Summer Sports

During the dog days of summer, you’ve got to do whatever you’ve got to do to keep cool and chill out under the scorching sun. Nevertheless, people need a pastime or sport so they don’t pack on any of those pesky pounds. Stand up and stretch with me as we take a saunter into summer sports on this week’s episode FYI! 

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during the dog days of summer you've got to do whatever you've got to do to keep cool and chill out under the scorching sun nevertheless people need a pastime or sport so they don't pack on any of those pesky pounds stand up and stretch with me as we take a saunter into summer sports on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music][Applause] hello hello hello and welcome to this another exciting edition of fyi and i can't believe it but this is the second to last episode of our second season so i couldn't have done it without you it has been an amazing two season so far and i'm really excited about the third season coming up in september so that said if you haven't listened to previous episodes now would be a great time you have almost 60 episodes and if you're patrons you have a hundred and twenty that's right because you have access to bonus audio as well so you've got tons of content to keep you busy for the next month and if you guys haven't left a rating yet well now would be a good time if you're enjoying the program the podcast if you like it if you're learning it just takes a minute if you go over and leave a rating wherever you listen to podcasts that really helps me out and it makes us much more visible i really appreciate it and of course i love reading your comments and feedback so thank you thank you thank you fyiers it's been an amazing two seasons and i can't wait to kick off season three i hope you enjoyed last week's episode where we had none other than my mom on board and that was a very special episode and next week we'll have our final episode of this second season so you've got so many different topics to explore and much more still to come if you haven't figured it out yet today we're talking about summer sports we did an episode on winter sports as well so i only thought it was fair for us to do one dedicated to summer sports and especially because when this podcast comes out this episode it'll be smack dab in the middle of the summer and smack dab in the middle is in todo el me oyo as you would say in spanish in the intro i said the during the dog days of summer during his durante evidently the dog days of summer dog days what is this well dog days of summer are the hottest days of summer then i said you've got to do whatever you got to do to keep cool and to keep cool is refreshing to not overheat to not get dehydrated which is another thing that can happen in this scorching summer heat and there was another word we use scorching abrasador you can also say sofocante scorching it's a word that we often associate with the summer scorching also with the the sun it was a scorcher and everybody needs to keep cool and chill out as i said before chill out to relax and keep cool because it's hot out there let's be honest we love summer but it is a scorcher at least where i am right now recording this podcast do you want to know something i'll be honest with you i literally have beads of sweat dripping down my forehead and beads of sweats on gotas de sudor and my forehead is mi frente so as soon as i finish recording this episode i think i'm gonna participate in some summer sports then i went on to say in the intro nevertheless you know of course we need to keep cool we need to chill out but we also have to keep active so we need a pastime or a sport and when i say to keep active i don't just mean our bodies i mean our minds too and i guess that's one of the reasons you guys are working on your english so mind body and spirit yeah there's a time to chill out but we don't want to turn into a complete vegetable in the summer either well i guess you could turn into a complete vegetable but then as i said you're going to pack on those pesky pounds oh there's that alliteration again to pack on pounds esponet quilos we say libras evidently and no matter how hard i try i always put on a couple pounds in the summer well if you remember last summer what were the episodes we did barbecue beer need i say more then you guys heard me blow a whistle so pla el silvido el pito is and i said stand up and stretch with me a lot of s's there stand up and stretch ponte de pie yes as we take a saunter into summer sports and what is a saunter well santos como um right uh paseo una and that's exactly what we're going to do on this episode so let's stretch because well we don't want to have sore muscles afterwards and if you remember from our gym episode to have sore muscles is estar con agujetas or you could simply say to be sore i'm gonna give you guys a little disclaimer at the beginning of this episode i'm not too sporty yeah i'm not what you would call the athletic type and many of you guys know i like sports i like playing sports i like doing activity but i'm not the sporty type no matter how hard i try i've been more of a beach bum a beach bomb yeah well that's because i feel like life is a beach con this is expression life not to be confused with life is a b-i-t-c-h which means so make sure you don't pronounce those words the same because those two expressions mean the exact opposite but some are sporty i know many people who are sporty i see people running up and down the beach in the mountain and i'm actually quite envious i wish i had that will is or as we call it willpower and if you remember in our gyms episode i told you that i never really got into going to the gym one of the things i love about doing sports or doing exercise is nature fresh air the great outdoors so this is probably my favorite time of the year to be active if i'm going to be active and something tells me i'm not alone so we're going to go over some of the most common summer sports and some of the vocabulary around these sports and in the bonus part of today's show we're going to look at some water sports we'll also look at some really cool expressions that you can use for sport and in the summer and all of that is in the bonus part of the show remember every week there's a bonus episode for patrons so if you guys are interested in getting bonus audio to accompany each episode and pdfs and classes with me on a weekly and monthly basis it's all happening over at patreon.com just go to patreon.com alonso and find out about our amazing community and that said i'd love to send a shout out to all my patrons thank you so much for being the most rockin students in the world and a special shout out to all my super duper students javier frantisco tony roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and lolis and don't forget about my interstellar students carmen diego pilar and diana if you want more information or if you want a free sample contact me or just go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and take a look around we'd love for you to join our curious community and learn so much more than just english now one of my favorite things to do in the summer is hiking senderismo to take a hike but it also means better afraid asparagus so if you tell somebody take a hike you're telling them either or better asparagus it'll all be in the tone but i gotta say hiking is one of my favorite ones because while you're getting that fresh air you're using your legs your arms your core and when you get to the top usually there's an amazing reward and that reward is a bird's eye view of wherever you are a bird's-eye view is pajaro i think you say in spanish so like when i hiked in the alpujarras in the south of spain i remember okay i was tired but when we finally got to the top it was worth it it was so rewarding tan gratificante just to look at the you know the people below and how the the trees look like little fake trees it's it's just an amazing way to see the world to get some exercise and to get some inspiration as well so there's hiking and walking in general you don't have to go hiking on a trail you can just walk along the beach they say that speed walking is one of the healthiest things you can do this trend it's actually a new craze it's been popular for many years but i've been reading a lot about speed walking lately so these are things that almost anybody can do you don't need much equipment to do these walking hiking okay you might need a car to get to the national park or whatever place you're going to be hiking at i think you don't need too much maybe some hiking boots and that's about it maybe a jacket that's it and you're ready to go as we'll see in some of these activities well it requires quite a hefty investment just think about how expensive a surfboard is or surf lessons so some of these sports as you'll see you can do for peanuts and others well they'll require uh an investment at least if you want to get into it full time which is another thing people do when they start doing a new activity or they take up es el verbo compuesto they take up a new activity or sport well one of the first things that they do is they rent and i think that's a great idea when i first went snowboarding which is obviously a winter sport but i'm using this as an example i said i'm not going to buy a snowboard until i know that this is something that i really want to do because five hundred dollars for a piece of wood i don't know your budget guys but for me that's an investment that's gotta last a long time so that's good that you have schools and renting options so you can try a lot of different things and see which ones work for you another one that you can do for pretty cheap i mean the only thing you need is a bathing suit unless you're on a nude beach una playa nurista then you don't even need a bathing suit and i'm talking about swimming okay granted you need a pool you need a lake you need an ocean you need a body of water but once you've got that the swimming part is pretty easy no sweat in the literal sense and in the figurative sense no sweaters now i have to say i'm not an expert swimmer though i love swimming i enjoy swimming i've been swimming since i was a little kid but i i looked it up i had to look it up because i couldn't remember all the different strokes and the strokes are the different ways that you move when you're swimming so the five major swimming strokes are back stroke breast stroke then you have one that's very challenging and that's the butterfly have you seen that one i tried to do that for like a minute and and i'm dead i am out of breath and uh about to drown aogarme so the butterfly then you've got freestyle and side strokes so these are called strokes in english these different forms these different ways of swimming and we have an expression in english that is different strokes for different folks i think you say in spanish paragustos los colores different strokes for different folks and strokes aren't only used in swimming no no they also use strokes in golf people talk about how's your stroke your golf stroke is how you swing the golf club do i strike you guys as a golfer no i don't have the look well let's you got to think about that golf aside from being a sport a very popular sport uh it's got its own look there's there's you know a special signature to this sport uh 18 holes we call them the same agujeros but my favorite kind of golf is mini golf are you guys with me on that i mean okay 18 holes that could be a long day chasing a ball around but mini golf i love mini golf some of my earliest memories are playing mini golf oh another golf that i like as well i guess i like the the less structured golf the the less involved golf and that's a driving range i don't know how you call this in spanish but a driving range is where you go and you hit golf balls you whack them really really hard and really really far and you know what that was a really good way to vent i remember doing it when i was in college before a big exam a friend said to me do you want to go to a driving range and we'll we'll hit some golf balls and i said well i don't really like golf he goes no no man trust me this will be great right before our big exam so we went we went early in the morning we went to a driving range and we started whacking i got a bucket of golf balls and you want to know something i aced the exam ace como as and also ace comes from tennis which we're going to look at in just a moment but i have to be honest i've never played real golf like 18 holes at a golf club and that's an interesting word un club de golf is a golf club a golf club so remember this sentence there are lots of clubs at golf clubs okay it's a bad joke but if it helps you remember it great but one thing that golf has been accused of though is being elitist golf is not a sport that is accessible to everyone and well firstly you need a lot of space you need grass you need a lot of people to maintain that you need water so it's a lot more expensive than let's say hiking or swimming which all you need is a mountain or a body of water so some people complain that this is a sport that you know people who live in underprivileged areas well they don't really get to enjoy it as i said i'm not a big fan but i love going to the driving range and anytime you offer me a game of mini golf i am in and a great expression that we have that comes from golf is it's par for the course and it's par for the course literally means that it comes with the territory so if you're learning english you're going to make mistakes obviously you're learning it's par for the course and as i said that brings us over to tennis we just looked at the word ace which comes from tennis do you guys play tennis you want to play doubles[Music] the good thing about tennis one of the many good things about tennis is that you can play tennis all year round you can play tennis in spring you could play it in the summer you can play it in the winter and you can play it in the fall it doesn't matter but i imagine playing tennis in the summer is better because well you're working on your tan right you know trabajando so you look good and obviously there are many many sports that have come from tennis such as paddle tennis which is very very popular now in spain you've got ping pong i mean who doesn't like a good game of ping pong well i consider it like a a mini tennis almost a harder tennis because have you seen like if you get some really good ping-pong players you can't keep your eye on the ball so they're all related in some way they both use two different courts uh court is gancha in fact we can get another expression from there the ball is in your court el balon la pelota esta tejado which comes from tennis and the expression i gave you before to ace a test is to do something easily well what happens when you hit an ace in tennis it goes in and the other person can't even hit it so you got that point easily it makes sense and if a person is an ace is so tennis the ever popular sport of tennis yeah you need courts you need rackets but i think it's accessible to almost everybody and all you need is a racket as i said before the word racket though is a very funny word because racket also means noise so a good way to remember these two yes the tennis players were making a racket when they threw their rackets for example it's a good way to remember it because you already know the word racket oh and a racket is also an illegal business see three words for the price of one one of my favorites is volleyball but not just any volleyball i'm talking about beach volleyball sand volleyball another one where you're working on your tan and one of the greatest things about playing beach volleyball is when you take a break you can literally go into the water you know cool down a little bit and you're back and you're refreshed and you're ready for the second inning no inning is baseball come on you can tell i haven't played beach volleyball in a long time and a popular word that we can learn from volleyball is to spike the ball which i think you say is you spike the ball and obviously the word valley te suena una palabra in espanol abolea aha so they were volleying the ball beans estaban pasando lo avolea it all makes sense when you start to think about it another classic one is the frisbee how could we talk about summer sports without talking about frisbee and i