Exercise and Sport Sciences

With reference to the theme Contemporary Research in Sports, Exercise and Health: Measurements and Protocols, this title assembles eminent researchers from Malaysia to share their expertise and research findings in various subdisciplines of sports, exercise and health. A major aim of this book is to provide scientific evidence and in-depth exploration of the various types of measurements and protocols used in research in the area of sports, exercise and health. This ebook has been specifically prepared with the needs of both students and teaching staff in exercise and sports science in mind, but is also relevant for students in other related fields, and of interest to athletes, coaches, fitness instructors, sports nutritionists, and health practitioners.

"In Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body, contributors explore the extent to which the body, when moving about both ostensibly active body spaces (i.e., the gymnasium, the ball field, exercise laboratory, the track or running trail, the beach, or the sport stadium) and those places less often connected to physical activity (i.e. the home, the street, the classroom, the automobile), is bounded to technologies of life and living; and to the political arrangements that seek to capitalize upon such frames of biological vitality. To do so, the authors problematize the rise of active body science (i.e. kinesiology, sport and exercise sciences, performance biotechnology) and the effects these scientific interventions have on embodied, lived experience. By focusing on the confluence of agentive materialities, disciplinary technologies, vibrant assemblages, speculative realities, and vital performativities, Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body promises to offer a groundbreaking departure from representationalist tendencies and orthodoxies brought about by the cultural turn in sport and physical cultural studies. It brings the moving body and its physics back into focus: re-centering moving flesh and bones as locus of social order, environmental change, and the global political economy"-- Provided by publisher

If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? These engaging stories and explanations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising--not to mention sitting, sleeping, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing. "Strikes a perfect balance of scholarship, wit, and enthusiasm." --Bill Bryson, New York Times best-selling author of The Body * If we are born to walk and run, why do most of us take it easy whenever possible? * Does running ruin your knees? * Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? * Is sitting really the new smoking? * Can you lose weight by walking? * And how do we make sense of the conflicting, anxiety-inducing information about rest, physical activity, and exercise with which we are bombarded? In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise--to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the question of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vulnerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.