Language and Identity

Language and Identity
A Research on Applied Linguistics
By Domenec Mendez

This photograph was taken almost seventy years ago; it is one of my oldest family pictures and I like it especially. It shows my grandparents and their four kids, my father is the one with a broken arm. My grandfather used to run a bar and he also worked as a shoemaker in Adamuz -Cordoba. During the 50s, his three sons and one daughter emigrated, as so many others, to Terrassa -Barcelona- where my two brothers and I were born, as I guess, we could have been born anywhere in the world; for instance, one of my grandfather’s brother moved to the Vasc Country and more recently, part of that family branch settled in Florida, USA. Besides, we also have relatives in Valencia, Madrid, Dos Hermanas, Tenerife, etc… However, as far back as we know, Seville was the stamping ground of a great-grandfather, although originally our last name comes from Galicia.

My wife was born in La Seu d’Urgell (Lleida), her father came from Teruel, and her mother from Soria. This family branch still lives in Aragon and Castille, as well as in Madrid and France. I believe my two kids, Javier and Victor, are a mixture of everybody, everywhere and everything. It’s incredible!

‘1000 Families’ is one of my favourite art books. A compilation of typical family pictures from all over the world in which the German photographer captured with great success the essence of every culture and country. From my modest point of view, it would have been equally interesting to reflect a great deal of that diversity without leaving the boundaries of any European country to show the fact that migratory movements have spread the population across every corner of the planet since the very beginning of time. Take for instance, Spain, it is obvious that the blood flowing through our veins once beat up in the hearts of Iberians, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Jews and Moors -not to mention Altamira or Atapuerca. There is nothing more beautiful than the blending of cultures and races and for that reason, I could not be prouder of my birthplace and origins.


These previous circumstances -emigration, mixing of races- together with trade and war justify the existence of vocabulary -even noun phrases and syntactic structures- common to some or all Western languages. But exactly, how many words between two different languages still keep a somewhat similar spelling and meaning? How many are alike but have another meaning -false friends? Or how many entries have a translation whose morphology is completely different? And this is actually the scope of this paper:

• Setting up a criteria to compare the lexicon of two languages based on the morphological and semantic similarity between one term from one language and the most common translation/s for that term in another language.
• Applying such criteria to compare the vocabulary of two languages in order to quantify the results. Suggesting a practical use for this research, mainly in applied linguistics and bilingual lexicography.
• And finally, commenting on the expectations and consequences that these new resources in foreign language teaching could have in students as well as the marketing impact of this implementation.

1. Cognates

Cognates words between two languages are those with a common origin. Some pairs are obvious, some are questionable. Next example is intended for readers to deem whether these two English words, man and work, are cognate with their equivalent translations in Western languages:

Eng. Man Work

Dutch man werk
Ger. Mensch Arbeuit
Swed. manniska arbete
Dan. Menneske arbejde
Nor. Meneske arbeid
Fin. Ihminen tyo

Spa. hombre trabajo
Cat. home treball
Fren. homme travail
Port. Homem trabalho
Ital. uomo lavoro
Rum. om munca

Russ. Chiloveyek rabota
Pol. Czlowiek praca
Chec. Clovek prace


Exactly, despite the wide range of graphic diversity existing between both terms in all languages, we would consider them as cognate according to morphological, phonetic, semantic and use-frequency criteria. First case, man, shows a nasal bilabial sound in most languages; and second example, work displays a plosive bilabial sound -whether voiced or voiceless- in either a stressed syllable or stressed initial position of most languages compared.

Isn’t this amazing? After approximately 5000 years of use and 300 generations of Euro-Asians being born, living and dying; after about 2.500 years of sporadic written use and hardly a century of more common written use, and yet today, these words still keep some similar chisel strokes. Some of our quotidian expressions are real megalithic monuments, menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, buried in the sand and undiscovered by most people.
David Prendergaast, Professor of English Philology at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, is probably to blame for my interest in cognate vocabulary existing among Western languages when attending his classes in the mid 80s. He taught us the struggles of Sir William Jones who, in the XVIII century, established the similitude among the Sanskrit in India, with Latin and Greek, concluding that there should have been a common source that he called the Indo-European, from which other linguistic branches came out.

2. Preliminary Questions

However, and despite these historical processes, What is the present situation? What’s left of that common source in modern lexicons after thousands of years of distant use? Or anyway, regardless of the genealogical or diffusion theories of the origin of languages, and just considering the frequent loan of expressions among cultures throughout history, considering the sharing of scientific information and the spread of technical advances, considering the proximity of communities of speakers of different languages, the improvements and increase of communications, international trade and tourism, what would be the result of comparing the most common 6000 words of English with their corresponding translation in Spanish for instance, although both languages belong to different linguistic branches? Which criteria would be adequate to establish such comparison between both lexis in an objective way to compare other pairs of languages? Which practical use would this research have?

In these terms, and little after I finished my Bachelor’s degree by the beginning of 1989, I approached the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from UCLA, University of California at Los Angeles, and Susan Plann, Associate Professor, suggested that such a research could yield new resources in foreign language teaching to introduce vocabulary or build it up, whether for writing or speaking purposes. By then, I had obtained a teaching credential as bilingual teacher from the Los Angeles Unified School District, and was working as a Spanish teacher at Berlitz Language School, Torrance, California. Therefore, I could actually confirm that some teaching methods based a great deal of their success on the use of cognate verbs to illustrate conjugations; but it did not exist -then or now- any comprehensive collection of true cognates. There were dictionaries of false friends though, but no comparative research reckoned precise quantities of cognates between both languages.

With these objectives in mind, I grabbed a conventional bilingual dictionary and started to underline entries in several colors depending on whether the morphology of its most common translation was more or less similar, or whether the entry shared more than one cognate equivalent or monemes, or was a close set member and therefore had a high use frequency. After a few months of work and having patiently compared the totality of both sections of the dictionary, the following criteria was established to classify the vocabulary of one language according to the degree of morpho-semantic similarity with its corresponding translation in the target language.

3. Criteria of Classification

1. First Group or true cognates.
1. 1. Scientific and Technical terms -mathematics, telephone, monopoly…- loan terms -potato, orange, anorak, croissant…- and other cognate terms in which there is an obvious likeness between an entry and its most common translation.
1.2. Words like colleague, pharmacy, syringe, phenomenon, have, various… have some spelling differences with their translation but they share their main meaning or moneme.
1. 3. Indo-European cognates like who, how, what, head, heart, first, fist, hill, helmet, horse, cow, day, night, mother, father, wind… which share their main moneme with their equivalent translations and usually have a very high use frequency. In general, we can suspect that there is some sort of etymological relationship between two terms when the sounds of their graphemes in either their first syllable or stressed position share the same or a proximate point of articulation -mainly bilabial phonemes /p/ /b/, alveolar-dental phonemes /t/ /d/ and velar phonemes /k/ /g/- and experience variations in the manner of articulation, like voicedness, frication or nasality.

2. Second Group or partial cognates.
2. 1. Both terms compared keep a very similar orthography but they do not share their main moneme, they share instead a second less common meaning, college, professor, crystal, compass, for instance.
2. 2. Those entries in L1 whose direct translations in L2 are not morphologically alike but are nevertheless related etymologically to another term in L2 of the same family. For instance, close has not much in common with cerrar but it keeps a certain resemblance with clausura, and this similarity can be useful for FLT purposes.
2. 3. Compound words like corkscrew whose separated parts abide by any of the rules above.
2. 4. Onomatopoeic words like tick, click, boom, bark,

3. Third Group of false friends
3.1 false cognates like actual, sensitive, sensible, mañana, escalator, carpet…

4. Fourth Group of non-cognate close set elements
4. 1. Articles, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary and modal verbs, even days of the week or months of the year are classified according to the previous rules. However, if they do not show any likeness with their translation, they are put into this group because they normally have a very high frequency of use and therefore, they should be potentially easy to learn.

5. Fifth Group of non-cognate pairs of terms.
5. 1. That is, those words whose translation is so different that the student has any morphological reference to identify or relate both terms. Often they are terms with very low use frequency which increases the difficulty to recognize and learn them.

4. Objectives

This criteria should allow us to accomplish the following three objectives:

First, identifying and quantifying the amount of true and partial cognates between both languages (columns named Group 1 and Group 2 on the following charts), so that they can be furthermore classified into semantic fields for a more appropriate use in FLT. This research could also be used as the basis for other investigations searching for cognate Noun Phrases, and Verb patterns or structures with a similar word collocation.

Second, quantifying the amount of false friends (column named Group 3 on the following charts) not to prevent students against their wrong use, because there are already specialized wordbooks of this kind, but in order to make a call to the common sense of publishers as to integrate this list of false cognates with another much more numerous list of true and partial cognates.

Third, quantifying specially those completely dissimilar pairs of terms between L1 and L2 (column named Group 5 on the following charts) because it was precisely this percentage (indicated on the next column) the one needed to determine the viability of a new tool in Applied Linguistics which I started to conceive, a series of Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries among main Western languages whose main features and contents will be explained later.

Results

English-Spanish Morpho-semantic Comparison



GROUP 1 GROUP 2 GROUP 3 GROUP 4 GROUP 5 TOTAL ENTRIES COMPARED
2830 610 515 153 1772 5880

Spanish-English Morpho-semantic Comparison:

GROUP 1 GROUP 2 GROUP 3 GROUP 4 GROUP 5 TOTAL ENTRIES COMPARED
3045 589 604 92 1685 6015

5. Initial Conclusions

Applied linguistics is the branch of linguistics that addresses real-world problems like first language education and second language acquisition. Historical or diachronic linguistics, on the other hand, deals with language change, and comparative linguistics, which is one of their subfields, focuses on comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. There are other branches of linguistics which involve the comparison of languages and which are not, nevertheless, part of comparative linguistics: Linguistic typology, for instance, compares languages as to classify them by their features and contact linguistics, examines the linguistic result derived from the contact of speakers of different languages.

Well, we could say that this is a typological research on semantics which occasionally relies on the comparative method to classify some dubious morphemes as cognates. Or, in other words, a synchronic approach to moderns semantics with an implied diachronic perspective and with the strictest objective of being implemented in applied linguistics and bilingual lexicography.

On these regards, the somewhat surprising results on both charts more than measuring the high relatedness of both languages, the data mirrors the tremendous interrelationship of worldwide cultures, the leading roles of two countries throughout history and the close geographical proximity of their communities of speakers.

Moreover, in spite of the corpus’ oral language preference, the sample can not compensate for the fact that real communication, whether written or spoken, follows other patterns of production and word selection, which are totally unrelated to the trends of semantic similarity described on these charts.

