More-Athletic Mindset
David Fleming
This article was commissioned in order to help you see the big picture when you hit the gym. If you adopt the More-Athletic Mindset, then every time you train you will not only be in line to reach your goals faster, but you will be setting yourself up for even better performance and an even better physique down the line. Magic. With knowledge comes power I guess.
Why YOU need to be More-Athletic
This is a 'proper fitness' magazine. The aim is not to pump meaningless rubbish or the first thing we can think of. The aim is to take the very technical, detailed world of fitness and performance from the laboratories, physios, osteopaths and pioneers of the fitness world, make it as simple as possible to understand, add a touch of entertainment and bring it to the keen punter - whether hardened gym rat, or prosperous looking gut lover. We want to make things simple to understand and put into practice, to keep you inspired, entertained and possibly buying t shirts!....but most importantly, we want more people to train, and to help more people to train well.
The bottom line of training well as we see it, is to get More-Athletic. The continual pursuit of getting more-athletic is an ongoing attempt to get stronger, faster, fitter and healthier - the exact end goal will obviously affect your training - but whether your end goal is to put on 11 stone of ripped bulging muscle and be a champion bodybuilder, to get so lean that your six pack is visible from half a mile away or simply to loose a few pounds and be able to hold your head up slightly higher while you introduce yourself around match.com, the continual focus on becoming a more-athletic animal is the intelligent way to attack the goal. Eat right, train smart, be happy. - this is in effect, what we mean by the more-athletic mindset. The continual process of training to get more-athletic, to move better, to be stronger and more powerful while chasing down your goal.
But I only want to look like great you say? Well, looking better comes down to two physiological factors; your fat loss is more to do with what you eat, and your muscle growth is stimulated by your performance. The more athletic you become, the more work you can do, the more work you can do - the more you can look like a big sexy hunk and the more the ladies will want to stroke you (or whatever your preference maybe).
For example, a bodybuilder needs to get more-athletic - yes more muscle obviously, but by striding to improve the quality of his movement and structural balance then the chances are that anyone on a mission to pack on as much muscle as humanly possible will be in a better position if they are stronger and faster and have the ability to move their bodies better - they will be less susceptible to injuries and have a much better chance of moving more weight with more quality then ever before all leading to more muscle fibres being activated and therefor all other factors being equal - hypertrophy of significantly marvellous levels.
An elderly lady who wants to look more glamorous with ever so slightly less wobbly bingo wings, needs to get more athletic in order to keep herself healthy, to be able to burn a few calories, maintain her power and strength. If she trains intelligently with the More-Athletic Mindset to boost her stability through all her joints, maintain decent mobility levels, burn some calories and strengthen her withering muscles then she will indeed look more glamorous. If she simply does a few tricep kick backs and 3 different kinds of ab crunch to 'tone her tummy muscles' she will make little progress and probably do more harm than good.
The average 24 year old who used to play a lot of sport but now drinks too much chasing the ladies but has decided to halt the decline would also be wise to adopt the more-athletic mindset.
Working on quality of movement, strength and endurance would certainly be the fastest way to less chub and more chance of pulling a finer class of female.
...And of course an athlete needs to get more athletic in many ways so that they can crush their opponents, resist injury, summersault after scoring etc. - all this goes without saying.
Just to hammer it home:
The More-Athletic Mindset - A commitment to improve physique, performance and health by training the body to be More-Athletic as a whole.
Why is this important?
You can't just train one body part - You will get inferior results. The body functions as an integrated unit.
You can't just do sit ups and crunches - it's a waste of time and bad for you.
You can't just do the exercises you like - your being a tart. Your body will suffer, you will probably get injured and look ridiculous.
You can't just do cardio - well you can, but it's a complete misuse of time. Your results, health and physique will be inferior.
The trouble is, the human body is complicated. People often want fast results without hard work. Clever marketers play on that. As a result, we live in a very sedentary society where the majority of the few people who actually do exercise, do the wrong things for the wrong reasons and inevitably only a small percentage of the population actually have a decent physique.
