What is public relation?

     This time I'm going to talk about something out of swimming and film but a guest lecture about the public relation (PR) practice from a PR co. stakeholder, Tina Wong.

     Before I study PR and listen to this guest lecture, I think it is just a very simple thing which is only promotion to different parties and the creativity is the key for every practice. However, I'm totally wrong with this concept and PR is really important to the success of different events.

     At the beginning, the understanding of the nature and detail information of the event is essential because it needs a very clear mission to set the position in the market and it is directly related to the success base on the market need and competitiveness.

     Taking care of every parties' need may be the difficulty in the PR practice because it may consist the huge vary between the company boss, the sponsors, the audiences and the media, so understand the components of need in each party and strike the balance to create the further plan is not that easy as the wrong understanding or balancing will lead to the failure of the event with the wrong plan. No matter which side cannot be satisfied, the event will lost the supports.

     Even attracting the media to help spreading out the information requires a lot of techniques. It is because the media is uncontrollable, every piece of information they pick to report may not be the one you want to deliver but the level of interest of the public is the key to decide. Therefore, the PR co. always need to build up good relationship and communication with them and catch up the characteristics of those media, such as their patient, focus, needs etc. When to have the press conference and release and how to arrange to fulfill the needs of different parties are always base on the experience of the PR co. as the longer and better they run, the more success they can perform due to the grasp of comprehensive information.

     If anyone who think PR is an easy thing to do like I was, it is totally wrong and it is a good chance for you to re-understand this complicated but interesting topic.

Be inspired from the old film: The Social Network

     Actually this film isn't very old like the last film sharing one month ago, it's picking the book written from Ben Mezrich as the reference and converted to be the film that directed by David Fincher in 2010. The story is about the establishment of Facebook, one of the most popular social network platform around the world, by Mark Zuckerberg who was still at the stage of being an university student of Harvard University but already a genius in program writing.

     

     There are quite a lot of points for me to reflect on in the film, some are related to my school learning and some are about the friendship handling and commitment things.

     One of the subjects in my learning talks about the public relation of the sports organizations and sometimes the concepts may just be the concepts for me only because what I can do is to analyze the present practices of some sports teams and I can't put myself into them to understand more. However, watching this movie help me realizing the concepts in my lessons more. Mark create the Facebook and become so successful is because he knows what are the needs of his targets so he can combine all the elements and design for them. What's more? He has a clear mission and objectives to help him get in the progress of his business, and he stay focus of the mission without being distract from other thing, such as the profit. That's why he becomes success!

     However, it's just a pity that the only friend of Mark, Eduardo Saverin, which is the co-founder of Facebook, sue for the compensation from Mark due to the betray action. How hard is it to have a friend to support you and your idea without asking to much but Mark just focus on his business and he didn't care or respect the feelings and effort of his friend. Finally he's successful with his business but lose his only friend who just trust him. Is it worth?

     Mark promised the Winklevoss brothers to help them write the program for another social network platform, Harvard Connection, but he broke the promise instead building his own website without noticing the brothers. I personally think that's a big problem because it must be fulfilled once the promise has been made or what is the point of the saying? Most of the relation build on trust and if there is no trust between the relation anymore, it'll just simply break.

     Maybe you will have a different view from me after watching the movie, The Social Network, base on different life experience and I'd love to listen from yours so leave a comment and tell me what's in your mind about this movie. Also, try to figure out what do you want from swimming and set up some goals to help you learn and enjoy it=)

Why swimming?

     Some people may have a confusion that why we should swim and why we should start learning it from zero. I can understand these kind of questions since I've also asked myself about that before I started to learn. There are numerous of sports which are beneficial to us to enhance health but why I have to learn something that I don't familiar with? However, there's no doubt that swimming really bring us lots of advantages and let me show you how good it is.

1. Strengthen the cardio muscular function: the blood circulation is faster and the oxygen can be provided to the muscles and organs faster, then go back to the heart again. After a period of time, the loading of your heart will be reduced due to the increased efficiency of each pump of blood.
2. Enhance the immune system: frequent swimming with the water temperature as 26-28 degree can help your body to adapt and balance the heat by the nervous system, the metabolic rate can also be enhanced so the risk to get sick will be reduced.
3. Maintain the healthy body shape: every part of your body muscles are recruited and the body fat can be burned efficiently, therefore the body shape is comprehensively developed.
4. Strengthen the respiratory function: the respiratory muscle will be stronger and the lung volume will be increased after some time of swimming training.

     Swimming is definitely good for the elderly and pregnant women since they may have a higher stress on the knee joints due to the degrading and the excessive weight increment. Therefore, exercise on the ground may be the high impact one for their knee joints and swimming can solve the problem completely.

     Why confuse? Go to swim and practice more is definitely good for you!

The easy backstroke

     Backstroke is an easy swimming style after you familiar with the floating skill and have practice with the freestyle swimming since they share some similar characteristics. Therefore, it won't be difficult for you to learn it from zero acknowledgement!!

