY We have just received some breaking news via BBC News 5!! What do you think this story is about??? Image adapted with Image Chef

WRITING Write 4 questions that you would like to ask about the text you are going to read. Who? What? Where? Why?

GUESS THE CONNECTION!

What connects these 2 images to the article you have just read?

Do you know anyone who is similar to one of the people depicted in the images above? Can YOU connect in any way with either / both or neither of these 2 images? Write a short paragraph connecting the 2 images above. Use your imagination and be creative!

SUMMARY WRITING You work for a weekly magazine and want to report the article in your Strange but True column. Unfortunately you have space for no more than 200 words!!

Go to http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp, paste your article and print in the form of a newspaper!

COMPLETE THE STEMS................

Having a set of biceps like the ones below is ....................... It’s cool to be fit because...................................................... Keeping fit is important ....................................................... This image could be an advert for......................................... I would like /not like to be this person because.......................

Compare your answers with a partner.

CHECK THE INFORMATION Quickly read the short extract from the newspaper article below, and locate

the bits that are wrong and then correct them. www.fodey.com

Number Crunching! Read the text quickly in order to find out what the connection is to the numbers below. Compare your answers with your partner. Are you surprised by any of these facts?

Physical training in your dream Physical training in your dreams

Scientists have come up with just about the best news that a couch potato could ever want to hear.

They say you can increase the strength of your muscles just by sitting back and imagine yourself taking exercise.

The discovery could help patients too weak to exercise to start recuperating from strokes or other injuries.

Dr Peter Clough If the technique works in older people, they might use it to help maintain their strength.

Muscles move in response to impulses from nearby nerve cells called motor neurons.

The firing of those neurons in turn depends on the strength of electrical impulses sent by the brain.

Dr Guang Yue, an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, says that this suggests you can increase muscle strength solely by sending a larger signal to motor neurons from the brain.

New Scientist magazine reports that Dr Yue and his colleagues have already found that visualising exercise was enough to increase strength in a muscle in the little finger, which it uses to move sideways.

Flexing biceps

Now his team have turned their attention to a larger, more frequently used muscle, the bicep.

They asked 10 volunteers aged 20 to 35 to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as possible in training sessions five times a week.

The researchers recorded the electrical brain activity during the sessions.

To ensure the volunteers weren't unintentionally tensing, they also monitored electrical impulses at the motor neurons of their arm muscles.

Every two weeks, they measured the strength of the volunteers' muscles.

The volunteers who thought about exercise showed a 13.5% increase in strength after a few weeks, and maintained that gain for three months after the training stopped.

Controls who missed out on the mental workout showed no improvement in strength.

The researchers are now repeating the experiment with people aged 65 to 80 to see if mental gymnastics also works for them.

Aerobic exercise

Dr Peter Clough, a sports psychologist from Hull University, said that it was well known that visualising playing a sport could often be a more effective way of getting better than actually practising it.

However, he said that muscle strength was only one aspect of taking exercise. Flexibility and aerobic exercise were also important parts - and these could not be achieved by simply using your imagination.

"This is an interesting theory, but sitting on the sofa thinking about taking exercise in not really a good idea.

"Simply building muscle mass might make you look good, but it is not what exercise is all about.

"We need to encourage people to take aerobic exercise that raises their heart rate to 70% of its maximum for 20 minutes three times a week - it is that which helps you to live longer."

A spokesman for Sport England said that everybody would benefit from taking exercise.

Not only was it healthy, for young people in particular it was a confidence builder, and had been shown to help reduce crime.

This article was taken from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1668247.stm

DAY 6 Task: Design some activities for Before, during and after reading

Seeta Reading Challenge

LL Janet Bianchini

March 7th 2011