If you adopt the More-Athletic Mindset you will be immune to fads, ballsh*t and short term thinking. You will commit to getting stronger, fitter and more skill-full over the long term and you will get significantly more from your training. The rest of this article contains more info and details on the quest to get More-Athletic.
So, er...what is More-Athletic?
Just so we are on the same page, let's get it clear. There are plenty of ways you can get more-athletic; get stronger, get more muscle, lose fat, improve the quality of your movement, improve your structural balance and posture, improve your skill levels and many more.
These ways of getting more-athletic pretty much fit into 5 categories...
1) Horse Power - your strength and power. The stronger you are and the quicker you can apply that force will have a huge impact on your performance on the football pitch, in the ring, on the rugby field and in whatever sport you play in.
2) Speed, Agility, Quickness - think athletic, think sport, and speed is one of the first things that springs to mind. It's no fun being strong as hell if you can't catch the bastard with the ball!
3) Biomechanics and mobility - better function always leads to better performance and lower chance of injury. If you look at any half decent athlete on the tele, you can bet your bottom £2 coin they do their fair share of mobility/flexibility work. If your going to make the effort to drag yourself in the gym, even if you only spend 10-15 minutes on focused movement work - your going to put yourself ahead of 90% of the crowd and as long as your not doing it cause you don't wanna work hard - your probably giving yourself the best chance of real long-term success.
4) Vision and balance - rarely talked about by those who have it, but a crucial factor of athleticism is the ability to see the ball, the opponent and everything else for that matter. A lot is said about the great balance of top sportsmen, but can you train your vision, can and should you train your balance? Read in detail below and try the drills!
5) Endurance - of course you may need incredible endurance, or may just need to have enough to punch a guy 10 times in the left eye. In the world of athletic endeavours endurance tends to fall in line as one of the strength qualities. You may need to repetitively perform an action under low load over an extended period of time. Conditioning on the other hand refers to your overall stamina with respect to how long you can work hard for and how quickly you can recover from said hardness. Its pretty useful to be able to punch and kick a guy as hard in the third round as you did in the first.
More on those to come. If your main interest is getting better at your sport, there are 3 main things you need to get better at - not simply pumping weights and running sprints for the sake of it...
1 Collecting information - There is a huge amount of information that your body will read at any given time. While playing tennis, the body will take information from the shoes you are wearing, how tight they are, the playing surface, the pressure of contact with the ground, the temperature, the size and weight of the racket as well as its velocity all will present different challenges to and responses from the body. The millions of nerve endings (mechanoreceptors) that live in your joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and skin will react to each stimuli differently in terms of the stability, speed, mobility and power that your nervous system will allow you to display. As well as all of the mechanical responses described above, your visual and balance skills will also be challenged. The better your eyes can focus and track the object you wish to hit while simultaneously watching your opponents movements will have a profound impact on your success in the game.
2 Processing information - The relentless barrage of information and stimuli that hurtles towards your control centre every second of every day is truly epic. The proprioceptive system loosely described above sends its information up the spinal chord to the control centre, the brain. Here, simultaneously all the information is read, assessed and acted up on to help you rip that back hand down the line.
3 Action Response. The motion that occurs, as in the shot that you play is a direct response to the amalgamation of all the information described above. Your intention to hit the ball as hard and accurately as you can may or may not go as planned depending on how efficient and 'athletic' your brain perceives your body to be. If you are a person who may not be naturally athletic but has never been taught to be athletic, the shot might ricochet off the racket frame and you may stumble embarrassingly to the floor.
This is the focus of this article, what is it to be more-athletic? How do we become athletic if it has never come naturally to us and what sets the athletes apart from the average person.
If that wet your appetite read on below for more discussion on how to look at the 5 main elements of becoming More-Athletic.
MORE ON HORSE POWER
Horse power encompasses the components of strength and power. Think of this as a continuum ranging from maximum strength (90-100% 1RM) being the the maximum level of force generated irrespective of time, to power (30-60% 1RM) being varying levels of force generated as quickly as possible. In the sporting world these attributes often have to be displayed repetitively without performance reducing levels of fatigue.