Furthermore, if rigorous criteria of spoken intelligibility or phonetics had been considered, dissimilarities would have increased dramatically, even in the first category of identically spelled bound morphemes. For instance, the pronunciation of literature and comfortable have almost nothing in common with the pronunciation of those terms in another language, although their spelling hardly changes.

Therefore, it is extremely important to point out that the value of these reckonings are entirely restricted to the confirmation of our premises and objectives regarding their use in applied linguistics, particularly bilingual lexicography, which mainly uses written resources to classify and display their findings, and on this account, the sample should be perfectly representative of other dictionaries with an equal coverage as well as the vocabularies of some other languages. For example, it seems obvious that still higher rates of cognate terms will be found if, unlike this study, the languages compared belong to the same Indo-European branch like Spanish/French, English/Dutch or English/German.

However, the most important conclusion confirms the existence of, on one hand, so many true and partial cognates between both languages and, on the other hand, such a low percentage of dissimilar pairs of entry/translation that, instead of producing specific listings -like Susan Plann suggested- it made better sense, from the point of view of both pedagogy and marketing, to compound a special bilingual dictionary. This brand-new type of bilingual dictionary, besides being consulted as such, would give students easy access to three types of related information:

First, a comprehensive list of true and partial cognates between both languages, including affixes, noun groups, idioms and syntactic structures conveniently displayed by means of an adequate layout and graphic design; second, a list of false friends marked in red if necessary; and third, another list of those entries -and syntactic structures as well- potentially most difficult to learn because of either the morphological differences with their translations or low frequency of use.As we said before, this new kind of teaching resources are called Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries among main Western languages.
6. Additional Features of Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries

In this sort of publication, entries are headed by superposed pairs of cognate terms. That is, first the term in L1 with its phonetic transcription and immediately under -instead of next to it- the cognate translation and pronunciation in L2 whenever it might be possible, like this:
Communication (n) /kc,mjuni’keiSn/
Comunicación (n) /komunika0i’on/

Next, the rest of the entry will display monemes, synonyms, examples, etc… the reason for such graphic design could not be more simple: there is no easiest way to show similarities and differences of spelling and pronunciation as to impress the reader’s mind and help him associate both terms. In any case, these associations will eventually take place of course, but our particular graphic layout should better contribute to speed up this association process by reducing the passive stage of mere word recognition and sooner incorporate that word into the speaker’s active vocabulary.

Nowadays, the design of conventional bilingual dictionaries shows each lexicon as linguistic realities totally independent one from the other, without any absolute connection of any kind now or ever. In my opinion, that traditional design tends to confuse students and block them because it interferes with their linguistic competence, that is, their growing intuition to know the right use of a term, its collocation and synonymous expressions. However, the graphic design of cognate pairs of terms heading the entries of CBD gives a more real and truthful lookout on the interrelations and interdependence of modern languages. This new lookout should encourage the students’ assimilation as well as their production whether written or spoken particularly in the lower levels. For instance, Eng. Street, Ger. Strasse, are not related to their Spanish translation, calle. However, both foreign terms have a Latin origin and stem from what is now our Spanish, estrato. Originally, both foreign terms referred to the checked pattern of roman colonies and cities. It only takes a couple of minutes to point this out in class but in my modest opinion, it makes a huge difference. Ever since students are told about this etymology, they tend to consider the foreign term as less distant and they are usually able to utter the long vowel sound that characterizes it more easily. So references like this one could be useful in a Cognate Bilingual Dictionary.

Another particular feature of CBDs consists of listing all terms for Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 mentioned before in one single part for each initial and immediately after the rest of words from Group 5 of dissimilar terms. Obviously, dividing the corpus of every initial into two parts -to isolate those potentially more difficult terms to learn- can cause the disadvantage of having to search twice for the same word. Yet, if we look carefully into the data of Group 5 on both charts, we will realize that in more than half of the initials, the amount of dissimilar terms is so small as to be listed in one or two pages which eases the search.

Besides, there are many occasions in which students consult a bilingual dictionary not to look up a term for the first time, but to search for other meanings, or synonymous expressions, or spelling, or pronunciation and therefore, they know beforehand which section to choose. Moreover, splitting up the vocabulary of each initial allows for the following advantages: It influences students in favor of taking an active role when consulting a CBD, challenging them to an activity of word recognition in which they must rely on the linguistic competence of their own language to decide whether looking up a term in the cognate or non-cognate section.

Searching for a term in the non-cognate section of a CBD also influences good students in favor, even unconsciously, of paying more attention to assimilate that kind of dissimilar term. Listing entries in two different sections and one after the other makes it easier for students to consult and complete the self-assessment activities designed to focus on each kind of vocabulary. Of course, the existence of two different sections poses no trouble at all when using the digital version of the CBD in CD.

To sum up, CBD is a new attempt to increase the variety and offer of the many bilingual dictionaries existing in the market today, like visual dictionaries, phrasal verbs wordbooks, false friends listings, etc… Publishers, textbooks and methodologies can change from one course year to the other. However, a Cognate Bilingual Dictionary can be used to unify criteria of vocabulary and structures required for each level; it can also be used for students to measure their personal progress in lexicon throughout the years, so he can have the certainty of being able to understand a great deal of language and to express any idea with either simple words, or the common complex words that he already knows from his own language. Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries stand half way between a reference book and a workbook, they are for personal use only, and therefore increasing consumption.

Needless to say, it will be a wider practice of speaking-writing output together with the automation of speech habits that will lead the individual to thoroughly assimilate the new code, but exposure to more appropriate pedagogical resources will significantly increase the user’s linguistic competence and accelerate their wide language acquisition process. By mid 1991, I wrote a first article about this research, International Morphemes, which I registered with the USA Copyright Office (TXu 487 899) and sent the first queries to publishers and institutions. By then, I was working as a Spanish teacher at The New School for Social Research, a college from New York University. I commented a first draft of this investigation with the Language Department Coordinator, Irene Finel-Honigman, who got very excited with the project. The replies from Ed Battle (Institute of International Education), Walter H. Lippincott (Princeton University Press), Michael Ross (National Textbook Company), Juan Manuel Salvat (Ediciones Universal) and Emiliano Martinez (Grupo Santillana) were also especially hopeful. However, no further agreement could be reached with any of these institutions to publish any of the ten or twelve Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries among the main Western languages that according to this research could be completed. Still today, fifteen years later no one has yet attempted such endeavour although false friend dictionaries are often updated.

High School Investigation.

This project was re-activated along the school year of 1996-97 in Institut Ferran Casablanca from Sabadell, Barcelona, where I was working as a substitute English teacher. I suggested a simplified version of my previous research to 155 students from the two last courses, K11 and K12, (groups A, E, G from 3 BUP and groups A, D from COU) and the whole investigation took us three sessions. In the first session, students were told about general concepts like cognate terms, Indo-European languages… as well as the objectives of the research as explained before.

Then, the 8000 entries of the Spanish section of a bilingual dictionary -of which there were copies for everybody- were divided among all students equally; therefore, each student had to compare about 50 or 60 entries. In the second session, students either individually or in pairs, did the actual comparison. They focused on one entry and its translation or translations, and used a pencil to write whether it belonged to the first, second, third, fourth or fifth group of the classification next to the entry. Once they had finished their assignment, they used to raise their hands so I could check out their work.

Next, students counted the total amount for each group, walked up to my desk where they could find a graphic like this one below and filled in the information with their own handwriting. From then on, I personally added up all their subtotals and included the results of each class with the rest of the classes in order to have a global vision of the whole investigation:

Date 18/4/1997 Group: COU - D

High School Morpho-semantic Comparison
(very similar results to previous charts)


I made copies of this chart and gave them out in the third session. With this information, students had to answer a questionnaire, a mixture of objective and subjective questions, and choose among a set of given conclusions, as many as they wanted, even figuring out their own, in order to write a semi-guided essay about the investigation.

Considering the unusual nature of the activity and the added difficulty of using a foreign language, the experience was great and students did quite well, some of them were even exceptionally accurate. For instance, a student from K11 classified embarrassed as a partial cognate instead of a false friend like I had suggested, because he rightly considered to better relate this term to Spanish embarazoso/a with which it also kept a morphological and semantic affinity. Another girl from K12 was able to classify Spanish desgastar as a partial cognate with wear, due to the relationship between English /w/ Spanish /g/ existing in the root of the Spanish term ‘gastar’ without the prefix, and ‘wear’ similar to war and water with guerra and agua
8. Searching for Publishers

This experience was followed by quite a number of meetings, presentations and correspondence, all of them interesting, with Everest, Teide, Cambridge University Press, Difusion, McGraw Hill, etc… One of my most promising attempt took place with Oxford University Press. The first time I ever approached this institution, Claude Conyers, Editorial Director of the Reference Book Department in OUP branch office of New York, let me know by 1991 that he had transmitted my proposal to their colleagues overseas. This time, ten years later, and after interchanging a few e.mails with Craig McWilliam, at the time Editorial Advisor for OUP in Barcelona, I sent him a copy of my first article, an introduction for the Cognate Bilingual Dictionary series and some examples of entries. Again, he liked my proposal and Judith Willis, Publishing Manager of ELT Bilingual Dictionaries, took it to Oxford, England, which I modestly considered it to be already a great success. Unfortunately, they dismissed the proposal in a very long letter that I really appreciated because, at least, they went to the trouble of justifying extensively their decision:

“I agree with you that we often tend to concentrate on the differences rather than the similarities between L1 and L2.”

She honestly admits, which is to be grateful for and take seriously into account. However, she adds,
“I fear that the practical outcome of your approach, in terms of design and layout, may be confusing for the user.”

With which I can not agree completely because false friend publications are often updated and nobody argues that they might confuse readers, on the contrary. So why a dictionary of true and partial cognates could not be reliable? In fact,

“There is little question that lexical similarities in two languages can greatly influence comprehension and production in a second language. Cognates can provide not only semantic but also morphological and syntactic information, and while some of the information can be misleading, some can facilitate acquisition.”
Possibly, what Judith Willis really meant was that such a new and original approach to bilingual lexicography should be tackled with extreme care, and here we totally agree.

I couldn’t help it but applying our morpho-semantic criteria to her letter, that is, excluding locative and personal proper names, there are about 180 words of which approximately 10 % would belong to the fifth group of totally dissimilar pairs of entry/translation. You see, by using the resource book we propose, students would be exposed to such phenomena of morpho-semantic similarities -of true and partial cognate as well as false friends- from the very beginning of their Foreign Language Teaching process. They would stand a better chance to be aware and use them properly. But without our suggested tool, students might never learn the many subtleties involving the complex semantics of both languages.
9. Final Conclusions

After quite a few years of teaching modern languages, it is obvious that even good students are, on one hand, unable to use basic cognate vocabulary and, on the other hand, they make mistakes of false friends and partial cognates which do not fit in with the several years studying and being exposed to the foreign language. For sure, we teachers have prevented them, remarking similarities and differences of meaning and collocation, but of course this task should be reinforced by a reference book.

