4fitbodies.com

Off Season Training – February 2007

David Hansey

NASM Certified Performance Enhancement Specialist

NASM Certified Sports Fitness Specialist

NASM Certified Personal Trainer

Most sports have an off-season. Even if you do not play an “organized” sport such as football, baseball or soccer, you can usually determine when your off-season is. For Golfers and Tennis Players, along with football, baseball and soccer players, it is RIGHT NOW. The off-season is not your time to kick back and put your feet up on the coffee table. In fact, cycling activity and inactivity can increase imbalances in your body as well as set you up for injury. Off season is the time to work on correcting your body’s imbalances as well as to work on strength and power. Is your golf swing still becoming a slice by the time you get to the back 9? Well, perhaps it is because you are not using your body correctly and compensating with your arms, which become tired and fail you later in the game.

If you have never followed a “workout plan”, now might be a perfect time to seek professional help to determine what you need to be working on. A movement assessment is a perfect way to determine your strengths and weaknesses. You may not realize that you are making compensations for weak or tight muscles. For example, you may bow your knees out when you bend them because certain muscles are too tight or you may roll your feet outward.

I can see some people saying that these limitations are not really that big of a deal. Well, consider this. That slice that we mentioned before in your golf swing is usually caused by weak muscles in the back and tight hamstrings. Both of these are EASY TO FIX. Most weak and tight muscles are easy to fix. But, until you identify them, your workout will probably not do anything to correct them. In fact, working out blind without knowing your unique strengths and weaknesses can cause injury (tennis elbow, golf elbow, back problems, knee pain or injury, etc).

Now that you have identified your unique strengths and weaknesses, you can work out an off-season training program. This program should consider correcting any weaknesses as well as take any goals you have into account. For example, are you tired and making mistakes in your game due to poor cardiovascular conditioning? Or do you need to change how you train. Are you missing shots in your tennis game? Then maybe some interval training or lateral training (both of which emulate the moves in tennis) would make more sense than steady training on a treadmill.

Regardless of your sport, the off-season is the time to make these assessments and train for improvement so when the time comes to play; you are stronger, faster, more accurate and less prone to injury. For more information on Sports Specific Training, call me at 404-514-1896 or visit my website at www.4fitbodies.com.

FOR THE LATEST CHAPEL HILL NEWS ARTICLE, click HERE

Tags: Chapel Hill News, Fitness, golf, Off Season Training, Sports Fitness by David Hansey, Personal Trainer
Comments Off

This is a bit of a loaded question, but it is a good thing to ask yourself when you are looking to lose weight. There are a lot of nutrition and diet programs that cost up to $100 per week. This is a LOT to pay for one to two pounds per week!! 20 pounds of fat could end up costing you $2000. Use your gym membership and maybe a few personal training sessions and not only will you lose the weight, you will reap the health benefits for THE REST OF YOUR BODY (heart, lungs, cancer prevention, bone health, disease prevention, etc)
If you think the diet centers were expensive, the cosmetic surgeon is REALLY EXPENSIVE. Cosmetic surgery has its place, but as any plastic surgeon will tell you, it is not a replacement for working out. Let’s face it, at the gym or anywhere else in your life, THERE IS NO REPLACEMENT FOR GOOD HARD WORK!

Tags: Fitness, Motivation, obesity, Sports Fitness, Weight Loss by David Hansey, Personal Trainer
Comments Off

Name a sport you enjoy. There are specific ways to train for that sport and there are specific things that you can do to prevent being injured at that sport. I recently watched Downhill Skier Bode Miller saying that he has the strongest legs in the world. It may have come out sounding a bit arrogant, but he probably does (at least in his world). You may not be planning on becoming a world-class athlete like Bode, but you should consider sports-specific training if you enjoy a sport. Even the casual player can benefit.
Do you golf? Play tennis? Ride horses? Swim? Play on a baseball team?
Tennis players can improve reach and speed and prevent knee injuries by just adding a few simple moves to their workout routine. Tennis players can also benefit from exercises that increase hip drive.
Golfers can add more power to their swing by working on their core and doing strength exercises for their hamstrings. Both of these can improve the accuracy of your swing and lower your score.
Horseback riders can improve their “seat” by strengthening their core and their legs. This will give them better control and reduce their chances of being thrown by an unexpected change in position from the horse.
Baseball players, especially pitchers need to focus on keeping their shoulders balanced. They can do this by performing a series of rotator cuff exercises that can prevent elbow pain.
Swimmers can improve their speed by working on shoulder strength. They can reduce fatigue by working on their back muscles so their stroke has more power without using arm strength to compensate for other weaker muscles.
You get the idea. Regardless of what sport you play, you can improve it by tweaking your off-season and on-season routine.

