Let's Learn English! Topic: Phrasal Verbs for Sports 🥇🥊🚴 (Lesson Only)

Hello, and welcome to this English

lesson about phrasal verbs for sports.

So I thought this was a good time to

do a lesson on phrasal verbs related to sports,

considering that France is currently hosting the Olympics.

So I thought, you know what?

There are a lot of phrasal verbs we use

when talking about sporting events, when teams play each

other, when people run in races, when people swim,

when people train for their sports.

So I thought I would make a list of phrasal verbs

for sports, and we would learn them together this morning.

So hopefully you're ready for this English lesson

about phrasal verbs for sports to fall behind.

So when you watch a race, we use

a number of different phrasal verbs to talk

about how people are doing in the race.

If you see the guy on the far side of

the picture with the arrow that says 19 km an

hour, and then these two ladies are running 21 km

an hour, the guy behind is starting to fall behind.

So he's not running as fast as the

other runners, so he's starting to fall behind.

If you're watching a running event

in the Olympics, it's disappointing.

When the athlete from your country starts to

fall behind, you see the other runners running

faster, and that person falls behind.

Maybe you're watching swimming and you're just cheering

away, and you realize that the canadian swimmer,

the canadian women swimmer, summer Macintosh, is just

way faster than your swimmer, and your swimmer

is starting to fall behind.

So again, when you fall behind, it means you

are not as fast as the other people, and

the distance between you and the people ahead of

you is getting bigger and bigger.

It's not nice in a race to fall behind.

It's not a very nice feeling if

you're the actual person in the race.

But then what you might want to

try and do is to catch up.

When you try to catch up, if there, let's say there's 10

meters between me and the person in front of me, I try

to run faster than them so that I get closer to them.

I try to catch up.

So in this picture, you can see the person in

front is running 20 clocks an hour, but the person

behind her is running 21 km an hour.

Thus the person in, I guess it's kind of

a pink or fuchsia colored jacket, is starting to

catch up to the runner in front of her.

So as you can see, she has

a determined look on her face.

Maybe she's found some new energy, and she is

now running faster than the person in the lead.

The person in second place place is starting to

catch up right now is starting to catch up

to the runner in front of her.

And then we have this as

well, the phrase to pull ahead.

So when you pull ahead, it means you're

ahead of someone and you are going faster

than them and you are making a bigger

distance between you and the person behind you.

So in this picture, you can see the guy

with the briefcase is running 21 km an hour.

He's starting to pull ahead of the guy behind him.

He's starting to run faster.

So to review quickly, when you fall behind, the people

in front of you are starting to pull ahead.

So you can use the phrases to describe each person.

When you're behind and you run faster or

swim faster, you start to catch up.

And then when you are in front of someone

and you are running faster than them, or cycling

faster than them, you start to pull ahead.

And then if you run the same speed as someone, if

you drive the same speed as someone, if you swim the

same speed as someone, you keep up with them.

So you can see here, these two guys

are both running 21 km an hour.

They are running the same speed.

So you could say they are keeping up with each other.

You can say that, or you can

say Joe is keeping up with Fred.

Um, there are a variety of ways to use

this phrase, but when you keep up with someone,

it means you run the same speed as them.

Or if you're in any kind, well, it

doesn't even have to be a race.

Like, even if Jen and I drive separately,

I will try to keep up with Jen.

I'll try to go the same speed as her to cheer on.

So you can cheer for someone, you can cheer on someone.

You might go to a race

to cheer on your favorite runner.

It simply means to cheer.

This is one of those verbs where I'm not sure

why we add the word on, but if I knew,

like, let's say my brother was in the Olympics, I

might go to cheer on my brother.

I'll be like, go, brother.

My brother's name is John, by the way.

So I would yell, I would yell, go, John.

So I could say, I'm there to cheer on my brother.

I could also say, I'm there to cheer for my brother.

You can use both phrases interchangeably.

They both work.

So it gets a little, well,

it's not really confusing though, right?

You can go to cheer for your

brother, you can cheer on your brother.

I guess you can just use them

interchangeably and you will have no problem.

Anyways, to cheer means to like, just yell like whoo.

Go, go, go. You can do it. Yay.

