Soccer Fitness 101

Fight Diseases And Still Look Beautiful-easy Fat Loss

Soccer — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:14:20 +0000

When it comes to being overweight or having excess fat deposition all over your body, it is not just looking bad that should be your concern. Being overweight can genuinely bring in lots of diseases along with it. Thus, Reducing does not only mean bringing down your body weight it also means maintaining a perfect balance. Fat loss is very effective to keep yourself healthy and fit always; with those excess fats all over your body, it is very natural and easy to fall ill. Diabetes, heart diseases etc are the most dangerous occurrences that excess weight can curse you with.

The fat loss calculator

While you are considering weight-loss, the very first step that you ought to consider is to burn fat. You actually need a body calculator at such times. This will help you by calculating your excess weight for you, the weight that you necessarily need to burn down. The body mass ratio is very easy to find out and thereby extremely useful. It gives an idea of how much of fat you need to burn, and allows your body not lose anything extra. Find out the problematic fat areas of your body and figure out the ways to reduce that without going overboard.

Sweat out for that lean body

Pump out those extra calories, with a little bit of expert help following specific fat burning exercises will be very beneficial to lose weight. Sometimes you will have to include certain vegetables in your diet like cabbage and get rid of certain vegetables like potato to help you burn fat faster. Raw fruits and vegetables are not only healthy but also are rich in substances that help burn down the fat. It is not a dream to achieve the perfect lean body; it only requires activation of the lean enzymes of the body by the help of workout and alteration in the diet.

Remember the body is like a machine

It is very important to understand and treat the body like a machine; the body needs constant fueling to keep going. You are working so hard to reduce a few inches and look smart, flaunt a lean body. It is your responsibility to feed the body the right way. Do not skip meals on the other hand keep eating at regular intervals. All your internal organs are prone to extreme danger when you keep them unnoticed while on this strict weight-loss regime. Drink more water to maintain the osmoregulation of the body in control. Moreover, let the liver function better- as water is the basic source of life.

Having excess fat is a real problem when it comes to acquiring unwanted diseases .on the other hand if you do not lose fat in the right way and is not cautious along the process; problems are bound to crop up. Be wise and step in to the path of fat loss, burn fat the right and healthy way by bringing the much needed change in your lifestyle and also look after all the basic necessary needs of your body to stay fit and smile the diseases away.

By: Jim J Wanlass

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Jim Wanlass is working hard so he can spend more time with his family. He has great fun watching his kids dance competitions and soccer matches. Everyone needs to be healthy and wants to look good. Visit Fast Track to Fat Loss today to see how it can work for you!

The End of the Golden Age

Soccer — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:02:24 +0000

Thirty years ago, if you flew over an Australian city what would surprise you was not the swimming pools, but the tennis courts. Australian suburban backyards of every demographic stripe had one, or had one within reach: grass, sand, clay, sometimes concrete. Particularly in affluent suburbs, but elsewhere, too, most Australian kids were in walking distance of a tennis court.

These days, they are gone. There are no fixed statistics on the number of backyard tennis courts in Australia, but authorities ranging from the national tennis body to former Davis Cup captain John Alexander confirm that it has been a catastrophic wipe out, a virtual extinction. The home tennis court has fallen victim to the 10-metre swimming pool, to the subdivided block, to the granny flat, to the stack of apartments. A culture of leisure has transformed itself into a culture of property development.

Community tennis courts still exist as a legacy of the mid-20th century boom in the sport, but few new ones are being built and the extant ones are seldom booked up. The Australian home tennis court – which doubled as a cricket pitch, a football ground, a basketball court – is a seriously endangered species.

At the same time, we Australians see a reason behind the decline in our national tennis prestige, where grand-slam tournaments pass without an Australian player, male or female, reaching the second week and with a mere scattering in the first. Once, we owned tennis: 15 Davis Cups between 1950 and 1967; a further six since then; seven Federation Cups; 18 male grand-slam winners with 77 singles titles between them; four female grand-slam winners with 42 titles; arguably the best male player (Rod Laver) and best female (Margaret Smith Court) the game has known. But, since the 1970s, tennis has been a drying riverbed, momentarily replenished by Pat Cash (one grand slam), Pat Rafter (two) and Lleyton Hewitt (two). Five grand-slam singles titles since 1980, and few second-week appearances outside of those three players. Looking at that change and at the decline of the family tennis court, you have to conclude the two phenomena are connected.

Deep social change has upended Australian tennis – just as, in a completely converse way, a different species of social change has raised the sport in eastern Europe. So what can be said about the rest of Australian sport, which appears to be going through one of its periodic ebb-tides? This year our Olympians brought home their lightest bag of metal since before we started spending up big for our home Olympics, Sydney 2000. Our cricketers lost to India and limped past New Zealand, and many believe England could beat them in next summer’s Ashes. Our once-unchallenged net ballers and hockey players are among the ruck. Our surfers and squash players, who once brought home world titles like duty-free gifts from foreign airports, are among the hunters, not the hunted. Even the trustiest standby, when all else goes wrong – our rugby league team – has just lost the World Cup for the first time since any of the current players were born.

