My son not only plays many sports, he likes to watch sports on TV and shows about how to play sports. Because of his interests, I started watching a show called Sport Science that airs on Fox Sports.

This show is a cross between Myth Busters and some type of “how to” sports show. OK, it isn’t really like Myth Busters, but I don’t know how to describe it otherwise. Basically the show asks questions such as can a female boxer hit as hard as a male boxer? Can crowd distraction affect a basketball player throwing free throws? Can a person sweat to death?

Interestingly enough, the answer to all of those questions was “Yes”.

I was most interested in the question about sweating to death. I missed the first couple minutes, so I don’t know the name of the athlete who volunteered to be the guinea pig. Let’s just say he was extremely fit.

He jogged on a treadmill wearing one of those silver “sweat” weight loss suits. He lost a tremendous amount of sweat and they explained how the kidneys and other organs work harder when the blood gets thicker. It was very interesting!

Though the show isn’t often about running, it still is very interesting to see how they handle their questions. I’d recommend it to most sports fans.
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There was one show I found interesting, but it really seemed more like a commercial. It was about a fabric that pulled sweat away from the skin, but kept the sweat in the fabric to cool the skin. They showed how wicking fabrics can actually lead to athletes being hotter because the sweat can’t help cool your body when it is pulled away. An ultra athlete wore a shirt made of this fabric while (again) jogging on a treadmill with heaters raising the temperatures in the room to 125 degrees! The shirt worked, it kept his core temperature to only 100 degrees. The whole problem with this particular episode is that it seemed to be too much of a commercial for the fabric and the VERY expensive clothing line. (But then again, the show about the “Nutty Buddy” was similar.)

Let’s just say, I don’t think this particular episode was unbiased.

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