Extreme Sports

The world is full of fearless risk-taking adventure seekers in search of a rousing rush of adrenaline. Daredevils defy the very limits of humankind daily. These venturers are constantly pushing the envelope in search of that sudden surge of dopamine. The sky’s the limit when it comes to overcoming one’s own obstacles. Ultimately, it’s all about leaving your comfort zone and living on the edge! We’ll explore extreme sports on this week’s episode of FYI!

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the world is full of fearless risk-taking Adventure seekers in search of a rousing rush of adrenaline Daredevils defy the very limits of humankind daily these venturers are constantly pushing the envelope in search of that sudden surge of dopamine the sky the limit when it comes to overcoming one's own op stacles ultimately it's all about leaving your comfort zone and living on the edge we'll explore extreme sports on this week's episode of FYI welcome to for your info English you got it you got[Applause][Music][Applause] it[Applause][Music] hello hello hello and welcome to this another exciting episode of FYI Today's Show is for you Adrenaline Junkies those of you who are looking for a fix you're craving something more and if you were paying attention I ended last week's episodes on drugs talking about dopamine well today we're going to talk a lot about dopamine adrenaline and all those chemicals those chemicals that make us feel good the ones that put us in a great mood and they remind us that we're alive and kicking So today we're going to tackle extreme sports and we're even going to hear from one of my students Garman she's an Interstellar student and her favorite pastime is skydiving so she's going to give us a firsthand account of what skydiving is like let's kick off today's show with our intro I always like to sprinkle some great vocabulary words in there for my Amigos I started off by saying the world is full of fearless risk-taking Adventure Seekers wow that's a mouthful let's unpack it piece by piece the world is full of fearless Fearless means you are not afraid of anything I ain't afraid to know ghosts if you're fearful it's the opposite it's always good to learn synonyms and antonyms of words so Fearless versus fearful and somebody who takes risks is a risk taker an adventure seeker and to seek is to look for something just be careful it's a very irregular verb it's seek sought sought thought so Adventure Seekers are in search of a rousing rush of adrenaline and rousing means exciting emotionally exciting just like many extreme sports are I mean that's the reason people get into them right they're chasing that adrenaline rush and a rush in this case is then I said Daredevils defy the limits of humankind daily and a daredevil is somebody who's not afraid to try anything and to Defy is to go against the saf in Spanish then I said these venturers and that's interesting because you can say adventurers or venturers and to venture is to dare to go somewhere it means to take a risk a lot of times when we talk about a business we talk about a venture have you heard about his new Venture that means his new project his new ambition his new business but it usually implies taking a risk it's a great word if you didn't know it Venture and it's got the T and the U Venture nature Portugal future situation I hope you repeated all those with me you can add your own to the list and these venturers are constantly pushing the envelope and to push the envelope is to go beyond our Horizons and they are in search of a sudden surge of dopamine and a surge is similar to a rush then I said the sky the limit I love that idiomatic expression it really means there are no limits to infinity and beyond as Buzz Lightyear would say and the next word is a really good verb to overcome T and I think the word obstacle is pretty obvious obstaculo you can also say the word hurdles we're going to learn a lot of great vocabulary today and I wrapped up the intro saying ultimately it's all about leaving your comfort zone and then I got the help of Steven Tyler from Aerosmith living on the edge do you like to play it safe or do you like to live on the edge well either way we'll explore extreme sports today now let's look at the origin of the term Sports versus extreme sports because the word Sports has been around for ages but the term extreme sports they say first appeared in the 1950s now it's been wrongly attributed to Ernest Hemingway the quote is there are only three Sports bull fighting motor racing and mountaineering all the rest are merely games however it was not Ernest Hemingway who said that it was another writer named Ken perie and the quote appeared in 1957 so as always let's start out by defining the topic Action Sports adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk these activities often involve Speed height I want everybody to pronounce that that one with me height a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear the word gear is a keepo in Spanish it's all the stuff you need to do that sport it goes on to say extreme tourism overlaps with extreme sport to