Not only can Australians scratch their heads over failure in the present or immediate past, but failure of a kind is already factored into the future. On 4 December, when the British government announced it would commit £304m (A$571m) to its Olympic athletes for 2012, the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald was ‘Half-price heroes: we can’t compete’. Australia, spending A$213m on its Olympic program, had effectively given up the fight before it had started.

We may pretend it didn’t, but losing all those cycling races to the British in Beijing – and falling behind Britain in the medal table – stung the national hide. To see that Britain will, for 2012, spend four times as much as us on rowing and cycling, and three times as much on swimming and athletics, sticks in the antipodean craw, because money spent is generally thought to be directly proportional to medals won, and if we are already surrendering to Britain, what hope is there?

It has to be added here, without fear of generalisation, that Australians can tolerate losing to many different nations: in cricket to West Indies, in swimming to the United States, in tennis to Spain, in rugby to New Zealand. But there is something about losing to Britain, and England, in any sport, that just cannot be borne. Even those Australian cricket pundits and fans who were most ambivalent about the team’s image and manner of winning during the past 15 years were able to set their moral objections aside and rally behind the flag when it came to an Ashes series. Witness the size of the crowds, and the sheer glee, when Australia won the last series 5-0. To the boors and the sledgers and the poor sports in our team, all was forgiven.

When Britain’s Olympic spending figures were released in December, enough was enough. Heads of Australian sporting bodies lined up in an orchestrated protest. ‘We have to decide upfront whether as a nation we want to be successful,’ said Andrew Dee, chief executive of Rowing Australia. ‘You can’t join the space race with a hang-glider.’

The president of Cycling Australia, Mike Victor, commented: ‘We’d love to have some of the things [the British] have and be able to run things like a professional road team. But we just can’t at the moment.’

Danny Corcoran, the chief executive of Athletics Australia, said the difference between Britain’s funding and Australia’s was ‘a monster, a huge gap. The UK team were amazed by what Australia was able to do in Beijing with our resources, and it is now getting worse… For us to try and compete against not only the UK but many other countries spending more than us, we can’t continue to compete with our hands tied behind our back.’

When discussing Australians and sport, distinction must be made between tips and icebergs. At community level Australians are an increasingly sporting people, living up to our international image. We are devoted to fitness – walking for exercise and going to the gym are far and away the most popular fitness pursuits, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and two in three Australians participate in some sporting activity, including about one in three in an organized sport. Among men, the most popular organized sports are golf and cycling (both 8.8 per cent of the male population), swimming (8 per cent), running (5.4), tennis (4.9), soccer and cricket (both 3.9). Among women, the top organized sports are swimming (10), netball (4.8), tennis (4.7) and cycling (3.9).

Nor is there any sign of complacency or slackening off in the country’s investment in sport. The total value of construction works – public swimming pools, football grounds, stadiums and so on – has increased from A$869m to A$2.23bn in the past decade. Four-fifths of that spending comes from the private sector. Households spend a total of A$6.3bn a year on sports equipment and activities, including tickets to events. There are 9,256 sporting organisations in Australia, which give paid employment to 111,000 people and make the use of 181,000 volunteers.

These numbers are all on the rise. According to a report by the researchers Sweeney Sports, the most popular sports in Australia for ‘interest’ and participation are tennis, swimming and cricket – interestingly, three sports where our national performance is notably in decline.

So much for the iceberg, which is massive and growing. In any society, though, there is an intriguing connection between the mood of public participation in sports and the performance of the elites. How much impact do the symbols of national prestige have? When Dawn Fraser won swimming gold in three successive Olympics from 1956 to 1964, there was a boom in pools to turn us into a nation of Dawns. No doubt everybody who swam felt they glided along the water with the gold medallist’s amphibious grace.

If that is true, the converse is also: when our Olympians don’t win, we all feel a bit more sluggish. When our cricketers are beaten by England or India, there is a little less strut on every Saturday-afternoon pitch across the nation. Great champions inspire a nation; failure at the top has a slight depressive effect on the masses.

Australia suffered a national sporting depression once before, and it galvanized a response that produced the most profound change in the history of our sport. The 1976 Olympics in Montreal are seen as the nadir of Australian sports: one silver medal, four bronze, and 32nd place in an overall medal tally depleted by the African boycott. The construction of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, which was already under way, was finished by 1981. The AIS, designed along ’scientific lines’ to prepare elite athletes, initially covered eight sports, six of them Olympic.

Outside the communist bloc and some private academies in America, the AIS had no parallel. It harnessed the best knowledge on training, nutrition, medicine and psychology, and enticed coaches from every corner of the globe, to hothouse a tiny elite of athletes in a full-time professional environment. It led the non-communist world for total commitment and was given credit for Australia’s recovery in subsequent Olympics, right up to 1996 and 2000, when we were among the top five nations in terms of medals won.

