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Doping (by Fulgencio Serrano)

Sir, last August,17th was published in your newspaper – ENGLISH, WE PRESUME- an article, signed by Mati Bolaños, whereby author highlighted the risk of doping substances in sportsmen health. Even though being in according to her conclusions I would like to use this space to accurate some ideas exposed in the post.

First of all, no all doping substances are drugs or bad for health and no all drugs are doping substances. For instance, alcohol is a drug but sportsmen do not acquire any advantage and, on the other hand, a blood self transfusion is a doping activity that is not a risk for health.

Secondly, some doping substances are a risk to health depending on doses, so EPO (erythropoietin), is bad in high doses –risk of heart attack- and good for physiologic recovery in low doses.

Moreover, not every substance that helps to improve a sport results is a doping substance, for instance, water, glucose, salt, orange juice and the like. These products are called ergogenic aids, in other words, substances that improve the fitness without being hazardous for human body.

Finally, I want to comment about two invisible doping system, one accepted and the other one will be debated in the next few years, I mean, technological doping and genetic doping. We must realize that the improvement in sport results are not reached only with personal sacrifice but with owning the very modern pole vault, a bath suit made in NASA or another expensive materials far from the most of sportsmen economies. Regarding on genetic doping, who is going to deny body modifications in human body with genetic therapies so normal nowadays in other areas?

I would not finish without spend a line against IOC (International Olympic Committee) that has passed a new method of doping: Politic Doping, it consists of selecting a country like China –a Human Right offender-to organize the Olympic Games because of political and economical influences, no matter of trampling on the Olympic spirit.

In conclusion, we should appreciate those sportsmen who struggle to improve, no merely for a victory but to show us the best values of a human being plain and simple, and send the cheaters off sport for life.

Chirigotas (by Fulgencio)

Today I would like to write about one of the most funny shows you can watch on the stage: a carnival chirigota (Cadiz style).

A carnival chirigota is a performance composed by a mixture of humour, lyrics, music, disguises and comedy stand up as a way of social critic and entertainment. It is like to explain the world from the point of view of the character that comedian is disguised. Although the word chirigota has a wide meaning, the term is commonly accepted to referred to a famous and very popular Cadiz carnival show.

Technically, a chirigota -Cadiz style- is adapted to a pattern in instruments and kind of themes. Traditionally a group uses one to three guitars, -rhythm and plucking- , kazoos, and, as a percussion instrument, a drum, and a bass drum with cymbal.

Repertoire is made up of a Presentation, several Pasodobles and Cuplés with original music and a Potpourri as the ending part. In Presentation the group uses a popular song to adapt lyrics to introduce why they have chosen a particular disguise and characters, everything in showed in a funny and humorous style. Later, Pasodobles start reflecting and critizing –seriously or with a little bit of humour- certain social or political aspects. After Pasodobles it is the turn for Cuplés, the funniest part of the show, they are compositions with the goal of making laugh. The show ends with the Potpourri changing lyrics of famous songs in order to create an atmosphere of exhilaration in the audience.

Chirigotas spread out of Cadiz too. In Murcia, “La Chirigota de Molina de Segura” offers an opportunity to appreciate this kind of performance no far from your home.

Regardless of comparisons, this group has a long career on a stage, so they have been performing for eight years since their first spectacle in 2002 with the show “Los Hermanos de Dinio” characterized as brother of a tabloid celebrity. After that they appeared with “Los Pole Position” (2003), disguised as racing drivers. A year later they were “Los Missmisimos” ridiculing the catwalk word. In 2004, pretending to be athletes in the Open Ceremony of Olympic Games, played with the name of “Los Que Pasan Olímpicamente”. Subsequent performances were: “Las Que Van a Servir” (tennis women players) in 2006 and “Los Que Se Comen Todas Las Hostias” (first Communion children) in 2007 and last year they were on the stage with the name “Las Que Se Van de Vientre” characterized as belly dancers.

Although my opinion is not neutral, because of being one of the performers, I recommend to watch the show “Vísteme Despacio” during the next season 2008-09,
in the end, fifteen people will have been working for pulling your laugh out.

About sport, health and other bullshits (by Ful)

All these Olympic days we can hear everywhere how sport helps to reach values and be healthy. Respect to health, it is a common place to consider sport as the best way to increase life quality and life quantity. In my opinion, sport is just a single word to describe a complex human activity. So, if I had to answer the question of sport as a source of health, after sixteen years being a high performance trainer in athletics, I would say: maybe.

