Monday, January 29, 2018

Baseball Pitching (Post 4): Preventing injuries

Preventing Injuries

One of the biggest ways to improve your pitching and increase the amount of time you are able to pitch is to prevent injuries especially to your elbow.

How Do Injuries Occur?

Injuries can be caused by various actions, such as wrong form. When practicing incorrect form, it can increase in arm injuries to the elbow’s UCL is from incorrectly thrown “sliders” in which the forearm dangerously supinates at release, forearm is what stresses the UCL (Clark 68). On correctly thrown fastballs, the forearm safely pronates after release. On correctly thrown curveballs, the elbow safely hinges after a karate chop motion after release. On change ups, the arm also as it does on a fastball. Unfortunately, young pitchers throw too many “sliders” in which the forearm dangerously supinates at release. Pitchers would be much better off developing a cutter instead of a slider so the arm can safely pronate after ball release (Clark 68).
Image result for throwing curve balls
By turning your wrist to get the ball to spin, you can hurt yourself so it is important to take care of your arm













How to Prevent Injuries


The Biggest way to prevent injuries is to keep you and your arm conditioned throughout the entire season. This also helps you recover faster 
Source:
Clark, Dave. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. Print.



How to build a quick and easy Survival Kit

When going out into the wilderness it is always good to be prepared even a simple plastic bag fill with important items can be the difference between life and death... Making your own little survival kit is quick and easy. "Recommended items include needle and thread, compass, knife, snare wire, flint and spear with so tinder."(Wiseman 29). My little survival kit cost me around 10 dollars, it includes duck tape, flint steal, compass, sewing kit, mirror, to signal for help, small knife and mini-fishing kit, with a few hooks weights and 30 feet of line, all of which weighs about and ounce. "It is important to only bring what you need."(Wiseman 19). I bring this kit with me when ever I go out hunting, camping etc. This kits can be made at home with stuff around the house or you can purchase pre-made ones at your local sporting goods store. With that knowledge in mind would you consider making one of these little items, it might save your life. 
 
Work Sited
John Wiseman (Author). “SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere Paperback – November 11, 2014.” SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere: John Wiseman: 8601411364013: Amazon.com: Books, Collins, www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival Handbook-Third-Surviving/dp/0062378074

Choosing the right knife for the job

Throughout my "adventures" I have always tried to be as prepared as possible, which includes bringing the right tool for the job. Perhaps the most important tool is a knife, one of the oldest tool known to man. But choosing the right knife is often where people go wrong especially in a survival situation. "A multi-bladed knife is a useful tool, but, if you carry only one knife, you need something stronger." (Wiseman 35). This is referring to knifes like a Swiss army knife which is a useful knife around a casual camping trip but in a survival situation is the wrong option because it is very brittle. The best option is a full tang bush craft knife, which is bigger and much stronger. Remember a big nice can do anything a little knife can do, maybe not as well, but a little knife can't do everything a big knife can do. "You are only as sharp as your knife"(Wiseman 35). The knife up top has not been taken care of or sharpened though it looks awesome it is all but worthless in a survival situation. Looks are not everything, just because a knife looks cool does not mean it will work well. The bottom left knife was $10:00 at a flee market, the all black knife is a $20:00 dive knife. The best choice of knife I found was the fixed blade "Gerber", that was the knife that I used to make my snares in my previous blog, so you know its quality. With that in mind would you consider changing your choice of knife you take into the woods.



 Work Sited
John Wiseman (Author). “SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere Paperback – November 11, 2014.” SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere: John Wiseman: 8601411364013: Amazon.com: Books, Collins, www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival Handbook-Third-Surviving/dp/0062378074

ASL: Talking About Actions

ASL: Talking About Actions



The final chapter I read out of Christopher Brown's The Art of Sign Language was about actions. How to use them, and common signs associated with them. I show a small handful of the signs I gathered from this Chapter below.



  1. "I want to wish you a good visit."
  2. "Where do you live?'
  3. "Please try to continue working."
  4. "Remember to pay for your laundry."

Brown provides helpful little bits of information throughout his text related to general ASL proficiency. These have been of great help throughout my IRP. One of these helped greatly, and helped me realize a lot about body language in ASL, "Remember that when signing, you are engaged in a conversation, just like normal speaking. Use expression and body language to portray your point. This gives your signs more meaning." (Brown 115).  She continues on, speaking about things like moving your body with your hands, and mouthing your words (Brown 115-116). This knowledge has been of great help. As I have gotten more familiar with my signs, I can slowly improve to sign like someone skilled in the language.

How does body language translate from ASL to normal speaking, and how important do you think body language is?

Brown, Christopher. The Art of Sign Language: Phrases. Vol. 2, Thunder Bay Press, 2003.
By Noah Crissey




Referee's Hand Movements for Contests


Knowing the referee's hand signals are VERY important during a match for scorekeepers, viewers, and the people in the match. There are a handful of signals and have changed over the year or decreased somewhat. Some are very obvious but some need explaining. "Looking at the referee's hand movements are essential to the fighters in the match and can gain one persons advantage" (Wilson 111). In my personal experience, the referee's hand signals help me know what is going on and what is happening during the match. These signals can give an advantage or disadvantage to one fighter (Win or Foul point).

