Here at All-Star Sports Academy, we're always proud of the achievements of the athletes with whom we work.
A lot of the time, we're celebrating their being named to an All-County, All-Shore or All-State team. Sometimes, we're celebrating a college scholarship or acceptance.
Every so often, however, we get to celebrate something really unique!
That's what happened last week with Matt Kalinowski. Matt is a young athlete who plays lacrosse.
Matt also, apparently, has some pretty serious acting skills!
He landed the role of "The Beast" in the Toms River Intermediate School production of "Beauty and The Beast!"
I saw Matt's last show Saturday night, and he was terrific!
I was proud of him, excited for him and a little shocked at how comfortable and natural he looked on stage!
We're proud of Matt, and as soon as we have video of his performance, we'll post it here and at http://www.allstarsportsacademynj.com
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Monday, January 19, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Green Foods...you have the power!
At some point in the history of mankind, he realized that hunting wild game was difficult, time consuming and often dangerous. With this realization came the caveman version of “there’s gotta be a better way!”
Some caveman (ok…probably a cavewoman…you know how stubborn we men are!) looked around and noticed all the green stuff all over. Maybe a keen sense of smell noticed how fresh the stuff smelled, as well. He certainly had to notice that there were a lot more leafy greens than available deer, antelope or mammoths.
So hunter gatherers began eating green and raw foods. Good for them, and good for us!
Unfortunately, with the rise in world populations, the agricultural and industrial revolutions and the advent of the “instant gratification” lifestyle, Americans moved away from farm-fresh and towards pre-processed, pre-packaged and junk foods.
Green foods and vegetables in general are making a “comeback” thanks to better education and lots of fear-inducing news stories about obesity, heart disease and other large scale health problems.
While green foods are claimed to have health benefits including improved immune function, better digestion, improvements in eyesight, brain function and heart health, I’d like to focus on the benefits to athletes of consuming green and raw foods (vegetables.)
Athletic performance is aided by consumption of fresh vegetables and green foods by virtue of the fact that these carbohydrate sources are rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber and enzymes.
Vitamins and minerals, while not a direct source of energy, aid the body in regulating metabolism and breaking down energy sources from foods. Enzymes also assist this process. A diet rich in raw and green foods, as well as vegetables in general, will therefore result in higher levels of energy absorption from food sources.
Recovery time between exercises, sports activity or workouts is enhanced by the consumption of green and raw foods. The chlorophyll contained in green veggies helps increase oxygen uptake in the body. This, in turn, helps flush lactic acid, allowing muscles to recover quicker and more fully. Increased oxygen uptake also means better muscular and cardiorespiratory endurance for athletes.
Antioxidants also help to reduce inflammation in muscles and joints. This helps avoid missed workouts, games, meets or matches. Pain is a great limiter, and inflammation causes pain. Eating greens and raw foods may just help you stay in the game!
What are “green foods?” Simple; they’re vegetables of various types.
Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus), leafy greens (Romaine lettuce, green, red, Boston or bibb lettuce, spinach, collard greens, watercress), sprouts of broccoli, alfalfa or radishes, or sea vegetables like kelp.
However, any fresh vegetable, of any color will help you perform better. Peppers, green beans, peas, squash and zucchini all contain beneficial goodies! Add them to your diet in easy ways.
Add peppers, broccoli or spinach to omelets or egg whites, or even in soups. Include dark lettuce and/or watercress on every sandwich.
Chop broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, peppers and cabbage and mix together with low-fat mayo and some parmesan cheese for a fresh take on slaw.
You can also add a good multivitamin/mineral supplement, like Prograde VGF 25+ for men, Prograde VGF 25+ for Women or Melaleuca Vitality,(click here and put "Melaleuca Vitality" in the subject line for more info) to your daily plan. These won’t replace your veggie intake, but will help fill the gap when you can’t get your fill of veggies!
Be creative and consistent, and you’ll reap the benefits of green foods. Bottom line: veggies help your athletic training and performance, so…don’t be a hater! Be an eater; of veggies and “green foods!”
For more help with your athletic eating plan, talk to the All-Star trainers!
Your success is our business!
Some caveman (ok…probably a cavewoman…you know how stubborn we men are!) looked around and noticed all the green stuff all over. Maybe a keen sense of smell noticed how fresh the stuff smelled, as well. He certainly had to notice that there were a lot more leafy greens than available deer, antelope or mammoths.
So hunter gatherers began eating green and raw foods. Good for them, and good for us!
Unfortunately, with the rise in world populations, the agricultural and industrial revolutions and the advent of the “instant gratification” lifestyle, Americans moved away from farm-fresh and towards pre-processed, pre-packaged and junk foods.
Green foods and vegetables in general are making a “comeback” thanks to better education and lots of fear-inducing news stories about obesity, heart disease and other large scale health problems.
While green foods are claimed to have health benefits including improved immune function, better digestion, improvements in eyesight, brain function and heart health, I’d like to focus on the benefits to athletes of consuming green and raw foods (vegetables.)
