WCPT is working to promote ICF

Check the site www.wcpt.org it is World Confederation for Physical Therapy. In it's latest new it has two interesting notes. (Interesting for me.)
1. WCPT works for a classification of function!
2. News letter publish my call for setting up a network to discuss Functional Ability and Eastern and Western understanding of health oriented physical activity.

http://www.wcpt.org/common/docs/WCPTNewsSept05.pdf

Here is the WHO link for ICF http://www3.who.int/icf/icftemplate.cfm

Thank you

Qiu Pixiang Liikunta

(Picture is of Chen Zhenglei. Thank you for Harri Salmi for noticing it.)

Professor Qiu Pixiang is teaching us two T'ai Chi forms: 6 movements and 12 movements.


Qiu+Pixiang Liikunta

Wushu master visiting Jyväskylä

Kung-Fu is one of forms of Wushu. An other is TaiChi. Professor Qiu Pixiang from Shanghai is visiting us and giving us a short introduction on martial arts.

Getting feedback and measuring physical functionality

We get fat and lazy or get addicted to sports. It's difficult to understand what is normal amount of physical activity we need. What should we be able to do? What is "normal" for us?

I think we should collect a group of easy tests for everyone to do, so that we can eveluate our self, if we have an average functional ability. (Send me links or ideas about good tests.)

Other "todo" collection or a knowledge base would be a collection of exercises. We are collection online videos and it is going well, but what about instructions about exercises. (This does not mean that instructions should be done with out an instructor.) This is just pre work before the actual research starts. Remember that research is about comparing eastern and western ways of maintaining physical functionality.

active+living exercise personal+trainer yoga

Components of Physical Fitness

Earlier I asked how to communicate about Physical Activity and Functional Ability. If we set aside "social", and "mind" and talk about "body", here is one way. It give 5 categories 1) cardiorespiratory endurance 2) muscular strength 3) muscular endurance 4) body composition and 5) flexibility.

Categories are about fitness, but "body composition" might be good for functional abilities too. I think that muscle coordination, kind of motoric ability should be there too. Our ability to control our body?

If these are the components that make our Physical Functional Ability? How do we keep our self's functional or get in better shape?

Physical+Activity exercise health fitness training

Talking about functional ability

How can we understand each other? In a way it is very easy to say that physical activity equals to the amount of energy you burn. It’s just a little difficult for us to know how much we are burning. And it is difficult for us to know how much we are getting from our food too.

I am looking at physical activity and how it affects our functional ability. My presumption is that we can be doing too much and too little at the same time. (Having just the beef, but forgetting our vegetables.)

How do we talk about functionality? What should we be able to do? And what is just aging or our body structure prevents us from doing?

Human body can be practiced to do stunning performance, but what is healthy in the long run? Or other way around, we can spare us from physical stress for years and still manage to do our daily work, but after a while inactivity starts to have bad influence.

How do we communicate about natural movements, functionality and physical activity so that we can understand each other? (I’d say that we should use video as much as possible – it’s good for communication of movements:-)

functionality physical+activity communication

Introduction to physical activity project

Physical Activity as I understand it

"Physical activity is all movements in everyday life, including work, recreation, exercise, and sporting activities..." WHO, 1997 (See also)

For our wellbeing we should have a balanced mixture of different kind of physical activity. It is as important what we do, than how much activity we have. (Compare to wood diets. It not just how much you eat, but also what you eat.) In physical activities it might be important also how often you have a break and how much time you take to recover from previous stress.

I want to understand what is the minimum amount of physical activity that we need to keep healthy and what is the maximum amount until the stress starts wearing us out in the long run. (This is about our life time, not just a short 1 – 2 year training.)

Even though this project is about Physical Activity, it is important to deal with the hole human. I see us from three points of views – Social, mind and body. (Even though much of the “social” is just in our imagination, I think it is important. For instance my slogan is “ubuntu”.)

I think that eastern philosophy might treat humans more as a hole than our way of digging deeper and slicing things to bits and pieces. (No scientific facts here, just hear say.) I want to compare western and none western way of seeing Physical Activity. I do look at it from Physical Exercise, but all the time I have to keep reminding me that this is not about practicing. It is about keeping functional. What do we do to keep our self’s functional as long as possible?

This is what I want to study and collect knowledge about. And this is where I need every ones help. I am interested in different exercises and also about ways of life that keeps one in good shape.

Thank you for people that have emailed me. I don’t have a timeline or an action plan – sorry. Planning and setting up the research starts next autumn. My very first estimate is that this discussion might take 2 – 3 years and most likely will be published as a book, educational television program and a collection of exercises.

Physical+Activity exercise health

Video collection moves to xo4u.blogspot.com

Collecting link library of online videos about Physical Activity has it's own site now.

Links are generated from public links at Blinklist from links that users share.

In future we will look at the collection and maybe categorize them by some taxonomy like UDK (Library) and ICF (Physical Activity).

Health Physical+Activity Videos Socialnetworking Exercise