Toby Ng's Official Badminton Blog - Adventures of a Canadian National Team Athlete!

A Story of Success

2015-04-07T10:10:00.002-07:00

New blog on my website!

2015 All England and Swiss Open Recap

2015-03-16T06:49:00.001-07:00

For those who don't know, I am porting over to my new website with medali.st, a blog for athletes. Click the picture to go to my new blog!

2015 All England Open

2015 Nationals Overview

2015-02-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

I will be slowly transferring to my other website on Medalist (http://towbsss.mli.st). I may throw in the odd exclusive blog here, but for now, I will update my Blogger with a link to the other website, as I'm trying to make more formal postings on the other website. Anyway, I'm sure you're not interested reading this, so please click the picture below to read my latest blog about the 2015 Canadian Nationals!

Lessons From 2014

2015-01-02T06:46:00.003-08:00

There’s that saying that goes something like, “Smart people learn from their own mistakes, geniuses learn from the mistakes of others.” So, let’s reflect a bit on my 2014 year, which had such major ups and downs, in a hope that it will make me smarter. If the saying really is true, then I hope you become a genius. Remember to come back and help me out after that happens.

Losing Nationals

I don’t really want to go back here, but it was a major highlight. All the feelings and emotions I went through during this time was intense. I usually am pretty chill otherwise, but writing this blurb has already raised my heart rate (seriously, I measured). It makes me angry, it drives me forward. I only need to think about this and I have instant motivation to do anything. Of course it’s a highlight, because it moves me so much. Never again will I want anything like this to happen, and I have grown from the experience. But I have not forgotten it. Perhaps it’s like the intro to an epic movie. Something bad happens to the protagonist, and a bit of him dies at the beginning. However, he picks himself up as it motivates him to finish his task. Since this is my own epic and my own story, I think it did make a difference, looking back from today. I’ve learned. I’ve grown. I’ve evolved.

Lesson: Put yourself first. If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone.

Diving into Strength & Conditioning

(Dean Somerset trying to get me to relax my stomach)

Sometimes you just gotta dive in, and it’s sink or swim. I’ve totally felt this way about strength & conditioning, and getting involved with training at Fortius, joining the UBC Thunderbird Strength & Conditioning Club, attending Charlie Weingroff’s seminar, attending the BC NSCA Conference, attending Dean Somerset’s seminar, and doing an FMS Mentorship with Fit To Train, as well as helping out at their Level 1 & 2 Combo course. That is some significant money spent, but I feel it is well worth every cent. If you want something done well, it’s better to pay someone who knows what they’re doing to tell you what to do, or at least teach you what you should be doing. Trying your best and believing that everything will be okay only get you so far, if you’re using archaic techniques. At least that’s what I believe.

Lesson: Have an open mind and keep learning. Spend the extra money to learn from the best; I’d like to think of it as quality learning over quantity.

Finally Out of School

I did graduate in November 2013, but I was still registered in 2 courses from January to April. I took 2 kinesiology seminars, including functional anatomy and clinical exercise rehab (both great courses, UBC KIN 489E and 489B respectively if you wanted to know). I started off-season training at Fortius at the end of February as well, and continued it for 4 months. It was nice to train almost full time for 4 months and I think it really made a huge difference, even up until recent tournaments. However, I can feel the training slowly fading and another couple months of off-season conditioning would be great before starting the Olympic year. Though I’m out of school, I’ll never be out of learning something new. Being open minded is useful, although you need to combine it with critical thinking. Sometimes, things just don’t make sense and it’s okay if you don’t want to believe in nonsense. It’s everywhere nowadays.

Lesson: It’s nice every now and then to have a set schedule which you don’t deviate from. Routine can bring great results.

Commonwealth Games

(Source:Yan Huckendubler)

Despite the hiccup at Nationals, I barely made the Commonwealth Games team (although my National ranking has suffered). Fortunately, we took the top spot by a few ranking points, so we got to go to Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Prior to the tournament, we had an optional staging camp in Ireland, which a few of us participated in, and I was happy I went along for the experience. The Commonwealth Games were very well run and it was a wonderful experience overall, especially getting to see Michelle Li win that semifinal match against India. Unfortunately, most of us missed the final and award presentations, but I think most of us believed she would have little trouble taking the gold medal after than amazing performance in the semifinals. Great performance by rising star Rachel Honderich as well, as her and Michelle had a huge win against Australia in the team event. It was nice to be part of a team and to see some players really pushing forward and getting results. It’s inspiring.

Lesson: Celebrate the work ethic of others. I say this because the expression typically says to “Celebrate the success” of others. Sometime people succeed because they get lucky, and celebrating luck may compromise our own work ethic, especially if we give up and wait for luck. Make your own luck through a strong work ethic and have the best of both worlds.

World Championships

Although my match itself didn’t last very long, it was an interesting experience in Denmark overall. After not getting a hotel reservation, our coach, Jeff White, did all he could to find us accommodations and made sure we had a place to stay for a few nights. Additionally, he ended up staying at a crappier hotel so that the other players could stay at a nicer one. I would also like to thank Thomas Stavngaard for letting me stay at his house with Derrick and Adrian. The tournament was run quite well except for a minor transportation hiccup (the bus driver left without half of our team…), and getting to see some of the world’s best duke it out live is always a treat. This tournament also highlights the efforts of Jeff in taking the time to talk to Alex and I and our partnership, and acting as a bridge to improve our communication with each other. In the end, I would say it made a huge difference.

Lesson: Spread the good karma. Help someone out if you can, because you can’t always pay the same person back. Maybe it will eventually get around full circle.

Precision Nutrition Certification

Taking about a month to train and study after World Championships, I finally got around to doing my Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification. I signed up in March, but really didn’t get around to anything until September. I said I would start after my classes ended, then I decided after my summer tournament schedule, and then… I set a hard deadline and met it. September 30^th was the deadline, so I pretty much crammed as much info as I could into the 5 days before my deadline (procrastinator at heart). Fortunately, I’ve covered a lot of the material in University courses at UBC. The certification is very good because it combines half nutrition and half coaching. What good is information if you don’t know how to communicate it? I wonder if people are still reading my blog… Anyway, it’s nice to get a bit of nutrition information and I can always do some more research or find an expert if I need to go deeper into a certain concept. Additionally, now I have a better idea how I should eat!

Lesson: A little knowledge about nutrition can go a long way, especially when I have a family of my own. Coming up from a Chinese background, it took a long time to throw away the idea of multiple bowls of rice each meal. Maybe I also threw away a greater risk of diabetes as well.

Pan Am Championship (Pan Am Tour)

(Source: John Lei)

The tournament started really rocky, with losses to two teams in the Team Event. Fortunately, Michelle and Rachel pulled off an amazing win in the WD for Canada to take the Team Gold against the top Pan Am WD team. Not that Michelle’s WS and Adrian/Derrick’s MD wins are worth any less, it’s just that the odds were probably in favour of USA for that deciding match. Continuing into the individual tournament, I’m glad I didn’t give up. It was depressing and I was trying really hard to understand what was happening, but it felt like everything I tried didn’t work. I asked many people for their feedback and I got a lot of great feedback from everyone, and fortunately it was just enough for that week to get us through to reclaim our title. However, even though we won, I still learned from our mistakes and it was in Orlando the week after that really changed everything.

Lesson: Sometimes, all you can do is to try and initiate the process. Getting started and waiting to see if someone will meet you halfway is all you can do, because you can’t always do everything yourself. But if you never initiate the process, maybe things will never get started. If you really want something to happen, you gotta take that chance. You gotta open the box; curiosity killing a cat is better than inaction. At least you know.

Europe Tour

6 of us went to compete at the Scottish and Welsh Internationals at the end of November and we ended up using AirBnB for accommodations, and I would recommend the service as an alternative to hotels. We booked an entire town house in Scotland, and a couple of rooms in Wales. The tournaments went well and Alex and I were able to continue training as much as we could before, during, and between tournaments. Sometimes you just have to make the most of the situation, and in the end, I think we did fairly well with our results, making a quarterfinal in Scotland, and a semifinal in Wales.

Lesson: Taken from Dan John, who took it from Dan Gable: “If it’s important, do it every day. If it isn’t, don’t do it at all.” We didn’t have much time to train and practice, so we just kept honing the most important skills we needed for the tournament.

Selling Supplements

Being certified with Precision Nutrition had an additional perk of getting the change to be and affiliate with ThorneFX. They have some really high quality supplements geared more toward fitness people and I’ve had the opportunity to sample most of their products. Additionally, I recently got enrolled with USANA, a network marketing supplement company through an old friend, who has been quite successful with USANA. I took the opportunity to see if I can make some extra income as an athlete, and selling supplements seemed like a reasonable thing to do, with a small background in nutrition. I like USANA because they don’t make any crazy claims to their supplements, and they offer a wide variety of products for one to ‘supplement’ their health. Additionally, learning to sell is a huge skill to have. However, I don’t want to oversell anything to anyone. I stand by my product because I use it as well. Not to enhance performance, but for general health.

Lesson: If we ate healthy, exercised regularly, slept enough, and drank enough water, would we need supplements? Maybe not. But be honest, how often do you eat well enough, exercise enough, sleep enough, or drink enough water? I won’t lie to myself, that’s why I use supplements.

Coaching in Winnipeg

I was offered an opportunity to coach in Winnipeg for Badminton Manitoba and I jumped at the chance, despite the cold weather and increased chance of getting sick. Despite the amount of people falling to sickness, I think the camp went pretty well. It was nice to get to meet new people and I would like to thank those who helped to organize the camp and billet me. The exhibition was pretty fun as well, and it was nice to see so many people come and support the event! It’s always nice to get a chance to coach a good group of motivated players, and I wish them all the best with their new knowledge and skills.

Lesson: I did the camp 2 years ago, and I have changed the way I view certain things. I probably will have a different stance on other things in the future as well. With that said, it’s okay to take information and use it if it’s useful, but be sure not to hold onto it forever, especially if there is a need for change.

Live, learn, and pass it on. As we begin another year, I wish you all success in your goals. I know I have mine…

4 Elements of Badminton

2014-10-07T10:39:00.001-07:00

I like to look at 4 elements to badminton, with each sub-section being just as important as another, but different. There may be temporary advantages in focusing attention to one, but with many things, we get diminishing returns. Think of it as a video game and you are trying to level up your stats. Each person will be different, especially if we throw in both environmental and genetic factors, so individuality becomes quite important, as no two players are exactly the same. I will make a better attempt to go into each one at length, but that will be for another day.

PHYSICAL: This is the Attack/Strength stat in most role playing games, or like any superhero that has any enhanced physical attribute, like Superman, the Hulk, Juggernaut, and I will even include the Flash and Spiderman, as speed and movement ability are included as well. If we include genetics, those with the right genes would have the ability to maximize this stat more than the other groups.

Juggernaut vs Hulk (via Google Images)

Marvel vs DC Comics (via Google Images)

TECHNICAL: This is not so much a stat in a role-playing game, but more or less acquiring new techniques to use. It would be more similar to acquiring special abilities to use instead of an overall stat. Superheroes that come to mind would be Batman, Ironman, or the Green Lantern as they would need accessories to assist them in their battles. Environmental factors are much heavier due to what is accessible in the area. For example, in Canada, living in the major badminton hubs in BC or Ontario would give greater accessibility, more diverse coaching, and better competition that most other places. Additionally, having resources (i.e. money) would help as well.

Ironman - Proton Cannon in Marvel Super Heroes (via Google Images)

Batman Arkham Origins (via Google Images)

TACTICAL: Again, I’m not too sure how this would be a stat, but it would be simply your choice of strategy. Take Pokemon, for instance, where each Pokemon type may have a weakness (e.g. grass Pokemon are weak to fire attacks). By taking advantage or particular strategies, no matter how simple or complicated, this element is highly glorified in movies because that’s usually how the hero wins in the end: they make a plan, they execute it, they win… most of the time. Practically all superheroes will resort to some kind of tactical plan, because that’s what happens near the end of almost every movie. They may not be successful at the beginning, but after a change of tactics, they succeed. Everyone is happy (except for the bad guys). I would attribute those at a genetic disadvantage to use more tactics because they do not have the same physical capacity as those who do.

Who would win? Batman or Superman? (via Google Images)

Batman looks less comfortable in Tennis. He should try badminton :P

MENTAL: This would be like the magic stat, but I suppose it depends how your look at this element. It can be very broad and it is different for everyone. I like to think of it as the magic stat, because most magic attacks also require MP (Mind/Magic Points). Once those are exhausted, then you cannot use those attacks anymore. I would attribute this to those with genetic and or environmental disadvantages, simply because the more one struggles, the better one gets at overcoming adversity. Those who do not struggle, do not understand the struggle. Most superheroes will encounter this as well, usually near the beginning or midpoint of the movie. Something bad happens, or they fail at something, and they spend a while struggling to continue. No matter how they pull through, they get back on their feet and usually it leads to an amazing plan (TACTICAL) which will lead to end of the movie when they win.

*SPOILER ALERT*
If you have not watched The Amazing Spiderman 2, then watch the movie first! There is no better way to sum this up than Gwen Stacy's Graduation Speech for The Amazing Spiderman 2 (click for link). Well, maybe that and Eminem's "8 Mile". I know there are mixed reviews about both movies, but ultimately, I go by the way they make me feel after. It always gives me a bit of hope :)

2014 World Championships and Moving Forward

2014-09-02T14:25:00.005-07:00

http://instagram.com/towbsss

I’m writing this while streaming the finals of the 2014 World Championships, and I’ve already come across a few thoughts. It’s before the Men’s Singles final, in which I hope Lee Chong Wei will finally take the match, and that is also the time limit I’m setting for the blog so I don’t ramble on for too long. I woke up to watch the ending of the Men’s Doubles final, and (*spoiler alert*) I was very surprised to see that Ko Sung Hyun/Shin Baek Cheol won over Lee Yong Dae/Yoo Yeon Seong. I would think that not having to play a semi-final would have been a significant advantage for Ko/Shin, and I would still count on Lee/Yoo as being an overall stronger team. I suppose it was just that one tournament that didn’t work out the way you wanted and it happened to be World Championships. We can probably say the same for the Women’s Singles (*spoiler alert*). It was pleasant to see a European World Champion and I hope it will help further opportunities for Spain. I know it must be disappointing to Li Xuerui, but I think it’s nice for the sport to have at least some depth in at least a few events. Hopefully, Carolina Marin’s victory will inspire our top badminton player, Michelle Li, to rise to some more amazing results of her own!

Tournament bus... often times without enough seats for everyone.
(Source: Me)

Looking back at my performance this tournament, it wasn’t the best (match can be found HERE). I was trying to play things that I am not very comfortable doing, especially when I was under the impression that things needed to be done this way for the best chance to win. I suppose I second guessed myself and opted for a team strategy, which was not comfortable to begin with. I understand that people see the game differently, and tactics are generally a way to approach a match because physical and technical attributes cannot really be changed right before, or even during the tournament (e.g. ‘you need to jump higher’ or ‘you need to angle your racquet more’, etc.).

Let’s step away from the actual performance for a moment and address a way of looking at things. Let’s talk perspective. On the one hand, we have different coaches working with different players. We have Jeff White, the National Team coach for Canada, coming in to coach us for the World Championships. He has seen us play at various events, but he does not address training issues; he only observes. Alex’s coach at the moment, Andrew Dabeka, is working with Alex in Ottawa, and is one of the best Canadian Men’s Singles players in his time. However, I do not know of his Mixed Doubles ability and I cannot comment on that. I was working with Ronne Runtulalao at ClearOne briefly before the tournament, as he works with us at ClearOne and has watched my matches at Canada Open with Alex. So we have been fortunate to have 3 coaches working with us, but unfortunately, they did not collaborate. We ended up with a very interesting mix of tactics to consider.

Main Venue (Source: Me)

Let’s begin with looking at how we view performance: I believe it is very training oriented, whereas it seems that Alex takes on a tactical approach. For the sake of the discussion, let’s assume that we are on the extreme ends of our performance beliefs. For myself, I believe performance will be a slight degradation of optimal practice. Any tactics or strategies need to be performed in practice, and new tactics and strategies should not be simply ‘inserted’ into tournament play. There is little room to ‘improvise’, unless it has been performed in practice. Over time, many aspects of the game will eventually be covered, which leads to a stronger and more mature player with a diverse set of skills. However, technical ability and physical capacity must be addressed IN training. It must be developed first, because they are fundamentals to badminton, and also in many other sports as well. The tactical approach (as I am biased to the other approach) seems less realistic. It has worked for people before, but it seems more like the things you see in movies (or the rare real life events that end up being turned into movies). With a solid “system” in place, you would minimize the problems you would face if you opt for this approach, as you can make small adjustments because they are a part of your arsenal, or at least a similar ‘lateralization’.

Ballerup Super Arena (Source: Me)

I like to think of this as studying for a very difficult test. Ideally, studying the right material the right way would be best, but most of the time, we either don’t prepare enough, or maybe we over-prepare the wrong material. So, who would do better on the test? It’s really hard to say: it depends. If we go back to our match, we had a mix of tactics to attempt, based on our match against our opponents at Commonwealth Games. On Alex’s side, they believed that we gave up the attack too much, and we had to challenge them more at the net. On my side, Ronne simply tried to give me strategies to mix up my shots and do a few things differently on defense. Ultimately, we decided on trying to challenge the net more in the match, which I was not terribly comfortable with and I could already foresee various counter-measures that I needed to adopt. Not lifting is not easy for me in Mixed, because it also increases the speed of the game we need to play at. If you cannot read the game well enough, then everything becomes fast and furious and turns into something like Men’s Doubles.

From my own perspective, I take a systematic approach to my game. I like to use high lifts to open up the court, instead of trying to play blocks and challenge a very confined space. I don’t like playing floaty mid-court shots to try to hit over the player at the front, because it doesn’t work very well at the higher levels (and World Championships is pretty much one of the highest levels I can play at). I like to vary up things based on what is happening in the game, although I do tend to be a bit too predictable at times. However, I can also tough it out and continue a standard way of playing until a better chance opens up, because that’s what I think the best players can do: play a good pace in a rally until they get a good chance to attack, then make the most of their opportunity. I usually don’t like to gamble. However, the strategy to adopt for this match seemed like a heavy gamble, and perhaps I didn’t understand what the coaches wanted, but it appeared that I had to play the tactic of ‘blocking more’ so that Alex could take the net. It seems like a great idea, and anyone watching my Commonwealth Games match would probably agree, but there is one limiting factor: execution.

Denmark... beautiful! (Source: Me)

How many of you have heard of the strategy: block and move in? How many have practiced it? Now, the question I propose is, “How many of you practiced it in a match situation, where your training partner can kill your shuttle if it’s too high, or play it over your head if you run in blindly without watching your opponent?” I know we should move in, but is it the appropriate time to? So, this would be a great concept to consider in training, but not when you’re in the middle of a match. I felt that the blocks could have been a good strategy, but I didn’t believe we could really execute it. And we didn’t.

I had trouble getting Heather away from the net, and I tried to play some shots over her head to the mid-court, but they didn’t really work out so well, because it’s honestly a terrible shot that unfortunately works in Canada, but the rest of the world will punish you on it. Playing to the net also proved difficult because I would then have to cover a side in case Alex couldn’t make it in time. I felt Alex needed to creep forward as well to minimize the distance she had to move, but now that opened up lifts/clears over her head, which I also had to cover in case she was gambling forward too much. The tactic COULD have worked, but I don’t think we had the ability to execute it. I would have opted for a more casual defensive strategy to open up the court to give ‘holes’ to exploit. Additionally we lost heavily on the first 3 shots. Knowing it needs to be better is easy, but ‘how’ to make it better, and ‘what’ to do to make it better becomes much more difficult.

Training at Gentofte Badminton Club, led by Thomas Stavngaard! (Source: Me)

The real difficulty lies in how we move on from this, as we don’t even train together. In fact, we are 5 hours away by plane. Fortunately, we had a meeting with Jeff White after the tournament and it was good because we got to the heart of certain problems and we have at least a few actionable items we can address for the upcoming Pan American Championships in October. However, with Alex playing the Guatemala International, it eliminates at least a week of training, which gives much less time to prepare. Although the Pan Am Champs may not be at a very high level, there are still many upcoming Canadian teams which will be looking to take the title, in addition to other Pan Am countries, like Brazil and USA. The fact that I have to be nervous about a tournament I have won 5 times is troubling… but I’d rather over prepare than to under prepare. It will be a tournament which counts toward the Pan Am Games qualification, so I cannot take things lightly.

But when have I taken things too lightly?

September will be a key month for preparing, as I will be preparing not just for one, but for 3 tournaments back to back to back (Pan Am Champs, USA International, and Brazil International). I’ve won 2 of these tournaments before, and made a semi-final in the last one. I’ll be taking new measures to improve my game, including keeping communications with Alex, but this time, I will make sure that I lead. I will consider tactical suggestions, but I will play the way I need to play to win, instead of following orders which did not involve prior preparations. I’m all for following plans that have been practiced in training, but I’m not about to adapt different strategies or tactics that the team hasn’t performed before.

I will lose on my terms. I can also win on my terms. And it’s time to start winning again…

Always seek to improve. How can you say
you've tried your best, if you haven't tried everything?
(http://instagram.com/towbsss)

2014 Commonwealth Games Overview

2014-08-05T15:24:00.001-07:00

The 2014 Commonwealth Games have been an amazing event, especially for Michelle Li, who was undefeated the entire tournament in Women’s Singles. She is definitely the star of Canadian badminton this tournament, but I would like to also congratulate some stellar performances by some of the other Canadians, with Andrew D’Souza performing well in the Men’s Singles, and the spectacular win by Rachel Honderich and Michelle Li in the Women’s Doubles against Australia, which won us the tie, and gave us a chance against India. Derrick and Adrian also put up a valiant effort in their matches, and I can see them growing as a team.

Michelle Li (Source: BadmintonPhoto)

In terms of staffing, we had both Jeff and Ram, who always do a great job to make sure everything works out for us during these big events, and finds answers to any problems we encounter. This allows us to focus on our badminton, which is nice when you don’t have to worry about the little nuances that we have to deal with ourselves in other events (i.e. transportation, etc.). We also had Marc Rizzardo as our physiotherapist, who helped us with warm ups, cool downs, recovery, and injury management. I personally had my ankle put back in place twice, my hip capsule loosened up a bit, in addition to other back manipulations which kept me in pretty good shape for the duration of the event. A big thank you to the badminton staff, and a special thank you to the Canadian medical staff as well, especially Erin Reid, RMT, for working on some of us during these games! Last but not least, I'd like to thank Yan Huckendubler for taking some awesome photos of us during the Games!