In time the AIS’s activities were decentralized from Canberra among the states, where replica institutes were set up, some of them specializing in individual sports. One of these satellite institutes was the Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide. Its formation was announced in 1986 – the year Australia lost to New Zealand at home, drew with India at home, and lost a second successive Ashes series. That year was our cricketing Montreal. The academy model became the envy of the cricket world when in the 1990s it became recognised as a production line that turned out a generation that dominated the sport.

Adam Gilchrist, who attended the cricket academy in the early 1990s and emerged with contemporaries such as Damien Martyn, Justin Langer, Michael Bevan and Stuart MacGill, says the academy is still doing its job but the benchmarks of success might have shifted. ‘The first thing you’ve got to say is that the rest of the world hasn’t stood still, and the more other countries have copied our cricket academy, the less advantage it gives us.’ Countries such as England and India have imitated the Australian model, even, in England’s case, to the point of poaching the Australian academy’s most influential early coach, former Test wicketkeeper Rodney Marsh. But it is not only in the levelling of the international playing field that Gilchrist sees warning signs.

‘I think the academy will keep on producing cricketers with high technical skills,’ he says. ‘Where you might be a little bit more concerned is how these guys are schooled in life outside cricket. Because they’re being identified so young and taken into this environment, they’re not getting the exposure to life that pre-academy cricketers had.’ Gilchrist himself, although part of an early academy intake, played with seasoned adults from his early teens. It was always part of the education of an Australian cricketer, this exposure to hard men 10, 20, 30 years their senior.

‘I certainly learned a lot of new words from playing with grown men,’ Gilchrist recalls. The grade cricket competitions across Australia, city and country, earned a reputation for hardening young players in an intense environment, not only technically but competitively. ‘When you were representing your suburb or area against another, with all the men against each other, you knew you were in a game,’ Gilchrist says. But also, it gave an education broader than just cricket. Gilchrist partly attributes his ethical approach to cricket – walking when he knew he was out, for instance – to the fact that he used to play grade cricket alongside his tough but deeply moral father, Stan, a schoolteacher. ‘Men like that wouldn’t let you get away with any nonsense.’

Now, however, the best young talents tend to skip over their years of grade cricket, being recruited to the academy or elite State squads from their mid-teens and pushed forward into Sheffield Shield cricket before they have played much grade cricket at all. Gilchrist says he does not know how this cultural change – a kind of hothousing, or early-life specialization – will ultimately affect Australian sporting standards.

This transition would play itself out later in Gilchrist’s career. The Australia team were a mix of academy babies (such as Ricky Ponting, who went to the academy at 16) and a few who had come up outside the system (Matthew Hayden, for instance, had been shunned by the academy because Marsh said he only wanted to take cricketers who had a future as first-class players).

Once these players became adults, together in the one team, they would realize how different their life experiences were. When John Buchanan became Australia coach in 1999, his credo was: ‘I want to help you become not just better cricketers but better people.’ It was as if, at the highest levels, there was a recognition that the precocious hothousing of professionals was leaving their education incomplete, a gap that had to be filled in later.

Competitors will say that that single-mindedness, even narrowness, was precisely what made our teams so rugged. In the British caricature of Australians, we are beady-eyed and granite-hard and our humanity has been winnowed down to a thin, adamant stratum of competitiveness. That is said to be our strength. But it’s a long way from the truth about how Australians see ourselves. Generalising again, the beer-drinking, pizza-eating, womanising persona projected by Shane Warne was admired in Britain for what it was thought to say about Australian sporting masculinity. We are simple, we are upfront, we are laid back, we are pretty stupid actually, but with a ball in our hand we express our national genius.

Meanwhile, Warne was never as popular in Australia as in Britain. To many here – including the decision-makers at the national board who denied Warne the captaincy – Warne reminded us all too painfully of what we had left behind. He was the unreconstructed 1970s man, not particularly funny, and when he did not have the ball in his hand he was a national embarrassment. His off-field ‘bogannness’ was the price we had to pay for laying claim to his genius at cricket. But he personified the national character in the 2000s no better than Edna Everage or Dennis Lillee.

Caricaturing Australians in this way, of course, licensed the British to congratulate themselves on their sporting failures. Mike Atherton and Derek Pringle did not do much on the field against Australia, but at least they were cultured human beings, university-educated and articulate and almost above it all. Would you be proud to have a losing Mike Atherton or a winning Glenn McGrath? The English might well have been happy with what they had and, if they saw Australians as too obsessed with winning at all costs, then winning itself could become another sign of Australian inferiority.

Yet this was a battle of caricatures, not truths. In England, a tough new cricket academy and a streamlined, more competitive county system were under way. In Australia, Buchanan was trying to round out the education of our Test cricketers by taking them to historic battlegrounds and asking them to write poetry. Hayden wrote a cookbook and McGrath worked on developing a new barbecue sauce. Was all this a new sign of Australia’s degeneration?