It's not some really fake sounding cheering there, but

that's how you would cheer to root four.

Now, this basically means the same thing.

When you cheer someone on or you root for someone,

it means you are supporting them as they do some

sort of athletic activity or some sort of competition.

Um, excuse me.

When you watch your team play in an Olympic event,

you root for your team, you cheer for your team.

It means the same thing.

You are there to watch them and

encourage them and those kinds of things.

So when you root for a team,

it means you are supporting them.

You are telling them they can do it,

you are clapping when they score, you are

yelling, encouraging things to them to warm up.

So before you do an event, before you participate

in some sort of athletic activity, before you play

a game, you will want to warm up.

When you warm up, you do some light physical activity

so your blood starts to flow so that you're ready

for the game that you're going to play or the

race that you are going to run.

Last summer, I did some running, and when I went

every Saturday morning to run, I would actually walk for

almost 15 minutes before the start of the race because

I wanted my body to warm up.

I wanted to warm up, to be ready.

So when you warm up, it means you get

ready to participate in some sort of athletic activity.

A game, a race, or something like that, or even

just a workout to loosen up, to stretch out.

So there's a couple of other things you do before

you want to run hard or play really hard in

a game, you might want to loosen up.

So you might do things like this.

Like, you might rotate your shoulders a little bit.

It's not exactly the same as to stretch out.

This is when you actually, you know, like, stretch.

I'm not.

I don't have a lot of room here to

stretch out my muscles, but you might stretch.

So, technically, in this photo,

she's kind of stretching out.

She's kind of stretching, but also loosening up.

But I would describe. Let's.

Let me give you an example. To loosen up.

I'd be like, okay, I'm getting

ready for a boxing match.

You know, I'm gonna kind of, like,

move my shoulder a bit and.

And loosen up a bit of to stretch out.

I might be, like, doing something more like this,

where I'm like, you know, actually stretching the muscle

for a few seconds and that kind of stuff.

So before you do a physical activity,

you might want to warm up.

You might want to loosen up and get ready.

You might want to stretch out so that

when you actually start doing the event, you're

less likely to be injured to cool down.

Once you are done some sort of physical activity, it's

usually not a good idea to simply sit down.

So if you go for a run, or if you run in a race,

let's say you run a race where you have to do five laps.

I'm not sure what kind of race that would be.

It would be a 2000 kilometer race that doesn't exist.

When you're done running, you want to cool down and

you do that maybe by walking a few laps.

So the same way you can warm up by

doing really light physical activity, you can also cool

down after doing something by doing light physical activity.

So this guy, it looks like he just finished a race and

he has decided that it's a good idea to cool down, just

to take some time to let his body slow down a little

bit before he sits down and relaxes to workout.

So this is a pretty common one.

Most people are familiar with this.

When you work out, it means to go

to the gym, it means to lift weights.

Maybe you'll use some sort of apparatus like this.

It looks like a machine with cables and

there's probably weights and pulleys at the end.

When you work out, you usually do it in the gym.

You usually do it in order to strengthen

your muscles or to increase your muscle size.

Maybe you're working out because you want

to jump higher or run faster.

So you would go to the gym, you would use

the weights and machines in order to train your body.

You would go there to work out.

So we talked about I might take up archery.

Archery is something interesting to me, so I

don't do it now, but if I decided

to do it, I would use this verb.

I might say to someone, yeah, I.

I think I'm going to take up archery this year.

I might go and buy a bow and arrow.

I live on a great property to practice

archery, so I might take up archery.

It's something that as a kid, I often built a bow

out of old, out of a stick and a string.

And then we would run around the farm shooting sticks.

They weren't real bows and arrows.

But if you decide to try something new, not just

a sport, we use the verb to take up.

You can take up painting, you can take up writing,

you can take up archery or anything that interests you.

It means to start something new.

Um, so this is, I thought this picture

was funny because these guys are old and

because obviously the picture was created by AI.

There's a little clue.

I don't use AI pictures very often.

I think there's only one in this whole lesson.

The rest are real photos.

But I needed a picture of someone who wants to join in.

If some people are doing something and you want to

do that with them, you want to join in.

If people are singing, you might

say, hey, can I join in?

