Top five male characters in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
5. Jose Arcadio
4. Aureliano
3. Colonel Aureliano Buendia
2. Jose Arcadio
1. Jose Arcadio Buendia
5. Jose Arcadio
4. Aureliano
3. Colonel Aureliano Buendia
2. Jose Arcadio
1. Jose Arcadio Buendia
LeBron’s extra edge: Cavaliers star’s devotion to yoga training helps keep James healthy
CLEVELAND -- Over the last year, hotel guests in various NBA cities have likely been a little jolted to see the Cavaliers' LeBron James out by the pool in the mornings. Not so much because he's a celebrity, but because he just might be standing on his head.
When James first came into the NBA at the age of 18 he didn't even tape his ankles, sometimes ate McDonald's an hour before tipoff and his main use for ice was cooling beverages.
As he's matured, part out of necessity and part out of pride, he's serious about preparing and maintaining his body for the rigors of an NBA season. That includes a wide range of measures from diet and recovery techniques to the Vajrasana, Virasana and the particularly stunning Salamba Sarvangasana.
They are yoga poses and they are also an essential part of James' routine every week.
"Yoga isn't just about the body, it's also about the mind and it's a technique that has really helped me," James said. "You do have to focus because there's some positions that can really hurt you at times if you aren't focused and breathing right."
James got serious last summer when Mancias was with him for much of the Team USA events in Las Vegas and China. During the season, they carve out time at least once a week and sometimes more for the practice. Often it happens at team hotels on the road and the two prefer to do it outside if possible. The two also do some pilates exercises.
"He tries to focus on things that will help him and that the body needs, especially for balance and to strengthen his core," said Mancias, who is in his fifth year with the Cavs.
It can be a topsy-turvy world in the NBA, but James has plenty of practice at keeping his balance, regardless of where he finds himself.
A TYPICAL LEBRON GAMEDAY
Morning
Stretching
Strategy sessions, drills and shooting with teammates and coaches
Film work
Afternoon
Lunch and hydration
Nap
Pregame
Small meal
A mixture of weight training, massage therapy, stretching, ankle taping and shooting
Postgame
Ice bath for feet, lower back and sometimes shoulders
Small meal, often chicken, sushi and/or fruit with recovery drinks
"Yoga is an activity that encompasses all that. It's total body and it helps him mentally, too. Flexibility is important to him and we've tried to incorporate all of that into a routine."
Basketball players have been experimenting with yoga for decades. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was perhaps the first high-profile player to embrace it. In recent years, Shaquille O'Neal has used it at times to increase flexibility in his legs. Phil Jackson, who is famous for his alternative techniques, used it as a player to help with back problems and had the Bulls go through a series of yoga classes throughout the 1997-98 championship season.
The theory is that basketball players tend to be strong in certain areas, such as the legs and arms, due to the nature of the game. But all the repetitive motion can build up tension and limit flexibility in some joints and large muscles.
James started getting into the importance of stretching during his third season. Partially inspired by then-teammate Alan Henderson -- who extended his 12-year career by using elastic bands and a large inflatable ball in a stretching routine -- James began to devote himself to making sure he was limber.
At the time he was also bothered by some lower back spasms, which nearly forced him out of a playoff game against the Wizards in 2006. That and a couple of nasty ankle sprains got James focused on doing things to maximize his physical tools. Stretching with bands after practices and games slowly developed into using yoga.
The positions increase flexibility in areas athletes don't always pay attention to but basketball players need. Such as ankles, shoulders and hips. Fans can surely remember times when James appeared to have suffered serious ankle injuries only to shake them off. Some of that may be due to the freakish size of James' joints, but some of it may be from those targeted workouts.
Two weeks ago, for example, he flipped backwards over his neck chasing a loose ball in Phoenix. It looked like he may have hurt himself doing it, but in reality it was sort of like the Salamba Sarvangasana, or shoulder stand, he'd worked on a day before.
"It is something that really can help your balance," James said. "I had some lower back problems a few years ago and once I started to do the yoga, it has helped them go away for now. Of course we can stretch but stretching only goes so far."
It's part of a package James now employs. He gets massages on most game days, gets his ankles heavily taped and wears a padded vest under his jersey to protect his ribs, and ices his feet and lower back after every game and contact workout. It includes an overall better series of eating habits and weight training, which James is now more devoted to than ever.
"People don't see everything that he does, he's focused on doing everything for his body that will help him succeed," Mancias said. "The proof is what he's been showing on the court."
