Improve Speed and Agility

If you or your client is looking to improve speed, quickness, and agility, you may need to add hip flexion exercises to your leg routine.  Most athletes know to train their glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves.  But many athletes forget to train the hip flexion muscle group which includes the psoas major and iliacus. 

Dean et al (2005) showed that subjects improved both 40 yard time and shuttle times after an 8 week hip flexion resistance training program.  There were no improvements in the control group.  Results were published by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning.

A simple hip flexion exercise is lying leg raises.  Make sure your lumbar spine stays flat against the floor when performing this exercises.  A more advance exercise is hanging leg raises.  These exercises will challenge your core along with the hip flexor group.

In summary, everyone should follow a total body, all joint action, exercise routine.  If you are missing a few joint actions in your weekly routine, you may be shorting yourself athletic improvement or even worse, creating muscular problems that may lead to injury down the road.

Halloween Candy

Do you still have Halloween candy?  No doubt eating that candy will not only add a few extra calories into your diet but it will also give you somewhat of a guilty conscience.  Well don’t worry, there’s a way for your guilty pleasure to make its way into your muscles.

After workouts, your muscles have used up muscle glycogen and are starving for sugar to replenish your glycogen stores.  An influx of sugar and protein will stimulate an extra uptake of glucose and amino acids into your muscles.  A good ratio is 3 to 1 or about 45 grams of candy (sugar) to 15 grams of whey protein depending on your workout.

So remember, fast acting sugar plus a fact acting protein makes for a wonderful post workout snack.  But also remember that you need to resume your normal diet shortly thereafter.  Candy should only be used as a treat AFTER your workout! Enjoy J