That means you want to sing with them.

If you saw these two old guys playing basketball and

you wanted to play and you said, can I play?

You are asking to join in.

Okay, so if you join in, did anyone spot

the how you know this picture is AI? It's.

I'll tell you in a sec, but you can join in right now.

You can even say that about this lesson.

You've decided to join in.

Um, you are here watching.

You decided to do this with other people.

By the way, if you look at the

gentleman's fingers, you might get a clue.

The guy in the blue shirt, as to how

we know this picture is generated by AI.

AI struggles with fingers sometimes to wear out.

So you can use this a couple of ways.

One, you can see that the handle on

this tennis racket has started to wear out.

It's not new anymore.

When you use something a lot, it starts to wear out.

It starts to break a little bit.

It starts to lose.

Like, it looks like it's falling apart a little bit.

There's another good word.

So it has started to wear out.

You can also wear out the other

team if you're playing a sport.

If a hockey team plays really good defense,

they might wear out the other team.

That means the other team

is getting really, really tired.

So you can use it to talk about equipment.

I have a pair of shoes that I am.

They're starting to wear out.

The one shoe has a hole in it because I've been

walking too much and the shoes are starting to wear out.

And you can also wear out the other team.

When playing a sport, if you play very

vigorously, they might get tired and we would,

we would use the same verb.

Or you might use to wear down.

Let's say you're playing soccer against a team

and your team is faster and stronger.

You will eventually start to wear down the other team.

They'll start to get really tired.

They'll get exhausted because your team is just

so much better at playing the sport.

So sometimes you just wear down the other team

and eventually you start to win because they are

just tired and it's hard for them to play

at their full potential to work, to work off. Oh, yeah.

This is the second AI picture to work off, so.

And there's another one to burn off.

These are not AI pictures.

So we often talk about eating and exercise

and how they relate to each other.

Sometimes when you eat a lot of food or you eat

too much food, you might go for a walk because you

want to work off the calories or you want to work

off the food, or you want to work off the fat

that you put on from eating too much.

So when you train, when you exercise, when you walk or

run or lift weights, you might be doing that because you

want to work off some calories or work off some fat.

So we use that to talk

about losing weight a little bit.

Or if you ate this whole cake, you might want to

walk until you've used up all the sugar that you ate.

And then we also use the phrase to burn off.

So sometimes if you look here, this lady is eating

a banana split in the far picture, a banana split

is when they cut a banana in half and they

put ice cream in the middle and chocolate sauce.

And then she's decided to burn off

those calories by going for a run.

Um, so you often will hear people say, like, oh, I ate

too much, I'm going to have to burn this off later.

Or, oh, I ate too much, I'm going to have to

work this off later by going for a run or going

for a walk or doing some other kind of exercise.

So to burn off and to work off both

refer to how exercise and activity can help you

stay lean and fit by using the calories, the

energy that you consumed to drop out.

So this happens sometimes for a couple of reasons.

This refers to when you stop doing

a sport or stop doing an activity.

So you might be playing and you hurt your knee, and

then you might need to drop out of the game.

You might be in a race, and all of a

sudden, let's say it's a really hot day and you're

running a long race and you get heat stroke.

That's when you're outside in the heat for too long, you

might need to drop out, you might need to quit.

So basically, to drop out means

to no longer do the activity.

To quit doing the activity.

Um, sometimes you have to drop out because maybe

you've broken the rules or something like that. So.

But anyways, I think the better

description would be, here's an example.

I was running the race and my knee started

to hurt, so I needed to drop out.

So that means you didn't finish the race,

you decided to quit to wipe out.

So sometimes, and this happens in cycling, sometimes.

Sometimes people fall off their bikes.

Sometimes people hit other people

and fall off their bikes.

Sometimes they wipe out.

When you go skating, sometimes you're

skating and you slip and fall.

And we, when you do that, we

say that, uh, you wipe out.

So wiping out is when you are,

you basically, you fall down by accident.

Maybe this cyclist ran over a small

rock, and then they wiped out.

Maybe you haven't skated very much, and when you

tried skating, you were wiping out all the time.

You kept falling on the ice.

So to wipe out simply means

to fall down, not intentionally.

So it's usually an accident.

