Posts Tagged ‘speed and agility training’

In Warm Weather, Children Are In The Hot Seat

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Agility training in the summer means climbing temperatures and working out and practicing in the heat. Therefore, it is important to know that children do not adjust to the heat as well as adults. It is also imperative to be know how to prevent heat illness and be aware of the warning signs. These illnesses consist of any of the following, heat exhaustion, heat stroke and heat cramps. Whether your child or your team is doing strength training workouts as a coach, or parent,  you want to be aware of the seriousness of heat-related illnesses. In actuality, youngsters are the most vulnerable to heat illness.  The mortality rate for children having heat stroke is 17 to 70%. The seriousness of the ailments and the child’s age are important factors to consider.

Young athletes get heat illness when their bodies are not able to properly cool.  Youngsters are more vulnerable to heat related illnesses because they don’t adapt as fast or as well to heat changes as do adults and they also create additional warmth with activeness. Children are more at risk to heat illness since they can’t adapt as quickly or as well to changes in temperatures. In addition, they produce extra heat with activity. Young folks also sweat at a higher body temperature, and they perspire less than adults.  For overweight children, who take medicine and have ongoing illnesses are more at risk in hot weather during workouts.

INDICATORS
Heat Cramps – agonizing, involuntary muscle twitches, commonly in the gastrocnemius or hamstring muscles (the tissues at the back of the calves and thighs)

Dehydration – tiredness, thirstiness,  wooziness, less-frequent urination,  disarray, heightened heart rate and breathing, parched skin,  dry mouth and mucous membranes

Heat Exhaustion – clammy, pale skin, sweating, dry mouth,  tiredness (fatigue), headache and or dizziness

Heat Stroke – Loss of consciousness, confusion or hallucinations, headache, agitation, high body temperature, absence of perspiration, deep or shallow breathing, weak pulse rate, seizures|

PREVENTATIVE MEASURES
Be aware that temperatures over 80 degrees make conditions favorable to heat illness..  Know that high humidity lessens a body’s capacity to release excess heat through perspiration. In order to prevent this illness acclimate the child to the heat, increase intensity over 10-14 days, no heavy work for the first week Morning or early evening are the cooler parts of the day and optimal for practices. Ensure children often take rests. Have young people drink water prior to practice to ensure they are hydrated before workouts. During practice it is imperative that H2O is readily available. Even if they aren’t thirsty, young athletes need to drink fluids every 20 minutes when practicing. Liquids to stay away from are caffeine and everything effervescent. With clothing, have kids wear well-ventilated, sweat-absorbent and light-weight.

If your minor or your team is doing speed exercises as a coach or parent, you need to be cognizant of the criticalness of heat-related illnesses.  Respect the high temperatures or there could be serious physical consequences.

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Flexibility Exercises – The Motion Potion

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Do you think you’re ignoring flexibility training? If yes, you are not the only one.  As outlined by specialists, flexibility training is the most underrated factor in speed and agility training.You don’t have to be an competitor to profit from being more flexible.

What is flexibility?

To describe flexibility, it is the complete range of motion in the capability to move joints. It is a movement from a relaxed position to a flexed extended pose.Flexibility exercise is on the list of most significant rituals an athlete can perform to avert injuries.It encourages cardio workout routines, enhances athletic accomplishment and strength training workouts.The more flexible that you are in your strength exercise, the more you work the muscle groups you are training.This leads to a more effective and efficient work out.   A flexible athlete also moves with superior comfort and improved agility. The American College of Sports Medicine advises flexibility exercise in its general exercise recommendations.  They suggest stretching exercises for the main muscle groups be completed two to three days per week.

It’s crucial that you warm-up muscle groups to begin with before stretching them.Cold and stiff muscles that don’t yield are understood to be a principal cause of injury.Preferably, a 5-10 minute run should suffice.Then muscles will have faster relaxation and contraction speeds.This can help to escalate metabolism, increase circulation and raise body temperature.

A sportsperson does stretching exercises so they can increase overall flexibility.Athletically-challenged individuals can enhance the effictiveness of practical movement in everyday life such as getting into the car.   An athlete should gently stretch a little more each day so that they can develop flexibility, speed and agility.

Guidelines

The following are suggestions to use while stretching.