Emirates Arena (Source: Me)

I went through a long training process to prepare for the tournaments this summer, spending a good more than $1000 on physical preparation since after Nationals. I still look back and reflect on that match, and I really took it hard on myself because I lost funding for the year. I have decided to upload the match, because I think people who follow my progress deserve to see how things went. I know the camera angle isn’t the best, but it is what it is. You can find the links here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9it4vZAQjFY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYhGbvz9u_s

Looking back on my progress from Nationals, I’m actually content. I’m fairly hard on myself because I always want to do better, but if I can’t get results, then how accurate of a reflection is it? If I cannot win, are my performance perceptions accurate? I am still far from playing a perfect game, but I feel that my efforts are not matching the benefit in performance. For example, if I trained very hard for 4 months, I would hope to have some kind change, and change is best measured by results at tournaments. But, after all the training, the results are still the same. I lost to Australia in the pool play, lost to India in the pool play, lost to England in the individual event. The only matches I won were against Wales, Barbados, and Northern Ireland. Could I have won those matches without training hard? I would think so, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

So the biggest question I have right now is: “What MORE can I do?”

And we need to be honest, because I have to ask: “Is it worth it then?” How much more do I have to toil and how much more money do I have to spend? I believe in doing things well, because I get involved. I learn as much as I can and I try to evolve. I think I’ve changed tremendously over the years, and it’s because I have learned to adapt and accept that I may not always be right. That way, I am open to feedback; hence, open to change. Perhaps the common misconception is that people think I know everything. That is completely false. I would say a good quarter to one third of the things I say may not be true, or I will change my belief about it in the future, even in this post. I definitely don’t know anything, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to learn as much as I can. I have unique interests as well, especially anything related to badminton. I’m just looking to find more efficient ways to do things, because we don’t have the resources. I’m not in it just for “the experience”; I’m “in it to win it”.

With all that said, I don’t want to critique other people, because I cannot be 100% certain that they are wrong. For example, Michelle won the tournament, but there are things that she does that I wouldn’t do, and vice versa. We all train differently, and there are different ways to do it to get that win. BUT, it doesn’t mean that every way is right. So, let’s talk about concepts and ideas, because I don’t want to talk about events, and I certainly don’t need to talk about people. That way nobody needs to take things personally, and we may all benefit from the idea. Take it, expand it, make it better… and if you do, please let me know. I want to learn as well.

(Source: Yan Huckendubler)

1.) Practice:

We need to train, but what if we are tired? What if we are sore? What if we are injured? So, perhaps the best question is to ask, “What do you mean by ‘training’ or ‘practice’?” I think it’s a very broad concept and I think people make too many assumptions, especially if they are tired, sore, or injured. Injury is probably the most difficult, because pain is different for everyone. I’m not one to push to train under an injury, but if you’re in a tournament and you’re going to play anyway, then that kind of changes everything. I would not train the affected part, but there may be ways to train the rest of the body that isn’t injured. For competition, I would highly recommend training around the injured area, because you will go compete anyway; but I am not sure where I would stand if it was post-competition.

For example, a shoulder injury would be best not to do anything overhead depending on the type of injury, if it aggravates the shoulder, but your legs are fine, so do footwork, move around the court, or do light underhand strokes if it doesn’t cause any pain. If an ankle is injured, then move less, but do movements that don’t involve the ankle. Going to the gym to do kettlebell swings or the rowing machine are possible things to stay in shape without killing the ankle. Any type of kneeling or quadruped exercises could work as well. So there are a lot of possibilities, even like… working on a serve for doubles/mixed.

(Source: Me)

2.) Recovery:

Warm up and cool downs are important, and Marc pointed it out right away on our first practice as most of us just went on court and started to hit. I can’t do that anymore because I physically can’t, but I’m guilty of doing that when I was younger for sure. Cool downs are also interesting, because stretching is so casual, and people always stretch the things they are better at. Or, people do ‘extra exercise’ because it’s really going to make a difference if you do some crunches? Just because it ‘burns’ you’re getting better at it? Well, it burns when I do rotator cuff external rotations with a band, but I don’t think I’m making it stronger. I would use it as a warm up, but doing ab exercises which involve spinal flexion ‘as fast as you can’ (or, I guess AMRAP) after training doesn’t seem particularly effective to me. Why not try the RKC plank instead? Again, this simply comes from asking 2 questions: 1) What is the purpose of doing this? 2) Is there a better or more effective way to accomplish that task?

We had to try the ice baths on one of the first days, but I didn’t like it. It was so cold that I actually cramped up in my bicep later on. I have no idea why, but if I had to guess, I was very tense during the duration of the ice bath, and tension usually involves flexion, so hence, huge tension in my biceps which probably is excessive for 6 minutes. The next day, I didn’t feel particularly better, so I decided that the ice bath didn’t really help (and for a nerd bonus, I looked up a Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis on ice baths in 2012 and read through the study, not just the abstract). Some people “drank the kool-aid” and continued doing the ice bath, which is totally fine with me. I felt protein supplementation after a hard practice, foam rolling, and the odd massage worked better for me. And it may work for you as well, or it might not. Maybe you could ice bath and massage and feel great the next day. I would totally continue if I were you. However, the question I propose is: is it really working for you? I’m not against people who find things that work for them, but I’m against the people that just go through the motions. (‘It’s not really doing anything, but I’ll just do it anyway because I always do it’). That’s a great way to get stale. How will you improve then?

(Source: Me)

3.) Performance

Here’s an interesting thought: would you play better if you didn’t worry about a thing, or if you were worried about the outcome of the match? Or worse, how do you think you play if you are worried what other people think of you? Let’s start with myself: when I compete, I don’t care if people are cheering for me, or against me. I’m the one on court, so I’m in charge. It doesn’t matter what other people who aren’t competing think during the competition. Afterwards, it’s a bit different, because I’d like feedback from those who understand the game. Casual observations are considered, but I’m not going to watch a hockey game and go tell a hockey player what they need to do.

I stopped worrying about the outcome. I try not to worry about the score. I’m just here to play a single rally, and I hope to reset my feelings each time. Win the moment, then the rally, then the match. Thinking too little isn’t too productive for me, but thinking too much is also a hazard. Instead of telling myself, “I can win the rally”, I try to tell myself “I can get it back”. This prevents me from trying to hit winners, which may work at a certain level, but at the level I want to compete at, it’s not enough. So, that’s why I changed it.

However, my greatest weakness is the partnership. I find it hard to interact excessively with my partners. I know we have to work together, but I don’t like having to feel like I’m doing everything. If I’m not playing well, I do NOT expect my partner to make it better; I don’t expect anything from them. If I don’t play well, it has nothing to do with my partner, it is MY problem. They can try to help out, but at the same time, I’m sure you’ve all experienced too much compensation, and your partner tries to do too much, and then you are totally sunk. If I don’t play well, I try to minimize what I’m not doing well, and maximize what I’m doing right. So my partner can step in to help, but it’s important that I work very hard to get myself back into the game.

Encouragement is also difficult to me, because my mixed partners (past and present) have said this to me at some point in the match: “You need to encourage me more”. It bothers me, because I believe that you need internal motivation, not external motivation. Asking for help would be a much better way of communication: e.g. “My defense isn’t so great right now. Can you lift higher or lift a little less?” or “I’m going to give you the middle as well, so I can focus on just one side on defense”. That is true communication. Think of it this way, if you did a group project and the person who didn’t finish their portion in time asks for “more encouragement”, how would you feel? Granted, maybe it’s a different perspective if you don’t care what mark you get, but if you wanted to get the highest grade possible because your medical school application depends on it, I think it’ll be a different feeling.

However, I understand that ‘encouragement’ is very individual, and this is only my opinion. I have no problems encouraging people when they make an honest attempt at something and fall short, as I like to encourage effort over flattery or ‘sugar-coating’ things. In the context of high performance sport, I don’t think it is necessary for the external motivation because I believe the best athletes have that internal driving force. Athletes that need reassurance have a long way to go, or shouldn’t be competing in high performance sport.

(Source: Me - Actual Footage)

Different perspective (via Yan Huckendubler)

Final Thoughts:

Michelle made history, and I think it’s great that someone is finally getting some results for Canada. I wanted to be someone to do that, and maybe I still have a chance, but I’m happy that at least Michelle is paving the way. I hope that inspires people to do well in the future, which is also what I hope to achieve. I would like to get as far as I can, and I’d like to leave a path for someone in the next generation to follow. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to write and record what I do. We all know we have to train hard and train as much as you can, but I’d like to give you a better picture of things, so that the future generation can learn through my mistakes, instead of having to make them all over again. That’s how we get better as a country, because if we all simply leave, then the new generation has to figure it out all over again. Canada has a unique system, and understanding the system gives someone an edge against someone who doesn’t, or has to figure it out on their own. I only hope to share what I have learned so far, because there have been others before my generation that have helped me along. Not everyone gives back, but I would like to be someone who does… because I’m also someone who can.

And all I hope is that one day, my results can match my performance potential, but until then, I gotta keep working hard, one rally at a time.

(Source: Yan Huckendubler)

"The Talent Code"- Book Review

2014-05-31T09:27:00.001-07:00

“Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” – Bruce Lee

“The Talent Code”, by Daniel Coyle, has been on my wishlist for a while, and I finally got a chance to get a copy when a local Chapters (bookstore) was closing and offered 50% off all books! Out of the 17 books I bought, I started with this one and I finished it in a day. It was a simple read, with quite a few stories to explain the concepts, so for me it worked out because they repeated a few key points over and over and I simply glossed over the stories. My goal is to give a recap of the book and try to take some points that I can take over to badminton.

One of the main concepts of the book was “deep practice”. This kind of practice, also known as “deliberate practice” by others, is the type of practice that is not fun. You are really grinding out the details and making a large effort to take a concept, analyze and break it down into pieces, then putting it back together. Mistakes are expected, and many of them as well. A reference to ‘futsal’ was made, in which Brazilian football (soccer) players used this game to develop their actual football game. With the higher restrictions and difficulty of the game, they had to find new ways of adapting to the game and hence, improving their overall technical skills.

This would be a strong reason for playing modified games, such as “Box Game”, or even 2 vs 1 Singles, or 3 vs 2 Doubles. Any type of modified game which restricts boundaries or certain shots (i.e. doubles with no lifting) should enhance technical skills based on those restrictions. However, from a coaching perspective, it may be helpful to inform players what their focus should be, or at least have the players discuss the best way to approach the modified game. I have often seen players seem confused and frustrated over a modified game because they cannot do what they can do typically (I’ve been here many times), and there is a lack of effort towards the game.

“Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals” (Coyle, 2009). This is the science behind deep practice, in that you are essentially adding myelin in your brain to optimize neural circuits, without getting too technical into neuroscience (out of my scope of practice, although motor learning does interest me). The ’10 000 hour’ rule is addressed here, but it is expanded to ‘10 000 hours of deep practice’, which gives world-class skill.

From a badminton standpoint, it would be interesting to see how much we overestimate our abilities because 10 000 hours of badminton does not equal 10 000 hours of deep practice, at least in Canada. I can only wonder if I have reached 10 000 hours of deep practice in badminton myself…

Coyle gives the 3 rules of deep practice: 1) Chunk up, 2) Repeat it, and 3) Learn to feel it. The first rule looks at taking the process as a whole, and dividing it up into its smallest possible parts. An example would be to look at an overhand stroke, but start out extremely slowly, as to ensure perfect technique before speeding it up. One of the quotes from the book was: “It’s not how fast you can do it. It’s how slow you can do it correctly.” The second rule involves repetition of the task (obviously!) but he talks about limits of practice. While he says that 3-5 hours/day is recommended, it may be best to stop once you get out of the ‘deep practice zone’. The final rule involves making mistakes, and that they should bother you; hence, you learn to “feel it”. As he discusses practice and not performance, corrections should be addressed immediately.

There are many takeaways from these 3 simple rules. I have already addressed slowing a stroke down to ensure perfect technique, but I’m not sure how often this strategy is used. I typically break down the stroke into parts, but I try to minimize the amount of steps for ease of memory. I typically would like to have students trying to hit a shuttle as soon as possible, as most of them feel the same way about it. However, this strategy would likely involve slowing down the stroke to perfection, then gradually building up speed until it reaches normal speed with perfect technique. I suppose this is like trying to improve your badminton game by playing more games, vs. breaking the game into smaller parts, practicing and perfecting each part, then putting it back together into a complete game.

The second rule makes a lot of sense, because I have come across research about motor learning where it is best not to practice fine motor skills under fatigue. However, it is definitely up to debate. I would say a complex skill like a jump smash would be better with perfect technique and execution, and by practicing jump smashes when you are tired will affect your overall technique because of small tweaks in posture or force development. The quality of smash is affected, and constantly practicing tired jump smashes may make small adjustments in the overall quality of your jump smash. However, I would say it is context dependent, because some will argue that you need to jump smash when you are tired, but I will ask if a jump smash is the right shot selection at that point (i.e. why not a regular smash)?

The final rule is essential for practice, and I think it’s important (in practice only) to understand whether shots you hit are good or bad, or whether the shot is going as you intended. Sometimes we hit drives or smashes too high, and they magically float and land on the back line. Often times I see players celebrating or assuming they did well because they won the rally, but the execution was not correct. Personally, I’m the opposite and I’m overly critical when that happens, even in matches (where it is good to note for later, but not dwell on the fact. Next rally, go!). Shot quality is quite important and I feel that we neglect it as long as the shot goes over the net (e.g. during multi-shuttle drills). Or, we take the opposite approach and only focus on shot quality and neglect proper movement to the shuttle. In the concept of deep practice, both are necessary in optimizing neural circuits.

Coyle’s next major insight in “The Talent Code” is the concept of ‘ignition’, which is really just his word for passion, drive, motivation or will to succeed. He talks about having a sustained motivation, which is an important concept because many of us can be motivated, but only a few of us STAY motivated. In his research, he found that people who have a high commitment will tend to stay motivated and practice more than those with lower commitment.

The simplest way to look at this in badminton are those who are looking to pursue the Olympics for Canada. Who took a 4 year commitment to train and compete? Who took less (i.e.2 or 3 years)? Perhaps I should look to extend my commitment to the 2016 Olympics, instead of the 2015 Pan Am Games.

Coyle also describes what he calls “Primal Cues” which may drive us to pursue our tasks. Two primal cues include ‘You Are Not Safe’, which speaks about the will and drive to succeed for children who have lost a parent (although possibly debilitating for some), and ‘You’re Behind – Keep Up’ which gives success to younger children in the family. However, Coyle acknowledges that the concept of ‘ignition’ doesn’t necessarily follow normal rules, which means that motivation can sometimes come from the most unlikely of sources.

Upon reflection, perhaps my ‘ignition’ came from wanting to win a junior national title so badly, until I found international badminton, and realized that there was so much more than a Canadian Junior National Title (not to take that away from anyone, because I never won one :P ). My new ignition came from a hope for future success, owing to the opportunity of a lifetime to train with Kim Dong Moon in Canada, and now, the new ignition is a new approach to training and competition, a new partnership, and a new start. Challenges do exist and I’m still at the beginning of an uphill battle, but finding new ways to overcome hurdles may be my own ignition. Find what motivates you and achieve your personal best!

Additional pointers from the book that I found useful include having a continued ignition as the key to success, praise efforts over intelligence, and pay attention to details. As these pointers are quite self-explanatory, I will address the final key to success according to Coyle, after deep practice and ignition: master coaching. Coyle talks about master coaches having “extraordinary sensitivity to the person they’re teaching, customizing each message to each student’s personality” (2009). Although coaching may be more art than science, he also addressed that average-skilled teachers or coaches may offer continuous ignition for those and help them to progress.

This concept hit hard, because it differed from Geoff Colvin’s definition of an expert. Colvin speaks of deliberate practice, but includes world-class coaching. Looking back at my career, I would think I was fortunate to have both at some point. To prevent this discussion from going too long, I think both players and coaches need to work together in addressing individual needs. I think the player should learn to make the most with their coach and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, but the coach should also treat each player individually, instead of the typical group mentality that most players get. All we would need is a little effort, trust, and lots more deep practice! We can learn from everyone… but first, we need to be open-minded.

Post Game Re-Cap with Coach Darryl Yung:
DY: "Why do you still play singles?"
TN: "... Good point."
(Photo Credit: Joseph Yeung)

Coyle speaks about the 4 Virtues of a Master Coach: 1) The Matrix, 2) Perceptiveness, 3) GPS Reflex, and 4) Theatrical Honesty. The first virtue speaks about a master coach being able to take it to a deeper level (hence, ‘The Matrix’, i.e. red pill or blue pill?). Master coaches may have been former talents who may not have reached their potential success, but tried to figure out where they went wrong. They can offer genuine information because there is no survivorship bias, because they will tell you what went wrong, and at least how to avoid making their mistake. The second virtue is the ability of the coach to gather information about individual players and treat them individually. Knowing when athletes are tired is important to prevent overtraining and also to optimize an individual’s performance. For example, some players need a pep talk, some need time alone, while some may just need a simple nod or pat on the back to encourage them to perform. The ‘GPS Reflex’ refers to how direct and simple GPS commands are (i.e. turn left, you have arrived at your destination, etc.). Coaching should be simple and direct, so information is given and understood with as little ambiguity or filler as necessary (e.g. “I think you should maybe try hitting a bit harder next time”). The final virtue, ‘theatrical honesty’ is a means of keeping your athletes guessing; have a different personality for a different player. For example, a coach to be enthusiastic and cheerful to players who also exert that same energy, or being quiet and patient for different player, is part of being a master coach. In conclusion, athlete should not be looking to do things by themselves: find a master coach!

I think we have many great coaches, but perhaps there are a few virtues that each coach may be missing. In our system, coaches simply continue to coach, but most do not have any way of continuing their education. How can we expect anyone to make a change if they are not aware of it? Perhaps feedback and trust should go both ways: a player cannot develop as well if they do not get feedback from the coach, but can this go the other way? A coach will likely not be as good of a coach if they have no students, but we never give coaches feedback like we give our teachers a student evaluation. Coaches can practice these virtues as well, and in the end, everybody will benefit, because they will understand how to develop their players, and their players will perform better.

Celebrating a win with Coach Ronne Runtulalao at the 2013 Canada Open
(Photo Credit: Joseph Yeung)

Overall, I highly recommend the book and to give it a read. It’s only about 200 pages and it’s not too long. The stories are enriching and there are some other good points that I have not shared. I think the book is great for both players and coaches, and I think it will definitely give some new ‘ignition’ for both, as well as the ability to take practice to a ‘deeper’ level!

Visit the website here: http://thetalentcode.com/

2014 Junior Nationals Speech

2014-04-29T09:31:00.002-07:00

I was asked to do a little speech last minute at the 2014 Junior Nationals to add a bit more depth to the opening ceremonies, so I wrote up a 5 minute presentation and based it on my own junior career. I've included the contents of the speech as I drafted it earlier, and I was more-or-less able to include all the material into the speech (minus the cool pictures). For those who missed it or those who were not able to attend (e.g. the entire province of Quebec), here it is:

Thank you all for taking the time to come here and support another Junior Nationals. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Toby, current National Team member and I’m partnered with Alex Bruce, and also with Philippe Charron. I train out of this wonderful facility, and I had the great fortune of competing at the 2012 London Olympics. I’d like to wish all of you the best of luck in competing to become this year’s national champion, much like the other players as listed on the website (www.badmintonnationals.com), including current National team members, like... Alex Bruce, Michelle Li, Joycelyn Ko from Ontario (*cheer after each Province*), Philippe Charron from Quebec, Grace Gao from Alberta, and Phyllis Chan, Christin Tsai, and Derrick Ng, who they've left out, from BC. Honorable mention: Dave Snider of Manitoba, but we’ll say Prairies, so that includes Saskatchewan! Many of our top players have performed well as juniors, and it is helping them extend their badminton careers.

But, every year, there are only 4-8 winners per age group. Sometimes we come up a bit short, despite all of our training goals and all the sacrifices we put into the year for this one tournament. I knew that feeling well. I didn't make that list for a reason, because I never won a junior national title. I think I was seeded first in doubles for my last year of U19, and 2 years of U23, when they started U23s in 2006, and 2007. I had a freak loss in U19 in the semifinal and I vowed to quit badminton and become a bboy instead (well, look how that turned out), and in the 2 years of U23, I played 4 events and won 4 silver medals.

#throwback U19 Nationals in Saskatoon 2004
(L to R:) Kyle Holoboff, Richard Liang, Alvin Lau, & myself

#throwback U23 Nationals in Montreal #bboystance
(L to R:) Ronnie Runtulalao (coach), myself, & Adrian Liu

#throwback U23 Nationals in Montreal #bboystance
(L to R:) Ronnie Runtulalao (coach), Adrian Liu,
myself, Luke Kuroko, & Kevin So

It was tough, but I was given that opportunity to look a little bit further. Instead of continuing to chase that National title, I took the opportunity to compete internationally (for the record, I never played World Juniors either, but I volunteered for one, which totally doesn’t count). I ended up skipping my last year of U23 Nationals, my final chance to win a title, but for Thomas Cup team finals. I suppose if your focus is so narrow, you’ll miss the big picture. As Bruce Lee quotes, “It’s like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

So I finally won my National title in 2009. It was a Senior National title, and the feeling was bittersweet. I mean, sure I finally met my goal, but I had actually won the 2008 Pan Am Championships a few months before, so I was technically continental champion before I was National champion… all that 20 months since my last U23 Nationals. Sweeeeet…

For those who have won before, it’s also a lesson in consistency. When you are the front runner, everyone is chasing you. So you have 2 options, fend off your spot from challengers, or find someone else to chase. Aiming higher may make things easier, but sometimes aiming too high may be harmful as well if it becomes too unrealistic. I would say that I've lost at the 2010 Nationals because I was aiming too high, and I lost this year because I wasn't aiming high enough. Tragic, but it’s a wake-up call. I hope you can learn from my mistake instead of making your own. Regardless, I’ve picked myself up and I’m training hard for my next series of tournaments in the summer, including the World Championships. I’d be foolish to train really hard just to win Nationals again because I have confident in my abilities. Often times, I find if you play a player/team 10 times, you can win 80% of the time. That means you’ll lose to them 1 in 5 times, for whatever the reason. Sometimes, it will be at that most important tournament of the year, but don’t take it personally. Over time, your average will work itself out.

