Lifestyle

Fit fam, see how strong you are at Under Armour Combine!

The fitness competition makes its debut in Manila, pooling in a total cash prize pool of P680,000

Published

September 10, 2023

MJ Jucutan

Heads up, all athletes and fitness freaks!

Under Armour’s COMBINE — the largest fitness competition that benchmarks an athlete’s performance — is back for a second year. The successful debut last year brought in over 1,200 participants across four countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Australia.

This year, Under Armour expands the competition, pooling athletes from diverse sports and training disciplines in the Philippines.

Testing your limits

UA COMBINE will see competitors testing their limits in a total of eight physical and mental tests devised by Under Armour‘s Global Head of Athlete Performance, Michael Watts.

Each test challenges an athlete’s agility, stamina, vertical, power, endurance, strength, speed, and cognition. The eight tests will focus on the following:

Agility Star Drill (Agility)
Pull-up Beep Test (Stamina)
Vertical Jump Test (Vertical)
20m Sled Push (Power)
20m Beep Test (Endurance)
3RM Bench Press (Strength)
40 Yard Dash (Speed)
Reactive Intelligence Wall (Cognition)

A glimpse of your strengths and weaknesses

Under Armour has been hosting Train to Win sessions in the Philippines before the inaugural COMBINE event slated in November. On its fourth leg, Under Armour and Avantgarde Fitness mounted a fitness test at Activate Sports where I got invited to participate. The event also invited athletes from various disciplines such as CrossFit and Obstacle Course Racing.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jaye (@hemjaye)

The session covered seven out of eight tests, pushing athletes to top their benchmarks through shuttle runs, wall balls, bench presses, max height box jumps, strict pull-ups, and burpee box jumps overs.

Going through various tests made me realize what I’m good at and what are my deficits. My stamina, endurance, and vertical are quite good, and I’ve been exceptional at speed and agility — thanks to my background competing in obstacle course racing.

However, I’ve been struggling with strength and cognition which gave me insights on what to work on before the actual competition.

Tweaks and then some

As part of the brand’s continuous efforts to better define athletic performance, the UA COMBINE 2023 will see significant tweaks made.

As opposed to a more traditional sargeant jump from last year, the standing vertical leap test will have competitors assessed through force plates. This accurately measures an individual’s upward propulsion force.

The cognition station will also use the Reactive Intelligence Wall used by professional athletes in Formula 1 and the NBA. With six light pods positioned on a vertical wall, participants will be tasked with tapping out as many blue pods as possible in 30 seconds. The test will measure reaction time, decision-making, and attention skills when doing so.

Happening in November

UA COMBINE 2023 is slated to happen on November 19, 2023, at the SM Megamall Megatrade Hall. The competition is open to 350 competitors and all participating athletes will receive a full set of Under Armour competitor gear on the event day.

Points will be earned for each completed test and athletes will be ranked according to their final result, with medals and cash prizes of PHP200,000, PHP100,000, and PHP40,000 awarded to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place athletes in both the men’s and women’s divisions respectively.

Moreover, Under Armour lowers the entry age to encourage younger athletes aged 16 to 18 to compete. Under Armour products worth PhP 50,000 for the top male and female youths await.

For those who want to compete as a team, participants are encouraged to form a group of four. The scores of each individual on the team will be totaled to a team score. Then, the highest team score will bring home PHP80,000 worth of Under Armour gear.

For further information on UA COMBINE 2023, including competition rules and how to register, please visit the official website www.uacombineph.com, or follow @underarmourPH on Instagram using #UACOMBINEPH.

Entertainment

Netflix is getting a second F1 docuseries

Focusing on F1 Academy

Published

May 4, 2024

Luigi Leonardo

Image source: Bianca Bustamante (@racerbia), Instagram

Formula 1’s success these days owes a lot to Netflix’s Drive to Survive. In concise ten-episode chunks per season, the documentary series takes viewers through an entire season of the sport. Next year, Netflix is getting a second Formula 1 series, focusing on F1 Academy, to add to its motorsports slate.

