Benefits of massages

Soreness happens to athletes in every sport. A way to reduce the amount of soreness you have is by getting a massage.

Massages are good for the body and also for the mind. There are physiological and psychological effects of a good sports massage.

The physiological effects are pain reduction in the area. The tension and waste products in muscles can often cause pain and soreness. A massage helps reduce this in many ways including releasing the bodies endorphins. Massage also allows the the body and mind to have complete relaxation. The muscles relax through heat generated, circulation and stretching.

One of the main psychological effects is the reduction of anxiety in the muscles. Muscles carry a lot of tension in them, especially during and after a workout. It is very important to relax these muscles through a sports massage.

There are many places to go to get massages, but you need to find the right place to go. There are specific places that specialize in sports massaging, which would be more benefitial for you.

Florida Atlantic University sports uses Dr. Bruce Fischer for all our our massage and chiropractic needs.

The main difference between sports massage and other massage techniques is that it directly targets and reduces tension in muscles that are affected from the sport you are doing.

When weather doesn't always cooperate

When you say the word track, we normally think of the outdoor track and field. There is such a season as indoor track, but there are not many of them in Florida. If you are training near a university that does have an indoor track, it is easy to train inside which could be good for when the weather turns bad.

Down here in Florida, it is hard to always run your workouts around the rain. Storms can pop up right when you are about to start your workout. If that does happen, don't get discouraged because you can still get a good workout indoors.

You can go to a gym such as Golds Gym, Worlds Gym, LA Fitness or any gym that is close to your house. Most gyms have a one day pass if you do not want to pay for a membership.

If you have to miss a workout outdoors, make sure to find a gym and get a good cardio workout. If there is a treadmill available you can do sprints on the treadmill. You can turn it up to the speed of 8.0 and run on that for 30seconds, then back off for another 30 seconds and repeat for eight times. This will work yourself as if you were doing sprints outside.

If you are not comfortable having the treadmill at such a high speed, get on a stationary bike and do the 30 second sprints on a bike, peddling as fast as you can and then resting by slowly peddling. You never want to stop peddling because that could slow down your heart rate extremely fast and that would not be good because you could find yourself feeling faint and dizzy.

A good way to warm-up and cool-down would be do ride a stationary bike for twenty minutes each time. Make sure you remember to stretch so you will not injure yourself. Even though you are not outside and putting all the pounding preasure on your legs, you are still very vulnerable in the gym because a lot of people do not warm-up as much as they should.

Is it getting easier yet?

As the weeks progress, your workouts should feel a bit easier. The first two weeks are tough because you are probably not used to the strains you put on your body. The workouts are tough and the body has endured a lot more than it is used to.

As week three begins, your body should feel a bit lighter when you run and not as heavy. Here is the workout for week three:

Monday:
Jog two laps around the field, stretch and do drills. After drills, make sure you grab some water and get ready to run.

Long sprinters: run 600 meters, walk a 400, run 400 meters, walk a 200, run 200 meters, rest for five minutes, then do it again.

Short sprinters: run 300 meters, walk a 200, run 200 meters, walk a 100, run 100 meters, rest for five minutes, then do it two more times.

Tuesday:
Jog two laps around the field, stretch and do drills. After drills, make sure you grab some water and get ready to run.

Long sprinters and short sprinters: both run 12 times 100 meters. Walk a 100 inbetween.

Wednesday:
Both long and short sprinters warm up and then head to the weight room to do an upper body workout.

Thursday:
Go to a hill somewhere that is safe and mark off 200 meters. Both long and short sprinters run 10 times up a 200 meter hill. If you can not find a hill, go to a gym and put a treadmill on an incline of at least five.

Friday:
Jog two laps around the field, stretch and do drills. After drills, make sure you grab some water and get ready to run.

Long sprinters: run six 300 meters. Walk 200 meters in between each one.

Short sprinters: run 10 times 110 meters, walking 100 meters in between each one.

If this is not getting easier for you, take your time and don't worry about your speed. If this is getting easier for you, feel free to pick up the pace and challenge yourself during these workouts.

Icing your injury

Sometimes injuries do happen, whether you want them to or not. I wrote in a recent blog about pulling and straining your hamstring, but I did not write about what to do if that does happen to you.

Right now I have a hamstring injury. I have a minor hamstring strain, which if taken care of properly I should be back to training in a few days.

Those few days that I have to recover from my injury are crucial and to not be taken off. There are many things one can do while injured in order to help your body heal faster.

