I eventually managed to persuade my parents to buy me a new football shirt for school matches. I was so excited. So I decided to wear it today for the first time during a match. As soon as we had been playing for ten minutes, a shirt sleeve was torn (撕破) when I made a quick turn.

I couldn’t tell my parents that my new football shirt was ruined. I needed a tailor. As I walked home, I suddenly came across a shop sign: “All kinds of repairs!”

I went inside directly. I looked around the shop and I saw broken toys.

“I guess this is the wrong place. What I really need is a tailor,” I said, putting my fingers through the tear in the shirt.

“This tear needs repairing,” I said.

“Don’t worry. This is just the right place, son. Since I opened this shop, I have repaired many things, but never a football shirt,” a man with white hair said.

“Is this the first time you’re going to repair a football shirt? I hope you aren’t going to make it worse. It’s new.”

“It’s OK. I’ve been waiting a long time to repair a football shirt.”

Then the man took the shirt from me, pulling it out of my hand.

“Are you a striker?” he asked.

Before I could reply, “Yes, how did you know?” he said, “We may see you play for a professional team one day.”

“Impossible! My dad doesn’t see football as a profession. He thinks I should be an engineer or a doctor.”

“Not at all...   People who choose a career they really desire become successful and happy.”

“Yes, you’re right! I know what I want to be! I’m not shy when I play football. I want to play just like Ridvan does! Even my father likes him!”

The man was repairing the tear with thread.

“Great! The tear hardly shows now.”

He smiled at me. I noticed a photo on the wall. It was a photo of a football team. I couldn’t make out which team it was from where I was sitting.

I asked him if he liked football.

He patted me on the back and asked, “Do you understand now?”

Building up your muscles is an easy part—the hard part is burning those layers of fat that cover your muscles. Here are some tips.

In order to work out harder, make a favorite fitness playlist with music that gets you excited, as it can help you go up to 20% longer and burn more calories, according to a study of Brunel University London. The study’s researcher says that music tends to prevent tiredness, and produces feelings of excitement.

Not only does eating good breakfast speed up your metabolism(新陈代谢), but it also nourishes (为……提供营养) your muscles. After eating breakfast, your best way of keeping fat burning going is to “graze”. Set up an eating schedule where you eat five to eight small meals every few hours throughout the day. It provides your body with a constant flow of nourishment to feed your muscles.

Men’s Health suggests choosing hard exercise that involves total body movements in order to help raise your heart rate and leave you out of breath. By including total body movements into your exercise, you’re going to end up burning a lot more calories while challenging yourself at the same time. As the saying goes: No pain, no gain. So, get moving.

Sounds easy enough, right? It’s as simple as drinking a cup of green tea every day. Adding in green tea will push fat burning to another level. And studies have shown that it can increase fat burning and help you lose weight.

While doing your weight training, try something including short, big bursts of cardio(心脏强化锻炼) throughout your exercise. For example, if you’re doing an hour-long exercise, place cardio into it every 15 minutes to help speed up your metabolism.

4 . Americans grew up with stories of Fionn Mc Cool, Cuchulainn and other legendary heroes who, emerging from the Celtic twilight, would relax after their great deeds in battle and hunting by playing hurling (ariel hockey) and handball. Great was the shock in later years to hear that other countries such as Spain, France and Italy were also claiming credit as the original home of the game.

Strict historical research, rather than myth and legend, turns up few clues as to the origins of the game. The elements involved in the play ball, wall, players and rules must have evolved in many different countries at different times.

