Flexitest: An Innovative Flexibility Assessment Method
Author: Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo
A simple, easy-to-learn grading system that simultaneously measures and evaluates the flexibility of 20 different joints during individual movements. Now you will be able to really evaluate, rather than just measure, flexibility for individuals of all age groups and physical activity levels.
Claudio Gil Soares de Araъjo, a Brazilian sports medicine physician with a PhD in physiology, has spent more than 20 years developing and perfecting the Flexitest method. This concise resource clearly explains how to use Flexitest in different settings, with valuable coverage of data acquisition, analysis, and statistics.
The book is organized into three parts and includes the following features:
* More than 100 accurate photographs of the assessment of 20 joint movements
* Numerous figures and tables presenting the flexogram and flexindex data
* Supplemental photographs, video, and other materials available via the author's Web site for viewing or downloading
Flexitest includes an 18-point classification system that makes it easy to compare and contrast different flexibility assessment techniques; it will appeal to any professional whose job involves flexibility assessment. The author discusses how to determine a global index of body flexibility, called Flexindex, using the assessment of different joints. He presents normative and statistical information for male and female subjects ranging in age from 5 to 85 and the Flexitest profiles of more than 400 athletes from a variety of sports.
You'll also find a self-evaluation test, a review of contemporary flexibility testing methods, variables affecting flexibility assessments, and a rationale for the use of Flexitest based on several controlled studies.
The information presented in Flexitest: An Innovative Flexibility Assessment Method is clear enough for practitioners to begin using the technique immediately, yet it is detailed enough to meet the scientific needs of researchers.
About the Author
Claudio Gil Soares de Araъjo, MD, MSc, PhD, is a professor at Gama Filho University and medical director of CLINIMEX in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A practicing physician in exercise and sports medicine who is dedicated to productive research, he has used Flexitest on more than 4,000 subjects in his practice since 1979.
Dr. Araъjo has worked in supervised exercise programs and cardiopulmonary exercise testing since the 1980s. He also coordinated the medical evaluation of the Brazilian athletes during the 1988 and 1996 Olympic Games.
He earned his MD, MSc, and PhD from the University Federal Rio de Janeiro. As part of his medical training, he was a research fellow in cardiorespiratory and exercise areas in 1979 at McMaster University in Canada. Dr. Araъjo is an American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) fellow, committee member, and presenter at ACSM annual meetings.
Interesting textbook: Belleza universal or YMCA Healthy Back Book
Illness and the Limits of Expression
Author: Kathlyn Conway
A sophisticated literary, psychoanalytic, and philosophical treatise on illness and narrative form, Illness and the Limits of Expression investigates the failings of standard survivor literature by asking how language can be used to express the catastrophic experience of disease. While battling three bouts of cancer herself, Kathlyn Conway became familiar with the "success" narratives of disability and sickness---stories of the woman who still looked beautiful after three successive treatments or the man who ran five miles a day during chemotherapy---all of which emphasized victory born of hope and positive thinking.
Believing that such upbeat accounts insufficiently portrayed the intense emotional strain, physical deterioration, and mental terror brought about by illness, Conway began to investigate the far less popular nontriumphalist genres of illness literature---by authors such as Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Susan Sontag. Instead of shying away from the uglier sides of illness, these writers explore how disease and devastation separate us from ourselves and why much can be learned about identity and language by noting this division.
Through her readings of both sets of narratives, Conway shows how difficult it is to express the reality of serious illness or injury, but she also argues that by wrestling with this challenge, writers can offer a better picture of the complex relationship between body and mind.
Kathlyn Conway is a practicing psychotherapist and the author of Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
"This is a wonderful book, whose message is extremely important but all too rarelyheard: most published accounts of illness gloss over its difficulties and horror. People struggling with serious illness and disability deserve more. With clear writing and sound scholarship, Illness and the Limits of Expression takes on this challenge and should be read by both scholarly and general audiences."
---Emily Abel, University of California, Los Angeles
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
The Cultural Story of Triumph 17
Character: The Damaged Self 41
Plot: The Disrupted Life 57
Searching for a Language 75
Narrative Form 99
Endings 119
Conclusion 133
Notes 139
Index 153
