This will be the last post to whitmantennis.blogspot.com.
Never fear I'm going to continue to blog at my new site
www.whitmantennis.net
Why move? Nothing like a new project over the winter but honestly Wordpress has more features and allows for far greater control over content and layout. I've moved all the old content over to the new blog and am currently working through all the old posts tagging and adding categories.
Make sure to subscribe to the new blog so you are informed when new content is added.
Goodbye dear old blogspot!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Photos from 2009 spring break
Was going through my computer files and ran across these pictures from our 2009 trip to Hilton-Head. Certainly a blast from the past. Enjoy!
2009 Pictures
2009 Pictures
Thursday, November 10, 2011
An evening with the sleep doctor
The team had a wonderful dinner with Dr. Richard Simon last night in the Reid Campus Center. Dr. Simon is a '72 graduate of Whitman (and varsity tennis player) who is now one of the leading sleeping researchers in the nation. Dr Simon made the point of telling the team that if you see someone who is truly great make sure to follow them. Sage words from the sleep doctor.
Was a great experience for the team to be able to sit down with Dr Simon and talk about sleep, sleep issues, and ask questions. Dr Simon had some really fascinating information on sleep. For instance about 8 years ago Whitman student Jenny Schwartz conducted a study with the Whitman women's tennis players that focused on their serve and sleep. Basically she tracked 2nd serve percentage to a specific target with the student's normal sleep patterns and repeated the experiment with 2 more hours. Not surprising there was a statistically significant improvement with the 2 hours extra sleep. That experiment has since been repeated with Stanford varsity basketball players with similar results (free throws). One interesting fact that Dr Simon presented to the team was varsity athletes typically get 1 more hour of sleep than students not involved in athletics -- 7 hours vs 6 hours. However the 7 hours is still well below the 9 hours most college age students need.
We also spent quite a bit of time talking about resetting one's "rhythm" to adjust to time zone changes. This year we will be spending time in Hawaii and Washington DC so the information presented is very pertinent to our situation. Dr Simon stressed it was the wake up time that adjusts one sleep clock. He suggested when traveling to an Eastern time zone to start getting up 1/2 hour earlier and immediately getting full spectrum light (sunlight) a few weeks before the date of travel.
Of particular interest was the topic of naps. Basically sleep is good and if done properly naps can make a person more alert and reduce "sleep debt". It was suggested that if one has an important task (like a test) in the afternoon or evening a good strategy would be to drink a cup of coffee and then take a 20 minute nap. However be careful not to nap too long and then potentially wake up from stage 3 sleep. Waking up from stage 3 sleep can cause "sleep drunkenness" and heavy lethargy.
Also for the parents out there -- it is completely natural for teenagers to have a sleep cycle of staying up late and sleeping-in the morning. It appears that humans are wired to have different sleep patterns at different ages.
Question for those that stayed away through this article -- how can you tell if you are getting enough sleep? Answer -- if you don't need an alarm clock to wake up.
Big thanks to Dr Simon for taking the time to have dinner with the tennis team.
Was a great experience for the team to be able to sit down with Dr Simon and talk about sleep, sleep issues, and ask questions. Dr Simon had some really fascinating information on sleep. For instance about 8 years ago Whitman student Jenny Schwartz conducted a study with the Whitman women's tennis players that focused on their serve and sleep. Basically she tracked 2nd serve percentage to a specific target with the student's normal sleep patterns and repeated the experiment with 2 more hours. Not surprising there was a statistically significant improvement with the 2 hours extra sleep. That experiment has since been repeated with Stanford varsity basketball players with similar results (free throws). One interesting fact that Dr Simon presented to the team was varsity athletes typically get 1 more hour of sleep than students not involved in athletics -- 7 hours vs 6 hours. However the 7 hours is still well below the 9 hours most college age students need.
We also spent quite a bit of time talking about resetting one's "rhythm" to adjust to time zone changes. This year we will be spending time in Hawaii and Washington DC so the information presented is very pertinent to our situation. Dr Simon stressed it was the wake up time that adjusts one sleep clock. He suggested when traveling to an Eastern time zone to start getting up 1/2 hour earlier and immediately getting full spectrum light (sunlight) a few weeks before the date of travel.
Of particular interest was the topic of naps. Basically sleep is good and if done properly naps can make a person more alert and reduce "sleep debt". It was suggested that if one has an important task (like a test) in the afternoon or evening a good strategy would be to drink a cup of coffee and then take a 20 minute nap. However be careful not to nap too long and then potentially wake up from stage 3 sleep. Waking up from stage 3 sleep can cause "sleep drunkenness" and heavy lethargy.
Also for the parents out there -- it is completely natural for teenagers to have a sleep cycle of staying up late and sleeping-in the morning. It appears that humans are wired to have different sleep patterns at different ages.
Question for those that stayed away through this article -- how can you tell if you are getting enough sleep? Answer -- if you don't need an alarm clock to wake up.
Big thanks to Dr Simon for taking the time to have dinner with the tennis team.
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