The first record of ball games with the hand is from 2000 BC in Egypt. Their priests (祭司) of the temple of Osiris in Thebes were depicted on the tombs, striking the ball with the hand. Such iconographic evidence is also found in America where ball games formed an integral part of Pre-Hispanic culture. Over 700 ball court sites have been identified from Arizona to Nicaragua, with many having sculptures, bas-reliefs and painted vessels that show people engaged in hand-played balls. The oldest are dated as far back as 1500 BC, and interestingly in only one area is there play involving a wall that depicts the land of the Chichimeca people of the Mexican plateau.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, the Greek writer Homer referred to a handball game invented by Anagalla, a princess of Sparta, in his works. Alexander the Great (450 BC) was credited with spreading the game to the Greek colonies in Italy, and from there it went to Spain, France and to other parts of the Roman Empire. Around the year 1000 AD, as Europe stepped deep into the Dark Ages, the mention of handball became more numerous in manuscripts. In France Jeux de Paume(palm play)became popular with both the nobility in their enclosed courts and the ordinary people who played longe-paume on common land. The medieval annual of St. Foix written around 1300AD describes the game, “The exercise consists in receiving the ball and driving it back again with the palm. The game was first played with the bare hand, then with the glove, lined or unlined; afterwards, they bound cord around the hand to make the ball rebound more forcibly.”

So far there is no mention in any of the sources of a rebound game against a wall, the game played was one of hand-tennis and this is still played in parts of Spain, France, Holland and Sweden. The original ball used was made of tightly rolled cloth pieces stitched together and this would have given little bounce against a wall. Meanwhile, the game of Jeux de Paume with the addition of larger and longer gloves — eventually becoming bats — evolved into the game of tennis in the end. The hand versus racquet controversy was commented on by Erasmus, the Dutch Philosopher in 1524, “You may sweat more but the game is prettier when played with the hand.”

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Should E-sports Be in the Olympics?

The International Olympic Committee and the Global Association of International Sports Federations recently hosted an e-sports forum to explore shared similarities, possible partnership and the tricky question of whether video gaming could be recognized as an Olympic event. Ever since the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris first expressed its interest in possibly adding electronic sports to the Olympic Games program, we’ve seen a growing interest by the IOC in e-sports—“since the youth are interested, let’s embrace this,” said the organizing committee of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

To tell the truth, as a former-world class high jumper, I struggle with the notion of e-sports becoming an Olympic sport. Conversations I’ve had with other Olympians reveal concerns about comparing the physical skill and demands of traditional athletic competition with e-sports.

Given the growth in popularity, it’s understandable why the IOC would want to partner with e-sports. The IOC generates more than 90 percent of its revenue from broadcast and sponsorship. The marketing firm Newzoo estimated last year that with brand investment growing by 48 per cent, the global e-sports economy will reach almost $1 billion in 2018.

What’s more, most Olympians recognize that those who participate in e-sports spend a great deal of time training—even working with nutritionists and sport psychologists to improve their prowess. But is that enough to join the Olympic Games family?

Is e-sport a sport? To answer this question, perhaps we need to revisit the academic definition of sport. While differences may exist in their granular descriptions of sport, researchers appear to converge on three central attributes: The sport involves a physical component, it is competitive, and it is institutionalized, meaning a governing body establishes the rules of performance.

While e-sports can be argued to be competitive and institutionalized, the first criterion is where it falls short. Given the IOC’s advocacy role for physical activity, e-sports seems to be a conflict with its push for an active society. In an interview with Inside the Games, Sarah Walker, an IOC Athletes’ Commission member, explained her opposition, “If I were inspired to be a gamer, I would go home and sit on the couch as my first step.”

Wearing wristbands with the names of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant     1     (write) on them, 17-year-old Tibetan girl Cigla plays her favorite sport — basketball — at Nagqu No 2 Senior High School in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region. For her,     2       (study) in Lhasa, the region’s most developed city, has made it much     3     (easy) for her to realize her basketball dream.

With     4       average altitude of over 4,500 meters, Nagqu is among the most uninhabitable places in Tibet.     5     have long compromised the health of Nagqu students are low-oxygen environment and extreme weather. “The students had barely played any sports due to     6       (limit) sports facilities and frequent bad weather in Nagqu.” said Bachug, the school's physical education teacher.

However, in a bid to ensure equal access     7     quality education, in recent years, the Tibet regional government     8       (establish) several schools in Lhasa to recruit Nagqu students. Like Cigla, many Nagqu students are from poor farming and herding families. The school     9       (campus) in Lhasa have seven concrete basketball courts, a standard soccer field and a sports stadium, which gives students opportunities     10       (train) their bodies and find the sport that appeals to them.

