HUMAN BODIES FOR OLYMPIC
TRAINING
By Wilhelmina S. Orozco
The concept of
manhood in our country is quite barbaric, primitive. It is brawn against brawn,
and not even the litanies of prayers of the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Marys, and the
Nicene Creed are enough to erase such idiotic notions of what is being a man in
those universities where frat violence exists.
Womanhood
meanwhile is being advanced by some religious groups as purely for procreation
or pregnancy. Nowhere is there any encouragement of women’s engaging in sports
at all.
How about
examining ourselves everytime the so-called fist guy has a fight? The whole
country stops and majority are glued to the TV set watching him pulp down his
opponent. Then when he comes home, he is given a “hero’s” welcome. The mayor
who started that “heroic welcome” is a devout Catholic, mind you.
Let’s ask, Heroism
for what, for doing violence against another person’s human body? Listen to the
language of the announcers when they are covering the fights and you would feel
like vomiting, that is if you are steeped in human rights lingo.
Physical notion
In general the focus on the human body is on its vulnerability.
There is a very
low regard for sports in general in our country. Many classes in the elementary
do not even have a physical education subject. This view is an indication of
how we view the human body. The prevailing notion, abetted by the Church is
that it is for procreation. As such –as women have limited fertility period - then we are narrowing down its capabilities.
We are saying that the human body has an ephemeral significance. Beyond
procreating, what else will the human body do? The Church is silent on that
one.
Advertising:only physical
The advertising
world focuses on the body as a tool to attract the opposite sex especially for
the youth. Its ads focus on their capability to have or keep this or that guy
and gal. Every product has a sexual connotation, that once it is used, then huffing
and pumping would not stop.
In advertising
terms, the human body is only a physical tool -- for decoration – for display
as a sweet-smelling body, its gorgeous bunch of hair on the head flinging away
to the wind with the use of the “proper” shampoo; a body that will move ooh so
slowly like a princess or a king, an aristocratic false view of human motion;
or in the case of the female body, one that will always look svelte all the
time if not pregnant.
Except for the
chocolate drinks for children and some multivitamins which push for a healthy
body, the rest of the ads are just Horrible, aren’t they? Not an ounce of
respect nor recognition of the capabilities of the human body to reach the
heights of perfection, of speed, and of muscle coordination.
Also save for
medicines fornthe elderly or adults suffering from arthritis, memory loss, or the like, the ad models are all young up to
their 30’s, a reflection on the burgeoning Filipino populace. Yet we know that
time passes by and the human body ages, some very fast due to exposure to the
polluting elements of urban life.
Noontime shows
Then view the
different noontime shows. The hosts look forever the same through the years,
perhaps courtesy of some surgical operation. But the female accoutrements are
sprightly youngsters whose only qualifications seemingly are that ability to
put life into their one or two liners and the capability to shout out loud to
two thousand people. (The screeches in those programs are just plainly
unbearable.)
Inspiring environment
I asked two
students, from grade and high schools, what is your physical education subject
now? He said none. N-O-N-E. She said,
not now yet.
To nurture
Olympian medalists, our environment should be inspirational for physical
excellence In the 60’s, when I was in the elementary, everyday was PE day. Walang palya. (An ad uses that phrase
to hint at unlimited sex activities for couples who take a certain product.) We
even displayed or competed with other teams of the school population once a school
year. In college at UP, I had PE subjects yearly in swimming, golf, volleyball,
aerobics, modern dance and so many more. We were also made to attend varsity
games and to cheer our teams during tournaments.
What is wrong
with our educational curriculum now? How come there is less emphasis on the
physique? The Greeks have a mantra:, “A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY.” My teacher
in high school told us that over and over again.
So if the school
cannot do it, let us turn to the barangay. Unfortunately the barangay seems to
have only one focus– basketball. I could only close my eyes everytime I see
youngsters playing that game on the streets with great hopefulness in their
eyes that someday they would be as famous as Jaworski or some other guy. But
they are too short to even reach the goal.
Wanted: institutional ads
Worse of worst, Folks,
a tv ad pretends to focus the attention on the Olympics, but in what manner? It
implies, “Hey sports people, sure get into the race but don’t forget you could
smell along the way. So wear this deodorant.”
Whoa! What is
that? How could a runner, a sprinter focus on that medal, on that race, when
this ad keeps reminding him or her, “Hey your opponent might smell you.” Is
that not idiotic? Instead of praying muscle power would not fail her, the
sportster is made to think of “kilikili” power.
Actually, what
we need are institutional ads – no longer the use of sports in the Olympics for
promoting this and that product. During important periods where sports are
given prominence , those commercial interests should take the back seat and
make the human body be the frontfunner for all types of messages – as capable
of achieving the greatest speed, the most creative movements, the highest point
for jumping, etcetera. .
Transparency among sports managers
So now we know
that a Philippine contingent went to the 2012 London Olympics. We have two
agencies who are supposed to focus on that: The Philippines Sports Commission
and the Philippine Olympic Committee. I tried accessing data through the
internet to find out, how much budget was allotted for their attendance? Who
are the participating sports people? How long did they practice for the event?
