3.)    Form and function;
Every aspect of your training needs to be performed with great for and technique. By paying extra attention to your form you will teach your body to function correctly not just when training, but on the field or court too.

4.)    Functional Strength Training;
As part of an effective strength & conditioning program you should definitely incorporate strength training. However, as an athlete you should not train like a body builder. Instead, you should focus on more athletic movements that will increase your overall functionality. Things like Olympic weightlifting (cleans & snatches), single limb training, and exercises that help increase balance, agility and relative strength.

5.)    Proper recovery and nutrition;
Recovery techniques like myofacial release, deep tissue massage, static stretching, and     mobility training will help aid in preventing over use and injury. Additionally your body     will have the better ability to recover from a well-balanced nutrition regimen. You are     what you eat and fueling your body with the right nutrients will help with recovery which     will prevent injury.

6.)    **Bonus** Get qualified help of a reputable strength and conditioning specialist. They will be able to tie all of the above together in a sound training regimen that will not only increase your performance on the filed or court, but will absolutely prevent you from being sidelined due to a preventable injury
There you have it. 5 solid strategies to help you increase your sports performance while decreasing your chances of getting injured both in preparation for your sport as well as actually competing in practice or games

Jason Zaretzky is owner and program director of Optimal Performance Training Center, Rockland County’s leading sports performance enhancement facility located in Valley Cottage. For more information or to register for their cutting edge sports training programs visit http://www.rocklandsportsperformance.com

* So a complex just means that you stack series of excer. one after another , while never letting go of your barbell,dumbbell etc etc…*

Here’s the excer’s and have fun: DB sq’s/rev lunge/DA hammer curl’s/DB RDL/ Press/ front raise x 5 ea. @ 5 rounds…. run 100 yards after ea. round

Sq to press x10
Lunge@ 25 yds or 20 steps ea. side
Trx Muscle Up x 10
Run 100yds

* Go through this 5 rounds*

I can’t say enough good things about Chris. He’s all heart and puts in even more hard work in the gym than anyone can imagine. And to say his efforts off the field pay off is an under statement…

Since this past football season we have been getting him ready with our combine prep program as he’s been getting some Pro looks.

Here is Chris’s private workout he did with his agents a few weeks ago;

Chris also has had pro day’s or football combines at Yale University’s “Pro” day as well as few other in the Northeast, with a BIG Time Private workout at Giants Stadium with The NY Football Giants earlier today.

Like I said Chris has been a long time Athlete of ours here at Optimal Performance and has become a great friend.

With his heart mindset and work effort , combined with his football skills – if he gets a shot in the pro’s, I know he’ll make some heads turn!

Good Luck Chris

JZ

Baseball, Lacrosse, Tennis, Softball, Golf, Track and Field… So many great sprig sports and they all have one thing in common (besides being played in the spring).

So what’s the main thing all these sports have in common?

A term we at OPTC call “Rotary Power” or the ability to swing a bat faster, throw a pitcher harder, shoot 90+, Drive a golf ball 300yards, or even run faster!

The common theme with most spring sports is that your need to have great ability to rotate your torso with great power and speed, while maintaining stability throughout the rest of your body.

The good thing is developing a strong and powerful core to enhance rotary power is pretty simple…

All you need is a solid block wall and a medicine ball!

What to do;

Simply stand in front of the block wall with med ball in hand and heave the ball at the wall in various positions.

Sounds simple right?

There is one thing to consider though – if you are like most athletes the thirst to lift, throw, and move heavy things is felt as a necessity as they think the heavier you can lift or throw the better the result. There is truth to that however, rate of speed and explosiveness is just as if not more important. What you want to do is choose a medicine ball that’s heavy enough to make your muscles to work, but the key to getting results that transfer into your sport, you want to be able to throw the med bal l as fast as possible while maintaining control.

Here is OPTC’s Rotary power training in action;

Now if you play a spring sport a or any sport that calls for rotational power – get yourself hammering a ball at a wall ASAP

Lata

JZ

PS – OPTC is now offering an unlimited group training package for 1 month, so you can try us out and let us prove to you that we are the best in sports performance enhancement training. Simply click the picture below and lock in your unlimited sports training month today!

 For todays express workout we’ll hit 2(3) excercise circuits for 15 min’s

 circuit A) Inv row=> curl/sq=>row/Mb twist

circuit B) BB RDL/Pit squat/Trx Fallout’s

* Both set of circuits do 10 reps for each excercise….get as many rounds through as you can in 15 min’s

In part I of this series we spoke of my recent injury and a short sight goal I have to accomplish. Since that point I gained a significant more amount of range of motion and been able to walk semi normally once again. I left off with telling you guys about an upcoming contest I have to get ready for plus everything that’s going to be required of me to get to that point. In this installment I’ll speak about each individual factor that will get me to my goal…

Diet

The consistent consumption of a high quality diet, augmented with an intelligent supplement/ fueling program – Many tend to focus more on the first two components of this “formula ” than on the third, particularly supplementation. However, you need to remember that as an athlete you are demanding a lot out of your body. My nutrient requirements, just to maintain health, are much greater than the average person. That’s why a combination of diet and supplementation is vital, especially now as you begin your season.
            Let me ask you a question: Do you believe that your diet provides the optimum amount of all nutrients, and thus you take no supplements? If you answered “Yes, ” then this article is worth reading because it’s a combination of diet and supplementation – not one or the other, but both together, that will yield best results.
  
            The “balanced diet will provide all you need ” concept is a myth; you cannot obtain all of the nutrients your body requires from your diet. Here are a couple reasons why this view is outdated.  There has never been a single clinical study that documents what comprises a balanced diet, or one that has demonstrated one’s ability to meet basic nutrient requirements through foods alone.  There is an ever-growing body of research, done by nutritional science’s most brilliant minds, showing that food alone does not supply all the micronutrients we need to prevent deficiency, let alone achieve optimal health.
           