Others believe that elite international sport has changed so vastly, in the era of wholesale professionalism, that there is no longer a meaningful relationship between the sporting prowess and fitness of a culture and the performances of its national representatives. Do the exploits of Rafael Nadal and the Davis Cup winners, not to mention the European football champions, mean the Spanish have suddenly become a faster, fitter people? Are Novak Djokovic and Jelena Jankovic the standard bearers for a nation of superhuman Serbs? And conversely, does decline among the professional elites throw any light at all on national sportiness?

The Australian Institute of Sport has 700 scholarship-holders this year, a historic high. Yet the competitive nature of sport means that a country may be going backwards even when it is going forwards: that is, it may be raising its standards against fixed measuring sticks, but other countries may be raising their standards faster. The anxiety in Australia is that while our AIS has become a model for the western world, we are suffering early-adopter’s syndrome: we are standing still while the others are, comparatively, moving forwards with newer facilities and fresher approaches.

One person who has observed the fine detail of change in several fields is sports analyst Mark Morgan. A Commonwealth Games gold medallist in the 100m freestyle in 1978, a lawyer and a long-time accredited swimming coach, Morgan has compiled figures to test different theories about Australia’s reputation for ‘punching above its weight’ internationally. ‘For a start, this is a bit of a myth that we pat ourselves on the back for,’ he says, ‘this idea that for our small population [20 million] we do so well. The fact is, Australia is an affluent country with a favourable climate and education systems that expose children to many different sports and sporting opportunities, we spend a lot of money on sport and we value sports very highly, so in sporting terms we’re not quite the small country that our population suggests.’

Morgan believes Australia does punch above its weight in most sports, but not perhaps as impressively as we like to think. In swimming, the sport Morgan knows most intimately, he says that Olympic results never reflect the health of the sport generally: ‘Olympic results are generally assessed by medals won, and medals are won by freakish performers. Without Ian Thorpe in Sydney and Athens, and without Stephanie Rice in Beijing, Australia’s swimming results would have been comparatively moderate, in terms of medals won. But then again, if America hadn’t had Michael Phelps, Australia’s results would be much better without Australia having done a single thing differently.’

Rather than look at Olympic results, Morgan’s analysis goes to age-group times in national and regional championships. ‘Age-group records are being broken in Australia at a ridiculous rate,’ Morgan says. ‘The times are getting significantly faster every year. They are on par with American results and better than any other country. This may never be reflected in Olympic medals, but it’s a fact that swimming in Australia is getting stronger and stronger.’

The sophistication of swimming training and coaching has increased appreciably in the three decades since Morgan was the fastest swimmer in the country. ‘From the 1970s there was a move towards huge volumes of swimming. Heated indoor pools had just been built, so swimmers were training in winter as well as summer for the first time, and the thinking went, “Five kilometers a week is better than two, so 10 must be better than five, so why not 40, 50, 90 kilometers a week?”‘

The attitude of coaches, Morgan recalls, was: ‘You throw all the eggs at the wall and the couple that don’t break, they’re the good ones and you’ll persist with them.’ Weights training was similarly crude. ‘Nautilus machines and the like had only just come around, and coaches would put you on dumbbells and bench-pressing and essentially the same weights program as a shot-putter would do. Not only did it burn sprint swimmers out, but it was counter-productive, building muscle bulk that wasn’t good for swimmers.’

The transformation to more targeted training – core-strength exercises, a focus on recovery, and splitting swimming groups into distance and sprint swimmers, as well as separating their training by stroke – was pioneered in countries such as Australia and America with the strongest swimming traditions, but during the 1990s there was also a greater sharing of knowledge internationally that leveled the pool, so to speak. Also, the freer traffic of coaches between countries – Australia kindly donating the best of its coaching talent to Britain – and the influence of the internet meant that while one country might be improving its coaching techniques, its ability to keep those techniques secret as a competitive advantage was diminished. Globalisation was a rising tide that raised all the boats.

‘With those influences,’ Morgan says, ‘I think you shouldn’t be saying how Australian swimming has lost its dominant position, you should be saying how remarkable it is that Australia, and America, have stayed ahead of the field.’

Older coaches spy something deeper at work: in Australia, there is such a saturation of sporting opportunities that sports are constantly in competition with each other. ‘Scouts from all sports are going around schools and spotting talent,’ Morgan says. ‘There’s nothing a parent and a kid like more than someone coming up and saying, “You’ve got the perfect physique and speed and skills for basketball, or Australian rules, or netball, so here’s a scholarship for you and you’re on your way.”‘

The identification of talent, he says, is happening at such a young age and spreading among so many sports that Australians’ natural tendency to fitness and the outdoors are going to be diluted.

‘It’s not like China, where someone will come to a village and pick out the gymnasts and that will be their only pathway out of poverty,’ Morgan says. ‘In a relatively affluent country like Australia, the most talented young sports people have lots of sports to choose from, and it’s inevitable that your national teams in the traditional sports might be weakened, because nowadays the kids aren’t all playing cricket, or all going swimming, or all playing the same code of football. And it’s not a pathway to affluence. A good number of the most talented kids in any sport are going to become doctors and bankers. They don’t need sport to get them out of where they’ve come from.’

