The Washington Redskins are a mess right now. Head coach Jim Zorn has a tenuous hold on his job at best and has recently been stripped of his offensive play calling duties. Management installed newly hired ‘offensive consultant’ Sherman Lewis as the new offensive play caller and the team has set up an awkward arrangement for him to get the plays to the quarterbacks. For that reason, starting QB Jason Campbell has some serious misgivings about the efficacy of the setup.

Lewis has only been out of retirement and with the team for two weeks, and has spent this week trying to ingest a crash course on the Redskins’ offensive schemes. While he was learning on the job, head coach Zorn was trying to put the best spin possible on what can only be seen as a de facto demotion and vote of ‘no confidence’:

“I need to have composure. I need to understand what the reality of the situation is, and I think our players expect me to rise up. We expect them to play under adverse conditions. We expect them to risk it all. … I’m conscious of what’s going on. I’m not naive about what’s going on, and yet I have to just hold back on any feelings and make the decisions.”

Quarterback Campbell is more concerned about the convoluted system of getting plays from Lewis to him:

“There’ll probably be a couple of plays I have in my head just in case if some reason it doesn’t get in on time.”

Here’s how things are supposed to work-Lewis will sit in the coaches’ box above the field and read the plays off a sheet. While Lewis has years of experience working in the so called ‘West Coast Offense’, Zorn left doubt that he really knows what he’s doing at this point stressing that Lewis “doesn’t know the protections” and “doesn’t know the blitz schemes.” Nevertheless, he’ll be running the offense when the Redskins take on Philadelphia this Monday night.

Once Lewis figures out what to call, that’s when it really gets tricky. He’ll relay the plays via headset not to Zorn but to offensive coordinator Sherman Smith. Smith will then inform the quarterback what to run. Zorn is left in the role of a passive bystander on offense, though he will listen in to the playcalling on his headset.

Backup quarterback Todd Collins also shared his concern with the new arrangement:

“It is unsettling. I’ve never gone through this before. I’ve never had a play caller get changed in the middle of the season.”

Lewis didn’t exactly evoke a lot of confidence upon his hiring, where he revealed that he’d been calling bingo games at a seniors’ center to kill time since his retirement in 2004. Still, Collins gave him a guarded vote of confidence;

“I know he’s been studying last year’s game against the Eagles and seems to have a pretty good idea how he wants to call the game this week. It’s the same plays. He might coach them a little differently or highlight some different areas, but the offense hasn’t gone under an overhaul or anything like that.”

The Redskins haven’t scored more than 17 points in a game this season, so maybe the thinking is that things can’t get any worse.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and highly respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sports news and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

One of the most crucial elements of martial arts training is breathing correctly. This is important because the underlying philosophy is that proper breathing results in your body getting cleansed from within. All toxic wastes such as carbon dioxide get eliminated due to this cleansing and are replaced by fresh oxygen and nutrients.

If you are just starting to discover the importance of breathing in your martial arts training, you will find the following exercises very useful.

The most basic methods of learning how to breathe properly are Attention Breathing and Abdominal Breathing.

While practicing either of these techniques make sure you focus on breathing through your nose. Normally just breathing through the nose is difficult when you are practicing martial arts exercises. However, for the purpose of these breathing techniques it is essential you use just your nose. While breathing, imagine you are creating a closed circuit by breathing in through your nose and then again breathing out the same way. Every time you breathe through your moth, the circuit gets broken and the energy gets dissipated.

You need to be aware of the fact that everyone does not breathe in the same manner. Children breathe differently from older people. When people are excited they will tend to breathe more rapidly as compared to when they are depressed. When you are at peace, your breathing will be deep and slow.

The Attention Breathing method is about focusing your attention on the natural flow of your breath. You do not need to do anything to change it. You only need to take note of the way the breathing process is occurring within your body. You can do this by feeling the air when it enters your nostrils, then circulates through your lungs and finally gets exhaled. As you concentrate and feel the movement of the air through your body, your breathing will become smoother and more even.

If you feel your concentration waning, try and focus back. Practice this method for at least five minutes at the same time every day. Once you get used to this, try and practice it at other times during the course of the day. Gradually, without your realizing it, this awareness will become integrated into your life.

Abdominal Breathing is one of the easiest breathing techniques to master as it is actually different to do it incorrectly. The basic concept behind this method is to fill up your lungs with air completely. This is important since we usually tend to breathe with just the upper half of our lungs. The Abdominal Breathing method helps in expanding the capacity of your lungs.

To practice this technique, breathe in through the nose. Expand your abdomen slowly and allow the air to fill your lower lungs. Do this in a smooth and gentle manner. Once your abdomen is full, breathe out through the nose and keep pulling your abdomen in slowly. As you inhale, your abdomen should expand and with each exhalation your abdomen should contract. Repeat this method in sets of ten.

If you like to learn more about martial arts training, be sure to check out our site today.

