I'll start with a great article I read last Friday on a way to think about your diet. It comes from EliteFTS.com and if you are interested in anything that has to do with training, sign up for their newsletter. Here's the link to the diet...
http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/nutrition/the-mountain-dog-diet-%e2%80%93-a-healthier-way-to-get-leanadd-muscle-or-both/
I also wanted to touch on warming up before training. Too many times I see people walk into gyms and weight rooms and just begin their training. This drives me nuts, to see competitive athletes and every day gym-goers starting their workouts without properly preparing themselves.
A warm-up serves two purposes: To get the body physically prepared and to get the mind mentally prepared. By warming up you get the joints and muscles ready for training by increasing blood flow throughout the body. And this is the time that should be a signal from your brain to your body saying, "its time to get to work". This is your time to concentrate on what you need to accomplish during the training session.
Warming up can be done in 5-10 minutes and does not have to be as boring as riding a stationary bike (although that is better than nothing). It also does not include static stretching, unless flexibility is a concern.
Here is the warm-up I have my athletes do prior to strength training and/or agilities and conditioning.
For this warm-up I have them take their shoes off (Why I, and many other trainers do that is for another post).
This is done from sideline to sideline on a basketball court.
Each exercise is done for 1 length.
Toe walks
Heel walks
Forward lunges
Backward lunges
Side lunges - Left foot lead
Side lunges - Right foot lead
1 leg deadlift walks
Quad grabs
Frankenstein walks
Knee hugs
Ankle pulls
Skips
backward skips
High knees
Butt kicks
Then they get on their hands and knees and I put them through a couple core and glute activation exercises I learned from Kettlebell Master David Whitley (who is also a strong man and does shows. Youtube his name and prepare to be amazed).
Then they will put their shoes back on and we will start out training session.
I will add and take out things that I see from other trainers, or sometimes I will think of something that I believe is new myself until I type it into youtube and see somebody else was doing it 6 months ago.
Now you don't need to do all of the exercises for a warm-up. This was an example. Personally, I do an abbreviated warm-up based on what I am doing that day. I start every session with some corrective exercises since my hips have been pretty terrible for years now. Then I go through a number of the above exercises and go through this jump rope routine:
100 regular jumps
50 left foot
50 right foot
100 alternating
50 high knees
100 regular
This is from Dave Tate's 5/3/1 Manual and I really like it as the last piece of my warm-up.
The point of the warm-up is to get a good sweat going. The guys I work with now would be jumping into first-step exercises or will be warming up for a heavy lift next so they need to be mentally and physically prepared. And this isn't just for athletes, as anybody going into a training session with the goal of getting better needs a solid warm-up.
Be sure to leave any questions and comments below or on Facebook.
