Monday, June 16, 2008

Bullet Proof Abs

The biggest myth when looking to develop 6-pack abs is that you need to perform an unlimited number of crunches. The real truth is that you must work hard to reduce body fat through proper food intake, increasing activity, or a combination of both.

In this article, I will focus on six core exercises that will help you build stabilization and strength in different planes of motion, which in turn will help you build those 6-pack abs you have always wanted.

Your ab routine should last about 20 minutes two to three times per week, with two to four exercises for 2-3 sets of 10-25 reps per exercise. The program below will allow you to superset your exercises to save time. The letters and numbers before the exercises will help you to keep your exercises in order.

You can superset A1 and A2 for the total number of sets before progressing to the next set of exercises. Complete all sets and reps of A exercises before moving to the B exercises.

A1 Incline Hip Raise: Lie on an incline bench with your head at the top and your feet towards the lower side. Bring your knees towards your chest and curl your hips up towards your shoulders. Pause at the top for a count of 2 seconds before returning to the starting position.

A2 Weighted Swiss Ball Crunches: Sit in upright position on a Swiss ball with feet flat on the floor. Walk feet forward to roll underneath body until the ball’s positioned on lower mid-back. Grab a 6-8 lb. medicine ball and leading with the chin and chest, reach towards the ceiling. Contract the abdominals and raise shoulders up.

B1 V Ups: Lie back on the floor with legs straight and arms extended overhead. Leading with the chin and chest towards the ceiling, contract the abdominals and raise the shoulders off the floor. Also raise legs up towards ceiling and attempt to touch your hands to your feet.

B2 Front Planks: The goal of this exercise is to stabilize the muscles by holding a static position with your abs tight and braced. Lay flat on your chest. Elbows are placed on the floor at a 90 degree angle. By positioning the elbows right underneath the shoulder you maintain a stable position with support of the upper body. Lift hips and knees off the floor and maintain a straight spine with your head straight, back flat, and knees off the ground.

C1 Stability Ball Rollouts: Start on your knees with forearms on the Swill ball and your arms outstretched. Roll yourself forward towards the ball using the forearms to support your weight until your body is in a straight line, hips parallel with the rest of your body. Brace the abs and roll back and return to the starting position by pulling your arms back up the ball until you are in an upright position.

C2 Prone Jackknife: Place your hands on the floor and your feet on a Swiss ball in a push-up position. Maintain a natural curve in the upper and lower back. Begin drawing your knees towards your chest. Do not allow any spinal movement. Extend the legs back to the starting position.

Great abs are a product of a healthy diet, consistent abdominal training, calorie-burning exercises, and reducing body fat by stimulating your metabolism. Here are four nutrition tips that will help with your goal of 6-pack abs.

Drink plenty of water –divide your weight by 2.2 for total ounces of daily water. Spread your calories into 5 or 6 smaller meals instead of 2-3 big ones. Avoid refined, simple carbohydrates that contain white flour or white sugar. Eat a good source of complete, high-quality lean protein with each meal.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

ESPN Acquires Student Sports, Inc.

ESPN announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Student Sports, Inc., a premier high school-focused digital media and event production company based in Torrance, Calif.
Founded by grassroots sports marketing and media pioneer Andy Bark, the company’s president and CEO, Student Sports has been a leader in high school sports content for 22 years. Student Sports assets include StudentSports.com and DyeStat.com, and more than 160 events such as Elite 11, Area Code Baseball and Nike Combines/Nike SPARQ Mini Camps, all of which will be integrated into ESPN’s recently announced high school initiative ESPN RISE. In conjunction with the acquisition, ESPN will enter into a licensing and content sharing agreement with SPARQ, the dynamic athletic training and assessment company based in Portland, Ore.

“It is an exciting time for ESPN RISE,” said James Brown, senior vice president, ESPN RISE. “Adding Student Sports to our organization enhances our position in high school sports significantly. This acquisition is in lock step with our goal to celebrate high school athletics, utilizing the expertise across all of our assets - representing a collection of more than 40 years of experience in this space.”

ESPN RISE is a multimedia brand that will deliver high school sports content across all of ESPN’s platforms including programming and events, digital media and publishing.

“Andy Bark has been an innovator and leader in high school content for more than 20 years,” said John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager, ESPN Digital Media. “Adding Andy and the Student Sports team will enable ESPNRISE.com to offer rich coverage to fans and athletes across high school sports — a great complement to the assets we have in Scouts, Inc., RISEMag.com and Hoopgurlz.com.”

Bark said: "We have served millions of students who play sports - as well as their parents, coaches and fans - for many years, and to continue to do so as a part of ESPN and its authentic and integrated platforms is a dream come true."

ESPN RISE represents ESPN’s commitment to providing its core fans, the high school athlete, and its fan base with content that examines and celebrates high school sports in a unique way – across all of ESPN’s platforms. ESPN has a 20-year-history of covering high school sports (1980s) including boys’ and girls’ basketball, football and lacrosse competitions.


