Stretching Every Day: The Benefits and Its Place in Your Fitness Routine
Have you ever wondered about the role of stretching in your health and performance training program? The answer may surprise you. Stretching, particularly dynamic stretching, can be a game-changer in enhancing your overall fitness journey. In this blog post, we'll explore how dynamic stretching can improve the results of your training program, when to incorporate it, and how both dynamic and static stretching contribute to long-term flexibility and mobility.
The Importance of Dynamic Stretching and Recovery for Exercise
Have you ever wondered what happens if you skip dynamic stretching before your workout or neglect recovery techniques like foam rolling and PNF stretching after exercising? The consequences may surprise you. Let's dive into why these practices are crucial for your health and performance. Skipping dynamic stretching and recovery techniques can lead to muscle stiffness, reduced flexibility, increased risk of injury, and slower performance improvements.
What are the top 5 most Underrated Health & fitness tips?
In the world of fitness, some valuable tips often go overlooked, hindering individuals on their health and performance journeys. Discover the top 5 most underrated fitness tips that can transform your training. Misconceptions and a lack of awareness about these tips can lead to suboptimal results and frustration in your fitness journey.
Accelerate Your Recovery: Strength, Mobility, and Flexibility Training for Joint Surgery
Are you facing hip, knee, or ankle joint repair surgery? Worried about the lengthy recovery process and the impact it may have on your health and performance journey? You're not alone. Joint surgeries can be daunting, but there's a way to decrease your recovery time significantly. Let's explore how strength, mobility, and flexibility training can make a world of difference. Joint surgeries often lead to extended downtime and muscle atrophy. Without proper rehabilitation, you risk losing strength, mobility, and flexibility, which can affect your overall health and performance.
Unlocking Athletic Potential: Mobility Training for Ankles, Hips, and Shoulders
At Atlas Performance Training, we recognize that mobility is the key to unlocking an athlete's full potential. In this blog post, we will break down the significance of ankle, hip, and shoulder mobility for improving sports performance and injury prevention. We'll offer a series of mobility drills targeting these specific areas and explain how improved mobility can enhance athletic movements in various sports like football, basketball, volleyball, golf, and baseball.
Functional Movement Screening and Corrective Movement: Ensuring Proper Athletic Development
In the pursuit of athletic excellence, understanding the concept and significance of functional movement screening is paramount for youth athletes. Functional movement testing goes beyond the surface, probing the intricacies of an athlete's mobility, stability, and overall physical function. In this blog post, we will explore the essence of functional movement testing for youth athletes, delve into practical methods for conducting these tests, discuss strategies for correcting and improving functional movement, and provide real-life examples illustrating the transformative power of these assessments and corrective exercises.
Foam Rolling and Self-Myofascial Release: Unlocking Athletic Potential
At Atlas Performance Training, we understand that nurturing young athletes' potential involves not only rigorous training but also intelligent recovery strategies. In this blog post, we will delve into the concept of myofascial release and its importance. We'll discuss foam rolling and Body tempering in detail, explaining how these methods aid in muscle recovery and injury prevention. Additionally, we'll provide foam rolling techniques tailored to different sports and muscle groups, and we'll emphasize the vital role of self-myofascial release in an athlete's routine, enhancing recovery and improving youth athletes' mobility.
What’s the hardest part of getting fit?
Are you ready to embark on a 90-day journey that will transform your body, boost your fitness level, and elevate your overall health? Atlas Performance Training presents a comprehensive program designed to help you become the hero of your fitness story. This program combines strength/resistance training with cardio sessions for a balanced and effective approach.
Get Strong to Hit’em Long
Strength training can help improve your golf swing in 2 major ways, but first lets look at the terminology and how most avid amateur golfers approach their health and performance training. In most cases non-professional golfers approach their physical fitness/strength and conditioning with a attitude that it is optional, or they don’t think it is important at all, until they are forced to take it more seriously due to a lower back issue or injury that is preventing them from play the game at level that they find fun and somewhat competitive. They key is to take the bull by the horns and be proactive in your health and performance so that you can enjoy the game and play without any physical limitations.
Rebuilding Your Body
It is important to consult with a physical therapist or certified fitness professional coach with the knowledge of how to work with and train individuals with joint and mobility limitations. These professionals have the experience to develop a personalized exercise plan that focuses on strengthening the muscles (for example the Quadriceps and Hamstrings in regards to the knee ) and opposing joints surrounding the joint that will be replaced (hip and ankle in regards to the knee). This also will help improve joint stability and range of motion, as well as prepare the body for the demands of surgery and rehabilitation, which is very important to help speed up your recovery and help prevent additional complications…
Joint pain Series: Blog Post #1 Knee Joint Pain
In this post, we are going to look at 5 exercises that can help manage, reduce, and or eliminate knee pain. There are several issues that may be the cause of knee joint pain, but the most common issue is caused by strength imbalances within muscles the leg, namely the quads the muscles in the front of the upper leg or thigh leg and the hamstrings, the muscles in the back of the upper leg or thigh. Mobility issues in the two joints that are on the top (the hip) and the bottom of the leg (the ankle) also could be the cause of pain in the knee joint, or a combination of both.