And here lies without any doubt the most significant concept to highlight in this article: from my modest point of view there is a key difference between, on one hand, a conventional bilingual dictionary of about 6000 entries per language, like the one used for this research, and on the other hand, the rest of reference books with a higher coverage, whether bilingual or monolingual. And this fundamental difference has been almost overlooked by most publishers who use a very similar design for all of them and put them in the same sack of reference books. This key factor consists in the fact that whether nobody would ever try to memorize a volume, or even a page, of the British Encyclopeadia, for instance; this circumstance is totally different with regards to a conventional bilingual dictionary. In this case, if a given student goes through the complete foreign language learning process, by the end of the fifth or six years, he should be able to recognize about 90 % of the entries in the dictionary and use actively 60 or 70 % of those entries. Therefore, it seems reasonable to display all graphic resources, like those explained before, to ease that assimilation process.

This article is actually an invitation to colleges, universities and institutions all over the world to complete the statistics of cognate rates and listings with the rest of Western languages according to the criteria mentioned before. It is also an invitation to keep researching on related topics, for instance, a comprehensive listing of cognate noun phrases, idioms and verb structures, or cross-cognates among all Western languages, or the possible existence of cognate terms in non-European languages. And of course, this is also an invitation for a publisher to pioneer the compilation of one Cognate Bilingual Dictionary.

The prospects of success could not be more promising. Just one CBD English-Spanish, Spa-Eng, would have a potential market of about ten million consumers in Spain, UK, USA and the rest of Latin-American countries; even more if we consider that Spanish is frequently the second language option learnt by speakers around the world. Now, keeping in mind that most of those speakers already know English, our Cognate Bilingual Dictionary would be perfect for them because it would help those students assimilate Spanish vocabulary at the same time that they are reviewing English vocabulary.

And this is only one volume, according to the data collected on this research, at least ten more CBDs could be completed, that is, English-French, English-Italian, English-Portuguese, English-German, English-Dutch, but also Spanish-French, Spanish-Italian, Spanish-Portuguese, French-Italian, French-Portuguese, etc… all of them with millions of potential sales and sustained! For let us remember that these publications should be designed as a new tool half way between a reference book and a workbook, and thus personal material not to be shared like a regular dictionary.
What consequences can we expect from the implementation of such a new tool in applied Linguistics? In the short term, it is likely that this kind of publication could draw a special interest and motivation from the general public for linguistic topics, particularly tourists and sales representatives who, instead of limiting themselves to the knowledge of one single lingua franca in all their international trips, might dare learn some basics from Italian, Portuguese, French or Spanish. Mainly, if that acquisition is based on the knowledge of their own language or others that he might be familiar with and if that wordbook comes with a useful phrases, crosswords, etc… Perhaps some of those occasional readers might well go on satisfying their curiosity with basic language courses.

In Language class, cognates already represent a very motivating factor for students, but they frequently refrain from using them -or do it in a wrong way- because of the lack of adequate technical support, and because they are perfectly aware that many expressions are partial cognates and false friends. If these students have access to a didactic resource like a CBD that systematizes and exemplifies the proper use cognate terms in their wide range of morpho-semantic similarities and differences, they might well improve their academic results in all skills, particularly written and oral output.

It is obvious that the most spoken languages -English, Spanish, French…- do not represent a single country any more and have turned into international communication means. Cognate Bilingual Dictionaries, with its openly merging or blending design, give every language the character of a natural Esperanto and legitimates, more than ever, their international use not only as a trade and scientific tool, also culturally. In other words, in the long term, the continued use of these new tools in applied linguistics should provide a better appreciation and understanding for other Western languages and foreign cultures.

To sum up, CBDs are only the consequence of the tremendous scientific and technical advances that lead our society for the last two centuries and blend absolutely all frontiers among any field of human knowledge to produce a single oneness within our apparent variety. CBDs are also the echo from the delicious cultural mixing of the arts, the music and dancing. Denying them is to deny us.

Domenec Mendez
LiveScripts
C/ Jacint Badiella, 2; 08226. Terrassa. Spain.
Tel. 34 609 371 231; 34 937 349 742
Copyright: Language and Identiy @ Domenec Mendez. 2006

Works Consulted

Al-Kasimi, Ali M. Linguistics and Bilingual Dictionaries. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977.

The American Heritage Word Frequency Book. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1971.

The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology. N.p.: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Bergman, Peter M. The Concise Dictionary of twenty-six Languages in Simultaneous Translation. New York: Bergman Publishers, 1968.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. London: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Collins Pocket Diccionario Español-Inglés English-Spanish 8th ed. Barcelona: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. Ediciones Grijalbo, SA, 1986.

Ethnologue. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc., 1988.

Fuller, Graham. How to Learn a Foreign Language. Washington DC: Storm King Press, 1987.

Hood Roberts, A. A Statistical Analysis of American English. London: Mounton & Co., 1965.

Knorre, Dorwick, Vanpatten and Villarreal. Puntos de partida. 3rd. Ed. New York: Random House, 1989.

Lorayne, and Lucas. The Memory Book. New York: Ballantine books, 1974.

Madrigal, Margarita. Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish. 3rd Ed. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Odlin, Terence. Language Transfer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridge Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1996.

huertos escolares y urbanos

El huerto,

la Expresión Corporal y

la Educación Fisica.

Domenec Mendez

LiveScripts es una asociación sin afán de lucro que entre otras actividades edita una revista de guiones de películas en version original como guía de lectura previa a la proyección de la película correspondiente, que aconsejamos se realice también en versión original y preferiblemente sin subítulos. Somos, por tanto, una nueva organización educativa al servicio de la sociedad con propuestas concretas de actuación e investigación dirigidas a los centros de enseñanza de todos los niveles principalmente en materia de Lingüística Aplicada pero también en Educación Ambiental, entendida con el fin de mejorar las relaciones de los hombres con la naturaleza, y las relaciones de los hombres entre sí.

Coincidimos con tantos educadores en que los huertos escolares pueden ayudar considerablemente a que todos conozcamos mejor nuestra relación con los ciclos naturales y asi, concienciarnos sobre la protección y mejora del medio ambiente.

Además, el conocimiento de los alimentos y de los procesos para obtenerlos es la mejor manera de educar para la salud y favorecer habitos de vida saludable a nivel físico, psíquico y social; aumentando la capacidad de actuación sobre las distintas dimensiones de la vida, conocimiento que debe mejorar la imagen personal y autoestima.

La conexion entre los huertos escolares y otras materias curriculares está bien estudiada. Como apoyo al desarrollo de las ciencias naturales, por ejemplo, puede relacionarse con la climatología, edafología, metereología, botánica y biología. En matemáticas se pueden hacer mediciones diversas y porcentajes. Existen actividades programadas igualmente para Lengua, Pretecnología, talleres de fotografía, de cocina y reciclado de residuos.

Desde nuestra perspectiva, y considerando el caracter interdisciplinario de los huertos escolares quisieramos añadir la asignatura de Historia, dado que la agricultura empezo a desarrollarse durante el Neolitico -según algunos historiadores: uno de los momentos historicos mas relevantes de la humanidad. Es justamente durante el Neolitico que se dan excesos importantes de producción alimenticia -inexistentes en nuestra condición como cazadores-recolectores- cuya propiedad y reparto van a determinar las relaciones sociales que nos han llevado a ser lo que somos.

A esta dimensión histórica, nos gustaria añadir otra, la Espiritual, es decir, al parecer, el culto a la fertilidad y las fuerzas naturales durante el Neolitico han unido a todos los pueblos de la tierra durante milenios, y eso es importante de resaltar en la actualidad cuando tantas diferencias religiosas nos dividen.

Sin embargo, es bien cierto que en la tradición oral y los textos sagrados de todas las creencias religiosas, los muchisimos similes y metaforas agricolas nos unen por encima de todo lo que nos diferencia. Es decir, los seres humanos y nuestras acciones siempre han sido semilla, fruto y cosecha. Todos somos la masa que se cuece en un horno desde hace 10.000 años y esta realidad merece ser recordada para una mejor convivencia superficialmente multicultural.

***

Mientras existen muchas actividades que relacionan los huertos escolares con prácticamente todas las asignaturas curriculares, quisieramos señalar una falta de atención académica y de investigación sistematica que vincule las pequeñas tareas agrícolas -de preparación de la tierra, siembra, recolección, etc...- con la asignatura de Expresión Corporal y Educación Física.

Sin embargo, existe una larguísima tradición en buena parte lúdica de cuidar la tierra por diferentes colectivos de horticultores y jardineros ociosos (a parte de los profesionales) cuyas razones más frecuentes para justificarse suelen ser aquellas del placer por realizar un esfuerzo físico ligero o moderado, el gusto por obtener un resultado de ese esfuerzo, de socializar e incluso colaborar con otros miembros de gustos afines, la satisfacción de aprender unas técnicas y mejorarlas y el equilibrio emocional que se desprende de ello. Y sorprendentemente, todas estas razones figuran entre los objetivos curriculares de la asignatura de Educación Física; sobretodo desde una perspectiva no competitiva tan actual.

Nos resulta totalmente contradictorio. Más incluso si cosideramos que la agricultura, en el neolitico, tuvo que ser el cresol donde maduró la danza, la música, las artes, la ciencia y la religión que durante varios milenios unificó a todos los pueblos de la tierra donde tuvieron las condiciones necesarias, climáticas y técnicas, para desarrollarla o bien, entraron en contacto con otros pueblos que ya la conocian.

Desde este foro, y modestamente, queremos hacer un llamamiento a instituciones y profesionales para que estudien el tema y propongan actividades aunque sean esporádicas -por estimular la variedad- o simbólicas que vinculen el huerto escolar con la Expresión Corporal y la Actividad Física. Entre las actividades o juegos simbolicos relacionados con las tareas agricolas, me hare eco de las que conozco. En educacion primaria, algunos profesores han tenido la genial idea de realizar danzas alrededor de huertos y plantas en reminiscencia de aquellos ritos ancestrales en los que corros de hombres y mujeres propiciaban la feliz conclusión de los ciclos de siembra y recolección.

