The Supermarine Spitfire is better than the Hawker Hurricane

Better: More desirable, satisfactory, or effective.

Speeding may not have the negative social consequences drinking and driving under the influence has, but it kills just as many people. In a recent 10 year period, nearly the same number of deaths occurred-- about 113,000 -- from passenger vehicle speeding related crashes as did from alcohol-involved crashes. And while drivers are aware that speeding is a safety threat, they acknowledge it is common in the US.

Those are the main results of a new study released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

“You can’t tackle our rising epidemic of roadway deaths without tackling speeding,” Robert L. Sumwalt, the NTSB’s acting chairman, said in a statement. “And you can’t tackle speeding without the most current research. Speed kills. This study examines how it kills and what actions can be taken to save lives and prevent speeding-related crashes.”

The study, “Reducing Speeding-Related Crashes Involving Passenger Vehicles” underscored the relationship between speed and crash involvement, noting speeding increases the risk of being involved in a crash and the severity of injuries by people involved in speeding-related crashes.

Flexibility is a hot topic now, as is natural movement and increasingly clever ways of working out that lead to strong, flexible and capable bodies. If you are someone who is naturally flexible, this may be a question you do not think much about, but on the other hand if you are more like a plank than a person, you may be wondering what you have been doing wrong all these years, and really miss being able to touch your toes. Generally speaking there are two main poles: Naturally Strong and Naturally Flexible, with most people being much closer to one than the other.

This in itself is not a massive problem, because if you are naturally strong you can stretch and work on maintaining your mobility and if you are very flexible you can strengthen yourself to keep your body in balance. Unfortunately, as you have probably often seen, strong people love to lift weights and bendy people love to stretch and do yoga classes, when these two groups of people should really be swapping their training routines, at least part of the time. However it often feels like our natural instincts are telling us to stick to the things we’re good at – the challenges we enjoy.

Even within those two main groups there are further causes of physical imbalance. For example; naturally strong people may still be weak in some areas and be avoiding them unconsciously or consciously and naturally flexible people may have tight areas that they avoid by going around them, without even thinking about it. Part of the reason for this is that the body is very sensible, so it will always make a movement in the way that requires the least effort. Also, bodies always expect to be healthy so they do not focus on difficulties so much as make substitutions to get around those problems and continue to work as best as they can.

However, it is very important to know that strength and flexibility have to be balanced within a person’s body to maintain their posture, efficiency and health. Too much flexibility and you put your body and joints at risk from instability and increased risk of strain. Too much strength without flexibility and the body will become like a self-compacting pressure-cooker without a way to release itself, preventing healthy movement and causing unnecessary wear and tear in the joints.

In order to make sustainable increases in flexibility we need to be strong all the way through the range of motion we are opening up, or we will lose access to it again. Partly because we keep that pathway open through strength work and partly because the body does not see the point in going to the end of a range of motion if we lack the strength to do anything or bring ourselves back when we get there. It is a liability rather than a gain without strength to stabilise it.