The Day that Never Ended...

What a day, what a day. Yes, I do believe, the folks here in China do try to overbook our day! We started out the morning visiting a biomechanics class here at the Institute. It looked very similar to the classes we saw at Wuxi, just a lot of lecture. I didn’t hear a student speak once during the class. But it was interesting to watch the students. Some feverishly took notes (those in the front of the room), and as the number of rows increased from the instructor so did the level of note-taking. I would say distance from the instructor and note-taking ability is inversely related (sorry to those non-mathematicians). And, of course, the students in the back couldn’t hold their head up or keep their eyes open. It was great to see the funnel effect of learning so explicitly, which is to say students in the front and middle of the class learn the most (or so research says) in comparison to students at the edges.

After lunch and an 1.5 hours of Tai Chi, we finally did a lab tour! Though, I haven’t been able to explicitly see the biomechanics labs (they’re hiding them from me!), today we went to the new lab! Wow—talk about a construction bonanza! They are building this amazing complex for their Institute and athletes. It is set to be completed by the Chinese New Year, and it will be huge! All new labs, physiology, biomechanics, sports medicine and psychology, for everyone! The biomechanics lab will be about ~35m long by 15m wide, and the professor said, “Yes, it is very big. We will be doing obesity research as well here.” I don’t know if he caught the humor in what he said or not, but I did! These new training, research and teaching facilities are going to be astounding—plus they are putting a “Western-style” hotel in it as well! Their big showcase for all this is next October, when Jinan hosts the 11th China Games, and they invited me to “come have a look!” Just to put it in perspective, they have 3 outdoor tracks and 1 indoor track!

After the new labs, we went to a test site for track and field, and collected data on their athletes, which allowed me to watch the coaches more thoroughly to see how they interacted with their players. Thankfully, we were with the most animated coach. He really seemed to care about his athletes, and though I couldn’t understand a lick of what he said, he said it with such gusto! It was terrific to see this type of interaction. The rest of the coaches sat on the bench with the stopwatches, but he really seemed to take an active role in his athletes. I used to say I could just watch John coach all day because I liked how he interacted with his divers, but this guy had it down too. He was funny (once things were translated for me), he listened, and he cared—what more can you ask for in a coach!

And, of course since the Chinese work like dogs (to quote Jill), we ended the evening with 6 research presentations by the master’s students—all in English, a first for all of them! Four had collected data, 1 was for coaches on training methods, and the last was a proposal of work to do. They have some neat work being pursued and a lot of it was interwoven with things I do! With the proposal of what will research will be pursued next year, we had a fairly lengthy discussion (students here only have 1 advisor), but now I think this one will have 2 (the professor and me!). Then, at 10 pm, I was told, “okay, you can go to your hotel now,” so now I must prepare tomorrow—we’re visiting Confucius’ birthplace tomorrow!

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