· Warm up muscle tissues prior to a stretch

· Stretch until you’re slightly uncomfortable but not to the point you feel pain.

· The sensation of tightness diminishes as you stretch

· Hold the stretch for 10-30 seconds

· A set should be 2 or 3 exercises before moving on to next one

· Shake out the limbs between stretches

Find more informative articles here on training for speed and agility.

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No Goals – No Play

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

What do All-Star athletes, accomplished professionals and  CEO’s, all have in common? They believe in the significance of goal setting.  They know that it offers them the capacity to achieve great things.  It is the difference between mediocrity and brilliance. They also know the power of goal setting as they believe it give them  an edge over other colleagues and competitors .  A lot of people are not familiar with goal setting. Goal setting can be defined as the method of determining what you want to achieve and the development of  a plan to achieve it. Setting goals helps athletes by providing direct focus. It points them in the direction towards attaining success in lives, careers and athletics.  In order to get the most out of your speed and agility training you must set goals.

 

Why Set Goals?

Goals are primary in the success of an athlete. They supply a road map and are important in helping the athlete stay alerted to the actions necessarry to be successful. An athlete who is disenchanted and disconnected can use goals to help them stay motivated. Goals motivate athletes to work harder to get to higher performance levels. Faster and more efficient achievement of goals are rewarded to athletes who have clear expecations of performance.  Goals can give an athlete a psychological edge as well by improving self confidence, giving them a sense of pride and as they reach their goals for Speed and Agility Training. Goal setting provides the athlete a physical edge by improving power, performance and speed and agility. A goal of a certain speed when using an agility ladder can be set, then attaining that goal.

For speed and agility training, a knowledgeable coach can be a great asset. A coach is vital to the athlete in helping to set goals.  Good coaches can help the athlete set practice, performance and game goals. The athlete will be positioned to have an edge over the opposition.  Practice goals are designed to prepare an athlete for a specific event. Practice and tactics are the concentration of these goals. Setting hard yet possible goals is one of the ways coaches can help athletes.

Whether people are elite athletes or Fortune 500 CEO’s, the ability to set and master the skills of goal setting contributed greatly to their achievements and it will to yours as well.

Get more information on speed and agility training, see this awesome site to get the latest Agility Training

 

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Introducing Sport Vision Training – The Secret Weapon For Speed And Agility

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

It is the way of our times for things to change faster and faster, speed and agility training is no exception.   People throw aroung the word incredible quite a lot when first hearing about this.   We have to thank a class of people called contrarians for the development of training protocols applicable to previously thought of as untrainable characteristics. This training is now a staple for athletes wanting to enter the NFL Combine (a camp in which professional football teams assess NFL draft candidates).   Sports Vision training.  It encompasses the obscure skills such as reaction speed, sport intelligence, anticipation, game tempo, court or field vision, focus and concentration, depth perception and timing. The training comes from the premise that athletes react to what they can see.   The sooner an athlete can see something the better he will be able to deal with it and the better he can do that, the better his value to the team will be.
Most improper reactions on the field have a simple cause — lack of sports vision training.    An athlete doing conventional speed and agility training needs to also be  trained for speed exercises of the mind as well, or speed and span of recognition training.   This includes even the fastest players.  There is a more than ever need for atletes to visually process their surroundings faster. They must improve their reaction times and their reflexes. Without these, they will simply be left behind.

One of the key points of the rapidly growing popularity of sports vision training is that it leads to an incresed performance in visual imagery processing capacity even when under high stress — such as during an important game.  This field is so new that not many standards have been completely designed, but here are some of them:

* peripheral awareness – being able to recognize and react to objects out of  the corner of the eye

* visual reaction time – is time between when a change or stimulus is seen and when you react to it

* dynamic visual acuity – the number and correctness of the moving objects the athlete can keep an eye out for    * eye tracking – the ability to to watch or follow the ball carefully no matter how fast it may be traveling
* eye focusing – this training allows your eyes to get more information by being able to focus on things faster, more information, better game reactions

* depth perception – leads to the correct placement of objects within our 3D world

* eye endurance – the eyes get tired too, if they have more stamina, then they can behave better for a longer time (until the buzzard rings)
I hope this has sparked your interest as far as Sports Vision Training is concerned.  One funny thing to remember is that: “keep your eye on the ball” is something that you have the tools to improve now.