Research has shown that maximal strength training has little to no carry over to several athletic markers such as speed, vertical jump, agility and quickness. If your sport requires intricate skill with an emphasis on these qualities, training for high levels of maximal strength isn't going to make you much better. For example it will be of very little benefit for a tennis player to have a double body-weight bench press. With the exception of specific strength events such as power lifting, olympic weightlifting and some strongman events, training for this particular strength quality will be of very little benefit to improving your tennis game.
His point in mind it is still worth noting that squatting with high loads does seem to carry over to many sports, especially sprint performance. Sprinting is a high skill event and extremely dependent on the level of an individuals total 'horse power'.
When considering 'horse power', the key is to determine what the strength requirements of your sport or event are and train for them appropriately. More often than not power will be of greater importance to improving your athleticism. That requires moving quickly, sometimes as quickly as possible, so far lighter loads would be used in training. It is safe to say though that if your sport requires long periods of resisting force or involves a lot of direct impact, big, strong and muscular bodies are the way forward.
Examples
Lets look at powerlifting. This is where how much you can lift is everything. Without taking anything away from the technique of the powerlifting squat, bench and dead-lift, there is a relatively low skill requirement to the movements.
The plane of motion never changes, there is no risk of a tackle or disturbance from another participant and the only athletic qualities necessary is adequate mobility and eye popping maximal strength.Therefore the greatest amount of force you can display is the key. Compare these requirements to that of a mixed martial artist and the role of strength becomes a little more diluted. Huge levels of 1 rep strength with no cardio-respiratory endurance or the ability to display that strength quickly in various positions repeatedly will be largely useless. This example highlights that several strength/athletic qualities must be considered and trained to improve your overall athleticism.
With this in mind the next logical question of course is 'how do i train for strength'. First of all, a traditional bodybuilding approach is not the way to go. This is a sport that doesn't require performance. Aesthetics is the one and only goal. Now, a lot of bodybuilders are extremely strong but this is often due to their size. Relatively speaking the strength levels of a 100kg bodybuilder will pale in to insignificance when compared to a 100kg olympic weightlifter. This is a classic comparison but its a little redundant as it doesn't matter how strong a bodybuilder is, it only matters how big, symmetrical and lean they are. If you only want to get bigger i would strongly recommend you train like a bodybuilder. However if you play a sport and want to improve your athleticism i recommend you train for strength, power, speed, agility and if necessary endurance.
Staying with the MMA example, increases in power and power endurance will be extremely beneficial to performance. Take two fighters of similar skill levels and weight. Both Fighter A and fighter B can bench press 150kg for 1 repetition. How do you think you can determine who has an advantage? Well, the question can be answered by asking another question; who is more powerful? Which ever athlete can complete the rep the fastest could be considered to be displaying a higher power output which means he is producing a peak amount of force faster than his opponent.
Lets now suggest that out of the same two fighters; one can bench press 150kg and the other 130kg. Each athlete could attempt to bench press 50-60% of 1RM for as many repetitions as possible as fast as possible. Once the speed of each repetition reduces substantially the set is terminated and the completed reps recorded. The athlete who can maintain the higher power output (fast reps) with the same relative percentage of weight (50-60% 1RM), over multiple sets without a dramatic drop off in performance will have a higher level of power endurance. When faced with an opponent that can reproduce their hardest punch round after round, as long as they can avoid being hit, you're in trouble!
Training to improve your body's ability to generate force from your current level even if only marginally will be of benefit to a lot of athletes. It is important though to use total body compound movements that challenge the core, lower and upper extremities. Seated incline biceps curls and triceps kick backs aren't really going to make you a much better rugby player, dead-lift and squat variations at varying bar speeds will.
General strength training has benefits of improving mental focus, robustness and durability of joints (if done correctly), eccentric, isometric and concentric strength, grip strength, core stability and of course reducing body fat, all of which will help improve your performance. (Yes, weight training is the way to go for fat loss, not cardio!)
