January 2015 Issue

January 2015 Issue

The Performance Training and Conditioning E-Magazine of Athletes and Fitness Enthusiasts

In this Issue: Training Zen: Let GO and then GO further Total Body Training with Kettlebells Prowler Plush Sleds: not just for big guys Mid-November 2014 Issue

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Editorial: Finding ways to challenge yourself is never ending Training Tech: The Training Mask puts the “work” in “workout” Book reviews: Train better with Periodization Training for Sports; get high speed with Training for Speed, Agility & Quickness; and get to the next level with Every Day is Game Day Athlete Zen: Let “go” to “go” further Athlete Fueling: What Fruit and Vegetable stickers mean...and alkaline vs ionized water Training Tips: Jump rope to prep your feet from the GROUND UP Workout of the Month: Total Body Training with Kettlebells Psychology and Motivation: Doing your best 100% of the time even when you don’t feel 100% motivated

Also:

The Prowler Push Sled: not just for the big boys anymore

Finding ways to challenge yourself is never ending From the Editor Happy belated new year!!

Whereas the end of the year represents a time of reflection, the new year represents a time of renewal. Almost a re-start. So congrats on making it to another "beginning"—-another restart!

But we know that in all reality, it's not necessarily a re-start, more of a continuation. A continuation of our lives into another year, and finding ways to continually get better. And we can always find ways to get better.

It's almost as if life offers an endless array of ways that we can get better.

And some of the best ways are the physical ones. Getting better physically means that we have to find ways to physically challenge ourselves in workout sessions to keep progressing. Our bodies are great adapters, and the more we train, the more we adapt to the stress and rigors of training.

We get stronger at pushing weight, we increase our cardio endurance, we get more explosive in our movements---so we have to challenge our selves to progress even more.

My word of advice to you in 2015 is to find those ways to challenge yourself; push the envelope more and more in your training. Set a goal, smash through it, then set the ceiling higher for another goal. Challenge yourself to get better. Do the exercise you dread; go for a long run knowing that it will burn more; find a new drill to work on your ball skills in your sport.

Challenge yourself to get better.

I'd wish you luck in 2015, but you won't need it. Just find a way to challenge yourself, then surpass expectations. Whether you treat 2015 as a restart or continuation, it doesn't really matter. Just find a way to challenge yourself. And get better!

Daimond D. Dixon Editor, Pro Power E-Mag

The Mission The Pro Power mission is to provide training information to athletes and fitness enthusiasts by sharing training and conditioning ideals from various sources helping individuals to reach their personal performance potential.

Publishing Pro Power E-Magazine is published monthly in an online viewing format along with an accompanying online web site and blog.

Contact Information Editor: Daimond Dixon Web: ProPowerMag.com Email: PerformanceSport21@gmail.com Phone: (616) 633-1883

Training Tech Tech that adds variety to sports performance and fitness training

Get your Training Mask here today!

What is the Competitive Cauldron? A MUST use application for any coach. See it here     

“Our competitive cauldron is a player development tool. By making the player better, it makes the team better. We don’t use players’ rankings to determine starting positions or playing time. The rankings are for the players’ information. Those that are ambitious will want to climb and those that are content to be mediocre will also be content to remain in the middle to bottom of the rankings.”

Customize your own Categories. Filter by Categories and by Player position.

Create a cauldron from our templates for Soccer, Lacrosse, Basketball, Football, Volleyball or create your own personalize cauldron.

Create and enter your players stats for each training sessions online or via the app.

Printout/Email individual players stats or the entire Team.

Allow players to login online to view only their stats and progress.

Book Reviews: Periodization for Sports, Training for Speed, Agility & Quickness and Every Day is Game Day From Amazon: Periodization Training for Sports Sport conditioning has advanced tremendously since the era when a “no pain, no gain” philosophy guided the training regimens of athletes. Dr. Tudor Bompa pioneered most of these breakthroughs, proving long ago that it's not only how much and how hard an athlete works but also when and what work is done that determine an athlete's conditioning level. Periodization Training for Sports goes beyond the simple application of bodybuilding or powerlifting programs to build strength in athletes.

