This Week: Home Fitness

Introduction

Jack: Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to our weekly round-up section called ‘This Week’ on Premier Skills English.

Rich: Hi there. I’m Rich. We’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

Jack: We hope you are all staying well whether you are staying home or still going to work.

Rich: With no Premier League football at the moment we’ve changed the format of This Week a little. We’ve looked high and low for three news stories that we want to share with you.

Jack: We hope you find the stories we’ve chosen interesting and funny. 

Rich: We have chosen these stories because they are topical but also so we can focus on some interesting bits of vocabulary that we think are useful to learn.

Jack: And we want you to use and practise these words and phrases by interacting with Premier League fans from around the world in our comments section.

Rich: If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, you can leave your comments in the review section. We do read all the reviews and would love to hear from you.

Jack: You can find all our latest content on the Premier Skills English homepage or the Premier Skills-British Council Facebook page. 

Rich: Don’t forget that we also have our weekly Premier Skills English Podcast that is released every Friday. Every week we help you with some different vocabulary or an aspect of grammar.

Jack: Our latest podcast is called Learning Vocabulary: Walk this way. Rich goes out for a walk and has a conversation with a police officer. We look at words connected to the ways we walk and run. You can find the lesson on the Premier Skills English homepage, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most other podcast platforms now. 

Rich: This week, after each headline, we will have a little discussion and look at some vocabulary. The words and phrases we are looking at this week are: workout, fitness drills, shuttle runs, lap, gear, and summit.

Jack: We also have another fitness challenge and language challenge for you to have a go at.

Headline 1

Jack: Shoe workout goes viral in Nigeria.

Rich: The Nigerian footballer, Desire Oparanozie, is helping her compatriots keep fit and healthy at home with a simple workout that anyone can do in their hallway or any small, restricted space. The shoe workout involves four pairs of shoes and lots of fitness drills and lunges. 

Jack: Everyone is looking for ways to keep fit and healthy at home at the moment and so many people are helping out and sharing ideas online.

Rich: I really like this one because space, or the lack of it, is so important right now. If you have a garden or a yard, exercise is easier but if you live in a small flat things get more difficult.

Jack: That’s why this routine is so good - you just need a few pairs of shoes - I suppose you could use small boxes or anything really.

Rich: It looks like it’ll really keep you in shape. If you want to check out the routine just Google Desire Oparaozie shoe workout but we’ll put a link on the Premier Skills English website, too.

Jack: Let’s look at a couple of the words we used in the headline. The first is workout, Oparaozie has designed a new workout. She’s called it the shoe workout.

Rich: A workout is a period of physical exercise. You might do a 20-minute workout every morning.

Jack: I think doing a good workout every morning gives you energy for the rest of the day. Work out is also be a phrasal verb. Do you work out, Rich?

Rich: It’s difficult with this lockdown to work out in the house, you know.

Jack: Did you work out before the lockdown?

Rich: Er… let’s look at another phrase from the headline fitness drills. A fitness drill is a type of exercise you do repeatedly, something you do lots of times.

Jack: A fitness drill is like a routine - something you do every morning for example. When I get out of bed, I do 50 push-ups, 30 star jumps and 20 squats every morning.

Rich: No, you do not!

Jack: Let’s move on to headline two.

Headline 2

Jack: Man runs marathon in garden.

Rich: James Campbell, from Cheltenham in the UK, has raised over £25,000 for the health service after running a marathon in his back garden. It took five hours of shuttle runs for Campbell to reach his 26.2-mile target in his six-metre long garden. Campbell is not the only one taking on such challenges: Elisha Nochomovitz ran a marathon on his balcony in France and Pan Shancu ran 31 miles in his apartment in China - completing 6250 laps in under five hours.

Jack: People all over the world are doing things slightly differently at the moment - this is one example.

Rich: A marathon in a tiny back garden. I think I’d just get dizzy and end up falling over.

Jack: It’s impressive, it really is, and great that he was raising money for charity, too.

Rich: I wonder if it’s more tiring than a real marathon?

Jack: Let’s look at some of the language. Mr Campbell had to do thousands of shuttle runs to complete his marathon.

Rich: A shuttle run is usually a short run that tests speed and agility. You have two lines about 20 metres apart and have to run and tap the line with your hand and then run back and do the same.

Jack: Doing that every six metres for 26.2 miles. That is definitely a test.

