Top 5 Yoga Poses For Athletes

Yoga focuses on improving your physical, mental and spiritual well-being. The goal of yoga is to harmonize your body, mind and spirit through a combination of poses, meditation and breathing exercises. Unifying your body, mind and spirit allows you to achieve a sense of wholeness, peace and self-realization. In addition to achieving inner peace, practicing yoga has many physical and mental benefits. For example, the physical exercise involved in yoga can increase your strength and flexibility. Yoga is also a very effective tool for relieving stress, calming your mind and allowing you to achieve complete physical and mental relaxation. 

Anyone can practice yoga, regardless of age or fitness level. If you have a physical limitation, you can modify yoga to meet your needs. For instance, people with limited mobility can perform yoga while sitting in a chair. Almost everyone can find yoga useful, since yoga provides such a wide variety of benefits. For example, people who work in offices can perform stress-relieving practices to give their overworked minds a break. Athletes and dancers can perform strengthening practices to restore their energy and improve their stamina. Children can practice yoga to improve their attention span and concentration. Seniors can also practice yoga to feel strong and improve their strength and flexibility.

Top 5 Yoga Poses

1. Pigeon Pose helps to open and increase the flexibility of your hips. This pose also helps to strengthen your back, stretch your thighs and increase the flexibility of your groin.

2. Child’s Pose is a seated forward bend that stretches and releases your spine and lower back. Make sure you do not rest your weight on your neck and forehead. You should also be able to breathe evenly while performing the pose. Child’s Pose is a simple pose that is comfortable and safe for almost everyone. However, you should avoid this pose if you have knee problems or high blood pressure.

3. Downward-Facing Dog Pose lengthens your spine and provides an intense stretch to the back of your legs, with an emphasis on stretching your calves. As you perform the pose, keep your shoulder blades wide and your spine lengthened. You should also try to establish one straight line with your arms and spine and another with your legs, but make sure you do not lock your elbows or knees. To form these straight lines, try visualizing your body making an upside down V shape.

4. Cobra Pose develops strength and flexibility in your spine and back, with an emphasis on your lower back. 

5. Knee Down Twist improves the flexibility of your spine. Performing this pose also opens your chest and shoulders, while stretching your lower back and hips. As you perform Knee Down Twist, only lower your knee as far as is comfortable for you. It is more important to keep both of your shoulders on the floor than to lower your knee all the way to the floor. As you hold the pose, allow your body to soften and release further into the twist with each exhalation.

You can create a personal yoga practice to meet your needs. Make sure the poses you select include forward, backward and twisting movements of the spine, as well as shoulder and hip movements

FOCUS: THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Hard work is a key to success. However, winning is more than just working hard. It’s working smart. It’s having a direction and focus. It’s having a plan and working the plan. A plan involves defining what has to be done, how to go about doing it, who will do it, and setting time lines. With winning teams it’s very much about everyone working the plan together. Working the plan is an expression of organization, direction, and cooperation. It involves a coordinated effort by a group of people directing their energy efficiently and effectively.

When Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, was asked by a prominent industrialist, “What makes a winning team?” Lombardi said, “The players have to know their jobs.” First you need to tell people exactly what is expected of them. “Once you know specifically what you want your team to be doing in the future, then you need to measure it.

Focus is a key to success. Winning teams share a winning focus. There’s an awareness of where they’re going, what has to be done, and a belief in their capability as a group to execute the plan. Focusing on what the competition is doing can be limiting. Instead, focus primarily on what you are working to create, and how you are trying to improve relative to an absolute standard of excellence.

The pattern of defining what has to be done, communicating it to team members, rehearsing, executing the plan, and then assessing and adjusting is key to success in most endeavors. As the coach said, “The players have to know their jobs.”

Focus is key to superior performance, and the plan is a blueprint for focus.

PROTEIN: THE PRINCIPLES OF EVERYDAY EATING FOR ATHLETES

The protein needs of athletes have been hotly debated for many years. In the past, strength athletes have argued that more was better for growing muscles, whereas endurance athletes almost ignored protein, focusing mainly on carbohydrate to fuel exercise.

