10 Natural And Amazing Ways To Improve Your Sports Performance
Improving your athletic performance is not a one-dimension effort. It’s a highly dynamic endeavor and you need to cover all your bases. Here’s ten ways to help you up your sports performance naturally.
1. Include Functional Exercises. If you plan on honing your athletic abilities, then simply focusing on an isolated group of exercises won’t do. Sculpting your body is not the goal. The goal is to have the right workout regimen. Functional exercises are helpful in improving the movement, and they also reduce the chances of an injury. Examples of functional exercise include split squats, deadlifts, and goblet squats. The reason they are called functional is that they focus on different muscle groups rather than an isolated muscle.
2. Keep Changing Your Workout Every 3 Weeks. The goal of any exercise is to develop muscle memory so your body knows how to handle different stress scenarios. For athletes, these stresses are drills and workouts. When you repeat certain movements over and over, you develop that muscle memory. But if you stick with the same regimen, your body won’t adapt to different stresses. By changing your workout every 3 weeks, you are able to get better results.
3. Go Outside for Cardio. The best way to expose yourself to the real-life movements you will be forced to encounter during the actual sport is to take your cardio outside in nature. Spending an hour fixing yourself on a machine is not the most functional thing you can do. Cardio workouts such as rollerblading, mountain biking, and hill sprinting closely mimic the movements of an actual sport. What’s more, it will increase your agility, control, and sense of balance, all the while improving your cardio health.
4. Stay Hydrated. Earth is mostly water. So, is the human body. If your body senses dehydration, it won’t be able to deliver optimum performance. Even slight dehydration can hamper your performance drastically. Therefore, you must not put hydration on the back-burner. Make sure to drink enough water after, during, and before the training session.
5. Don’t Forget To Recharge Electrolytes During Exercise. How do you know if your body is running low on electrolytes? Watch for symptoms like frequent cramping, fast and irregular heartbeat, muscle spasm, and muscle revolting. Do not wait for them to get worse. Make sure to load up on electrolytes during exercise. Otherwise, it won’t be long before your optimal performance starts declining.
6. Keep A Journal To Track Your Performance. Have a journal handy so you can record your reps and gains, along with your food habits and history. This practice will help identify the shortcomings and the areas in need of improvement. The data provided by the journal would help point to certain exercises that might need changing. You could also better assess the much-needed changes in your diet for optimal performance.
7. Replenish Your Body With Proteins and Carbs. Every workout is supposed to result in muscle exhaustion and depletion of nutrients, so your protocol post-workout is equally important — repairing the muscles and replenishing the nutrients. If you fail to get enough protein and carbs, you won’t be able to get the best results from your efforts. You need to replenish the fuel and the best time to do so is right after the workout. That’s when the body is most receptive. It will also speed up the recovery and help the body to better adapt to multiple physical stresses. Ideally, you should aim for a 3:1 ratio of complex carbs and protein.
8. Eat Sufficient Amounts of High-Quality Food Before Your Race. The science behind a pre-race meal is to up the stock of liver glycogen, which becomes depleted overnight. Unfortunately, most trainers would have you consume anywhere between 600 to 1000 calories. That many calories, simply put, are not needed. A pre-race meal carrying complex carbs, a handful of soy/rice protein with a dash of fiber and fat is really all you need. You can take it 3 hours before the game. There’s really not much you can do at this point that will add to the glycogen store. Therefore, overeating, especially if it’s going to be an early morning race will only be hampering your productivity.
9. Get Enough Sleep And Take Small Naps Post Workout. Sleeping is the best way to repair muscles, tissues, and bones. A quick 20-minute nap after your workout session can expedite that recovery process, especially if it was a tiring one and you are still feeling sore from it. To get a good night’s sleep, try drinks and teas made from white vein kratom powder.
10. Limit Your Caloric Intake During Exercise. For optimal performance, it’s best to replenish the lost calories in “body cooperative” amounts. That means the caloric intake should always be less than the calories you burn because your body simply cannot spend all the calories you consumed. If you are an athlete, 250-300 calories per hour should suffice. Light athletes can count on 180-200 cal/hr. For large athletes, an hourly intake of a little over 300 calories/hour should do the job.
Andy Watson works as an editor at thegoldenmonk.com studying the effects of kratom extracts on various health and sports performance issues.
See also:
Why Stretching Is (Still) Important For Weight Loss And Exercise
Thirteen Minutes Of Weightlifting, Three Times A Week, Can Improve Muscle Strength And Endurance As Effectively As Working Out For 70 Minutes