Tags: Sports Fitness by David Hansey, Personal Trainer
Comments Off

For most of us, abs are about looks. We crunch and we crunch and we get a variety of results. There are many different muscles that make up your abdominals and some of them are very deep tissue muscles. We should probably look at training all of them and training them smarter. While the crunch is an effective exercise, too many can have negative results. According to Dr. Michael Yessis in his book “The Kinesiology of Exercise, doing excessive crunches can lead to a flattening of the lumbar curve, which will weaken your back.
There are a variety of exercises that are much more effective on the look and health of the abdominals that can be added to your routine. When you work with a trainer, you may hear about “drawing in”. Some instructors talk about holding your abs in. These tactics are introduced to protect your back and to help your abs, but it is important to know how to do this properly. It is not just “sucking it in”.
One of these maneuvers is called the “drawing in” and it can make your abdominals look and perform better if you learn to master it.
According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the drawing in maneuver should be performed at the beginning of every set. To learn this technique, you can ask a trainer, but here are the basics from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. From your hands and knees (on all fours), pull in your abdominals while keeping your back flat. Hold for as long as you can. Once you can hold this move for 3 reps of 20 seconds each, you can move onto the plank maneuver. The plank maneuver starts in a push-up position (a real push-up, not on your knees!) From that position, you perform the same drawing in as you did on all fours. Pull in your abdominals but maintain a flat back.
Both of these exercises work deep tissue muscles in your abdominals that will help you change the look of your abs as well as keep your core balanced which will keep your abdominal area and all of the areas it supports, healthy.
Abdominal training should also include some work on a Swiss Ball for most people. The Swiss Ball protects your back so even if you have issues with your back, it is usually a good option for most people. There are a whole variety of effective exercises that you can do on the ball. One “on the ball” exercise that you may want to try is a crunch. This is a much more effective way to work your abdominals because you get a greater stretch than a standard crunch.

Tags: Fitness, Sports Fitness by David Hansey, Personal Trainer
Comments Off

Interval training is not a new concept. Do you remember doing wind sprints when you were in school? Same idea except it can be applied to most cardio methods.
The wind sprint consisted of you (and all your classmates) sprinting to a designated point and jogging back. The interval works in a similar way. You have a period of activity where you are working very hard followed by a period of activity where you are working less. The less-intense portion is called active recovery. Your RPM class has some intervals. There are periods where you sprint and these are followed by “ride-easy” times where you continue to work, but you have a chance to catch your breath.
A big reason people do not work out or do not work out often enough is that they feel that they do not have enough time. So, the workout goes out the window. Interval training allows you to get a great workout in less time. Here’s why. Regardless of what cardio workout you choose, you can only maintain a certain pace for so long. If you normally spend 45-60 minutes on your cardio workout, you could probably trim this in half and get a great workout (or perhaps even a better workout!) If you use the treadmill, you would start out with a brisk walk to warm up, then add some incline (you are now hiking in the treadmill mountains). Once you reach the five minute mark, increase your speed to a run. And I mean a very healthy, fast run. This should be fast enough that you can maintain the pace for a few minutes. After 2-3 minutes, return to your brisk hill walk. If you are a beginner, you can drop the incline down during the running portion. If you cannot run due to some limitations or you are a beginner, you can increase the speed to a very fast walk and take the incline up to the maximum for the intense period. You will still feel how hard it is. Repeat this cycle (walk/run or little hill/big hill) and you will find those 30 minutes of cardio might be just enough!

Tags: Fitness, Sports Fitness by David Hansey, Personal Trainer
Comments Off