It is clear that protein requirements are increased by exercise— first, to account for the small contribution of protein to muscle fuel, and second, to account for any extra muscle that is laid down to increase muscle size and strength or repair damaged tissue. Many athletes will still be met by the general recommendation of 1g of protein per kilogram of body weight—e.g. 60 g for a 60 kg athlete. But athletes whose daily training sessions are lengthy and intense (burning up a significant total of protein fuel), or who are in a muscle-gain stage of their programs, will require an increase in their protein allowance. Athletes who are growing will need to cover these physiological requirements as well. However, don’t go rushing for a protein powder yet—although protein requirements increase in absolute terms (you may need more total grams of protein), the extra energy in your diet to fuel exercise should automatically allow you to eat more protein without having to consciously emphasize protein foods. In other words, your growing appetite and the more food that you will be required to eat should cover the increased protein needs.

Lean animal protein foods are able to supply all the body’s essential amino acids, as well as calcium (dairy foods) and iron (meats and shellfish). They may also be good sources of omega-3 fats—especially fish. Common sense should tell you that it doesn’t take half a cow to make up your daily protein needs—cereal with skim milk for breakfast, a chicken sandwich for lunch and a small steak for dinner will provide over 60 g of protein. In fact, the only athletes really at risk of failing to meet these guidelines are those who eat very restricted diets—low in energy, low in variety, or low in both.

Vegetarian Protein Sources

Another reason for athletes to be less concerned about the total amount of protein they eat is the growing evidence that the timing of one’s protein intake is a more critical factor in optimizing the results of training. When protein is eaten in the hour or so after a resistance/weights workout, there is a substantial increase in protein synthesis in the muscle. The same with endurance exercise. The exciting news from recent studies is that gains made by this strategic timing of protein intake around training sessions are real and stand out even from the results of eating protein throughout the day.

But be aware that you don’t need a lot of protein to provide all the building blocks for post-training protein synthesis. In fact, if you eat too much you will end up increasing the use of protein as a fuel. That’s not smart use of a relatively expensive nutrient. - Strategic intake of a protein-rich food or snack after key training sessions or competitive events promotes recovery and adaptation. It is the most effective way for an athlete to address the increased protein requirements imposed by exercise. - 10–20 g of a good-quality protein seems the ideal size of a protein recovery snack. There is a substantial increase in protein synthesis with a 10 g protein serve, but the response seems to level out at 20–25 g. In fact, more than 25 g of protein will lead to increased use of protein as a fuel source, which negates the purpose of consuming protein. - The ideal timing and pattern of a recovery snack is not known. However it makes sense to start protein intake within the hour after a key workout or event. If you have large energy needs, you may want to add a recovery snack before and after a strenuous workout.

Is Water Better Than Sport Drinks?

In some cases yes. For exercise lasting one hour or less, water is still the best sport drink around. The nutrient you most need to replace during and after a workout is water.

“Sports drinks” do have their place, mostly for exercise lasting more than an hour, and especially for use by endurance and ultra-endurance athletes. These products are a mixture of water, carbohydrate, and electrolytes. Electrolytes are dissolved minerals that form a salty soup in and around cells. Electrolytes carry electrical charges that let them react with other minerals to relay nerve impulses, make muscles contract or relax, and regulate the fluid balance inside and outside cells.

In hard workouts or athletic competitions lasting an hour or longer, electrolytes can be lost through sweat. Sports drinks do two things: replace water and electrolytes lost through sweat, and supply a small amount of carbohydrate to the working muscles. The best time to swill one of these drinks is during an aerobic workout or during any period of exertion, especially if you're exercising or working in hot weather. That's when fluid loss is greater than any other time of the year.

 Where sports drink may have an edge over water is in their flavor. A lot of people just don't drink much water because it doesn't taste good. If you are an avid water drinker and really like water, you will benefit just as much from water as you will from using a sports drink unless you are exercising more than an hour.

Refueling Your Muscles after a Workout

After working out, you want your muscles to recover. Recovery is essentially the process of replenishing muscle glycogen. The better your recovery, the harder you'll be able to train during your next workout. There are three critical periods in which to feed your muscles with carbs. These three periods are explained in the following discussion.

