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The clear hero of the Beijing Olympics, Usain Bolt, is a bit of a mixed blessing as a role model. Yes, he is an amazing athlete, but he does give the impression that world domination (athletically) is his right, and very little hard work is required. Take the 100m pre-finish celebrations, his ‘jogging’ in the qualifiers or his comment after demolishing the world 200m record that before the race “I woke around 11am and decided to watch some TV and had some nuggets”. Or is this all just a refreshing attitude in an otherwise dull sport?

Dig beneath the bravado and the story is quite different. Like all serious athletes, Bolt has a serious work-ethic and top-class diet that had led to his success. With his show-boating and joking, he is just making light of an arduous and sometimes monotonous existence of body pumping and preparation for the big race. One area where he clearly stands out is his lean physique. In a recent interview with FHM, Bolt does admit a love for junk food, but most of his meals are exemplary mixes of brown rice, tuna, yams and green vegetables. He might get up late, but you can bet most of his waking hours are focussed on building those muscles.

The dietary contrast with Michael Phelps is revealing: where Phelps eats huge quantities of saturated fat and protein just to keep his calorie intake high enough (5 hrs of swimming a day, plus his huge resting metabolic rate, burns over 10,000 calories), Bolt goes for lean protein, fibre and vitamins. That’s pretty much in line with government advice on a healthy diet. Yet the quantities of food these men eat is in a different league to most humans. As one commentator put it, “Michael Phelps burns over 1,000 calories an hour while training. You and I couldn’t burn a thousand calories an hour if we set ourselves on fire.”
OK, I’m sure both athletes have their vices. Bolt claims he is partial to a Guinness and Red Bull (yuk!), and Phelps got stopped for drink driving. But this kind of repeated sporting success requires pretty clean living: you can bet Usain wasn’t partying until the small hours after his 100m win. And when asked about supplements, Bolt admits “I take vitamin C, but that’s it.”

The reality is that Usain Bolt, as with the other Gold Medalists, get to where they are through long-term dedication and single-minded perfection of their sport. Bolt especially is a great role model, showing you can do all this and enjoy yourself as well.

Looking across the Olympics, the great news is that success doesn’t all come down to freakish physique and a one-in-a-million talent. If you aren’t blessed with a 6”5 frame and massive muscles, it’s possible to excel in everything from table tennis to archery. The key ingredient is determination.

If you want to get more ideas for how to incorporate this in a lesson, have a look at our Fuelling Champions resource, or how to prove whether sports drinks actually work.

Why can the smartest kids often come up with the most annoying, disruptive, and irritating ideas?

I can’t remember who said it, but someone famous did comment once that being bored breeds ideas and innovation, and it is good for children to have some down time and boredom in order for them to have the opportunity to be creative and imaginative without framework or limitation. The only problem with this is that if you develop an equation that combines intellect with boredom, adds peer influence, and subtracts constraints, that equals sheer nightmare for a teacher! There are a whole range of ideas and inventions that students have dreamed up under these circumstances, and the pea-shooter is one that reoccurs often.

Teachable went to see the World Pea Shooting Championships last week, held ever year at Witcham, Cambridgeshire. The rules are simple, and the equipment even more so: use straw, pea and a puff to hit the target.

Now, we know that Pea-Shooting is perhaps not a teacher’s favourite sport, but why not use our ideas and inspiration to twist an old student favourite into something the whole class, including you the teacher, can enjoy! The safety precautions are fairly obvious: have a clear target area, and perhaps control the supply of peas so that only one at a time are fired. But a basic pea-shooter can be made with a cheap plastic straws and dried peas, although a range of sized straws and peas will help the experiment. There are some obvious science-related questions to explore:

1. Do smaller peas travel further, or is it about how well the pea fits in the straw?
2. Would a shorter straw help the speed and accuracy?
3. Can the class design a different way to launch peas at the target (but not necessarily test it…)?

And finally, some more off-the-wall ideas to entertain in the last week of term:

Living Without Technology – Research and discuss technological inventions and their impact on our lives. Give up a particular technology for one to two days and keep a journal about the experience (mobile phones or a computer / internet would be a good one to choose). The discussion afterwards can be directed either towards how much impact the science behind these everyday technology has on our lives, or how people in the mid 20th century would have lived without them. (Ages: 7-14, Subjects: Science, Citizenship, History).
Science and Disablity – Investigate technological innovations that help people with disabilities to communicate, and list design features you would want to include in a personal digital assistant (Ages: 11-16, Subjects: Health & Fitness, Science & Tech, Topics: Chronic Conditions. Communications & Computing. Design & Invention)
Programming a Pizza – Design the sequence of steps needed to make a pizza, create an algorithm of the steps and simulate programming a robotic device to “create” a pizza (Ages: 11-16, Subjects: ICT, DT).

Well, here it goes – me in a Welsh bog! As you can see, it is really a pond within a bog, but I certainly didn’t have time to look for pond-skaters or frogs.

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If you’re looking for even more ideas and inspiration around the Tour De France, look no further:

• French: examine France’s sporting successes over the decades and relate to French government policy
• Maths: explore the percentage of foreign versus French TdF winners over the decades, looking at probability, charting data and averages
• PE: develop theories about sport training and how it prepares an athlete for the actual event, including doing research into which non-French athletes train in France and if they train with other athletes who they will later compete against
• PE / Business: how do athletes who participate in the Tour De France earn income and what percentage of cycling athletes can make a living simply from sport-related activities?
• Research Wikipedia facts about the Tour De France and explore the issues of truth versus fiction when using the internet for research.

