Wrestling

Wrestling is a worldwide competitive sport where there are two contestants that use their maximal muscle strength to try and force the other player to touch their shoulder to the floor. As you may know wrestlers are subjected to compete in specific weight classes with similar age groups in order to have a fair competition.

I chose to write about this sport because my brother has been a competitive wrestler since as long as I can remember. One thing that I saw him struggle through was the amount of health issues that these competitive athletes can have. He was constantly on diets and try to cut weight before his matches so he would be able to weigh in as less as possible. Athletes would do this because it was better to get into lower weight classes so it would be able to give them some sort of an advantage. It came to the point where his coaches were encouraging the wrestlers to cut weight because of the heavy competition. These habits consisted of eating small meals with limited portions while also putting forth a lot of vigorous exercise. This sport contains a lot of strength training to be able to defeat the opponent. Right before competitions sometimes wrestlers try and cut out as much water weight as possible to decrease their size. Ive seen athletes run in a full sweat suit in the heat or run with a trash bag to sweat all that extra water. Being an athlete myself, I understand that people do whatever they can to win however, sometimes this can be very unsafe to the athletes body. In the severity of this situation athletes can have long term effects that can result in kidney failure and heart malfunctions. Some other physical problems that some people develop later on in life is hypoglycemia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

In 1997, the death of 3 collegiate wrestlers sent a message to the public on what this strenuous activity can do to an athlete. Since then there has been a lot of changes in the rules and weight classes for precaution. Today, it is common for people to stereotype wrestlers as the starved and malnourished athletes however, in most cases there are many who participate in this sport that don't participate in extreme weight loss. I think its amazing how much muscle strength and endurance that these athletes contain. In experiencing the the intense weight training that my brother regularly works out to, I find it unbelievable how much dedication it takes to built up this type of strength.

A Time Consuming Sport

This week I chose to write about gymnastics because it was once a sport that consumed a big part of my life. In reading many articles and hearing from others I found that many people felt that this sport requires dedication in the amount of training hours. It can really take away from ones social life and the opportunity to focus on multiple sports. In my own experiences this was my reason for quitting. From elementary school to the beginning of high school I would spend countless amounts of hours at the gym almost every night. As I grew older I realized that this was not something that I wanted to continue with and decided to take another path. Writer Eleni Edwards comments that "in order to thrive in gymnastics you must maintain a high level of dedication."Gymnastics is a sport that involves a performance of exercises that require a lot of physical strength, flexibility, agility and coordination." ( new york times). I always found that gymnastics took more time then any other sport I was involved in.

Often times we notice that elite gymnasts are of a certain stature. They are small, slender and have defining muscle activity. Female gymnasts are known to have lighter body masses compared to other athletes and females of the general population. Elite gymnasts are at the increased risk of the adverse effects for growth and maturation in their lifetime. Because this sport requires various stresses and high impacts to the body it directly effects one growth patterns. Gymnastics requires that athletes build up muscle strength, endurance and flexibility at a young age. While these athletes participate in this intense training their muscles begin to develop and its preventing a normal growth spurt because theres so much built up muscle holding it back. The greater the number of years in gymnastics the greater reduction in growth. However this also works to an advantage for these athletes because the smaller the better. Short gymnasts ofter have an advantage of spinning faster while tumbling and getting around easier on the uneven bars. From my own experience I remember watching taller people do the bars and sometimes there heals would hit the low bar or even the ground if they wernt able to hold their body weight.