Who are their trainors -- are they of Olympic quality? How much allowance does
each sports player have just to practice everyday? But there is none at all.
Even the news items hardly mention the different categories that the
participants entered. Our news reports seem to be gagged to give only a
superficial rundown of our participation in the event. It seems that
transparency is not a valuable word in the field of sports management.
Watching the TV
programs focused on the Olympics, we can gather how other countries had prepared
for the Olympics -- 4 years before the event! The candidate is given to a
trainor to train rigidly, everyday.
Way back in the
90's I had a friend, Carol de la Paz Zialcita who trained gymnasts for the SEA
Games. She was a famous beautiful stage actress who starred in many Broadway
plays – like Guys and Dolls - presented at UP during the 60’s and 70’s and
later on, had gone into gymnastic training. I met her colleague, a foreign
trainor and in another, weight-lifting I think, a Russian. The Russian trained
participants won gold. In preparation for the SeaGames, the government spent
something like P150,000 per month allowance for the foreigner with free housing
etc. Those benefits drew “inggit” comments but when the medals came in,
they stopped.
It was all worth
the expense. It put us in the map of Southeast Asia.
But now we are completely zero. And boxing? Wow, never the sport that the young
should learn at all. In fact the CHED and the Dep Ed should make sure that it
is erased as a sport, not even to recognize any of the international champions
in the schoolbooks as worthwhile emulating. What happened to Muhammad Ali? Huh?
Sports for us
As we are an
archipelagic country, the sports that we should excel in are swimming and
rowing. Our Dragon oars persons won an international gold already and that
speaks a lot of our capabilities where water is concerned. I wonder why
they did not join the Olympic trip.
Now because we
are short, we need not bother about basketball but rather about football,
sprint, and track and field. What we lack for height, we can compensate through
other sports that do not require it.
I have seen many
of our kababayan who could walk
around very fast --especially those who are asked to walk ahead of me in the
streets by some Olympic losers masquerading as intel officers. Joke guys, but
the act is very real. It really happened.
Actually, we
have tall young people around us. I have seen many men and women who are a head
taller than I am, which means to say 6-footers. One woman I saw is a
policewoman. If we put our minds to it, we could start selecting people with
the right height and build for particular sports. In volleyball, definitely we
should choose tall players. In track and field, we must have those with long
legs. In swimming, we must have also tall people so that when they kick at the
start, their bodies would be more forward than the rest. The only thing we have
to do is to convince those tall people to go athletic.
Table tennis
should be another sport that we can excel in. Here, we need not think of
height. Moreover, we have many Chinese folks here who could teach and train our
sports people on how to whack that ball. Why Chinese is because pingpong
is originally from China.
My mother, Esperanza became a table tennis champion even when she had had all
of us already – five children, in the fifties. So we can gather that the people
of that era were conscious of being into sports. Her ability to focus was too great despite the
fact that my father was bedridden then with nephritis.
One benefit we
can get from excelling in sports is that tourists would come flocking in here
just to see us train the participants for the Olympics. Regional competitions
would also be a come on for them. Actually, some tourists do that –they look
for unique scenery especially where there is excellence.
Focusing and sports
How did the
Olympic participants-winners train? On TV, they revealed that they had had to
learn how to focus.
Mindset: One girl said that her mind was set on
the gold medal for two years – all over her room, she was shaped into a
determined sportster. She completely focused on winning in the race.
Emotional strength A young girl had to live in Iowa so as to train
under an Olympic trainer. She had to curb her longing for her family for 2
years, mind you. But of course, train tickets are cheap in America and so
I am sure her parents saw more of her during those years.
Qualifications Then let us look at the qualifications of
the participants. A winner in the rowing competition is a physical education
teacher! Everyday of her life, she was thinking of sports. And, and, she had a MENTOR who instilled in her
that self-confidence to be able to hurdle all the obstacles that would be
thrown her way.
Hence, to recap,
the qualities of Olympic participants, including those mentioned above, are:
- right height and build for the sports;
- ability to focus;
- respect for excellent mentors;
- self-discipline;
- self-confidence;
- a great sense of time;
- knows how to prioritize and can withstand
delayed self-gratification;
- selects the people he or she would be around
with in the course of the training. If participants are surrounded by
mediocre people who would make fun of sports, as once shown in that TV lunch
program ridiculing the Olympics,
then they better kiss those medals goodbye.
What to die for
One benefit of
focusing on sports is that we could curb violence in our country, especially
fraternity violence. The youth will be made to focus on the Olympic
motto the Latin words "Citius, Altius, Fortius", meaning "Faster,
Higher, Stronger" in English. Nothing there about boxing the next fellow.
Through such focus, we
would be raising their standards for what is being a citizen of this country –
one not dependent on some barbaric groups that espouse hierarchical but rather democratic relationships, and certainly one
who knows who and what are worth dying for.
