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So you’re looking to be a stud on the field, or perhaps on the court, right? About 65 miles north of Los Angeles, in a desert area filled with Joshua trees and tumbleweeds called the Antelope Valley, there is a innumerable number of athletes working on their accomplishments to compete at higher levels and reach their extreme goal of going to college and then on a professional level. My question is however, how precisely do you get to become the best athlete you may perhaps be? Should you rely on raw, natural talent? Let me ask you this? What is your training plan, do you have any direction, or are you winging it hoping that you land on the right path?athletic development coach, my occupation has been to aid young athletes in training and developing their athletic attainments to reach their full potential while minimizing injuries. Now isn’t that the goal of each athlete, coach, and parent? They want to be in the game, playing, winning, having fun, and growing into an athletic beast like Lebron James, or Adrian Peterson. The problem is though; a lot of athletes within the A.V. are missing a key ingredient to a successful athletic career: suitable aged based performance-enhancing programs that would support them increase their athletic strength and power, and would grant them to improve their game speed, agility, and flexibility. What’s most crucial to these young athletes is to employ a program that addresses their person injury concerns. In working with young athletes around the Antelope Valley, I have came upon that majority of the athletes playing sports today are just a hair line away from a season ending injury. According to a three year study conducted by the National Athletic Trainer’s Association from 1995-1997, two players on any team in America, no matter the gender will be injured for the duration of the season. It showed us that the most mutual injuries were sprains (44.6% males, 44.2% females). Moreover, the most likely place athletes were getting injured was in the foot/ankle complex (38.0% males, 36.0% females) In selective information I collected from the National Center for Sports Safety, there were over 680,000 injuries in basketball in 2001. This was over 200,000 more than the injuries that occurred in tackle football! Excessive injuries in sports are due to lack of proper training, repetitious muscle strain, and inadequate flexibleness and control of the body. What makes things worse is the fact most athletes do not have access to Injury Prevention and Performance Enhancement Coaches that could help these young athletes prevent injuries through sound training principles and proper education. And most head coaches just don’t have the skill, training or the time to address each athlete’s developmental needs. Most of these teams strength & conditioning workouts come from other coaches they know or from the Internet and is not on an individual basis based, so there is genuinely no way of knowing what each athlete’s injury worries are. The need for injury preventative action programs is obvious: An athlete’s history of injuries will spur future injuries. This is exceptionally true when the injury that has occurred is improperly managed. These reasons ought to lead us to focusing on “pre-habilitation,” (addressing a weaker muscle before we actually injure the muscle or muscle group) rather than rehabilitation. Some simple steps may help these athletes prolong their athletic careers all around high school, college, and even at the pro level for the very particular athletes. Here are five steps to heightening your performance and prolonging your career in sports for long lasting success: 1. Individually based programs begin with the assessment. This is better done by a professional, but with a good mirror and little education you may determine where your weaknesses are. There are a great deal of assessments that may be done; one in queer that we use as sports medicine and fitness pros is the Functional Movement Screen developed by Sports Physical Therapist Gray Cook. In using the FMS, we may see through simple, yet effective testing where an athlete may be prone to injury, therefore permitting the performance coach the prospect to create a proper training protocol for that athlete. 2. Begin a corrective exercise program. Now that you have determined where your weaknesses are, you will have to begin with the corrective process. A corrective exercise program addresses worries of overactive muscles versus under-active muscles and attempts to beef up the under-active muscles while relieving the exuberant tension found in overused muscles. This validates the reason for having coaches who specialize in youth performance training and have vast psychological result of perception learning and reasoning in corrective exercise programming. No athlete likes sitting on the sideline, but with overuse injuries and improper training; this is surely what will happen! Plus, adding in the fact that most injuries are improperly managed, the athlete is almost guaranteed to re-injure the muscle or joint in the future. A corrective exercise program is particularly essential after your season is over. Spend a good 4-6 weeks