The reduction of body fat and increase of lean body mass will improve an athletes power to weight ratio. If you're carrying around a useless 20kg's of body fat on the playing field or court, rest assured that your engine will become a lot more efficient if you drop the excess lard.
Of course the athlete who has high levels of maximal strength, power and speed is officially a bad ass! So if you have been smart enough to train under the bracket of strength to improve your performance, you can rest assured that you can become even more of a force to be reckoned with by increasing your power.
Remember, train movements not muscles. Refer to my 'intro to strength training' articles for a general place to start.
Note: Bench pressing may not be the best exercise to develop punching power as the mechanics of each movement is completely different but it is part of the puzzle.
Did you do that thing there where you read something without paying attention??
Main point - train for strength, if your bodybuilding it helps to be strong, if your fat it will help you burn calories and Reshape your body if your an athlete - it will help, the level to which depends on your sport...
To be more-athletic, whatever your goal - always involves boosting your strength and power in some way. Every human needs this!
MORE ON Speed, agility and quickness
A fast individual is someone who can be described as having a lot of horse power. This can be from great genetics, great training or a combination of the two. An agile person is someone with great proprioception and balance. They can display great control over there body segments, controlling their centre of gravity over a changing base of support.
A quick athlete may not have the highest level of top speed but can accelerate faster than there opponents. The greatest athletes in high skill sports tend to be very quick and extremely agile. Displaying excellent control and reaction, predicting what's going to happen, cutting direction and accelerating all at high speeds shows the greatest interplay and function of each of the athletic elements as discussed in this article.
Some coaches and educators in the industry have stated that quickness is something you have or you don't. I think thats not quite true. If all athletic qualities are skills, skills can be trained, just maybe not through dumbbell and barbell movements. If your visual skills are lacking its pretty unlikely that you'll be as quick to react as someone with better eyes. If your joints are jammed up you'll probably find a more mobile person can spin past you on a basketball court and if your balance is poor, without appropriate training to improve the function of your vestibular system you may never be a great surfer.
If your sole goal is to look awesome, you may not need to train so much for speed and agility, then again it never hurts. But for the athletes/Sunday league weekend warriors out there, the more dedicated speed work you do, the more you will be able to show off, or destroy the showoffs out on the field.
MORE ON BIOMECHANICS AND MOBILITY
As I mentioned at the start of this article, the attributes described that piece together to form athleticism are in no particular order. Saying that, I personally hold the assessment of an individuals biomechanics in high priority.
Biomechanics describe the mechanical function of the biological system. This encompasses posture both static and dynamic, total range of motion at each joint as well as the interplay between the joints, soft tissues, and nerves with regards to the movements that are required for a particular activity or sport.
While the acquisition of strength and power are imperative to enhanced performance, continuously adding horse power to a poorly functioning chassis is like sticking a 4 litre V8 engine in a Fiat Punto with misaligned wheels. Its only a matter of time until it starts tearing itself apart and falling to bits.
The quality of complex, integrated movements is determined by the quality of your smaller, more basic movements. These movements can be described as your mobility. The body has been designed to move in any and all directions fluidly, powerfully and gracefully. As the majority of our lifestyles dictate that we only need to be good at sitting down with poor posture we have become good at moving badly. If you fail to challenge your body's movement capabilities in all direction and combinations, you will lose the ability to do so and become more susceptible to injury when you try to move outside of your current movement box at high speeds or with high levels of force. Put more simply you hurt yourself when you run, play a sport or even start a new gym program.
Proprioception as described by Dr. Eric Cobb of Z-Health as; "a medical term that is defined as the ability to sense the position, location, orientation and movement of the body and its parts. You can think of proprioception as your body's 3D movement map".