Rich: We said that Pan Shancu did 6250 laps of his apartment.

Jack: A lap is one circuit, usually of a running track or race track from the beginning to the end.

Rich: We often speak about laps in athletics. In athletics, a lap is 400 metres - one lap of the running track. Motor racing also uses laps - the race might be 60 laps of the track for example.

Jack: Let’s look at our final headline.

Headline 3

Jack: Climbing group conquer Everest on stairs.

Rich: After five days of climbing, a group of climbers reached Mount Everest base camp last Friday. However, this is a climb with a difference, while the climbers are kitted out in their full climbing gear, they are not in the Himalayas but at home in the UK. The group have reached an altitude of 5364 metres by climbing stairs and ladders in their homes. This week’s challenge is to reach the summit.

Jack: That’s a funny story. I wonder if they had oxygen tanks and everything.

Rich: Well, they said they were in full mountain climbing gear so they might have.

Jack: It’s weird what people do to stop getting bored. Gear is our first word we want to look at - full mountain climbing gear.

Rich: Gear has a couple of meanings but the one we are looking at here means equipment and clothing to do a specific activity.

Jack: You need a lot of gear to go mountain climbing - ropes, boots, helmet, harness and loads more.

Rich: You don’t need so much for football - just a football really - everything else is optional.

Jack: Our last word is also connected to climbing - summit.

Rich: The summit is the top of a mountain, the highest peak.

Jack: To reach the summit of Mount Everest you have to climb 8848 metres.

Rich: Or lots of stairs!

Jack: OK, we’ve looked at three stories that are in the news and six bits of vocabulary. The words we’ve looked at are:  workout, fitness drills, shuttle runs, lap, gear, summit.

Rich:  Have a listen to the headlines again and see if you understand the vocabulary we’ve looked at.

Jack: The shoe workout goes viral in Nigeria.

Rich: The Nigerian footballer, Desire Oparanozie, is helping her compatriots keep fit and healthy at home with a simple workout regime that anyone can do in their hallway or any small, restricted space. The shoe workout involves four pairs of shoes and lots of fitness drills and lunges. 

Jack: Man runs marathon in garden.

Rich: James Campbell, from Cheltenham in the UK, has raised over £25,000 for the health service after running a marathon in his back garden. It took five hours of shuttle runs for Campbell to reach his 26.2-mile target in his garden six-metre long garden. Campbell is not the only one taking on such challenges: Elisha Nochomovitz ran a marathon on his balcony in France and Pan Shancu ran 31 miles in his apartment in China - completing 6250 laps in under five hours.

Jack: Climbing group conquer Everest on stairs.

Rich: After five days of climbing, a group of climbers reached Mount Everest base camp last Friday. However, this is a climb with a difference, while the climbers are kitted out in their full climbing gear, they are not in the Himalayas but at home in the UK. The group have reached an altitude of 5364 metres by climbing stairs and ladders in their homes. This week’s challenge is to reach the summit.

TASK - Fitness Challenge

Jack: Each week we’re trying to set you a fitness challenge. Last week we gave you a PE class and this week we want you to give the shoe workout a go.

Rich: Google Desire Oparanozie and shoe workout to find the video.

Jack: We’ll also put a link to the video on the Premier Skills English website, too.

Rich: If you are at home with the family, we want you to get them involved, too, kids, parents, brothers sisters, everyone.

Jack: Then, let us know in the comments section how you did and you felt afterwards. Was it a good workout?

TASK - Language Challenge

Rich: To finish up the show we’ve got a quick language challenge for you which is connected to this week’s vocabulary.

Jack: We want you to listen to three sentences and tell us which sentence is correct.

Rich: Those shuttle runs are so tiring. I can’t do more than 10.

Rich: Those rocket runs are so tiring. I can’t do more than 10.

Rich: Those plane runs are so tiring. I can’t do more than 10.

Jack: OK, we want you to write the correct answer on the Premier Skills English website where we have some more questions and activities connected to this week’s show for you.

Rich: Or write your answer on Apple Podcasts if that’s where you listen to us. We want you to use the correct word. Write: Those _______ runs are so tiring. I can’t do more than 10. 

Jack: Before we finish we just wanted to say that we hope you found this lesson useful and we hope that all of you are staying fit and healthy and we’ll all be back watching Premier League football very soon.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.