Tag: Sport

Get fit faster: listen to music!

Hill Attack. Tension Up! #4It’s now officially Games Over. Gone is the excuse to bunk off work to catch five minutes of of dressage or synchronised swimming. And as our love affair ends, normal life must resume. The real challenge now begins: to stay true to those keep-fit resolutions.

One of the tricks to stay motivated may be, quite literally, music to your ears. ‘Music has received very little attention among sports scholars’ wrote one author in 1993 in the Sociology of Sport Journal.  Since then, much has changed. Long distance champ Paula Radcliff swears that her playlist during training – insisting it helps to keep her going. Yet Usain Bolt is denied such an indulgence.

Taking a perusal trough the latest research, we’ll explore what is known about the power of music to get you fired up and heading down the gym. Even when The X-Factor is on… Read more

The Olympics is Coming to London: So Why Won’t Brits be any Happier?

This post was chosen as an Editor's Selection for ResearchBlogging.orgIt was a shock announcement. Back in 2005, everyone thought Paris had the winning bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Unlike the UK’s hastily put together pitch, the French had spent 20 years fine-tuning theirs. When the IOC president declared that the Olympics were coming to London, scenes of jubilant crowds filled the screens of UK TVs. Celebrities, politicians and even the Queen were tripping over each other to enthuse about this ‘great victory’ for Britain. Were they right?

Now in the midst of economic turmoil, UK politicians still desperately cling to the hope that the Olympic Games represents, as if it were a flaming torch to light the way ahead. They continue to boast that it will boost the economy and importantly, the nation’s happiness. If they had they done their homework, they might have been better informed: Research now shows that all this rhetoric is almost certainly very wrongRead more