Massive well done to Ritchie and Andy – you’ve both done me proud this week

Here’s why (click on each picture to view full size):

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A great documentary film is due to be released very soon. It tells the story of two physically impaired, but mentally determined women who take on the challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa back in January of this year.

Erika Davis, a paraplegic since 2005 becomes the first ever paraplegic female athlete to make the summit. She is accompanied by her team mate Tara Butcher, an amputee below the left-knee.

The project came about with the aid of Paul Chek and the Challenged Athlete’s Foundation.

It looks the source of some solid inspiration and a great story.

You can watch the trailer at the Through the Roof website:

http://www.throughtheroofmovie.com/

Great video featured on TED.com about controlling cancer via the diet.

The theory is based on the premise of controlling Angiogenesis, the process by which new blood vessels are formed.

The outcome is to eat more veg, which I think has always been great advice.

Nick Vujicic provides today’s inspiration.

Great video today, that outlines a solution to the problem of getting access to fresh vegetables in large cities – by growing them yourself using a windowfarm with minimal set-up costs.

I love “outside the box” thinking like this, especially when its effect is maximised by embracing the global reach of the Internet.

For more information you can visit the windowfarms website at www.windowfarms.org

I came across this great parody of modern life today, made me smile.

Reminds me of the people who spend 20 mins trying to find the closest parking space to the supermarket, instead of parking futher away and have a 2 minute walk.

I’ve just come back from a fantastic day at Exeter University.

I went with James Marshall, of Excelsior Training, to help him run a support day for gifted athletes from all over South Devon.

We spent the morning running through warm-ups, circuit training and agility exercises suitable for all athletes to help improve their abilities and reduce their chances of injury.

In the afternoon we sat down with the resident physio Dave MacLellan and the athletes individually, taking them through a musculoskeletal assessment to screen out any possible problems and impairments.

It was a great chance for me to learn first hand how James and Dave assess posture and movement efficiency in athletes.

The most inspiring point of the day was watching how, during the assessments, James and Dave would almost pre-empt one-another as they picked out various compensations. It showed that they had a real synergy between them and I think its a great thing to have the strength and conditioning coach there first-hand to witness everything that the Physiotherapist does, rather than simply relying on written reports.

Things I learnt over the course of the day:

• Young female athletes are generally more flexible than their male counterparts.
• Nearly all young athletes lack a solid and robust foundation for everyday movement, let alone anything sports specific.
• Lower back problems seem to be worryingly common among young athletes of both sexes and nearly always is caused by bad posture, inflexibility in the spine and being coached into the ground when they do have a problem.
• Some equestrian riders seem be more agile than a lot of athletes who play team sports, such as Rugby and Football, even though it is not as important to them as it is the team sport players.  Makes you question what the team sports’ coaches are actually doing when they train their athletes.
• A great synergy between coaches and therapists produces the best results by far.
• The young athletes who we worked with had either zero or next to no appreciation of the quality of the services, knowledge and skill that was being made available to them – for free!

Overall a great day and I thank James and Dave for allowing me to help out, watch and most importantly learn from their wisdom.

That’s a deliberate misspelling on the title, to find out why you’ll have watch the source of the inspiration behind today’s post.

I must admit I am sucker for tales of triumph over adversity and the film “The Pursuit of Happyness” is probably one the of the best I will ever see.

Why? Because it is based upon the true life story of one extraordinary man called Chris Garderner.

The film focuses on Chris’s battle to become a stock broker, and in the process, forever change the fortune of himself and his young son.

Chris manages to successfully complete an internship and secure a new career, all the while he is homeless and undertaking the responsibility as a single parent.

Here is a an interview from 2007, which gives an insight into his character and determination:

And here is a trailer for the 2006 film, starring Will Smith:

“You want something. Go get it. Period.”

Great video here from Sean Croxton from Underground Wellness, talking about disconnection.

I can’t agree more and its something I am becoming more and more acutely aware of.

If we take the time to put away the distractions (internet, facebook, tv, etc) and just take a step back and look at our lives…you can really see what he means.

We seem be becoming more and more disconnected from our food, each other and to an extent, ourselves.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Neurodegeneration, I’ve come across these two videos.

I am always interested to hear stories that make you think about not writing people off, even though their physical limitations may suggest you should.

The first is about an open source project called the EyeWriter.

Using open source software and cheap, readily available components a team in the US have created a system that allows users to draw using only the movement of their eyes. The possibilities this has in terms of helping people overcome serious physical impairments is in incredible.

The second is about the legendary savant (and inspiration behind the Rain Man charater played by Dustin Hoffman) Kim Peek.

Although he has severe physical and social limitations, his brilliant mind has enthralled both scientists and members of the public alike.