Kickin' it on Katie's blog

 Chapter 5: The Talent Trainability  The most interesting thing that I read in this chapter was the HERITAGE family study that looked at 98 two generation families and had them participate in a 5 month long stationary bicycle training regimen that was made up of three workouts per week with increasing intensity controlled in the lab. The question of this lab was "How did regular exercise alter these previously untrained people?" and "How would the strength of their hearts change? Or the amount of oxygen they could use during exercise?" They also looked at the decrease in blood pressure and the change in cholesterol and insulin levels. The reason this study was different than others is because DNA was studied from all 481 participants with the a goal of seeing if genes played a role, and which ones. The findings in this were very interesting. The researchers found that even though every participant had the same training regimen, there was a vast and similar spectrum

Chapter 3 of The Sports Gene had me questioning just how much genetics play into the role of being a natural born athlete. We read about how MLB players have an average visual acuity that really helped them excel in their sport. Before reading this, I did not even know that vision could be better than 20/20, so reading that nearly every MLB player in the study cleared the 20/15 visual acuity test that Rosenbaum had been using for his research blew my mind, because before I was ignorant to the fact that perfect vision was not 20/20. It was then stated that one's visual acuity is predetermined by your genetics. While MLB hitters might not have any faster reaction time than the average Joe, they do have better visual acuity that can help them pick up the cues needed to hit the ball since their eyes can't even fully track the pitch of the baseball. Another study done on child tennis players to predict how they would be as adult players determined other parts of genetics that determ

Reading about the woman who was a softball pitcher throwing to MLB players and basically deflating their egos was a great hook to get me interested. It just gives insight to athletes and even non-athletes that every sport has its on difficulties and caveats. The softball is technically easier to hit as it is larger than a baseball, so why couldn't the MLB players, who hit baseballs at the same pitching speeds all day long,  ever get a bat on the softball pitch? As an athlete who has attempted to play just about every sport ever  available to me, I have come to realize that every game has its own demands and skills necessary to compete. This is seen in Chapter 1 especially.  De Groot wrote in his research about chess players, "It is evident that experience is the foundation of the superior achievements of the masters." This exact phrase presented itself in the same nature in cricket, tennis, boxing, and basketball. The saying "practice makes perfect" is pretty mu

 Hello! My name is Katie Rice and I am a senior at Thomas More University. I play on the women's soccer team as well as on the women's lacrosse team. I am an Exercise Science major, but I hope to eventually become a doctor of Physical Therapy. I have a dog named Lucy and she is a mini golden doodle.