Strengthening Your Core
If there’s one indication that someone is fit, it’s a tight and lean stomach. Men and women alike hope that eating right and putting in hard work at the gym will earn them a perfect six pack. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. The rising popularity of fast food has led to an increase in obesity rates and waistlines around the globe. If someone is out of shape you will notice the extra kilograms around their midsection. In both cases, a person’s core muscles seem to tell a lot about their fitness and eating habits.
Many people associate the core with just the stomach area, but science actually defines it as our body without arms and legs. Although many people want a solid core to look good, the development of these muscles affects many areas of our lives. In athletics and general life for that matter, we all rely on our core muscles heavily to get things done. Studies have shown that athletes that build a powerful core foundation aren’t injured as much. Meanwhile, the benefits for ordinary people may be even greater. They use their core muscles for nearly every task they do. This includes picking things up, sitting in a chair, or tying our shoes. Our core muscles provide stability, so we can keep our balance and easily move in any direction. If we neglect them, life can become much more difficult.
As a result, we should always consider our core muscles when designing our workouts. However, if you’ve been inactive for years, performing thousands of repetitions will probably get you injured. Instead, start off slowly and gradually build up your numbers. An excellent exercise for both beginners and advanced exercisers is the plank. You simply get in an extended pushup position as if you have just finished a rep. Maintain this position, but place the weight on your forearms instead of your hand. Then, hold the position as long as you can. You should feel your core muscles working hard to help your hands and support the weight of your body. In the beginning you may only be able to hold it for a few seconds but keep at it. The Guinness World Record for abdominal planking is three hours and seven minutes!
1. What will earn people a perfect six pack?2. What does a solid core mean to athletes?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
If you haven’t done exercises to build up your core for years, you should design your workouts with more repetitions to strengthen your core quickly.
4. How do you keep your body in good shape? Explain your ways in detail.
Nearly 2.4 billion people around the world used a smartphone in 2017. By the end of 2018, more than a third of the global population will be using a smartphone.
However, smartphone technology can be a double-edged sword (双刃剑). On the one hand, it sends us unlimited amounts of information. We don’t have to wait. Our phones ring, vibrate (振动) and light up with the latest news from family, friends and around the world. On the other hand, this immediate access to information may become an addiction (上瘾).
Erik Peper and Richard Harvey, two health education professors from San Francisco State University led the following study and reported that “overuse of smart phones is just like drug addiction. And these connections form slowly over time.”
Also, addiction to social media may affect our emotional state. By asking 135 university students about their smartphone use and their feelings, they found that “students who used their phones the most reported higher levels of feeling lonely and anxious.”
Peper and Harvey do not blame (责备) users for their technology addiction. They blame the “tech industry’s desire to earn money.” As Peper writes, “More eyeballs, more clicks, more money.” The researchers warn that workers in the technology industry know how to affect our brains and turn us into addicts.
And the researchers also suggest ways to fight back.
They say that we can train our brains to be less addicted to our phones and computers by turning off push notifications (通知) on our phones. More often than not, our devices share unimportant information as if our lives depended on it. Our brains see the notices the same way. And that is a problem. So, just turn them off.
The researchers also suggest taking control of when and where you answer a text or email. You do not need to answer them all. And you certainly don’t need to answer them as soon as you get them.
They also suggest setting limits on the time you spend on social media. If you want to catch up with friends on Facebook, set aside a small amount of time to it.
Title: Smartphones May Lead to Problems | |
Introduction | Smartphones are becoming increasingly Besides the benefits of offering |
Problems caused by smartphones | Overuse of smartphones will have a negative |
Warnings about the problems | If we are not careful enough with the habit of clicking our smart phones from time to time, we may |
| Some pieces of information provided by our smartphones are of no Some pieces of information jump in at an improper time. There’s no Sometimes, our precious time is wasted on social media. A time limit is to be set to make | |
Procrastination (拖延) is like a voice in your head giving you several reasons to avoid doing something. Usually it’s tough to overcome it.
So why not ask some questions to give you practical solutions?
1. What can I do to get started?
Sometimes we’re faced with projects so big that we don’t know where to start. Once you actually begin working on a task, it doesn’t feel as bad as you imagined it would.
By asking yourself what you can do to take that first meaningful step, you can begin mentally breaking up the project into smaller sub-tasks, then pick the simplest one to start on. Once you begin focusing just on that, there is a possibility that you will have more motivation ( 动机 ) to keep going.
2. What are my first three biggest things today?
Each morning, list down which three tasks you need to finish today. Spend the first few hours of your day focusing on those. Only when they’re done should you move on to your other work.
3. How can I make this easier?
Many of us believe that success demands hard work — and it often does. But sometimes that belief gets in the way of finding simple solutions to big challenges. There’s no shame in making something difficult easier for yourself to complete.
For instance, you might not have time to work out for an hour every day. So rather than giving up completely, start by exercising for just 10 minutes each day. After all, small steps lead to big changes. The key is to turn to the easier alternative (替代方案) and stick to it regularly.
4. What will go wrong if I don’t do this now?
Ask yourself how you might lose out if you delay any further. And don’t focus just on the immediate effect. Strongly remind yourself of the long-term fallout that comes from habitual procrastination.
The truth is that all successful people have a tendency (趋势) to procrastinate. The key is what steps you take to start getting things done. And sometimes that’s all about asking the right questions.
Four questions to help you stop procrastination | |
| Introduction | Procrastination is difficult to |
| ● What should I start with? Ask yourself how to take the first step so as to break up the project into smaller sub-tasks. Once you begin focusing on it, you are ● What are my first three biggest things today? At the start of each day, decide what is on your You should have them finished ● How can I make it easier? Although it’s commonly believed that hard work is a(n) Turning to the easier alternative and sticking to it on a regular basis will make a ● What’s the result of procrastination? You might lose out if you delay any further. So | |
| Asking the right questions is of great | |
