Friday 30 January 2015

Your body clock could be affecting your athletic performance

This news report on BBC Breakfast this morning caught my attention; a new study from the University of Birmingham suggests that your internal body clock can have a significant effect on your sporting performance. Therefore, early risers perform better earlier on in the day, and vice versa. The researchers go on to suggest that this could affect top-level performance such as in Olympic events or top-league football (even giving English teams an excuse for not performing so well in the Champions' League!).

We don't have full-text access to the article, but you can read the abstract here (and don't forget that if you're in your final year or a postgraduate, you can use the Document Supply Service to request material we don't have).

Monday 12 January 2015

#thisgirlcan - encouraging women to get active?

Sport England have launched their "This Girl Can" campaign, encouraging women to take part in sport and exercise "no matter how they do it, how they look, or even how sweaty they get" (Sport England, no date). On Twitter you can follow @thisgirlcan and the hashtag #thisgirlcan to see what women are doing to keep fit and active. 

It's great that initiatives like this exist, but eagle-eyed readers will have spotted the question mark in the title of this post, and if you've been reading for a while you might remember that last year I wrote a post about this issue of women apparently not wanting to exercise because of how it will make them look, where I explained that I'm not entirely sure that this is the only or main barrier to physical activity for women. However, anything to promote the importance of physical activity for any section of the population can only be a good thing, so I hope that this campaign has a positive impact.

What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below. 


Sport England (no date) This Girl Can: About Us. Available at: http://www.thisgirlcan.co.uk/about-us/ (Accessed: 12 January 2015).