overlap I think in Spanish is solapar the two share the same Main Attraction Adrenaline Rush caused by an element of risk and differ mostly in the degree of Engagement and professionalism as with many definitions there's a gray area more recently the term extreme sport has spread everywhere and it's often used to describe a multitude of different activities now exactly which sports are considered extreme is debatable but there are several characteristics common to most extreme sports extreme sports tend to have a younger than average Target demographic also they are rarely sanctioned by schools for their PE curriculum PE is how we say physical education they also tend to be more solitary than many of the popular traditional sports but as always there are exceptions to every Rule and there are new extreme sports popping up every day another thing that makes something an extreme sport is the higher number of inherit currently uncontrollable variables variables such as weather and terrain wind snow water mountains and since Mother Nature cannot be controlled will this adds a lot of uncertainty to the outcome it elevates the risk level but then again isn't that what we want isn't that why everybody's trying to hike up Everest by the way we have an episode on Mount Everest if you haven't listened to it give it a listen so we looked at where the term came from and more or less when but who were the Pioneers well many of these Sports have existed for Generations Sports such as rock climbing and Ice climbing they've even produced famous athletes such as Edmund Hillary if you remember him in the Mount Everest episode and Killian jouret so there's a whole business and a marketing machine behind it and we're going to talk about when that turning point was was because these Sports as many things do start out on The Fringe and then they get very popular they catch on and some obviously get more popular than others as with skateboarding also you can't ask for a better spokesperson than Tony Hawk but we'll hear from him later another sport that's considered extreme is surfing sure have you seen the size of some of those waves and don't forget about the reefs below and surf is not a new sport it was invented centuries ago by the inhabitants of Polynesia and as many of you know in Hawaii it's the national sport so it started with adventurers risk-takers but also there was something called the dangerous sports club of Oxford University England and this was founded by a couple of guys and they wanted to take risks they saw modern sports tennis basketball as is boring mundane ordinary even and they were thirsty for more they wanted to up the ante to raise the stakes sure the more you risk the higher your adrenaline goes up so this club in Oxford University came to the attention of the general public when they invented modernday bungee jumping I know in Spanish you say buting we don't call it bridging we call it bungee jumping the reason is the cord is called a bunge cord and the first modern bungee jumps were on April 1st 1979 they were done from the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol England other club activities included hangliding but wait that's not all hangliding from active volcanoes and they were also there in the early years of base jumping so you could say these guys were defin itely Pioneers Oh and we might as well start talking about all the different kinds we'll start with base jumping Bas stands for building antennas spans and Earth and those are the four different things you will jump off of it's different from parachuting or skydiving because you don't jump out of an airplane you jump from fixed objects but base jumpers only carry one parachute they say that base jump jumping is significantly more hazardous than other forms of parachuting and it's widely considered to be one of the most dangerous extreme sports one of the most popular extreme sports is skateboarding and I know what you're thinking you're thinking skateboarding well you know my little cousin does that yeah but as with every sport there's skateboarding and then there's skateboarding if you've ever seen Tony Hawk on a halfpipe you'll see that it's true humans can fly and Tony Hawk was one of the Pioneers not only did he make skateboarding popular but he also pav the way for other extreme sports and even the X Games which we'll talk about a little bit later on but right now we're going to hear from a young Tony Hawk in 1987 I don't think he could have imagined in his Wildest Dreams how popular skateboarding would become let's hear from a young Tony Hawk Behold The Amazing skateboard one of the few toys capable of turning parents prematurely gray sending kids off the wall and medical bills into the wild blue yonder sometimes all at once 25 years ago it started out as one more of those California fads now it's the sleeper gift of Christmas 87 popular and most times priced that way Pro boards range from 100 to$140 and when they buy the board that's only one of the components right throw in things like wheels and bearings and the gizmos to hold everything together and you can spend$200 of moms and dad's