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By Paul Hata

The value of money cannot be underestimated. In a recent national survey, more than 96% Americans agreed that early monetary savings would help one achieve a fruitful and stable life.

Saving is a way of insulating oneself from the many symptoms of health and natural adversity. While an average youth of yesteryears thinks more about short-term financial goals such as purchasing a new pair of signature shoes, owning a new jet ski or a brand new car, statistics show that more and more are starting to realize the importance of keeping a personal savings.

Long terms goals are described as goals that have a lasting effect should a person’’s present actions be religiously maintained.

The following statements are outlined to provide information and tips on how you can start up your money-saving gimmicks and ensure a happy and financially stable future and list the reasons as to why saving money should occupy a greater place in our list of priorities in life.

Reasons for Saving:
1.Saving for your Future and Present Needs - Saving today will provide you with flexible financial resources in the future.

Keeping at least 20% of your monthly earnings while using the other for your household, personal and unexpected expenses will surely play a big part in your pursuit for a stable future.

2.Saving for an Investment Need - Savings can also be a source of your future capital for engaging in business enterprises.

It will provide you more opportunity for venturing on your unexplored talents and earn you a huge potential in increasing your money exponentially.

3.Saving for your Retirement - More than 23% of today’’s elderly were shown to have failed in one instance in their lives, to save and strategically used their money for preparing their way to retirement. As a result, these folks extend their entire retirement career working on an equally satisfying job that pays them enough to cover their basic expenses.

Keys to Fulfilling your Saving Goals:
No matter how good our intentions and objectives for saving are, we should also take note that goals can fall and touched the following baselines or characteristics.

Attainability - Goals should be something attainable and one which can be achieved without you doing something extraordinary or illegal. A little amount of patience and hard work are key.

Consistency - Changing your goals from time to time due to incidents that may arise in the near future are sure ways to deterring your intention to save.

While we need to focus on the present incidents, we also need to take hold of our original intention and continue until you have gained enough leads to get it.

About The Author

1000s of Finance,Financing,Financial and Funding Services -
- http://www.worldfinancepages.com, http://www.worldfinancingpages.com,
http://www.worldfinancialpages.com and http://worldfundingpages.com

By Peter Woronoff

Fitness is a term that is used to help define a persons ability to stay in the best physical shape. You may ask, then, “What am I staying in shape for?” For each person, the answer will be different.

For many, it is a matter of staying healthy as long as possible. You see, your body is designed to work as a machine. When each part of the machine is cared for, the entire machine works the best it can. When the machine is neglected either in part or in whole, then the machine doesn”t run well and eventually won”t run at all.

For example, If a car is well maintained, it will last many years longer. If it isn”t taken care of, for example you don”t change the oil, you cut several years off the life of the car. That is costly to you, but you can always buy a new car.

When you look at this as your body, you are shaving away days, weeks, and even years from your life. You cannot buy a new body to lengthen you life, and you cannot easily make pain from poor maintenance go away

Fitness is a necessary part of life. And please remember, fitness is something for which you can develop good habits. This makes it easy.

You do not HAVE TO struggle with fitness. When you were three, you were probably taught to brush your teeth. You learned to put your clothes on. When you were learning how to do them, you may have hated it.

But once you learned how to do it, it became something you didn”t think twice about. Do you worry about brushing your teeth today? No, because it is a habit. That is what we want you to think of when you think of fitness.

It’’s just something that you do. Granted, the first weeks of learning to be fit and staying healthy will be the hardest. You may dread it. You may find excuses about not doing it. You may claim that getting fit is just too hard. You may say you just can”t give up foods and habits you love. That is just not true.

In fact, if you have the will power to save your life by sacrificing for just a few weeks, you”ll see that fitness can be easily mastered for the rest of your life.

Best of all you can go through the process without having to struggle. Struggle is not necessary. That depends on you and on the support you have.

Take a look at yourself right now. What do you see? If you are unhappy about any part of your body, chances are that area of your body is bothering you because it’’s unhealthy.

