1 . As a teenager, I hated sports and physical education classes. I was always making up _________ to get out of them.

However, when I started university, I decided to _________ kung fu. To my _________, I loved it! It was a friendly and casual club. I used to go two or three times a week to _________. Because it is not a team sport, I didn't feel _________ about not being very good. And because it is a combat sport, you train in pairs, which means that you get to _________ people and talk to them. I also _________ that the focus of the classes was on getting better at kung fu, _________ exercising to change my body. I think that advertising puts us under an unhealthy pressure to change our _________. When I was doing kung fu, my body did change — I got __________ and quicker — but the __________ were a side effect of the sport, instead of the goal. __________, in the last year of university I was too busy to do kung fu most of the time.

When I moved to Italy this year I wanted to start doing a __________ sport again. I found a great local __________ that does mixed martial arts. The club is more __________ than the one at my university and we do lots of sparring (practice fights). I think that sparring is like chess, but much faster and much more fun! If your sparring partner tries to __________ you, you have to decide in an instant how to __________. You could dodge (巧妙躲避), block or even __________ their arm and then throw them to the mat.

When I was a teenager, I never __________ that I would like sports. Now I think that everyone should try as many __________ as possible because I believe there is something out there for everyone!