Lets take the foot as an example. Im pretty sure that most of you who are kind and patient enough to read this article have never given your feet much thought when it comes to training. The function of the foot and it's mobility has a huge and direct impact on the function of the rest of the lower leg. For example, lets say you wear 'Nike Shox' day in and day out, you run in them, jump in them, you think you look awesome and if you're playing some kind of sport you tie them up nice and tight to get the 'support' that you've been led to believe that you need.
With a raised heel the foot and ankle joint is held in a constant position of plantarflexion, as in the heel is positioned slightly closer to the calf and the toes are pointing down more towards the ground. Over time and thousands of repetitions (walking) this will contribute to a reduction in dorsiflexion, or the ability to lift the foot up towards the shin or drive the knee forward over the toes with the foot flat on the ground. This will have a direct and detrimental impact on the knee and hip with regards to knee flexion and hip extension.
With some good old fashioned 'motion control' or 'anti-pronation' shape to the insole and sole of the shoe, the calcaneus (heel) and talus bones (top of the arch of the foot in front of the shin) will gradually lose their ability to collapse or pronate. Tie the shoe up tightly and by virtue of the shoes shape, you will restrict this movement even further. Pronation is a necessary function of the foot and a lack of it is just as detrimental as having too much. If your foot doesn't properly pronate, your butt will never get to play its part and your hips, knees and low back will be at risk of injury as you are no longer moving as your body has evolved to do.
Having too much soft cushioning at the rear of the shoe and an upward curvature at the sole around the toes will also have a negative impact over time. The lip at the front of the sole reduces the need for the 1st metatarsalphalangeal joint (big toe - also the strongest lever in the body) to flex through its full range of motion and propel you forward. This adds to a lack of inversion of the foot and subsequent external rotation of the entire lower limb. Guess what, thats going to chew up your knees, hips and low back as you can't toe off properly.
All of this is just from bad footwear. Now add on top of that the fact that you may never train barefoot, try to improve the mobility of the feet and ankles or wear shoes that simply allow your feet to move and you can start to see how biomechanics plays a huge role in your ability to perform or be more-athletic!
What to do?
There are a lot worse places to start than at the foot when trying to improve your athleticism. At the very least, start doing some of your lower body training barefoot. Try working through some lunge, squat and dead-lift positions to get a feel of what its like to not be in shoes. In the book 'Born to Run', author Chris Mcdougal discovers an elusive Mexican tribe who are capable of running for hundreds of miles barefoot or wearing nothing more than a slip of rubber strapped to the leg with leather twine. The tribe suffer virtually none of the injuries associated with distance running and consequently 'running shoes'.
The book also quotes studies that show old beat up running shoes are better for your feet than new spongy ones. The theory behind this suggests that when we begin to run, we are not meant to heel strike. Try running without shoes on hard ground and see what happens. Usually the body will auto correct to a mid foot strike that shifts the impact from a painful heel strike to be absorbed by the dense fascial structure on the sole of the foot. Mechanically this is advantageous as the stretch - shortening cycle, or plyometric action that is recruited is more efficient at propelling your mass forward. (More on this in a future article) So if we were born without shoes and are not designed to heel strike when running, maybe its just the running shoes that allow us to run incorrectly. The harder the surface under the heel (compact rubber in an old shoe) the lower the heel strike force. The softer the surface under the heel, the harder it will tend to strike as it searches for the ground.
Refer to the ever expanding mobility library on the site to see some foot and ankle movements to start working on.
So, is it just about the foot?
When it comes to biomechanics and efficient motion its not just all about the foot. The position of the pelvis has a direct influence on the lumbar spine (low back), the lumbar spine influences the thoracic spine (mid-upper back) and the thoracic spine influences the cervical spine (neck). The shoulders can take a world of abuse as well. If you're involved in a sport that requires a lot of arm motion, maybe swimming, tennis or any throwing event, you may be acutely aware of the health of your shoulders. Guess what, without adequate mobility at the spine (mainly thoracic and cervical in this example) as well as healthy wrists and elbows, the shoulders can get pretty stressed out. You should be able to lift a straight arm from in line with your hip to at least the level of your ears effortlessly without any other accessory motion. That means if you're spine is rounded forward and your shoulder blades flap around all over the place, your shoulder range of motion will be less than optimal and it may even hurt just to lift your arm. I cant stress enough the importance of mobility training with regards to health and athleticism.