En este sentido, conviene recordar que éste parece ser el origen de tantos bailes circulares como nuestra Sardana. Tambien nuestros populares Castellers parecen tener su origen en tradiciones similares -posiblemente y por su carácter masculino posterior a la sardana. Un castillo de hombres bien alto, firme, correctamente cargado y descargado debía propiciar igualmente tallos bien altos y granos maduros, sembrados y cosechados sin dificultad.

A nivel teórico, queremos sugerir Tai Chi¹, o danzas orientales parecidas a la Capoeira, e incluso la misma Capoeira, como preparación o calentamiento ocasional para el estado fisico y emocional de aquellas personas que lo deseen previo a las tareas agricolas. Podria ser la manera de vincular meditación, espiritualidad y dinamismo a una actividad fisica, humana y vital, ayer y hoy.

La población escolar no seria la única en beneficiarse de este conocimiento y propuestas. Muchos abuelos y abuelas tienen sus raíces en algún lugar cercano o remoto donde la huerta y los trabajos del campo formaron parte de su infancia. Muchos recuerdos profundos están asociados a olores, sabores y texturas de las plantas y la tierra. La mayoría de personas de edad tienen una gran cantidad de tiempo libre y la mayoría de ellos se encuentran en unas condiciones físicas aceptables y los conocimientos y experiencias que pueden aportar son muy importantes para recuperar y mantener una tradición agrícola que se está perdiendo.

Conservar estos conocimientos y unirlos a las nuevas tecnologías respetuosas con el medio ambiente es una labor importantísima que ellos pueden aportar a la sociedad a través de la creación y mantenimiento de huertos urbanos ecológicos. Las personas discapacitadas se pueden beneficiar de esta actividad tan enriquecedora ya que supone el contacto con unas labores culturales muy estrechamente relacionadas con la Naturaleza, en un entorno al aire libre que puede ser muy gratificante para ellas contribuyendo de una manera eficaz a aumentar su autoestima. La aplicación de la horticultura como terapia tiene un gran arraigo en muchos países. A través del cuidado de los vegetales y de la obtención de sus frutos, personas con disminuciones físicas y psiquicas pueden obtener un gran beneficio emocional. Existen modelos de "huertos ecológicos" elevados del suelo unos 60 cms., que conjuntamente con una adecuada disposición de los bancales, con pasillos accesibles y sin barreras arquitectónicas, constituyen la base de una correcta adaptación para minimizar cualquier tipo de discapacidad. En un entorno familiar, cultivar en casa es una actividad que puede realizarse en común, estimulando la responsabilidad, la atención , el cuidado, la constancia, la observación del ciclo vital,… una actividad para compartir los resultados que se obtienen gracias al esfuerzo colectivo y comerse las mejores ensaladas del año. Las personas adultas, tienen la oportunidad de realizar una actividad ideal para combatir el estrés y llevar a cabo una experiencia enriquecedora, abierta a todo tipo de posibilidades de relación con los demás y al aumento de satisfacción personal. Los jóvenes, encontrarán en esta actividad una saludable alternativa para sus momentos de ocio y la posibilidad de establecer una relación inter-generacional. Huertos Leopoldo y otras fuentes.

Si es cierto que los huertos urbanos ecológicos se configuran como un posible punto de partida hacia una verdadera educación ambiental en la ciudad - convirtiendo a todos los ciudadanos en verdaderos voluntarios ambientales que participan de una manera activa y ejemplar en la propagación de la idea de desarrollo sostenible- la Expresión Corporal y la Educación Física debe colaborar en este esfuerzo.





1 El Tai Chi Chuan ha sido analizado desde los parámetros de la medicina china tradicional como una práctica saludable y como tal ha sido incorporada a la misma.

Algunos investigadores han establecido que la práctica continuada del Tai Chi Chuan durante un tiempo prolongado tiene efectos favorables en la mejora del equilibrio, la flexibilidad y la higiene cardiovascular y que reduce el riesgo de caídas en personas de avanzada edad. Algunos estudios también informan de la reducción del dolor, el estrés y la ansiedad en personas saludables. Otros estudios han indicado una mejora de la función cardiovascular y respiratoria tanto en pacientes saludables como en aquellos que han sido objeto de intervenciones de bypass coronario. Otro tipo de pacientes que se han beneficiado mediante la práctica del Tai Chi Chuan son los que padecen arritmias, víctimas de infartos, hipertensión, artritis y esclerosis múltiple.

En cualquier caso la aplicación de esta disciplina u otras prácticas deportivas como terapia a personas con problemas de salud debe ser tutelada por un profesional de la Medicina. Wilkipedia.

revolcones - newaza - randoris en el suelo

Newaza
by
Domenec Mendez
domenec.mendeth@gmail.com +34 609 37 12 31

Feature movie dramatizing the benefits of judo ground techniques on victims of aggressions, inmates and the general public.

Laura, about 45 and divorced, accepts her daughter's and son's invitation to a disco where she tries to forget her loneliness. On the way back home, she is assalted by a drug-addict in crisis and ends up in hospital. Not much hurt but emotionally worn-out can hardly get on with her life as a physical education teacher.

Meanwhile, Rachel, her daughter, has difficulties as a counselor connecting with a group of mis-treated teenagers in the poor quarters of downtown; and Allan, her brother, is trying to come up with a good idea for his hospital training practice to complete a degree in psychology.

While judo standing can be potentially dangerous, ground techniques are practically harmless but keep that wise philosophy of yielding to win, it fosters self-control and respect for the opponent; it also encourages energetic action without being really aggressive. It will be the key stone for Allan to treat his mother and raise her self-steem during some therapy sessions at the hospital; and Rachel will use it as well to reach the hearts of her troubled teenagers.

Finally, the National Judo Federation organizes an exhibition of Ground Techniques on the beach open to everybody, among the attendees, Laura and her aggressor, condemned and re-habilitated. Her aggressor pairs up with her by chance, she accepts a randori. He is happily exhausted from other ground fights, doesn't offer much resistence and loses.

Revolcones
Newaza – Tecnicas de Suelo
Domenec Mendez

Practiqué Judo durante un año en el antiguo gimnasio Chowa de Terrassa porque uno de los monitores, Marc Brocal, estudiaba conmigo en la universidad y me animó a probarlo. La experiencia me resultó tan enriquecedora que he apuntado a mi hijo de nueve años a clases de Judo en el Squah 4 de Terrassa donde lo practica desde hace dos años y... no puedo decir que destaque, pero estamos muy contentos de lo que ha aprendido.

Recuerdo mi experiencia personal practicando Judo a los veinte años cuando empecé mis entrenamientos que más o menos se desarrollaban así: después del saludo hacíamos un calentamiento de estiramientos y flexiones, a continuación practicábamos una serie de katas, y finalmente acabábamos con una serie de randoris o combates de pié y otra serie de randoris de suelo.

Como podeis suponer, en los randoris de pié me encontraba en total inferioridad técnica con respecto a mis compañeros que con frecuencia me hacían caer. Sin embargo, los randoris de suelo implican una menor movilidad para ambos combatientes de la que era bien consciente. El hecho de encontrarme en mayor igualdad de posibilidades unido a la seguridad de estar más cerca del tatami y existir menos riesgo de lesión, hacía que disfrutara intensamente de aquellos combates de suelo y que los anticipara con interés y satisfacción cada semana. Eran normalmente tres randoris de unos tres minutos cada uno, es decir, los 10 o 15 minutos finales de cada sesión en que luchábamos a tope de nuestras posibilidades para acabar sudados y realmente extenuados.

Han pasado años de aquella experiencia, pero ahora la estoy reviviendo cuando mi hijo me explica las actividades que le enseñan en clase de Judo. Esta circunstancia junto al hecho de que, recientemente, por una razon u otra, estoy más vinculado a ciertos aspectos del mundo deportivo, me ha llevado a la siguiente reflexión:

Un randori de suelo consiste en un combate de agarre entre dos luchadores cuyas reglas son así de senzillas:

1. Mantén, como mínimo, una rodilla sobre el tatami en todo momento,
2. Agarra a tu oponente de la ropa para desequilibrar y tirarle,
3. Mantén su espalda contra el suelo durante 15".

Y ya has ganado. Bien, un buen judoka ofrece resistencia pero se deja vencer ocasionalmente por un oponente inferior al menos fuera de combates oficiales.

Defiendo la idea de que esta práctica, en el contexto de la filosofia del Judo, puede tener identidad propia dentro del deporte escolar especialmente pero también en centros privados deportivos e incluso terapéuticos. Es decir, mientras un profesor de educacion fisica o un monitor pueden ser reticentes a practicar Judo erguido con sus alumnos en alguna de sus clases por razones obvias de seguridad, las técnicas de suelo conllevan un riesgo mínimo para los participantes y tantos beneficios que merece la pena tenerlos en cuenta; los randoris, o mejor, las técnicas de suelo de Judo:

• Enfatizan el respeto a las normas, a profesores y compañeros así como el trabajo en colaboración que lo distingue como práctica deportiva muy educativa;
• Ese respeto por el adversario, cuya oposición y colaboración nos permite aprender, mejorar y superarnos, se debe traducir por una mayor capacidad para superar cualquier tipo de obstáculo en la vida, el miedo, el dolor, asi como estimular la voluntad de ponerse a prueba, saber ganar y perder sin traumas...
• Estimula tambien la comprensión, la atención, concentración, astucia, reflexión, etc...
• Capacita la realización de un ejercicio físico de cierta intensidad y duración¹;
• En el Judo hay tensión y esfuerzo físico, pero nunca hay violencia²,
• En otras palabras, el Judo y en especial, las técnicas de suelo canalizan la agresividad de los individuos de una manera inocua y positiva.

Y en este sentido, la práctica de las técnicas de suelo de Judo pueden ponerlas en practica no solo profesores de educación fisica, sinó también, monitores de esplai, animadores e incluso psicólogos que las implementen de forma muy gradual como dinámicas dirigidas a víctimas de abusos y agresiones.
De hecho, en alguna de las fiestas de cumpleaños de mis hijos y conocidos, he sugerido a los participantes alguna de estas actividades y, por supuesto, nos lo hemos pasado estupendamente.
Bien, con estos argumentos contacte con las diferentes federaciones de Judo del pais, simplemente para sugerirles esta via de acción que pudiera dar lugar a un incremento de la práctica de este deporte y de licencias federativas.
Para sorpresa de ambos, el actual Presidente de la Federació Catalana de Judo, Sr. Pedro Ruiz Uriarte, había sido el propietario del Gimnasio Chowa y mi profesor de Judo veinte años atras.

¡Vaya coincidencia!

Acordamos una reunión y nos encontramos en la sede de esta federación en Barbera del Vallés el 14 de Marzo pasado, el Sr. Pedro Ruiz es además Licenciado en Psicología, y su opinión no sólo coincidía considerablemente con la postura que he reflejado anteriormente, me comentó además que ya existían iniciativas parecidas a esta que se estaban desarrollando.