Don’t give up, no matter what happens this week… and keep playing. It’s often not realistic to be the best all the time, but if you work hard, you can be best most of the time. Take that as a trade secret.
For some, this may be your first badminton Nationals; but for all of you, I hope this won’t be your last one.

Thank you, and have a great week!

Top 5 Things I Learned This Semester

2014-04-22T11:15:00.002-07:00

5) Exercise is medicine.

Nothing like taking a functional anatomy course to get me back up to speed on my anatomy, which will definitely help all the exercise related things I do. I also took a clinical exercise rehabilitation course, and we covered many types of health conditions, including aging, heart failure, heart transplant, spinal cord injury, stroke, cancer, and obesity. We learned how exercise can be beneficial to all these conditions, mainly in preventing cardiovascular disease and keeping people in shape so they don’t fall below the threshold for functional dependence. Personally, I liked it because I had to learn many regressions of exercises I’m more familiar with. I suppose it’s easy to make an exercise harder, but it’s not the same when you go the other way, at least not at first. Now that I'm a kinesiologist, perhaps I can find some additional part time work in this sector. It's extremely rewarding and with an aging population in the years ahead, I think the demand will increase quite a bit.

4) You can learn just as much if not more outside of school.

You CAN… but not always. I've had a great deal of extra education this year, and it was all outside of school. However, the foundation I've developed from school really helps integrate everything together. The way I see it, it doesn't really matter where the learning is coming from, just learn as much as you can and be open to the fact that you could be wrong at any moment. Even something in this blog post will probably be wrong, or I will have different thoughts about. At least I’m willing to admit it, and through mistakes, I can learn again. This semester, I've had the fortune of participating in lectures by Molly O'Brien & Dan Kenzie (Fortius Sport& Health), Carmen Bott (Human Motion), Behnad Honarbakhsh (FMS – Fit ToTrain), Charlie Weingroff (Training = Rehab), all the wonderful speakers at the NSCA BC Provincial Clinic, Patrick Ward (Optimum Sports Performance), Nick Winkelman (EXOS), and Dean Somerset with Rick Kaselj. I still have much information to sift through, and I will leave the finer details to another blog post in the near future!

3) I’m on the “Precision Nutrition” diet...

Actually, I’m on the Precision Nutrition (PN) PROGRAM, meaning that adherence is recommended, but you aren’t forced into making drastic changes for a short period of time, only to go back to your original diet and regain everything back (and then some)! Although this may sound like a plug for the PN system, which it is, I really like their system, so much that I’m taking a certification course from them because I know it can make a difference with those I will be working with in the future. Aside from that, it would be nice to have some general nutrition knowledge, as the whole nutrition industry is rife with so much information, but never the whole story. PN is about making healthier choices, and changing habits little by little so the new ones stick. I wanted to start right after I got back from Ontario Elite series in early January, but things got delayed and I had to wait until mid-January before I did anything. For most people, that kind of delay would have already killed their New Year’s Resolution, but with PN, making a change late is better than not making change at all. I began making their Super Shakes (with protein powder), and started trying a few recipes from their Gourmet Nutrition cookbook (highly recommended!). I’m by no means a cook, but I was able to successfully follow some recipes, and I really improved my vegetable intake by far. Now I’m eating many more vegetables than I ever had before, and I’m making healthier choices, little by little (i.e. tried turkey sausage and I love it!). It’s still an ongoing process, but I enjoy learning and I suppose now is a great time to learn how to cook, as it will be a valuable skill to have in the future!

2) You can’t win it all…

“You win some, you lose some…” harsh words, but often realistic because it becomes difficult to maintain sustained efforts to be successful all the time. Things have been going well the past year, but the beginning of 2014 hit REALLY hard, with an early loss at the 2014 Ontario Elite Series, and the terrible result at 2014 Nationals. I have already addressed things in previous posts (Reflections on the 2014 Nationals; Recovery, The Elephant In The Room), so if you’re not sure what happened, feel free to read my past blogs. Now, 2 months later, things have been better. I suppose there’s nothing like a traumatic event to test your will to achieve. I've been able to repair most of the damage from the event, and I’m rebuilding myself to be even better than before. Now that I’m finally done school, we’ll see if all the potential things I wanted to do come through. We often desire many things and make elaborate plans, but if we don’t execute them, they will be nothing but empty ideas that never materialize… and that's when we lose. That was my mistake… and hopefully, I've learned from it. The stakes are much higher this time as I've lost funding for next year, so we will see how 'loss aversion' can make lasting changes. Perhaps I will elaborate in future blog post.

1) Never forget why you started.

Despite the bad times, I’m fortunate to have tremendous amount of support from a few special people (you know who you are because many of you read my blog!). I’m also fortunate to have support from most people I interact with. I often come back to a harsh lesson that there will be people who still remember you as the person you used to be, and if they never give you the benefit of the doubt that you changed, they are probably not someone you want to be around anyway. According to Martin Rooney (a strength coach), one of the keys to success is to “get your average up”. He makes the reference that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, so if you are trying to lose weight (fat) and your group of 5 is all obese, it would become a difficult task. Compare it to hanging out with 5 health-conscious people who exercise regularly and eat well, you have a much stronger change of success with fat loss. Check out his video on Motivation on YouTube!

So, I should never forget why I started, or to be more specific, I should never forget why I’m continuing to play badminton despite losing funding for next year. I know that it’s not optimal to publish your goals to the public, and I know I am at a risk for exposing too much information to my competition, but it’s okay… because it leaves me accountable. Accountability is huge, and maybe that’s why losing Nationals hurts because I’m taking it personally… I have to be accountable. And only then, will I be able to grow as an athlete, as a person. What’s the difference between competing now and before?

A different partner, a different start, a different fate. It’s different playing with Alex than it is with Grace. Each player has their own unique advantages and disadvantages, but there are possible commonalities between both players as well. The key thing for me is not to make the same mistakes from before, and identifying them is a step in the right direction. Communication, for example, is something I strive to maintain with Alex, because I think that is one of the major problems I had with Grace.

A different philosophy, a different training style. I've lost the opportunity to train with a world class coach, because I cannot get full time training, and even if I could, I wouldn't be able to afford it. Such is life. I really don't have a solution, but instead, an alternative strategy: make use of previous years of world class concepts, while increasing physical strength, movement qualities, and work capacity. I don't think I had the strength or fitness to play the way Kim Dong Moon wanted me to back then, but now I'm one step closer. I know I don't have him coaching me, but I've also learned to make do with what I have. In the words of Bruce Lee, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”

A different training environment. It’s difficult to train at times, and I could easily just blame the system and throw in the towel, but I refuse to give up and I hope to inspire the next generation of athletes that there is always a way if you try. I've began sparring with younger athletes, in exchange for them feeding me some drills. I also can teach them a few things, so it’s ultimately a ‘win-win’ situation. It started off a bit rocky, but things are smoothing out and it’s been fairly productive. Hopefully, over time, a system will be in place and people have a template to follow. Sometimes I think that a good reason isn't enough for people to make a change… sometimes, you need to give them an actual template and get them started… then, changes may actual begin to happen.

A different level of expertise. I’m learning so much more than I have in the past while, and I really owe it to good fortune, as I met Dan Adams by chance in one of my classes. I was in a High Performance Conditioning class, right after the Olympics, and being an Olympian, I thought I knew it all. But thankfully, I was handed a reality check because I didn't know anyone in the lab, and there were 2 other people who didn't have partners for the group, with one of them being Dan. So, the first thing I learned was the existence of the term “Strength Coach”, as I thought everyone in fitness was just a “personal trainer”. Slowly, I began to learn more about strength & conditioning, and Dan actually just started up the UBC Thunderbird Strength & Conditioning Club. And pretty slowly… things took off, little by little, and the learning just keeps going… with pretty much everything coming from outside my school curriculum. After a while, I had some interest in Olympic lifting and Dan referred me to my current strength coach, Molly O'Brien. Despite everything we've done, I still haven't performed a single Olympic lift! Honestly, I’m actually glad I haven’t… because I don’t really need them right now, and I’m not ready for them yet. Sessions have been going really well with Molly, and she’s been quite supportive over the semester, even though I crashed out at Nationals. I’m currently working with her now and I’m on my 2^nd month of General Prep training! If anyone in the area is really serious about training, go book a session with Molly! I totally endorse it :) So, going back to badminton, I can see training through a different perspective, and hopefully, I can make efficient changes that will not only help me improve my game, but to stay injury free!

A different attitude. Well, I hope so. My attitude towards learning is probably much different than it was before, but given the new circumstances, I don’t see me having much of a choice. I must evolve and adapt to survive; otherwise, I can’t expect changes to be made. I know I will be facing new competition, but everyone deserves their chance to compete. That's the spirit of competition. There are many competitors at a tournament, but always only one winner. If we are all competing for that Olympic continental spot (i.e. Mixed Doubles), only one team will make it. So I won’t bother aiming for that... I will go higher. Top 15-20? I’d be pretty happy. If I make it there and not make the Olympics, that’s fine with me, but my chances of making it would be quite high. Why fight to be the top of the continent when you should be fighting to be at the top of the world? I like to aim high, because I will prepare myself that way. If your ultimate goal is to be one of the world's best, then start training and doing what you can to get there. If you just want to have fun and enjoy the process, then do just that. As long as your actions match your goals, you have a much better chance for success, which is never guaranteed, unfortunately. But that's a risk I'm willing to take...

Let the journey begin...

Top 5 Take-Away Concepts from Nathan Robertson

2014-03-20T16:22:00.001-07:00

An opportunity came up for a chance to train with Nathan Robertson at the Badminton & Racquets Club (B&R) in Toronto, courtesy of Stephane Cadieux, Badminton Ontario, and Badminton Canada; so I decided to jump at the opportunity to work with a former World Champion and Olympic Silver medalist for Great Britain! Additionally, my partner Alex Bruce was able to take a few days off for the camp (from her incredibly busy schedule as a soon-to-be engineering graduate), so we had some really solid training together with a world class coach. Anyway, before I bore you with incredibly long run-on sentences, let’s cut to the chase:

5) The women are in charge in Mixed Doubles

Nathan emphasized this concept when we had to take some extra time to discuss tactics and strategy (in which Alex Bruce coined the term “tacticize”), especially in the first 3 shots of a rally. As the women are in the front at the net before a serve, it is better that they pick and choose where they want to go after the serve, as there really is no time to react. Instead of trying to cover everything, it is better to make an educated guess. Since the women are technically at the front lines, it is better for the guy to cover her instead. To simplify, it’s always easier for the front person to finish the rally. Just as much as some teams use hand signals before they serve, it is always the front person who dictates, and the back person covers. Additionally, it’s usually better to have a plan, instead of not having a plan. Perhaps great teams don’t need to communicate much, but until we get there… communication is necessary.

4) Not everything has to be hard and fast

A few times in our drills, Nathan told us that we have to mix up the pace of our shots. For example, even in a simple alternative drive exercise, we had to mix up our shots and hit both hard and soft shots, as we want to get used to hitting different shots because we want to do the same in a real match (further discussed in #2). Especially in multi-shuttle drills, it become easy to hit at the same pace for all shots, and likely, it will be repeated in a match. Shot quality can suffer, as trying to hit shots that fall below the net cord/tape will end up flying up too high, allowing opponents to have a chance to go on the offensive, or even having your shot drift out the back. In my opinion, the key takeaway here is that there are times to go hard and fast, just don’t be reckless about it and it works better when you can mix up between hard and soft. This is definitely one of the “easier said than done” concepts, especially when looking at higher level play.

3) “Racquet Carriage”

This was kind of an inside joke, because Nathan was coaching a provincial camp over the weekend with other Canadian athletes and coaches, and he was quite exhausted saying “racquet carriage” to many of the players. The term is equivalent to “racquet up”, and just maintaining the racquet at the right height to take follow up shots earlier. Many of us (myself included) drop our racquets a lot after we hit, and shots that come back sooner than we expect will cause trouble because we have to bring our racquet back up before we can swing. This leads us to hit bad quality shots, especially if we also violate the “not everything has to be hard and fast” concept. Having the racquet in the right position can mean the difference between keeping the attack, or allowing your opponents for a chance to convert from defense to offense. Ideally, I think the racquet should be pretty much at the height of the net as a minimum after playing an offensive (downwards) shot.

2) Short, but Multiple Sets – FOCUS

The drills we did with Nathan were actually very short. Multishuttle sets were never more than 20 shuttles and averaged around 12. Single shuttle drills were never more than 3 minutes per person. However, we did multiple sets, so instead of doing a drill once each, for 5-10 minutes at a time, we would rather do a drill 3 times each, for 3 minutes per person, which would be pretty much the same amount. However, the breaks in between allow greater focus when we work, as we get to rest a bit when we are feeding. Also, for those who may lapse out when they start fatiguing, the quality tends to go down toward the end of a longer set. The short sets allowed for a greater focus, especially from the beginning because the set is so short. Those who don’t concentrate will find that they get very little work in. There were also times when we had to count our easy unforced errors, meaning that if we made a mistake in an unchallenged position (e.g. overhead stroke). As there were punishments (or “forfeits” as Nathan called them) for errors at times, it gave an extra edge for us to stay focused during the drill.

1) Practice must be the same as match play – Forfeits

Nathan reinforced this concept all the time during the camp, as practice quality should always be at a high level as it will reflect the quality of our match play in a tournament. As discussed in the previous concept, ‘forfeits’ were used to ensure that everyone is playing to win and staying focused in drills, especially in those which replicated consistency. There was a drill we did where we have to play at our minimum tournament speed, but at a pace where we shouldn’t be making unforced errors. Excessive errors were punished, with some type of extra physical work in the legs or the trunk/core after the end of the drill. For fear of misquoting Nathan, he said that there are ‘forfeits’ because when you lose in a tournament, you go home. Additionally, there should be less structure or patterning in drills, as it strays away from tournament/match situations. Although there are times that exist where patterning of drills are necessary (e.g. front court combos), my interpretation was that there shouldn’t be a patterning of more than about 2 shots, because match play is quite chaotic.

Bonus: Practice deception AKA trick shots

One final piece I would like to add was that we took about 15-20 minutes at the end of every afternoon practice (the final session for the day) to work on deception. Nathan told us that deception is used much more frequently at the highest levels of badminton, much more than it used to be. The idea of doing a bit of practice with these shots will give us more confidence if we want to use it in a real match. Even though we may try a deceptive shot once in every ten shots, a bit of extra practice is much better than not doing any at all, and attempting it in a real match.

This concept was new to me, as I generally frown on low percentage shots. However, I suppose if you regularly practice some of these shots, those percentages should shoot up quite a bit. Interestingly enough, these shots are not intended to win rallies, but an attempt to make the opponent late for a shot. A full step in the wrong direction can give considerable advantage in a rally, sometimes even winning a point out right, but relying too much on these shots is probably not the best idea. Again, there is a purpose in practicing some DECEPTIVE shots, but within reason!

A big thanks to Nathan Robertson for all his insights and I’m sure a lot of us hope to work with him again in the future! I had a great time in Toronto with the camp, the exhibition at the Granite Club, and getting to see familiar faces in addition to meeting new friends! I know I didn’t get to see everyone, but I hope to return in October for the Pan Am Championships! Special thanks to Stephane Cadieux for organizing an awesome camp for many players and even billeting me for the duration of the camp! I hope you enjoyed this blog post and hope you can pick up some new concepts! Work hard, train smart!

#perspire #inspire #aspire

The Elephant In The Room

2014-03-09T21:05:00.001-07:00

Have you ever heard of the expression, “the elephant in the room”? It more or less refers to an obvious problem that is ignored or not addressed. I’m going to talk to you about the “elephant in the room” and by no means am I justifying, nor defending it. I simply hope to provide information and wish to remain as neutral as possible, although it’s hard not to be biased…

… because the ~~monster~~ elephant in the room is me.

Whether you agree with that statement or not, tension exists and I want to take steps to remove that tension. Consider it as taking a lacrosse ball to release the fascia of my ego, apparently some people feel that I’m always right, whatever I say is true, or everything has to be done my way. Some feel I’m a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode on the next person that lights my fuse. Some people feel I have a temper and they just don’t want to deal with the stress I can incur to others when things aren’t going my way. Sure, bad things have happened before, but I think it’s unfair. Why is it that people get so caught up on the bad things, so much that it takes away from all the good things I’ve done and what I continue to do? Why are people so intimidated by me where I train? It’s not fair that I take the time to go to school, read books, and do extra learning, while the others enjoy doing their own things, watching their TV episodes, movies, listening to music, or playing their phone games. I gave those up so I can learn and hopefully use that knowledge to further my badminton. I’m happy to teach others, but I feel resentment from others. Maybe they just want to do it their own way, okay… fine. I just wanted to try to help.

So, I must apologize. I apologize to all those people that I made an attempt to help, but may have hurt instead. Or even if they felt uncomfortable or didn’t want or need my help, I’m sorry for invading your personal space. I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and in our faith, we don’t simply believe that we go to heaven just because we believe in God:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. - James 2:14-26.

(Original Source: tillhecomes.org via Google Images)

After 12 years of religion classes in my elementary and high school days, I have come to interpret opportunities to assist others as a potential test of faith AND good works. Should I do the right thing, or should I just leave it be? This would bring me back to the unfortunate events at this year’s Nationals, where I wrongfully stepped in and made my coach look bad. The only question that popped in my mind at that time was, “If I took action, would I be able to make a difference?” Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to change anything and it only made matters worse. Now, many people write me off because they feel I don’t respect my coaches. So, if you were in my position, do you think you would want to risk helping someone in the future? I didn’t want to at first, but after reflecting on it, I would like to ask you this: “What would Jesus do?”

I have learned from the lesson, and it cost me dearly, but I have decided that I will not coach anybody on court at a tournament from now on due to risk of making the coach look bad, even though there was never any intention to disrespect the coach. Perhaps you have already heard my side of the story, or perhaps this is the first time you heard of it, but shouldn’t I get a chance to defend myself? I’m not justifying my actions, but I don’t deserve the snap judgement and assumptions that some people make, including many of the coaches I work with. It makes me sad, because many times in my career, I wanted to succeed so badly, not for my own glory, but so that they can be rightfully recognized as great coaches. I wanted to do well so badly when I was with Kim Dong Moon, because the best thing I can do for him is to succeed. Same with my coaches at ClearOne, but sometimes, it’s tough because I’m in a partnered-event. I can only guess you have already assumed that I’m trying to blame my partner. See how easy it is to jump to conclusions? All I’m saying is that if partners have different goals, it’s hard for the team to reach their goals because they could be going in very different directions. Perhaps there are different ways of getting to the same goal, but if both partners are trying to attempt different paths to the same goal, it’s not likely to work. For example, if I want to win by attacking, and my partner wants to win by defending, we are probably less likely to win. Regardless, people automatically assume that it’s always my ego, but I disagree. I don’t have to win all the time, except if it’s something I’m actually competing in (i.e. badminton tournaments). Some people say that I can’t lose an argument, and obviously that’s not true. Sometimes, I think it’s due to a lack of communication that causes the argument to begin with, and while I want to find a mutual solution, others just don’t want to change. Why would we want to change if we are already in a good place? But… what if we can make a change to go to a better place? Am I the only one asking these questions?

(Original Source: Google Image Search)

Another problem I possess is that some people think I hold a double standard, where I can do a trick shot on someone, but I get mad when they do one on me. Yes, I get frustrated because I feel it’s a low percentage shot that would probably not succeed in a real tournament setting. I don’t gloat when my shots work, and there are many times I tell myself the exact same thing. Sometimes I even apologize for hitting wrong shots that work out in my favour because I didn’t intend it that way. When I see other players hit riskier shots in practice, sometimes it bothers me because I feel that things would be different in a real tournament environment. I’m not looking for confirmation bias, but those who simply rely on hindsight bias can believe what they want. Again, I’m not justifying that my actions are right, but merely pointing out that things may not always be what they seem. A good analogy of this is if someone accidently runs a red light. Sure, they may have gotten through the intersection safely, but it was still a mistake that should be identified. However, some may feel that it’s justified, and claim they couldn’t stop in time, and that it was just a late yellow light, not a red. To each their own judgement…

The final problem I will identify is my temper. Many times my temper has flared up and caused unnecessary stress to many people. I won’t defend myself, saying that I can’t help it, maybe it’s genetic, or other empty excuses. I’m sorry if it happened, and I’m sorry if it will happen again. I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but I do my best to learn from each time I’ve failed to control myself. For example, I lost it when I was at a practice the week between 2 international tournaments. I wanted to maintain a high quality training session, but it was going nowhere. What set me off was when a player smashed the shuttle into the back of my head. Sure, we’re in the most elite group at the badminton center, but I mis-hit poorly as well. I suppose I could have made a stronger effort to communicate my needs to the coach that day, but I clearly remember telling him what I needed, but due to court scheduling, we were limited. I was the only one in the group who had to play another tournament, and I decided to play that international tournament because I wanted to help represent my badminton club, because the tournament was held at ClearOne Orlando. It was a tournament that wouldn’t have helped my world ranking, and I’m certain I would not have lost my temper if I didn’t have to play that tournament. But I did, so I went to train. And I told my coach what I needed, but we couldn’t do anything. I tried to make the most of a bad situation, but then I get a shuttle to the back of my skull. I lost it, I got mad. I’m sorry.

My temper is the other elephant in the room, the temper that was inspired by some of my coaches, because I wasn’t intense enough when I was a junior. The same temper and anger that my other coach said that made me play faster and move better. I think we may have some mixed signals here, but it’s also the same temper in which I’ve lashed out on many partners. It took a long time to realize it coming up through the junior/U-23 years, but I eventually came and understood that I was wrong, and I apologize. To all the partners that I’ve hurt or even traumatized, it wasn’t your fault; it was mine. Whether it was driven by my desire for success or fear of failure, I’m not justifying my actions. I’m just telling you it was never personal and that you got caught in between. I’m sorry.

The reason I decided to write this post was primarily meant as an apology. My desire for success and achievement has made me difficult for some to work with. I understand that I need to work with other people, and I hope I can reconcile with those that I have wronged in my pursuit of excellence. In the future, I hope that we can maintain a good level of communication to minimize problems so that we can all work together...

… because at the end of the day, elephants are pretty friendly unless threatened.