money in no time and that doesn't include protective padding helmets t-shirts and stickers The Lure of course is to defy gravity hopefully with style just like the skateboard Pros do 19-year-old Tony Hawk is King of the cult inventor of such Maneuvers as the 720 that's two midair somersaults the Madonna and the frigid between appearances and sales of his own boards he earns an excess of$150,000 a year skateboards have been very very good to Tony yeah for me it has been I bought a house um a condominium in carlbad the sport has developed its own language which to the uninitiated sounds like dialogue from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie I just like you know stoking other people out if you know what stoking means you know any on some happening slide and roll Cur or sorry bro they're all secrets predictably perhaps skateboarding has its own videos too and its popularity has spread to Japan the third Major Market after the US and Canada where body jumping is the in thing to do but if all this put you off consider this youthful wisdom we could be doing worse things be doing drugs we could be in like gangs and stuff but this is our way of fun skateboarding it's pretty cool wow those were the days it just took me back to the 1980s and I have a Tony Hawk right here in my office in the studio right next to me and as I said before there's skateboarding and then there's skateboarding well I do the first one not the Tony Hawk one another person who was a skateboarder and snowboarder Shawn White he's another guy who was a Pioneer in Paving the way for extreme sports an extremely popular one is skydiving for young people it's almost become a right of passage I remember going skydiving when I was a little kid well little kid I had to be over 18 I was a lot younger than I am now and I remember it being one of the most amazing experiences of my life and it wasn't just the adrenaline that I felt running through my veins for 3 days but it was also the night before those nervous Jitters thinking is something going to go wrong or is it going to be okay so there's that whole psychological element as well and that's why you have to psych yourself up and to psych yourself up is to get in the right mindset I think you say mental I've only skydived once but it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life and somebody who is no stranger to skydiving is Garmin Garmin is one of my students she's an amazing amazing student a great person and it's an honor to have her in our curious community and she has gone to Florida and train there she comes to Madrid to train she takes it serious as we say she means business let's hear from Carmen hey Amigos skydiving's been the most Blissful experience in my life but also the most difficult skill I've ever learned I have to to push not only my physical abilities but also my mental abilities I became a skydiver through an AF course AF stands for Accelerated freefall that is a rapid and safe progression in just eight jumps after a two days Ground School Learning I was trained on safety and emergency procedures safety free for Maneuvers canopy piloting and canopy landing and then I was ready to do my first sky dive my two instructors and me jumped out of the aircraft at an altitude of 4,500 M they were hanging onto my harness and during the freef fall I had to complete the exercises I was trained for always under day supervision the freeall speed is around 200 km per hour I'll never forget my very first jump my brain didn't know what to experience I was locked up for about 2 seconds it was a nerve wacking too much sensory overload after a free fall of 60 seconds I reached the opening altitude at 1,500 M and I deployed my canopy by pulling the handle out and then the canopy opened and I was on cloud N I couldn't believe I was up there riding my canopy in the sky and feeling the fresh air on my face then I piloted the canopy to the ground and eventually I got a safe canopy Landing when I completed my C and I got my license I started to feel that I was the goddess of the universe now 30 years later I'm still spending all the time improving my abilities sometimes I feel in heaven when I get my exercise well done but sometimes I feel frustrated during the learning process because it takes me a lot of time practicing again and again just to achieve a simple body position during the freeall by the way the same thing I feel with the English learning process too but the rewards I get in return every time I jump or every time I master a word in English it's worth it wow Carmen you sounded great and you know what even though I've got a bad knee I'm thinking about going skydiving again just don't tell my wife or my insurance company I'm sure cman knows this as well but some of the coolest places to Skydive down in Florida in the United States and Key West also in the Swiss Alps Byron Bay in Australia is another amazing location I did it in New Jersey it is still one of the most memorable days of my life Other Extreme Sports the Iron Man Triathlon you say Triathlon we say Triathlon a shout out to one of my students born to Iron Man he's done many Iron Man competitions hey I'm sending a lot of shoutouts to my students and I forgot to send a shout out to all my patrons so a shout out to all of you who are in my Curious Community including Gman and born to Iron Man and all of you thank you thank you thank you let's continue to learn and laugh together and if you want to join my Curious Community take a look go to patreon.com Alonso and find out what you're missing out on you can get bonus episodes every week PDF documents with all the vocabulary review classes and even private classes with me all the information is over at patreon.com Alberto Alonso and I'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students Mara Javier Paco Roberto and Mila and don't forget about my inter Stell students Carman Lena Issa Paco David Jose Maria Patricio and Edgar keep up the great work guys and if you want more information go to patreon.com Alberto Alonso for more information in fact now they have a function on patreon where you can join for free now I don't know if you have access to all the content but at least you'll be in the loop all right where were we with our extreme sports oh right Iron Man another one that's become very popular kite surfing this is one that's done around Spain especially in kith I guess you need a lot of wind to do this one and you need some serious muscles too and you need a kite and not just any kite not the one you bring to the park so that's another thing too you're not just investing time and energy but also money on equipment a parachute is not cheap a kite is not cheap not the ones used in kite surfing and obviously the word kite is coma then you've got other water ones such as snorkeling or scuba diving we already briefly mentioned snowboarding and skiing sure you can just go down the bunny Hills or you can go where no man has gone before we mentioned rock climbing and Ice climbing you've got some Motor Sports such as Motocross I don't know very much about this but I got to say I love it when they do Superman it's just a really cool trick then you've got jet skiing and snowmobiling wake boarding which we can learn the word wake Estella there and it's not just in the literal sense but it's also in the figurative sense in the wake of the current events I know a lot of people who do wake boarding in the north of Madrid you've also got BMX Bob sleigh hangliding parkour that's cool because you're using the environment and I think my favorite one is Extreme ironing I know you've seen pictures of this one the way it works is people take their ironing board and an iron to a remote location and they iron an item of clothing so just imagine you're on the top of mulen in Sierra Nevada with your ironing board ironing your dress shirt but make sure you get a picture I'm serious folks there's even a Wikipedia page on extremee ironing and they give away trophies move over Iron Man it's time for extreme ironing well I doubt you're going to get hurt ironing it's getting there that's the extreme part but none of these Sports would have been as popular as they are today without television without mass media and that came in the 1990s I'm sure many of you are familiar with the X Games they were founded by e ESPN which is now owned by Disney and they had different disciplines skateboarding BMX Motocross skiing and snowboarding at that time none of those were Olympic categories and the inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 I'll never forget it I was graduating high school I thought it was a great idea and in the '90s it was all about extreme everything started with an X even the Generation generation x and they took place in Providence and Newport in Rhode Island one of the coolest things about the X Games it's where they push the envelope and invent New Tricks such as Tony Hawks 900 or Shawn White's double MC twist 1260 which is a snowboard trick that had not been done before and Tony's was obviously a skateboarding trick the good thing is those two are Pals also the double back flip in the BMX that was done for the first time at the X Games by Travis Pastrana and I think it has snowballed pun intended but now there's a lot of money in extreme sports just ask Red Bull and we're going to hear from Felix bomgardner in the bonus episode we're also going to take a look at some of the most extreme extreme sports and where to do them we'll take a look at the worst accidents in extreme sports we'll also take a look at a shocking Survival Story and of course some idioms all of that in the bonus episode and if you're not a patron you are missing out so sign up now I hate to be a pest but it's worth it so whether you like adventure sports or not there's one thing that we can't deny they are on the rise every day adventurers are pushing the limits to go where no human has gone before and you my Amigos you too but only your English explorers exploring the English language every week with a different topic and don't forget if you haven't heard a topic you'd like to hear about just let me know we're going to wrap up here but I sure hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of this week's FYI[Applause][Music] a