Lo cual pude comprobar dos semanas despues de esta reunión, durante el IV Congreso Internacional y XXV Nacional de Educación Física, celebrado en Córdoba el pasado mes de Abril, al coincidir con Roberto Ruiz Barquín, Doctor en Psicología, Profesor del Departamento de Expresión Corporal y Educación Fisica de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid y judoka quien me comentaba que efectivamente se estaban realizando iniciativas algo parecidas en Madrid, aunque obviamente ni han sido muy divulgadas ni han trascendido a escuelas o medios de comunicación; por ello, mi insistencia y esta comunicación.

En la reunión de aproximadamente cuatro horas con Pedro Ruiz Uriarte y en la que tuve el placer de conocer a Pasqal Tayot, colaborador de la FCJ, Cinturó Negre, Professor de l’INEFC-Lleida i Doctor en Ciències de l’Activitat Física i l’Esport que participa en la tabla redonda “L'esport i la cohesió social” de estas Jornades Internacionals d'Esport Escolar acordamos -aunque sin ningún tipo de compromiso- que un guión para libro ilustrado podría ser una publicidad interesante para difundir las excelencias de las técnicas de suelo y al mismo tiempo estimular la práctica del Judo en general.

Hice algo de investigación sobre el tema, y para nuestra sorpresa, otro frances, Dominique Thabot coincide considerablemente con nuestra postura y señala explícitamente en el capítulo III, La Enseñanza del Judo como actividad física y deportiva de su libro:

• En primer lugar, nos parece necesario que, al principio, el aprendizaje escolar del 'judo' se limite a su único componente: el suelo.
• El suelo permite limitar los riesgos objetivos asociados con la proyección y la caída.
• Esto permite emplear una superficie de combate no reglamentaria.
• En el entorno escolar tambien habrá que excluir la práctica de las técnicas de abandono (extrangulación, luxación) por razones evidentes de seguridad³.

Más adelante, el mismo autor apunta en Otras razones en favor de este enfoque:

• Adquirir el objetivo de la actividad y su reglamento,
• Adquirir los principios operativos a traves de la experimentacion de las reglas de acción, transferibles luego al Judo en posición bipeda,
• Reforzar la musculatura de los alumnos,
• Conocer el entorno. El cuerpo de los demas: habituarse a las opresiones.
• El tatami: acostumbrarse a las caídas.
• Por ultimo, crear una necesidad nueva: ganas de combatir de pie⁴,

En una semana, Pedro Ruiz Uriarte tenía sobre la mesa el guión para libro ilustrado que se puede consultar aquí en el que estamos trabajando con Jose-Gines, el diseñador grafico habitual de la Federación Catalana de Judo, para realizar un primer capítulo.

Colaboro con algunas organizaciones de esplai y ocio, y de manera informal me han pedido que desarrolle una dinámica para jovenes basada en las técnicas de suelo de Judo, esta es mi modesta propuesta:

Taller de técnicas de suelo en Judo

Presentación

Las técnicas de suelo se pueden considerar como un juego predeportivo de agarre o lucha; como juego, el factor lúdico es esencial; es decir, no importa tanto la técnica ni la buena ejecución, interesa divertirse, ya habrá tiempo de mejorar. Su practica esporádica o continuada puede considerarse como técnica de animación, motivación y desinhibición dirigida a un grupo de personas que se conozcan previamente y que hayan colaborado en otras actividades y dinámicas, es decir, un grupo que se encuentre preferiblemente en fase de crecimiento o maduración⁵.

Objetivos

Crear un buen ambiente de grupo incrementando la variedad de actividades; romper una situación de monotonía o tensión; respeto a las normas y al adversario; canalización positiva de la agresividad; salud, equilibrio psíquico, autoestima, etc... dirigido a grupos clase de educación primaria, secundaria y esplais, así como de re-educación, integración y prevención de situaciones marginales en entornos como prisiones, centros de menores, centros de rehabilitación, de drogodependientes, etc...

Materiales

Tatami de 10 m x 10 m si es posible, o colchonetas ligadas las unas con otras, o una superficie blanda como pueda ser arena de la playa o campo de cesped o hierba; kimonos completos con cinturón, o en su defecto, chandal completo con pantalón largo y jersey ancho para facilitar el agarre.

Contenidos

Calentamiento

Estiramientos y flexiones; tai sa wake, (replegarse y estirarse: la gamba),
la serpiente (con los brazos juntos o alternos), etc...

Programa técnico – Katame Waza o Ne Waza

• Posiciones defensivas: boca-abajo y a cuatro patas;
• Inmovilizaciones – Gatame.
  Kata Gatame, Kami Shiho Gatame, Yoko Shiho Gatame, Ushiro Gesa Gatame, Kuzure Yoko Shiho Gatame, Tate Shiho Gatame, Kuzure Kami Shiho Gatame, Kusure Gesa Gatame, Kuzure Tate Shiho Gatame, Makure Gesa Gatame,
• Salidas de las inmovilizaciones.
  • Formas de volcar a Uke: Tori a caballo sobre Uke, Tori a la cabeza de Uke,
  • Formas de entrar para inmovilizar: 1ª a 8ª entrada de frente; 1ª a 4ª entrada de costado; 1ª a 3ª entrada por detrás⁶.
• Randoris

Secuenciación

• 10' – Escoger entre los diferentes tipos de estiramientos y flexiones.
• 15' – Escoger dos tipos de inmovilizaciones y como salir de ellas y practicarlas con al menos dos parejas diferentes.
• 15' – Serie de randoris con tres oponentes diferentes.

La primera sesión debe incluir las posiciones de defensa.

 

Industriales

He enviado esta comunicación a algunos fabricantes y distribuidores de tatamis y material de Judo. Como era de esperar, su posición no podría ser mas alentadora. Esta ha sido la respuesta de Vicente Palomar de Tagoya fechada a 22 de Mayo:

Aprovechando su llamada quiero comentarle mi opinión personal: Para la promoción del Judo su idea es una ayuda excelente. Le deseamos mucho éxito en la propagación de este proyecto y desearíamos saber su repercusión.

---

1: J Santos Nalda, Judo Infantil, Barcelona: Ed. Alas, 2003; pg. 24 y 25
2: Pedro Ruiz Uriarte, Es bo que el meu fill faci Judo? Carta de promoción, 2007
3: Dominique Thabot, Judo Óptimo, Ed. Inde, Barcelona 1999, pg, 63, 64.
4: Dominique Thabot, Judo Óptimo, Ed. Inde, Barcelona 1999, pg, 64.
5: Victor Ventosa, Manual del Monitor de Tiempo Libre, Ed. CCS: Madrid 2006, pg 425
6: J. Santos Nalda, Judo Infantil, Ed. Alas: Barcelona 2003. pg. 78, 79, 95, 96, 112, 113, 126, 127, 142, 164.

Pasadas de Escalera - Ladder Workouts

Ladder Workouts was presented at the XII Conference on Sports Medicine (Seville 2009), the First Ibero-American Summit on Sports Education (La Habana 2008) and the VI Conference on Sports Education (Barcelona 2008).

As a proposal, it was submitted to a number of producers and institutions with a positive feedback, among them: Warner Brothers, Olympic Commitee of Barcelona 1992; and more recently to the Olympic Research Unit of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Catalonia Government and Futbol Club Barcelona.



SNAKES AND LADDERS
A TV-movie treatment
by Domenec Mendez


Jack is an ex-marine unable to fit in with civilian manners. Somewhat traumatized by war actions and victim of his own idealism, he has no patience to kick off his big business plans and hardly gets by as a sports-equipment salesman.

One early morning, some old friends dropped him off at his apartment after a whole night of drinking and living it up. Too drunk and sick, he knocked on the door expecting Julia, his girlfriend of a couple of years, to open. She had also been awaken all night long and sick in the bathroom but for a very different reason; and for that reason, she crawled to the door and just sat on the floor crying her heart out without letting him in.

When he woke up a couple of hours later, the apartment was deserted. She had disappeared without leaving a trace, or a note or anything. "I screwed up again" he thought trying to shrug it off but then coming apart for they had sincerely trusted each other and had plans for the future. Besides, it was actually her apartment.

This time he couldn't get over it. Within a month, he had lost his job, any interest in life and was living in the street.

Meanwhile, Julia had looked for shelter at her sister's apartment. She had really had no choice about Jack. She didn't want to disappear like she did nor getting rid of the child from the man she loved. But bringing up a kid implies so much effort that she understood right away she would stand a better chance doing it by herself. It was crazy but she thought that this way there was a remote possibility her Jack would find the room and time he needed to find himself. She wanted to lose him in order to recover him somewhere down the road.

A few months passed by like this until one day, an old pal found Jack, gave him some money and offered him a dirty job, killing somebody else, to settle a score. The same day, his girlfriend's sister bumps into him, recognizes his face and briefs him in on the true reasons of Julia running away:

"She was pregnant, loved you too much to cramp your style with that sudden burden. She preferred to say good bye then than loosing you little by little. She had the courage to look for everybody's help but now she makes a good living for herself and her son, you're his father."

That night, Jack had a very vivid dream in which he was back on duty, in the middle of the streets, giving away humanitarian help, food and water, to a myriad of begging hands. Yet some of those hands were not to keep that food, but to pull the ring and trigger off the bombs attached to his own body. He could barely save himself from a rainfall of blood and broken members. Then he saw himself hanging from an exercise ladder, hand-walking along the rugs through blasting waves of fire and about to fall in when, suddenly, he was standing on a quiet sunny playground, looking at a kid hanging from a monkey-bars set-up. This little boy jumped off, looked back at him and smiled.

At that point, he woke up impressed with such experience but at peace with himself for some weird reason. He wandered around, pensive, until apparently by chance, he reached a lonely playground -still too early in the morning for any kid to horse around. So he stood up under a horizontal iron ladder, jumped on, went through a few times and completed a thorough upper-body workout.

This is a particular relevant part of the story for several reasons: the main character is getting over the confusion caused by suicide terrorists and his own depression and he's gaining the determination to go on with his life. Moreover, he's about to teach the audience the tremendous fitness potential of a simple Exercise Ladderthrough a unique series of upper-body exercises to build up both physical and moral strength.

After finishing this first Ladder Workout, he then turned down his acquaintance's killing offer and accepted a mopping job at the local gym where he could train and prepare himself for a fire-fighter position he had seen long ago but disregarded. A few weeks later, he gets in touch with his girlfriend to make up but she doesn't believe he has changed.