Wazari (Half Point): Person who thrown or had a 10 second pin get's a half point. Another half point means a win.

Mate (Stop): This means to stop the match


Ippon (Win): Whoever gets the max points when the match is over wins, however another way to get an ippon is by a solid and clean throw or a pin for 20 seconds.


Shido (Penalty): The person who receives the penalty has the finger pointed on their side. A person can get a max of 3 penalties, if the person goes over 3 then they are disqualified or lose the match automatically. Penalties can be giving out for touching below the hip when standing, hitting, choking when it is forbidden, etc.


Osaekomi: When the referee uses this signal, this means that one person is in a hold down or someone is pinning and the timer starts until 20 seconds or when the person gets out. If the person applying the attack gets to 20 seconds, he or she automatically wins. The opposite of this is Toketa which means the person has broken out or lost the hold.


Referee's also need to be in training for about 2-3 years and can start as early as junior year in high school. "Always obey the referee's rules at all times off and on the mat" (Wilson 112). The hand signals are mainly for score keepers to keep track and see who earns the point or loses it.

Unfortunately, this is my last post and I hope you guys had fun reading my blogs! If you guys are thinking about doing Judo, come talk to me for more information!
  
 USJF. Judo For High School And College. George L. Wilson, 1975

ASL for School and Home






In Christopher Brown's The Art of Sign Language, many examples and common phrases are given for a number of different scenarios and situations. In the next chapter, Brown delves into common phrases used around the house or at school. I can be seen performing a few of the many gestures learned from this chapter below.

  1. "Would you like a toothbrush, toothpaste, or towel?"
  2. "The telephone is on the table under the window."
  3. "The paper, pencil, scissors, and crayons are in the basket."
  4. "The letter came in the mail today."




I have stated in previous posts how Brown has provided a number of step by step pictures for each of the signs he shows. However, in this chapter, as the signs got more complicate, he began providing arrows on this images. This helped me greatly for sign like "Fire Alarm", where the arrows greatly aided me in understanding the sign (Brown 112). In addition, the instructions below each step that previously had little impact have grown to be a valuable asset in this chapter. For example when understanding the word "came" for the sign "The letter came in the mail today", Brown's instruction helped clear up something that could not be portrayed through motion arrows, "Index fingers rotate around each other in motion towards the body." (Brown 110). This is just one example of how the instructions were of great aid.

Muscle memory played a big roll in learning a lot of ASL. How big of a role do you think muscle memory has in numerous other things, like playing instruments of engaging in sports?

Brown, Christopher. The Art of Sign Language: Phrases. Vol. 2, Thunder Bay Press, 2003.
By Noah Crissey

Java: Switches

Throughout my time programming, there have been many times where I needed to get an input from a user, and depending on what they inputted, I needed to run different code. There are multiple ways of accomplishing this, however some methods are faster than others and much easier to work with.

In most programming, the way to do this would be to use a lot of if and else statements, chained together. The first if statement checks if a certain value is true, and if so, it runs the following code. However, if the value is false, it goes on to the else statement, or else if statement. The else statement runs the next code without question, however the else if statement acts just like the first if statement. This means that you can chain lots of these together to test for different possible inputs, and only the code for the user's input will be run.

As you can see, this option will get long and confusing as more options are added due to the difficulty to read the code. There is so much extra code that is required that the code that is more important is easily lost. Barry Burd, a computer science educator with a PhD, wrote that lots of if statements seems wasteful and "why not create a statement that checks the value of [a variable] just once and then takes an action based on the value it finds?" (Burd 132). Luckily, there is a simple solution to the problem. Several years ago, a new feature was implemented into Java that allowed switches to replace the complex if and else statements. This new method was short, simple and easy to use and understand, plus it was scalab.e This meant that if there was anything that needed changes, it would be easy to change.

As you can see in the second image, each if statement has been replaced by a case statement inside of the switch. The switch defines what variable to check, and the cases define what options the variable can be. Burd explained that "the computer checks the value of the [inputted] variable. When the computer determines that the [inputted] variable's value is 2, the computer checks the case of the switch statement. The value 2 doesn't match the topmost case, so the computer proceeds to the middle of the three cases. The value posted for the middle case (the number 2) matches the value of the [inputted] variable, so the computer executes the statements that come immediately after case 2" (Burd 133). This was still a problem for me, because if a user inputted text such as "strONGly agRee", the code wouldn't recognize it. To solve this, I decided to first make the variable lowercase, then checked for all lowercase answers as there is no way to ignore the case of each answer as I could in the first method.

Other than that, this method is extremely useful and much easier to use! The code is simpler, easier to understand and easier to add on to if future changes are necessary. All of this adds up to make switches a great addition to the programming language, and something that should be taken full advantage of!

Have you ever tried to repeat a task over and over, only to get tired of it before you were even done?

Works Cited:
Burd, Barry. Java for Dummies. 7th ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2017.