in the corrective exercise phase fixing your muscle imbalances and your body (plus your coach) will be thankful for it. 3. Always do a proper dynamic warm-up. No matter what! When you have tight muscles, they tend to pull the joints out of proper alignment. Couple that with enormous demands of sprinting up and down a court, cutting, jumping for rebounds and you have a recipe for disaster. I see so galore people neglect to stretch in the right manner and go through a joint by joint dynamic warm-up. This alone will go a long way into heightening your game performance. A good dynamic warm-up ought to include exercises that will stretch and beef up your muscles at the same time. It ought to also address hip and ankle mobility. This will help to prevent knee sprains, hamstring pulls, low back pain and shoulder injuries. It will have to also raise your core temperature and increase blood flow. Fact is, failing to take this step is a indispensable fault in athletic development. 4. Add numerous remainder and stability training to your routine. In dynamic situations, an athlete is almost always on one foot. So bettering an athlete’s remainder is of the utmost importance for injury preventative action and athletic development. Exercises like squats may be done on one leg to heighten athletic strength. Push-ups with one leg up will help develop hip, core, and shoulder stability. 5. Focus on deceleration. A Ferrari going 160 miles/hr without good working brakes is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The same is true for athletes who run fast, but don’t recognise how to in the right manner slow down from a sprint or a cut properly. This is a mutual reason for ankle and knee sprains. An athlete who cannot sprint and cut with good form is asking for a sidelining injury. Before working on your speed and agility you need to work on “hitting the brakes” first. The same goes for jumping as well; do you “stick the landing,” or are you falling on your butt each time your feet hit the ground. It is a must that you learn proper jumping and landing technique. |
Most helpful customer reviews
133 of 137 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By Edubya in Texas
First, a little background. Aside from a TI-99 we had when I was a kid and the Apple IIc computers at my middle school, I’ve always been a Windows guy. I feel very comfortable in the Windows environment and have been building my own PCs for about 15 years. I don’t hate Microsoft. But when the need for another laptop became clear, I decided to focus my search on the higher end machines. I wanted good horsepower, but I especially wanted a nicer form factor than the creaky Dells I had become accustomed to. As I had fallen in love with the interface on my iPhone, I decided it was time to give MacBooks a try. I kept my Windows desktop in case I ran into compatibility problems.
The short version of that story is that I quickly dismantled my PC and now use this laptop as my only machine. I am fortunate to be able to do so because my work as an attorney requires only Word, Excel, and an internet browser. As a bonus, my copy of Lightroom 3 also installed on the MacBook. I’m trying not to sound like a Mac zealot, so let’s have a list:
-Aluminum unibody is no marketing gimmick. It’s sturdy and feels great with no flex and no creaking. Looks nice, too.
-Keyboard is well-engineered. The key travel and spacing between keys feel just right for my taste. There is no flex here, either, which I often find disconcerting on other laptops.
-Trackpad is a marvel. It really is. It’s very large, but I’ve yet to feel like it’s in the way. And the finger movements are intuitive and work very well.
-The screen is bright, clear and has great color. The reflectivity is sometimes an issue in bright locations, but I find tilting it a little solves most problems. Otherwise, you can custom order the anti-glare screen direct from Apple.
-The lid closes with a magnet, so there’s nothing to break.
-It is very fast. In my experience, Mac OS X starts up and shuts down far faster than a comparably spec’ed Windows machine. I have yet to feel a need for 8 GB of RAM, but an upgrade would only cost $90 if you know how to do it yourself. Otherwise, I have no issues running lots of standard programs at once.
-Comes with Time Machine. As an attorney and amateur photographer, I have lots of stuff that needs to be backed up regularly and reliably. Time Machine works so well and so seamlessly that I can’t imagine how I survived before.
-Spotlight is brilliant. Type in any word, and Spotlight almost instantly gives you results from your entire hard drive, including INSIDE your searchable documents, preferences, web results, and even definitions of words.
-Seven hours of battery life is very possible, even on wireless. I can sit in Starbucks for hours unplugged and still have plenty of life left. The caveat is that you really can only surf and use programs like Word. I also have Flash installed, which is a huge battery drainer, so I grabbed a Flash-blocking program that let’s me choose which Flash files to activate. Nice solution.
-HD webcam. Nice quality, though I haven’t really done more than messed around with it.
-The magnetic power cable is slick.
-As a former Windows user, I find the Mac OS X interface to be really nice and intuitive. There’s obviously a learning curve, though I’ve found it be surprisingly short. Lion is anticipated to be a nice upgrade, too.
-PRICE! Well, a lot of people complain about the Apple premium, and it definitely exists. I found this laptop to be a few hundred dollars higher than the really nice Windows laptops with mostly similar specs, although I don’t think comparing raw horsepower between two different operating systems is always an accurate benchmark. I live on my computer, so I’m willing to pay a little more to get what I want. It’s like buying a BMW because you have to spend three or four hours a day in your car. Whether that value equation works for you or not is up to you and your checkbook.
-Anything I dislike? Not really. I’d like maybe one more USB port and a CF card reader. I’d love to start seeing cheaper SSDs in these things, but that’s really not Apple’s fault. Decent SSDs with any size are still expensive for everyone. I was a little nervous about having a 5400 RPM HDD. I think transferring large NEF files from the card reader might be fractionally slower. The tradeoff in battery life is probably worth it. Will Thunderbolt be worth it? Who knows? I don’t care just yet, but ask me next year.
I know there’s more to say, but I’m running out of steam. I’m happy to discuss anything in the comments.
56 of 59 people found the following review helpful.
Notebook New Era – Quad Core Processors
By Steve H
The update to the 15-inch MacBook Pro in February 2011 was significant. Indeed, significant may be an understatement when it comes to the increase of processor performance offered by the updated machines. Quick thanks to Amazon and Apple Stores for having these immediately available at launch.
The primary upgrade to this revision? The processor! Intel has a brand new architecture called Sandy Bridge, and these MacBook Pros are the first Macs to feature this technology. Some have called it some of the most significant changes to Intel architecture since Pentium 4 was introduced. These 15-inch MacBook Pros as well as its big brother, the 17-inch, not only take advantage of Sandy Bridge, but the Quad Core i7 Variant. Quad Core processor in a notebook Mac! Wow.
I actually chose the 13-inch model for my personal use (only Dual Core on the 13-inch), but a 15-inch is replacing an aging iMac at the office to save space and leap over its performance. These Quad Core Chips are amazing. Early benchmarks are showing this entry-level 15-inch, 50 percent faster than the upper end i7 15-inch MacBook pro from a year ago. A dramatic improvement. This higher end model is even better. Furthermore, if you’re still on a Core 2 Duo machine such as the iMac I am replacing, the performance is as much as 2.5 times faster and 3x faster with this higher end model. At least in terms of the processor. This is most beneficial in processor intensive applications, for consumers such applications are iMovie and Garageband. Professionals will see the new processors beneficial in any professional photo editing, video, or music work.
This model also includes a fantastic dedicated graphics card with 1GB of graphics memory. 1GB of graphics memory is a a first for Mac notebooks.
One downside is that due to cost, the machine still comes with a spinning hard drive standard. In this case, the standard drive is a 5400 RPM 750 GB drive. That offers plenty of storage, but is slightly slower than a desktop 7200RPM drive and much slower than a new, solid state drive. You do have options. You can special order the machine from Apple with a 7200RPM drive, or Solid State Drive. However, what I have decided to do, is simply, when I’m ready, swap out the drive myself. Other World Computing sells solid state drives compatible. It might not be easy for every user, but for those with some computer experience, it is a fairly easy swap. Then I can install a faster solid state drive, when the more acceptable capacity drives come down a bit in price. You might also choose to do the swap yourself because you can then put the hard drive that was originally in the machine, into an external enclosure, and use it as an external drive for backup. Of course, any damage you cause to the machine would not be covered under warranty. Therefore, if you have any concern, you might want to see if you can special order from Apple online, or in many situations, you will find the standard hard drive to be acceptable.
After the processor advancement, Thunderbolt is the other great new technology included in this revision to the MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt looks like the Mini Displayport that was already included on the MacBook Pros. Indeed, it will still function perfectly as a Mini Displayport, for connecting an external display. However, Thunderbolt is more importantly a new interface to connect external devices in the future, such as, external hard drives, HD camcorders, and perhaps even iPads, iPods, or iPhones someday. Data would then transfer many times faster to and from these devices than it does currently. These devices were not available at the time of the MacBook Pro’s launch, but we have already heard that external drives should be available later this year with Thunderbolt connectivity.
iSight camera has been upgraded to HD resolution and Face Time pre-installed on the computer. This gives you the ability to video chat, easily, with other Macs and notably, iPhone 4s and the newest iPod Touch with front facing camera.
