Stick It

Stick It is about the sport of gymnastics and everything that comes along with it.  Haley is faced with the challenge of returning to the sport after she traumatically left it years ago.  She goes through many ups and downs along the way, and can attribute many of them to her coach.

Release Year: 2006
Rating: PG-13
Length: 103m

For more information, view its pages at the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes or purchase it from Amazon.

• Confidence:  When the girls have their first meet, Haley tells her teammates to throw harder skills because she knows they can do it.  The girls do throw the harder skills, showing they are confident in their abilities.
• Eating Disorders: This theme is seen quite a lot in the sport of gymnastics.  It is evident in this movie when Joanne is looking at herself in a mirror in disgust, even though she is far from being overweight.
• Leadership:  From the start, the other gymnasts looked up to Haley as a role model.  They decide to scratch their routines at Championships after Haley is the first one to do it and throw their harder skills at their first meet because Haley convinces them it is a good idea.
• Sportsmanship: Joanne (a fellow gymnast) is very un-sportsmanlike, sarcastically telling another gymnast "nice stick" when she falls on her bar dismount and follows that up by saying, "it's not called gymn-NICE-stics" to Haley.
• Teamwork: This theme is seen throughout the entire movie, especially when the four girls go to Championships.  Mina performed her vault flawlessly, but received only a 9.5 because her bra strap was showing.  All the other girls decided to blatantly pull out their bra straps during their vaults and scratch for that event so that Mina will win.

Something Fishy for Fighters....

This fascinating scientific tidbit below comes from my good friend at High Performance Nutrition. 

I have previously discussed here on the Combat Sport Psychology site, some of the hazards associated with recurrent concussions (see "Watch Your Head"), a phenomenon not at all uncommon among amateur and professional combat sport athletes (and among drunks, the ill-tempered, and those whose mouths regularly write checks that their other ends' cannot cash) .  Here - however- is some potential good news.  (RB)

Fighters may be able to reduce their risk of developing brain damage by taking fish oil supplements. According to an animal study by American neurologists, brain cells recover more quickly from head trauma when given DHA, a fatty acid in fish oil.

The researchers, working at West Virginia University, wanted to know whether the brains of people with head injuries recovered more quickly or better when given fish oil supplements. The brain contains relatively high amounts of DHA, the fatty acid found in fish oil. This substance stimulates the growth of brain cells and protects them against damage and stress too.

The researchers gave a group of rats concussion of the same degree and then let the animals recuperate for 30 days. Some of the rats were given a standard diet, some were given 10 mg DHA per kg bodyweight daily, and yet another group were given 40 mg DHA per kg bodyweight per day on top of their standard food.

At the end of the 30 days the researchers examined the rats' brain cells. They were looking for precursors of beta-amyloid precursor protein [APP] in the axons, the long protrusions at the end of nerve cells. Beta-amyloid peptides form plaques in the brains of people who have Alzheimer's or dementia, but they probably also do this in the brains of people who have received severe blows to the head.

Sham = rats not given concussion.

If cells become so damaged that they cannot repair themselves, they kill themselves. When this happens, the synthesis of the suicide enzyme caspase-3 rises. This is what happened in the brain cells of the rats that had been given a blow – but it happened considerably less in the rats that had been given DHA.

If you convert the doses used into the amount needed for a human weighing 100 kg [for the sake of easy maths] and take into account the fact that humans' metabolism is slower than that of rats, you arrive at a dose of somewhere between 100 and 400 mg per day. Most of the cheap kinds of fish oil contain 10-15 percent of DHA. That means you need to take 1-4 of the big one-gram capsules a day.

It's not clear whether other omega-3 fatty acids work as well as DHA, but of all the omega-3 fatty acid molecules in the brain, 97 percent of them are DHA.

Source: 
J Neurotrauma. 2010 Sep; 27(9): 1617-24.

Staff Developments 2011

SPC Staff Developments 2011

The influence of others on sporting performance

Kenyan athletes training in a group

Having taken an extended break from writing whilst working this summer, I have been training and running aplenty. In London I had to fit in a big training schedule with work and commuting. I got fitter and set some PBs at a time when normally I'd be putting my feet up after 4 months of winter training. Having not made a PB for the first time in four marathons, I wanted to up my game and ran with Simon Freeman and runningwithus in my limited free time. Having a personalised schedule was great to help chart progress, but as with my training with Victoria Park Harriers in London and Trafford AC in Manchester, running interval sessions on the track every week helped improve my time and in turn, my confidence.

Simon in particular was a great influence, both on a friendship and athletics level. He encouraged me on and off the track with training. We share a love of endurance running and the mental side of sport, so it was great to be asked to help with an article on the benefits of running in groups.

Since my return to Manchester from London, I've taken a break from the running after setting a PB in the Bristol half marathon, and am head down in study mode for Sport Psych exams with the BPS. Once I've finished the first of my exams completed in early November, I'll be hitting the track as part of my goal to improve on last years Marathon time in London, and to achieve a Boston Qualifying Time (the famous and frankly scary BQT!).

In the meantime, I'll leave the virtues of running as part of a group and the benefits it gives you in training and races to Simon. 

Sport psychiatry and psychotherapy. Mental strains and disorders in professional sports. Challenge and answer to societal changes

Sport psychiatry and psychotherapy. Mental strains and disorders in professional sports. Challenge and answer to societal changes

(reviewed in Journal Club session, presented by Neoh Yeow Wen)

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THE RELIABILITY OF MALAY VERSION OF PASSION SCALE: PRE TESTING

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