Training Secrets from Winter Olympic Stars

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

Squats

MSNBC has a great article from Men’s Health on training techniques used by top Winter Olympic athletes. At the core of these exercises is core exercises! One of the exercises that comes up over and over in many top sports is good ‘ol fashion squats. They are great for strengthening quads, glutes, Hamstrings, hips, lower back and abs. Remember, start small and work your way up. There is virtually no sport that will not benefit from squats. Add in one leg squats for strength and balance and you have a great core workout. There are of course an almost infinite variety of core exercises that you can do, so read the article and build your own killer workout.

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“Take the legs,” he says. “Instead of monkeying around with six different exercises and five different machines, why not just focus on back squats? Do them right, and there’s not much more you need.”
…During the early stages of an exercise cycle, Jason Hartman likes high reps with a short rest between sets, believing that a standard of about 3 sets of 10 repetitions, performed two or three times a week, keeps his athletes from trying to bang too much weight. (Of course, reduce the number of reps if your form begins to suffer due to fatigue.) He also focuses on just a handful of old-school standbys: squats, dips, pullups, power cleans, deadlifts, lunges, and sprints. “That’s it,” he promises. “That’s the secret to becoming an alpha male.”