Dummies.com: Sports & Outdoors

A Few Dramatic Tour de France Moments

Sudden, spectacular moments make the Tour de France what it is. Racing can change in an instant, whether from a rider's quick acceleration, an unseen obstacle in the road, or a cyclist's unscripted emotional [more…]

A Week in the Life of a Formula One Driver

We all like to think that driving a racing car flat-out would be easy, but it isn't, even if you have heaps of talent. A modern-day Formula One driver has to work very hard if he's going to win a race. [more…]

Ascending Slowly While Scuba Diving

When you're ready to end a dive, do the following:

1. Signal your buddy and begin the ascent together.

2. Begin your ascent when you still have sufficient air remaining in your tank. [more…]

Assessing Your Basketball Players' Skills

Playing basketball requires a broad range of skills. As a coach, being able to assess a youngster's strengths and weaknesses is crucial for determining where he best fits in your lineup. [more…]

Assisting Your Young, Befuddled Baseball Players

As your season moves along, most of your players will learn new skills, make improvements, and have a lot of fun. However, some of your kids may not develop a comfort level with certain basics of the game [more…]

Avoiding Common Short Game Misfires

Hitting the ball from the tee is easy compared to the short game. Heck, the ball sits up on a tee, you hit it with the same club most every time, and you can swing away and hit it as far as you want. The [more…]

Balancing Parenting and Coaching

Being a parent is a difficult job, but here's a surprise: Coaching your son or daughter's soccer team is equally tricky. After you step inside the white lines, and your child straps on the shin guards, [more…]

Becoming a Better Lacrosse Player

To play lacrosse successfully, you need physical qualities, such as strength, endurance, quick-as-a-cat agility, flexibility, and quickness. In this article, you'll discover how to improve these qualities [more…]

Betting Against Other Bettors

Before the advent of parimutuel wagering, horse race betting was done with bookmakers. Bookmakers, also known as bookies, are essentially businesspeople that handle gambling bets — mainly on horse racing [more…]

Bunting in Baseball

Bunting occurs when a batter holds the bat in the hitting zone and, without swinging, lets the ball make contact with it. The idea is to deaden the ball so that the baserunners can advance [more…]

Checking Out Formula One Clothing

From the early years of the Formula One world championship, it became obvious that improvements to safety would not just depend on the design of cars and circuits. Racing drivers began to realize that [more…]

Choosing Hockey Equipment for Yourself — and Your Kids

The best way to buy the right hockey equipment is to find a store or outlet that specializes in hockey equipment and has knowledgeable salespeople who can not only help pick out the best gear for you and [more…]

Choosing a Formation in Soccer

Formations are the way a soccer team lines up its defense, midfield, and forward line at the beginning of the match. If you want to get technical, you could produce dozens of formations due to the mathematical [more…]

Choosing a Sleeping Bag for Camping

The key choice in sleeping bags is between synthetic fill or down. Down is lighter in terms of a weight-to-warmth ratio. Down is also more compact. However, only synthetic fills like PolarGuard 3D, Lite [more…]

Choosing a Tennis Racquet

Yes, you can dust off that racquet that you played with five years ago and give it a glorious return to the court — if it feels good in your hand and it gets your shots where [more…]

Choosing the Best Walking Shoe for You

A good pair of walking shoes runs you anywhere from $40 to $100. They should have good shock absorption and should be stiffer and more supportive than running shoes, despite having a flexible forefoot. [more…]

Coaching with Constructive Criticism

So what do you say when you feel it's necessary to offer some "constructive criticism" to your athlete?

What do you say to the child who has become a bit of a [more…]

Controlling a Power Play in Hockey

A player from the opposing team has just received a penalty for tripping, and for the next two minutes, your squad has a man advantage. Congratulations, you're about to go on a power play! [more…]

Dealing with a Ball Hog on Your Basketball Team

A ball hog — a player who hangs onto the ball for extended periods of time and always looks to shoot rather than pass — creates real problems for the entire team. For instance, a ball hog ignores open [more…]

Determining a Starting Lineup As Coach

When putting together your starting lineup(the kids who are playing in the game first), bear in mind that you usually have more kids on the roster (a listing of all the kids on your team) than can play [more…]