Athletic performance is aided by consumption of fresh vegetables and green foods by virtue of the fact that these carbohydrate sources are rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber and enzymes.
Vitamins and minerals, while not a direct source of energy, aid the body in regulating metabolism and breaking down energy sources from foods. Enzymes also assist this process. A diet rich in raw and green foods, as well as vegetables in general, will therefore result in higher levels of energy absorption from food sources.
Recovery time between exercises, sports activity or workouts is enhanced by the consumption of green and raw foods. The chlorophyll contained in green veggies helps increase oxygen uptake in the body. This, in turn, helps flush lactic acid, allowing muscles to recover quicker and more fully. Increased oxygen uptake also means better muscular and cardiorespiratory endurance for athletes.
Antioxidants also help to reduce inflammation in muscles and joints. This helps avoid missed workouts, games, meets or matches. Pain is a great limiter, and inflammation causes pain. Eating greens and raw foods may just help you stay in the game!
What are “green foods?” Simple; they’re vegetables of various types.
Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus), leafy greens (Romaine lettuce, green, red, Boston or bibb lettuce, spinach, collard greens, watercress), sprouts of broccoli, alfalfa or radishes, or sea vegetables like kelp.
However, any fresh vegetable, of any color will help you perform better. Peppers, green beans, peas, squash and zucchini all contain beneficial goodies! Add them to your diet in easy ways.
Add peppers, broccoli or spinach to omelets or egg whites, or even in soups. Include dark lettuce and/or watercress on every sandwich.
Chop broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, peppers and cabbage and mix together with low-fat mayo and some parmesan cheese for a fresh take on slaw.
You can also add a good multivitamin/mineral supplement, like Prograde VGF 25+ for men, Prograde VGF 25+ for Women or Melaleuca Vitality,(click here and put "Melaleuca Vitality" in the subject line for more info) to your daily plan. These won’t replace your veggie intake, but will help fill the gap when you can’t get your fill of veggies!
Be creative and consistent, and you’ll reap the benefits of green foods. Bottom line: veggies help your athletic training and performance, so…don’t be a hater! Be an eater; of veggies and “green foods!”
For more help with your athletic eating plan, talk to the All-Star trainers!
Your success is our business!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Youth Fitness: Beware the Rise of the Machines!
Ok…by now you all know that All-Star is involved in the youth fitness industry. In fact, we’ve been told that we’re changing the way people think about youth and sports fitness in our area. So, as you can imagine, we’re pummeled with marketing and advertising for the “newest,” “most cutting edge” and “next generation” of equipment for youth fitness.
The thing that strikes me as odd about this stuff is that it looks like “Mini-Me” versions of the same crappy, dangerous machines that parents and adults are getting unfit and unhealthy on in their “health clubs!” Fixed position, uni-planar, single movement “fitness” equipment that nearly always creates injury patterns in the people who use them.
Yes! Building muscle will help you lose body fat! Yes! Regularly performing resistance training will help build muscle! Yes! These machines were “engineered” to maximize (isolated) muscular output! Yet a strange thing has happened to American adults, even those who use these machines to “get in shape!”
They’ve become so dependent on them that they no longer are capable of performing strength building exercises without the artificial “intelligence” provided by these contraptions! So when the time comes to apply their newly developed “strength,” they either get injured or realize they aren’t nearly as “strong” as the numbers on their exercise machines would indicate!
Add to this the fact that more back, shoulder, knee, ankle and hip injuries are caused by the use of these torture machines in a year than in the NFL in 10 years, and it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder why we’d shove our children onto this junkyard fodder in the first place!
We know that “free-form” functional exercises, those that mimic real-life and sports movements, not only result in better movement patterns (think injury-resistance), they burn more calories and build more muscle! That’s right, functional integrated training stimulates the development of a far greater number of muscles than isolated, fixed position machine training.
Let’s look at a very popular exercise machine for both youth sports and adult fitness, the leg press. Whether we’re talking about a plate loaded, selectorized (think weight-stack-and-pin) or otherwise resisted version, this machine artificially stabilizes the body as the exerciser tries to perform hip and knee extension. The design of these machines creates higher levels of lumbar strain during the eccentric lowering, or negative phase of movement. The extreme hip flexion which occurs at the bottom of the leg press prevents proper glute activity and puts a tremendous amount of stress on the knees.
Unlike squatting, which when done correctly increases knee stability, using the leg press reduces knee stabilization, increasing the risk of serious injury. Add to this biomechanical reality the fact that many exercisers, especially young athletes, load far too much weight on the leg press, in a misguided effort to increase leg strength. This practice alone can result in spinal injury and, potentially, permanent damage to knees, back and hips.
While good squat form may be a challenge to master, squatting will develop far higher levels of functional strength. As important is this pleasant bonus: squats help athletes develop total body, multi-planar strength and power, compared with the limited strength developed on fixed position, artificially stabilized exercise machines designed to “isolate muscle groups.” (More on this fallacy in the future!)