Although many people start looking into fitness because they want to lose weight, fitness is not just about weight loss. You work to improve your overall wellness and increase your lifespan as well as the quality of life that you are currently living. You can look and feel great.

If you don”t think that you need to lose weight, that’’s great! You are one step closer to being healthy.

But, that is not to say that you don”t have health problems beyond that. Many people are still at risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol as well as other concerns, even though they aren”t technically overweight.

You need to take into consideration the fact that overall health is important to improve for health, long life, looking and feeling good.

About The Author

Peter Woronoff is a psychotherapist, martial artist, and a recovering fitness enthusiast. Claim your Free Audio to take the Struggle out of Being Fit at StayFitNow.com http://www.StayFitNow.com

By Bill Mann

Can you diet your way to six-pack abs? A July 17, 2008 study titled, “Weight Loss With a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet,” published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported on the two-year effectiveness of these three types of diet for overweight people. It showed somewhat better results for low-carbohydrate diets, without the health risks that opponents of these diets claimed would exist.

So that’’s cool. Just go on a low-carb diet for a while and you”ll soon have the body you want, right? Not exactly. Here’’s why dieting alone isn”t enough to get the body you want.

First, dieting doesn”t do anything to preserve your muscle mass. As you may know, once people reach thirty or so years of age, we tend to lose muscle mass. People typically lose 5-10 pounds of muscle per decade. And dieting doesn”t change that. It might reduce the amount of fat over your shrinking muscles, but it won”t maintain those muscles, much less build more muscle mass.

Now this latest study didn”t specifically look at muscle mass (a search of the original report didn”t even turn up a mention of muscle) so it’’s possible that one type of diet could have more of an effect on muscle mass than another. But going by the results of this study, there’’s no reason to believe that any type of diet will do anything special to prevent the gradual muscle loss that comes with age. It’’s going to be hard to build an awesome body when your youthful, sexy muscles are slowing fading away.

Second, the results of the diets are sad. The participants were overweight men and women, or people with Type 2 diabetes. They were placed on one of three types of diet, and given instructions and materials specific to the diet they were to follow. Over the course of two years, each group of people had eighteen 90-minute meetings with a dietician to help them stay on track. People who were having particular trouble received motivational phone calls as well.

The results of all this? Among the people who stayed in the program for two years, the average weight loss for the low-fat diet was 3.3 kg (7.27 lb), for the Mediterranean diet was 4.6 kg (10.14 lb), and for the low-carb diet was 5.5 kg (12.13 lb). There were also some positive changes in markers of health such as cholesterol levels.

This looks good, but think about it. The best performing group, with help from a nutritionist, lost just over 12 pounds in 2 years. One type of diet may be better than another, and for overweight people to lose weight safely is great. But is losing 12 pounds over 2 years, with a dietician’’s help and without any consideration for preserving your muscles, really going to get you the body you want?

A healthy diet is surely a good thing, and important to developing your abs and building the body you want. But as this study shows, dieting alone won”t get you there. The secret to a super body and a great six pack is a plan that combines diet and exercise.

About The Author

Dieting alone isn”t enough to get you the body you want. To learn about a complete system that will give you abs to envy, visit Your 6 Pack Quest Review, at http://your-6-pack-quest.blogspot.com/

By Bill Mann

Starting on the quest to build 6 pack abs requires adding a lot to your life: more weight lifting, more cardio, more discipline, more work. But another important part of this quest is elimination. When it comes to food, a big 6 pack quest secret is that elimination of certain foods means much faster fitness gains. And that means a shorter, (relatively) easier road to your 6 pack.

The concept is simple enough: You rank the foods you eat from worst to best when it comes to developing your 6 pack. Then every so often, you eliminate the worst food that you”re still eating. Once you get used to living without that food, you eliminate the worst food that’’s still remaining.