Recently James held a special event for some students from Holy Cross Elementary in Euclid at the Cleveland Clinic Courts to promote yoga and its benefits. At first he seemed a little shy in talking about yoga; brute athletes in the past have not always been lauded for work with such finesse arts.
But as James has experienced the benefits, he's become an advocate of yoga, pilates and massage therapy that he does with the Cavs and their support staff.
"I've been blessed with a lot of physical talent and a strong body," James said. "I have focused on working hard to maximize those gifts."
“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” (Leo Tolstoy)
‘‘What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina - not truth but the inner light of truth. When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels?''
–Vladimir Nabokov
Top five characters in American literature:
5. The Grandmother (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”)
4. Huck Finn
3. Willy Loman
2. Humbert Humbert
1. Scout
Today we…
There was more than this, of course. But this adds up to a pretty good day.
Basketball, as a game of skill, is totally compromised when referees don’t protect shooters by calling the bumps to the body and especially the seemingly insignificant knocks to the elbow or forearm. But players need to learn that when you initiate contact with a defender, the refs don’t call that anymore. William Walker gets fouled virtually every time he turns around to shoot, but most of the time it doesn’t get called. Meanwhile, referees in college love calling these idiotic offensive fouls where the defense appears to set and then flops backwards. College basketball has become too much of a wrestling match in the past ten years, and the only hope for skilled basketball players (rather than over sized troglodytes) to reclaim the graceful purity of the sport is to turn the game into a 94 foot contest. The mid-range jumpshot needs to make a return, and players need to be able to make the shot even when well defended. It’s easier to make a fifteen footer with a defender in your face while not being fouled (and they still do call it when a jump shooter gets hit) than to muscle your way to the basket, bumped the entire way, and force up a shot hoping for the foul that should be called. When they let the defense get away with so much holding and bumping, the only thing left to do is run and shoot, run and shoot, run and shoot.
MCC Tournament: Championship Game
Bethel 74
Indiana Wesleyan 70
Pilots head into the NAIA national tournament with a 30-3 record. We (how long are you allowed to think of your former team as “we”?) have a very good chance to win a national championship this year.
Tonight’s game was fantastic. My dad would’ve loved it.
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
"The diary of a novelist who is writing a novel [to be called The Counterfeiters] about a novelist who is keeping a diary about the novel he is writing." - Harry Levin
One.
5 school days.
But who’s counting?
I’m too tired for strong opinions. How about just some simple declarative sentences and maybe a rhetorical question?
#31 Greif makes you feel perpetually weary.
#32 Most of the time there’s just nothing to say.
#33 I wish there were a restaurant that served roadhouse food (steak, burgers, ribs) in a non-roadhouse (i.e. quiet) environment.
#34 Slam dunk contests are much less impressive these days because of the dunks Lebron James is able to pull off in games. I mean, why watch a dunk contest when you can watch this guy dunk in a game?
#35 I wonder if all teachers wonder as much as I do if anybody is learning anything.
#36 If I were president I would un-holiday president’s day.
#37 For some reason, writing what appears below in the previous post (“The Walk You Remember”) was easy.
#38 Most of life is aftermath.
#39 The lights in my office hum loudly.
Kip Prenkert’s Funeral
Wakarusa Missionary Church
12 February 2009
Robby Prenkert
The Walk You Remember
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
My dad had a distinctive walk. I suspect that some of you noticed this.
His heels scarcely touched the ground when he strolled from the garden to the back door, down a wooded trail in Ludington, from his car in the parking lot to his spot in the bleachers (omnipresent book in one hand) to watch me play some game.
At times it looked to me as if he were treading delicately on the earth, trying to avoid leaving any imprint in the soil, tip-toeing gently but purposefully to his destination.
His tip-toe walk became more pronounced at times. In the driveway shooting hoops, after he'd made twenty or so in a row, realizing he was "on," he would get an extra spring.
Once when I was very young, we were in the midst of witnessing some dramatic comeback in one of his church league fastpitch softball games at the prairie campgrounds. He was cheering a big hit that drove in a couple runs, extending the rally. He walked past me as I sat, taking it all in on the bench.
On the bench, an awestruck boy who only ever wanted to be like his hero. On the bench but allowed to be a part of the team, witnessing his father nearly levitate, heels five inches off the ground, his face aglow with a joy that can only be known by grown men at play.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I have a theory about it.
I can see my dad, left hand on left knee, gloved right hand on right knee, waiting and watching from his spot in Right field. He had the uncanny ability to know exactly where a flyball hit his direction was going land a split moment before the batter made contact. They call that getting a jump on the ball.
