Christian had a question about the quality of exercise derived from playing sports like football, basketball, racquetball, and those kinds of sports in comparison with roller blading, bicycling, swimming, and running. He had a book that actually said that the former were better than the latter. It turns out that book was abysmally wrong. I went to the Cooper Clinic web site and found this information. While, as people age, there is a growing need to increase the amount resistance training (weight lifting) in an exercise program, football, basketball, and the like are just not as good for you as running, swimming, and biking. These leaves out the obvious benefits to your joints of sports biking and swimming added to the fact the both of them are much easier to maintain as lifetime activities than the highly specialized, anaerobic, joint-damaging sports that are so heavily promoted on television and in the government school systems.