Get the book here

In this new edition of Periodization Training for Sports, Bompa teams with strength and conditioning expert Carlo Buzzichelli to demonstrate how to use periodized workouts to peak at optimal times by manipulating strength training variables through six training phases (anatomical adaptation, hypertrophy, maximum strength, conversion to specific strength, maintenance, and tapering) and integrating them with energy system training and nutrition strategies.

From Amazon: Training for Speed, Agility & Quickness Today’s athletes are bigger, stronger, faster, and more agile than ever before. Exhibiting a combination of power, speed, and quickness, they’ve raised the bar on performance, competition, and training. Training for Speed, Agility, and Quickness: Enhanced Edition is the complete workout guide you need in order to perform a step ahead of the competition.

This total training package offers 49 video clips of the most effective drills and exercises for developing movement skills, letting you see how to perform key tests and execute the best and most complex drills in the book.

The top sport and conditioning experts present the best information on testing, techniques, drills, and training programs to maximize athletes’ movement capabilities.

The book includes 262 drills and proven assessments for customizing programs and tracking progress.

Get the book here

From Amazon: Everyday is Game Day As founder and president of EXOS, Mark Verstegen has trained the world’s top athletes in sports including the NFL, Major League Baseball, and worldwide soccer powers, along with the most elite “tactical athletes”—U.S. Special Operations Forces personnel.

More than a decade ago, Verstegen’s groundbreaking book Core Performance revolutionized the fitness industry and made core conditioning and functional training mainstream. In his new book, Verstegen presents his most hardcore program yet: a demanding system that challenges readers to perform at the highest level.

Get the book here

Borrowing heavily from his regimens used by the military and NFL-combine hopefuls, Verstegen breaks the system down into tough but easy-to-follow workouts that help readers become faster, more explosive, and more powerful while moving with greater efficiency and with far less potential for injury. If you’ve ever wanted to perform like the top sports champions or elite fighting forces, this is the book for you.

The books above are available in both print and tablet versions in our Pro Power Bookstore

Athlete Zen Let “GO” to “GO” Further

If you jump into a pool while holding an 80 pound dumbbell, chances are you’d either sink or find it very difficult to swim to the surface. The stress that the extra weight itself would put on you would be a lot, and even if you are an avid swimmer, getting to the surface would be a challenge (unless your were maybe a US Navy Seal!).

Once you drop that dumbbell, imagine the physical release of not holding on to it any longer, and the ability you’d have to actively get to the surface unobstructed. You’d cruise toward the top.

Holding onto things in our lives is the same thing. The “holding on” I am talking about is the MENTAL dumbbell that can weight you down. Mistakes and missteps in our training goals can be disappointing.

Mistakes and missteps in our athletic performance can be emotionally devastating. The “coulda, woulda, shoulda” thoughts in our heads bounce around as we hold on to the weight of those mistakes and missteps. We want to move beyond it, but mentally we cant because for whatever reason we want to beat ourselves up over it.

You want to get beyond it? Drop the weight. Stop holing on to your mistakes mentally, and get back in the game. Make a mistake on the court or field, realize it and correct it, then get back in the game; miss a workout, go off course on your nutritional plan, realize it, correct it and then get back to work.

The same can be said in our lives. Stop spending so much time holding on to mental or emotional weights that you can’t swim through life. It’s not about seeing the fluffy side of life and being the “eternal optimist”; it’s about accepting the things that have gone wrong, the mistakes of life, the disappointments and then agreeing to let go and move on. Let go to go further---in sport, fitness and life!

HOW THEY WORK FOR ATHLETES Swivel Vision allows athletes to utilize their optimal field of vision in order to achieve maximum focus and better hand-eye coordination. Swivel Vision will help athletes train to increase reaction times and develop superior mechanics. With repetitive use, Swivel Vision seeks to strengthen the core muscle memory of the eyes and the mind to help athletes become more successful.

Check out Swivel Vision’s Official Site HERE and see them in action HERE

Fruit and Vegetable Stickers...and the Alkaline vs. Ionized water

by Trevis Trevino (A.T.C., C.P.T., C.S.C.S., L.N.)

Fruit and Vegetable Stickers It started with bananas but now it seems these days, every piece fruit and vegetable comes with one of those colorful little stickers. What are they and why are they popping up on all our produce?