Hence one solution to the apparent paradox: while Australians are growing demonstrably fitter and more involved in physical exercise, the achievement of our national teams in traditional sports may slide. Couple this with the boom in popularity of non-competitive physical pastimes and ‘extreme sports’ – skateboarding, surfing, mountaineering, off-road cycling – and you have a fair portrait of today’s Australians: fitter than ever, sportier than ever, as rugged and sunburnt as we always were, but just not so focused on beating England at cricket. And not so worried at having no locals competing in the tennis grand slams. As Tennis Australia points out, for all the decline in Australian participants in the grand slams, attendances and television ratings for the Australian Open have never been higher. Perhaps we’re just not as parochial as we used to be.

It’s a rosy, laid back picture and there’s only one thing that might conceivably change it: getting smashed in this year’s Ashes series and getting left behind by Britain in cycling and rowing and swimming and track and field in London in 2012. Then we might get serious again.

A List of the Highest Paid Football Players in the NFL

Soccer — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:09:46 +0000

A List of the Highest Paid Football Players in the NFL

Sports Articles | November 27, 2009

This article provides information about how players of the NFL are able to make millions of dollars per year. What follows is a list of players and their salaries, a discussion about NFL player salaries including how they are able to sign multi-million dollar contracts, and finally NFL salary implications for both players and fans.

The main questions is, why do NFL players get paid millions of dollars per year? To answer this question, you need to understand the concepts of revenue stream within the NFL, and the term “salary cap”.

The salary cap is the amount of money an NFL team can spend on salaries for their players per year. The salary cap, imposed by the NFL commission, has progressively increased year by year since its inception back in 1994.

In essence the NFL salary cap, as negotiated by the players Union in the current collective bargaining agreement, is 62.24% of all football related revenue divided by 32 teams. For the 2009 season that figure is 128 million dollars. This means that each team has 128 million dollars it can spend on player salaries per year. But, as indicated by the data shown below, this salary cap continues to grow from year to year. Revenue mainly comes from ticket sales.

The following shows the steady increase in salary cap since 1999:

Salary Cap Per Team for NFL Player Salaries by Year

2008 0; 0; 0; $116 million

2007 0; 0; 0; $109 million

2006 $102 million

2005 0; 0; 0; $85.5 million

2004    $80.5 million

2003 $75 million

2002 0; 0; 0; $71 million

2001 $67.5 million

2000 $62.2 million

1999 $58.4 million

As the salary cap increases, so does the salary of players. The real question is how is the money distributed to players. There is a type of salary distribution model that teams use which is not known to the general public. Lets look at a list of the highest paid NFL players for 2008.

The following table tells it all:

TOP 20 HIGHEST PAID PLAYERS IN 2008

1. QB Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh $ 27,701,920

2. DE Jared Allen, Minnesota $ 21,119,256

3. WR Larry Fitzgerald, Arizona $ 17,103,480

4. QB JaMarcus Russell, Oakland $ 16,872,400

5. RB Michael Turner, Atlanta $ 16,003,840

6. G Chris Snee, N.Y. Giants $ 14,890,000

7. CB Asante Samuel, Philadelphia $ 14,145,000

8. WR Randy Moss, New England $ 14,006,720

9. T Flozell Adams, Dallas $ 14,005,760

10 .DT Tommy Kelly, Oakland $ 13,978,480

11. WR Terrell Owens, Dallas $ 13,731,560

12. WR Bernard Berrian, Minnesota $ 13,705,000

13. T Michael Roos, Tennessee $ 13,505,520

14. C Jeff Faine, Tampa Bay $ 13,105,760

15. DE Will Smith, New Orleans $ 12,950,000

16. QB Tony Romo, Dallas $ 12,886,600

17. G Travelle Wharton, Carolina $ 12,850,000

18. DE Antwan Odom, Cincinnati $ 12,800,000

19. CB Terence Newman, Dallas $ 12,611,240

20. RB Marion Barber, Dallas $ 12,522,400

Lets examine the concept of salary in the NFL a little more closely. As previously stated, how teams pay their players and the value they place on them is known by only a few, including the player agent. It is interesting to note that having high salary players does not necessarily mean success to the team.

A case in point. One of the most successful NFL teams over the past ten years has been the New England Patriots. Yet only one player from the Patriots is in the top 20 for 2008. That is wide receiver Randy Moss. Yet Oakland, over the past ten years, which has two players in the top 20, has not seen the success that the Patriots have had. As a mater of fact, they have not even come close.

Also, you can see five players from the Dallas Cowboys in the top 20 list for 2008, yet they have not been in the Super Bowl since 1995 (Super Bowl XXX). It appears that the New England Patriots like to spread their money around to their players, so that one or a few players do not get an enormous salary while the rest of the players make a fraction of that amount. Randy Moss may be an exception to this rule.

