1 . What an athlete eats before, during and after exercise is important for comfort and performance during exercise. While eating soon before exercise doesn’t provide what is needed for the activity, it can prevent hunger during exercise. What is needed for muscles is stored in the days before exercise. This is one reason that the post-exercise meal is very important to recovery and being ready for the next exercise.

Exercising on a full stomach is not a good idea. Food that remains in your stomach during an event may cause stomach upset. To make sure you have enough energy, yet reduce stomach discomfort, you should allow a meal to fully digest before the start of the event.

If you have an early morning race or exercise, it’s best to get up early enough to eat your pre-exercise meal. If not, you should try to eat or drink something easily digestible about 20-30 minutes before the event. The closer you are to the time of your event, the less you should eat. You can have a liquid (液体) meal closer to your event than a solid (固体) meal because your stomach digests liquids faster.

Because glucose (葡萄糖) is the energy source for most exercise, a pre-exercise meal should include foods that are high in carbohydrates (碳水化合物) and easy to digest. This includes foods such as fruit, bread, energy bars and drinks.

Planning is necessary if you are competing in an all-day event, such as track meets or other tournaments. You should plan ahead and prepare meals and snacks that you have tried before. Do not experiment with something new on the event day.

2 . Physical education, or PE, isn’t required for all high school students. In some schools, it isn’t offered for some different reasons. But should high school students have physical education? The answer is certainly “yes”.

Today many people don’t do sports. But as is known to all, doing sports is very important for an adult. Teaching teens the importance of a healthy lifestyle and making fitness plans now can help teens put exercise in the first place as an adult.

High school isn’t that easy. Many students are under a lot of stress. Stress can be harmful to a student’s study and life. Doing sports can help them deal with stress better, helping them live a happier life at school.

The American Heart Association says that 10 million kids and teens suffer from obesity (肥胖症). Teens should get 60 minutes of physical activity per day to control their weight and to help their bones get stronger. The increase in activities that don’t get teens to move around, such as video games and computer activities, means many teens don’t get their required exercise. PE classes act as a public health measure to encourage physical activities and help teens have healthy weights.

Not doing sports increases teens’ risk of developing many diseases. An active lifestyle offers a good way of protection from these health problems. As much as 75 percent of health-care spending goes toward treating medical conditions that can be hindered by lifestyle changes,according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

According to the President’s Council on Fitness,Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN), students who performed five hours of physical activity each week improved their academic (学业的) performance. Students from programs with no physical activity, who used the extra time for classroom study, did not perform better on tests than those who gave up some study time in support of physical education.

3 . Years ago, I could not stick to exercising until I bought a CD called I Enjoy Exercise. I listened to it every day. I bought the CD because I wanted to run in a race and hopefully win!

I had assured my 10-year-old son Todd that I would run in a race with him. Unfortunately, however, when that race came, his left leg was hurt in a car accident. Without him running with me, although I took part in that race, I didn’t do quite well in it.

While Todd couldn’t run together with me because of his injury (受伤), he never forgot the promise I made for him. He was always asking me whether I would keep my promise when he recovered in the future. So I decided I was going to train and go all out to win the next race. What I needed was motivation (动力). It happened that one of my friends mentioned the CD which he liked very much, saying that he got a lot from the music in it when feeling down. So I bought it and listened to it while exercising every day.

What happened to my thinking was amazing as I listened to it daily. I started to think about the repeated words on the CD — “I enjoy exercise”. Instead of dreading exercise, I was thinking, “I enjoy exercise.”

I found out how important words are that we play in our minds every day. I went from a person who seldom exercised to someone who started to exercise daily. Just think how our lives will improve if we reflect on the uplifting words of the famous works. I have found the positive messages have greatly inspired me and then changed my life.

How did I do in that race, you might be thinking? I actually became the champion in my age group.

4 . Running can be a polarizing (两极分化的) subject. Most people fall into one of two camps: those who love running every morning, and those who would sooner do anything to avoid it. For most of my life, I was planted in the second camp.

I always hated running. I remembered entering a neighborhood 5K race with my dad at age 12; I also remembered that I came in last in the race, followed by only the police car driving patiently behind me. Three years later, I didn’t make the junior volleyball team because I couldn’t run a mile in under 10 minutes. Every time I ran, I felt as though failure — in some form or other — was the only possible result.

The summer after my freshman year, though, I took a job at a summer camp in Connecticut, where I got paid to be a kid again. I spent my days keeping an eye on different camp activities. When it came to exercise, running was my only choice. So, I made a promise myself: Every day, I would run for a while. By most runners’ standards, it wasn’t far; I guessed it was only about a mile. But I decided to do it every day, no matter how long it took. The exercise lasted for 61 days — the entire time I spent at camp that summer.

I started to feel better about myself. But to my great surprise, I learned to love running, too. I went from fearing the sport to loving it. I’ve finished seven marathons (马拉松赛跑) and more shorter races than I can remember, and now I am a running coach. These were the secrets I discovered to changing my way of looking at life.

7 . Are you preparing for a big test? If so, you may want to go playing some basketball in between hitting the books. Doctors are starting to find more and more information that suggests a connection between exercise and brain development. Judy Cameron, a scientist at Oregon Health and Science University, studies brain development. According to her research,   it seems that exercise can make blood vessels (血管),   including those in the brain, stronger and more fully developed. Dr Cameron is sure that this allows people who exercise to think better. As she says, “while we already know that exercise is good for the heart, exercise can actually cause physical changes in the   brain.”

The effects of exercise on brain development can even be seen in babies. Babies who do activities that require a lot of movement and physical activity show greater brain development than babies who are less physically active. Even a little movement can show big results. Margaret Barnes, a scientist, also believes in the importance of exercise. She thinks that many learning disabilities that children have in primary school or high school can result from a lack of movement as babies. “Babies need movement that encourages and excites their five senses. They need to set up a connection between motion and memory. In this way, as they get older, children will begin to connect physical activity with higher learning，” says Margaret.

Older people can develop their brains as well. Cornell University studied a group of seniors who have a short­term memory increase of up to 40 percent after exercising just three hours a week. The exercise does not have to be very difficult, but it does have to increase the heart rate. Also, just like the motion for babies   exercise for older people should not be too simple. Learning some new skills or actions, such as with yoga or tai­chi helps to open up memory paths in the brain that may not have been used for a long time. For most people, any type of physical activity that increases the heart rate is helpful. The main aim is to increase the brain’s flow of blood. And your brain can benefit from as little as two to three hours of exercise a week.

8 . You probably know that exercise is the key to treating depression (沮丧), but a bigger fact remains: You don’t feel like exercising. Here are some tips to help you start exercising.

Change your view of “exercise”.

Forget “exercise”. Instead think: “being active” or “having fun”.     1     Besides，it gives you a bigger emotional (情感上的) benefit.

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Taking part in physical activities with others supports you in doing those activities. Ask friends what activities they’re doing or they would like to do, and join them. You can also find a personal trainer, join an exercise group or go to a class.

Keep moving throughout the day.

Sitting is the new smoking.     3     Try to keep exercising throughout your day. If you have a desk job, get up and walk around.Every 20 minutes stretch (伸展) your hands, arms and back or more frequently, if you can.

Take exercise outside.

Nature has a great effect on your mood and it can relax you. Even just looking at images of lakes and trees helps.     4     Or walk on a treadmill (跑步机) by a window.

Set a goal.

When you connect your exercise to a long­term goal, it helps your brain forget the discomfort and makes your exercise more satisfying.Find out what’s truly important to you.     5