Back at the gym, things are not easy either. A bunch of tough weight lifters are aiming at the same job position Jack does, but he doesn't lose face and keeps practicing Ladder Workouts, visibly increasing hypertrophy, improving strength and endurance, and without forgetting cardiovascular fitness.
There he met Rachel, a professional rock-climber, who becomes a real friend, both practicing Ladder Workouts, spending time together, hiking, rock-climbing.

The day of the exam to select a team of fire-fighters comes up. In the physical test, Jack proved himself as strong and powerful as his opponents but quite faster and more flexible due to the dynamic quality of Ladder Workouts. Jack finally gets the job, along with some of the weight lifters, and gets back on his feet.

In one occasion, his fire-fighting team answered an emergency call. It was a multiple car accident involving a truck which had lost part of his dangerous burning cargo across a bridge. The liquid was on fire. Most drivers were safe but some of them were stuck inside their crashed cars between two fronts of flames. In one of the cars, there were his girlfriend and son.

The team extinguishes the fire while Jack risks his own life to rescue his family to be. At this point, he's proven himself worthy of her love, after getting the steady job he'd been fighting for, after gaining the mental stability he also longed for and, who knows?! Perhaps accomplishing his big plans as part-time sports-equipment representative for The Sharper Image or Wilson Sporting Goods Inc. selling overhead ladders all over the world and teaching their use.

THE END
NOTES:

1. The story is intended to show the courage and determination of both Jack and Julia, each one in his/her own way.

2. The plot and photography have been carefully designed to give the audience a familiar background and understanding of the use of Exercise Ladders as superb upper-body fitness conditioners. Please take a look at the appendix attached by title Ladder Workouts.

3. Likewise, Jack, Rachel and the characters of the weight-lifting team should perfectly illustrate a proper Ladder Workout program.

4. On these regards, we should try to approach a Sporting Goods company willing to market a particular design of Overhead ladders at the same time that this TV movie is broadcasted or the DVD is for sale.

5. Main character could be adapted to any of the multinational armed forces in today's conflicts as to match the producer's needs.

6. At this time, I'm looking for another writer to co-author the movie script.

Copyright @ Domenec Mendez. 2012

Ladder Workouts,
an old modern approach to upper-body fitness
By Domenec Mendez


"Many well-respected fitness promoters, athletes and organizations — such as Charles Atlas, Herschel Walker and the Royal Canadian Air Force — all attribute their physical fitness to rigorous calisthenics/resistance training rather than weights and other equipment. Exercises that require the pushing and pulling of your own body weight are indeed rigorous enough to build strength, endurance and muscle."

Quoted from Linda Buch, (linda@ljbalance.com.) a certified personal trainer, author of  "The Commercial Break Workout," co-written with Seth Anne Snider-Copley (Random House) who answers questions about fitness in http://insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3384908.

    You only need to take a look at athletes of gymnastics in the Olympics doing rings, parallel bars, floor exercises, etc… to confirm Linda's statement. But we will all agree that learning the use of this gym equipment is highly complex and their technique takes many years to master. However, we can  easily find Exercising ladders, Overhead ladders or Horizontal ladders, made of wood or cast in iron, in military tracks, playgrounds, school yards, college gyms, regular gyms and parks all over the world; and while their right use is extremely simple, the results in strength power, endurance, coordination and hypertophy can be as good as those obtained by the complex apparatus mentioned before but without the struggle.

    I have tremendous good memories of my three first wooden ladders -one of them vertical- in the gym of our local swimming club (Club Natacion Terrassa, where Rafael Aquilar, presently National Water polo Coach, and my high-school mate, used to train and compete). There was another nice wooden ladder at a Judo Club called Chowa also in Terrassa and I recall many others, especially one cast in iron located in the South-East corner of  New York University Square and Campus in The Village, Manhattan. Most people, including this coach, the entire local water polo team, judokas, soldiers all over the world and Herschel Walker (as shown on the two pictures of  "Herschel Walker's Basic Training"; New York: Doubleday, 1989 pg. 43)  use them to warm up and down from other exercises or for a variety of chin exercises, with underhand and overhand grips, or chins behind the neck. The University of Leeds in England, for instance, includes exercise ladders in one of their work stations in a method of full-body conditioning called circuit training or parcourses.
So far there is nothing new under the sun.

    However, quite a few of my colleagues and myself used to do some additional ladder exercises in a slightly different way. Now, picture Herschel Walker, or any other athlete, hand-walking along the rungs of a ladder, his arms are stretched and therefore, we could say that his elbows make an almost 180 degree angle, this way and just like himself admits: "Ladder walking can hardly be beaten as a developer of grip strength…" but what if you pull up your body a little bit, not as much as to complete a chin-up, only until your elbows reach a 100 or 90 degree angle and only then, you go on along the rungs, or the side bars, keeping that angle until the end.

    Can you notice the muscles in your arms, shoulders, chest and back working out as much as they possibly can to keep up your entire body weight? even your abdominals will be also working out in an attempt to prevent your legs from swinging too much from side to side as you hand-walk ahead. Can you notice your breathing rhythm increasing as you are about to reach the other end? Can you feel the pleasure of working out your whole upper-body machinery in a more dynamic way than weight lifting -or weight machines? Can you keep a cold mind during the few seconds of the exercise and coordinate your grips under such strenuous conditions?

    Don't you feel like Spiderman hanging from building to building? Or like Tom Cruise rock-climbing to the peak of a mountain in Mission Impossible? (In fact, many of our colleagues were climbers). Not yet, that is, you couldn't hang up and fell off? Don't worry, this is the easiest and most progressive approach to upper-body fitness ever. Forget about "No Pain, No Gain", overhead ladders are usually found in playgrounds all over the world precisely because feeling our body and limbs hanging and totally stretched gives children pleasure. It might have something to do with our ancestors living in the branches of the trees. But anyway, with Ladder Workouts you'll come to love that pain and  gaining will be a bonus -for another very nice picture of kids ladder-walking and having fun take a look at the cover of The Ultimate Fitness Book by Dr. Charles Corbin and Dr. Ruth Lindsey; Champaign IL: Leisure Press, 1984.

    You see, this upper-body fitness approach disguises the traditional chin-up with a costume of dynamism and fun which are real, and this is the bottom line. Who doubts about the strength power of chin-ups and push-ups? Nobody. Yet there are two welknown disadvantages associated with this kind of calisthenic practice:

"The first of these is that some young people will be unable to perform one chin or even one push-up properly…The second disadvantage (…) is that some people find it difficult to motivate themselves to work hard enough to realize the true benefits of these exercises." Herschel Walker's Basic Training, pg 40 and 41.

    However, with Ladder Workouts, first, you don't start by completing a chin, not even reaching the end of the ladder. Second, this subtle change of performance in elbows angle to hand-walk along the overhead ladder gives a tremendous variety of ladder exercises for which your imagination is only the limit. What could be more motivating than that? Besides, we trust that the pleasure derived from the activity will give the athlete the confidence not to give it up.

    We used to practice with these eight initial positions, but there are more since some of them allow for reverse exercises:

1.2. Rung overgrasp and undergrasp,
3.4. Sidebar overgrasp and undergrasp,
5. Combined grasp on rung,
6. Combined grasp on sidebar,
7. Combined grasp on sidebar and rung,
8. Outside grip on sidebars.

And I have counted up to almost forty different exercises, many of which allow for backwards variations, but as we said before only your imagination and your fitness conditions will be the limit:

Outside grips on sidebars
Outside grips jumping on sidebars (tremendous plyometric potential)
Outside grips on sidebars with pull-ups
Outside grips on sidebars with lateral pull-ups
Outside grips on sidebars with consecutive overgrasps on rungs
Outside grips on sidebars with consecutive undergrasps on rungs
Overgrasps on rungs
Overgrasps on rungs with pull-ups
Overgrasps on rungs skipping out a rung, and going backwards to the skipped-out rung
Single overgrasps on successive rungs
Single overgrasps on successive rungs skipping out a rug, or two.
Overgraps jumping on rungs
Undergrasps on rungs
Undergrasps on rungs with pull-ups

And many more.

   
    This is the way it worked: After warming up, beginners would start with three or four of the easiest ladder exercises in an hour session combined with other calisthenic exercises, sit-ups, pushups, squats, etc or cardiovascular exercises, like rope jumping, three days a week, for a couple of weeks.

    Then we would gradually increase the number of ladderexercises per session until by the third or fourth month approximately, we were able to perform ten ladder exercises -: three easy exercises, three medium exercises and four tough exercises-  still combining them with other calisthenics and weight lifting or weight machines. The results on strength capability were obvious and visible.

    This is a suggestion to athletes all over the world to give a shot to Ladder Workouts. It's also an invitation to sports researchers and institutions to investigate further into the potential of exercising ladders as upper-body fitness conditioners. It is of course an invitation to sports equipment designers and manufacturers as well as movie producers to study the marketing possibilities of this old new product.





 

Pasadas de Escalera

Ladder Workouts

Domenec Mendez

Introduccion

La mayor parte de la poblacion, no solo en edad escolar, sino de cualquier edad, incluso una gran cantidad de atletas y deportistas amateurs descuidan el ejercicio muscular de torso y brazos. Es obvio que mientras nuestras piernas soportan el esfuerzo cotidiano de llevarnos de un lado a otro, el trabajo muscular de brazos es considerablemente menor en comparacion. Por otro lado, existe una gran variedad de actividades cardiovasculares que ejercitan nuestras extremidades inferiores y fortalecen el corazon; en cambio, las pesas o maquinas de pesas acostumbran a ser la unica opcion de la mayoria de deportistas y atletas para incrementar el poder muscular de su tren superior. Estas rutinas de ejercicios tienen un caracter repetitivo, estatico e incluso individual, se realizan en espacios cerrados y, por tanto, requieren una buena dosis de poder de voluntad de quienes las ejecutan que, naturalmente, cuesta de mantener con el tiempo y acaban por abandonarse.

Desgraciadamente con frecuencia, ese abandono del ejercicio de pecho y brazos arrastra al individuo a una desgana que puede desmotivarle hacia todo tipo de ejercicio fisico y asi perderse los muchos beneficios que tiene el deporte para la salud. Desde una perspectiva global, esta situacion crea un cierto desequilibrio muscular en el individuo entre la mitad inferior y superior del cuerpo, que sin duda es causa de menor rendimiento deportivo y satisfaccion personal; ya que un cuerpo trabajado en su totalidad no solo puede relajarse mejor sino tambien puede afrontar mejor posibles lesiones, o el desgaste propio de la edad. Dicen que todo esta relacionado entre si y que, por tanto, este desequilibrio meramente fisico entre la mitad inferior y superior del individuo reflejaria un desequilibrio mas grave entre las pasiones inferiores y las emociones superiores que caracteriza una sociedad sin valores morales.