This article appears courtesy of Bucknuts.com an independent Ohio sports site and ESPN affiliate. If you would like more information visit BUCKNUTS.com

Friday, June 13, 2008

Lactic Acid Not Athlete's Poison, But An Energy Source -- If You Know How To Use It

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2006) — In the lore of marathoners and extreme athletes, lactic acid is poison, a waste product that builds up in the muscles and leads to muscle fatigue, reduced performance and pain.

Some 30 years of research at the University of California, Berkeley, however, tells a different story: Lactic acid can be your friend.

Coaches and athletes don't realize it, says exercise physiologist George Brooks, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, but endurance training teaches the body to efficiently use lactic acid as a source of fuel on par with the carbohydrates stored in muscle tissue and the sugar in blood. Efficient use of lactic acid, or lactate, not only prevents lactate build-up, but ekes out more energy from the body's fuel.

In a paper in press for the American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism, published online in January, Brooks and colleagues Takeshi Hashimoto and Rajaa Hussien in UC Berkeley's Exercise Physiology Laboratory add one of the last puzzle pieces to the lactate story and also link for the first time two metabolic cycles - oxygen-based aerobic metabolism and oxygen-free anaerobic metabolism - previously thought distinct. "This is a fundamental change in how people think about metabolism," Brooks said. "This shows us how lactate is the link between oxidative and glycolytic, or anaerobic, metabolism."

He and his UC Berkeley colleagues found that muscle cells use carbohydrates anaerobically for energy, producing lactate as a byproduct, but then burn the lactate with oxygen to create far more energy. The first process, called the glycolytic pathway, dominates during normal exertion, and the lactate seeps out of the muscle cells into the blood to be used elsewhere. During intense exercise, however, the second ramps up to oxidatively remove the rapidly accumulating lactate and create more energy.

Training helps people get rid of the lactic acid before it can build to the point where it causes muscle fatigue, and at the cellular level, Brooks said, training means growing the mitochondria in muscle cells. The mitochondria - often called the powerhouse of the cell - is where lactate is burned for energy.
"The world's best athletes stay competitive by interval training," Brooks said, referring to repeated short, but intense, bouts of exercise. "The intense exercise generates big lactate loads, and the body adapts by building up mitochondria to clear lactic acid quickly. If you use it up, it doesn't accumulate."

To move, muscles need energy in the form of ATP, adenosine triphosphate. Most people think glucose, a sugar, supplies this energy, but during intense exercise, it's too little and too slow as an energy source, forcing muscles to rely on glycogen, a carbohydrate stored inside muscle cells. For both fuels, the basic chemical reactions producing ATP and generating lactate comprise the glycolytic pathway, often called anaerobic metabolism because no oxygen is needed. This pathway was thought to be separate from the oxygen-based oxidative pathway, sometimes called aerobic metabolism, used to burn lactate and other fuels in the body's tissues.

Experiments with dead frogs in the 1920s seemed to show that lactate build-up eventually causes muscles to stop working. But Brooks in the 1980s and '90s showed that in living, breathing animals, the lactate moves out of muscle cells into the blood and travels to various organs, including the liver, where it is burned with oxygen to make ATP. The heart even prefers lactate as a fuel, Brooks found.

Brooks always suspected, however, that the muscle cell itself could reuse lactate, and in experiments over the past 10 years he found evidence that lactate is burned inside the mitochondria, an interconnected network of tubes, like a plumbing system, that reaches throughout the cell cytoplasm.

In 1999, for example, he showed that endurance training reduces blood levels of lactate, even while cells continue to produce the same amount of lactate. This implied that, somehow, cells adapt during training to put out less waste product. He postulated an "intracellular lactate shuttle" that transports lactate from the cytoplasm, where lactate is produced, through the mitochondrial membrane into the interior of the mitochondria, where lactate is burned. In 2000, he showed that endurance training increased the number of lactate transporter molecules in mitochondria, evidently to speed uptake of lactate from the cytoplasm into the mitochondria for burning.

The new paper and a second paper to appear soon finally provide direct evidence for the hypothesized connection between the transporter molecules - the lactate shuttle - and the enzymes that burn lactate. In fact, the cellular mitochondrial network, or reticulum, has a complex of proteins that allow the uptake and oxidation, or burning, of lactic acid.
"This experiment is the clincher, proving that lactate is the link between glycolytic metabolism, which breaks down carbohydrates, and oxidative metabolism, which uses oxygen to break down various fuels," Brooks said.

Post-doctoral researcher Takeshi Hashimoto and staff research associate Rajaa Hussien established this by labeling and showing colocalization of three critical pieces of the lactate pathway: the lactate transporter protein; the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase, which catalyzes the first step in the conversion of lactate into energy; and mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase, the protein complex where oxygen is used. Peering at skeletal muscle cells through a confocal microscope, the two scientists saw these proteins sitting together inside the mitochondria, attached to the mitochondrial membrane, proving that the "intracellular lactate shuttle" is directly connected to the enzymes in the mitochondria that burn lactate with oxygen.

"Our findings can help athletes and trainers design training regimens and also avoid overtraining, which can kill muscle cells," Brooks said. "Athletes may instinctively train in a way that builds up mitochondria, but if you never know the mechanism, you never know whether what you do is the right thing. These discoveries reshape fundamental thinking on the organization, function and regulation of major pathways of metabolism."

Brooks' research is supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Athletic Testing

I recently found the link below while working on a project. This link has a great deal of information for athletic testing. It is especially good if you are not familiar with testing or have never tested athletes previously. The website basically spells out each test, including equipment you will need for each test, how to set up the test, normative values for the tests, etc.

There is a great deal of variety as well. You can find anything from agility testing, strength testing, speed testing, to even body fat and BMI testing. This website is a good resource for a variety of tests and could really help you get started with athletic testing.

One last thing I found important about this website, is that you can actually use some of the information in workout sessions (esp. the agilities and shuttle runs). So it can be used for testing and also for creating an exercise program. I think the website is geared more toward the athletic population, but it could be used with any population you may choose.

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests.htm

Monday, June 9, 2008

Improving the Vertical Jump

There are a few ways you can improve your athletes vertical jump. There are various exercises, plyometrics, and platform drills you can do to add those extra inches onto your athlete's vertical jump. The most important (and most over-looked) skill is the ability for your athlete to perform the vertical jump in the most efficient way possible.

The following is a guideline that can be used to help your athlete achieve his/her in the vertical jump goals.

1. INITIAL STANCE

  • Feet shoulder width apart
  • Arms straight into the air
  • Athlete should be on ball of his/her feet
  • Head straight forward, looking forward

2. Downward Acceleration Phase

  • Swing the arms down and behind you as fast as possible while squatting down. (remember athlete should be bent at the hips rather than the knees. Athlete should learn to be hip dominate)
  • A couple things to remember for this phase. Make sure your athlete has their head up looking forward, not up. Also, make sure the athlete maintains a nice straight back.

3. Re-acceleration Phase (Amortization Phase)

  • The main focus here is on EXPLOSION!
  • Remember, amortization in the vertical jump is the ability to go from the eccentric motion (downward acceleration phase), to stop, then right back into a concentric motion (jumping up). Encourage your athlete to spend as little time as possible at the end of the downward acceleration phase (eccentric motion). The longer the athlete stays in the stop position, the more potential energy that could be turned into kinetic/mechanical energy is lost.
  • There should be full extension at the low back, hip, knee, and ankle
  • Take off from BOTH feet, not just one.

4. Landing

  • The landing is crucial to preventing injury
  • Make sure athlete lands on both feet!
  • Allow hip and knees to bend. This allows the absorption of the force onto the body as a whole, rather than just the knees and ankles. This motion is similar to the squatting down action of the downward acceleration phase.

Final thought to consider. When performing the vertical jump, encourage your athletes to focus on using their arms. 15-20 percent of the vertical jump height is determined by the athlete's arm movement or swing. With this in mind, when you are conducting drills for the vertical jump, do not just focus on lower body work... Core work must also be done to help stabilize the body on landing to prevent injury, along with upper body (mostly rear delt/delt) work to establish a base on the arm swing.

Monday, June 2, 2008

The Relationship Between Visuals Skills and Reading Achievement of College Athletes

Frank Spaniol, Liette Ocker, Randy Bonnette, Martin Ward, and Jeff Paluseo

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX. Human Performance Lab.

ABSTRACT


PURPOSE: To investigate the relationship between visual skills and reading achievement of college athletes. METHODS: Fourteen (14) male college athletes (ages 18-23) from the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi baseball team were studied at the conclusion of the 2007 fall baseball season. Each subject was assessed for visual skills utilizing the VizualEdge Performance Trainer® (VEPT), a software program designed to evaluate and train visual skills. Individual test scores were determined for eye alignment, depth perception, convergence, divergence, visual recognition, visual memory, and visual tracking. A composite VEPT score was also calculated for each subject. Reading achievement was determined by the third edition of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Level 10/12, Form L). The test consists of two parts: vocabulary and comprehension. The vocabulary section includes forty-five objective questions while the comprehension section includes forty-eight objective questions. Per test administration instructions, all subjects were permitted twenty minutes to complete the vocabulary section and thirty-five minutes to complete the comprehension section. Raw scores were recorded for each section, while an extended scale score (ESS) was recorded for each subject. RESULTS: Data analysis was performed on the test scores by utilizing a correlation matrix to calculate correlation coefficients for the following variables: visual convergence, visual divergence, visual recognition, visual tracking, reading vocabulary raw score, reading comprehension raw score, composite raw score, and extended scale score. Statistical analyses (p < .05) indicated high positive relationships between visual convergence and reading vocabulary (r = .72) and visual divergence and reading vocabulary (r = .74). Additional moderate positive relationships existed for visual convergence and ESS (r = .62), visual divergence and ESS (r = .56), visual convergence and composite score (r = .57), visual divergence and composite score (r = .61), and the comprehensive VEPT score and ESS (r = .48). 

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that significant positive relationships existed between visual convergence and reading vocabulary and visual divergence and reading vocabulary. In addition, significant relationships existed between convergence, divergence, VEPT, and composite scores and ESS. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This study was funded by a grant from the Center for Educational Development, Evaluation, and Research (CEDER) at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.