If you keep this up over a period of months, you”ll greatly increase the quality of your diet. All other things being equal, this should result in increased health and energy, along with significant fat loss. It won”t get you the abs you want, but it will definitely help you on the quest.

This begs the question: How do I rate the foods I eat? How do I know which to cut out and which to keep? I”m sure you know some general rules already. You probably know that fried chicken is less healthy than plain chicken. You probably know that fruit is a better desert than ice cream. But beyond generalities like that, most people don”t have a clue.

A lot of the information that’’s available out there doesn”t help either. Some diet programs tell you to cut back on fat and eat more fruits and vegetables. Others tell you to eat all the meat and bacon you want, as long as you stay away from most fruits and vegetables. I suspect that somewhere out there, someone has written a book describing the virtues of cake and ice cream as diet foods. So how do you know which foods to keep and which to eliminate?

Since you”re trying to cut your body fat and develop incredible abs, why not do what the people with the best abs around do? Why not model your diet on the diets of professional fitness models and bodybuilders. These people optimize everything they do to get their body fat down. That includes their diets. No matter how well muscled they are, if they have a layer of fat over everything, they will fail at their quest for the ultimate physique. They know, based on real world experience, which foods are best and worst to eat on your 6 pack quest.

Now you probably don”t have easy access to a professional fitness model who can give you personal advice about your diet. Fortunately, when you buy a guide to developing 6 pack abs, it will almost certainly include a detailed section on diet and food choices. One of them even grades individual foods the way your teacher graded you in elementary school, with an A, B, C, D, or F ranking for individual foods. With a guide like this, it’’s easy to decide what to eliminate from your diet next.

So that’’s today’’s 6 pack secret. Identify and eliminate the worst single food from your diet. Then when you are used to that change, do it again with the next worst food. Keep going like this and you will definitely accelerate your 6 pack quest.

About The Author

Eliminating the worst foods from your diet is only one of keys to completing your 6 pack quest. To learn more about a complete system that will give you abs to envy, visit http://your-6-pack-quest.blogspot.com/

By Alan Densky

The Atkins Diet is a popular “low-carb” weight reduction program, but it is often greatly misunderstood! Common, yet slightly exaggerated depictions of the plan portray dieters devouring nothing but vast amounts of meat and fat. Although the program is not quite that simple, many dieters under the program have successfully lost weight and improved their health.

On this plan, dieters follow a highly specific regimen based on cutting carbohydrate intake. The nutritional aspects of the plan are emphasized over exercise and other factors, although getting physical activity is encouraged. There are four phases in the Atkins plan:

Induction: During this two-week stage at the start of the diet program, dieters can only have up to 20 grams of carbs per day. Dieters can ingest high protein foods such as meat and poultry, fats such as butter and oils, and other food with little to no carbohydrate content. Many foods with carbs are not permitted at all, including alcoholic beverages.

This initial phase is intended to help the body switch from burning carbs for energy, as it usually does, into burning stored up fat (the state called ketosis). Most dieters begin to lose weight during this stage.

Ongoing Weight Loss: During this stage, dieters gradually increase their carbohydrate consumption by adding 5 grams of carbs into their diet every week. Dieters fine-tune their diet, losing weight to put themselves within 5-10 pounds of their goal weight, before moving into the Pre-maintenance phase.

Pre-maintenance: Dieters use the Pre-maintenance phase to find out the maximum amount of carbs they can ingest without experiencing weight gain. During this stage, dieters add 10 grams of carbohydrates to their diet each week. Once dieters reach their target weight and can maintain it for one month, they move into the Lifetime Maintenance stage.

Lifetime Maintenance: For lasting results, the Atkins program is designed to be maintained throughout the dieter’’s lifetime. Using the strategies that helped the dieter reach their goal weight, the dieter develops an eating and exercise program to stay at their target weight. Individuals can revert to previous stages if they ever begin to regain weight.

Dieters who can commit to the Atkins diet are typically successful in losing weight; however, many people are unable to keep following the program and end up quitting early on in the initial induction stage. In general, most diet plans fail because dieters cannot stay committed to the plan.

Many people struggle with dieting because they experience strong food cravings, have problems with compulsive overeating, cannot control their appetites, or simply lack the motivation to lose weight. Overcoming these mental obstacles is the most challenging aspect of losing weight.

One reason why many people cannot seem to manage their eating is because they are emotional eaters. Such people eat in response to their feelings, such as when they are bored or upset. However, this habit programs a “conditioned response” into the unconscious mind. This means that when individuals experience the same emotion that made them overeat initially, they will feel compelled to overeat again and again.

Hypnotherapy works by helping our unconscious minds disassociate our emotions from our eating habits. To eliminate the conditioned response to overeat, a hypnotherapy weight loss program is used to break the association in the unconscious mind between overeating and specific “trigger” situations.

For example, if you tend to binge eat when you feel bored, hypnosis can disassociate boredom from eating in your unconscious mind. Hypnosis can then be used to replace the overeating response with another activity, such as exercising. That way, the next time you suffer from boredom, instead of having an urge to overeat, you will feel motivated to engage in physical activity.

Hypnosis is an excellent tool for stress relief as well, helping us cope with our stressful feelings and relieve tension without eating. As a relaxation tool, it calms the mind, helps you develop strategies to cope with stress, and boosts your self confidence to promote natural weight loss.

Self hypnosis can also be used to remove the emotional stressors that keep you from losing weight. Many overweight people use their weight for emotional protection. For example, after a painful end to a relationship, people might find themselves becoming overweight so they can avoid relationships and avoid having to endure emotional pain again. Through hypnosis, we can turn our negative thoughts into positive ones and focus on improving our health instead of becoming overwhelmed by our emotions.

Not only is hypnosis a powerful motivation tool, it relieves stress, extinguishes the conditioned responses that trigger overeating, and can help you overcome the mental obstacles that prevent weight loss. Hypnotherapy for weight loss is really effective at helping people stay on a diet plan, such as the Atkins plan, and lose weight.

About The Author

Alan B. Densky, CH has invested over 30 years specializing in weight loss. He offers several ways to lose weight, including lose weight CD and NLP to lose weight DVD. Visit his self-hypnosis CD website for Free hypnosis newsletters, videos, and downloads.
http://www.neuro-vision.us/

By Chris Chew

For a skinny person, gaining muscle weight can be very difficult without professional help. Where for some fortunate genetically blessed people, gaining muscle mass very fast is a breeze. Therefore if you are trying to figure out how long does it take to build muscle mass, there is simply no direct answer.

Firstly, do take note that muscles do not usually grow in a linear process but in a series of spurts.
Therefore no matter how hard you work your muscles or how much you eat, muscle growth will not be at a predictable steady pace.

That said, let’’s take a look at the factors which influence muscle growth. As you probably know, there are many factors influencing your muscle growth and not everyone will build muscles at the same pace even though they may be working out with the same weight, exercises and eating the same food.

Some people are genetically predisposed to gaining muscle mass and these folks will see impressive results within only a few months. We all know that the Mesomorphs (sporty body type) will be able to build muscles muuch faster than the Ectomorphs (thin body type).

Your rate of your muscle gain will also depend largely on how close you are to the upper limit of what you naturally are capable of in terms of gaining muscle mass. This phenomenon is also known as the adaptation ceiling in bodybuilding speak.

This gors to say that the closer you are to the upper limit of the adaptation ceiling, the slower your muscle will grow. That means that someone who has been lifting weights for a number of years will gain muscle mass much more slowly than a newbie to weight training.

It is not uncommon for people to gain fat when they are building muscle mass. The amount of fat you gain will depend on how much you eat and also on how lean you are when you started to fuel your muscle growth with what you eat. Eating to fuel muscle gain is called overfeeding in the bodybuilding lingo.