1. Immediately Following Your Workout

Your muscles are most receptive to producing new glycogen within the first few hours following your workout. That's when blood flow to muscles is much greater, a condition that makes muscle cells practically sop up glucose like a sponge. Muscle cells are also more sensitive to the effects of insulin during this time, and insulin promotes glycogen synthesis. You should therefore take in some carbs immediately after you work out.

 The question is: What's the best type of carb for refueling?

 Answer: carbs with a high glycemic index.

The glycemic index is a scale describing how fast a food is converted to glucose in the blood. Foods on the index are rated numerically, with glucose at 100. The higher the number assigned to a food, the faster it converts to glucose. A sport drink containing glucose, sucrose, or a glucose polymer (all high on the glycemic index) is a rapid and efficient restorer of glycogen. Some of these drinks may also contain fructose, which isn't as fast at replenishing muscle glycogen as either glucose or sucrose. That being so, try to avoid fructose, including fruit, as the sole source of carbohydrate in the period immediately following your workout. Stick to high glycemic index choices containing glucose and sucrose.

2. Every Two Hours Following Your Workout

Continue to take in a mixture of low and high-glycemic carbs every two hours following your workout. A word of caution: There is a drawback to high glycemic index foods. They may produce a fast, undesirable surge of blood sugar, and you can feel weak or dizzy.

3. Throughout the Week

To keep carbohydrate replenishment on track, stay on a high-carbohydrate diet from week to week. An excellent study of hockey players, whose sport requires both muscular strength and aerobic endurance, found that during a three-day period between games, a high-carb diet caused a 45 percent higher glycogen refill than a diet lower in carbs. By consistently fueling yourself with carbs, you can keep your muscles well stocked with glycogen.

 Giving careful thought to what you eat and making sure you get plenty of carbohydrates will provide a solid foundation for optimizing both your performance and your health.

Summer Speed And Agility Training

Athletes must work on their bodies year-round so that they are ready to play at peak efficiency from the start of the season. Thus your best window to improve your speed, agility and quickness lies in the off season. Then when competitions starts, you aren't overloading your body with too many competing demands. Whether your goal is to improve at track, basketball, soccer, volleyball or any other sport, you can make your greatest gains during your open time in the off season.

The purpose of speed, agility, and quickness training is to execute maximal force while performing high-speed movements. SAQ training is an ideal supplement to your summer strength training program.

A common misconception is you have to be born with speed, agility and quickness or coordination. Anyone can train their body to improve their speed and reactions. With proper training, a slow athlete can become faster, a fast athlete can become even faster, and a good athlete can become great.

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How Parents And Coaches Can Help Young Athletes Succeed In Sport And Life

People often think professional players show up at seven o’clock for a seven-thirty game, get dressed, and play. They do not realize that the players often arrive three or four hours before game time to work on their skills.

“Many athletes have tremendous God-given gifts, but they don’t focus on the development of those gifts. Who are these individuals? You have never heard of them—and you never will. It is true in sports and it is true everywhere in life. Hard work is the difference— very hard work.” - John Wooden

Good results rarely happen by chance. Hard work, coupled with correct knowledge, is necessary for ultimate success. There is a famous saying that goes “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Often, people say a player was lucky when they do well or win. In reality, hours and hours of work produced the good results.

Very few young players work as hard as they could, but that is probably a good thing. Too much hard work at a young age often leads to burnout. Parents and coaches should promote the idea that hard work leads to success and rarely will success come without the hard work, but they should not push their player to the point of overexertion or disaffection.

It is frustrating for parents when their kids do not want to practice. Often, parents cannot understand this, especially when the parents feel they have been nothing but encouraging with the child’s participation in the sport. It is important that parents and coaches understand that they should try to inspire young players, but motivation comes from within the players themselves. All athletes are different. Some are self-motivated at a young age. Others become motivated at a later age, and some never seem to attain the motivation for sports.

Letting a young athlete know that they can develop this talent with desire and practice is good. These words may create the love of the sport and the motivation at some point in a young player’s career. It all starts with love of the game, followed by hard work, which produces success. Those three, love, hard work, and success build upon and feed off each other. No one can make a player a major-leaguer; only the player can do that. Nevertheless, parents and coaches can help players develop a love of sport, a good work ethic, and success.