Standing in the National Speed Skating Oval, China’s former speed skating world champion Wang Beixing had mixed emotions. She was jealous of those young athletes who had the chance     1     (skate) on the new rink (溜冰场). And she felt very glad as the testing program in the venue,    2     (know) as the “Ice Ribbon”, was going as smoothly as the athletes skated on the gleaming ice.

Following the     3     (success) testing program on snow in February, the “Experience Beijing” ice sports testing series for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics,    4     (consist) of five Olympic events and two para events, got underway     5     April 1 and 10 in five different competition venues, including the National Speed Skating Oval     6     the 36-year-old Wang Beixing works as the stadium’s sports director.

“The testing program in the ‘Ice Ribbon’ had three     7     (priority). First is the ice. We need to make sure the ice will be     8     perfect quality during the Winter Olympics, Wang said. “The second would be the competition facilities including the safety cushions, training equipment and so on, which     9     (be) mostly relevant to the athletes, and we want feedback from them, “Thirdly, we also need to drill on the operation teams,” she said. “    10     (certain), I feel very glad because the competition went well and I am satisfied with the result of the rehearsals.”

9 . It’s 6:15 a.m. on a school day, and Jocelyn Murzycki has two kids and she needs to get out the door in an hour. As the sky begins to _________, Murzycki doesn’t manage a few more minutes of sleep. _________, she’s heading out in the freezing cold on her daily plog—a run to_________ litter.

First, the _________ are: a litter grabber and a reusable shopping bag, one side for landfill and the other for _________. Covering herself up, Murzycki jogs _________ down Main Street, stopping briefly to pick up a plastic cup. She usually needs to stop halfway through her 20-minute run to _________ her bag. Within a few hours the street will look littered again. But she isn’t_________—it just adds fuel to her plogging fire.

The word “plogging” comes from plogga, a _________ of two Swedish words that mean to pick up and to jog. The activity was ____________ by Erik Ahlstrom. When he moved to Stockholm, he felt ____________ at the amount of litter in the streets and began gathering friends to clean up the neighborhood while out for runs. Now Mr. Ahlstrom is traveling the world, publicizing the ____________ of plogging. In the U.S., social media and running groups are ____________ people to get out and plog: the “plogging” tag (标签) alone has more than 40,000 posts.

Murzycki has been doing this for a few years even before the trend hit the U.S. “It really is super ____________ if you go out every single day and just pick up litter,” she says. But she’s figured out how to make it fun by jogging with friends and adding the ____________ finding a tiny glass bottle adds one push-up (俯卧撑).

10 . A new study has found that braving the cold maybe a good way to help burn off some fat.

The research was carried out by scientists at Canada’s Laurentian University and focused on high-intensity interval training(HIIT). This format has grown in popularity of late due to the fat-burning benefits it brings, and the team set out to explore how temperature might influence its effects.

The study involved 11 overweight adults who took part in two HIIT sessions a week apart. One of these was carried out in a “thermoneutral” environment with temperatures of around 70 °F(21℃),and the other at a cold 32 °F(0℃). The sessions consisted of 10 separate cycling race at 90 percent effort lasting one minute, followed by 90-second “recovery” periods of cycling at30 percent intensity.

After each session, the participants cooled down by gently cycling or walking, ate a nutrition bar before going to sleep and enjoyed a high-fat breakfast the morning after. During these sessions, the scientists monitored skin temperature, core body temperature, heart rate and the amount of oxygen. Blood samples were also drawn to help calculate fat burning rates following the breakfast the next day.

“The present study found that high-intensity exercise in the cold increased lipid oxidation (脂质氧化) by 358 percent in comparison to high-intensity exercise in a thermoneutral environment,”the team writes.

The authors also note that the idea that cold temperatures help us burn more fat during exercise will need further investigation (调查), though the first-of-a-kind study does indicate it’s a possibility worth pursuing.