Read the interview and answer the questions.
What proportion of sportspeople use sports psychologists to help them with their mental attitude?
What are the main purposes of the Haka war dance used by the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team?
Listen and speak Giving post-production feedback
A In pairs, discuss the following questions.
1. Do you ever take part in debriefing meetings for your work? What is discussed in your debriefing meetings?
2. Do you think debriefing meetings are useful? Explain why/why not.
B Look at the following points, which might be mentioned in a debriefing meeting for a radio programme. Decide if the points are positive (P) or negative (N).
A booked speaker does not arrive for the show
Research not done well
Being first with breaking news
Studio going down for several seconds
Getting an eyewitness report for a breaking news story
Interviewees not briefed well
C 0.8 Listen to a debriefing meeting at the Good Morning Australia studio and tick (√) the points in B that they discuss.
D 0.8 Listen again and complete the following extracts.
1. Who wants _______ _______ first on this morning’s show?
2. … the show being off air was not a _______ _______ .
3. We’re still trying to figure out _______ _______ .
4. Do you have any idea what the _______ _______ and how we can avoid it _______ _______ in the future?
5. … what _______ _______ the meteorology expert?
6. … getting an eyewitness _______ of the rail crash was a _______ scoop.
7. I was also very _______ _______ the piece about house prices, and I think the piece on the Picasso museum was _______ _______.
Focus on reading
Read the article quickly and answer this question. What does it say you need to do to be able to do ‘free running’ successfully?
Running
Free
‘Parkour’ – or free running is the fast-growing extreme sport that turns everyday urban landscapes into obstacle courses. Caroline Williams meets the man who started it all.
Loosely translated, ‘le parkour’ means ‘using every object in your path as an obstacle’. It began in 1987 in the Paris suburbs, where bored teenagers Sebastien Foucan and David Belle decided to make life more interesting. ‘Interesting’ involved climbing up buildings, swinging around lamp posts and vaulting anything that stayed still for long enough. ‘We were just kids who started playing a game, and we’ve never really stopped,’ says Foucan.
With six friends, they set up ‘Yamakasi’- a group which later split when five of them opted to take work as theatre acrobats, but not before it had led to a 2001 film of the same name. Yet, despite all the splits and personal differences, what they refer to as ‘the discipline’ lives on.
Fifteen years later, it’s a global phenomenon. The UK-based parkour website gets 10 000 visitors a day. Foucan is surprised to say the least. ‘For me, it’s amazing but it’s my goal to meet people from all over the world and to spread the philosophy,’ he says. This philosophy is all about challenging and improving yourself, while maintaining a zen-like calm. That’s why there are no competitions in parkour, and definitely no world records. When asked what is the highest he has ever jumped, Foucan replies: ‘I have no idea.’
There have been serious setbacks. One person died after trying some of the moves in the Yamakasi film. And since the rise of parkour’s popularity amongst the general public there have been more than a few broken bones. ‘The key thing,’ says Ez (pronounced ‘ee-zee’), a founder member of the movement, ‘is that you must learn how to roll. It’s very important because if you’re moving forwards with a lot of momentum and you don’t roll, your legs take the shock. If you can roll – across your shoulder, never on your spine – it transfers the energy so you don’t get hurt. You land, you roll, you stand up and you keep running.’
And if you are going to leap from a tall building, or even just off the back of your sofa, you should know how to land properly. ‘You might think you just bend your knees, but actually you have to land on the ball of your foot, bend your knees in a certain way and slap the floor with your hand. It takes the shock out of landing entirely.’ It looks painful but he insists it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as when he landed flat on his heels one time and couldn’t walk for nine weeks.
Once you’ve mastered these movers, you can create as many jumps and death-defying handstands off the edges of buildings as you like. But, as the cliché goes, it’s practice that makes perfect. And you have to be able to suppress any last-minute doubts or fears. ‘When you get scared, you become more rigid in your movements, your muscles become tense and you’re more likely to lose co-ordination,’ says Professor Stuart Biddle, a sports psychologist. ‘The mind plays a massive part,’ agrees Ez. ‘When you’re standing at the edge of one building leaning to do a spot jump, you fall until the very last second and then jump. It’s scary because you can see exactly how far up you are – it might be eighteen or twenty metres. If the fear gets to you, it’s all over, so you really have to have confidence in your training.’