Studies have shown that during a period of overfeeding, you will gain more muscle and less fat if you are the naturally lean type. During the cutting phase to get rid of body fat so as to show muscle definition, it is known that fatter people tend to lose more fat and less muscle when they cut, but the leaner ones will find it the harder to lose fat without losing muscle.

Why is this so? Well, it may only be a psychological reason. If you have just worked your butt off to get your well defined six pack abs, then you will not want to put the fat on again and so you may simply be reluctant to eat the amount of food necessary to gain significant muscle mass, don”t you think so?

It could also be hormonal factor as some studies do show a link between low body fat and low testosterone(male muscle buiding hormones) levels. If your testosterone is low, it is also difficult for you to gain muscle mass.

So how long does it take to build muscle mass will depend very much on your genetic condition and other factors besides doing the proper workouts and eating correctly.

About The Author

Chris Chew is a fitness personal trainer and author of “Burn Fat Build Muscles Fast”. More free articles at his sites at http://www.sgfitness.com and
http://www.sgfitnessonline.com

By Albert Alexander

One of the most common, and surprising, effects of following the Atkins diet is appetite suppression. Many followers of the plan report that the between meal hunger pangs they used to experience fade away very quickly. This makes it easier to stay on the diet and continue to lose weight. While other diets have their followers starving between meals, the Atkins diet offers relief from constant hunger. The Atkins diet, with its specific combination of foods and ingredients, has powerful appetite suppressing effects.

The first key component is the amount of protein in the Atkins diet. Protein, more so than carbohydrates, has the power to satiate hunger. If you”ve ever eaten a carb heavy meal and then felt hungry afterward, you know that carbohydrates don”t have much staying power. Protein, when combined with a small amount of healthy fats, can keep you feeling full for long periods of time.

One of the most powerful appetite suppressing foods on the Atkins diet are eggs. Eggs are a great form of quick and easy protein. A recent study showed that eating eggs for breakfast would actually stave off hunger pangs through the rest of the day. The research concerned two groups of women. One group ate eggs for breakfast and the other had a breakfast of bagels and cream cheese. The calorie count for both breakfasts was exactly the same. The subjects kept track of what they ate the rest of the day and answered questions about their levels of hunger and satisfaction throughout the day. The results showed that the women who ate the eggs for breakfast felt more satisfied throughout the entire day. They ate less at each meal than the women who were in the bagel group.

Eggs contain about 6 grams of protein each. This helps to even out blood sugar and produces a feeling of satisfaction. Both of these factors help to curb cravings. Egg yolks also contain lutein and xenazanthin. These nutrients have been shown to have incredible effects on eye health. So it’’s important to eat the whole egg, and not just the white. Eggs contain choline that is important in brain functioning and memory. These nutrients are just an added benefit to the appetite suppressing qualities.

Broccoli and cauliflower, two of the acceptable vegetables on the Atkins program, also have appetite-suppressing effects. These vegetables are very bulky and they help make your stomach feel full. When your stomach feels full, it will actually create a chemical response in your body. Your body will reduce its appetite because it believes that your stomach is full of high calorie foods. This will happen regardless of what is in your stomach. You can achieve the same results with water and psyllium husk fiber. Both broccoli and cauliflower provide bulk in your diet and are essential vegetables on the Atkins plan.

The Atkins diet focuses on eating small protein balanced meals a few times per day. This will help keep your blood sugar stabilized and avoid carbohydrate cravings. With high carbohydrate diets, you are riding the wave of carbohydrate highs. After you eat, you feel great and full. Then a few hours later, you come crashing down and are hungrier than you were previous to eating the carbohydrate. This cycle continues and, over time, you will eat more and gain weight. The protein, fat and vegetable meals of the Atkins plan put your blood sugar back in balance. They provide just enough of each type of food, with a proper amount of carbohydrates (from the vegetables). The vegetables provide quick carbohydrate energy, and the protein gives the meal staying power. This combination helps suppress your appetite.