Tratamos de sugerir la unica actividad fisica para torso y brazos que resulta practica, sencilla de realizar por cualquiera y tremendamente efectiva, dinamica, divertida y liberadora, menos individualista que las pesas y mas social, de interior o de exterior, es decir, que se puede realizar en un gimnasio de pago o en un parque publico.

Este programa de ejercicio fisico va dirigido a jovenes de ambos sexos entre 15 y 55 años o mas, que practiquen cualquier deporte, o esten preparando pruebas fisicas para acceder a profesiones y estudios, o simplemente a aquellas personas que quieren tener buena salud o lucir un buen fisico.

Este libro tambien va dirigido a padres, educadores, profesores de educacion fisica, preparadores, entrenadores, investigadores y fabricantes de material deportivo para que los estudien, diseñen y profundicen en las posibilidades de uso y de motivacion de este aparato y otros que requieren del peso corporal para crear resistencia. Va dirigido a los propietarios de centros deportivos para que acomoden algun espacio donde este tipo de aparato pueda implementarse e incluso anime al usuario hacia otro equipo convencional de musculacion o hacia otra practica deportiva. Y por ultimo, este libro va dirigido a arquitectos y responsables de urbanismo para que habiliten espacios publicos con escaleras horizontales en parques y playas.

El objetivo final que nos guia es llegar a ese equilibrio motor entre nuestra mitad inferior y nuestra mitad superior, entre nuestras pasiones y emociones, entre las instalaciones privadas y los espacios publicos, entre el cielo y la tierra.

Preliminares

Como ven, el cartel anunciador de las 6as Jornades d'Educacio i Esports 2008 organizadas por el Institut Barcelona Esport y con la colaboracion de la Universidad de Barcelona y el INEFC muestra a un muchacho o muchacha caminando con les manos por una escalera horizontal. Es bien sabido que el uso de escaleras horizontales tiene una larguisima trayectoria ludica y deportiva en patios escolares, parques infantiles, parques naturales, centros y gimnasios deportivos, gimnasios de artes marciales, gimnasios universitarios y academias militares de todo el mundo.

Por ejemplo, la portada de este libro, "The Ultimate Fitness Book" editado en el 1984 tambien muestra a dos niños jugando en una escalera. Estas dos fotografias muestran al jugador de futbol americano Herschel Walker entrenandose igualmente en una escalera horizontal. Por otro lado, la Universidad de Leeds desarrollo un programa de educacion fisica de todo el cuerpo llamado Parcourses que incluye escaleras horizontales. Otros ejemplos incluyen la preparacion militar del protagonista de la pelicula Hair de Milos Forman que le muestran haciendo servir una escalera horizontal; y si se fijan en Mision Imposible, Tom Cruise camina colgado de las rocas de manera muy parecido al uso de una escalera horizontal. Mas cerca, he visto a los jugadores de Waterpolo del CN Terrassa haciendo el mismo uso de escaleras como entrenamiento. Incluso Haide Garriga, coordinadora del Instituto Barcelona Esport me comentaba que la ha hecho servir en la escuela primaria.

Ahora bien, si os fijais, en todas las fotografias, los brazos de los usuarios estan completamente estirados y, de esta manera, la actividad mejora la coordinacion y la flexibilidad pero estaremos de acuerdo que los beneficios a nivel de tono muscular son minimos.

Una Verdadera Pasada de Escalera

Sin embargo, esta no es la unica forma de hacer servir una escalera horizontal. El uso correcto que me enseñaron hace treinta años es como sigue: Cuando saltas y te cuelgas de un extremo de la escalera horizontal, sube un poco con los brazos hasta que tus codos hagan un cierto angulo -entre 80 y 100 grados- y solo entonces procede de un extremo al otro de la escalera horizontal de unos 12 escalones y 4 metros, manteniendo este angulo.

Procediendo de esta manera, si que podemos hablar de una practica deportiva que verdaderamente incrementa el tono muscular de brazos, ombros, pectorales y espaldas en diferente intensidad, incluso se trabajan los musculos abdominales al tratar de controlar el vaiven de las piernas. Es decir, las Pasadas de Escalera inciden sobre los mismos grupos musculares que las flexiones en barra fija.

Y aqui radica la clave de la efectividad del metodo: Las Pasadas de Escalera no son mas que flexiones en barra fija o dominadas con un disfraz de dinamismo que es real . ¿Y quien duda de la efectividad de las flexiones para crear musculo? Nadie. Desafortunadamente, todos conocemos las desventajas de las flexiones tradicionales: resultan repetitivas, monotonas y duras. Las Pasadas de Escalera son todo lo contrario: Ocho posiciones de salida y mas de cuarenta y cinco ejercicios diferentes de las mas faciles a las mas complicadas.

¿Cual es el secreto?

Cuando se trabaja con el peso del propio cuerpo, la verdadera dificultad consiste obviamente en la repeticion de estirar totalmente los brazos y realizar un numero de flexiones completas, pero mantener media flexion mientras se pasa de un extremo al otro de la escalera es relativamente sencillo y al mismo tiempo, esto prepara y hace crecer el musculo de una manera mas progresiva y motivadora.

Una Session de Escalera consiste en una serie de entre tres y diez pasadas combinadas con otros ejercicios cardiovasculares durante una hora, dos o tres veces por semana. Entonces, el incremento de masa muscular es evidente. Queremos enfatizar que esta propuesta en realidad no pertenece a este autor -aunque el libro si por supuesto-, es la propuesta de miles de deportistas anonimos que han practicado y practican Pasadas de Escalera desde hace medio siglo. Simplemente nos hacemos eco.

Si se fijan, el muchacho o muchacha del cartel y triptico de aquellas jornadas deportivas sonrie, se lo pasa bien, no es publicidad, es real. El movimiento, la sensacion de sentir tu cuerpo estirado al maximo proporciona placer. Por eso, las escaleras han estado presentes en todos los parques infantiles de todo el mundo y por esa misma razon pensamos que pueden tener un gran exito con la publicidad y difusion adecuada. Esta en juego la salud de todos, jovenes y adultos.

Posiciones de salida

Acostrumbramos a practicar con ocho posiciones iniciales, pero hay mas dado que algunas de estas posiciones permiten cambiar de sentido el cuerpo:

1.2 Agarres superior e inferior del escalon.

3.4.Agarres superior e inferior de la barra.

5. Agarre combinado en el escalon.

6. Agarre combinado en la barra.

7. Agarre combinado en barra y escalon.

8. Agarre exterior de ambas barras.

Pasadas sencillas

• Agarres superiores de escalones
• Agarres inferiores en escalones
• Agarres exteriores de ambas barras
• Agarres superior de barra
• Agarres inferior de barra
• Agarres inferior lateral de escalones

Pasadas de dificultad media

• Agarres exteriores de ambas barras con flexion completa
• Agarres exteriores de ambas barras con flexion completa lateral
• Agarres superiores de escalon con flexion completa
• Agarres inferiores de escalon con flexion completa.

Pasadas durillas

• Agarres exteriores de ambas barras con saltos progresivos (tremendo potencial explosivo)
• Agarres inferiores de escalones con saltos progresivos
• Agarres superiores de escalones omitiendo un escalon y regresando al escalon omitido
• Agarres exteriores de ambas barras combinado con agarres inferiores de escalones

Una Sesion de Escalera

Asi es como funciona: Una sesión de escalera consiste en una serie de entre tres y diez pasadas combinadas con otros ejercicios cardiovasculares durante una hora, dos o tres veces por semana.

Entonces, el incremento de masa muscular es evidente. Quiero enfatizar que esta propuesta en realidad no es mía, es la propuesta de miles de deportistas que han practicado y practican Pasadas de Escalera desde hace medio siglo. Simplemente me hago eco.

A partir de aquí, corresponde al ministerio de Cultura, la Conserjería de Deportes y las comunidades autónomas, así como a los departamentos de investigación universitarios, medir los niveles de hipertrofia que se pueden conseguir con esta practica y en que periodo de tiempo, si esta práctica se puede combinar con pesas, etc... e invito a profesionales competentes que estudien y confirmen el uso de Escaleras Horizontales como una opción excelente para iniciar a jóvenes atletas y la población en general en el ejercicio físico de torso y brazos.

Puede mejorar la condición física de millones de atletas en nuestro país y en todo el mundo. Si se fijan, el muchacho o muchacha del cartel y tríptico de aquellas jornadas deportivas sonríe, se lo pasa bien, no es publicidad, es real. El movimiento, la sensación de sentir tu cuerpo estirado al máximo proporciona placer.

Por eso las escaleras han estado presentes en todos los parques infantiles de todo el mundo y por esa misma razón pensamos que pueden tener un gran éxito con la publicidad y difusión adecuada. Esta en juego la salud de todos, jóvenes y adultos.

Algo de historia

Mi interes por este aparato debio nacer alguna de las mañanas que madrugaba para ir en bici hasta el gimnasio antiguo del Club Natacion Terrassa donde hacer algo de ejercicio mas de veinticinco años atras. Al final de una de las sesiones, recuerdo que me quite los guantes de piel sin dedos y los deje sobre un plinton donde dibujaron una estrella de seis puntas. Alli relajado, pense los ratos tan divertidos que habiamos pasado con tanta gente haciendo pasadas de escalera, futuros propietarios de gimnasios, policias, bomberos, escaladores y escaladoras, etc... pasaron por alli, y charlabamos entre pasada y pasada.

Que curioso que nadie haya escrito un libro sobre pasadas de escalera!

Pensé entonces, pero no le di mas importancia. De hecho olvidé el tema totalmente hasta siete u ocho años despues, cuando trabajaba de profesor de castellano en Berlitz Language School de Torrance -California. En los ratos libres, entre temblores de tierra 4,5 grados y 5,3 grados que transmiten un trueno sordo a traves del suelo, escribí un pequeño artículo sobre las pasadas de escalera -ladder workouts le llame entonces, y ahora no podria decir si exactamente la misma expresión entendida como 'entrenamiento progresivo' se acuñó durante aquel momento o ya existia.

En cualquier caso, aquel primer intento de publicación generó respuestas que ciertamente parecian ir mas alla de la declinación amable porque la propuesta no coincidia con los planes editoriales de aquel momento, excusa que conocia bastante bien. En cambio, recuerdo frases muy sugestivas como “parece ciertamente interesante y util...” de Patricia Berry, Senior Editor de Sports Illustrated for Kids, y Royce Flippin, tambien Senior Editor de American Health Magazine.