know what you're thinking alberto tossing a frisbee back and forth is a sport well depends if the other person makes you run i know some people who i have to tell them i'm over here not over there so it can be a sport absolutely but there's also something called ultimate frisbee and it's so popular in the united states now that it's just called ultimate and it's similar to football it follows some of the similar rules of football when i say football i mean obviously american football except the players are not allowed to run with the frisbee so if someone passes you the frisbee you can only move one foot to pivot it's kind of like basketball but without dribbling in that aspect but this is so popular there are tournaments all over the united states and it's played with a frisbee something that you would play fetch with with your dog to play fetches another one that's played with a frisbee and it's very popular in the area where my parents live northern new jersey and in new york there's even a park near my mom's house where they have these they look like garbage cans but they're made out of chains cadenas and you play something called disc golf or frisbee golf and there are 18 holes just like golf and you have to throw the frisbee just like golf and you got to get it into that chain that kind of garbage can type thing and if you get it in great of course if not well you got to keep throwing until you get it in it's a lot of fun i remember playing it a few times with friends disc golf so i guess what we're seeing is people have taken this this thing that's so simple frisbee which in fact you know how the frisbee was invented it was actually the dish that was used for pies and someone turned it around and said wait a second this is a toy we can throw it back and forth and then other people said well we can make a sport around this and then other people said well we can do it too and before you know it the frisbee is still the king of summer sports speaking of kings of summer sports also skating this is very popular i think of venice beach in the united states in california you've got roller skating and well from my generation in line skating or rollerblading some people don't like to call it rollerblading because that's the brand name but many people say rollerblading or inline skating which was invented in 1979 in minneapolis in minnesota these guys scott and brennan olsen they were brothers they did they decided to take the wheels off their roller skates and put them in a straight line instead of you know four different corners and voila the inline skate or as they called it rollerblade was invented and i used to rollerblade a lot but lately i've had some problems with my foot you guys know also i had a knee injury so i've been avoiding uh rollerblading i still have my rollerblades who knows maybe i'll get back on them one day on deck we've got baseball vista location expression the baseball if you haven't heard that episode give it a listen there are tons of great business expressions in there and on deck is el proximo batteador or proximo por benite so on deck we've got baseball the only thing about baseball though is you need a team so you need you know at least you need a first baseman you need a handful of people on each team to get a baseball game going and another popular one too is softball if you remember it's baseball same rules but it's played with a bigger ball it makes it easier to see easier to hit and it's pretty competitive as i said in the united states you'll see softball leagues even between companies different companies play against each other so baseball and softball they go hand in hand but you need a team another sport where you need a team is basketball but you don't necessarily need a team i mean if you want to play a game you need a team but you can always do a one-on-one or a two-on-two or you can play horse estos horse or out look at the themos is to shoot hoops would be to shoot hoops so that's another way to keep yourself in shape to work on that tan and you don't need too many people like in the case of baseball or softball or soccer there's another one soccer as well oh and i can't talk about baseball without mentioning kickball and what is kickball it's baseball played with a bouncy ball and instead of hitting the ball with a bat you kick it this is a classic american game kickball as you see we like to make a lot of different hybrids ibritos and don't worry soccer fans i'm not gonna forget about soccer how could i it is the universal game and there's a reason why soccer is such a popular game at least in my opinion and i think it's because you don't need too much i mean you got to make goal posts but you can use a shirt or a shoe and if you don't have a ball you can roll up a couple pairs of socks and kick around that and if you've seen it in latin america in some poorer areas that's how people play soccer so this is kind of a game that doesn't exclude anyone because really all you need is a ball but there are people who haven't let that hinder them either and to hinder esprenar or so as you can see you have so many options we didn't even talk about water sports yet we're going to talk about water sports in the bonus part of the show we'll also take a look at some sporty idioms in the bonus part of the show and some summer songs to get you pumped up and to get you pumped up is energetic so we're going to take a look at that and much more in the bonus part of today's fyi[Music][Applause] you