This team concept of salary distribution that the Patriots employ falls in line with the team concept they have set for their players when it comes to playing football. The Patriot’s organization believe that it requires a team effort to win football games, and not the superior effort of only a few players. Maybe that is one of the reasons the Patriots have been so successful over the past ten years. And lets not forget that the Patriots is one of the best managed teams in the NFL. Part of that management is proper salary distribution. Team owner Robert Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick seem to know what they are doing.

In any case, NFL player salaries continue to increase year by year. Today the lowest rookie makes a bare minimum of $285,000.00 (at least for 2007). In terms of all professional sports, the NFL players are the highest paid. This is why so many college players seek to get into the NFL. But it should also be remembered that the average length of a career for a player in the NFL is only 4 years. So obviously a player needs to make all he can during that short career. The question is are the players worth these very high salaries.

A persons salary is dependent on one major factor. That is how many other people can do the job they are doing? The fewer the number of people that can perform a particular job, the higher the salary. Not to many people can play in the NFL. Also, the players do deserve most of the revenue that is produced simply because, without the players, you would not have any business entity. And since fans are willing to pay the high ticket prices, then I would have to answer the question that yes, the players do deserve the salaries they receive.

Football is a form of entertainment, but it is a form of entertainment Americans can not do without. Even in the Roman period, people had a need to see the gladiators fight in the Colosseums. The Romans had to pay to see their gladiators fight to the death. Sometimes all the seats were free, if a rich person had given money to pay for the show. Other times, you had to pay, and it cost more money for the good seats than for the bad seats, so the poor people had to sit way up top in the Colosseum where it was hard to see. Today rich people do not pay for all the seats at a football game. But at least today, NFL teams do not fight to the death! The point is, Romans were willing to pay to see the gladiator form of competition. This willingness to pay to see competition has existed throughout the history of mankind.

The bottom line is, fans really seem to not care to much about the player salaries. They just like to watch their teams with the hope that their team will reach the Super Bowl, or in some cases, simply a winning season. So how do NFL players make millions of dollars per year. Simply put, fans are willing to pay high ticket prices to see their team play. And as long as the demand for tickets remains high, players will continue to enjoy a high income.

Article Tags:
Highest Paid, Player Salaries, Salary Distribution

How to Get Rid of Man Boobs Fast

Soccer — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:48:14 +0000

Article: How to Get Rid of Man Boobs Fast

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How to Curve a Soccer Ball

Soccer — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 01:22:42 +0000

The phrase ‘curve ball’ is used for pretty much anything that defies accepted norms or common intelligence. I’m not sure who pioneered the curved free kick revolution in soccer, but David Beckham used it to a great extent (and to great effect) and popularized it. In many instances, the curling kick left the goalkeepers stranded and defensive-walls stunned. Today, this art of how to curve a soccer ball has been researched by many, with some claiming that it can be done only by a few people and Beckham was one of them. What a load of rubbish! Amateur street footballers like you and me can do it too! So let’s see how to curve a soccer ball?

How to Curve a Soccer Ball: The David Beckham Way
Learning how to curve a soccer ball is easy. Just follow the steps listed below.

The first thing you have to keep in mind when you are curving a soccer ball, is which is your stronger, more accurate foot? Always take the free kick with that foot. Free kicks are precious and you have to make your best attempt at the goal, so it is better you ascertain which one is your shooting foot.
Let’s say that you shoot better with your right foot. Once you place the ball, see where the goal is. If the goal is to your left-hand side, you will have to curl it inwards with your right foot. If the goal is on your right-hand side, you have to curl it outwards. Generally, it is more difficult to shoot the ball with enough force and accurately curl it outside. But rest assured, it can be done.
Another thing you have to keep in mind, is that if the ball rotates in an anti-clockwise motion, it will ‘bend’ to the left side. If it spins in a clockwise motion, it will bend to the right hand side (for the right foot kick).
If you are shooting to the left, you take a slight run-up from 45 degrees to the left of the ball. Your foot should make contact with the ball just below the equator of the ball, bottom-right. The important thing is to make the required follow-through with the foot. Now this part requires talent. The follow-through will define just how much curl the ball picks up. The more the follow through, the more you will curl the ball.
To curl the ball to the right hand side, you can take the run either from 45 degrees left or run straight. The contact should be just below the equator on the bottom left of the ball. Again, the follow through is very important.
To kick a free kick with you left foot, the steps are exactly opposite. To kick the ball with your left foot to the right-hand side, hit the ball below the equator, bottom left. To curl it to the left-hand side with left foot is again a bit difficult. Hit the ball at the bottom right just below the equator.