I can still see him pivot and run, dark hair blown off his forehead, eyes glued to that ball—running. Running on his tip toes. Gliding, it seemed, on the top of the grass.
Many years later I played outfield, too—and I realized something that my dad showed me rather than told me, for that was more his style. I learned that if you run on your toes and not your heels, you land, with each stride, much more delicately. Land on your heels and your head jars and the ball you're chasing starts to bounce, making it considerably more difficult to catch. But run on your toes and you'll see the ball fly smoothly toward its home in the deep pocket of your glove as you make that final graceful reach over your shoulder to grab the inning ending out.
When he was a boy, he spent hours just tossing a ball up in the air and chasing after it to make a catch. He and his closest friend, Mike, spent countless hours hitting the ball to one another, chasing down flies. At an early age he learned to run on the balls of his feet, and that must have carried over into his walk, and all the days of his life my dad tread lightly on God's earth and this kept his eyes clearly focused.
My dad had a distinctive walk, but I don't know if you ever thought about why.
At sixty five, he still had that spring in his step. I suspect he kept it after knee surgery, back surgery, prostate surgery, heart surgery, multiple kidney stones, and who knows what other aches and pains that inevitably come with age—I suspect he kept it not simply because he had learned how to chase down a ball the way they teach major league outfielders to do it, but because he loved being alive.
He kept that soft bouncing walk because he knew my mom and one way his passionate and voluntary love for her was involuntarily, habitually evidenced was by a spring in each step. You walk with a woman like her for more than forty years and you, too, would retain the spring.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I want for you to know and remember this.
My dad was an outrageously joyful person, even if he did not express it the same way others might have. But you could see it if you watched his walk. With each step his head bobbed heavenward. Because he enjoyed life, the abundant life offered those who know the ONE who is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.
When I was a boy all I wanted to do was to shoot a basketball like my dad. I wanted to hit a ball the way he did; I wanted to chase after and catch a ball and do it with his grace and style. I still do.
I do not think I walk quite like him, but I have learned a great deal about walking rightly by watching his "walk." All of us could learn something from the joyfully contented way he walked humbly with his God.
We are sad today and we mourn our loss. But we are also comforted, knowing that now dad runs on those toes without ever growing weary, and walks without ever growing faint.
I know one thing. My dad, like his LORD, would like nothing better than for each of us to "walk on" faithfully, humbly, joyfully, until we, too, are called home.
More strong opinions:
#28 Super Bowl halftime is too long.
#29 But if the halftime has to be so long, thank God it’s Bruce Springsteen (or U2, or Tom Petty) and not Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.
#30 I’d rather watch a regular season baseball game any day than the Super Bowl.
(p.s. I think I mentioned something like #30 earlier, but who cares?)
Strong Opinion #27:
This is one of the worst constructed sentences I’ve ever read (from A Secular Age by Charels Taylor).
“Thus among some peoples, agents fall into trance-like conditions which are understood as possession; among others (sometimes the same ones), powerful portentous dreams occur to certain people, among others, shamans feel themselves to have been transported to a higher world, with others again, surprising cures are effected in certain conditions; and so on."
The rest of the paragragh doesn’t improve things.
One strong opinion about a basketball rule that need to be changed:
#26 You should not be able to call timeout while the ball is in play. Timeouts should only be allowed after a made basket or on a dead ball.
A borrowed opinion:
#26 “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” (F. Scott Fitzerald)
Right on, F. Scott!
Some meta-opinions:
22. I don't have enough strong opinions to write thirty-nine interesting theses.
23. In my opinion, being opinionated is not a good thing.
24. Having a strong opinion about opinions qualifies one to be entertained, and not just angered, by the Opinion page of the daily newspaper.
25. Having an opinion about strong opinions about opinions approaches absurdism.
A strong opinion in the form of a strong recommendation:
21. Do yourself a favor (on this frigid winter day) and re-read these five short stories:
1. "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver.
2. "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol. http://h42day.100megsfree5.com/texts/russia/gogol/nose.html
3. "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor.
4. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates. http://jco.usfca.edu/works/wgoing/text.html
5. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the+handsomest+drowned+man+int+he+world+full+text
More opinions:
18. The worst part of winter is the static electricity.
19. The best part of winter is a crackling fire in the fireplace.
20. The Color Purple is a much better film than novel.
A very strong opinion:
17. Every student at Bethel should consider a second major in Humanities.