They are called Price Lookup (PLU) code stickers. Along with having the price barcode, they also usually contain a numeric code and sometimes a country name. The numeric code tells you about how the fruit or vegetable was grown, either organically or genetically modified. The country code tells you where.

These PLU codes have been used on fruits and vegetables since 1990 and were originally used to help with inventory control. The codes are either four or five digits long.

Four digit codes mean that the produce was grown using pesticides. They range from 3000-4999 and also tell the type of produce. For example, 4011 is for bananas and 4012 is for oranges. Five digit codes that start with an 8 mean that the produce has been genetically modified, such as 84011 for a genetically modified banana. A five digit code starting with a 9 means its organic, such as 94011 for an organic banana.

Alkaline Water - Water Ionizers What will a Water Ionizer do for my Health & Body? Ionized Water is Alkaline for Better pH Balance. Because it is very Alkaline, Ionized Water dissolves accumulated acid waste and returns the body to a proper pH balance. Just by supplying your daily drinking and cooking water from a Water Ionizer, you can restore a healthy alkaline environment in your body.

Ionized Water is a Powerful Antioxidant Imagine having the ability to take normal tap water and turn it into an antioxidant with a negative ORP*, which slows down the aging process significantly. Millions are spent each year on antioxidizing vitamins such as Vitamin C and E, and enzymes. Yet a glass of alkaline water has more antioxidant power than orange juice! Anti-oxidants prevent cellular and DNA damage by neutralizing free radicals! Of all other types of water commonly available today, ONLY alkaline ionized water is strongly anti--oxidizing. (*ORP means "Oxidation Reduction Potential") Most beverages of our daily life are Oxidants Every sip that you take from your coffee or soft drink is jeopardizing your health and speeding up the aging process. Therefore scientists use a method of measuring antioxidants in liquids through the ORP. Ionized Water is Great for the Skin Alkaline Water tightens the skin and removes wrinkles, and helps keeping the skin clear of acne and other blemishes.

Not Only Alkaline Water – But Contaminants Gone!

Harmful components of the water are gone: Fluoride, Chlorine, Sediment, Odor, Organic waste & Parasites, Lead, Copper, Aluminum, Mercury, and Bacteria of all kinds. Optimal water ionizer unit use 8 layers of filtration including high quality activated carbon, ceramic, ion-exchange media, and more – so contaminants never reach your lips!

Trevis Trevino (A.T.C., C.P.T., C.S.C.S., L.N.) is a sports medicine consultant who specializes in Sports Nutrition and has worked with Professional and Olympic athletes across the country.

Jump Rope to Prep from the ground Up! Training starts from the ground up; nine times out of ten with the exception of certain sports like swimming, your base into the ground (feet) are the key to creating great athletic action. It’s the key to movement ability in general since your body operate as a kinetic chain from the ground up: you feet matter.

One way the train those feet is with the jump rope. Why jump rope? Because that one simple rope has the ability to create things in your body such as:  Ankle and Joint Stability  Balance  Quickness Not to mention the fantastic Cardio effect you get from it! Keys to effective jumping rope are:  Smooth turns from the wrist when using speed ropes  Landing lightly on your power pads (forefoot) NOT flat footed  Making the jump action “happen” from the ankles, with your knees acting as shock absorbers  Stay in the same spot without drifting side to side or forwards and backwards “Quickie” Jump Rope Workout “Ladder” for Speed and endurance: Perform 8 sets of jumps following the format of jumps resting about 15-30 seconds between each set : 25 X 50 X 75 X100 X 75 X 50 X 25. Perform this quickie routine before a strength or sport specific performance training session as a warm up, or as an after training session “cool down”.

See Jump Rope Videos below

Jump Rope single Leg

Jump Rope two legs

Jump Rope alternate

Workout of the Month: Total Body Training with Kettlebells are here to stay. They were around decades ago, then left the training and fitness stage, and have made their way back not only into performance training, but into todays general health and fitness genre. Kettlebells are not just these big awkward heavy “things” anymore. As the training and fitness world has moved into using them more and more, they now are available in various sizes and the applications are almost limitless.