For those of you interested in using ‘biking’ in the classroom, we’ve brainstormed the following:

• search the internet for the last 5 press-covered examples of people cycling from Land’s End to John O Groats, and discuss the successes, issues, and charities concerned;
• research accidents that cyclists experience on the road, discussing road safety and how to improve it;
• discuss whether biking is a true green alternative for commuters, and how business could assist employees using this form of transport more;
• research the timings of Tour De France ‘legs’ over the decades and discuss how technology and biology have developed to improve sporting performance.

If you have any other ideas that you have used in your classroom, please do share them!

It’s my experience that bikes are nowhere near as popular with the 10-16 year olds as they were, say, 10 years ago. There seem to be fewer kids on bikes and certainly less images of children and adults on bikes than there were only a few years ago. I’ve been polling my friends and colleagues about some reasons why this is so. Perhaps it is down to Lance Armstrong never being able to shake off the rumours of substance abuse, despite his legacy and hero status in America. Could David Cameron have made mountain biking the epitome of uncool, in one quick and easy PR step?

Has pop culture and the proliferation of z-list celebrities (people who have become famous for simply appearing on Big Brother or the internet without any obvious skill or talent) become the modern aspiration of children, so that they no longer look up to those who are successful by dint of effort and commitment, but simply look up to those who can achieve press coverage?

I have to admit that I do struggle to find examples of modern heroes who are admired for their effort and strength — perhaps Andy Murray, who made it far enough and with enough panache to be inspiring!? But I then start to draw a blank. Perhaps you can let me know what you and your class think?…

Maybe you’re always trying to stop children jumping in your school pond, or being pushed in. In which case, it probably doesn’t help much to hear that grown men actually jump in muddy ponds / bogs for fun!

I’m off to do just that at the World Mountain Bike Bog Snorkeling Championship in Wales. I’d like to say it’s all in the name of science education, but really it’s just a bit of fun. We’ll bring you pictures and more from the event after the weekend.

If Wimbledon inspires you to bring tennis into the classroom, perhaps some of these ideas will help.

First off, a bit of trivia: when were the Olympic Games last held at Wimbledon?

Well, London has hosted the Olympics twice before in 1908 and 1948, with tennis being played at Wimbledon at the ’08 games.

Then there’s some more ideas to explore in the classroom:

Why are tennis balls fuzzy? Hint: it’s about control with the racquet, more than just air resistance. And of course tradition: rubber was invented after tennis in the 1800s, so early tennis balls needed a soft covering. Have a look at Yahoo Answers. You could extend this and use our speed of the tennis ball experiment to compare a smooth with a new/rough ball.

Why are balls in other sports designed the way they are? Think about rugby versus footballs, or squash balls versus tennis balls.
Real Tennis – why is it not more popular, and what would it need to make a revival? (If you’ve never heard of real tennis, check out Real Tennis rules. If you have a Real Tennis court, or even a squash court near you, you could use it in our Geometry of a Tennis Court lesson.
How many left-handed winners have there been at Wimbledon – does being left-handed affect your ability to play tennis, or any other sport?

How did a 1907 murder feature Wimbledon in its history? (Read the full story here) Write a mystery that takes place at this year’s venue (or perhaps another sporting event).
What are Wimbledon profits used for, and why?

Explore simple machines by building a machine that will lift a tennis ball 50 centimetres, using: tennis ball , 2 plastic cups, 0.7m of string, broomstick, 50 pennies, cello tape, scissors, table, meter stick.

Why does Wimbledon have ‘official suppliers’? Why are they not called ‘sponsors’? Explore the role of sponsors at sporting events and their effect on athletes and supporters.

So, Wimbledon is upon us.

I, myself, like playing tennis. Not that I’m any good at it. I have a nasty tendency of standing still and not moving an inch when my tennis partner aims his serve to the furthest possible ‘in’ point away from where I am standing. He wants to know I won’t chase it down. I say it’s because a) he’s helping me and he should serve it where I want him to and b) I want to enjoy the game, which would require me to actually make contact with the ball and hit it back to him, which is highly unlikely to occur if I have to frantically run across the court and desperately flail at the ball wildly with one hand that’s outstretched as far as humanly possible. In the end, I know I am being a brat, but he does give in! But, I have fun and I learn, which is the point. And, I have started to love to watch the game (where once upon a time I thought tennis was about as exciting to watch as students writing exams!)

At this time of year, I mentally nominate celebrities I would like to see on court, who either a) you could see would really put their all into it or b) would really add some humour and extra entertainment!

What about you? Who would you like to see up against the likes of Federer or Nadal?

Jonathan Ross (who would both try and be humourous)?

How about Gordon Ramsay? So serious and intense.
Or Jo Brand? Likely to have an approach similar to mine.

How about the Obamas (what would they be like!)? And would Barack want to get snapped playing something elitist like tennis??

Do let us know!

We love the concept of using sport to bring ideas to life.  So, for some extra inspiration: explore the architectural styles of the town of Ascot; identify and describe the major events in Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in a story, poem, or video; art, advertising, and propaganda: analyze images and text in print advertisements for persuasive and propaganda techniques; design and math:  examine nine sport logos (Ascot, Euro 2008, Olympics …  for symmetry, and create an original logo using geometric shapes and symmetry); consider how equestrians create careers out of doing what they love, and explore hobbies and leisure-time activities that develop self-esteem and self-expression.