(Original Source: sinfest.net via Google Image Search)

#recovery

2014-02-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks since Nationals, with many thoughts going through my mind. It was an emotional roller coaster at first, but I think it’s safe to say that I’m back on track. However, I really need to contemplate on securing sponsorship for up to the next 2 years, and that will be my greatest challenge. Perhaps this may be one of the greatest turning points in my life… ultimately, it’s the passion that keeps me going, and if I quit and just let it die, it may be one of the biggest regrets in my life. Regardless of the struggle, I have to understand why I want to continue and make the right moves to achieve my goals. As I am already at a financial disadvantage starting in June when my funding cuts out, I need to maximize all the opportunities that come my way. Long ago, I realized that I cannot train like players from other countries with more structured programs and adequate finances, but I would have to ‘make the most of a bad situation’. This is one of my new mantras in training, as a way to maximize opportunity. Change must begin with the self, and even a change in attitude can make the biggest difference.

In Austria, we had the chance to see some of the Olympic events and it has been extremely inspiring. Despite watching all those gold medal performances, I looked at those who didn’t perform as well either, because that was what I was like in London. I’m like that guy at the end of the race, who maybe had no chance of ever making to the podium, but it’s been an incredible journey just to be there and represent my country. Perhaps it’s not reasonable to be one of the best in the world given the system I’m in, but trying the best I can possibly be in a broken system. I can’t change a broken system, but I can do my best to make sure that my body, mind, and spirit remain intact. How can I expect to push the boundaries of my sport if I’m broken as well? Needless to say, it was inspiring to see the brilliant Canadian performances, as I was fortunate to get to see Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse win the women’s bobsleigh, Jennifer Jones and her team win the women’s curling, and I caught the very end of the women’s hockey after they pushed the game into the overtime. However, I was most interested in the Women’s figure skating, as I’ve enjoyed following Yuna Kim from South Korea since I first saw her skate in Vancouver 2010. She performed well and despite all the controversy in the judging and coming second, I admire her personal character and all she has done leading up to this Olympics. She is truly an inspirational athlete, and you can learn more about her in a short interview here: (http://www.feverskating.com/fevers/64985230)

(Photo Credit: Badmintonfoto.net)

After watching the Olympics and seeing so many different people having their spotlight moments, I thought about it for a long time. As results go, it’s frustrating because I want to be able to perform and do well, but the spotlight goes to other players. It’s like I’ve become invisible after Nationals, simply because of all the things that happened and I was simply an observer. It hurt because I felt nobody cared about what I did, especially after the coaching conflict at Nationals. But then it came to me… why should I care? I actually don’t care who gets the spotlight, and the moment I realized it, I felt relief. I personally don’t need spotlight attention, be it interviews, recognition, or keep-sake awards. However, when it comes to funding, that’s a different story altogether, because I’m severely at a disadvantage when other people get funding and I don’t. But there’s very little I can do about that. All I can do is continue my “pursuit of happyness”. Not my pursuit for glory or attention, but a pursuit for personal success, knowledge, and to make a positive difference in my field of choice. That’s why I want to continue playing, and that’s why I hope you will continue to support me. All I want is a level of respect that reflects the abilities I possess, and I would be a very happy person.

So where do things go from here? I anticipate that I will need to find some serious work, perhaps getting a personal training certification and working as a locum kinesiologist. I would like to do more coaching work, but not if it will conflict with the other coaches. I will continue learning as much as I can about strength & conditioning, and hopefully I can start a strength program at my badminton center. I don’t foresee any major competitions until Canada Open in July, so I have a solid 4 months to train towards my summer tournaments, including US Open, maybe Commonwealth Games, and the 2014 World Championships in Denmark. I’m keeping in touch with my partner Alex Bruce, and we will hopefully have at least a month to train together before the big tournaments in the summer. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out her promo video for the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games!

Hopefully, I can start blogging a bit more in the future. I’m not too sure how I want to approach it, but I would like to combine thoughts from both Strength & Conditioning and badminton. I suppose I’m in a very niche position, having very technical proficiency in my sport, while trying to apply S&C principles. I’m not about trying to invent sport-specific practices in the gym, but I want to look at concepts that are used in badminton training that may violate S&C principles, and how certain S&C principles can be adapted to badminton. I honestly don’t know too much about other sports, but I’m learning. I suppose you never know what you can use from one sport which may transfer to another. For example, any type of shoulder correctives from baseball may easily apply to badminton. Or kettlebell swings and the difference between tension and relaxation can be applied to the badminton stroke to increase the power of the shot. Regardless, there are so many questions floating through my mind, and maybe someday, I’ll have an answer.

Aside from a National Team camp near the end of May, I’ll be pretty much training and applying for odd jobs, so I’ll definitely not be in the spotlight, but that’s okay. Just know I’m “back in the lab” and let’s see where I’ll stand this summer. As for strength, sales, and general concepts in life, I prefer quality over quantity most of the time. I’m not interested in writing garbage to attract the general masses, but I would much rather write quality to a smaller group that understands and respects me. I train the same way, I teach the same way. So thank you to those who take the time to read what I write, or hear what I have to say. You are the ones who keep my passion alive and I hope I can inspire you at least just a little bit, to chase your own passions, to do it with quality, and to inspire others who are just like us.

#inspire

(Upgraded on the way home from Vienna to Toronto on Austrian Air)

Reflections on the 2014 Nationals

2014-02-08T09:59:00.002-08:00

It’s been about 2 days since I lost in the Mixed Doubles quarterfinal at the 2014 Nationals. This is just a brief recap of events that led up to it, and the ripple effect that will happen because of it. Upon reflection, you have no idea how much this hurts me. I’ll tell you why.

Photo by Joseph Yeung

Ontario Elite Series

I went to play in Toronto as a means to get some extra practice with Alex Bruce (my mixed partner, for those unaware). I did not have to go, but I thought it would be in our best interest to have a practice tournament together before Nationals. I even tried to go a few days earlier, but unfortunately, we did not have too much time to practice. Over the course of an unorganized tournament, we ended up losing in our semi-final match to Michelle Li, playing with an Indonesian coach. Our performance wasn't the greatest, but it didn’t help that I was stuck at the tournament venue and our match was about 5 hours delayed. If not for Alex’s coach getting me some dinner, it would have probably been worse. Additionally, the umpire must have been tired too, because I felt there was an illegal serve performed and she would not even speak to me about it afterwards, even though it ended the match. Regardless, I took home some things to work on.

Training at Fortius

I began training at Fortius in November with Molly O'Brien, one of Fortius' top Olympic Lifting coaches as I wanted to learn Olympic Lifting. However, due to her recommendations, I ended up doing a lot of other work instead and after 10 sessions with her, I still haven’t done a single Olympic Lift with her. However, after the introductory sessions, I realized that Olympic Lifting would not necessarily give me as much of an advantage as I anticipated, and the other work I have been doing was much more important. Acquiring proper diaphragmatic breathing, scapular stabilization, and good deadlift technique were key things. Trying to use my hip/glutes more than my quads was also an overall highlight through most of the sessions, in addition to lacrosse ball rolling and working on getting kinks out of my t-spine and hips. My work with Molly has been pretty much a complete asset, and I still have a lot of room for improvement. I definitely made the right choice to train at Fortius, as I was well conditioned to last through Nationals, if warranted.

Photo by Joseph Yeung

Training and Coaching Other Players

Christin Tsai moved in for about a month where I’m living at in January, so I’ve had the opportunity to work extensively with her. I’m not sure what amount of confidentiality I would have to keep for a more or less casual favour, with no monetary compensation, but just in case, I will keep things broad. Basically, I gave her a 3-4 week S&C program, catered more towards proper warm up and injury prevention, as to keep her from getting injured. I did extensive sparring with her for the past 2 weeks, trying to apply various training principles so that she would have a peak performance this week, in WS. For the WD and XD, I cannot really say, but all I can say is that Derrick and Christin had more practice together than Alex and I did, given that Alex is across the country. I had spent time sparring with other players in a hope to get them on the right training mindset. I feel that my training approaches have differed, and although I will not offer too much technical badminton advice, I try to advise on training properly for a peak performance, the same way I hope to prepare for a big tournament.

Volunteering for the BCAN Competitions Committee

Being the player representative on this committee is tough. Players are complaining, and the committee members don’t seem to grasp the problems that will occur, but that is because they do not have as much invested. From my perspective, it only seems as if everyone is preaching in their own best interest and it’s easy to see because I don’t think everyone is aligned with the same goal. For those who may be reading, I will be constructive and suggest that it’s good that they wanted to align competitions with the LTAD, but it still requires an approach, typical top-down (high performance down), and bottom-up (grass roots up). It seems that everyone is fighting in the middle stages and neither high performance not grass roots will benefit when that is the case. Although it’s usually seen as a pyramid, with grassroots at the bottom, filtering up to a small fraction of high performance, I prefer to look at it cyclically, so that it should keep feeding back into the system. For example, fund and develop high performance, but get them to come back and work with grassroots. I’m trying to do a bit of work now with players I interact with, as it’s really hard to change a high performance player. They are so dead set in their own ways or their coaches’ ways. They obviously think they have their answer, but I think that’s a good thing because you wouldn’t really be a high performance player if you didn’t know what you were doing. Not to stray too far from my original point, if we have high performance players working with grassroots, that will let the grassroots learn from better players and experience can be passed on to young ones, inspiration can develop much easier. Now the grassroots players can see that there is a future, not a hypothetical one that a coach can give, or if they even see a future at all. Again, I feel a lot of our experts are good in the middle ground, but they do not know what it takes to develop a high performance player, and few coaches know how to develop grassroots through physical literacy. But hey, that’s just my perspective.

Learning How To Coach and How To Train

With my new found interest in strength and conditioning, I have attended more lectures and read more information about the field than I ever have before in my life. The gains are significant and I think I’m on to something… something that most other sports with money have. Strength and conditioning coaches aren’t cheap, but good ones are definitely worth it, as I can attest to Molly’s ability and programming at Fortius. Still, I wanted to absorb more information and I had the chance to attend lectures organized by the UBC Thunderbirds S&C Club. The founder of the club, Dan Adams, was probably the one who introduced me to the whole concept of a strength coach, and this was post London Olympics. There I was, thinking that I knew what I was doing, but I realized I knew extremely little about training, peaking, periodization, and developing strength. Over time, I started changing my views on the every growing evidence that S&C will have an extreme benefit, especially in my sport. There are many things I used to believe that I don’t believe anymore, and there will be things that I believe now that will need to be updated. I didn’t want to just pick and choose, so I decided to jump in and learn bits and pieces of everything I could learn about. I try to pass the information to others that are willing to listen, because it helps me learn better when I can teach and apply principles, and also so that the next generation of players might get a better chance. If the next generation of players don’t get better than your generation, how can you expect the sport to grow? I have long learned that people make the mistake of assuming their own experience is enough to work for everyone, so that is one of the approaches I hope to be able to overcome. Sure, I can give anecdotal experiences that I have come across, but I’m much more willing to teach things that work with athletes in different sports, in different parts of the world, otherwise I’d be really limited to the players that can only relate to my experiences. That is how I hope to coach in the future, should I still continue. It’s a bit traumatizing after what happened this week, but all will be explained later.

Photo by Joseph Yeung

And if all falls down…

The second I heard that Derrick and Christin were playing the tournament, I cringed a bit inside. Then I heard that Ronne and Jo were playing as well, and it kind of hurt. They have every right to play the tournament, and I did not dispute it. But it really hurt a bit inside, knowing that they will be competing against me in my event. It bothered me because this tournament was really important, and I suppose the draw came out the way it did. I just needed to make 3^rd place, so after seeing the draw, I only worried about that one QF match. It wasn’t really the feeling of nervousness, just kind of a caution that you have to consider, much like the difference between a stop sign and a yield sign when driving.

I took to action by contacting Alex and trying to give her some things to work on while she was still in Ontario. It was nothing extremely specific, but some technical things to work on in the front court. It wouldn’t hurt to try, but I was delayed in getting things done, because I was training and working with other players, ironically, one of them being Christin. I did some extra practice with Alex after our match on Wednesday, and generally, I was quite happy at how quickly Alex picked up a lot of the things I was discussing with her. Though there’s still definitely room to improve, there wasn’t enough time. I think Alex performed many of the things really well despite the loss and I hope it will continue to carry over to Austria International in 2 weeks. Things will always improve well at the beginning, especially if it’s a newer task, but that extra refinement will take some dedicated practice and hence, a lot more training time, but given the short amount of time Alex had to practice, I was very happy with her progression.

So… what about my own performance; how do I feel about my own performance? I think I played fairly well, although the shot selection was not the best at times. Defense could still need work, but overall, I was very happy with my physical ability. I could have easily played another match, or if rallies went longer, I could have happily continued to move around the court if necessary. But the nets are bad; the floor is slippery. These are things I have stated in a Facebook post on behalf of the Badminton Canada Players Association previously. Also, it becomes difficult to play against a team you have to play against in practice. Who has to practice with them? Who else is there to practice against them? Do I really have an advantage playing against them with a different training partner who has a different playing style? I’m not saying it has to, but does it? It hurts, because it felt like I was training them to compete against me in my own event. Now after I have lost, what happens? Do I get any coaching advice on how I should have played? No. I get the “nice try”, the “better luck next time”, “tough loss”… while deep in my mind, I knew that match cost me $18 000 of funding. Maybe it cost me my spot on the 2014 Commonwealth Games team. So yeah, that sounds like I was set up big time to take a fall. Am I the only one who sees it this way? Competition is competition, but is it really that, knowing that I had played a role in the development of the team? What do I get for compensation? Dinner? A “thank you” on Facebook? It breaks my heart a little bit inside when people cheer for the underdog team, knowing that in the end, we’re probably the underdogs. Alex is in full time University, and I have courses still. You can say it’s a choice that we chose to go to school, and I can say it’s a choice to help others in need. Well, now I’m in need.

Photo by Joseph Yeung

Politics

If not for the whole mess I don’t want to talk about anymore, maybe things would have been better. Playing a second event is much more beneficial, especially at this level of tournament. It helps gets the nerves out a bit, and getting a better feel for the environment that is very different that where I train. If I had known of the eligibility of my partner, I would have found a different partner, or even enter singles, just to get a bit more time on court. Having a single match and then going into a heavy quarterfinal match is not fun, but I did all I could, including going above and beyond in trying to dispute the matter, and to represent the players on their behalf. Nobody asked me to, but it was the right thing to do. I spent a lot of time stressing over it, as it did affect my doubles, but in the very end, I was the one to withdraw my partner from the tournament, even though they would not officially do it before the start of the tournament. I missed out on playing 2 matches, which may have prepared me a bit better for my match, but since I couldn’t play, I had to go for my own workout.

Despite all the things I tried to do, I’m really disappointed in the turnout of the Players Association meeting. Not too many players showed up, and I lost my spot for Vice President to Philippe Charron. That REALLY hurt. All the things I tried to do were apparently in vain, and this kind of stuff does happen when you don’t vote. I lost 9 to 5, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who voted against me. But that's fine, I'll use my time more wisely.

What’s next…

Reciprocal altruism… if we ALL lived in this concept, we’d be in paradise. However, everyone wants something for nothing, and that doesn’t work out very well because we all want many things, and often times different people want the same thing. I’ve committed to the Toronto Pan Am Games with Alex and I’m going to keep that promise, through thick or thin. I will need to come up with fundraising ideas, or perhaps start working part or full-time to fund my way to the Pan Am Games. I don’t even want to think about Rio 2016, as it wouldn’t be worth it, going into debt and trying to enter a graduate program, if I can find one to take me. I will do what I can to salvage the rest of the year, but I will be stepping down from many positions, because people don’t want me there anyway. Badminton BC’s High Performance Committee didn’t want me, and now the BCAN Players Association doesn’t want me, so yeah, it’s hard not to take it personally, but that’s fine.

Photo by Joseph Yeung

All I know is that I have a VERY good skill set, with 4 years of working with a World Class badminton coach, a background in sport science, a passion for rehabilitation and strength & conditioning, extensive knowledge about the international circuit, and the best thing I can do…

… is to integrate and create something that few other people can, given that I don’t think there is anybody with similar credentials in THIS sport. I’m just counting the days down when Alex is done school and we can do some real training, which will give me time to develop a program which combines the best of badminton and the sport sciences.

I know I’ve lost a battle, but I haven’t lost the war.

Top 20 Highlights of 2013

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Pretty much in chronological order...

1) Received the Diamond Jubilee medal for my participation at the 2012 Olympics at BC Sport Hall Of Fame.

2) Won a third consecutive XD National title with Grace Gao.

3) Peter Gade exhibition at ClearOne Browngate!

4) Won the UBC x ClearOne badminton tournament with my girlfriend, Carmen.

(Photo Credit: Carmen Fong)

5) Won the XD title in Peru with Grace Gao.

6) Somewhere in May, I abandoned my attempts at medical school, but started volunteering at Richmond Physiotherapy. I also took the FMS Combo course, which was a serious game changer in my career aspirations.

7) Participated in the BWF World Mixed Team Championships (AKA Sudirman Cup) in Malaysia for Canada.

(Photo Credit: Jessy Sung)

8) Played my first tournament with Alex Bruce at the Canadian International in Ottawa and made the finals.

9) Beat China in the round of 16 at Canada Open in Mixed; witnessed the Thai MD brawl live.

(Photo Credit: Joseph Yeung)

10) Coached a camp in Prince George and did an exhibition as well.

(Photo Credit: James Tran)

11) Got certified in CPR-C with AED from St. John Ambulance. This marks the first step toward writing the NSCA CSCS examination.

12) Went to Anime Revolution to see Jessica Nigri.

13) Moved out of a house I lived in for a good 10 to 12 years. Fortunately, I was able to find a room and rent from my coach, Darryl, and his wife, Michele. Ironically, my brother is also renting a room, so we still technically live together.

14) Wrote my CSCS exam.

15) Won a spree of tournaments, including the Quebec and Ontario Elite Series tournaments with Alex, the 2013 Pan Am Championships in Santo Domingo with Alex, and the 2013 USA International with guest partner Michelle Li. (Fun Fact: Won an international tournament with each of the 2012 Canadian Olympians this year!).

16) Graduated with a degree in Kinesiology from UBC. This marks the end of my first degree after 10 years. I also passed my CSCS exam, which gives me: B.Kin, CSCS after my name.

17) I wrote something else here, but I couldn't find a good picture, so I'm going to post about a $70 action figure instead. I wanted to buy it for a long time, so eventually I did (Play Arts Kai - Ibuki - Street Fighter IV).

18) Started training at Fortius Sport and Health, under Molly O’Brien. Re-enrolled for January!

(Notice the hex bar in the back of my car)

19) Went to Las Vegas for the first time with Carmen. Walked the strip and watched Penn and Teller!

20) Getting ready for 2014! It’s gonna be epic! As for New Year’s Resolutions? I think I may opt to make 10 changes, BUT… one per month (+2 months for extra slack). I heard somewhere (can’t confirm the source, so believe at your own risk) that accomplishing a single task may prove 80% effective, while 2 simultaneous tasks will drop success to 30%. Add a 3rd task will drop it to less than 1% success rate, so multi-task-resolution at your own risk!

(Photo Credit: Carmen Fong)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

10 Things I Learned This Semester:

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1) Interculturalism:

(Source: besolidary.blogspot.com)

I took this course as a replacement for Food Chemistry, but I think it was a good choice, besides not having a midterm or a final exam. It really gave me a new tool that I have often ignored: how to look at things with an intercultural lens. What is “interculturalism” (compared to… “multiculturalism”)? Well, for starters, interculturalism is much more interactive. Here’s an analogy I have used for myself to make sense of things. Consider food: multiculturalism is like having a wide variety of ingredients from different ethnic backgrounds. Interculturalism would be putting them together to create something new. The 3 points we usually stick to include: 1) connecting across cultures; 2) promoting mutual learning; and 3) creating something new. Personally, I’ve always been culturally insensitive because I would do what is efficient or effective, but taking that extra time to respect someone’s traditions, customs, or beliefs really is something I should try, instead of steamrolling people with my ideas and concepts, even though it may be in fact more efficient or effective. And wow… it’s definitely not easy. The assimilation approach seems the most effective, but by connecting with people through their cultural beliefs is really something else. It’s not easy… but I’m trying. After all, I do believe in humanism.

2) Resistance Training makes a difference:

(Shameless plug: Fortius Sport & Health)

I started a more structured program back at the very end of July and documented all my training until now. I gave myself specific training blocks, and tried modelling things from what I was learning, as I was studying for the NSCA CSCS exam. I began with doing my best to increase my base strength, then translating it to a power phase, which took me right into Pan Am Championships. The idea was to build up as high of a strength base as you can, then transfer the gains to power training (i.e. training at high speed). Just for those who don’t know, “Power lifting” still refers to strength training, more or less, with the 3 basic lifts being the squat, deadlift, and the bench press. Lifting large amount of weight will be pretty slow, so strength will definitely increase. Training for power would mean doing Olympic lifting (i.e. cleans, jerks, snatches), although I really only did hang and power cleans, as my shoulder mobility is not at the level it needs to be for overhead lifts yet.

The results of about 3 months of weight training were enormous, and I plan to keep it in my programming, although I will always be modifying based on the information that comes my way. I’m still learning about it myself, and I hope to be a good strength coach one day. However, I’ve been fortunate to learn from a lot of people, including Mike Dahl, the CSC Manitoba Exercise Physiologist who is working with our National Team. Additionally, a big thanks goes to Dan Adams, who is running the UBC Thunderbird Strength and Conditioning Club. I actually would have never learned all this stuff (including how to deadlift haha) if I never met him in my lab last year. He has also recommended Molly O’Brien, a strength coach at Fortius Sport & Health, who I am currently working with! After just the first session, I’m hooked and I will do my best to maximize my time with her.

For those players who want to start weight training, but aren’t too sure where to start, just contact me and I will do my best to give you some ideas (including referrals, if you’re really serious). It’s a very individual thing, so I can’t give a “cookie cutter” approach to everyone. There is a lot of information on the internet, but it can be overwhelming. I don’t recommend you trying to learn off the internet, unless this is part of your field of study. Even I know that I need proper coaching, so I will get a second opinion on my technique whenever I can. Lastly, look for a “Strength Coach” or “Strength and Conditioning Specialist”. Nothing against ‘personal trainers’, but I think ‘strength coach’ is much more athlete specific. And it sounds cooler lol.

3) Nutrition is more messed up than I thought it was.

