9 Top Fitness Tips from Olympians and Footballers

When you’re looking for fitness advice, it’s best to go straight to the top. Therefore, we’ve spoken to leading wellness experts and sports starts to bring you all the advice you could ever need to help you get fit and take care of your wellbeing.

 

1. Visualise Success: Sports psychologist Michael Sachs instructs, ‘Use all five senses. Don’t only see things, but hear what’s going on, smell, taste the sweat in your mouth and feel the steel bar and what’s it’s like to go through the movements. This benefits ordinary people lifting weights as much as it helps elite sportsmen.’

 

2. Power Up: ‘When most people work on their fitness they only really do one part – the endurance part,’ says former Olympic champion Daley Thompson. ‘They spend maybe 30-40 minutes on a running machine but would get much more benefit if they mixed it with some really high-intensity work. The crucial bits in sport come down to how you perform in short bursts – those half-seconds and milliseconds. But few of us actually work on those.’

 

3. Shoot like Thierry Henry: The Arsenal star notes, ‘Strikers rarely get more than one touch to find the back of the net. Practise with a friend, and get him to knock balls to you at different heights and speed. ‘Try attacking the ball and hitting the target first time without the extra touch.’ Not only does this hone your football skills; it also provides a cardio workout that boosts your explosive power and flexibility.

 

4. Improve Your Breaststroke: ‘The straight-arm pull comes from your fingertips,’ explains Olympic gold medallist Duncan Goodhew. ‘Recreational swimmers often allow their pull to continue too long, rather than quitting while ahead. With a long pull it’s difficult to get the hands back to their starting position. Practise very short strokes, keeping the pull completely in front of the body.’

 

5. Breathe Properly: Former Olympic cyclist John Howard warns, ‘Most people don’t think about breathing and consequently end up inhaling and exhaling rapidly. This stimulates the flight-fight mechanism and is very inefficient. If you can elongate and control each exhalation, you can improve your cardiovascular conditioning.’

 

6. Score like Ronaldo: Brazilian football legend and World Cup winner Ronaldo asserts, ‘Sex a couple of hours before the match is the key to success.’ Well, if you insist!

 

7. Get in the Sauna: Ella Winter, Cannons Retreat manager, details, ‘Saunas are a great way to unwind after a workout as the dry heat relaxes tired muscles and helps to flush out toxins and impurities, such as lactic acid, that have built up during exercise.’

 

8. Stick with It: While your fitness regimen can seem like a new and exciting venture in the beginning, it only takes a few weeks for the hobby to become a chore. This is especially the case if you don’t see instant results but this is completely normal. Persevere and you will make the gains you want. On average, it takes around three months for training to become a habit, and by that time you will start to look and feel better. While you’re waiting for those three months to pass, make sure you constantly remind yourself why you’re doing this and give yourself healthy rewards.

 

9. Be SMARTER: You may not want to set yourself rigid goals, but giving yourself too much leeway won’t help you to succeed. You’re more likely to achieve your goals if they are Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Time-framed, Exciting and Recorded. This is the same for any goal or achievement, be it in the gym, home or office.

Categories: Celebrity Wellness, fitness, nbsp, olympic, pull, sauna, time, visualisation

Mind Trick Motivation: How to Get Your Brain in Gear

Sometimes, your big fitness goals and the enjoyment of exercising are all you need to get going with your regime; but there are other times, when your energy is lagging, that you need a little something extra. Luckily, there are many little tricks of the mind you can use to jump-start your motivation. According to sports psychologist JoAnn Dahlkoetter, PhD, the author of Your Performing Edge, ‘If you find a ritual that works for you and repeat it over time, your body will instantly respond when you need that extra push.’ So we spoke to a few world-class athletes, trainers and psychologists, and asked how they get motivated to take care of their wellbeing:

 

1. Be Inspired By the Greats: ‘One morning not long ago my motivation was at a major low point,’ confesses wellness writer Marisa Cohen. ‘I had plans to meet a friend at Zumba, but when I woke at 7am, it was raining, I had a cramp in my leg, and, frankly, staying in bed and finishing that dream about Jake Gyllenhaal seemed a thousand times more appealing than yanking off the covers and heading out into the grey gloom. But then I heard an urgent whisper in my ear: “Get up and get your workout out-of-the-way now; you can always rest later!” It was Janet Evans speaking. Yes, that Janet Evans, the Olympic swimmer who won four gold medals at the 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games. She mentioned this mantra in an interview I watched decades ago. I stuck it in my back pocket back then, and I pull it out for the ultimate kick in the butt when I need it most.’

 

2. Do it For the Kids: Janet Evans’ past mantra inspired Cohen to go on, but how does the Olympian, who is now a 40-year-old mother of two, do it today? Evans notes, ‘When I used to swim, it was always for external goals, like scholarships or world records. Now it’s more personal. I remind myself that I’m showing my five-year-old daughter that if you set a goal and work hard for it, you can achieve anything. Yesterday she said to me, “Mommy, you smell like chlorine.” And I said, “Get used to it, girl!”’