     No more air exchange is needed in this style cause your face will face upward for the whole process but you need to have a good floating skill and add up the arm pull and kicking as the whole set of movement. I can summarize 4 points in backstroke base on my learning experience, here we go:

1. Mind your body position. If you still remember the floating skill that I've talked before, keep the back straight and the ears should be under the water level.
   
2. The turn of your shoulder. Your body can slightly turn to the side which the arm is moving upward as a smoother movement.
   
3. Keep the palm pronated when the arm swing back to the water again and push the water for moving forward.
   
4. Do the flutter kick as freestyle but this time is a reverse one. The knees shouldn't be out of the water during kicking.

Reminder!!

• Practice with a partner and in a pool without too many people as you may not familiar with the distance so a partner can keep you away from danger.
  
• Maintain a slowly breath so the rhythm won't be messed.

Freestyle arm pull

     Last time we talked about the kicking of freestyle swimming so this time we will end up this swimming style with the arm pulling.

     A good pull can provide huge force to move forward in freestyle swimming and it's more effective than a good kick. Therefore, take this topic more serious may help you swim easier~ Here below are the main tips that need to be concerned:

1. The elbow should move up above the water level in every pull movement since it can reduce the water resistance.
   
2. Start the movement from the straight front of your head and look around 45 degree forward. It has 2 functions, first you can stabilize your way and the second is that you can check whether the arm position is correct or not.
   
3. Relax the arm muscle when your elbow is above the water level. Over contract of the muscle will lead to fatigue and hard to swim forward.
   
4. When your hand gets into the water again, keep pulling the water with straight forearm until it below the chest and go further until next to the thigh and move back to the starting point.

     Here is a video for your better understanding, you can concentrate more with the slow motion start from the 19th second and the 55th second.

     After you can familiar with this movement, try to combine all the breath, kick and arm pull together and see whether the freestyle swimming is successful or not. It will be more strength consuming with the whole set practice so remember to have enough warm up and cool down before you start and end up the practice=)

A movie for you!

     <<Jerry Maguire>> is an old movie that acted by Tom Cruise in 1996 and it is a story about the sport agent who had gained some reputation with lots of famous clients in a large agency company but he lost everything, including his job, respect and even his fiancee one day because of the mission statement. He was lost in his career as he can't feel anything from the job except the money so he hoped the company can be more humanity by caring their clients more instead of the profits and he tried to convince his company by sending everyone his mission statement. 

     I want to share this movie is because I feel and understand a lot from it. Undoubtedly, we concentrate on the tangible returns or profits too much when we're in the process or even begin we start something that's why we'll get lost on the way and totally forget the meaning of doing something. Failures and difficulties are always happen in the way we try some new things, not even in sports but anything in our lives, not many people can success at once but after many trials. Building up the faith or goal for your own and try to trust yourself, your decision at the first time by thinking positively in the dark time!

     We start everything with a certain meaning behind at the beginning and please hold it tight as this is the core that support us the most and give us the biggest reason to continue until the success. Don't let anything from outside distract you from that meaning or defeat your faith as nothing should able to stop you from doing the right thing! 

Freestyle flutter kicking

     This time I will talk about the leg movement when practicing freestyle swimming. I know that some people may suggest to learn breaststroke first as the new swimmers but I feel more comfortable and easy starting with freestyle personally as it seems not that strength consuming than the breaststroke.

     After the floating skill that I've mentioned last week, we can try to add the kicking movement to accelerate  this time. New swimmers usually practice it by grabbing the side of the pool as they are not confident to practice in the middle pool but I won't suggest that! Here below are the main reasons:

1. Your upper body will keep holding above the horizontal level when you grab the side so the lower body will sink into the water.
2. If you grab the side, your head will hit the wall when you kick, then you will have a sense not to move forward so you lose the meaning of practice kicking.
3. You can't realize how far you can go with each kick and how much power you need each time as you limited yourself by grabbing the side and not to hit the wall.

     So, pick a kickboard and practice in the water depth that you can handle with, then hold the top edge of the kickboard to concentrate on practicing the alternate kick first. Here below is a video as the demonstration on holding the board and how to do the kick.

     

     As a remind, please make sure that you heels should move up on the water with every kick but not the whole feet so you can produce the large force to swim forward without using too much energy.

     After you can handle the lower body movement, try to hold the middle or bottom edge of the kickboard so your head can go into the water and practice the breathing and kicking at the same time. Every breath can usually hold for 2-3 seconds inside the water when you're doing the kick or you can adjust the time freely for your own preference but I'll suggest not hold it for too long as you may feel hard to take enough oxygen in the next breathe.

     If you forget how to perform the breathing technique in the water, go to here  http://waterworldbynessa.blogspot.hk/2014/09/overcome-your-fear-in-water.html to check out the skill again, enjoy your practice=)