(Source: tsh.to)

Maybe ‘messed up’ is not the word I’m looking for… nutrition is just very controversial. I personally think it’s more due to the insane amount of individual differences that occur. Going through some schooling in Nutrition has been educational, but learning from the web also expands on that knowledge, at many times, challenging the school of thought taught in most institutions. A huge example is that we learned that coconut oil is a long-chain fatty acid in school, where most sources site it as a medium-chain fatty acid. You might not think that this is a big deal, but medium-chain fatty acids are supposed to be okay for you (health-wise) as they get processed as an energy source without having to turn into chylomicrons, which end up contributing to cholesterol levels. Long-chain ones are processed differently. As this is kind of getting too complicated for me to speak about without consulting further sources, the definition of long vs medium chain is based on the number of Carbon molecules in the fatty acid. Coconut oil has 12, but some define medium chain as 12 or less, while some define long chain as 12 or more. So it is actually based on whether 12-Carbon fatty acids are considered long or medium chain, and it cascades into either coconut oil being good or bad for you. This is only one of the examples I’ve been through. Additionally, the DRIs are actually based largely on expert opinion, which isn’t very high on the “evidence pyramid”… so what should we do?

I think nutrition is a valuable tool for considering that you can be right as much as you can be wrong. There is nothing wrong with acting on your body of knowledge, but you should understand that some things may or may not be correct, and if you’re flexible to adapt, I think you will come closer and closer to the truth. For example, I can argue low fat or low carb diets, but it depends on many factors. If we simplify, it is easy to overlook things. Nutrition is definitely not simple, and because of that, I cannot dwell in it as much as I’d like to. Perhaps I may specialize in something like, sports nutrition in the future, but I cannot apply that to normal people, people with disease, or people trying to lose weight. It’s much like exercising to build big muscles, building strength, or just for endurance/cardio work. The sets, reps, intensity, volume, and rest intervals will all change. However, I think it’s even more complicated with nutrition… because you can have similar effects with different protocols (i.e. weight loss via low carb vs. low fat vs. high fat vs. high protein vs. fasting… etc etc etc). Restricting certain foods also changes certain things and it becomes a huge flaming ball of complicatedness that I will stop talking about right now. Yikes… much respect to dieticians!

4) The best thing that contributes to recovery is… sleep

(Source: athlete2-0.com)

Coming back for the week in between Pan Am Champs and USA International was a good thing. Not only that I had to make up a midterm, I had the chance to go to the Canadian Sport Institute (Pacific)’s Athlete Advance. It was a free event for athletes, hosted at Fortius Sport & Health, which included many guest speakers. Basically it was an all-day conference with different speakers and you could choose which speakers you want to attend. The keynote speaker was John Underwood, who does the Human Performance Project in the USA. His work is mainly in recovery, and I had the fortune of asking a few questions at the end. As I don’t want to make this excruciatingly long (which I often do), the BEST thing an athlete can do for recovery is adequate and quality sleep. It’s still the typical 8 hours, but I’m sure there are individual differences. However, he brought up a few interesting points to sleep quality, such as the effect of ‘blue light’ and maximizing REM sleep.

“Blue light” is generally emitted from our electronic devices and the effect is compounded when we use those devices in the dark (i.e. phone before bed). I’m guilty of using my phone before I go to sleep, and there have been times it seemed to have made me sleep later than I wanted to. If you don’t have this problem, then just skip to the next paragraph. He recommended the apps ‘F. Lux’ (Apple/PC), or ‘Twilight’ (Android). These apps will emit a ‘pink light’ instead, effectively reducing that blue light glow which is supposedly something that can keep you awake. I have used ‘Twilight’ and it seems to be quite effective. As it’s a free app, it wouldn't hurt to try it out.

Improving REM sleep can vary depending on many factors. However, some suggestions were to sleep before midnight, which should make sense for most people. I personally sleep around 10pm and wake up around 6am, but maybe I’m getting old :P However, I did think about it and generally, nothing productive comes out of anything done that late at night anyway :P Regardless, I think you are supposed to get the greatest bout of REM sleep if you sleep early enough, which supposedly boosts recovery, helps memory, etc… (I really need to do some more research here). As sleep greatly affects recovery, sometimes you can sabotage your next training session without enough sleep. This idea is taken more from the ‘central governor’ theory that the Central Nervous System runs everything, and heavy training leads to neural fatigue, which is a delay in processing of the CNS. Proper sleep helps to improve recovery from neural fatigue, and improper sleep habits will sabotage recovery, hence training with neural fatigue. The idea here is that when you aren’t recovered fully and training, the gains from training may be so low that it’s better not to train at all, because you would be sabotaging future training sessions.

I think it’s an interesting concept, but perhaps it may be a bit too extreme and I have yet to come across enough evidence that supports these theories. The concept it pretty solid, as I do notice neural fatigue, which can occur if you do heavy lifts, but what about post-activation potentiation? PAP means recruiting more motor units with a heavy strength exercise so that they can be used in training/performance later on. I suppose there will be incredible individual differences based on genetics, training age, etc, but I don’t want to discount those who may train more often than I would. However, I do believe having undulating microcycles, so a heavy day should be followed by a light or rest day, then to a medium day, then maybe back up again. Especially with older athletes, I find we can keep up with the young guys, but it’s the recovery that gets us in the end. Over the course of a week, we may need more rest, so being efficient in training is definitely a must. I will mull over these ideas for a little bit, and I think we need to return here at a later date. Feedback is definitely welcome!

5) Eminem really is “Rap God”…

Of course this can be debated indefinitely, but I thoroughly enjoyed his MMLP2 album which I purchased on the first day it came out at Target in the USA, as the Deluxe Edition was a bit cheaper than it was here in Canada. I’ve always been a fan, and ironically my very first CD was the MMLP1. Yes, my dad listened to it, but I can say he didn’t quite understand it. I mean, there was quite some intricate word play and stories and skits that were carried over a few albums that you would have missed if you didn’t listen to the others. For example, “Bad Guy” on MMLP2 is actually a sequel song to “Stan” on MMLP1. There were a few references back to the old album on the new one, so I thoroughly enjoyed this album. Unfortunately, “Rap God” doesn’t seem to be 6077 words long, as there are some claims on the internet. I didn’t realize it until I read someone else post about it, and after I copied and pasted the lyrics into Word, I found out it was only about 1500 words. If you calculate the fastest part in the song where he raps 97 words in 15 seconds, just multiply it by 4 (i.e. 388 words/minute) and multiply it again by 6 (i.e. 2328 words/ 6 minutes), and you would realize that 6077 words in 6 minutes would be a slew of gibberish… maybe they meant 6077 characters?

Regardless, my favourite tracks are “The Monster” (second thoughts after radio is butchering it like crazy), “Legacy”, “Bad Guy” (because it connects to “Stan”), “Rap God”, “Beautiful Pain” (Deluxe Edition), and “Headlights”, which is a track where he apologizes to his mother, after all these years. If you have listened to all his albums of the past, it really is a special track.

6) Anecdotal evidence can still give an edge if you are an outlier.

(Skinetex.com)

I don’t really like the name of this title, because it’s basically saying… if you’re lucky, you can win. It doesn't really explain anything, but hopefully you might read on for clarification. I used to always look toward evidence, and I still do, but over time, I've heard different thoughts about things and I have changed my mind… slightly. Consider foam rolling… there isn't actually very much scientific evidence to prove whether it works or not, but anecdotally, it is advertised and used everywhere. Even I have tried it and I still use it when I can. There are results. Taping is another example, where the research isn't finding evidence for it, but perhaps it may be in the scope of the research question. I've seen a study published which says it is not effective. Of course it’s not effective… the test was on healthy people! I would like to think it’s more for some kind of pain relief, so if you’re otherwise healthy, it’s like popping a pain killer and seeing whether it works or not (as an analogy, because pain killers DO work regardless). How it works is another question, but anecdotally, I would support kinesio tape for minor injuries to get back into the game. However, I would not support it as a long-term treatment, because I would believe in a better rehabilitation program to fix the problem. But if you’re in the middle of a tournament, rehab isn’t really going to help, so I would much advocate having some kinesio tape in your bag for such emergencies. Support a local brand: Skinetex.

(Source: galter.northwestern.edu)

Regardless, if you were an athlete, and something gave you a 0.5% performance increase, would you do it? Yes, probably, you would want to do anything to give you the edge on your opponents. Sometimes, research is done where there is no “significant effect”, but would you be willing to try it anyway? Even placebo can be performance enhancing at times, and I would much rather have it help than not. The caution here though is that there is always a cost:benefit ratio to these things. The costs typically include time and money, both which are very valuable to an athlete, with the benefits usually being quite minuscule. What I would recommend is that athletes can try things that won’t significantly hurt them. Don’t waste significant amounts of money on things (more expensive doesn't mean anything sometimes), and make sure you consult an expert especially if you will be consuming it (i.e. new drug, supplement, etc.). Do some research and see if there are other athletes or teams that may find the product useful, and consider where they stand in terms of whether they endorse it because of sponsorship, money, etc. Personally, I would consult the literature and see if the research is justified (i.e. testing athletes vs. normal people), and see if the effect of what you intend to use the product for is used in the research (i.e. my example of testing kinesio tape on healthy people is… well, not very fair. Neither is using it on healthy people to assess performance. The best experiment would be to test on injured people and test whether it would help them compared to if they had no tape, or another conventional treatment e.g. pain killers. Then measure performance). Lastly, if this boggles your mind and it’s taking too much time (time is precious!), then at least have a trusted expert you can refer to for a second opinion.

Personally, I use protein, creatine, and caffeine (sparingly), and I do work with rollers and tennis & lacrosse balls for myofascial and trigger point release. I am trying out some of the Kelly Starrett’s mobilityWOD stuff from his book “Becoming a Supple Leopard”, but I’m still not fully convinced about everything (e.g. voodoo floss). We’ll give it some more time and I will update again in the future.

7) Flying from Seattle is a good idea

There are some conditions to this “idea”:

i) You have to live close enough to the border

ii) You have to have a car

iii) You have to have time to drive (round trip)

iv) You have to have patience for border crossing by land

I probably saved $800 from the difference in plane tickets, flying from Seattle to Santo Domingo, and again to Orlando, instead of flying through from Vancouver. This price difference doesn't include several things, but we’ll calculate it so you can see the difference. Vancouver to Santo Domingo would have cost about $1200 for airfare, plus $100 for a hotel room for the night because there weren’t any flights until the next morning. That would make it about $1300 and missing another day of class. Flying through Seattle would cost only $800, and I would have a chance to drive back late at night (which I did). It cost $50 for gas (roundtrip) and $75 for airport parking. We can add another $25 for meals within the 5 hours of driving, so that would still only be $950, saving me $350. Technically, I saved more time by driving because I didn’t have to wait overnight (hence, didn’t skip class).

Orlando was similar, although I was told that flights were cheaper after I had checked. However, to be fair, we should look at the price of equivalent flights. I flew United specifically because I get Star Alliance points, so flying from Vancouver on American Airlines wouldn’t really be an equivalent. I would have to fly Air Canada, and we all know they are expensive. Air Canada was charging $800 to Orlando, over 2 days, while I could get there from Seattle on a red-eye, with a connection in Houston for $400. Parking was $50 this time, as I had a membership with the Aeroparking, and gas was about $50 again. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to shop in Orlando, but I had some time on Remembrance/Veteran’s Day driving back, so I was able to get my New Balance MX20v3’s! They’re like Nike Free’s except way cheaper… Regardless, I saved another $300, for a total of roughly $750 from both trips, considering I was able to fly back home for a week to write a midterm. So, if you are considering flying from the US instead, it’s probably not such a bad idea!

8) I’ve played with 8 different partners… and I didn’t do too bad.

(with Michelle Li)

Since August, the beginning of my previous mesocycle, I have played in 7 tournaments, although one didn’t really count (why, because I won singles :P). This included the KHAS tournament (BC Circuit), Quebec Elite Series (National), Chinese Cup (non-sanctioned BC tournament), Pan Am Champs – Team (Internationa), Pan Am Champs – Individual (International), USA International, and the recent British Columbia Elite Series (National). So, I ended up playing MD with a different partner for each tournament I entered, and XD with 3 different partners, for a total of 8 different partners!

(with Phyllis Chan)

So, my MD partners include: Rahim Karmali (QC ES), Jacky Ruan (Chinese Cup), Derrick Ng (PAC-Team), Hendry Winarto (USA IC), and Philippe Charron (BC ES) with a total of 3 second place finishes, 1 semi-final finish, and technically a first place finish in the team event. However, XD was even better, with Phyllis Chan (Chinese Cup), Michelle Li (USA IC), and Alex Bruce (QC ES, PAC-Team/Individual, & BC ES)… being undefeated… O__O Thank you, ladies! And yes, it’s been a very fortunate semester for me, and I would like to thank everyone I played with, but special thanks goes to Alex Bruce, because she is my official partner! What can I say… it’s complicated ;)

(with Hendry Winarto)

However, let’s take some lessons from this experience:

If you play with a partner, and your partner misses the shot… you MUST get the shot. Regardless whether it was their shot or yours, if they don’t get it and you don’t either, you lose. You can discuss whose shot it was after the rally.
I find that weaker player often tries to adapt to the stronger player’s game. It would make much more sense for the stronger player to try to adapt to the weaker player’s game. Always let people do what they are comfortable with, and when in doubt, refer to the first point :P
Always lead by example. If you play 100% and play with confidence, your partner will follow. Don’t wait for someone to take charge, just do it.

(with Jacky Ruan)

9) Physical Literacy and Badminton Players

(with Alex Bruce: We're totally physically literate!)

I did a casual survey with 58 badminton players at the Pan American Championships, as I had to do a project about ‘Physical Literacy’ for one of my courses. Physical Literacy (PL) is basically developing fundamental movement skills in children, such as throwing, kicking, jumping, running, and other movement skills that we would want our kids to develop. Early sport specialization in some sports has been criticized for not developing certain motor skills, so kids may be deficient in other abilities. This may put them at risk for injury later on, as their development is highly skewed toward a single sport. For example, badminton players will never do any kicking. Learning to kick properly may be important because you have to balance on one foot to kick, and sometimes you use a rotational force to generate power (think roundhouse kick vs. front kick). Having that ability to kick might mean being able to handle those rotational forces at the knee better, thus maybe preventing an injury from occurring just because your knees are simple strong enough to handle those forces… hypothetically. Anyway, I will just present my findings, as I’ve typed it out for my project anyway.

In a casual survey done at an international badminton tournament with 58 badminton players from 11 countries, we found that most athletes had participated in an average of 6.5 different sports. With an average of about 8 years of International tournament experience, these athletes have done multiple physical activities to get to their highest level of competition in their respective countries. At least 6 Olympians and 15 Pan American Games medalists were surveyed, with many other players currently in pursuit of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

- Limitations in the survey were language barriers and the need for translation. When asked the number of sports or miscellaneous physical activities participated, including dance and martial arts, the cap was at 10 sports (i.e. 10+) and some may not have included ‘badminton’ as a sport because “other” sports were specified. Additionally, the specification whether a sport or physical activity counted was whether the athlete had a solid understanding of the game, including rules. However, inter-rater variability was low, as a single interviewer did all surveys.

- The main conclusion from the survey is that there is likely evidence that correlates those in high performance sport (badminton, to be specific) with the participation of multiple sports and physical activities in their childhood, indicating a high level of physical literacy. Additionally, of all the athletes surveyed, we did not find any athlete that only specialized in badminton.

- Raw data:

- Countries (number of players): Canada (14), Brazil (9), Peru (10), Jamaica (2), USA (8), Mexico (3), Dominican Republic (2), Guatemala (5), Trinidad & Tobago (3), Cuba (1), South Korea (1)

- Males = 34; Females 24

- Range of International Experience: 2-20 years

- Range of Multiple Physical Activities: 2-10+

- Mean Years of International Experience = 8.19

- Mean Years of Multiple Physical Activities = 6.59 (where 10+ = 10)

- Miscellaneous: Players volunteered their information and the information was gathered by the same person. Players were also told that their information would only be used for a “school project”. Each survey took about 2-3 minutes to complete.

- Original Survey Questions:

- Observational Data: Country represented; Gender (based on tournament entry & events entered)

- 1) How do you identify yourself ethnically/culturally/etc.?

- 2) How many years of international badminton competition experience do you have (including junior years)?

- 3) How many different sports or physical activities (including dance, martial arts, etc.) have you done previously?

- 4) Which physical activity or sport would you be doing if not for badminton?

- Top 3 Answers: Tennis (14); Soccer (10); Volleyball (9)

- 5) (Interculturalism Question) What is your favourite country traveled to for badminton and why (not related to badminton tournament experience)?

- 27 different countries were mentioned

- Top reasons: Culture, Lifestyle, & Atmosphere

(Source: phecanada.ca)

10) I want to keep playing… I want a shot at Rio.

Well, the Rio 2016 Olympics would be the final goal. The obvious progression would be to win a gold medal at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto, and if the qualifying period is going well, then I would continue on until the 2016 Olympics. I don’t want to kill myself and go broke trying to qualify, because I want to qualify on my own terms. If I really am the best in my event, I should be able to qualify without having to break my bank account, compared to those who might be able to afford traveling constantly for the year. I don’t want to enforce the stereotype; it’s not worth it if that’s the case. I don’t want to “pay my way” to qualify for the Olympics, unless it is going toward my training. Here is a recap of what it takes to qualify for badminton.

The soonest I can start preparing is January. However, I may opt to take a couple more courses and continue volunteering as a Kinesiologist. It will keep me busy, and keep me on track. I want to go into rehabilitation sciences, so I might as well continue to learn a bit… in the end, I would love to be an expert in rehabilitation in athletes (primarily), in strength and conditioning (S&C), and in coaching both badminton and S&C. It seems like an awful lot, but I’m hoping these 10 000 hours can overlap. I’m probably close to my 10 000 hours of badminton, so adding necessary coaching cues, strategies, sport psychology, and programming should not be another 10 000 hours. These can transfer into S&C coaching as well, where I learn better technique and different programming strategies for different athletes. Keeping myself and my teammates healthy is key, so rehabilitation and “pre-hab” (preventative rehabilitation) can be worked into programs, which will add to rehabilitation hours. This can double up into corrective and mobility exercises for S&C as well, so I’m “double-dipping” everywhere. At least I have a plan. Nutrition-wise, I will see what becomes of it. As mentioned previously, nutrition is a very broad scope in itself, and sometimes it will come into play. However, I cannot link into my programming as much as the others, but I will keep an open mind. I will also leave an open mind for psychology (i.e. decision making, motivation, etc).

With all that said, I’m hoping that everything I do from above can lead to improvements in my game, directly and indirectly. This time around, I don’t really have a solid coach, and I don’t really have a solid program… yet. Some athletes might not like this, but I kind of welcome it, because I will be responsible for my progress, and I cannot blame anyone else if things don’t work out. However, I really need to plan things out and securing funding will be a very necessary step. Kevin Jagger, the “Long TrackLong Shot” of speedskating, has the concept of ‘funding as fuel’, meaning that no matter how far you go, it is based on how much money you have. Once that supply runs out, your progress pretty much stops, so funding is like the fuel that gets you where you need to go. I am not as fortunate as some other players, as my brother is also making an attempt for Rio 2016. Our family helps where they can, but funds are usually divided in half (if any), and we pretty much need to make our own funding, in addition to paying our own living expenses. Very likely I will have to find ways to fundraise and acquire sponsorship, but I will look at different options in raising money as either a team with my partner, or even with my brother, as a family kinda thing. I’m hoping with my new found abilities and networks, I might have a chance to have enough “fuel” until 2016.

Everything is still just an idea in my head at the moment, so be sure to stay up to date for details. If I’m going to choose this path, I’m going to go all in!

Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts

2013-10-11T11:53:00.002-07:00

Okay, before we start out, I'm hoping to blog a bit more to get my thoughts down 'on paper'. It's good to practice writing, and it's also nice to reflect upon how I used to think. Everything I say, I more or less believe to be true, unless I say so. However, the information I present may not actually be true, may be true only at this given moment, and is always subject to change. I can be wrong as much as I can be right, but my goal is just to stimulate minds to create something new or to improve on something that already exists. I will try to use media where I can, but it's not guaranteed. And no, I don't want to be a writer. I only intend to write for an hour, so the blog may stop abruptly for no reason :)

(Source sodahead.com)

The topic at hand is “book smarts vs. street smarts”, and which one is better. Before we go anywhere, I'd like to tell you where I personally come from and hence, my bias. I'm actually leaning toward school. I like school, but I have done good and bad in school. Back in elementary and high school, I was always a decent student. I followed the rules and stuck to the programs, and I came out quite ~~normal~~ ordinary. However, I have also had a taste of sport, which I can argue fits into ‘street smarts’, as there are many experiences I have gained in sport that I would not be able to learn in school. So…darn it… maybe I’m BOTH.

Being nerdy is such a terrible stereotype, and due to popular shows such as “The Big Bang Theory”, I think it continues that trend. I don’t really consider myself a nerd, but there are some things that can easily swing me into that category: I very rarely read fiction; I read research papers; I enjoy science; I am still in school after 10 years (*not proud, but… kind of proud :P); I enjoy video games, comics, anime; I will go on debates with Mormon’s on the street; I overcoach all my students… and the list goes on. I like detail, I like learning… it’s exhilarating to learn something new that you can apply to your practice (although it’s another thing to learn something you’ve done wasn’t true). Regardless, yes… maybe I’m a nerd.

However, I do a lot of things outside school. Even things I read may not be related to school at all. School doesn’t teach you everything; school CAN’T teach you everything. But, you can learn from anywhere, and there is no better (and usually crueller) way to learn by experience. Experience makes a big difference, and I would highly credit my badminton ability in Canada based on experience alone. Hard work, proper technique, high intensity training, and strength & conditioning help as well, but that is more accessible to all players, should they be looking for it. There are many things I have learned through experience that I would have never dreamed of, so there should be much credit to experience as well.

Street smarts? Well, I don’t really like that term so much. I think it’s more based on attention, and our attention is limited. Consider the person texting on her phone while walking on the street. Where does the attention go? Even listening to music with headphones will reduce your attention because your mind is half listening to music. Even if you have a really good idea and start brainstorming, that would probably stop you in your tracks. According to Daniel Kahneman (author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow”), that engagement of System II (um… making that effort to think) may stop you from walking, or at least slow you down. Next time you’re walking somewhere, try calculating 28 x 56 in your head.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, because you will make a mistake. Hopefully it doesn’t do too much damage, but there is always that possibility of being wrong. I personally feel I am wrong more than I am right, regardless how you see me as an athlete or a person. I have made poor choices, sometimes because of a lack of foresight; sometimes because of misunderstandings; sometimes because of bad luck. I refer to luck as simply the turn of the events happening, and reflecting on them in hindsight. For example, if roll a die and guess the right number, I would say that I’m lucky, because I would be correct 1/6^th of the time. Basically, with luck, I don’t expect things to be repeated for similar results. Regardless, the experience itself can be a learning one, and it hits you in the face much more if you are wrong. It’s also possible to be wrong due to luck, so a proper reflection can help you determine whether you want to make the same choice again later on. It’s funny how a bad experience can turn us away for a very long time.

So, you’re probably asking yourself, “Toby, what are you rambling about in your blog today?!” Well, I’m hoping to address the stereotype of “book smart vs. street smart” in that I personally believe that you should be BOTH. And here’s why:

Experience is key, but if you don’t have a good foundation of knowledge, then you have no way to move around from your experience. Experience is based on perspectives and one person’s perspective can be different from another’s, even if it is on the same thing. By seeking outside input or evidence (e.g. research), one can grasp a better perspective on how things really are. However, this can still be skewed or incorrect. For example, a certain diet may work for you (eg. Paleo, Atkins, IF, etc.), but someone else may have found a benefit from eating the EWCFG (Canada Food Guide). Before you go criticizing each other, it may be best to consult other perspectives first, but that’s still not guaranteed to help all the time. Sometimes it is what it is: “If it’s right for you, AWESOME! But don’t expect it to be the same for everyone else.”
School is tough, because there are many things that are not taught in school. For example, how to study. I’ve actually studied how to study, as nerdy as it sounds, but I’ve basically tried many different methods, including Method of Loci, which involves some crazy memorization tricks (I actually used it and could memorize a deck of cards, although that won’t make me very much money unfortunately). However, when I ask other people how they study, sometimes they give me ideas, sometimes they give me ideas that I probably won’t even bother to try. I do not like studying in groups, but I know people who thrive in that environment. I found that I learn more asking questions and getting answers to them, but that may not be the same for everyone. Although this is not always true, I found that there are many times where it’s best to learn the perspective of your TA’s and professors, and regurgitate their thoughts back to them (despite what they tell me in wanting my perspective). I have learned from Daniel Kahneman’s book (haha, another shameless plug) about the “Halo Effect”, where answering your first essay question well may influence the marker to give you the benefit of the doubt later on. Not for everything, but it’s worth a shot if you need it.
Experience is riddled with “Survivorship Bias”. Basically, it is trying to learn from successful people. However, it wouldn’t make sense because if everyone started learning the things that successful people do, then that would average out the level of success, and in the end, we would be where we started, although at a higher relative standard. If that didn’t make sense, I will use my example of training in Calgary for badminton. I was able to play the Alberta Series tournaments and attain prize money which helped fund the way for a lot of my training and traveling. However, if other players wanted to do the same and made the competition harder, there would be less to go around for all of us. Perhaps I was only able to make it as far as I could because I was the only one in the system. Another way to put it is that if we fully funded a couple of players/teams in Badminton Canada, instead of the entire National Team, the results may be better. I could publish a book on how to make the Olympics for Badminton in Canada, but it’s just a personal story; just a simple anecdote; just a simple experiment with sample size n=1. If 2 people tried to copy it, it wouldn’t be sustainable for both of them. I suppose there was a lot of luck involved. Another example is about making money off the stock market. Sure, there are winners, but there are a lot more losers: where are there stories? In an episode of “Hustling America”, a UK television show starring Alexis Conran, he mentioned Las Vegas, in which the city in all its glory was built from the many people who lost their money. But before we end, we can make a counterpoint for experience, where learning from someone else’s bad experience may be a worthwhile thing to do.
Another problem with school is that it can be so broad. In elementary school, I had to learn French, Religion, and Music. I also did PE (which I thoroughly enjoyed). In Grade 4 I learned about classical music, latin-root words, and Greek mythology. Do you know why the “Are You Smarter Than A 5^th Grader” TV show is so difficult? It’s because they just memorize facts… mundane, useless facts with such a broad range than doesn’t really relate to anything else. That’s where it gets difficult. Regardless, school needs to cater to a large population, so it has to be broad. As we get older, we get more specific: for example, in undergrad we can choose our faculty, and then we can choose to specialize even further in graduate studies. I like to think of it as a pyramid, where you are building your base first, and slowly narrowing that focus as you go higher. As you can see, a solid foundation will help you climbing up. If you are purely experience based, you would have a narrow base and you would be stacking it up on itself, kind of like stacking pop cans on each other. Some people may be successful, but for most, they can collapse and they would have to start again. Consider an entrepreneur with no degree. However, with that said, if you keep your base too broad, you won’t ever get very high.

(Source: sodahead.com)

Well, that actually marks about an hour, so I will proofread things a bit and I guess we’ll call it a day. I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog and I will do my best to continue blogging a bit more in the future. Comments are always welcome, except for spam (I get a lot of that actually), and I welcome other thoughts on the matter. Maybe I can learn something :)

Until next time!

Changes

2013-10-07T21:15:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long hiatus. I've actually tried to blog every now and then, but I would give up because I couldn't get things up to a certain standard. Now that I finally have the time to continue, I found that the previous blog was too old and I would have to redo the whole thing, as I am doing now.

Things change, inevitably or not. I'm now out of my grandmother's house where I have been for probably a good 10 years, and my brother and dad had to move out as well. It was a bit sudden, but it was done. Looking back... it still sucks, but there's nothing to do but to accept things and move on. Fortunately, my coach had a room available for my brother and I, so we are both renting rooms from him. Much thanks to him and his wife for helping us out!

Time to say goodbye...

I have pretty much immersed myself in school and training for the past month, with an additional Strength & Conditioning exam I was studying for along with my 3 classes at UBC. I have 2 Nutrition courses and an interculturalism Kinesiology course, so they have been keeping me quite busy in addition to training badminton and strength training. I have taken a new interest in strength and conditioning, and I would like to say it's my newer obsession at the moment. With that said, I have given up all my Men's Singles aspirations, but I don't think that was ever going to get anywhere anyway :P Regardless, it's been pretty busy for the past while, as I didn't even have time to update this blog!

Visiting the UBC Badminton Club on Clubs Days @ UBC

Despite how things are going, I'm definitely ramping up things for the Pan Am Championships to come up in a few weeks, and I had the chance to play a couple of tournaments so far, including a local Provincial circuit tournament and a National circuit tournament in Quebec. The body is still feeling pretty solid, but with some new found knowledge in Strength & Conditioning, I have a long way to go to increase mobility in certain joints, but it will definitely be for the best. I'd like to keep this post short while I slowly get things back together, and I hope to update again soon! Thanks for visiting my blog and I appreciate all the continued support!

McDonald's coupons... what can I say? I'm cheap.

Men's Singles at the KHAS BC circuit tournament

I get fed birds at ClearOne, so now I'm feeding the ClearOne bird...

Nearby intersection of where I stayed in Montreal for the Quebec Elite Series

Practicing Interculturalism in Montreal

Impressive badminton collection at a store in Montreal

CMCC Orientation with Dr. Stuart Love speaking on management of sport injuries

Until next time!

June & July 2013

2013-07-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I blogged, but I will try to highlight what has happened since the end of May, as I have competed in the the Ottawa International, US Open, and Canada Open, in addition to finishing my summer courses at UBC and recently finishing my NCCP modules. It's been pretty hectic somewhat, but it's been quite a productive 2 months, and I've also just finished coaching a badminton camp in Prince George, a smaller town in the northern part of the province for a week. Things have been productive, albeit tiring, but no matter what happens, life continues, and I suppose it is a conscious decision whether we want to participate or not. We always have a choice to be defeated or to carry on.

Sitting with Coach Darryl Yung at the Canada Open
(Source: jyeung via BadmintonCentral.com)

Ottawa International came as a relief, as I had to write both of my summer courses' finals early to play in the tournament. I also took a red eye flight to get there, so that took a toll on my energy levels as well. However, it was nice to get to meet and eventually play against Nathan Robertson and Jenny Wallwork of England, formerly a top English mixed pair, with Nathan getting an Olympic silver medal in 2004 and winning the 2006 World Championships.

2013 Ottawa International at Carelton University
(Source: Me)

The tournament itself ran pretty smooth and I was able to stay at the Carleton University dorms. It was my first tournament playing with Alex Bruce and although there were some kinks to work through, I think we did pretty well overall and made it to the final before losing to Nathan and Jenny. It really made a difference playing a stronger team, as there were things we may have gotten away with against weaker teams. Defensively, we were a little weak as well. Overall, it was a good start to the partnership and a solid result.

(Source: Badminton Canada)

US Open was more of a vacation somewhat, as I did not find a mixed partner because Alex was competing at the 2013 Summer Universiade in Russia for the Canadian team. My girlfriend Carmen also came down, and one of my students, Jiwoo, also came down as well to watch the competition. Unfortunately, I didn't last too long in the tournament as I lost to a Chinese pair in the qualifying draw for MD, and to Arvind Bhat of India in the MS, all in the same day. Though it was disappointing to lose so quickly in the tournament, I felt my performance wasn't actually too bad. Nothing like drowning out your sorrows with T.G.I.Fridays happy hour, with half priced appetizers.

Carmen getting started on the appetizers!
(Source: Me)

The rest of the week was some light training, watching Despicable Me 2, visiting Newport Beach, and lots of eating and shopping with Carmen. Also, we went for dinner as it was Christin Tsai AND Kevin Li's birthdays, on free slurpee day ("7-11" i.e. July 11) so it was a pretty good week, at least to mentally relax a bit from badminton. As the tournament came to a close and we returned to Vancouver, we had to increase our preparations for the Canada Open.

(Source: Me)

Starting Sunday night before the Canada Open began, we had a massive group training with a lot of other Canadian players at ClearOneBadminton Center. It was really nice to have everyone training in a group together, and though it was pretty much a once a year thing, it almost felt like we were part of a national training program. The next couple days I practiced at the Richmond Oval with Alex and we were as ready as we could be to play, as we would be playing against a Chinese team who had reached the final of the US Open, just a few days earlier.

Nice to see Kim Dong Moon back in Canada for a visit,
even though he was working with different athletes!

When it came time for the match, I wasn't nervous, or at least I don't remember it to be that way. As the match progressed, I wanted to win, but not as badly as I wanted to before. I know it was a new partnership, so perhaps I didn't have such high expectations for us to earn results. I suppose my expectations grew as the length of my former partnership grew as well, and because of that, there was always that will to win, or at least that expectation that I should be doing better. However, I could finally escape that feeling and I simply... played. To my surprise, we did fairly well and even managed to escape a match point and took the 2nd set against China. Despite trailing quite a bit in the 3rd, we came back again and barely scraped by at the end, but we won. I really couldn't believe it... but maybe there was some luck involved. Regardless, we came out on top, and I will definitely cherish the win.

(Source: jyeung via BadmintonCentral.com)

Unfortunately, the draw wasn't very favourable, and we had to play against Hong Kong, the team that WON the US Open in the quarterfinals. We came out fairly strong (although I found us quite lucky that first set) and almost managed to take the first set. Unfortunately, luck and everything else seemed to run out in the 2nd, and that's where we ended our run. Hong Kong ended up taking the title, although they had a pretty good match against Thailand in the semi-final. The tournament went pretty well overall, except that I had to do a drug test after my match against China, and the other 'incident' that happened in the final. Stuff happens, bystander effect, outcome biases, etc... I'm really tired of hearing about what happened, as I was there to see it unfold in person. As it really seemed like a major personal issue between the two players, I think I will leave it at that. It's not my business to learn or gossip or guess what they were fighting about. I'm just glad it is over and I hope things will move on peacefully. However, I really don't like it when people compare the incident to hockey or boxing, because it wasn't. It was a real fight: short and unglamourous. There are no rules. So unless hockey players attack each other with sticks or skates, or if boxing allows kicking people on the ground, then maybe it's similar. Otherwise, let's not make substitutions to un-similar things.

(Source: jyeung via BadmintonCentral.com)

After the tournament, I had another day to train with Alex and tried to work out some things for the next time. The session went pretty well, so it will be nice to see how things go the next time we play together. The Tuesday after the Canada Open, I was flown to Prince George, a small town in northern British Columbia, to coach a camp for the week. It was a pretty cool experience overall, although it was quite tiring, coaching 8 hours a day on Wednesday to Saturday, and another 6 hours on Sunday before flying home. I went up with Phyllis Chan, but Christin Tsai and Derrick Ng joined us for Thursday night and Friday, where we did an exhibition. We each played 3 matches, but it was pretty good fun and I think we did pretty well. Perhaps someone who recorded it might post up the final rally for the night, which involves multiple dives from Christin and Derrick, trying to save a match point! Special thanks goes to Lisa Davidson and her family (Kevin, Jarin, and Jon) for hosting us at their beautiful lakeside house, and even taking us out on their boat and giving us a chance to water ski, although only Phyllis made the attempt. It was a good learning experience for myself as well, and it was nice to see so many people watch us play the exhibition and come out for the camp!

(Source: Me)

Now, it’s time to prepare for a month of off-season training, as I will be planning out a running and strength training schedule. I’m also doing a CPR/AED course at St. John Ambulance later this week, and will be studying for a couple of National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) exams. As I will not be attending the World Championships this year, I hope you will follow Michelle Li (WS) and Derrick Ng/Adrian Liu (MD), as they will be the only ones representing Canada!

Thanks for visiting! Until next time!

2013 Sudirman Cup Overview

2013-06-08T23:36:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I know I wanted to be more regular, but I couldn’t get around to writing all the time. It takes me a while to blog, and since I don’t get too many views, I figure I will blog more periodically so I can spend my time more efficiently. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate those who take the time to read what I write, but it’s tough to compete with the incredible amounts of information we’re faced with every day. Perhaps people don’t have as much time to spend reading, but I’d like to capture concepts and thoughts at a higher level, instead of just making brief commentaries or memes about pop culture. Anyhow, I will not bore you with this drivel any longer :P

Currently, I am taking 2 courses at UBC in the summer, meaning a condensed 2 month semester. One course is a coaching course which is my final kinesiology course toward my degree, and the other is a nutrition course, the first of which I hope to make a one year minor. If I could take it all back, I would do a double major in Kinesiology and Nutrition, and then go into medicine or physical therapy. I believe the nutrition would add a good touch to my coaching, and although it is only a minor, I feel that it is a good way to keep the nutritional things I come across in Kinesiology in check. Optimally, a combination of diet and exercise is the way toward a nice, healthy life for most people. One or the other doesn’t seem like such a great idea, but we can only do what we can, with the information we are given.

I will discuss the coaching course first, as it will lead into my review of the 2013 Sudirman Cup in Malaysia. My coaching course involves writing our own coaching philosophy, which I will attach below. Unfortunately, we had a limit to a page and a half, so I will leave the condensed version here. I feel I am missing a lot, but in a way, the philosophy stems from being both a coach and athlete:

Note: I will be using “he/his/him” for the coach, with primarily an individual sport perspective.

The coach should be a support figure and act like a reference manual for the athlete. He should be knowledgeable, keep sport specific techniques and scientific/evidence based methods, and keep up to date with the current trends of the particular sport. The coach should be process-based (vs. outcome) and strive towards development and problem solving. Mistakes and errors can and should be identified, but without punishment. Learning from mistakes, identifying them, and brainstorming innovative solutions with or without other people are critical life skills which can be practiced in sport. Mistakes are inevitable and athletes can develop an awareness of their own errors through practice and self-reflection. The goal of error analysis is to problem solve and develop a solution to a problem. Each solution is in itself a mini-successful event. If anything, mistakes are encouraged to develop persistence through methods such as trial and error, which is ironically how motor control is thought to be developed. In this case, the negative connotations toward errors should be removed and communicated early on to the athletes. The entire system should be process-based, which ultimately leads to athlete-centered goals.

Athletes should have written goals that have been prepared with great care and constantly updated and reviewed. Team goals should also be considered for doubles teams and athletes are accountable for their behaviour based on their goals. If their primary goal is to have fun, then the coach should work to help athletes enjoy sport. If their primary goal is to make the Olympics, then the coach will work with the athletes in a much different way. Although the coach cannot force the athletes to do anything, he should make suggestions to help the athletes come to a proper conclusion. Ultimately, the athletes make the final choice, but should remain accountable to their written goals. Goals may not necessarily have to be realistic, as they can simply be targets to aim for. Becoming an Olympic gold medalist may not be reasonable in some sports, but to train as if the athlete were an Olympic gold medalist is very possible.

The coach should be humble enough to realize if the athlete is no longer improving under his care, and should recommend the athlete to a better coach should an opportunity arise. As the coach is trying to assist the athlete the best way possible, even reference manuals get updated, and the most current version may be what is best for the athlete. Communication should also be always open between the coach and athlete(s), enabling clarification of concepts when necessary, discussing different perspectives to various approaches, etc. The goal of the coach is to transfer his knowledge to the athlete and develop the athlete to a stage where he/she is good enough to function on their own. At this stage, the athlete should find another coach and continue to progress.

Finally, the coach should always instill the Olympic values: Excellence, Fun, Fairness, Respect, Human Development, Leadership, and Peace. No value should ever have to come in conflict with another and coaches should model these values as well. In summary, the coach can tell the athletes “who, what, when, where, why, and how” they should do things, but ultimately, it is the athlete’s choice.

As you can see, I threw in the Olympic values, because I feel that they are important to have in mind, especially since I had the fortune of being a Canadian Olympian. I didn’t think it was such a big deal before, or even for a period of time after, and I still don’t think it means anything or that I should get any special benefits because of it. However, it does make me feel more accountable for my behaviour and my actions. Striving for these values in everything I do and to model these values wherever I go, that is a whole other challenge in itself. The coaching course has really given me new things to think about, as we started the course with a more spiritual perspective. I really felt uncomfortable at first, but I also learned to take my ‘ego’ out of things. Learning to deal with anger, although with a spiritual spin on things, really did play a role in my performance at the Sudirman Cup…

The 2013 Sudirman Cup began at the end of May, and Derrick and I flew to Malaysia via Hong Kong. We had about a 12 hour flight, a 7 hour layover, and another 3 hour flight. With the additional time it takes to wait at the airport, wait to get picked up, wait to get to the hotel in Malaysia, it came out to be about 25 hours! Fortunately, we didn’t have to play for 2 days, so we had ample time to adjust to the temperature and conditions of Malaysia, minus the jet lag. The first day we arrived, we had an opening gala with all the athletes and Jessey, a fellow Canadian working for the BWF in Malaysia advised us to dress up for the banquet as it was also an awards night for certain players and officials. We had a pretty awesome complementary Chinese/Malaysian dinner and pretty much everyone was dressed up on the Canadian team. It was a pretty good night overall :)

(Source: Martin Giuffre)

Over the next few days, we played the other countries in our pool (France, Netherlands, and Austria), and we played a full 5 match round robin, meaning that even though we had lost or won 3 matches already, we would still play the remaining matches. As we had lost to France and Netherlands, we came out 3^rd in our pool and had to play against Sweden. Although it was first to 3 matches, it actually came down to the last match… It also happened to be my match, but we lost pretty badly, giving Sweden the 3-2 win.

Up until this point, the details are rather thin, but I would like to write a bit more on what happened behind the scenes, from my perspective. My goal is not to blame anyone for anything, but to identify ‘problems’ AND offer solutions. I believe both are needed, kind of like how I view diet and exercise. I hope I don’t offend anyone, and I don’t want anyone to take anything personally, as that was also one of the lessons of coping with anger from my class. With that said, one of our coaches was actually sick and could not make it to Malaysia, so we were technically understaffed at the start, as Jeff White, our coach, had to run all managerial tasks and coaching tasks as well. He sat behind all 20 of our matches by himself, and I think that is a rather impressive feat. He also did his best in trying to cater to each of our individual needs and I think he did a really great job overall, so much thanks to Jeff for managing AND coaching us!

From my room... jet-lagged

A ‘problem’ (without a negative connotation) I felt with the ‘team’ this year was exactly that: teamwork. I know we are playing an individual sport; I know if we each did our job we would be fine; I know we don’t train together, or even speak to each other much. The team dynamics seemed a bit off and for once, it did matter to me, because I finally have a better idea of the meaning of teamwork, or at least I think I do. Jeff really respected us as individuals because we were funding ourselves, and he even communicated with us more independently than as a group. Normally, that’s what we do and normally it works, but I wish he pulled us together a bit more. That’s how I personally felt, and if I were to blame anyone, I would only blame myself for not trying to make a better group dynamic. I actually tried to request a team meeting after we lost to France, so I did actually make a move, but I suppose I could not get everyone on the same page. All I did was to ask a question about how each person dealt with the ‘drift/draft’ in a windy stadium, and getting everyone to voice their input.

View of Berjaya Times Square from the 10th floor (bottom of pic is 3rd floor)

Perhaps I have failed a bit on leadership, or at least to the extent that I see it. I really wanted everyone to voice their fears, or write them on a piece of paper, then I would collect them all and throw it away, or take each fear and give it to somebody else who didn’t have that fear. That way, we could all “throw away our fears”, or at least know that there is someone on the team who wasn’t afraid of what we were afraid of and could help us overcome our own fear, while we can help someone else overcome theirs. THAT, I think is teamwork, and that is also the leadership I failed to model. For me to know things and not act on them, in my perspective, is that I am withholding information, or withholding myself from doing my best. It becomes difficult though, as I do make attempts to voice what I know, but as you can see, sometimes I write a bit too much and some people don’t have the time or attention span to digest about 2000 words of information (length of this blog so far) at a whim.

To prevent this from going another 1000 words, I will use a picture. Okay, never mind. However, I would like to address the partnership conundrum with my mixed doubles for those who are curious. I would much rather give you the inside scoop than have people speculate. Still, it is from my perspective, but since I am actually involved in the matter, I’m sure it’s worth something at least. For those who didn’t know, I came into the tournament playing with Grace Gao, ended the tournament playing with Joycelyn Ko, and left the tournament with Alex Bruce as my current partner now. My partnership with Grace had its ups and downs, but especially after the Olympics, things started going downhill pretty fast. Grace was off on injury leave and needed medical clearance, but didn’t get it until December 2012. I cannot blame someone for their injuries, but being a course away from being a Kinesiologist, I can raise questions on how an injury which needed 5-6 months of recovery occurred and what should be done to prevent a recurring injury or other injuries. Of course, there are those individual factors that some people get hurt before others do, but perhaps we all need to look at our current training practices or those we give our athletes and see if they are on their way toward further injury. I’m not out blaming or condemning anyone, I’m just trying to raise awareness. Prevention, or ‘pre-hab’, is always less costly but always ignored, or deferred until a later time where it may be too late. I will come back to this concept, as it also relates to the sequence of events.

