During the first week of April my travels took me to Dallas to speak at the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Annual Convention. This meeting is held every year in conjunction with the Final Four NCAA Basketball Championships. This has become a yearly event for me and my son Matt. I have been invited to speak to the coaches about the importance of a healthy lifestyle by my old college coach and dear friend Reggie Minton, who is the Associate Executive Director of the NABC. This convention offers a great opportunity to provide much needed education on how to be healthy to these college basketball coaches and attend the Final Four championship games as well. For me there is no better spectator sport than college basketball.

However, the life of a basketball coach can be quite hectic and stressful, and often times they fall into an unhealthy lifestyle. As a result, there have been a number of coaches fall victim to chronic disease and premature death and the goal of my presentation is to help them make changes to their lifestyles before they result in health problems. For the most part, these coaches have been very interested and receptive to this message and a focus of my lectures is explaining to them the importance of walking each day. In fact, I gave a pedometer to every coach who attended my lecture, with instructions to try and get 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Studies show this amount of walking is one of the best things you can do for your health.

Of course, while I was in Dallas I did a lot of walking. I had a great time with my son and a sports medicine colleague I work with at Kaiser, Dr. David Anderson. We particularly enjoyed walking around downtown Dallas and getting a look at Dealey Plaza, which is the site of the JFK assassination some 50 years ago.

Thank you for reading this blog and for getting the word out about the importance of walking to good health.

Keep on walking my friends!

Bob