How to Curve a Soccer Ball: The Andrea Pirlo Way
A slightly different method to how to curve a soccer ball was devised by current AC Milan midfielder, Andrea Pirlo. The way he devised it, you can even kick the ball in a way that instead of just curling sidewards, it also dips, i.e. the ball exhibits a sudden downward motion in the latter part of the parabola. In my opinion, this kick is quite useful for straight free-kicks at the goal and for corner kicks. To get dip on the ball, the right footed Andrea Pirlo makes contact with the ball a bit lower than mentioned in the David Beckham way. Also, it is so much to the right of the ball and is a straight-ish hit. The important point being the part of the foot which makes contact with the ball. Pirlo hits the ball with the part of the foot that is between the toe and the instep (the part of your shoe which has the shoelaces). Hitting the ball with that part of the foot will make the ball dip suddenly and will augment the element of surprise. It is quite useful if the defensive wall of the opposition is taller and there isn’t a lot of distance between the spot and the goal, so you can clear them and score too.

So these were some of the most popular ways of how to curve a soccer ball. Players like Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have devised their own ways, but the variation is only which part of the foot makes contact with the ball. Taking curving free kicks is easy, but getting them on target by getting the right amount of curve/dip requires practice. Click here for more on.
Soccer Strategies and Tactics
Basic Soccer Rules – Learn How to Play Soccer

Ways To Learn Chinese Fast

Soccer — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:46:10 +0000

Ways To Learn Chinese Fast

Education Articles | July 15, 2010

Discover the amazing secrets how you can learn the Chinese language fast by making Chinese friends and taking audio-based language courses from home. It’s easier then you might think.

Most English speakers would agree it’s not possible to learn a language as difficult as Chinese or even Japanese for that matter. And in most cases I would agree with them. However with the advancements made in technology in the last couple of years, there’s no excuse why we as Westerners can find it difficult to learn any new language faster than a couple of years ago. In my opinion it is faster to learn to speak in Chinese than learning to read and write in Chinese as well. Most people make the mistake trying to accomplish all three aspects at once and don’t understand three months down the line why they have lost interest in learning Chinese. Start your learning process by focusing on learning conversational Chinese and the rest will fall in place.

You see, reading Chinese is one thing and we won’t even tackle that in this article. Having a conversation in Chinese is something totally different and much easier to accomplish. The consonants used in Chinese are quite simple. The tonal quality in which Chinese are pronounced is the reason why Chinese sound so “Chinese” to an English speaker. When we say the word “horse” it doesn’t matter whether we say it in a rising or falling tone it’s still a horse. Be careful, in Chinese if you use the wrong tone pronouncing a word that you might be saying something totally different! To learn Chinese fast, you need to become very sensitive to the varying tones used in the language.

And for that, you need an audio-based course one that not only teaches you the words but allows you to hear the pitch and tone in which they’re spoken. Either take a conversational class in person, or choose an online or DVD-based course in which the emphasis is placed on speaking rather than reading, and the instructors are native Chinese speakers themselves. This method will give you a solid foundation in the structure of the language itself while sensitizing you to the nuances of its sound, and it is the best way to learn Chinese fast.

But there is one more essential step in your Chinese instructional method. You will learn Chinese much faster by making Chinese friends! Making Chinese friends is really the missing secret piece you need to learn Chinese fast, since your new found Chinese friends will tell you when you pronounce a word incorrectly or not and this feedback is vital in mastering Chinese. Pay extremely careful attention to the way your companions shape their lips and tongue as they form their words. You’ll find that as you listen to Chinese speakers, you’ll be able to understand them relatively quickly. However be warned that in your first attempt to reply in Chinese to your friends will break out in hilarious laughter and there’s nothing to feel ashamed about. It’s very easy for a rookie to say embarrassing things in Chinese! Before you take that trip to China or entertain any Chinese dignitaries, you’ll want to have practiced your conversational skills with people you trust.

You might wonder where in your neighborhood you are going to find Chinese friends to learn to speak Chinese with? You may make some new Chinese friends at your local Chinese restaurant, however just make sure they speak Mandarin if you are planning to visit mainland China and Cantonese if you are planning to visit Hong Kong. You can also try your local Chinese market or coffee shop. If you live near a university, see if they have an Asian students’ group. Any of these outlets should put you in touch with people who will help you learn Chinese fast. Just be friendly, and you’re well on your way to learning a new language!

Gerrit founded the popular learn a language site. Do YOU want more ways to learn Chinese fast? Visit his Rocket Chinese review site for more info and receive your very own FREE 6 day Mandarin language program.

Cricket: Thorpe Looks Fit But Butcher Doubtful

Soccer — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:42:53 +0000

England completed their preparations for the opening Test with a convincing innings and 85-runs victory over the Vice Chancellor’s XI.

The hosts started their second innings 155 runs adrift shortly before tea on the second day and slumped to 70 all out to earn England a timely triumph five days before the start of the first Test against the West Indies.

Yorkshire’s Matthew Hoggard, fighting for one of the three seamer roles in the Test line-up, all but cemented his place with three further wickets while Ashley Giles’s important role in the forthcoming four-Test series was underlined with another three-wicket display. Simon Jones also continued his comeback by claiming three for three in two overs.

It rounded off an impressive display from England, whose Test chances were further enhanced by Graham Thorpe’s recovery from a back problem to score a determined half-century while Mark Butcher has made progress after spraining his left ankle ligaments on Tuesday.