If you enjoyed this article here are some things you might find interesting on speed and agility traing:role of strength in speed and agility training

Learn more here Speed Exercises

You HAVE to check out this unbelievable exercise for speed and agility training .

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Improve You Speed And Agility With Plyometrics

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

I’d like to talk to you about plyometrics and exactly what this practice can do for you. Article breakdown time: what plyometric training really is, the overall benefits it can deliver and what role in can play when correctly introduced alongside classic speed and agility training.

So what are plyometrics anyway?
Plyometrics are a type of exercise originally used in the Soviet Union and adopted due to its high training effect. The  goal of these exercises is to better link speed to strength resulting in an increase in power output.The idea is that if you use more of your strength, faster, the power will shoot through the roof.An example of application of plyometrics in a sport that requires a lot of speed and agility is doing a vertical  jump for height in basketball.
Plyometric training aims to improve two things:
– increase your bodies ability to absorb and store force;- teach you how to release that force — creating a movement which has a lot of power behind it.

Plyometrics can be implemented in any sport that involves one or more of these actions: kicking, lifting, jumping or throwing. Here are some examples: baseball, football, basketball, soccer, power lifting, disk throwing.

Benefits of Plyometric Training for Speed and Agility
Plyometric training makes your body better able to absorb force (by building up your muscles and joints) and it also allows you to control and use that force (by conditioning your nervous system). These aspects directly influence speed and agility allowing you to make very quick gains — such gains are even more powerfull in the case of athletes or other people who already have well conditioned muscle and tendons.

To put it another way, the quickest benefits to speed and agility that stem from the incorporation of plyometrics are due to the conditioning of the nervous system. This fact makes the following guidelines even more important:
* only perform when rested
you must train with intensity and presence
* keep the rep number low (no more than 20 regardless of the exercise used)whatever the difficulty of the exercise do not perform more than 3 sets for a particular exercise

Drill this into your head: Train HARDER, not looonger.

Good nutrition is very important for the long terms gains that come with the practice of plyometric training. This is because these long term gains are based on modifications in your body structure. Changes in muscles and tendons will occur.Plyometrics will make your muscles and tendons more springlike.
How does a plyometric movement work?

* first the body absorbs and stabilizes the force from a negative (eccentric) contraction
* as it does this, it  loads up your muscles and tendons with force (think of it like a compressing a spring)
* the spring unloads and the body (for legs) or an object (for arms) is propelled with astounding speed

Here’s an example,when you cock back your arm to throw a rock the natural thing you do is to first cock your arm backwards.  The effect of this is that the muscles of your arm and shoulder muscles lock, forcing your tendons to stretch thus storing a lot of force in those tendons and essentially turning them into loaded springs. When you throw, the stored force is released, allowing the rock to be accelerated at a rate which is higher than your normal rate of force development.

What really popularized plyometrics back in the seventies was the fact that it produced results and soviet athletes started to dominate many athletic fields. The beauty of plyometric training is that it allows you to make your muscles and tendons behave more like elastic bands or springs — storing force and then releasing it. And the fact of the matter is that before this, there was no known way to train for these aspects — leading many people to believe that such acts as a running for height jump were completely genetically driven abilities.
To summarize, plyometrics kill two birds with one stone: they teach your nervous system how to correctly perform movements at higher speeds and they condition your tendons, ligaments and muscles to aquire more spring-like characteristics allowing for greater acceleration. These benefits directly translate into gains in general speed and agility.To further support this process you should also learn about:role of protein in speed and agility training
How do I adapt the principles of plyometric training to my sport specific speed and agility needs? You have to take the basic movement you want to improve and inflic a pattern of force absorbtion and controlled force release upon it. I know that this isn’t a totally enlightening answer, but the truth is that the answer depends on the sport in question. I have provided a link though. Click here to learn more about: Speed and Agility Training

To summarize this article:

* what plyometrics are
* how plyometrics work
* the role of plyometrics as part of your speed and agility training
* the benefits you can expect when introducing plyometric drills into yours speed and agility training

I also recommend you check out this article and learn this very usefull exercise for speed and agility training and preventing injuries.

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