Very few of us have routine access to fresh, locally grown foods. Much of our diet comes from foods grown far away, picked when unripe and then sent packing. Nutritional content is questionable.  So where does regular food consumption fall short? Never in salt! Often in protein for hard-training athletes. Seldom in fat. Almost always in micronutrients, and that’s the focus of this article.

Regular diets simply can’t cover the range of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants and other micronutrients necessary to maintain optimal health and peak athletic performance. If you want to achieve your best performances, and enjoy optimal health (not minimal, optimal!), then daily supplementation is a necessity.

Greens complete... to fill in what we normally dont get enough of

That’s why I start my day with Greens Complete( Aids in providing the body with enzymes, nutrients, probiotics and phytonutrients that a vegetable-rich diet offers) plus some Fish Oil caps ( with every other meal).For overall joint support, heart health and added calories which I need to keep my weight up.

  No supplement program can take priority over a healthy diet, we all agree on that. I cannot emphasize enough that your primary nutritional goal is to consistently consume a healthy diet.
            What does this entail? It means eating whole grains and locally grown organic foods as much as possible, while avoiding packaged, processed and junk foods at all times. It means a low-sodium diet, a variety of foods, avoiding foods containing artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors and preservatives.  Even the best diet is not enough!

 That’s where supplementation comes into play. Taking a good solid multivitamin should be a staple. Most people have the idea that since they started working out they immediately need supplements but the truth is the 1^st has to be up to part before the 2nd.This topic could go on forever but that will be for a later article.

For overall joint support and heart health

Recovery and sleep

 

Rest days are critical to sports performance for a variety of reasons. Some are physiological and some are psychological. Rest is physically necessary so that the muscles can repair, rebuild and strengthen. For recreational athletes, building in rest days can help maintain a better balance between home, work and fitness goals. In the worst-case scenario, too few rest and recovery days can lead to overtraining syndrome – a difficult condition to recover from. So I’ll have scheduled days where I do nothing, on purpose. Very hard for me to do but I have to remember the bigger picture. VICTORY!!!

What Happens During Recovery?

Building recovery time into any training program is important because this is the time that the body adapts to the stress of exercise and the real training effect takes place. My event days will be hard and heavy, trying my best to have some type of progression leading up the show. The sport of strongman is hard to make minimal weight jumps with the implements. Meaning ok either pickup and run with this 250 lb keg or this 300lb’r…that’s an easy 50lb jump. So taking small incremental jumps in kind of out of the window.

  Recovery also allows the body to replenish energy stores and repair damaged tissues. Exercise or any other physical work causes changes in the body such as muscle tissue breakdown and the depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen) as well as fluid loss.

Recovery time allows these stores to be replenished and allows tissue repair to occur. Without sufficient time to repair and replenish, the body will continue to breakdown from intensive exercise. Overtraining often occurs from a lack of recovery time.

Short and Long-Term Recovery

Keep in mind that there are two categories of recovery. There is immediate (short-term) recovery from a particularly intense training session or event, and there is the long-term recovery that needs to be build into a year-round training schedule. Both are important for optimal sports performance. But for my specific reasons we’ll only talk about short- term and we’ll leave the other for another article.

Short-term recovery, sometimes called active recovery occurs in the hours immediately after intense exercise. Active recovery refers to engaging in low-intensity exercise after workouts during both the cool-down phase immediately after a hard effort or workout as well as during the days following the workout. Both types of active recovery are linked to performance benefits. So I personally love doing some form of metabolic work. My personal favorite tabata’s ( 20/ 10 time intervals). Choosing mostly bodyweight exercises.  Making sure not to over exert myself and just breaking a sweat.

Another major focus of recovery immediately following exercise has to do with replenishing energy stores and fluids lost during exercise and optimizing protein synthesis (the process of increasing the protein content of muscle cells, preventing muscle breakdown and increasing muscle size) by eating the right meals after exercise. I always immediately have some sort of simple sugar after my training sessions. Have it fruits or a mix of waxy maize ( cheap corn starch) shake. Followed up by a solid meal about a 1 hour later.

Strength and conditioning

Pressing logs, lifting stones and running around with odd objects isn’t your normal training means.  Since this is what the contest entails I’ll have a day specifically for that with 3 other days based on overall strength and conditioning. Including lower body and upper multi joint movements which give the best bang per buck, such as deadlights, squats, presses and olympic lifts.

Just a short time ago, most coaches thought that strength training would cause athletes to become muscle-bound and would be counterproductive to good technique. Now it has been proven that athletic performance depends either directly or indirectly on qualities of muscular strength. We must remember that strength builds the foundation for ALL other athletic qualities. For example, if you do not possess great relative body strength (strength in relation to your body weight), you will never be able to run fast. -off, you can’t be fast! How does this relate to strongman? Well without having a proper strength and conditioning program how do you think I’ll be able to compete in 5 gruelling events? My body has to be able to successfully be able to do all the events and be able to go all day long.

An added bonus of strength training is injury prevention. Athletes who strength train tend to have fewer injuries. This is because strength training strengthens the muscle attachments and increases density of bones at the sites of muscle origins and insertions. And if an injury does occur to an athlete who has been strength training properly, it will probably not be as serious and will tend to heal faster. So next time someone tells you weight training is just for bodybuilders, think again. A proper strength-training program just may be the final piece of your training “puzzle” to success!

 So wish me luck and follow along  and see how I end up doing leading up to the show…

60/60

OH press/Kb swing/1/2 getup/flr press/Trx Y->I

60 sec off lets hit some sprints…have fun