Un par de años despues, trabajaba entonces en el New School for Social Research que dependia de la New York University, decidí escribir un pequeño guion para documental en esos mismos ratos libres. Por entonces, Jane Fonda habia protagonizado una bien conocida serie de videos de aerobics distribuidos por Warner Bros, y ellos fueron mis primeras victimas. Unsolicited queries o propuestas no solicitadas como las mias llegan en tal cantidad a estos estudios que, segun tengo entendido, se lanzan a la papelera sistematicamente sin ni siquiera leerlas o abrirlas. No asi las mias, para mi sorpresa encontraba mensajes en el contestador automatico de casa de agentes y productores curiosos por la propuesta de Ladder Workouts, entre ellos, Mitchell Block de Direct Cinema Limited y William Blake.

Con este ultimo mantuve dos reuniones en sus estudios de Manhattan. Durante la primera reunion en su despacho, recuerdo que uno de sus compañeros se unio a la conversacion, y en un alarde de honestidad increible me aconsejaba que no dejara ningun guion sin hacer firmar un acuerdo de confidencialidad a la parte interesada, es decir, la empresa para la que trabajaba ambos. Y efectivamente, me marché sin compartir el guion con este productor hasta que varios dias despues, acordamos una nueva reunion donde, esta vez si, aporte este documento que William Blake firmó.

Elyzabeth Eysemberg, Directora de nuevas adquisiciones de Warner Brothers contesto en dos años consecutivos mi propuesta; le sucedio en el cargo Greg Boegner con quien intercambie varios faxes sobre el tema, de Columbia Pictures tambien contesto nuestra propuesta, asi como de TVE Marta Trias, Coordinadora de programas de TV3, Alfred Bosch, Jefe Secretaria Consejero Delegado COOB'92,

International Product Design, Ontario TV, etc...

Asi estaban las cosas cuando el jueves, 17 de enero pasado, paseando por la Carretera de Sanz, pase por el Centro Cultural del barrio y el cartel anunciador de las 6es Jornades d'Educació i Esport me golpeo como un tren de carga, dado que mostraba precisamente una niña agarrada de los escalones de una escalera horizontal y sonriendo. Si no hubiera sido por esa imagen, no habria reparado en la posibilidad de publicidad y promocion que podia ofrecer la plataforma de las jornadas organizadas por el Instituto Barcelona Esport en colaboracion con la Universidad de Barcelona.

Al dia siguiente, llame por telefono a la organizacion quienes muy amablemente aceptaron que les enviara mi propuesta de comunicacion sobre pasadas de escalera. El intercambio de correos electronicos que siguio me llevo a conocer el Centro de Estudios Olimpicos y Deportivos de la UAB, y Berta Cerezuela, coordinadora de proyectos, acepto considerar mi propuesta de investigacion, siempre y cuando existiera un equipo liderado por un Doctor que la encuente interesante. Entonces, Nuria de la Editorial Inde tambien acepto una introduccion y los primeros capitulos para considerar la publicacion e incluso tenia sugerencias para exteriores del DVD que acompañara la publicacion puesto que, tal como comentamos, y ella tiene una larga experiencia en el sector editorial, incluso como importadora de libros extranjeros, no existe nada publicado sobre el tema en el mercado.

Gracias a las jornadas, tambien tuve la buena estrella y satisfaccion de conocer a Xesco Espart, previo profesor de INEFC, entrenador del primer equipo de hadball del Futbol Club Barcelona, Coordinador del area de Preparacion Fisica, y a Ramon Riverola, su homologo de la seccion de Hockey sobre patines. Ambos ultimando o trabajando en sus respectivos libros, Jugar con el Corazon en el caso de Xesco, y una preparacion tecnica de la temporada de Ramon.

Xesco sugirio contactar con el entonces entrenador del primer equipo de handball, Xavi O'Callaghan, quien me podria facilitar la participacion de jugadores del primer equipo como modelos en las fotografias de la publicacion que estabamos preparando, una idea genial por parte de Xesco dadas las caracteristicas del tren superior de estos jugadores que encajaban perfectamente con las necesidades del proyecto.

Y asi lo hice, Xavi ha sido muy amable en las varias ocasiones que contacte con el, quien logicamente debia confirmar con la directiva del club sobre las condiciones en que las imagenes de los jugadores podian captarse y hacerse servir.

En esta sucesion de eventos, Alfredo Vega, Teniente Alcalde del Ayuntamiento de Terrassa, Regidor de Cultura, previo Director y profesor de Educacion Fisica del CEIP Pere Viver donde estudian mis hijos y antiguo maestro de mi mujer en la Escuela Joan Maragall de Rubi, me comentaba que el habia hecho servir las escaleras entre sus alumnos y la idea de una publicacion le parecia correcta hasta el punto de comprometerse a comentarlo con las universidades vecinas para que se investigara de forma sistematica sobre el tema.

Finalmente, el sabado 1 de Marzo pasado, realice mi comunicacion en el Aula Magna del INEFC de Montjuich, quisiera aprovechar para agradecer a la organizacion su interes, especialmente a Haide Garriga, coordinadora del evento, quienes tuvieron la flexibilidad para acomodar un comunicante mas de los que tenian previstos. No puedo decir que hubiera mucho publico durante mi secilla exposicion, pero creo haberme ganado la confianza de los asistentes.

Al acabar la comunicación, visite a Gerard Moras, Director del Departamento de investigación del INEFC de Barcelona, quien estaba al corriente del proyecto editorial y audiovisual, y nos felicito por ello. Todo el evento, reunion y felicitacion incluidas, fueron muy gratificantes. Mas todavía cuando la revista digital Educaweb.com publico mi intervencion en su monotematico sobre Educación Fisica de la edicion de Marzo.

El mes de Abril pasado, tenia lugar el 4 Congreso Internacional y 25 Congreso Nacional de Educacion Fisica en la Escuela organizado por la Universidad de Cordoba en esta ciudad. Desafortunadamente no pude presentar la misma comunicacion porque todos los plazos estaban cerrados. Sin embargo, Leopoldo Ariza, Coordinador del congreso y ponente, muy amablemente abilito la web para que pudiera inscribirme como asistente a alguna de las conferencias y mesas redondas. Durante el acto de cloenda del evento tuvo lugar la presentacion de la candidatura de la Universidad de Barcelona para celebrar el mismo congreso bianual, fue durante ese acto que conoci personalmente a Miguel Angel Torralba, Coordinador del Departamento de Expresion Corporal y Actividad Fisicica de la UB, y responsable de las Jornadas organizadas por el IBE en las que participe, no tenia ni idea de que asistiria a evento! Hice por hablar con el un momento y tras presentarme, tambien nos felicito por la iniciativa y nos alento a continuarla.

A la semana siguiente, me puse en contacto con Vicente Martinez, homologo de Miguel Angel Torralba, en la Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, a quien conoci durante el congreso de Cordoba, y le dirigí al enlace donde se estaba publicada mi comunicacion de Marzo sobre Pasadas de Escalera, a vuelta de correo, Vicente me escribia:

Sorprendentemente atinado para un Licenciado en Anglogermánicas. Enhorabuena!

Creo que el primer reconocimiento formal que he recibido y que es de agradecer despues de tanto empeño.

A raiz de una reunion con Jordi Llonch, Presidente de la Sociedad Municipal de Comunicacion SA de Terrassa y Montse Prat, Directora del Canal TerrassaTV, el pasado lunes 19 de Mayo, contacte con el Club Natacion Terrassa que a traves de su departamento de prensa, me comentaban que estaban por supuesto dispuestos a colaborar; cotacte de nuevo con Xavi O'Callaghan para saber de la disponibilidad de los jugadores de handball del FCB. La buena noticia es que la directiva no ha denegado la participacion del FCB en el proyecto en ninguna ocasion, lo que obviamente, parecen esperar es mayor compromiso de otras entidades, editorial, productora, etc...

Ahora mismo, estoy preparando la primera Cumbre Iberoamericana sobre Deporte Escolar a celebrar en la Habana, Cuba, en la que participo con dos comunicaciones breves, Pasadas de Escalera y Newaza, y un cartel donde introduzco la labor educadora sobre el medio ambiente desde la Asociacion LiveScripts de reciente formacion con el tema Huertos, Expresion Corporal y Actividad Fisica. Dudé en confirmar mi asistencia por razones obvias de compensacion de costos pero, de alguna manera, ese compromiso esta dando sus frutos. Carlo Buzzichelli, Director de Tudor Bompa Institute en Italia me comenta que el equipo olimpico cubano de Judo usa escaleras horizontales para sus entrenamientos y me sugiere que contacte con el Instituto Nacional de Educacion Fisica cubano para acceder a las instalaciones e intercambiar experiencias con sus entrenadores, accion que ya he tomado.

En la conversacion que tuve con Xesco y Ramon -le comentaba a Carlo en el correo donde le agradecia su sugerencia- ellos diseñaban entrenamientos especificos con pesas para grupos musculares precisos que intervenian en movimientos determinados, el uso de escaleras no ofrecia esa posibilidad y lo entiendo, pero sigo pensando que este aparato puede ser un agente motivador interesantisimo para principiantes. Me siento un poco como Don Quijote -continuaba- creyendo ver Gigantes, es decir, productos con excelentes posibilidades de beneficios sociales, de salud entre escolares y de marqueting, donde al parecer todos parecen ver solo Molinos. Y esta ha sido la respuesta de Carlo:

I see the horizontal ladders as a training mean. Surely they can be fun and for such reason a good training tool for youngsters. Working mainly the pulling muscles of the upper body, they have to be complemented with pushing exercises.

Quisiera acabar este apartado historico detras de las escaleras con un episodio que tuvo lugar hace tres dias durante las clases de repaso de ingles de ESO y Bachillerato que realizo en el Ies Can Jofresa de Terrassa. Al acabar la clase, Joel, un chaval de primero de ESO se marco unas verticales al final de las mesas, era capaz de mantener el equilibrio incluso con una sola mano. Empezamos a hablar sobre el particular y resulta que el gimnasio de la escuela tiene una escalera horizontal donde practica con una monitora. Le pregunte si aparte de las flexiones o dominadas, hacia pasadas de escalera, contesto afirmativamente; añadi si estas pasadas las hacia con los brazos extendidos o flexionados. “Desde luego, flexionados, para hacer bola!” fue su respuesta. Un chaval de apenas doce años haciendo pasadas de escalera! es prudente para su edad hacer este tipo de ejercicios? Y si efectivamente lo es, cuantos ejercicios practicara de toda la variedad existente? Y cuantos otros chicos no se podrian beneficiar de esta practica? Esta claro que este tema necesita atencion, investigación y difusion.