You wipe out, you fall down, you

have a small accident to bulk up.

So this is a phrase used a lot for

people who are trying to make their muscles bigger.

So this guy is very fit.

He has very large muscles, but when he

was younger, he probably didn't, but he decided

to lift weights in order to bulk up.

So the best description I can give for this is to

gain weight, but not as fat, to gain weight as muscle.

Okay?

So you want, when you're, when you decide to

bulk up, you're trying to make your muscles bigger.

You're lifting weights in order to increase the

size of the muscles in your body.

So often people who are maybe not very strong and

they want to have a physique like this, like, they

want to look like this, they will go to the

gym, they will lift weights to bulk up, to become

stronger and bigger, to knock out.

So if you watch boxing, sometimes the boxers

will hit each other and they'll remain standing.

But sometimes one boxer will hit the other

boxer with so much force that they fall

down on the mat and they are unconscious.

Oh, I was gonna do this so that there, now you

can imagine what it's like to be in a boxing match.

Although there would be a boxing glove here, right?

So this isn't as common as it used to be.

I think boxing is a lot more points oriented.

Like, you try to get points for certain

hits, but if you hit someone hard enough,

you might knock out that person.

You might render them unconscious.

That would be another way to say it.

So you can see here, these guys look pretty intense.

The one guy might knock out the other guy

with a hit like this to give up.

Similar to dropping out, when you

give up, it means you quit.

So this is common in sports because not everyone

has what it takes to play a certain sport.

Some people give up.

So let's say I was a good hockey player.

I might play for three or four

years, but eventually I might give up.

Eventually I might quit because everyone

else is better than me.

As you play a competitive sport, sometimes you're just

not strong enough or fast enough or good enough.

And so you might decide you're just going

to give up, you're going to quit.

So when you give up, it means that you

quit and you no longer play that sport.

You can give up in a game too.

Sorry, I should explain this a bit better.

Like if you're losing ten one, your

team might give up a little bit.

Like they're not playing as hard

as they should to pay off.

So if you work hard, it'll eventually pay off.

So if you practice a certain sport, if you go to the

gym every day, if you go to the track and you work

hard for years, you might eventually see that pay off.

When something pays off, it means that you achieve a.

A goal that you had, so you do a

certain thing and hope that it will pay off.

If you watch a lot of English lessons on

YouTube and if you study English for a few

hours every day, eventually that will pay off.

Eventually you will be fluent and you'll

be able to talk to other people.

So it's basically when you achieve a goal, that's

what I would say to try out for.

So if there's a team that needs ten players

and 20 people want to be on that team,

you need to try out for that team.

You need to go to a few practices and show your skills.

You need to hopefully find, hopefully

get a spot on that team.

So when you try out for something, it's especially for

a team, it means you and a lot of other

people who play that sport are there to try out

for to hopefully find a spot on the team.

By the way, when you try out for

a team, you go to a tryout.

We also use it as a noun, but you can see

these girls, they've decided to try out for a basketball team.

So they're hoping that they make the team.

Sometimes when you're an athlete, you

need to work on something.

Okay, so to me, it looks like this

guy has decided to work on his hitting.

He's a baseball player, he has a bat in

his hands, he's decided to work on his hitting.

So this person on the floor is throwing one ball at

a time so the other person can work on his hitting.

When you work on something,

it means you're practicing it.

You work on your English every week,

you're working on your English right now.

You might work on your English later today by

studying a bit more or doing some reading.

So when you work on something,

it means you practice it.

It means you do it in order to

get better at it, to be into.

So this can work for fans as well as athletes.

I'm into watching the Blue Jays right now.

They are a professional baseball team in Toronto.

This isn't me, by the way, but I

did go to a Blue Jays game.

I actually went twice this year.

I went on a class trip, and then Jen

and I went a couple of weeks ago.

So Jen and I are into watching the Blue Jays.

We're into baseball.

A player can also be into it.

Oh, does your son play sports?

Oh, yeah, he's really into football.

Does your son, is your son going to.

Going to the Olympics? Yeah.

From a young age, he was into

archery, and now Bob's at the Olympics.

In doing archery.

That is an Olympic sport, right? Archery?