The Atkins diet is actually a craving control diet that can help suppress your appetite. If you”ve had a problem with carbohydrate cravings before, this new way of eating will help control those cravings. The more you eat on the plan, the better your cravings will be controlled and the easier it will be to follow the diet.

About The Author

Visit us as http://www.what-it-is.com for information on just about any subject that piques your interest. We have a little bit of information about a lot of things.

By Albert Alexander

The main concept behind the pH miracle diet is to maintain a balance of pH in the foods that you eat. The human body is slightly alkaline and therefore it is better for your health to eat a diet composed of alkalizing foods. When you eat too many acidic foods, your system becomes unbalanced and it can cause a whole host of problems, including weight gain, poor concentration, fatigue and depressed immunity that can lead to more serious conditions.

The pH miracle diet relies on lists of foods that are acidic (to be avoided) and alkalizing (to be emphasized). The alkalizing foods are better for your health and help to balance the pH of your body. While acid, alkaline and pH are common terms, many people do not understand exactly what they mean and what they have to do with nutrition and health.

The word “basic” comes from the Greek word “basis” which means foundation. “Basic” relates to the properties of acidity and alkalinity. These conditions are determined at the foundation of the cells that the foods are made up of. So an external treatment does not change a food from acid to alkaline. Foods are acid or alkaline at their base, or foundation.

Acid and alkaline are chemical opposites. Whenever these bases interact with acids, there is a struggle between them and salt is the result. In the chemist’’s lab, these interactions are very simple and straightforward. However, in our bodies, the interaction becomes more complex because of the scale at which acids and bases meet.

However, science can make some generalizations about the effects of acids and alkaline in the human digestion system. Acidic foods are acid forming in the human body. They make blood, lymph and saliva more acid and cause a lower pH number. Alkaline foods make blood, lymph and saliva more alkaline and cause a higher pH number.

Just for reference, the “normal” range for saliva pH is between 7.3 and 7.4. Most people, however, are too acidic and have a pH that is much lower. They are burned out, tired and their bodies are starving for balance. Under the influence of acidic foods the muscles fatigue easily. You literally slow down because your body cannot produce the same physical results as before.

The free radical oxidation that occurs when you eat acidic foods makes you age faster. Vitamins and minerals are not absorbed as readily. Friendly bacteria in the small intestine die, which puts the digestive system off balance. Further hurting the function of the intestine is the fact that a high level of acidity inhibits the ability for intestinal walls to absorb nutrients. Cells become stressed with the toxins that build up and cannot remove them. The vast majority of bodily systems cannot run at full capacity.

On the other hand, alkaline foods have a wide variety of benefits to your health. Eating them improves your muscle output. They also have antioxidant effects in the body. They increase assimilation at the cellular level and allow cells to operate in the manner that they should. There is a reduction of parasites and yeast overgrowth with the use of alkaline foods. Alkaline foods promote deeper and more restful sleep, more youthful skin and relieve suffering from colds, headaches and the flu. Alkaline foods promote abundant physical energy.

Perhaps the most important differences between acid and alkaline foods are their relationship to cancer. Cancerous tissues are acidic, and health tissues are alkaline. When oxygen enters an acidic solution it combines with hydrogen ions can form water. Oxygen helps to neutralize the acid, but acid prevents oxygen from reaching tissues where it is needed. When oxygen enters an alkaline solution, the two hydroxyl ions combine with the solution to create one water molecule and one oxygen atom. The sole oxygen atom is free to go to the next cell and bring the benefits of oxygen to all of the tissue in the body. At a pH of slightly above 7.4, cancer cells become dormant. Studies show that at pH 8.5, cancer cells die and healthy cells live.

Alkalizing the diet has many benefits, in addition to cancer prevention. The alkaline food list is a selection of choices that will benefit your health when you start incorporating them into your body.

About The Author

Visit us as http://www.what-it-is.com for information on just about any subject that piques your interest. We have a little bit of information about a lot of things.