At the beginning of this section i described proprioception as the brains ability to sense the position, location, orientation and movement of the body and its parts. Is your mobility optimal? Is the information being fed to the brain clear or broken and confused. To summarize, if you're stiff as a board your level of proprioception can be described as 'rubbish in, rubbish out'. To improve your movement skills and athleticism, improve your body's awareness of its movement potential in all directions at all joints!
Sorry what was that again?... Move Better. Perform better. Look and feel better.... Train to move better and healthier and you will be able to get even stronger, even bigger, even faster and shift even more fat than the mindless apes you may find charging around your gym or the clueless flocks of people punishing themselves on cardio machines and the like.
More on Endurance
We're not here yet, watch this space for information coming soon!
And a lot more on VISION AND BALANCE!!!
If you're still with me, thank you its about to get really interesting, I promise!
So we've looked at horse power, biomechanics and proprioception as important factors in aiding the display of athleticism. Proprioception being an 'input' for the nervous system and biomechanics and horsepower both being outputs.
There are two more 'input' factors to consider. Vision and balance. These two systems are held as so important to the survival and performance of your body that if there is a substantial enough deficit in either one your true athletic potential may never be realised.
Just as different sports have specific strength, speed and biomechanics requirements, the same is true of visual skills. For example, boxing and golf have very similar 'central peripheral awareness' and 'body/eye coordination' requirements but vastly different 'visual reaction time' requirements.
Assessments and correction of your normal vision, where glasses or contact lenses may be required should be carried out by a qualified optometrist. Other visual skills that are inefficient or inconsistent can be trained very easily.
Two visual skills that are easy to train are:
1) Convergence, the ability of the eyes to come together (go cross eyed)
2) Eye tracking, the ability to 'keep your eyes on the ball'.
These qualities are easily trained as the movement of the eyes are controlled by muscles, just like any muscle in the body, the extra-ocular muscles can become inhibited and weak if under used, under trained or injured.
To train convergence try the following exercise:
Sit up straight in a chair with tall relaxed posture and have a partner hold the tip of a pencil two feet in front of your face. Have your partner slowly move the pencil towards your face at nose level. Without moving your head, follow the pencil coming towards your nose with both eyes and announce when the pencil becomes either blurred or splits in to two images. The idea is to be able to have both eyes follow the pencil all the way in to the nose where the image splits in to 2.
With practice this skill can be improved and then progressed. If one eye is a little lazier than the other, cover the good eye and train the weaker one before going back to training both eyes together again.
To train eye tracking try this exercise:
Take a tennis ball and draw relatively large letters, numbers or different coloured circles at different places on its surface. Next you are simply going to play catch. Try to throw the ball with minimal spin at first and follow the ball from the throwers hand to your own and call out the letter, number or colour that you see right before you catch the ball. With practice you will improve at this drill and progress to smaller details on the ball.
Deficits or asymmetries between the eyes and extra-ocular muscles can have obvious impacts on a persons ability to perform well in certain sports. If you've always struggled with catching or aiming and were therefore maybe considered un-athletic you may want to try some of the drills described above. As i stated earlier the eyes have a huge influence over the entire body and biomechanics can gradually become altered to accommodate a dominant eye giving rise to postural deviations that can once again lead to sub optimal performance.
Balance:
The visual system introduced above works hand in hand with the vestibular or balance system and the visual and vestibular systems work with proprioceptive information from the joints. It is the interaction and clarity of all three of these input systems that are the building blocks for becoming more-athletic.
The vestibular system:
The vestibular system has important sensory and motor functions contributing to the perception of self motion, head position and spatial orientation relative to gravity. As the body is hard wired for survival and as such keeps you aware of potential threats, the vestibular system sends 1 million signals per second to the brain. As the brain considers falling to be one of our highest priority threats, poor vestibular function, which significantly increases the risk of falling results in chronic muscular tension. This will obviously lead to an inability to perform well in any sport let alone those that require high levels of balance skill.
