On Exercise Physiology

This one could easily have come under the heading "More I Don't Understand...." Can someone explain to me why a person can stand for hours without noticing much more than sore feet, can squat down (baseball catcher style) for several minutes with only minor discomfort in the knees, yet when taking a pose somewhere in between find their muscles screaming within seconds?

To play along... Sitting in a chair, extend you arms directly above your head, lock your elbows and clench your fists. (If you prefer, you can also clasp your hands together.) Now, lift your butt about three inches off the chair and hold this position until you begin breathing hard or feel discomfort in your legs. Some of you who are in better shape will surely be able to do this for a longer period of time than I, but I can just about guarantee you can't hold this position for as long as you stand upright or squat fully. Why is that? What is it about this body position that makes it so much more difficult to maintain?

Some of you may know this as a yoga pose (the Chair Pose, though the book I've read refers to is as the Power Pose). If you think yoga is only about relaxation and breathing, think again. Holding yoga poses not only stretches your muscles but gives them a heck of workout as well.

Look for more of my adventures in yoga in coming "Healthy Heedings" entries.

Some Things I May Never Understand...

Today I offer commentary on two things which have occurred to me in the past 48 hours that I'm convinced I'll never understand.

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First, is the annual ritual we call March Madness. Every year, there are teams selected to the tournament as well as teams left out of the tournament that some people disagree with. And, even if you accept the selected teams, you may quibble over the way they were seeded.

I am a graduate of Iowa State University and having my Cyclones selected to the tournament for the first time in a number of years was a great thrill. I didn't even care where they were seeded; I was simply excited that they were in. I could go on about the Cyclones and their match ups, but that really isn't the part that I'll never understand. What I really don't understand is this - How can the Missouri Tigers be, according to the selection committee chairman, the 4th #2 seed (or the 8th best overall)? In the rankings that came out March 5th - prior to conference tournaments - Missouri was ranked 5th in the AP poll, 5th in the USA Today/ESPN poll, and 10th according to RPI. Fast forward to the end of the conference tournaments and you find that the teams ahead of them in the two polls - Kentucky, Syracuse, Kansas, and North Carolina - all lost. In the RPI, Baylor was ahead of them, but Missouri beat them head-to-head in the Big 12 conference tournament championship game. They are 30-4. All four losses were conference games and three were on the road. I understand that a loss to Oklahoma State (even in Stillwater) didn't help them nor did two losses to Kansas State. But aren't those easily offset by a split with Kansas, two wins over Iowa State, and three wins against Baylor? What more could Missouri have done? I'm sure I'll never understand the bracketing for March Madness.

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The second is the English language. In particular (today), I'm wondering what need we have for the letter 'c'. On his spelling test today, my first-grade son spelled the word "cart" k-a-r-t. My wife was concerned that he was influenced by video games like Mario-Kart. But upon thinking about this and discussing it, I had to wonder why we think c-a-r-t is any more natural. The letter 'k' always has the hard sound, while the 'c' is a wishy-washy hard or soft depending on how it feels. We already have an 's' for soft 'c' sound and the 'k' handles the hard sound; why do we need 'c' at all? Consider the word "circus" - why not s-i-r-k-u-s? (For that matter, why is the 'i' not an 'e'? Who decided that "circus" makes more sense than "serkus"?) My wife pointed out that we still need the "ch" sound. I'll grant that, but why not create a separate single character for that similar to Greek? Why not a single sound for each character? I could even accept dual use of vowels with some form of diacritical marking to distinguish between long and short sounds, but why allow a single character to represent multiple sounds depending on context?

I could go on, but I think I'll spend the time creating my own language instead. Writer or note, I may never understand the English language.

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It seems quite likely that "Things I May Never Understand" will become a semi-regular series. There is certainly plenty in this world that I may never fully grasp. What things do you believe you'll never understand?