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Working at your fundamentals to improve performance

Everyone who is into fitness will do some generally identical things such as stretching and warming up. But each person needs to work on the fundamentals of what they’re trying to do to get better.

Image by Victor Freitas from Unsplash.com

You want that extra rep, the extra set, the ability to run faster for longer, run further, jump higher and be able to take on any last-second challenges even when you’re tired. So do we all, but not all of us come close to that level of performance in our sports and workouts. It takes conditioning to able to push the barbell up one more time when your muscles are burning for the bench press. It takes continual hard work to be able to push your body right to the limit when you’re endurance running.

What do the world-class athletes have that most people don’t you might wonder? Well they’re not superhuman, they have just worked on their fundamentals so much that their bodies have been designed to accept their sport like a hand in a glove. Everyone who is into fitness will do some generally identical things such as stretching and warming up. But each person needs to work on the fundamentals of what they’re trying to do to get better.

Isolate and interrogate

Isolating a muscle or muscle group or a motion, and then interrogate it to force it into what you want it to do. For example, your bench press isn’t as good as you genuinely think it should be. You seem to have good biceps, and your upper chest is also in good shape. However, you seem to be lifting a little lighter then you should for your shoulders. Here is where the weak point is. Your bench should be better and it would be, if your shoulders weren’t letting you down. Your bicep curls let you know you’re strong here, and your butterfly curls also let you know your chest is growing and becoming stronger.

However your shoulder press is weak, you struggle to go beyond 8 reps when you can do 10 in the others. To get your bench press up to where it should be you need to isolate your shoulders more in workouts and do different workouts to build them up. This method of identifying weaknesses and going after them can be used anywhere else in your fitness regime.

Supportive clothing

The clothing that you wear in the gym should never be aimed to be a fashion statement. You’re in there to workout and that means putting your body through a lot of stress at times. The same goes for sport, you need to have the right kind of clothing for your particular sport. For example, you will need a wrist and forearm guard for archery, you’ll need shin pads for soccer and you will need wrestling singlets for Greco-Roman wrestling. Some clothes you will need them custom-made as for the right protection and support, they have to perfectly fit your dimensions. They will also be more functional that way because they are designed for your body shape and size.

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Pick your workout and sport clothes based on function and not form. This is a fundamental thing about sport, as without the right clothes you can’t perform to your optimum.

Trying to find clothes that will fit your body for the sport that you do, rather than buy off the shelf. Isolate and then work on your weaker muscles when you can sense that your compound workouts are lacking when they shouldn’t be.

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Your "not that regular" all-around gal, writing about anything, thus everything. "There's always more to discover... thus write about," she says in between - GASP! - puffs. And so that's what she does, exactly. Write, of course; not (just) puff.

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