Kettlebells

Training from a Total Body stand point of training “movements instead of body parts”, KB’s can be a good way to train those movement patterns. This months workout will focus on using KB’s to train those movement patterns using the exercises below:  Explosive (KB Swing)  Push (KB Strict Overhead Press)  Pull (KB High Pulls)  Knee (KB “goblet Squat”)  Hip (KB 1-legged RDL)  Core (KB Seated Twist)  Rotational (KB Corkscrew) Try this workout on for size. It’s actually a workout that can be done with dumbbells, however the unique shape of the KB adds to the allure and intensity of this particular workout.

Training Guidelines: 1. Get a stopwatch and a couple different size KB’s 2. Perform each exercise for one set of 8 reps 3. Pause 45-60 seconds between each exercise, each set 4. Once you complete all exercises for one set pause 90 seconds.

5. When time is up repeat the entire exercise cycle 3 more times

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Doing your best 100% of the time, even when you don’t feel 100%motivated Can you imagine the things that you would accomplish in your life if you were always motivated? I don't mean necessarily those “grand plans”, like climbing Mount Everest, or building a multi-million dollar empire. I’m just talking about those day to day tasks that often times get left in the “in box” at the end of the day as well as your performance and fitness training that go undone sometimes.

How many times have you not been sick, or hardly tired, yet the lack of motivation was prevalent? Those days when work has you beat down a little bit, or you have been bitten by the flu bug---you can see why there would be a lag in motivation to get in the gym or on the practice field to get it done. But what about those “I just don’t feel like it days”?

Finding motivation for those days becomes a little bit of a challenge because there is no LEGIT reason not to workout. How do you find a way to get motivated to go in and get it done?

Just go do it. Walk in, put your head down and grind through it.

Don't wait to get motivated to take action. I guarantee you that once you get in there and get that sweat going, it’ll start a chain effect mentally like dominoes to get you through it. Start grinding it out, then let the motivation catch up to you! One rep at a time to lift, one yard at a time to sprint; one kettlebell swing after another; one rope slam, then another. That’s it.

Do YOUR BEST 100% of the time, even when motivation lags.

Sure your 100% may be different from one day to the next, one session to the next.

But just keep giving your 100% best effort---with or without being motivated.

And you know what? If during that training session, no matter how long it is, if the motivation NEVER catches up its okay. That’s a feather in your hat. You save that for inspiration for next time you gotta hit the training rounds. Even if the next time you feel GREAT, smile and think to yourself how last time with zero motivation, you came in and got it done, and how NOW that you are feeling TOTALLY motivated, your gonna knock this workout out of the park.

Not motivated today to go get that training session in? That’s okay--go do it anyways!!

The Prowler Sled: Not just for the BIG Boys anymore Just like kettlebells (see previous article) the Prowler Push sled has become a popular fitness tool among the masses. When you think sled, you think big football lineman pushing this monstrosity across a grass field with some frenzied coach screaming and blowing a whistle.

Not any more. Sleds have become a popular tool for males and females, athletes and fitness enthusiast alike. Packing some weight on one of those boys, then taking off with a big push gives you an unbelievable workout.

And its not just in the legs--its a total body killer. Legs, hips, core, arms, LUNGS—-everything. Whether you use massive amounts of weight for serious strength and size building or medium amounts of weight for building speed and endurance, the sled has that certain “it factor” that appeals to it’s users.

And while it’s versatility allows for different ways of moving the prowler (pushing and pulling with cords), we will focus on the PUSH for this article.

The Prowler Push:  Start in a power split stance (feet under hips slightly offset)  Grab sled uprights and while keeping and maintaining neutral spine  Explode out in one movement and drive the sled forward to a predetermined point  Turn around sled and repeat the above to push back to the starting point Prowler Back-N-Forth  Start in a power split stance (feet under hips slightly offset)  Grab sled uprights and while keeping and maintaining neutral spine  Explode out in one movement and drive the sled forward to a predetermined point  Once there, move your body around the sled and grab hold of the low handles  Explode out in one movement and drive the sled back to the starting point  Repeat for time GRRRR! Have fun with that!

Prowler Push + Sprint Video

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