I'm pretty sure it is.

So when you're into something, it means you are.

You really like it and you do it a lot.

You are all into learning English,

by the way, to stick with.

So it's hard to be the person who never gives up.

When you stick with something, it means you do it

every day or every other day for a long time. Okay.

If you want to speak English,

you need to stick with it.

You need to study a lot.

You can't give up.

You can't drop out.

You can't quit.

You have to stick with it.

Um, if you're.

I'm trying to think of another example, um,

if I want to be a better teacher.

When I first started teaching, I wasn't sure I was going to

be a good teacher, but I decided to stick with it.

I start, I decided to stick with teaching

and to work on my teaching skills to

become a better teacher, to seize up.

So maybe this only happens to older athletes, but

sometimes when I'm walking, my muscle will seize up.

So I can move this arm to here and to here.

But last summer I had it where I moved

my arm, and then it kind of seized up.

This muscle started contracting while I

was trying to extend my arm.

So when you seize, when something

seizes up, it stops moving. Okay.

Sometimes a machine will seize up, like if

your motor in your car is turning, and

then it stops and it won't turn anymore.

We say that it has seized up. So.

So I got this picture because I feel

like his calf muscle is seizing up.

So his calf muscle isn't working

the way it's supposed to.

Maybe he has a muscle cramp. You see this?

Sometimes in a race, someone's leg will seize

up a little bit to count on.

When you play any sport where you

have teammates, you count on your teammates.

This means that you're going to play hard and

you expect them to play hard as well. Okay.

It's me.

It means someone is reliable for me.

Like you can count on me to

do a live stream almost every Friday.

I think out of the 52 past weeks, I've

probably done 47 or 48 live streams on Friday.

So you can count on that.

There's a live stream most Fridays.

When you play a sport, you can count on your teammates

to play hard and to do well for you, to help

you and the team win, to run away with.

So this has a literal meaning and

this has a sport meaning as well.

So if I have the ball, I can run away with the ball.

It means I take the ball. Okay?

But when two teams are playing each other and

if the score is 40 to seven, I don't

know if you can see that score down there.

You could say that in this rugby game, Australia

was predicted to run away with the game. Okay.

Or Australia ran away with the game.

So when you beat someone by a very large margin,

you might say that one team ran away with it. Okay.

It's like, wow, 40 to seven,

Australia ran away with the game.

So basically when you do so well

that the score is that big of.

There's that big of a difference, you would

use the, the phrase to run away with.

By the way, I did see this game.

I've never watched rugby sevens before, but I

was at my sister's house and it was

on tv and it was, it was interesting.

It was very, very, very cool to weed out.

So this is kind of the sad side of sports.

When you are a coach and you're trying to make a

team, let's say 30 people try out and there's ten spots.

You need to weed out the weaker players.

That means you need to figure out who isn't

good enough and then cut them from the team.

So when you weed out the weaker players, it means

you are looking for the people you don't want.

So if you make a team, there's

two things you have to do.

You have to determine who the good players are and you

need to weed out the bad players or weaker players.

So you choose the good players

and you cut the weaker players.

By the way, when you try out for a

team, you're either chosen or picked for the team

or you are cut from the team.

So the coach will try to weed out the

players who are not good enough for the team.

So notice it has the word weed in it.

Like when you're in a garden, weeds

are the plants you don't want.

So we kind of use it in this

phrasal verb as well, to crack down on.

So in the Olympics, sometimes.

What's a good example of this?

Sometimes in hockey, they try to

crack down on the rough play.

That means the referees or umpires, depending on the game,

are going to look extra hard for certain behavior.

Okay, so maybe there's, maybe there's a game between

two teams who really don't like each other.

So the refs might crack down on

any physical activity to prevent fights.

So when you crack down on something, it means you

try to look for it and prevent it from happening.

Sometimes at school, let's say students

are using their phones too much.

As teachers, we might be told we

need to crack down on phone usage.

So make sure students aren't

distracted by their phones.

Look for them using phones inappropriately and then take the

phone away for the day or something like that.

So when you crack down on something, you

try to identify it and stop it.

Sometimes the police will crack down on speeders.

They'll put a car, a police car somewhere

so that they catch more people speeding.