You probably already know if you have good or poor balance. For some, many pieces of the puzzle are already in place and a decent level of balance skill may already be present. For others, whether from a visual, vestibular or proprioceptive deficit, balance may be something that has never come 'naturally'. Hopefully from reading this article you are starting to see that all the components of athleticism are skills and skills can be trained.
Unstable or stable surface training
In the fitness industry it is extremely common to see trainers and gym users using unstable surfaces such as Bosu balls and swiss balls as a tool usually for variety in training. There is still some debate as to how effective these tools are for otherwise healthy individuals especially when trying to improve balance. I can't think of a single sport that requires the participant to stand, kneel, squat or lunge on an unstable surface such as a swiss ball. The obvious examples of surfing, snow boarding, skiing and ice skating are performed on stable surfaces directly under the foot i.e the surf board or skis that are then placed on to an unstable surface such as water or snow.
Research has shown reduced levels of muscle activation in the lower body when exercises are performed on unstable surfaces, as well as the same level of muscle activation in an upper body movement when performed either on a stable or unstable surface. With this in mind it is not always beneficial or necessary to use these devices when trying to improve balance as the world we live in never provides us with such an environment.
If you feel you need to improve your balance skill try first just standing on one leg. See how long you can hold the static position for. Progress to altering your head position and then start trying more dynamic movements such as hopping or skipping. Once you have mastered balance at this level, try the same progressions but with eyes closed. This will obviously shut down the visual input to your nervous system and force you to train your vestibular and proprioceptive systems.
Take home the message, if you started reading that and then glazed over like you were back in school don't worry, you can always go back and read it if again if you wanna try the drills, the main points to remember are.....
Balance & coordination are trainable skills. If you feel you don't have either start working on the visual drills described above, convergence & tracking. Progress these drills by getting a bit more sport or position specific. Try training convergence in various lunge and squat positions and tracking in the environment of your sport. Practice your tennis volleys with a letter ball.
Balance is a combination of the three main senses. Standing on something that wobbles won't have much carry over to improving your balance. Sometimes it makes a bad situation worse. Can you stand still with your eyes closed, in a lunge, on one leg? Eyes open but head tilted left, tilted right or looking up to the sky? This thought process will lead you to greater improvements in your balance and highlight in what positions you are weakest.
So, er...who needs to get More-Athletic?
Everyone. In my opinion, we are obliged by our very design to try and be more athletic. As a mechanical system of joints, levers and pulleys we have the ability to become extremely strong and powerful with endurance and grace. If the goal is to live a healthy, productive, injury and pain free life we should all take the time and effort to train and enhance our astounding movement capabilities. Health and vitality feels a whole lot better than fat, sore and immobile!
If you are reading this you are enlightened enough to exercise regularly and take a little more interest in finding the best and most efficient ways to do so.
The bodybuilder should venture outside the straight up and down movements of bicep curls and leg presses or they shall lose the ability to do so leading to completely avoidable progress ceasing aches & pains. The pilates enthusiast should stand up and strength train occasionally and the desk jockey should make sure the time they spend exercising is actually improving and enhancing their bodies ability to function normally in upright posture and not exacerbating the sitting induced injuries that are sure to bubble to the surface eventually.
Athleticism is not a gift from God. Although we are not all born equal, if we have a functioning torso, limbs and an intact nervous system we all have the potential to train, improve and express our athleticism. It is our environment, experiences and mindset that determine our ability not just our genetics.
Whatever your fitness goal, training to be a more-athletic animal is the key to fast and long term success.
About the Author
David Fleming is one of London’s top personal trainers. He is obsessed with helping people get stronger and helping people to get More-Athletic. He has studied and learned from the best strength coaches in the world. He is happily married and can lift heavy weights. His mother is very proud of him and he writes a good article.It took him until the age of 30 to pass his driving test, but other than that he is a solid chap.
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