While mixed martial arts fighting has only recently become popular in the United States, contests between fighters of different martial arts disciplines have taken place in Japan for many years. They weren’t called “mixed martial arts” until recently, but they were definitely an embryonic form of the now booming sport. Many of the most famous events of this type took place in Japan during the’70’s involving pro wrestling legend Antonio Inoki.

Inoki billed himself as ‘World Martial Arts Champion’ and would frequently face other high profile fighters in contests that are generally believed to have had a pre-determined outcome similar to professional wrestling. Inoki faced a ‘who’s who’ of the martial arts world, but none were more famous than heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

There’s still much speculation about how Muhammad Ali came to fight Japanese wrestling legend Antonio Inoki, and even more uncertainty about what happened immediately before and during the fight. Ali took the booking because he thought it was to be a big paycheck for little work. Most accounts suggest that his handlers agreed to the ‘worked’ finish without his knowledge, and once he found out that he was to ‘take a dive’ he refused.

By the time the fight began, Ali’s handlers had obtained a ridiculously one sided set of rules that prohibited Inkoi from using a closed fist, striking Ali in the head at all, using any chokes or submissions or even trying to take the fight to the ground. Were it not for the huge amount of money he’d be leaving on the table, Inoki would have been justified in not fighting at all under these highly restrictive and one-sided conditions.

Despite the repeated howls from the media that the fight was ‘fixed’, it was anything but–it was a real fight and painfully boring. Ali did next to nothing, Inoki did whatever he could within the one sided rules. Eventually, Inoki spent most of the fight on the ground trying to throw kicks at Ali’s legs. The event ended up as a 74-74 draw. Both fighters got paid, and the fans got to watch a fight albeit a really, really bad one.

An interesting postscript to the fight is that the referee was former pro wrestler “Judo” Gene Labell, a legit tough guy whom some have suggested could have beaten up both Ali and Inoki at the same time despite his advanced age. Had he chosen to do so, it would certainly have been welcomed by those watching the fight live and on closed circuit.

The fiasco didn’t hurt Inoki’s popularity in Japan whatsoever. Oddly, he became something of a hero for trying to take the fight to Ali despite the one sided rules. He would remain one of Japan’s most popular pro wrestlers and later serve in the country’s parliament. Inoki’s fights against other martial artists remained wildly popular, and are often credited as being the forerunner of PRIDE, RINGS and the major MMA organizations in Japan today.

Ross Everett is a freelance writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sports news and World Cup betting sites. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.

Following the great 2003 Moneymaker upset to the World Series of Poker, online poker US sites have garnered a lot more attention, and not all of it has been welcomed. Although it has certainly stirred up a lot more interest in online poker sites for US players in the general population, the national media attention also stirred up lawmakers, bringing into question the legality of online poker play for US citizens.

The United States, however, has lagged behind in allowing on-line play, resulting in the proliferation of free play online poker sites for US players. Quickly seeing the benefits of the online poker boom and hoping the capitalize on it, the state of North Dakota’s House of Representatives passed a bill to legalize and regulate online poker and online poker card room operators located in the state in February 2005. The bill would have required online poker operations to locate all branches of operations physically in the state to qualify for legal status. The owner of Paradise Poker and CEO of Sporting bet, Nigel Payne, pledged to relocate operations if the bill passed into state law. After hearing of the bill, however, the U.S. Department of Justice sent notice to North Dakota’s Attorney General warning that online gaming “may” be illegal meaning that the pending legislation “might” be in violation of the federal Wire Act, passed into law in 1961, well before the internet. Shortly afterwards the bill was defeated by the North Dakota Senate.

The owner of Paradise Poker and CEO of Sporting bet, Nigel Payne, pledged to relocate operations if the bill passed into state law. After hearing of the bill, however, the U.S. Department of Justice sent notice to North Dakota’s Attorney General warning that online gaming “may” be illegal meaning that the pending legislation “might” be in violation of the federal Wire Act, passed into law in 1961, well before the internet. Shortly afterwards the bill was defeated by the North Dakota Senate. Since then the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Wire Act doesn’t apply to types of online gambling other than sports betting, which was the original purpose of the law anyway. Despite the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the application of the Wire Act to online gambling.

Later legislation has further closed off the online poker US market. Passed into law in October 2006 by President Bush, the Safe Port Act includes a provision known as UIGEA or Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act which states that it is unlawful to use the internet for placing, receiving or knowingly transmitting a bet or a wager if the bet is unlawful in the state it is initiated, received or otherwise made.

The time is ripe for new legislation to legalize and regulate online poker in the US. Groups such as the Poker Players Alliance have made it their mission to protect and advocate for the right of US poker players. Several attempts have been made already to overturn the UIGEA and perhaps soon with some fresh legislation online poker rooms will be able to welcome US poker players online again.

Rich Vial is a webmaster for US Poker Rooms & Online Poker USA. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service