The F1 Academy is a much smaller series attached to Formula 1. Before a few F1 races sprinkled through the season, 15 female drivers take to the circuit. Though the series only started in late 2022, its main goal is to grant developmental opportunities for female drivers in motorsports.

The newly minted series gained a lot of traction because of McLaren’s Bianca Bustamante, the first Filipino driver to win an F1 Academy race. She also has two other podium finishes in the series to her name.

Now, almost a year since winning her race, Bustamante will get her Netflix debut through a new docuseries simply titled F1 Academy. As the name indicates, the upcoming series will focus on the female-only series, much like how Drive to Survive focuses on the main series.

In production now, the series is set to premiere sometime in 2025. It will be produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.

Apps

Bumble introduces new logo, better UI, features

Better dating experience

Published

May 4, 2024

Her

Bumble is ushering a new era of dating. The dating app has just rolled out a new brand design. This includes a new logo and user interface with bolder fonts and refreshed colors and illustrations. Along these are many significant updates to the app’s features, giving users better ways to connect with others.

For instance, Bumble has added hundreds of new prompts and have refreshed the prompts UI to help members show off their personalities easier. Shared interests have also been moved to the top of the profiles for users to better spot commonalities. This gives users a snippet of profiles for them to know right away what they have in common. Furthermore, the app has also increased the number of required profile photos to four to boost the likelihood of matches.

Among the new features on Bumble is Opening Moves. This allows women to set a post-match question for their connections to respond to within 24 hours. This facilitates a more meaningful connection and introduces another way to connect outside of Bumble’s Make The First Move. Of course, they may directly message their match even if they haven’t responded to the post-match question.

Meanwhile, Bumble has also expanded its Dating Intentions right from the setup. This is so users can answer the question “What are you hoping to find?” with more accurate choices. Among these are Long Term Relationship, Life Partner, Fun, Casual Dates, Intimacy without commitment, Ethical non-monogamy, and Marriage.

This change stemmed from a Bumble survey that saw 68% of women struggle with people not being upfront about their dating intentions. When browsing, the expanded dating intentions badges will show right below the person’s profile’s “About me” in a section called “I’m looking for.”

Moreover, Bumble has renamed Best Bees to For You. Bumble is employing a new machine learning model to give users their daily set of four curated and relevant profiles based on preferences and past matches.

The changes are part of Bumble’s mantra to empower women to make the first move, flip gender roles, and take control of their dating app experience and dating life in general.

Deals

AirAsia ASEAN Explorer Pass gets PhP 1,400 off

Until April 30 only

Published

April 27, 2024

GadgetMatch

Haven’t planned your international vacations yet? Great news for Filipino travelers: AirAsia MOVE’s ASEAN Explorer Pass just got a lot cheaper. Until April 30, the pass is available for a promo price of PhP 13,488. That’s PhP 1,400 cheaper than its original cost of PhP 14,888. To avail of the pass, simply download the AirAsia MOVE app here.

The ASEAN Explorer Pass offers Southeast Asians a cheaper and simpler way to explore more destinations within the region. When subscribed to the pass, travelers will unlimited enjoy zero-base fares on international ASEAN flights to Bangkok (Thailand), Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). Moreover, they will be able to enjoy unlimited use of an exclusive promo code to save up to 50% on all hotel bookings, as well as AirAsia ride perks. There are also free AirAsia ride trips from KLIA Terminals 1 and 2.

So, if you haven’t availed of the pass and happen to be thinking of traveling to Southeast Asian destinations, now is definitely a great time to avail. Kuala Lumpur also happens to be AirAsia’s “central hub,” meaning connecting flights almost always passes through KLIA 1 and 2. This means if you plan on traveling to nearby countries like Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the ASEAN Explorer Pass is definitely one way to save on fares.

The low-cost airline’s digital arm released the Asean Pass last March, taking off from a previous promo called the airasia Super+. According to AirAsia MOVE’s December 2022 data, 80,000 international flights were redeemed and flown in a year from the Super+ offer, allowing travelers to save an average of PhP 17,900.