First of all, we should classified what kind of activities exist inside the word ‘sport’ in order to analyze whether it is a health practice or not, so I divide sport in four activities:

1) Fitness
2) Formative
3) Competitive
4) Professional

Fitness
It is all kind of exercises to prevent illness, reduce daily stress and to obtain an improvement in mental health. Subjects who practice Fitness have to practice at least 3 days a week, more than 45 min. each session in aerobic way, that is, less than 160 heart rate per minute, avoiding high impact exercises in order to prevent injuries in muscles, bones and joints.

Formative
I mean physical activity, especially in children, aimed to learn how human body works, sport skills for a better carrying out of merely for not to be injured and as a way of social values promoting.

Competitive
Amateur competition, usually training 3-4 days a week directed toward competition once a week or a month. It needs an important work to get the goal: the victory. Since amateur, it is a hobby, no reason to exceed own limits.

Professional
It is a high performance sport, a profession, a way of showing the art of movement. The objective one: to be the best (without tricks, of course). The rest of aspects are behind main goal, to be the number one. It is not healthy at all, neither unhealthy, this is a profession, and none of us go to work thinking in improving healthy, don´t we? An artist look for art masterpiece and so an athlete does, as a singer, a dancer, a painter,etc. They ‘invest’ 4, 5, 6 hours a day to get the ‘profit’ of victory.

Regardless of whether we like or not, professional sportsmen protect their selves with the appropriate equipment and medical check-ups, care their careers to extend their sport lives. But, what about three previous categories? What about the so-named “healthy sport” in opposition to professional sport?

In a normal day we can find hazardous situations as people starving on diet, children trained as adults, amateur runners running distances they are not adapted to go, women walking in high heels, youngster in first contact with drugs trying to get a bigger muscles, friends playing tennis at 14:00 hours in summer, parents forcing sons to be succeeded sportsmen, amateurs working in a gym for hours without any objective but to get some muscle, young girls mistreating their bodies to fit a size less bikini, and so on. Thousands of examples of health risks in no professional sports.

In conclusion, sport is healthy or not depending on what kind of sport you want to practice and to follow their rules in order to not trespassing limits a person has. First what do you want to do, later to practice, in this order.

Regarding professional sport nobody should find health or illness in it, it is a job, like yours. Should Picasso have stopped to paint because inks and oil paintings were a threat to his lungs? Is sport a risk of health? Maybe, specially no professional sport.

The shower (By Fulgencio Serrano)

Traslated from my book "Diario de un pesimista con buen humor"

The shower consists of five phases: faucet opening, checking temperature in your back, soaping oneself, shouting for somebody to switch butane bottle on again, drying with a “Credijoven de Cajamurcia” advertising towel and it ends fifteen seconds before warm water starts to pour. It is annoying, isn’t it? You experiencing a temperature colder than to attend Walt Disney's burial ceremony and the bloody water starts to spread when you do not already need it at all.
And it would be even worse if going to brush your teeth you felt in your pretty mouth the warm water waiting for you inside faucet, to burn it, indeed.

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I wouldn’t like lie you, I am not keen on having a shower, I do it because everybody does it, although if you realize it, something unforeseen happens when you are dripping; in fact, the doorbell, it always rings when you are quite naked forcing you to get dressed with the first thing you pick up in your way to the door: a towel around the waist, a jacket and a mountain boots worn as flip-flops, that it seems you are walking on Cibeles Catwalk stumbling across the corridor with shoelaces untied and wet hair woolly bear style.

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When you return and try to resume the shower, scarcely ten seconds after you feel a strong desire of urinating therein, then you leave toward toilettes (yes, yes, of course dear dudes, it is true necessary to go out, do not be filthy thinking that nobody can see you) and, of course, trickling on the floor marking your path as Tom Thumb (Pulgarcito) but in water pools, so your couple sees you and says: -What a disgust! -Look at the floor; you should have pissed inside the shower tube, such a pig!

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About the creams, I merely want to say here a thing that assaults my mind occasionally: why do the bottles of shampoo and gel always fall down and can not stay upright? Whichever you catch always falls the nearby one, when not the rest ones, as a bowling alley, only the bottle of nature salts keeps vertical, which falls as soon as you have put back all the bottles in their original places again. By the way, anybody knows what the utility of nature salts is? It is this kind of things Santa Claus brings you every year because someone has supposed you would like and you have to bear the humiliation because if you comment a simple word against then will give you a Micky Mouse perfume burner or perhaps, something worst. As in tobacco boxes, it would be recommendable to put a banner up in the bath door: “Shower can affect to your psychic health”