Every Push deserves a PULL: Posterior Chain Development
Posterior chain development is extremely important for athletic development and for the prevention of injuries. One of the main objectives for posterior development is to make sure there are no strength imbalances between the front which is the anterior the back which is the posterior during physical activity….
Build a Stronger Kid: Lift and Learn
There is an age old question that goes back as far as I can remember, I tried to find out where or who came up with this myth and google failed to give me the definitive answer. But that is not important, what is important is that we are going to look at the benefits of learning to lift by briefly looking at the process of LEARNING to lift weights, which is based on two important principles. The first principle is developing the young person’s Relative muscular strength, which learning to perform basic bodyweight movements like a push-up, bodyweight squat, and lunge Pull-Ups, etc. with proper form and body control. In developing youth strength training programs for beginners exercises should in my opinion be limited to the use of specific types of resistance equipment like dumbbells, rubber bands, and tubes, with minimal intensity (lightweight) after they have learned how to properly execute the basic exercises that improve their Relative muscular strength. Developing relative strength varies and depends on the commitment of the individual youth, and their parents. After a solid foundation of relative strength has been developed, start developing their Absolute muscular Strength. This is when Free weights and resistance machines are added to the training program, examples of Free weight movements are……
Stay Ahead of the Game and Away from Pain
Joint pain and discomfort are two of the main factors that prevent people from maintaining an active lifestyle. If you are a fairly healthy person you may take for granted the normal function of your joints and ignore the factors that will have a negative effect on your joints if you don’t apply some preventative measures to help you manage the pain and discomfort you may experience while exercising. The is no absolute way to eliminate pain from physical activity especially if you are out of shape due to an old injury, a sedentary career, or any other physical limitation.
Create Your Environment or Your Environment Will Create YOU
As I continue my journey as a father, coach/trainer, (ex-husband lol), and entrepreneur/business owner, sometimes I can have a bit of a negative disposition if I allow these short term situations within the surrounding environment around me to control my attitude and my approach towards my daily activities that negative environment will influence my behavior to a certain extent and if I don’t recognize this negative influence my environment will create my reality, which will influence my behavior and when that happens my environment is creating who I am..... Unless I make a conscious effort to maintain a positive environment. And how do I do this? By searching out positive influences, this could be a night where I binge on 80’s music or spend a few hours reading self-improvement books and listening to YouTube videos, or maybe do some writing (like tonight).
High-Intensity Interval Training
What is the AP HIIT method? Well, it is a training method that I turned into a small group training class in 2015 when I was finishing my bachelor's degree in Fitness and wellness. The concept was developed from a boot camp and a small group training sessions that I ran at the second gym I worked at when I first started. Most boot camps use just body weight for resistance and are really heavy cardio training (at least from the ones that I have attended and or seen) I wanted to include resistance training exercises within the session along with heavy to medium cardio, and core training. One of the main areas that I wanted to focus on was limiting injury but maintaining a medium-high heart rate and allowing the individual to focus on the movement first and not have to focus on counting reps. Here is an example of a training session………
Strength Training: The Foundation of Speed Training for Youth Athletes
Everyone understands that speed kills, but the foundations of training that skill can be developed in athletes of all ages starting with a good foundation of strength training. There are two types of speed, there is linear speed which is running in a straight line and lateral or what I like to call Multi-directional speed which is transitioning from a linear direction to lateral direction at different angles of movement. Both of these types of speed are developed by increasing the force that is applied to the ground, and the only way to increase the force that is applied to the ground and increase your RFD or Rate of Force Development……..
YOU CAN'T BE SOFT YOUR WHOLE LIFE
Every time I got the chance to go in there on my weekend visits I would try "lift" weights (was lucky I didn't lose a toe). Then my dad moved to Chicago and my lifting weight days were over as far I knew it.
Fast forward to 1988 my sophomore year of High School after football season I meet a 5'10 280 lb Italian guy named Raul Denotti, he was a bodybuilder and part-time volunteer football coach. It was in the weight room talking and "working out" which was basically doing curls and triceps cable extensions in between sets of talking…..
Energy System Development Series
Just a brief overview of what Energy Systems Development training is by definition is training specific energy system to produce the desired training effect that is specific to the goals of the training program. There are there main energy systems that the body taps into to acquire the energy to perform tasks depending on the duration and the intensity of the task. Here is a brief description of the three energy systems……
Energy System Development Series
Whether you are a high school athlete looking to gain an edge on the competition in your offseason/preseason training program or a weekend warrior training in your spare time for an obstacle race, marathon, or an adult athletic league, or trying to lose those last 10 - 15 lbs of holiday weight, the old way of improving your physical performance and condition has changed. Enter the phrase Energy System development (ESD) training. ESD training should be the foundation of any training plan to improve your performance; it could be the difference between competing at a high level or coming up short in a game. In order for muscles to contract and produce movement ATP (adenosine triphosphate) must be present. The body’s energy system is responsible for converting ATP to a usable form of energy called ADP (adenosine diphosphate). ADP can be produced using three energy systems: