http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/ What Matters To Men Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:17:06 PST en-us 748 http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/my-passion-works/In_Futbol_We_Trust.shtml My Passion We took the train from Milan and reached the seaside town of Forte dei Marmi just in time for check-in. Our three boys, clutching their Adidas bags, thrummed with anticipation as the taxi pulled up to their hotel.

“Here’s some euros for Cokes and pizzas,” I told them. “Now give your mom a hug.”
My wife and I were dropping our kids off at soccer camp—something we’ve done back home in Santa Fe every summer since they were upspitting tykes in Huggies. But this wasn’t just any sports camp; it was run by perhaps the greatest soccer club in the world: the ­Associazione Calcio Milan, the fútbol juggernaut, founded in 1899, that has fielded such immortals as Ronaldo, Shevchenko, and (my boys’ current favorite) the Brazilian phenomenon Kaká.

When my sons learned about this camp, they had to go. To them, the “red-blacks” were less a team than a temple of soccer godliness. To practice Cruyffs and scissor moves under the gaze of living, breathing AC Milan coaches—while surrounded by Italian babes and gelato shops—sounded too sweet to pass up.

At first I was skeptical. Soccer camp in Italy? It seemed a tad extravagant. I tried to imagine the particular skills an Italian soccer academy would cultivate. Day one: Achieving excellent hair. Day two: Diving for the refs. Day three: Advanced trash talking. I pictured my 10-year-old learning to screw up his face and say, “Your mother is a terrorista puttana!”

I told the boys I’d have to think about it. And I did think about it…for about 45 seconds. But resistance was futile. We signed the boys up for the AC Milan Camp straightaway and booked the next plane to Italy.

Now here we were in this fun-loving Tuscan resort, where the narrow streets revved with Ducatis and Ferraris, and pleasure craft jetted about in the turquoise Mediterranean. At the AC Milan initiation ceremony, though, the mood was strictly business. The phalanxes of savagely tanned trainers, clipboards in hand, were anxious to hit the fields and begin conditioning. Of the 60 boys enrolled in the academy, my sons appeared to be the only Yanks. They were going to be, like, ambassadors.

As my wife and I left for Florence, I bid the boys farewell by invoking something we’d heard a particularly grandiloquent commentator say after the United States tied Italy in the last World Cup. “Go fight like lions,” I whispered reverentially, “and bleed for your country.”


As you may have noticed, we in the Sides clan are quite unwell. All families have their afflictions, their time-swallowing obsessions. Ours, God help us, is soccer.

Having grown up playing soccer 30 years ago, I always hoped my progeny would follow in my cleated footsteps. Recognizing my own athletic deficiencies, I was foresighted enough to marry (and thrice impregnate) a woman endowed with serious jock genes. My boys’ soccer indoctrination couldn’t begin too early—why not in utero, with continuous-loop instructional tapes narrated by Pelé? When my sons came into the world, I made sure they got solid Celtic footballer names, and that their cribs were outfitted with IQ-enhancing felt-soccer-ball mobiles.

It’s been a brainwashing program worthy of The Manchurian Candidate, and amazingly, it seems to have worked. Now all three of my boys (McCall, 15; Graham, 12; and Griffin, 10) are way into fútbol—and they’re already far better at the sport than I ever was.

Around the house, soccer has become our lingua franca, our go-to metaphor, our default mode. We spend inordinate amounts of time watching GolTV and Fox Soccer Channel. We debate the fine points of the Barclays Premier League. (“Now that Thierry Henry has transferred to Barcelona, who’s the greatest forward in the premiership—Drogba? Rooney? Cristiano Ronaldo?”) We curl up with our own version of porn—the Eurosport catalog—feasting our eyes on the latest soccer paraphernalia.

We go on YouTube and download power-dimming gigabytes of grainy footage showing Maradona’s fabled “hand of God” or Ronaldinho’s street-soccer legerdemain. In the fall, we root for our own University of New Mexico Lobos, who made it to the NCAA finals two years ago. As my sons are growing up, their soccer quest is taking them farther and farther afield—to training camps in Italy, yes, as well as to insanely competitive tournaments all across America. There’s one in Arizona every summer where the games rage all night long, like disco dance-athons of old.

And me? I’ve spent the past eight years coaching my boys while also (it’s worse than you think) serving on the board of our local soccer club. As a dad, a coach, a fan, and a hopelessly boring burgher in the local soccer scene, I’ve found there’s something wickedly addictive about this game. Soccer’s patterns of play dance in my daydreams. On paper napkins, I fuss with formations. At night, drifting off to sleep, I conjure up crosses, bicycle kicks, a crisp give-and-go. I hear the fat thunk of a hand-sewn ball launched on its silent swerve toward the goal.

And when I’m dreaming, I sometimes find myself picturing a day, not long in coming, when the U.S. national soccer team fights and bleeds its way to the finals of the World Cup.


I came to the game in a very different era, as a shaggy-haired Yes fan from the dogwood cul-de-sacs of suburban Memphis. In my native Deep South, soccer was regarded as a subversive pursuit for Commie potheads. Baseball, basketball, football—that was the holy trinity. The menfolk in my family were puzzled when I forsook football in eighth grade and went out for Coach Schmidt’s soccer team. The game was unmanly, they said. Unorthodox.

Un-American. A pussy sport for diminutive foreigners in knickers.

But what did they know? I soon became a pretty decent high school defender. And I found I loved everything about the game—its openness, its intensity, its simplicity. I loved its little feints and deceits, and the fact you didn’t have to be built like a bull elk in rut just to play it. Mostly, though, I loved soccer’s fluidity—its sense of being one sustained spool of improvisational effort, in which just about anything could happen at any time. Without timeouts or dorky special teams prancing on and off the field, every match was allowed to develop into something breathing and alive.

Not that anyone else much noticed. Even though our team made it to the state finals year after year, our high school bleachers were nearly always empty. In truth, we relished our exile status. It seemed as though we were involved in some gallant but vaguely cultish activity from the misty heaths of England—an activity, come to think of it, whose soundtrack might have been scored by Rick Wakeman and his fellow caped wizards from Yes.

As with the metric system and Esperanto, America wasn’t ready for soccer, but we felt that it was bound to catch on one day. And if it didn’t, then to hell with our fellow countrymen—they were all f--king ignoramuses unworthy of the Beautiful Game.

I can still picture my teammates. Bryan Jones, our most ferocious slide tackler, with his bloody scabs running like badges of courage down the length of his leg. Paulo Aur, fresh from Brazil and with the moves to prove it. And our masochist goalkeeper, with the perfect name of Mel Payne, who by the game’s end usually looked like one big contusion. (He is now Dr. Payne, a prominent Memphis surgeon.)

I went off to college, where I wasn’t good enough to make varsity. I played intramurals, though, and throughout my twenties, laced up for a succession of club teams in various men’s leagues. I was still crazy about the game, but increasingly accident-prone. I broke my wrist, broke my leg, tore my Achilles. In my midthirties, after yet another injury sidelined me for a month, I decided that soccer was a young man’s game. I hung up my old Mitres—for good, I thought.

But then my sons began to waddle onto the fields.


And boy howdy, what a difference a generation makes! I still can’t figure out how it happened. In recent years, soccer has become, if not our national pastime, at least our national youth pastime, having (in sheer numbers of players) eclipsed all other sports—alas, even baseball.

Nowadays, the growing hordes of straight-arrow soccer fiends are serious as a heart attack—which is to say, maybe too serious. Inspired by young superstars like Freddy Adu and Jozy Altidore, peach-fuzzed prodigies all over the nation are securing agents, sponsors, managers—the whole catastrophe. They swill vitamin concoctions supposedly formulated just for soccer. They showcase their talent at national jamborees, hoping to win a slot in the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program or a residency at the national soccer academy in Bradenton, Florida.

Slowly but now surely, youth soccer has grown into an intensely well-organized, high-pressure endeavor, with the usual accompaniment of drill-sergeant coaches, overbearing parents, and a corporate-dictated aesthetic. For better or worse, soccer has become—dare I say it?—an American sport.

I have mixed emotions about these developments, but I must concede that the quality of youth soccer now being played is nothing short of phenomenal. This is particularly true in Dallas, certain precincts in Southern California and Florida, and a few other well-known dens of soccer psychosis. It’s also true where I live.

Every Saturday morning, my boys head down to a gargantuan soccer complex near ­Albuquerque and compete against some of the best “select” club teams the state has to offer. The complex is a kind of incubatorium—a busy, amped-up hornet’s nest of soccerhood, with some 30 fields packed into contiguous grids. In the parking lots, the minivan bumper stickers bear charming messages like TRAMPLE THE WEAK, HURDLE THE DEAD and HEADS WE WIN, TAILS WE KICK. Not infrequently, the car windows will also be soaped up with irritating exhortations: GO TREY! #7 CHEETAHS ROAR! (We’ve taken a solemn vow that no matter what else happens, we will never embarrass ourselves with soap.)

Out on the fields, the teams cluster on the sidelines, with their matching duffel bags, their staffs of foreign-accented coaches, their club insignias flying proud. Dour soccer officials trundle over the fields in golf carts. The teams take their positions. The goals shimmer bone white against the mountains. The corner flags snap in the high desert breeze.

And then, all across the gray-water vale, the smartly hosened referees blow their whistles and the matches begin.

