Secret NFL Play: Acupuncture

The diminutive Lisa Ripi (46 years-old, 5'3") travels 20 days out of every month, tending to the sore muscles, tensions, and highly tuned bodies of pro football players. Ripi’s technique is closer to Japanese acupuncture than to traditional Chinese methods. She focuses less on established points and more on sore areas, using needles to increase blood flow, relaxing muscles tightened in the weight room. She has 40 NFL players among her clientele, many of whom claim she's as important as the playbook. “They always tell me I’m their little secret,” Ripi told The New York Times recently. “I feel like the little mouse who takes the thorns out of their feet.”

Here's the rest of the story.

The Power of Walking

Thanks to the Guardian, here's the poet Simon Armitage, winner of the 2010 Keats-Shelley Prize, who lives in West Yorkshire:

I try to get in a bit of a walk most days. Most times it's a toss up between going for a walk and staying in and writing a poem, but it often leads to the same thing. I go on to the moors – we live on the edge of the Pennines and Saddleworth moor, and it can be quite bleak and quite dangerous. Sometimes I go off-piste, but there are issues around here with land ownership so sometimes I stick to the roads and the routes and sometimes I wilfully transgress, which gives me a kick.

Some people have said there's a relationship between poetic meter and the fall of your foot – and possibly your heartbeat might be thought of as an iambic beat when it's amplified by walking. Often when I go for a walk I come back with a poem. There's a sense of creativity about it, and a sense of wellbeing that you are getting the organs and lungs and the blood moving. You never come back from a walk feeling worse – sometimes you come back feeling colder and wetter though, especially up here.

I'm sure that somewhere in the back of my mind I see it as a therapeutic activity. I know it can be good for a hangover. Some people believe strongly that art in general can put you in touch with yourself and through it you start feeling worthwhile and valuable, and there might be some kind of chemical trigger that aids recovery and keeps illness at bay. If a walk leads to a poem, maybe there's a relationship there.

I am 47 now and sometimes I think "How many more fantastic days out on these moors are there?' Sometimes it can be an expedition just to go up there, but when it's sunny and clear and crisp like yesterday it's exhilarating, and that gets right down to the far tributaries of your lungs that normally are breathing warm radiator air and it does heighten your sense of wellbeing.

The Runaway Success Of The Barefoot Shoe

With no traditional advertising to date, Vibram FiveFingers has grown from about 10,000 pairs sold in 2006 to 1.5 million pairs of shoes sold in the past year. (The original design introduced four years ago has since been tailored for sports ranging from yoga to kayaking.) Vibram USA President-CEO Tony Post projects that the numbers will double in 2011. Not bad for the funniest looking model since the Earth Shoe.

Long before the torrent of barefoot runners, Post stumbled onto the idea for the Vibram toe-glove. A longtime runner, he was training for a marathon in 2005 when he injured his knee and had to have surgery. After doctors recommended he stop running, Post decided to try out a prototype "barefoot" shoe developed by Robert Fliri and Marco Bramani (Vibram founder Vitale Bramani's grandson). The shoe wasn't created for sport, but after Mr. Post found himself running seven miles in them with no knee pain, he knew he was onto something.

Have a look at the company's site YouAreTheTechnology.com for some cool stuff about how the body naturally runs.

Weight Vests, Bikram, And Sprints. Oh My!

Andy Murray logged a win over David Nalbandian today in Paris, further proof that his markedly improved fitness is paying dividends. Currently ranked No. 4 on the ATP Tour, Murray (23 years-old, 6'3", 183 lbs) spends hundreds of hours on the tennis court, of course, but training goes way beyond fuzzy yellow balls. He does chin-ups in a weighted vest (that looks as if it were designed by Azzadine Alaia) for upper body strength; multiple back-to-back 100 and 400 meter sprints for speed and lower body strength; and in 2008, he added Bikram yoga to the routine. The Scottish player's trainers suggested he try the hot yoga, which lasts 90 minutes in a room heated to 104F. To his surprise, the practice improved his flexibility, stamina, and ability to cope with high temperatures, but it also helped his "mental strength," as he has told the British press. With a diet that relies heavily on Japanese food, his body fat has been reported as 6.5%. A good thing for a man who is obliged to wear a kilt from time to time.

Chilean Miners' Subterranean Workout

Next time you need some motivation to get up on that treadmill or to complete the last reps in your free-weight routine, consider Edison Pena. While Pena was trapped for 69 days in the collapsed Chilean mine, he ran in the network of tunnels by the light of a head lamp. Every day, he traced about a three-mile circuit, sometimes twice, in the knee-high boots he'd managed to cut down to his ankles. "When I ran in the darkness," said Pena (34 years old, 5' 5", 145 lbs) at a news conference before completing the New York City Marathon on November 7th, "I was running for life."

Just do it, indeed. Edison Pena, the 12th miner to emerge on October 13th

Meanwhile, Jean Christophe Romagnoli, a doctor specializing in sports medicine, taught all 33 trapped miners a regimen of exercise to help them maintain fitness and prepare them for rescue. The workout included simple cardio, leg-strengthening exercises, and movements aimed at improving blood flow.

Romagnoli started the men on cardio training--walking or jogging in the tunnels for about half an hour at a pace of two to three miles per hour. He had them sing while they worked out. Not to boost morale, but rather to ensure that their heartbeats remained in a safe range of 120 to 140 beats per minute. "Your physiology does not permit you to sing and jog while exceeding 140 beats per minute," Romagnoli told The Wall Street Journal. He also had the men do leg exercises, including a variety of squats (in part so they'd have strength for any climbing that might be required in the rescue), and resistance training with elastic bands.