‘The two games have been very good for us because the guys have got out there and had a good bat and the bowlers have had to work hard for their wickets,’ enthused coach Duncan Fletcher.

England’s upturn in fortunes started even before the start of play with the sight of Butcher, rated as ‘extremely doubtful’ after he sustained the injury during the drawn match against Jamaica, jogging tentatively around the outfield for the first time.

Fletcher still only rates him as ‘40-60′ for the Test, but the sight of Butcher on the comeback trail and Thorpe’s return was an early fillip for the tourists when they resumed their first innings on 152 for two.

After the interval Thorpe showed his class to score a superb 55, including seven boundaries, to help guide England to a lead of 155 before they were dismissed for 274 and prove his fitness for the Test.

While he may have concerns about the fitness of his top order, Fletcher’s bowlers certainly looked in good order with every member of the attack except Flintoff, whose contribution with the ball is being closely monitored to prevent him being over-burdened, claiming wickets during the match.

Managing Gout And Uric Acid Kidney Stones

Soccer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:27:42 +0000

Article: Managing Gout And Uric Acid Kidney Stones

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Record-breaker Ronaldo Cannot Exorcise Demons

Soccer — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:37:56 +0000

It started with humiliation, hit the heights of glory and ended in misery. Ronaldo’s World Cup, like his career, has been the worst and the best of times.

This was the tournament when Ronaldo confirmed himself in the pantheon of World Cup greats by beating Gerd Muller’s goalscoring record. It was also when, obviously overweight, he was booed off for an abysmal opening performance. He also argued with the Brazil president, got blisters on his feet and caught the flu.

Last night he came on the pitch with a new look. He had a little goatee under his chin and a big grin. For the first time in the tournament he seemed lighter in spirit, free from the taunts about his weight and from the doubters who thought his World Cup days numbered.

His pairing with Ronaldinho, moved up to the front line of attack in the absence of Adriano, was also something to put a spring in his step. The two Ronnies play to each other’s strengths much more effectively and within 10 minutes his head connected with a Ronaldinho free-kick and the ball bounced over the bar.

Ronaldo was the story the last time these two teams met, in the 1998 World Cup final. Then he was an apathetic, crestfallen figure who, it was revealed, had had a nervous fit hours before the game. His health and fitness has again been under scrutiny this year, having arrived two-thirds of a stone overweight for Brazil’s preparation in Switzerland. But with each game he has been getting sharper.

He has shed the pounds, but he still lacks pace and at times could have made better chances had he been marginally faster. He disappeared for large parts of the game, not because of any personal problem but because of France’s increased confidence and possession.

Ronaldo has already exorcised the demons of 1998, by recovering from injury just in time to take part in the World Cup four years later and win the title, scoring two goals in the final. It would have been especially sweet to have hit the net against France last night – less putting ghosts to rest than obliterating them to another dimension. Instead, the spirits came back to torment him.

Ronaldo’s funny turn eight years ago prompted two parliamentary enquiries in Brazil, even though what really happened has never entirely been explained. The official line was that after the fit he was taken to a clinic in Paris for tests, given the all-clear and then asked to play. Mario Zagallo, the coach, said that with a clean bill of health Ronaldo had to start.

Many Brazilians are sure something is being kept secret and grist was given to their mill this week when Zagallo, now coach Carlos Alberto Parreira’s number two, said: ‘In 1998 we played when Ronaldo was ill. Now he will be 100 per cent.’ If he was ill, they argued, then Zagallo was previously being economical with a verdade

Ronaldo arrived at Brazil’s training camp in Switzerland weighing almost 15 stone. When, after an invisible opening performance against Croatia, he was substituted the press were writing him off.

He improved against Australia, but his touch was lacking and when he started against Japan he was, according to the team fitness trainer, 9lb lighter than at the beginning of the preparation campaign. His second goal of that match equalled Muller’s record of 14 and his fifth-minute goal against Ghana put him clear.

Even though Ronaldo was never as hyped as Ronaldinho, Brazilians have tended to see him as more crucial to their retaining the trophy. But his grin turned to a snarl, part in surprise and part in anger, when shortly before half time Medina Cantalejo showed him a yellow card for what looked like an accidental hand ball. He never got his smile back all match.

Parreira defended his decision to use Ronaldo for 90 minutes: ‘The three best moves that threatened the French goal came from Ronaldo’s feet,’ he said. ‘I do not regret choosing the all-time World Cup top scorer at all.’ A day earlier Parreira had insisted Ronaldo would be able to carry on. ‘He is only 29 years old. He’ll be able to play for four or five years and maybe even go to another World Cup. If he is motivated, then he has what it takes.’

Whether he does after the disappointment last night remains to be seen.

A Healthy Package Deal With Aerobics

Soccer — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:55:59 +0000

Article: A Healthy Package Deal With Aerobics

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The author of this article Rose Windale is a successful Health and Wellness Coach. Rose recently published a step-by-step guide on how to lose weight the EASY way. More info at http://www.FlabAndFatAway.com.