Thursday, May 17, 2007

Top 5 Pilates Exercises for Athletes

by Tracey Katona, Teacher at Nike

Pilates exercises strengthen what Joseph Pilates called the "Powerhouse". Most people refer to it in the fitness industry as your core. The muscles that make up your powerhouse are the abs, buttocks, lower back, hips and thighs. When these muscles are strengthened they protect your back from potential injury and can alleviate most existing back problems. A strong powerhouse also helps to take undo load off of your joints and spine helping the body to work more efficiently. The Pilates method is also excellent for rehabbing repetitive stress injuries, shoulders, backs, knees, and hips by focusing on strengthening the deepest muscles of the body and increasing flexibility.

The 100

This exercise is called the 100 because you do the exercise for 100 beats. It is for breathing, getting the blood flowing and strengthening your abdominals and torso.
  • Lie on your back with your legs bent at a right angle. Draw your belly in like you are pressing it into the mat beneath you.
  • Bring your head up with your chin to your chest looking at your belly button and stretch your arms forward like you are trying to reach to the wall across from you.
  • Pump your arms up and down rapidly keeping them straight and strong. Inhale for 5 counts, exhale for 5 counts. You want to try and complete 10 sets.
  • Remember to stay rounded forward from your torso not your neck! As you get better at this, start to make your legs straighter!

The Roll Up
This exercise strengthens your core and stretches your hamstrings and back.
  • Lie on your back stretching your arms behind you. Your legs can be straight on the mat, or you can bend your knees if you need to modify.
  • Reach your arms to the ceiling and round your chin onto your chest. Continue to roll up one vertebrae at a time. At the top, stretch forward with your belly button in to your spine.
  • Squeeze your knees and buttocks together and curl your spine as you roll back down one vertebrae at a time. Repeat this 6 times. Try to keep your lower body stable and on the mat.

Rolling Like a Ball
This exercise will improve your balance, work and massage your back.
  • Sit on your tailbone with your knees bent, but slightly apart. Hold your ankles with your hands and lift the feet up so you are balancing on your tailbone.
  • Keep the elbows out to the side so you do not lift your shoulders up. Keep your chin tucked to your chest and round your back by pulling your naval to your spine. Fall back rolling to the shoulders and roll back up to the tailbone.
  • Remember do not throw your head back or kick your feet up. Stay as round as a ball feeling each vertebra touch the mat in order on the way back and the way up. Do this 10x.

Double Leg Straight
These next two exercises are part of the stomach series. This exercise here works your Powerhouse to the extreme! It gets your entire core while fueling the stretch in the hamstrings.
  • Lie on your back with your hands behind your hand. (one on top of the other- do not lace your fingers). Stretch your legs right up to the ceiling and turn the thighs out slightly to form the Pilates V. Your inner thighs should be squeezing tightly together and the negative space of your feet should from a V.
  • Press your naval in to your spine like you are securing it to the mat beneath you and lit your head and shoulders off the mat keeping your chin to your chest. Keep squeezing your inner thighs and butt.
  • Lower your legs down toward the mat ONLY AS FAR AS YOU CAN KEEP YOUR NAVAL IN DO NOT ARCH YOUR BACK. Then exhale and bring the legs back up to the ceiling keeping your tailbone on the mat. Repeat this 8-10.

Criss Cross
This exercise works the obliques and increases flexibility in the back, hips and torso.
  • Keep your hands behind your head without lacing them and bend your knees to your chest.
  • Extend the right leg and twist your upper body bringing your right elbow to the left knee. Look back to the left elbow. Make sure your upper back and shoulders are not touching the mat.
  • Now bend the right knee and extend the left leg bringing your left elbow to your right knee and look back at your right elbow.
  • Keep pulling your abs in and do not let them push out. Repeat this for 8-10 sets.




Adidas TechFit Powerweb



Adidas comes out with new compression shorts and shirts to improve muscular endurance, power and support during training. The new TechFit Powerweb uses strategically designed thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) bands to provide wearers with greater power and explosiveness. Compression technology, which involves wrapping muscles in tight fitting fabric, has been proven to to help with proprioception and body awareness, which means better form and technique. It also provides reduced muscle vibration, improved muscle recovery and less wear and tear during workouts.

The TPU bands are anchored at key points and are focused on key muscle groups such as the upper legs and shoulders. The bands work in unison with the muscles and function like springs. When an athlete moves, one set of muscles contracts while an opposite set extends; the bands mimic this, stretching on the extension side to store elastic energy. When the process is reversed and the extended muscles contract, the bands snap back to their shorter length, providing an athlete with more power.

In controlled laboratory tests, conducted together with the University of Calgary, an average 5.3 percent improvement in power output and 1.1 percent faster sprint time was measured over 30 meters. Even more impressive, the testers registered a 1.3 percent reduction in oxygen consumption while wearing TechFit with Powerweb - a clear indication that the onset of fatigue is delayed and that performance is enhanced.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Building Team Discipline and Committment

I recently received an email from a high school strength and conditioning coach in Montana, wondering how we get our teams/players to committ to our off-season training programs and be disciplned in their approach through months of grueling training. My answer was as follows:
Priority # 1
As a strength and conditioning coach at the high school level you should have the support of your Athletic Director. The A.D. must trust that your goals and objectives are in the same order as the athletic departments mission.
Priority # 2
You and the head coaches should be on the same page. You can't have the committment of your players if the head coach isn't on the same page as you are with the program. If they don't understand your program or have questions about your philosophy, educate them every chance you get. We are in an era of sports where every coach understands the benefits of a good off-season and pre-seaon conditioning program. The coach must get the players to understand the benefits, so he can emphasize it's importance to all of his athletes. Every athlete should understand that there are certain things that must be done to get ready to play at the highest level come In-season.
Priority # 3
Program Orientation. Every player participating in the training program must understand what is expected of him. The orientation process must include team goals, program objectives, weightroom demeanor, team discipline, exercise descriptions, set and reps schemes, etc. When the athletes walk into the weightroom or are conditioning, they must understand the intensity factor. We have a few rules in our program, but an athlete knows that if they yawn it's 20 push-ups and if they sit it's 20 push-ups. Our goal is to increase work capacity and we strive towards this goal on a rep by rep basis for the entire length of a workout.
Priority # 4
Program Consistency. When dealing with a high school program, you have the opportunity to work with an athlete for four years. This provides you the opportunity to instill certain qualities in your players from a very young age. Hard work, discipline, committment, team work, intensity. I think you get the point. These are the four years of an young athletes greatest gains in height, weight, and strength, so the ability to teach exercise technique, progressive overload, consistency, and patience will allow the athletes to develop according to their individual maturity process. The maturity process for each athlete is different and you must take this into account when developing programs for your teams.