Suddenly, the air fills with savvy soccer talk from the sidelines. The coaches yell things like “Send it!” “First touch!” “Drop!” The play is manic, inventive, technical, full of finesse. One senses the neurotic might of America, now squarely behind the whole enterprise, with all our best and worst qualities fully engaged: Organization! Competition! Preprofessionalism! Sponsorship!

It’s a picture that, played out at hundreds of similar soccer complexes across the nation, should give a frisson of hope to scouts pondering the future of our national team. The Germans and the Argentines, the Brits and the Brazilians, should look upon such scenes with fear and dread and know that America’s day is coming.
As I watch my boys in the thick of all this action, I find myself asking from time to time, “What’s the point of spending our lives in the thrall of this mania?” I might point out that my sons are getting into terrific shape, breathing fresh air, working hard with friends toward common goals. Or I might just say, “Hey, it could be worse. We could be deep into Parcheesi.”

Really, though, the only good answer is the joy that usually lights my boys’ faces when they’re playing. They still love this game, and are still happy citizens of Soccer Nation. It’s nice to see that, after so many seasons, the sport still runs hot in their blood.

But this season, I’ve noticed, their hair is just a little more excellent, their style of play just a little flashier, more sinuously European. And for those sticky situations when they need it most, they’ve now got an impressive arsenal of Italian expletives to hurl at the ref.

Hampton Sides is the New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West , which recounts the legendary exploits of Kit Carson. Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:54:53 PST http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/my-passion-works/In_Futbol_We_Trust.shtml 747 http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/advice-health/How_can_I_lower_my_LDL_cholesterol.shtml Health Eat a diet that’s rich in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fat, which is particularly abundant in many commercial baked products, such as muffins, cookies, and pastries. Also watch out for “tropical” oils, such as palm and coconut, which are also extremely high in saturated fat. But the worst LDL offenders are processed fats, or trans fats—which are really vegetable oils used to prolong shelf life (written on labels as “partially hydrogenated” vegetable oils)—because they also lower good HDL levels.

Dr. Nissen is the chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s department of cardiovascular medicine. He also edits Current Cardiology Reports and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology .

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:24:36 PST http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/advice-health/How_can_I_lower_my_LDL_cholesterol.shtml 744 http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/best-body/Build_Olympic-Caliber_Wheels.shtml Body Half Squats
Lay a five-foot-long stretch cord on the ground. Stand on its middle with your legs shoulder-width apart. Pick up a handle in each hand. Keeping your back as straight as possible, bend your knees slowly until they break at a 90-degree angle. Move your hands so that they are two inches above each knee. Slowly stand up and stop just shy of locking your knees. Hold this position for a beat. Slowly lower back into a squat for one rep. Do 30 reps for the first set, and then increase to 40 and 50 reps for your second and third sets. Take five-minute breaks between sets. This works your glutes, hamstrings, and quads.

Kneeling Hamstring Raises
Hook one of the stretch cord’s handles around a table leg, and slip your right foot through the other handle. Make sure the line is taut between yourself and the table. Face away from the table with a chair in front of you, and place your right knee on the seat’s edge. Slowly raise your right heel toward your buttocks, and then lower it to the floor for one rep. Do 30 reps on your right leg and 30 on your left for the first set. Increase to 40 and 50 reps for your second and third sets. This isolates your hamstrings.

Seated Leg Presses
Attach one end of your stretch cord to the doorknob of a closed door. Place the back of a chair against the door. Sit down and wrap the other end of the cord around your right foot. Put the cord alongside the chair, not over your shoulder. Scoot away from the door until the cord is taut. Raise your right foot until just before your knee locks. Pause for a beat, and then lower your foot to the ground for one rep. Do 30 reps for the first set, and then do 40 and 50 reps for your second and third sets. Take five-minute breaks between sets. This tones your calves, hamstrings, and quads.

Lateral Walks
Find a space where you can move sideways freely. Wrap the ends of a two-foot stretch cord around your ankles. Stand with your feet slightly more than shoulder-width apart. Step sideways with your right foot as far as you can. Keep your legs straight but don’t lock your knees. Bring your left foot to the original shoulder-width stance. Now pivot so that your left foot becomes the lead foot, and repeat the motion in the opposite direction. Thirty steps will complete one set. Do a second set of 40 steps and a third set of 50 steps. This works the adductor and abductor of each leg.

Backward Leg Extensions
Attach one end of a stretch cord to the bottom of a table leg. Attach the other end to your right ankle. Facing the table, step away until the cord is taut. Bend your left knee slightly and slowly extend your right leg backward, away from the table. When you can’t raise your leg any farther, slowly return your foot to the floor for one repetition. Do 30 reps with your right leg, and then switch to your left leg and repeat for one set. Do 40 and 50 reps for your second and third sets. This works your hamstrings, hip flexors, and glutes. Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:19:34 PST http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/best-body/Build_Olympic-Caliber_Wheels.shtml