Speaking more generally, most exercise machines are simply not designed to support the adolescent body, let alone pre-pubescent kids!
For example, seated overhead press machines are typically designed in a way that places a great deal of stress on the lumbar spine. These forces far outweigh those produced during standing overhead pressing, when the core stabilization system is more readily recruited for spinal stability. Athletes will often create severe lumbar misalignment in an effort to lift higher weights.
Leg extension and leg curl machines fix the body in the sagittal plane (think straight-ahead) and create hip flexion and shear force at the knee (leg extension) or extreme lumbar extension (lordosis) and hip flexion (leg curl.) In both cases, they work to seriously reduce the body’s ability to stabilize the knee and spine.
So, how then should children exercise in order to avoid the onslaught of the machines? Science tells us that ground-based training, with an emphasis on bodyweight stabilization exercises first, followed by a progression to bodyweight/implement based strength training, integrated along with speed, agility, balance, flexibility and power training, is the key to youth fitness and sports training success!
Better fitness levels for everyone? Higher levels of sports performance? And all of this while drastically reducing injury and extending athletic careers? Yes, yes and yes!
The strategy is simple…resist the “rise of the machines!” Your future depends on it!Contact us today to learn how to become part of the "Resistance!!
Visit us here: I want to be part of the "Machine Resistance!"
The thing that strikes me as odd about this stuff is that it looks like “Mini-Me” versions of the same crappy, dangerous machines that parents and adults are getting unfit and unhealthy on in their “health clubs!” Fixed position, uni-planar, single movement “fitness” equipment that nearly always creates injury patterns in the people who use them.
Yes! Building muscle will help you lose body fat! Yes! Regularly performing resistance training will help build muscle! Yes! These machines were “engineered” to maximize (isolated) muscular output! Yet a strange thing has happened to American adults, even those who use these machines to “get in shape!”
They’ve become so dependent on them that they no longer are capable of performing strength building exercises without the artificial “intelligence” provided by these contraptions! So when the time comes to apply their newly developed “strength,” they either get injured or realize they aren’t nearly as “strong” as the numbers on their exercise machines would indicate!
Add to this the fact that more back, shoulder, knee, ankle and hip injuries are caused by the use of these torture machines in a year than in the NFL in 10 years, and it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder why we’d shove our children onto this junkyard fodder in the first place!
We know that “free-form” functional exercises, those that mimic real-life and sports movements, not only result in better movement patterns (think injury-resistance), they burn more calories and build more muscle! That’s right, functional integrated training stimulates the development of a far greater number of muscles than isolated, fixed position machine training.
Let’s look at a very popular exercise machine for both youth sports and adult fitness, the leg press. Whether we’re talking about a plate loaded, selectorized (think weight-stack-and-pin) or otherwise resisted version, this machine artificially stabilizes the body as the exerciser tries to perform hip and knee extension. The design of these machines creates higher levels of lumbar strain during the eccentric lowering, or negative phase of movement. The extreme hip flexion which occurs at the bottom of the leg press prevents proper glute activity and puts a tremendous amount of stress on the knees.
Unlike squatting, which when done correctly increases knee stability, using the leg press reduces knee stabilization, increasing the risk of serious injury. Add to this biomechanical reality the fact that many exercisers, especially young athletes, load far too much weight on the leg press, in a misguided effort to increase leg strength. This practice alone can result in spinal injury and, potentially, permanent damage to knees, back and hips.
While good squat form may be a challenge to master, squatting will develop far higher levels of functional strength. As important is this pleasant bonus: squats help athletes develop total body, multi-planar strength and power, compared with the limited strength developed on fixed position, artificially stabilized exercise machines designed to “isolate muscle groups.” (More on this fallacy in the future!)
Speaking more generally, most exercise machines are simply not designed to support the adolescent body, let alone pre-pubescent kids!
For example, seated overhead press machines are typically designed in a way that places a great deal of stress on the lumbar spine. These forces far outweigh those produced during standing overhead pressing, when the core stabilization system is more readily recruited for spinal stability. Athletes will often create severe lumbar misalignment in an effort to lift higher weights.
Leg extension and leg curl machines fix the body in the sagittal plane (think straight-ahead) and create hip flexion and shear force at the knee (leg extension) or extreme lumbar extension (lordosis) and hip flexion (leg curl.) In both cases, they work to seriously reduce the body’s ability to stabilize the knee and spine.
So, how then should children exercise in order to avoid the onslaught of the machines? Science tells us that ground-based training, with an emphasis on bodyweight stabilization exercises first, followed by a progression to bodyweight/implement based strength training, integrated along with speed, agility, balance, flexibility and power training, is the key to youth fitness and sports training success!
Better fitness levels for everyone? Higher levels of sports performance? And all of this while drastically reducing injury and extending athletic careers? Yes, yes and yes!
The strategy is simple…resist the “rise of the machines!” Your future depends on it!Contact us today to learn how to become part of the "Resistance!!
Visit us here: I want to be part of the "Machine Resistance!"
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