 

3. Go for Instant Gratification: Rather than thinking of the long-term benefits of exercise (such as lowering your risk of cancer, heart disease, and a slew of other scary illnesses), jot down the benefits you’ll see today, like being more alert for your afternoon meeting or more relaxed when you spend time with your family. Michelle Segar, PhD, the associate director of the University of Michigan Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Centre for Women and Girls, comments, ‘Our research found that the women who stick with exercise programs are the ones who do it for benefits they can experience immediately, such as having more energy or feeling less stress.’

 

4. Star in a Mental Motivational Movie: ‘Visualization is a great tool,’ asserts celebrity trainer and holistic nutritionist Jennifer Cassetta. ‘I see myself at my healthiest, fittest, and strongest, doing different athletic endeavours. This motivates me to go the extra mile and skip the junk food.’ Kathleen Martin Ginis, PhD, a professor of health and exercise psychology at McMaster University in Canada, adds, ‘Picturing yourself accomplishing something may create a neural pathway in your brain in almost the same way as actually com­pleting the feat would. It also gives you a burst of confidence that you can succeed, which makes you more likely to continue your training.’

Categories: Benefits, evans, extra, janet, janet evans, motivation, nbsp, short-term benefits, visualisation

Fitness Focus: How to Get Your Mind Marathon-Ready

Whether you’re a seasoned marathon runner or just starting to do the odd jog here and there, most athletes and fitness experts will tell you that success is all in your mind. When you’re running a marathon, even if you’ve undertaken the best training regime possible, it all counts for nothing if your mental wellness isn’t strong enough to carry you through the race.

You need to be in good mental health and shape in order to perform at your best physically, as not only can a strong and healthy mind give you an internal push when your motivation begins to flag, but it can also do so much more for your wellbeing when you’re running. It is a proven fact that exercise helps to reduce stress, and this can feed into every aspect of your daily life, so how do you develop a more positive mindset, mental strength and more confidence?

1. Visualise it

Everyone struggles during a run, but those who make it through do so because they can picture themselves achieving their goal. How did you feel last time you finished a run? Hold on to that feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment and use it as your motivation for this one.

2. The Early Bird…

Do you plan to go running after work but then never get around to it? Daily life seems to have a habit of getting in the way of your plans, so seize your chance by setting your alarm early and running with the sunrise. Not only does it ensure you do your daily exercise before the day even begins – which is a very virtuous feeling – but running early allows you to grab a peaceful hour to yourself, clear your mind and get set up for the day ahead.

3. Chart Topper

You can easily lose track of how far you’ve come, but this can be a great motivation to get you where you need to go next. Keep a visual record or chart somewhere easily accessible in the house, and note down your weekly mileage, or time of your runs, to see exactly what you’ve achieved. You could even write down a projected goal on your chart for a week’s time, and plan a little reward if you achieve it.

Categories: record, Strong Mindset, visualisation

How you can switch on your mind with visualisation

Most of us neglect the use of our minds; the best example of which is watching television. Essentially, unless you are participating in a quiz show, most television programmes do all the thinking for us. It is understandable after a busy day at work to “switch off” by turning on the television, but is this really the best way to use our time? When you are watching television, your mind is switched off so what is the use of it? It would be far better to create your own vision, your own pictures with the use of your mind to help you reach your goals, improve your self-confidence and focus the mind.

Creative visualisation is used by all major sports personalities and high achievers in the world today. They know that to visualize your goal, see yourself reaching your objective and actually use all your senses to live the experience of the goal you wish to achieve, can help you achieve it in reality. Of course visualisation of your goal isn’t the only thing you need; developing the right skills, dedication and hard work is also required. However, believing you will get there and seeing yourself do it can send you on the right path.

Our minds do not differentiate much between what is real and what we visualise, so when you see yourself achieving your goal your mind really believes that you have done so. This helps you to overcome any obstacles, since your self-conditioned belief is so strong that it overcomes all obstacles. Additionally, your mind sub-consciously maps your route to the visualized goal, so that all you need to do is quieten the mind and tune into your intuition which will then tell you when to act to reach your vision. This is the power of creative visualization.

In a nutshell, creative visualization is excellent for your wellbeing; it improves your confidence, gives you peace of mind by focusing your mind on a positive outcome and helps you sub-consciously to map the method from the outcome backwards in order to help you act as required. Most importantly, it gives you focused concentration to enable you to not give up whatever the cost, and reach your target without any distractions whatsoever. Visualisation is a true complementary medicine that should form an integral part of your life. Improving self-belief and the ability to reach your goals is essential for your wellness.

Categories: complementary, visualisation