Anyway, Grace has been training in Toronto, probably as early as February 2012, as I had moved back to Vancouver because our coach, Kim Dong Moon, moved back to Korea. In September 2012, after the Olympics, she moved to Toronto and partnered up with Michelle Li, under the same coach, Jennifer Lee of Lee’s Badminton. It became quite evident that her new training priority was doubles, because she was doing a lot of stroke and backcourt work. This also affected our mixed, as she was backing off the net, which started causing more problems. But still, we could win Nationals; still, we could win the Peru International. It was frustrating because I was still winning, but only at the level where nobody was really stepping up. To me, it felt like winning in a void. Empty.

I wanted to switch partners, so the best option would be to work with someone who is local, so I decided I might try to convince Joyce to start playing mixed along with her doubles. I don’t know how long I will play for, but I offered to commit for a year. She was quite hesitant at first, because she didn’t feel comfortable playing mixed, but I suppose I somehow convinced her. We were going to play Ottawa International, coming up later this month, as our first tournament of the season together, but we had a chance to try it out in Malaysia. I had made a request, after playing 2 matches with Grace where we didn’t perform so well. The first match against France, I felt I should have done more in directing how we should have approached the game, but a bit of my ego came into play, and I wanted her to figure things out herself; I wanted her to be accountable. Perhaps, in the end, I was accountable for not doing anything. Neglect and avoidance is a choice, and in some cases, it’s a crime as well.

Sukiyaki set only $6 CAN!

I realized the mistake, and I resolved to make up for it, but I suppose I went to the next extreme against the Netherlands, and I got too involved with her part of the game that I lost focus with my own game at times. But it felt better that I tried more, because I knew that I had overstepped my limits. I now have a better idea where that limit is, and I can work with that. Just as I try to have at least an estimated rep max when I lift weights, it gives me a better idea what my capabilities are so I can push within those boundaries. Regardless, I wanted to move on, and after a team meeting after our match against Austria, I was able to play mixed with Joyce. Unfortunately, things took another turn…

The match went rather poorly, as we did not perform well together. I tried to tackle the problem after, but she was unwilling to work with me. I was working toward prevention, as I wanted to move forward and work toward a better performance, but she was unwilling to cooperate. I wanted to keep communication lines open, as this has been a problem with my partnership with Grace, but it wasn’t going to happen. And so, it turns out that we decided not to play Ottawa anymore. Fortunately, Alex didn’t have a partner yet and we decided to play immediately after Joyce denounced our partnership. I guess this is a good example of “when one door shuts, another one opens”. Regardless, I wish Grace and Joyce the best in their future badminton careers, as I’m not one to hold a grudge, at least not anymore ;)

I guess I disagree with EVERYBODY :P

So if I were to sum up the key things in this monstrous essay, is that I write too much and I really appreciate it if you read all the way up to here! But to be serious, I think there’s more to teamwork than meets the eye, even if your task is primarily individual-oriented. Preparation and preventative action should be considered especially when you want to ‘do your best’, and leadership abilities really can take off when you keep your ego out of the way. Also, I must be bad with women… cuz I went through three in one tournament… oops… :P

Until next time! Thanks for reading 3000 words!

(For 2013 Sudirman Cup matches of Canada vs. France and Austria, please visit my YouTube Channel!)

Week 15 & 16 (2013)

2013-04-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Week 15 & 16: April 7 - 20

(Week 15)
Badminton: 4.5 / 5
School: 2.5 / 5
Misc: 4 / 5
Overall: 3.67 / 5

(Week 16)
Badminton: 2 / 5
School: 3 / 5
Misc: 2 / 5
Overall: 2.33 / 5

I apologize for lumping both weeks together, but I was away in Lima, competing at the Peru International in Week 15, and then coming back for 3 final exams in Week 16. To top it off, I also had the BC Provincials to play on Friday and Saturday. I am finally done, so hopefully I can keep updating a bit more regularly for the next little while! I will do my best to update chronologically, so I guess the most interesting part will be up first: Peru International!

As Air Canada was sold out on flights coming back, all of us Vancouver booked the flight with United/Continental to fly down to Lima, Peru. Typically, there are 2 major routes down via Star Alliance partners and it would be usually United or Air Canada. I would fly Air Canada if the flight is cheap, but it connects in Toronto and sometimes the flights don't sync up, meaning that if you flew to Toronto early in the morning, you still might miss the flight to Peru and have to go the next day. The other option, which I've done a few times now, is fly from Vancouver to Houston, then Houston to Lima. Unfortunately, the flight to Houston is really early in the morning (~06:30) but it gets us into Lima on the same day (arrive ~23:00). The reason we stick to these airlines is to gather Aeroplan status miles, as options are limited in Canada. Perhaps if Westjet joined One World, maybe that would be a cheaper alternative, as you could fly American Airlines, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Otherwise, you're stuck with Air Canada, Lufthansa, United, and a couple other ones, but apparently it's not easy getting into Asia. It was quite costly booking flights to Malaysia for the 2013 Sudirman Cup coming up at the end of May.

My unique luggage stickers

Anyway, I traveled down with the ClearOne group, including Adrian Liu, Joycelyn Ko, Derrick Ng, and Christin Tsai, so it was nice to travel with some other people. The flights went quite smoothly and I ended up doing a lot of studying. I remember going through my neuroanatomy textbook and the flight attendant asked me what I was studying. I showed her the cover, and she gave me this... look (the 'ugh' look), so that was kind of funny. Perhaps she was just empathizing, but regardless, I found it quite humorous. The flights were quite long, and I ended up watching a couple of movies, including 'Jack Reacher' (2012) and 'House At The End Of The Street' (2012). I actually watched 'HatEofS' first, as I enjoy watching horror movies, but I felt both movies weren't too bad and they entertained me thoroughly. Perhaps it's due to the limited options you have on an airplane, so I may be over-rating both these movies. I felt 'Jack Reacher' kind of ended a little abruptly, while 'HatEofS' was a simple movie, and giving away any more information might spoil the movie, so I will leave it at that. By far, the best thing I saw, was a TV series called 'Impractical Jokers', where 4 friends have competitions with each other in various scenarios and the biggest loser out of a set of challenges per episode have an extra punishment they have to do that humiliates them even further. It's definitely worth checking out, and it made about an hour and a half of the plane ride go faster, as I watched all 3 episodes that United provided.

Official Website

Finally, we arrive in Peru, where we begin our first set of 'challenges'. Christin arranged rooms with the Ontario people, so I suppose they contacted the tournament organizers directly. Unfortunately for the rest of us, due to communication errors, we didn't have an airport pick up, nor did we end up getting a room at the tournament hotel we booked at. So, we were at the Bayview hotel which had no rooms, and we were desperately searching for a nearby hotel. Joyce remembered a nearby hotel they stayed at last time, so with the help of Google Maps and some locals (remember, stuff isn't always labeled correctly on Google!), we walked with our luggage to the El Tambo hotel, maybe 5 blocks away. By the time we got our rooms, it was probably about 1:30am and we had practice at 9:30-11:00am the next day! Oh well, such is life.

(Source: Me) El Tambo - Lobby

(Source: Me) El Tambo - Room

(Source: Me) El Tambo - Restaurant

We made it to the practice without too much difficulty and had a decent practice. The venue was the same as the 2012 Pan Am Championships, so I didn't have much trouble adjusting. After practice, we had lunch with the other Canadians before heading back to the hotel to rest. I ended up studying the whole afternoon, went back out for dinner, then... the fun began. We decided to extend our rooms for the rest of the week, but unfortunately the hotel was fully booked! There was a fashion trade show in Lima that weekend, and everything was pretty much booked up. They told us to wait til the morning to check with their sister hotel nearby, but Adrian suggested we go find it ourselves and try to book first. It was a really good thing we did that, as it ended up being fully booked as well. We decided to check out the Lima Wasi, another tournament hotel, but they were fully booked. We started getting a bit nervous, when we walked to the Mariott (4.5 star, $360/night) to ask for a room, but they were fully booked as well! They told us that all the popular higher class hotels were fully booked, including the Hilton, so that saved us a trip. We continued walking further, checking out the Ibis, Colon, and Embajadores, then finally came to the Ferre, the other tournament hotel. Fortunately, they had one double room, but they weren't sure about the 2nd room, but at least guaranteed us 2 single rooms. At least we found a hotel...

Follow the (Purple) letters!

So the next morning, I was off to play Men's Singles, as the other Canadian player withdrew from the tournament due to an injury, and I won a 3 setter against a player from the Dominican Republic. He had a pretty good attacking game and I also made a lot of mistakes, but I was able to adapt a bit better at the end and came through with the win. Unfortunately, my next round would be the tournament's top seeded player, but that was the least of my worries at the moment. I took a taxi back to the new hotel we were staying at to confirm rooms, then walked back to the El Tambo to check out. Fortunately, the others didn't have to play until Friday, so they were okay. After moving hotels, the rest of the tournament went quite smoothly, minus the fact that the tournament kept changing the transportation schedule on us, so a few of us ended up taking taxis and getting reimbursed later on. That evening, I went 3 sets with Kevin Cordon of Guatemala, the top Pan American Men's Singles player. Even though it went 3 sets, I never felt in control of the game and was always chasing. It didn't really bother me as his skills were much better than mine in Singles, but it was nice to challenge him and it was overall a great learning experience. Definitely gave me a lot of things to think about after the match!

Lunch at Chili's

The rest of the tournament went quite smoothly for the Canadians up until the semifinals. I actually think that all Canadian players that went down made at least the semifinal or better in one event! I think that's pretty good for Canada! Some really close matches, especially the Women's Singles semifinal where Christin defeated Michelle Li for the first time! The match was well over an hour and it was a really good match between the both. I think it will be interesting how it turns out the next time, as Michelle will be eager to try to establish her dominance in the event, while Christin may have new found confidence... but that may have to wait a while as we will all be teaming up at the World Mixed Team Championships (Sudirman Cup) in Malaysia next month! In terms of the other matches, things typically went the same way they had in the past except for the Women's Doubles final, where Michelle and Grace Gao defeated Joycelyn and Christin in straight sets. After the tournament, I went to study for the rest of the day until we had to go to the airport and take a red eye flight to Houston. From Houston, we flew to Los Angeles and then back to Vancouver, as it was better than waiting for the direct flight from Vancouver to Houston, which would have gotten us home at about 10pm Vancouver time, making it almost a 24 hour travel period. Unfortunately for me, I had to keep studying...

XD Medalists

WD Medalists

MD Medalists

WS Medalists

Working hard, or hardly working?

(via PhotoGrid - Android)

The NEXT MORNING (Tuesday), I had to be up and ready to write my deferred neuroanatomy exam. It wasn't so easy and I felt I could have studied a bit more, but perhaps my approach to the course wasn't so accurate. I spent a lot of time with the textbook and reading things that were a bit too detailed at times, when I probably should have focused on just the lecture notes. The textbook made some things confusing, which ended up wasting time because I had to look it up to try to understand it, and it ended up being too complicated and non-examinable anyway. Although at times, it was interesting to delve deeper, the information I remember wasn't of use in the context of the course and I probably didn't remember everything about it anyway. I suppose it will be a valuable lesson on being more specific in what I have to learn and that I shouldn't try to learn everything, because that's simply not possible. Anyway, I went home right away after my exam and began reviewing for my biochemistry final, which was the next morning, also at 8:30am. You can start to see how Peru International is kind of on the brink of "academic suicide". Regardless, I was able to focus and study and overall, I felt reasonably prepared for my biochem final. Again, there were many things that were too detailed, but my approach to the course was slightly better, as I spent the majority of my time on the lecture slides, and just skimmed the textbook. Actually, I skimmed 3 different textbooks, and I think that may have been what saved me from failing (well, we'll know for sure when my marks come back...).

(Source: serc.carleton.edu)

I took most of the day off after, as I felt a bit burnt out and did very light studying for my Friday exam on skeletal muscle physiology. I actually went to train, as I had to prepare for the BC Provincials on the weekend, and I'm quite glad I did at least a bit of conditioning. Unfortunately, later than night, I started feeling an itch in my throat and by the next morning, I was dealing with runny noses and sore throats. Studying was still fairly productive, but since my final was at noon on Friday, I still had the morning. On Friday, the sore throats were getting worse but not enough to become a cough yet, fortunately, so I was able to go through my exam without coughing up a storm, because no matter what you do, nothing seems to come out of a 'dry cough'. Regardless, I finished the final and had to get ready for the tournament. No rest for the wicked.

(Source: cheezburger.com)

Due to low entries in the tournament, we were playing everything round robin (play everybody in your pool), and then crossing over, then having the winners play the final. The shuttles were incredibly slow to begin with, but we found better ones at the correct speed fortunately. Unfortunately, it cost me the first game in my match and I really struggled to pull things together, as I was exhausted mentally from the studying and exams, and physically from my illness. Long story short (for the whole tournament), I didn't play very well overall and I was also dealing with a forearm injury which has probably gotten worse. As much as I want to get back into training, I understand that I need to rest and recuperate before I can get better. I suppose this could be an example where 'short term pain, long term pain' can be referenced, because if I keep training with my injury, it will only get worse and there will be no 'gains' at all. I would like to thank my partners, Hugh and Phyllis for playing, and I apologize if I got upset at times because, well, I was pretty much 'out of my body and mind' in terms of physical and mental exhaustion, sport-legal medication (pseudoephedrine-less cold medicine), and whatever else was going wrong those two days that were out of my control. Now I can finally rest a little more and do all the things I have neglected due to final exams!

All matches within about 24 hours (XD final was at 7pm)

Anyway, that's probably all I'm going to write (no more reading, yay!), so until next week! Hopefully I can do something productive so I won't be writing about how I played video games for a week next time. Thanks for checking out my blog!

Oh, lastly, before I forget, one more thing that happened this week was the launch of a new badminton footwork app for your iPads and tablets! I'm actually endorsing this app because I'm in the demo video :P I think it's a neat thing to have, especially if you really want to improve your badminton. I would probably rate footwork as one of the most, if not THE most important thing, and no matter what event you play, solid footwork will always help! Anyway, check it out when you can (not out on Android at the moment, but coming out soon) and support a local developer's app! Support badminton! Support me! Pretty please? :)

Official // Facebook // Twitter // YouTube

Thanks for visiting! See you next week! Some matches from Peru International can be found on my YouTube Channel: towbsss

For the rest of the matches, please visit my YouTube Channel!

Time to relax!

Week 14 (2013)

2013-04-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

Week 14: March 31-April 6

Badminton: 2.5 / 5
School: 4 / 5
Misc: 4 / 5
Overall: 3.5 / 5

Song of the Week: Ryan Star - "Brand New Day". Wow, actual lyrics. I'm more of a hip hop fan, but I usually rather work with instrumentals as I can easily drift into my own thoughts and what I am doing (e.g. studying). However, I must pay tribute to 'Lie To Me', a TV series that only spanned 3 seasons long before it got canceled by Fox, for reasons I'm not sure why. The premise of the series is about a group of experts that specialize in lie detection, and some of the show is actually based on the works on Paul Ekman, a psychologist who researches emotions and facial expressions.. It's a pretty interesting mystery show with a pretty good cast of characters. Tim Roth really does shine in his role and it's definitely worth a watch, as you can probably find an entire season for only $15-20 if you're lucky. I liked Season 2 the best, as it has 22 episodes. Seasons 1 & 3 have only about 13, unfortunately. So, if you haven't guessed by now, this is the opening theme of the series. I also highly recommend checking out Paul Ekman's books.

This week I think I'll review my courses for the term. UBC BIOC 302 is pretty much the 2nd half of a general biochemistry course. The first part involved more of an intro, with general protein structure and carbohydrate metabolism, while this second half focused on lipid metabolism, protein metabolism, and nucleic acid metabolism and structure. I found Biochemistry quite interesting, though my marks may show otherwise, but I can really relate to concepts in terms of nutrition. Also, some of the medical case studies we came across were quite engaging as well. Unfortunately, the driest part was the DNA to RNA to Protein part, including DNA replication, protein transcription, and protein translation. It's not THAT bad, but the other parts were better I guess. Overall, the professors were pretty good, although we had 3 different professors this time. Makes it a bit hard in adapting to each one, but generally, it wasn't too bad overall. Course objectives and everything are very clear cut, and exams are non-cumulative, but basically, they are just testing on both sections (i.e. fats/proteins, then nucleic acids). It would be pretty crazy to have a cumulative exam, though I think it would be cool to get the interactions. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the course, despite how my grades turn out to be: 4.5/5 (-0.5 for difficulty).

(Source: lifesci.rutgers.edu)

My skeletal muscle physiology course UBC KIN 462 was like a roller coaster ride. There were so many things I didn't understand at times, but I think it finally came together in the end. It's still a relatively new course (3rd time taught at UBC) so I'm sure it will work out it's kinks along the way. The instructor basically designed the course from scratch, so imagine having to make up a course from scratch? Not easy. The first part of the course was quite relevant to muscle physiology, as it was a giant overview of everything we've done with muscles, although I felt the Bioenergetics was rushed a little much. People without a Biochemistry background will definitely be swamped, and it's not an easy task to go learn it on your own. Instead of understanding things, it ends up with memorizing numbers (ATPs) and gets quite overwhelming, with 10 steps in glycolysis and another 8 in the TCA cycle. There's also the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex between the two, which gets overlooked usually, so you get contrasting numbers of ATP. Considering that older texts use a P/O value of 2 and 3 (per FADH2 and NADH), instead of the the 1.5 and 2.5 in Biochemistry, you'll end up with a whole mess of numbers if you don't know what's going on. Regardless, that's a problem that I didn't have, but what I had problems with was understanding transcription factors and intracellular signaling. The signalling cascades were foreign to me (and they still are), but I've finally just buckled down and accepted that they exist and just followed along. To me, it just feels a bit like memorizing, but I'm doing some extra reading about them. We dabbled a bit with it in the end of Biochemistry, touching very briefly on eIF's and eEF's (eukaryotic initiation/elongation factors) but I don't think we need to know which one is which, fortunately. However, to lump them all together seems kind of unfair, and shows a really superficial understanding. BUT, I guess our prof in Biochemistry did make the statement that we will have a "superficial but sufficient understanding" and that seems fair to me.

(Source: rockland-inc.com) So... which ones do I need to know again?

The other major part in this course included seminars and group projects. Seminars were where we discussed a bunch of questions in groups, and it was quite good because it was nice to see where you stood with other classmates (i.e. equally confused hahaha). The group projects were quite nice, as they gave perspective into many different aspects of muscle physiology. Some of the ones that spoke to me more were topics such as rhabomyolysis, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), and recovery modalities including massage and contrast baths. There were other really good presentations as well, but I may save it for a blog next time. Overall, the course came together and I think I really learned a lot from it: 4/5 (-0.5 for difficulty, -0.5 for order).

(Source: http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v20/n8/fig_tab/ejhg201244f1.html)

Finally, my last course is Neuroanatomy, or UBC KIN 473. Overall, it's a pretty simple course, with 2 midterms (25% each) and a cumulative final, so it's a pretty straight forward course. The material was sufficient, although a bit shallow, but since its focus was a bit more on clinical examples, it was overall a pretty good course. We spent the first third of the course with motor/descending pathways and problems, the middle third with sensory/ascending pathways and the basal ganglia, and the final portion covering the cerebellum, vestibular systems, and blood supply to the brain. The only problem with the course is that there were no online materials, so we would have to write down everything in class. Attending class is absolutely crucial, and I found it difficult at times because you were busy scribbling stuff and sometimes you lose focus. It's like continually stalling between rallies and slowing the pace down in a badminton game. But aside from that, it was quite an interesting course and gave me much more respect (and a bit of fear) about how complex neuroscience can be: 4.5/5 (-0.5 for no online materials).

(Source: flashcarddb.com)

My forearm injury has been hampering training slightly, but the extra rest seems to coincide with tapering for the Peru International next week. We leave on Tuesday and the tournament starts Wednesday. Draws don't look too tough, so I hope things work out (and I get some good quality studying done)! On Wednesday, I went for a haircut in the Kerrisdale area and we decided to check out The Red Onion, which seemed to be like a fancy burger place that has been around for a very long time. I've been there as a kid probably more than a decade ago, so this place has survived the test of time. As I went with Carmen, it worked out better because we could split burgers in half and get to try both of them, as I ordered a Hawaiian chicken burger, while she got a gingered salmon burger. Both were incredibly delicious and I would definitely recommend people to try it out, but it's a bit pricey, being $11 and $12 respectively for the burgers. With a half order of onion rings, it came out to be about a $30 lunch after tax and tip, so it's not for those who prefer a more budget friendly meal. However, it you love great tasting food, I guess your money's worth!

(Source: Me)

Thursday night, Carmen and I went to an event in Gas Town called "Share Your Heart with Haiti", where it was a fundraiser for medical supplies for doctors and nurses volunteering their time in Haiti. My friend from class, Aja, who is a nurse and a promoter of the event sent me an invite, so I decided to go with Carmen. I very rarely do these things... actually, this may be the first time I've ever went to something like this, but it was a fundraiser and a potential networking opportunity. After reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers", I decided that opportunities should be taken, and I guess this was no exception. It was held at the Secret Location's tasting bar and it was a pretty interesting evening. We got a free drink, chatted with some people, had a bit of food (exceptional crab cakes!), and Carmen even bid of a few silent auction items. We didn't stay too long, but it was nice to see so many people out to support a great cause and I even got bear hugged by a male nurse named Hugo. Nice guy. But anyway, a big thanks to Aja for the invite and I hope the event was a success!

(Source: Carmen)

(Source: Me)

My Tokidoki stuff finally came, and I got an exclusive skate deck because I purchased a combination of their exclusive Tokidoki x New Era hats! By far my favourite clothing brand at the moment, even though I don't get the chance to wear it out as much as I want. Typically, I'm stuck wearing my badminton clothing supplied by Yonex and anything from previous multi-sport Games events from the Candian Olympic Committee (COC). As I'm training most of the time, badminton clothing is so comfortably, casual, and simple :P Regardless, I have a LOT of hats, and I've added 2 more to the bunch, along with a hat carrying case. That will prove useful on the airplane rides. Also, I got a couple of shirts, one for Carmen, featuring Psylocke, as it is a Tokidoki x Marvel crossover. Anyway, check out their website for more information! To finish off the week, we went out for dinner with our Korean friend Jiwoo, as he is going back to Korea for a while. He took us to this Korean BBQ place out in Coquitlam, called To-Dam (I think). He's a VIP there as he eats there a lot, so we had some pretty good service. The food was excellent, but not sure what the price was. Usually, Korean BBQ is on the more expensive side, especially as it wasn't AYCE (All You Can Eat). However, the quality of the food was very good!

(Source: Me) Carmen modeling a TKDK hat

(Source: Me) Korean BBQ!

