Weight Training for Sports

Archive for January, 2011

Weight training is a great way to build strength and tone the body. Whether you do it just to get in shape and get your body to look the way you want it to, or whether you do it to increase your force and agility for a specific sport of athletic event, weight training can be good for everyone.

Using weight training equipment is not difficult as long as you know how to operate it. Generally, there are two types of this equipment. The “basic” category tends to be more traditional, while the advanced equipment has developed over the past few decades and does more (and also costs more).

Basic weight training equipment is quite simple. It generally consists of weights attached to a bar that you hold with your hands, discs or plates that allow you to change the weight, and a simple support structure (such as a bench). Good examples of basic equipment are adjustable dumbbells, a barbell, a set of weights, and a barbell bench with a bar rest at one end and a leg flex attachment at the other. This type of equipment is known as free weight equipment.

Advanced weight training equipment, on the other hand, is highly engineered and generally consists of many more parts than the simpler equipment. This usually involves some model of weight machine. A weight machine can be designed to help you do one or two specific exercises. Or a more complex weight machine, such as one you would have at home (rather than at a fitness club, where there is room for multiple machines), will likely perform 6-8 or even more different exercise types.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each type, both free weights and weight machines. Free weights are more affordable (usually), take up less space, and allow you to do endless different types of exercise, but can cause beginners to use poor form. Weight machines, by contrast, may cost more and use more space, but are excellent for helping you use the right technique for a given exercise when you are a beginner.

It seems almost every day there is a new fitness routine with new promises sucking us in. So how do we know the real deal and what will work for us, especially when we are just starting out? Making the wrong moves now can set you heading down the wrong path, so fitness routines for beginners are very important.

So how do you decide which routine to use?

First, recognise that much of this stuff is just marketing. The most important thing for you as a beginner will be to identify the key principles that matter and then apply them in the way that works best for who you are and where you are at.

Of course, what will work for each of us is an individual question based on a number of factors, but there are a few key things that will make the best workout routine.

1) It is aligned with your goals
As the saying goes there is no point climbing a ladder if it is up against the wrong wall!! It may be the latest craze, but is it actually going to help you get to where you really want to go? If not you could end up frustrated further down the line.

Let’s look at the goal of losing body fat for example. If that was your goal, but you started working out with your local power lifting team you are probably going to find that you don’t reach your goals for body fat reduction, but your bench press weights are going up like crazy. The law of specificity dictates that you get what you train for so make sure it’s what you want.

2) It doesn’t require too much time
Many of the exciting routines you may read about are those of athletes devoted 24/7 to preparing for their sport. Now if you have the same levels of time and want to spend it committing to such a schedule, that is your call. However if you are like most of us, then you don’t, nor do you wish to. So it stands to reason you may need to scale it down a little to fit in with the demands of your real life. You don’t need to train like a pro to get a lean and toned body.

3) It’s sustainable
A fitness routine has to be effective enough for long enough to make a difference and allow you to reach your target. This requires more than just the burst of enthusiasm we get when we start. We have to be able to stick with it, week in, week out.

Too much intensity could lead to mental burnout, too little likely means no results and giving up. The best workout routine will adapt and progress, as you do.

There you have it, some pointers to judge the next fitness routine you try by and help you to find an approach to fitness that fits you.

The origins of cricket can be traced back to Tudor times in early 16th-century England. This one time colonial recreational activity is now the most popular form of sport in the Commonwealth Nations. Since the last few decades after the sport was televised it became the next popular entertainment to Football that could be enjoyed sitting at home. Today cricket is one of the most popular sports among youngsters, middle aged and even aged class of people. Cricket is hogging all the money and bandwidth and because of this other sports are often neglected is some countries like India. What are reasons of popularity of this game?

The first and foremost reason which critics point out is – media gives more attention to the game! The media gives a lot of preference to the players of the game and the game itself. Countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka consider this sport as in their blood. So, the media takes the right opportunity to push it forward and create a kind of zeal among cricket lovers. But media is not the only reason to make this game popular. Simply media cannot be pushing forward a game to the zenith without the mass having some interest in it. Cricket is perhaps a sport which can be played the most casual way in any place. It is a game anybody can play without any prior requirements or special techniques for general recreation.

A long corridor of your home can be a place to play the game between two brothers. It is everywhere – in constricted spaces in apartment complexes, urban townships, and places which can be made the best use of space. Even an L shaped compound too can be a place to play this game without much trouble. Considering other sports they are not as flexible as cricket and cannot be played as freely as cricket.

The gentlemen’s game again requires minimum equipment to play it anywhere. You just need a ball, a pair of slippers for stumps, a bat and little equipment to start it anywhere and get the complete recreation of the game. But, if you ask why not football, basketball or something other then the simple answer you get is that you need specialized surfaces for it. Cricket is a game that survives in all mediums, platforms and climatic conditions to some extent too.

There have been many floating theories around which tell why cricket is the most popular sport in Commonwealth countries. Another popular theory that is put forward by experts is that Cricket tries to adapt to changing needs of people and that’s why the sport is very popular. There was a time when test matches were considered popular, then came 60 over matches; then there was an era of one-day internationals and now the Twenty20 cricket. These changes have been around with the changing lifestyle, needs, and time factor of people.

Summary: The first and foremost reason which critics point out to the popularity of cricket is – ‘media gives more attention to the game!’ There have been many floating theories around which tell why cricket is the most popular sport in Commonwealth countries. Cricket is perhaps a sport which can be played the most casual way in any place.