The consumer software you expect to be included by Apple is once again here. The latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (operating system), iLIfe 11 including iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, iDVD, and iWeb is all here. OS X always includes Safari web browser, iTunes, and Mail applications too. The average user would be good to go out of the box. You might pick up Microsoft Office for your office document needs, or simply purchase Apple’s iWork applications (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) from new Mac App Store on your computer.
The new MacBooK Pros, thanks to Sandy Bridge technology are fast. They will save you time, when using processor intensive applications. Time in business, saves people money and frustration. The average consumer might see less gains with this update as physically the MacBook Pro has retained it identical appearance, size, and weight. Nevertheless, under the unibody, improvements have certainly occurred which result in a much faster notebook. The fact that these 15-inch and 17-inch models now include Quad Core Processors standard is really extraordinary. This is putting recent top of the line desktop performance, into a sleek and attractive Mac Notebook. A breakthrough. Recommended Product!
53 of 58 people found the following review helpful.Simply the Best!
By Robert Green
Apple MacBook Pro MC723LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop
I have spent months reviewing different laptops. I’ve gone through at least 10 laptops in the last year looking for that one laptop that I will be pleased with and keep for more than a year or two. I’ve had Acer, HP, Compaq, Asus, Sony, Toshiba, and others. Sony was the only laptop that didn’t go FUBAR within a year or so.
So, I thought I would give Apple a shot and I was not disappointed. I first tried out a 17″ dual core that was super but the resolution was just too small for my eyes and I returned it. But I was so impressed with the quality of the case, the screen (albeit the resolution too small for my eyes), the quality of the innards (no cheap stuff under this hood), the quality of the power cord, the very fast 800 firewire, the backlight keyboard, the ease of typing on the keyboard, and the mouse pad. The mouse pad on this laptop was the first one I have not had to disable while typing. I have no idea why we have been stuck with those stupid PC mouse pads for so long when the solution was so easy! On the Apple laptop you push the pad down instead of tapping it. This means the cursor does not move to some abstract place and you find yourself typing three pages back!
But, then Intel released their new Sandy chips. I figured that Apple would not use these chips for some time so I started looking at PCs again just for the new chip. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a PC after owning a Apple. Fortunately Apple did release these new Macbook Pros with Intel’s new chip with increased graphic memory and the new Thunderbolt. Plus Apple increased the speed of the memory.
I just could not help myself and I purchased this MBP 15″ with the 2.2 i7 Sandy Bridge with the 1G memory. I am very glad I did. This laptop is fast. Its unibody case makes this the most solid and durable laptop on the market. The innards are easy to access to upgrade memory and the hard drive. Everything inside this machine is neatly arranged and is of top quality. The battery is rated for seven hours which is pretty accurate. The Mac OS is written to take advantage of the quad core chip, memory, etc. The LED screen is crisp and clear, and with the regular 1440X900 resolution I can easily use this laptop without any eyestrain.
I only have one puzzling complaint about this new laptop. Why in the world would a company build one of the fastest top quality laptops in the world and stick a hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM? Yes it is a 750 gigabyte drive, which few people including myself could never fill. But running at 5400 RPM? I just cannot understand this.
You can order the drive spinning at 7200 RPM or opt for a SSD on the Apple online store. The strange thing is that the 7200 RPM drive is the same price as the drive spinning at 5400 RPM. But that is not the point. Yes, most people will never notice the speed difference between a 5400 RPM and a 7200 RPM drive unless you are doing some pretty intensive media editing or are a avid game player. The point is why build a top of the line laptop and stick in a old busted down 5400 RPM hard drive like an afterthought. I fixed this discrepancy by installing a new Intel 160G SSD (solid state drive).
I have been using laptops since 1991 when they made great paperweights when they died. This is the best laptop I have ever owned. Do yourself a favor and try one. Even if you don’t like it you can always return it. I don’t think you will, but you do have that option.
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