It is important to make sure you ice your injury. When icing, you want to wrap or sit on a bag of ice for 20 minutes. When an injury occurs anywhere on your body the ice slows down the inflammation and swelling . Ice helps to relieve pain by numbing sore tissues. It slows down the nerve impulses in the area, which interrupts the pain-spasm reaction between the nerves.

Ice should be applied soon after the injury occurs. The coldness makes the veins in the tissue contract, which reduces circulation in the area. After the ice is removed from the injury, the veins in the body dilate. Once that happens, the blood rushes into the area bringing nutrients necessary to heal the injured area.

By icing, you are helping yourself heal faster and allowing yourself to get back on the track faster.

In sports, there is a very important mnemonic divice one should remember. It is R.I.C.E.

Injuries should not be taken lightly, they are a serious part of being an athlete and if not properly treated it could mess up your entire competitive career.

Time to work on those abs!

It is very important to have a strong core of your body. It is very important to work on your abdominals after every workout that you do.

According to Florida Atlantic University trainer, Brian Remington, a runner needs to do a minimum of 4,000 abs a week.

There are many different ab workouts one can do, but I will introduce you to the twomain ab workouts that the sprinters at FAU use.

The first one is called crunches.

To do a cruch, you need to lay on your back and put your knees up in the air. Position your legs hip length apart. Place your hands behind your head so that your thumbs are tucked behind your ears. Hold your elbows slightly out to the sides and keep your chin pointing upward. Curl up forward and make your head and shoulder blades lift off of the floor. Make sure that you are not pulling your head with your hands, as that would not be working your ab muscles. Pause for a moment and hold as you squeeze your abs. Release and continue until you do 100 of them.

The second one is called V-Ups.

To do a v-up, you need to lay on your back with your arms stretched above your head and your legs flat. Raise your straight legs up in the air and reach to touch your toes with your hands at the same time. Once you touch your toes with your hands, flatten back out to the starting position. Continue to do these until you reach 100 repititions.

Benefits of protein powders and shakes

After a workout it is very important to get proper nutrition. According to Frederike Feil, whose father is the nutritionist for the German National Track and Field Team, it is very important to fuel your body within 45 minutes of an intense workout.

One of the main ingredients in shakes and powders is protein, a compound known as a building block for muscle, bone, skin, and other tissues. Meal replacement drinks are a great way to lose weight, increase protein intake, and increase muscle. In track, it is imperitive to increase the protein intake in order to increase the muscle in your body.

There are many different opinions about shakes and drinks, but it is really up to the athlete as to what you would like to drink or eat after a workout. For information on powders and shakes, please refer to this site.

Shakes and powders can be expensive, so if you are trying to cut back and save money there are also some homemade ways to support and build muscles in your body. The only thing you should buy is whey protein, which can be bought at your local grocery store.

You can try one of these homemade recipes:
1 Banana

8 ounces of skim milk

1 tablespoon peanut butter

2 scoops of whey protein powder

Mix it all up in a blender and you have yourself a tasty power protein drink!

If you prefer a fruitier taste, try this recipe:

1 cup of frozen strawberries

1 cup of low fat vanilla yogurt

2 scoops of whey protein powder

1 tablespoon of honey

1 ½ cups of skim milk

½ cup of orange juice

Mix it all up in a blender and blend until the mixture is nice and smooth.

Injuries Happen

Injuries occur whether one wants them to or not. The most common injuries in track happen to some part of the the leg, thigh and knee. The muscles in the leg need to really be loosened up before any type of activity or else you could risk the chance of pulling something.

The most common running injury to people who run a lot is called runner’s knee. The injury has pain behind the knee cap during running and especially when you press your knee cap against the bone behind it. You can keep the knee cap from rubbing by wearing special inserts in your shoes and strengthening exercises so that the muscle pulls your knee cap inwards.

I talked in another post about the importance of running on the grass to avoid shin splints. That is another common injury that sprinters need to look out for. Shin splints can be anything from tendonitis to stress fractures in the shin area. If you have a dull ache in both or just one of the legs which becomes worse when you are running, you would want to go see a doctor.

When talking to a lot of sprinters, the most dreaded injury is an injury to the hamstring. Of course no one wants to become injured but a hamstring injury is difficult to recover from quickly.

It is very important to understand the muscles of your body. If you are having any type of pain in your hamstring, you could have either or a pull or a strain. please go see a doctor and get it looked at before you injure yourself even more.