So, that's all for this week! Next week I will be in Peru, so I will try to take more pictures and video, but no guarantees as I will be studying like crazy too! Thanks for visiting!

Week 13 (2013)

2013-04-02T22:58:00.001-07:00

Week 13: March 14-30

Badminton: 4 / 5
School: 3 / 5
Misc: 4 / 5
Overall: 3.67 / 5

Productive week as all of our group's effort came together for the final copy of our Creatine Supplementation paper and presentation on Thursday. It was also nice to have Friday (and Monday) off so I can get caught up with some studies, but it was a real downer that I did badly on my Neuroanatomy exam. The UBC x ClearOne Tournament was this weekend, so it was nice to be in the tournament environment again as well :)

Song of the Week: Kingdom Hearts Piano Collections - 2nd Mov. Kairi - Andante Sostenuo. I tried playing this piece a long time ago but the end was kind of a turnoff because it was so hard to play. Now I'm trying to get back into it and I've forgotten some things, but still remember some parts, so basically it's just a huge mess :) The song is from the video game 'Kingdom Hearts' (somewhat of a cross between Final Fantasy and Disney characters, with original characters mixed into the franchise as well). This is the theme of Kairi, the female character in the game that the lead character kinda has a thing for. But stuff happens and I like to think of it as a song of enduring or patience. Beautifully crafted piece, though I don't know if I will ever play it as well as the recording. Maybe someday :)

Let's start with the rant about my Neuroanatomy midterm. Well... I really don't know what happened. It's not like I didn't study for it, but I think I just didn't know what to expect. I ended up studying too much extra stuff and spent too much time typing things out of the textbook to learn which weren't even tested. I suppose I'm either losing touch with what I need to know in school, or still trying to recover from being out of school for so long. I feel I'm a bit mixed up with what I need to know for the exam, and what may be interesting or of practical use to me. I love learning about things that I can relate to, but I guess I process things differently. I apologize if you expected this to be about Neuroanatomy, but I will be talking about exam writing. If the TA is marking my exam, it would really not matter so much what the prof is saying, to the extent that he provides what I need to know, but the answers I give should be catered toward the TA because he is marking. Therefore, it would be much more interesting to figure out what the TA is thinking, or asking the TA questions, if he is the sole marker of the midterms. This would be the second time I have been killed by TA's because they are the ones marking. They have a marking scheme, leaving less to the imagination, and it's also based on their own judgement. But that's just life... sometimes, things just don't work out. It's not that I didn't try, but I won't give up either. I'll see what I can do on this final, and at least I can try to fix a few things. My answers weren't detailed enough and I suppose I misinterpreted a major set of questions (got pretty much a page of zeroes). For the final, I'll make sure I work on giving more detail, and spend more time on knowing different types of neuro exam techniques for various scenarios.

In my Muscle Physiology class, we had our group presentation on creatine supplementation on Thursday. My part was pretty simple, despite an idea I came up with. I decided to present an analogy to my section on osmolarity, hypertrophy, and side effects and it actually turned out pretty well. I actually got a little nervous, though I'm not too sure why. Maybe I haven't been competing enough lately :P Regardless, there were two points in the presentation where I had to present, so after almost dying in the beginning, I regained my composure, put my flash cards away, and just winged it. Fortunately, it worked well enough! A big thanks to my group for putting everything together and doing a great job on their parts! We had about 50-60 references for our paper, so we really did cover a lot. After doing the paper, I think I might try supplementation, although I will wait until after my finals. There aren't really any side effects if you're healthy, except for some minor case studies here and there. So, if you are an athlete who could use a bit of extra power, then maybe try it out and see how it works. Remember though, there's about a 20% chance that someone could be a non-responder, so there is a little gamble. Also, it's probably not useful for endurance exercise, as the oxidative phosphorylation mechanism via the electron transport chain is much more effective than the phosphocreatine shuttle system. I won't get too detailed right now, but please ask away if you have any questions.

(Source: Me) Wearing the UBC x C1 Tournament shirt!

So, for my Easter long weekend, I participated in the UBC x ClearOne tournament. I entered singles and mixed (with Carmen), and there were quite a lot of matches to play. Overall, I think there's some good players out there, even though a lot of them play for fun. In the singles, I had a fairly easy time because we play so many matches in a short period of time that most of my opponents were really tired after the first set. Actually, I was starting to really feel the tiredness in the final, but it was worse for my opponents as I'm sure they're not used to playing so many matches. Regardless, I will definitely reconsider playing singles next time and let everyone else duke it out. As my level of singles isn't that great, I still hope people learned a few things here and there so they can improve their games. It's not that I want people to go out and train and compete more, I just think it's nice to learn something, practice it, and have a goal to look up to :) Mixed was a whole different story. I think I pretty much went all out and had to use my tactics to get the upper-hand on some teams. Mixed was a lot tougher than singles, even though it was my event. Carmen did well to hold her own, but it was probably helpful that I kept instructing her to do things. This lesson always comes back to haunt me in that "I told you so" kind of way, because it's just a sign that things may still work out if you don't give up and try your best. Trying your best isn't always about running faster, jumping higher, or smashing harder: sometimes it just means repeating instructions to your partner constantly to keep them in the game. Even though you may have said it a million times, to forgo a chance to speak up means that you didn't give it your best. Anyhow, some really good games and again, it's nice to see a good level of recreational players out there! I think it'd be nice to do some recreational player clinics, not so much about forcing them to do drills and stuff, but mainly just to answer some quick questions so that they can make tactical changes that will add to their games. A big thank you to UBC Badminton Club for organizing the tournament and ClearOne Badminton for hosting! It was a good weekend :)

(Source: Me)

(Source: Me)
Victory dinner w/ Carmen and Jiwoo at Gangnam (yes, really) Korean BBQ

(Source: Me) With Carmen!

(Source: Me) Okay...

(Source: Carmen) Victory Pinkberry!

Now that the tournament is over, my forearm is not in good shape. I suppose it's overusing my forearm muscles (especially the forearm flexors) to excessive levels, so it's actually quite sore and I really need to rest it and make sure it gets better for Peru. Some things I will try is to minimize using grip strength outside of badminton, so no more playing piano for a while (not that it's very useful anyway), and definitely no 1-3 RM deadlifts, which are probably responsible to that additional strain on the forearm. I may have to limit rows and TRX exercises as well, so I guess I'll be doing a lot of leg work this next week. Hopefully, the tapering period will aid in the recovery as well. My injury has not been officially diagnosed, but I'm pretty sure it's Golfer's Elbow, or medial epicondylitis. Obviously, the badminton is the key cause of the injury, but I think it may be due a bit to the shoulder, as I've had shoulder problems previously. The shoulders have been a bit better, but it's probably because I'm using more of my forearm to play. Basically, your body is really good at cheating for you, so technique is important, fixing imbalances is important, and recovering properly from injuries is very important. Oh well, hopefully heat, compression, and topical analgesics will tie me over this week. I might take an additional day off to rest my arm and maybe study for the upcoming finals coming up in a few weeks!

(Source: Me) UBC x ClearOne Tournament - MD

So that's it for this week! I know I'm late again, and it's getting pretty bad. I might need to make this biweekly because I don't have the time to write as carefully as I want to. I don't want to say anything bad, or wrong, and I would like to research and source my information properly, so either I write less per week, or more per two weeks. I don't know yet, I guess I'll see what happens in a week :P Sorry for rushing through this week!!

Thanks for visiting!

Week 12 (2013)

2013-03-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Week 12: March 17-23

Badminton: 2 / 5
School: 4 / 5
Misc: 4 / 5
Overall: 3.3 / 5

Interesting week as I finally finished all my exams and I could relax a little bit. I also want to try a new thing this week, so I will now add a cliche "Song of the Week" so you can listen to it while you read the blog! Lame? Probably, but oh well. Here is "Purgatorial Road" (AKA Via Purifico) from the Final Fantasy X Piano Collections. I am actually learning how to play it and I'm pretty close to being able to play it decently :)

Although I have finished my exams for now, I still have a group presentation and paper to do for my Muscle Physiology (UBC KIN 462) class. Oddly, I'm the only guy in my group of 5, but hey, I'm definitely not complaining :P Our topic is on creatine supplementation, which has been extremely interesting and rewarding. After about 20 research papers later, I am starting to convince myself that I should be supplementing with creatine for my badminton! Ironically, I did the side effects section, and unless you have kidney problems, you're good to go if you want something extra for strength and power. It's not so useful for endurance athletes, although there have been mixed reports on creatine being an antioxidant. Apparently, it plays a secondary role and is very selective on what it can act as for an antioxidant, and the arginine (an amino acid) part of creatine is what plays the antioxidant role. However, a different study said that supplementation induces oxidative stress. Theoretically though, creatine supplementation is meant to increase your levels of creatine which will aid you the most in those very short bursts of energy (i.e. anaerobic alactic energy system) which neither requires oxygen or builds lactate. It gives you that extra ATP you need at the very start up of exercise. If you are using the aerobic system, which most people do in endurance type exercises, the aerobic energy system is much more effective than the PCr system. That's why, in theory, it probably isn't very useful to endurance athletes. However, if we were to use it for badminton, I think it's good for those quick bursts of energy, where you may go and jump smash and charge the net for a finish. Then, while you rest between rallies, you quickly try to replenish as much of the phosphocreatine stores as possible, so you can repeat it again if necessary. I don't know how practical it is, but I will get a chance to try it out. I think I will wait until after Peru to start my one week loading phase though. Keep in mind as well, maybe 20% of people are non-responders to creatine supplementation.

(Source: Mechanisms of muscular adaptations to creatine supplementation. Rawson & Persky, 2007)

I also learned about Complex Training in my muscle physiology class, as my professor works extensively with rugby athletes. The idea of complex training (CT) is that you do heavy strength exercises between 1 RM to 5 RM lifts, then go into a plyometric or power exercises. For example, doing deadlifts and then going into some power cleans. The idea is that the heavy strength lift will activate your central nervous system (CNS), so in a way it gets your nervous system ready to activate your muscles. To elaborate, I think the idea was that you may only be using Type I and IIa muscle fibers, but with the CNS activation, you can get in those IIb/x fibers to lift even more. It's still a relatively new concept, but it seems to make sense. However, there are drawbacks and if you don't train properly, fatigue is probably your number one problem, as you won't have enough energy to go on with your other workouts. I will clarify this with an example: if I want to train twice a day, with a weight training session as one of those sessions, it is better to do the weights BEFORE. I've always been an advocate of weight training first anyway, but I know some people prefer to do running/training first, then weight training. Regardless, if I did a heavy strength workout first, it might help activate my muscles better for the later session so I can work harder. I'm going to test it out pretty soon, as I need to get back into strength mode as I'm supposed to be in power mode at the moment. It might have to wait until my tournaments and exams are over first!

I didn't like some of the videos I saw, but here's a paper on Complex Training if you are interested:

(PDF) Complex Training: A Brief Review (Ebben 2002)

Badminton has been a bit stale this week because I skipped out on training on Wednesday to go to a resume workshop offered by Canada Sport Institute (CSI) Pacific, which I will talk about in a bit. Unfortunately, my training partners have been rolling ankles the past few weeks, so Friday was a relatively tame day, though I did get a little bit of a hit in, and I had a couple of lessons as well. As I figured that I should do something, I did some heavy squats and I have some DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) still lingering right now. However, I hope to amp up the training a bit more next week, as I will try out some of that complex training and I just got some more Yonex Arc Saber 11's! Thank you Yonex Canada! Also got some supplements from CSI Pacific so thanks to them and Pfizer for supporting Canadian athletes!

(Source: Me)

The resume workshop was run by Ken Graham and Kevin Morrison from Adecco. The Adecco group is apparently the world's largest provider of HR solutions so we got some pretty good information on how to do a resume and even how to make a LinkedIn account. I will briefly highlight some of the things we did, so bear with me if you already know how to write an awesome resume, or just skip the paragraph :P I found it quite informative as I've never had to use a resume. However, I figure it's probably something worth learning how to do. Some key things are that people may only spend 10-12 seconds per resume, so long engaging sentences or paragraphs (much like my blog) are not so good on a resume. Keep it less than 2.5-3 pages and have all the main stuff on the first page, and no grammar mistakes (pretty common knowledge here). A trick they said for proofreading though is to read your resume backwards. I guess that might catch spelling errors but I don't know to what extent it will play on grammar. Another thing is not to write anything that can be used to discriminate against you (i.e. political views, religion). The reason is that if they feel there might be conflicts or issues, then they will less likely hire you, based on your views. Some other tips are to explain what your previous company does, or what your role is in certain positions. Also, for sports, you should clarify your role as a National Team athletes, or what it takes to qualify for the Olympics. It's what they were calling the "So what?" editing. It doesn't mean that people won't care, but if you don't tell them the specifics, it's less likely for them to understand what you've gone through. A final point is to be able to identify interests, values, skills, traits, and give examples in a resume. From sport, you can identify how well you take to coaching, talk about the struggles you overcome, how you can stay consistent with training and diet, etc. To finalize, here is an interesting on Social Media video by Erik Qualman who wrote "Socialnomics".

I know this week is a little bit short, but I've been pretty swamped with my research paper for my Muscle Physiology class. Hopefully, I will start working a little earlier on next week's blog! I will be playing in the UBC Tournament at ClearOne (Browngate) over the Easter weekend and hopefully I can spend a bit of that time updating the blog! I will try to take more pictures too!

See you next week! Thanks for reading!

Week 11 (2013)

2013-03-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Week 11: March 10-16

Badminton: 3/5
School: 3/5
Misc: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

It was a pretty normal week, although I had a midterm in my Neuroanatomy course. Overall, everything went pretty smoothly, badminton included, but I think I'm not getting enough sleep for the amount of training I'm doing. I am starting to feel it significantly, so I will do my best to make adjustments starting this weekend. The next couple of weeks will be quite hefty, as I need to work on a paper and presentation for my Muscle Physiology course, all while training and getting ready for Peru International in April.

The week started off with Biochemisty (UBC BIOC 302) where we are covering DNA structure, including how it works with proteins, coiling, super-coiling, topoisomerases, etc. It's been quite confusing as I do recall learning a bit of stuff from my second year Cell Biology class (which I did terrible on), so I really need to spend some time to review the material this weekend. It sort of makes sense, but it's a bit like learning new material so maybe I just need a little more time to digest it. If you aren't clear about DNA, it is basically the blueprint of your genetic information. Kind of like your genetic fingerprint, you could say. In reference to what I was learning, DNA needs to condense to be packaged into a tiny cell, so you get these supercoils and such, so the function of a topoisomerase (an enzyme) is to help it out when it is underwound or overwound. I know you probably don't care what a topoisomerase is, but what if I said that some antibiotics work that way? For some bacterial infections (which should never be confused with viral infections e.g. cold or flu), you may get antibiotics know as quinolones which will affect the functioning of bacterial topoisomerase. Without the enzyme to make modifications to the bacteria's DNA, it dies. A common drug you may have had at some point is called Ciprofloxacin which is commonly prescribed for urinary tract infections and gastrointestinal problems. Again, this is not medical advice and if you are in search of medical advice, please consult a practicing medical professional, preferably not online. Below is a brief animation of topoisomerases which basically explains everything I said in less than 2 minutes :P

I had my second Neuroanatomy (UBC KIN 473) midterm on Tuesday morning. It was fairly straight forward, but I ended up studying too much, because the assigned readings actually encompassed more than what I needed to know. Basically, I knew things that weren't going to be tested. Useful in general? Yes. Useful for the exam? No! It's one thing to learn extra material, but for the sake of wasting valuable review time, I guess I should have clarified with my professor. In the meantime, we looked at some additional treatments for Parkinson's Disease which involved deep brain stimulation. Basically, an electrode is carefully inserted into the basal ganglia (Globus Pallidus or Subthalamic Nucleus) of the brain. Through magnetic stimulation, the indirect pathway is affected and as the stimulation is reversible and tunable, it can be controlled. The effects can be quite immediate and it is a very remarkable treatment!

My Muscle Physiology (UBC KIN 462) class went over the midterm on Tuesday for most of the class, and we got back into some molecular differences that happen in the cells between resistance training and aerobic exercise. I didn't do very well on the midterm, but it was better than my initial mark. I got a few marks because a couple of points were missed, and it was also nice for the professor to inflate the mark a bit by making the written section worth more. The idea was because the written portion was 4 essay questions, 5 marks apiece, but what probably took the most time to write, was only worth 20/55 marks. So she decided to double it to 10 marks apiece and make it out of 75, and after a couple of corrections, I got boosted almost 5%, making my mark a bit more tolerable so I don't want to walk in front of a bus anymore (metaphorically). Anyway, at the end of the lecture on Thursday, we were discussing concurrent training. A good overview of what it is in found on the Optimal Sports Performance blog as there is no Wikipedia stub. I suppose it is quite new, but as a badminton player, it is a very intriguing question, as badminton is a very mixed type sport in terms of using all the energy systems. I've had discussions with a few players, but what do you think is more important for badminton? Strength/power or endurance? Most importantly, why do you think that way? I will address my thoughts in the next paragraph, but I would like to add a bit more about concurrent training, for those who may be curious. A primary difference between strength training and endurance training at the cellular level is the effect of calcium. In those who are training aerobic endurance, there is more of a calcium dependence, while those who train for strength work more through a calcium independent pathway. Without getting too much into specifics, a key problem with strength training is that there will be hypertrophy (increase in size) of muscles. This increase in size makes it harder for oxygen to diffuse and other substrates to get to where they need to go. It's kind of like working in an office building that gets an expansion. You used to work on the 5th floor, but now you have to work on the 10th floor. So every time you go work, you have to go an extra 5 up and 5 down. In contrast, endurance training has a negative effect on protein synthesis, hence endurance training people don't get bigger; therefore, they don't get stronger (assuming hypertrophy = increase in strength). The picture below is a map of the molecular markers of both training regimes. The dashed line that doesn't have an arrow head means that it is inhibiting (stopping) the thing it points to (Source: www.8weeksout.com)

(Original Source: Hawley, 2009)

Well, to compete the discussion on concurrent training, it would be best to try to relate it to badminton. Honestly, I am not too familiar with endurance training except for my preconceptions of LSD (Long Slow Distance, not Lysergic Acid Diethylamide). As primarily a doubles player, I never found it useful (or pleasant for another matter) to do running for long distances for extended periods of time. Even since training for the 2012 Olympics, I never ran more than 20 minutes continuously. However, the question is not so black and white, but at least it's not 50 shades of grey (intent in the pun, not in reading the book). I find that long slow distance is probably never used in badminton, and HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) would probably be the best answer for building that aerobic base. I will probably do a bit more research when I have the time, but the way I like to approach badminton is sport-specificity and technique. That should always come as number one. If you cannot hit proper shots, then you will be terribly inefficient and then have to waste a lot of energy trying to retrieve the shuttle because of poor shot quality. After technique, I would go for power training. I think power is essential in being able to generate enough strength and speed into movements or shots that can help you win the rally. However, shot selection is important as well, and there is no reason to do full jump smashes on the backline as it is not to your advantage; ie. it is the wrong shot to hit. That would be a fault on both systems, as you would be wasting valuable energy and hitting a poorly selected shot. After that, I would go into anaerobic training and improving lactate tolerance. Basically, you will probably be working pretty hard running around, but if you move efficiently and take the right chances, you can reduce the amount of 'wasted' energy. Hence you can reduce the lactic build up with every break between rallies, hopefully which you've won. Having a good lactate tolerance will help you maintain a good level of performance at a given level. Finally, the aerobic base, which you probably would be training slightly when you do any anaerobic training, should be the final component. The reason is if you work backwards, you will lose before you get tired, and that's a terrible feeling. It's like, not finishing a test because you ran out of time. I will come back to these points when I have more time to research, as I am spending the whole weekend researching Creatine supplementation, which will probably be a topic that will show up next week!

(Source: Google Image search)

So for my final overview of the Arc Saber 11, I think I will probably switch to it. My shoulder has been acting up a bit and when I switched back to the Arc 10 because I broke my strings on my Arc 11, it felt a bit rough on the shoulder. I am trying to take measures to improve my shoulder health with TRX exercises, resistance band work, and really trying to strengthen my back, but if I'm training often and having to hit smashes, it's probably best to work with a racquet that's compatible with my problem. The racquet is slightly lighter than the Arc 10 (to me), and I think I'm adjusting pretty well to it. Most likely I will try to get a few more and I will be using it for the 2013 Peru International coming up in a few weeks! The flight has been book, I've entered the tournament, but I still need to arrange accommodations, though that should be alright. Not quite sure where we are playing this year as well. Regardless, I'll be armed with some new Yonex gear! Thank you Yonex!

(Source: Me; from Yonex Canada)

So some other stuff that happened this week included a certification fair at UBC for the Kinesiology faculty. It's kind of cool to see what else I can do to supplement my degree and I'm quite interested in getting a CSCS certification from the NSCA. I will do some more research but I think it would be good to supplement my degree, in addition to any coaching certifications for Badminton. Currently I hold a full NCCP Level 2 with a NCCP Level 3 Technical, but I hope to complete the Level 3 NCCP as well. The CSCS certification would make me a much more well-rounded coach for badminton, and perhaps I will looking into being a certified Exercise Physiologist as well. However, I'll need to get the hours for that, but I'm thinking either CSEP or ACSM. Or, if I make it into medical school, then all my money will go there. However, I'm having some second thoughts, as an MPT (Masters of Physiotherapy) can keep me involved in sport. Then... maybe Rio 2016 could be a possibility?

(Source: Me)

Here are some extra things that happened this week. On Monday night, Carmen made me some spaghetti sauce and left me some for lunch for a couple days (see picture). Unfortunately, on Wednesday, she forgot her lunch when she came over so she ended up eating the other half of the spaghetti! Regardless, it was some good homemade sauce and I hope she will make some more next time ;) On Thursday night, I decided to work on an idea I got from a Street Fighter wallpaper I had, as the characters were kind of darkened, with certain parts of their costumes glowing. I decided I would try to duplicate it for badminton and I chose the 2013 Canadian National Team. So I pretty much used Photoshop Touch on my Samsung Note 10.1 and did my best to try to duplicate the idea. Although it wasn't really what I wanted, I finished the rest of the pictures and put them together on PhotoGrid. So, the final result is displayed below (see picture). Lastly, I am trying to sell some used Playstation 3 games! Preferably locally, so if you know anyone is interested in any of the games, please contact me! Nothing is more than $10 :)

(Source: Me)

Hope you enjoyed this week's blog! See you next time :)

Thanks for visiting!

- Toby