By Jerry Leung

Have you ever tried to plan your diet? In fact, a lot of people do not really plan their diets. It is strange that we as human beings are full of planning. We plan for this. We plan for that. We plan for blah blah blah. But we do not really plan for your diet.

In fact, it is always a good idea to spend a minute to consider what you should eat. If you can really plan it, you will find that you will become a lot healthier after some time.

You may have heard that having a few small meals every day will be good for your health. Of course it will be quite difficult for you to have meals day every two hours. Yet it will be a lot easier if you try to take a rhythm of every four hours. Be sure than you will have a meal which is rich in fiber. To this end you will need to take more fresh fruits or vegetables. Remember, it is only a small meal and you should not eat too much. Otherwise you will miss the point of having a few small meals a day.

You can take some snack if you feel hungry. However, French fries should not be your choice. Again, you should try to take something good to your health even if it is snack.

In most cases, we know that some kinds of food are not good for our health. However, we will still eat it. However, you have to try your best to combat the temptation to eat something unhealthy. Of course usually the bad food is tastier. However, you have to control yourself. You are the one to control what you eat. You should let the food control it! As a matter of fact, eating this kind of bad food occasionally will not hurt.

We need calories. Our bodies will cease to function properly if we do not take enough calories. However, you should stick to the good food which can give you calories. You should not drink to get your calories. What does it mean? You know that. When you are drinking a can of coke, you are indeed drinking calories. However, this is certainly not good for your health.

It is not difficult to plan for your diet. You should try to eat healthy. Eating too much will also be bad for you. If you can eat with your mind, you can find that it is easy to plan for the diet.

About The Author

The author has website on health and fitness http://fitnhealth.info/
http://onlineloseweight.info/

By Harwood E Woodpecker

When I was a child we played soccer in the winter and cricket in the summer. Life was simple. In these times that we live in children have so many opportunities to try out new sports and disciplines; this has got to be a good thing, right? I”m not too sure.

For instance, as I”ve already explained I played soccer as a child, that was my passion, it was all I did. I ate, drank and slept soccer. Every spare moment of my youth was spent playing and training for the next soccer match. I was focussed on what I wanted to do so could train for a specific goal.

Obviously computer, video and console games have a part to play in why so many countries are not turning out the number of sporting stars that they previously were. For instance, in our local school of eleven to sixteen year olds the following sports are available to the pupils;

Soccer
Rugby
Cricket
Trampolining
Golf
Cycling
Judo
Dance
Wrestling
Volleyball
Badminton
Tennis
Softball
Rounders
Hockey
Netball

Now I”m all for choice within school and it’’s a great thing to see children playing sports and keeping fit but surely the amount of choice available doesn”t give the pupil the chance to excel at any one thing and progress to a level where he or she feels the enthusiasm and motivation to push themselves to the next level. And this is where I feel the system is letting the youth of today down.

On average a child at school today will have two hours per week of physical education. Split that over approximately forty weeks per year at school equals eighty hours per year of sport. Now divide that between just ten of the above sports giving just eight hours per year to participate in any sport. That doesn”t seem right to me.

I appreciate that some pupils will naturally excel at certain sports and will be picked to play for their school team but where does this leave the masses?
On the fringe with no real sporting goal to aim for is where. Children like to feel part of things, to be involved and participating in something that they feel they can improve in. The current national sporting formula isn”t allowing this to happen.

If a child is de-motivated by sport he will switch off, it’’s been proven in trials that people who were turned off from sport as a child do not feel they can return to it as an adult. Sport is either something you did as a child, enjoyed and continued into adulthood or had to do as a child and left behind at the earliest opportunity.

I don”t have the answers, as I previously said choice is a wonderful thing but for every one child that is un-earthed to be a volleyball champion are we leaving a swathe of disaffected youth behind?
Discuss.

About The Author

http://www.nike-trainers.com

You may not always agree with my writings but I hope to inform.
Harwood E Woodpecker