As anyone who has studied the quality assessment of anything is well aware, whether you are an educator or a scientist, a coach or an engineer, you know that there are two important qualities of any assessment:

1. Reliability
2. Validity

This article is primarily concerned with why it is important to teach validity when training people to perform valid assessment tasks in the physical or sporting environment.

Whereas reliability is how consistently an assessment is delivered and how consistently it performs its task, validity is the idea that something does what it says it will do. Reliability will be covered in…

My future is inextricably woven together with my past. But only my present determines what will happen next.

University made my hand blue.

The smooth gloss of the exam paper slowed the soaking of ink into its fibres and my hand would glide over that ink and come away blue. Unless I used a black pen. In which case it would be, well, black.

I like to think that’s why I failed so many times. It’s not. But it would be nice if it were.

When I say that I failed at university so many times, I only mean that…

In case you haven’t caught up with the sensation that was The Greatest Showman, I first of all invite you to disappear for a couple of hours and watch it — you’re bound to have a friend or family member who’s bought it, or perhaps you can rent it from an online digital distributor— and then get back to this article, if only because there will be spoilers up ahead.

The Greatest Introduction

As the house lights dimmed, my wife and I settled back into our reclining cinema seats. The screen went blank. Soon the giant silhouette of PT Barnum was cast against…

You may not be the same as me, but when I get into writing mode, I become focused. I mean focused.

I also don’t move. I sit there and type.

The body, though, it’s made to move. It wants to move, and I want to move it, but it’s so easy to just sit there, doing nothing but thinking and typing. After all, that’s what writing on a computer is. Thinking and typing.

A Simple Exercise Routine For Writers

So I thought I’d put together a simple exercise routine for all you writers out there. It’s easy to get caught up in what we do, and…

Waves break against a lonely cliff. Here the dark of night is deep. Moonlight, like a timid child, scatters over the cresting waves. A single, rounded coracle navigates rocky waters. A single, shivering body holds on for life, cowering beneath its woollen cowl.

Winds of ice and sleet streak down. Slivers slice the skin. Eyes clench shut, teeth clamp down.

Morning breaks and the weather stays the same. More sleet, more wind and more ice.

It’s common to hear people talk about this idea of mindful breathing, at least in the circles I move in. Often, it’s connected to managing anxiety, stress and related things. I often read or hear people saying things like, “Practise your mindful breathing,” and I think to myself, “Yes! What a good idea!” until I hear them explain what they mean by mindful breathing. Then I think, “Oh. That’s a little disappointing …”.

I’ve come across two major forms of apparent ‘mindful breathing’. One is the box breath, which is an excellent form of managing your body’s healthy response to…

Some years ago I came up with a broad overview of the elements of a fight, of the things that are most important when you’re engaged in a combat sport of some sort. These became known as The Three Rules.

They’re nothing all that new but I’d never heard anyone talk about the fight that way. So I coined them and use them for teaching martial arts all the time. Thing is, they’re useful for more than just martial arts. Anyway, that’s not what this is all about. This is about Rule 3 and why I think it’s the most…

It was some time after dawn that I summited the peak. The sun made its weakened petition for the morning ice to disband but to no avail. The concrete jungle slept, save for the occasional four wheeled beast that rolled along its well worn paths.

Fortunately, this path also was well worn but not by those wild beasts. Here, it was far more common to note other infrequent bipedal critters hunkered down in the cold and avoiding my eyes, as if I were some king of the jungle out to devour them on a whim. …