Name: Yuri
Web Site: http://www.fitterufitness.com
Bio: Creator of Fitter U Fitness. Former professional athlete, health enthusiast, and all around nice guy. Love spending 1-2 hours a day walking my dogs and helping you live your healthiest and fittest life ever!
Posts by yelkaim:
- rugby
- soccer
- hockey
- basketball
- tennis
Workouts for Beginning Runners
March 10th, 2010
Okay, so you’ve just bought a new pair of shoes, a headband, and as many sports drinks as you can get your hands on. You are pumped about getting into running, and as you head outside, you get excited about getting out there and pounding some pavement.
Then you realize that you have no clue what to do.
Hey, it’s okay. We all have to start somewhere, right? If you are new to the sport of running, realize that how you start determines if you stick to it or not. Fortunately, these workouts are very beginner-friendly.
Below are a few running workouts for beginners that make the following assumptions:
- You are new to running, in that you haven’t consistently run before as a part of an exercise program.
- Your aerobic endurance is either nonexistent or low.
- You have time to run at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time.
- You are interested in endurance, not speed.
Now, on to the workouts.
Workout # 1: The Walk/Jog/Run
This workout is a must for the true beginner, because it gradually ramps you up to higher levels. Start off by walking for about 5 minutes at a decent pace. You should start to feel a little out of breath, but not too tired. Then, start jogging at a slightly faster pace for 5 minutes.
Then, speed it up a bit and run for 3 minutes. Go back to walking and repeat the cycle. Do this three times a workout, three times a week (every other day). After Week 1, take a minute off of your walking time and add 30 seconds to your jog and your run. Do this for three weeks.
Workout #2: Your First Mile
This workout will help you get to that first mile, a great milestone (pardon the pun) for any runner. After three weeks or so of doing the first workout, run half a mile, then jog (preferably) a half a mile, three times a week. Do this for two weeks.
On your sixth week, run 3/4s of a mile and jog a mile two different times. On your third workout that week, guess what you’re going to do?
Run your first mile! Exciting, I know.
Workout #3: Stepping Up
After completing workout #2, you are ready to start putting on some miles. We’ll say this is Week 1 of your actual running program. For Week 1, run 1 mile three times (every other day). For Week 2, run 1 mile twice a week, then run 1.5 miles on your last day. For Week 3, run 1.5 miles three times, every other day. Then, for Week 4, go the distance: Try to run 1 mile at least 4 times that week. Go for 5 days if you can make it.
If you follow these running workouts, you can gradually and safely build up your endurance. You’ll be winning marathons and stockpiling medals in no time.
Fitness for Hockey
March 3rd, 2010
I have to say that the last time I was really into hockey was about 15 years ago – right around the time that Patrick Roy was traded from the Montreal Canadiens. When that happened, I don’t think I followed hockey, until…
The recent winter Olympics in Vancouver.
I was drawn back in from the incredible excitement of the game along with the physical fitness demands of the sport.
Yesterday, I wrote about why soccer players are fit. Today, I’m going to do the same for hockey and convey a compelling argument that hockey players are some of the fittest athletes on the planet.
Strength Requirements
Due to the sheer physical nature of hockey, these athletes need to have a solid foundation of physical strength. It also helps if they carry a good amount of muscle mass as well since momentum comes into play when two players collide. Usually, the heavier, stronger player will win that battle.
Thus, hockey players need to be strong from the ground up. The need solid legs and a heck of a lot of core stability. Furthermore, skating fast and having a hard shot go hand-in-hand with overall body strength. But they also need an incredible amount of…
Power
As I’ve mentioned several times already, power is the name of the game in sports. Hockey players are no different. If they want to skate faster than their opponents, they need to be more explosive. If they want a slap shot that will put a hole through the net (or shatter the glass), they need to be able to harness their strength into powerful full body explosiveness.
And, all the while, ice hockey players also need to have a great…
Balance and Stability
If you’ve ever stepped onto the ice and taken a slap shot only to land on your butt, you obviously understand that playing on ice brings a whole new element to the sport.
So, hockey players not only need great strength and power but they also require superb balance and stability – on ice!
It’s easy to train on a stable surface but what about training while you’re moving quickly on a slippery surface. It’s a whole new dimension. So eventhough dry land training is essential for developing strength and power, hockey is a game that is played on ice, and thus, players should harness their skills and challenge their bodies on ice as well. It’s only by doing so that they can improve specifically to the demands of the sport.
Anaerobic Requirements
In case you haven’t noticed, most hockey shifts last about 45 seconds. And that’s mainly because the players are going “all out” for that amount of time and can’t possibly last any longer. Skating at literally full speed for 40-60 seconds is very tough and produces a huge amount of lactic acid.
The muscles seize up, brain function declines, and mistakes are made if a player continues to stay on the ice longer than necessary.
Even though a good aerobic base is needed for hockey, the major focus needs to be on anaerobic conditioning. Doing high intensity intervals of roughly 45-seconds @ 100% with 2-3 minutes of recovery is a simple and effective to train the energy system mostly needed for hockey. Ideally, that should be done on skates but running or biking can be effective as well. Try doing that for 60 minutes!
Strength, power, and anaerobic fitness are huge elements to any hockey player’s fitness arsenal. But I forgot to mention foot speed, agility, hand-eye co-ordination, and tactical and technical ability.
Oh well. But I think you get the point.
Soccer Fitness – Why Soccer Players Are So Fit
March 2nd, 2010
Yesterday, I mentioned that I believed rugby players to be the fittest of all athletes. Today, I want to discuss why I believe soccer players are 2nd on my list of fittest athletes.
Aerobic Fitness Demands
First, off to play soccer at a decent to high level you need to be able to run 90 minutes. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t last the duration of a game, then forget about everything else. Having a solid aerobic base is important because of its impact on mental acuity and technical execution.
If a soccer player becomes fatigued during a game, his or her technical game goes down the drain. Passes are not as accurate, shots are off target, and more mistakes are made.
Research shows that soccer is predominantly aerobic with about a 70-30 aerobic to anaerobic split. Thus, most elite soccer players have a VO2max (maximal aerobic capacity) upwards of 55 ml/kg/min.
But that’s not all…
Anaerobic Energy Demands
Take a marathon runner and throw him/her into a soccer game and you’ll soon see a fish out of water. That’s because soccer involves changes of speed and direction every 5-6 seconds – something a long distance runner is not used to.
It also involves midfield battles and full field sprints that are very taxing on the body’s anaerobic energy system. And this is where the lactic acid starts to pour into the muscles, making the legs feel like lead.
But that’s partly why it’s important to have a strong aerobic base. The fitter (aerobically) a soccer player is to begin with, the faster they will recover from the high intensity anaerobic demands of the sport.
SAQ Demands
SAQ stands for speed, agility, and quickness. Soccer (and most high level sports) is all about the “first step”. Being quickest off the mark and being able to shift your feet and bodyweight quickly are paramount to any elite player. Not only do soccer players need to be able to accelerate, stop, cut, change direction, and more, but they also have to do all that with a ball in many cases too!
Power and Explosiveness Are King
The difference between the best soccer players in the world and those just beneath them – aside from technical and tactical ability – is their speed of play, their power, and their explosiveness.
As I briefly mentioned above, in soccer that first step is huge. It’s the difference between creating an inch of space to shoot on goal or getting around your opponent. Being able to jump higher than anyone else will mean that you can win headers in the midfield while posing a greater threat to the opposing goal on set pieces.
Jumping, sprinting, and being quick off the mark are all determined by a player’s power.
As a former professional goalie, power was my bread and butter. I would train day and night to become more explosive because I knew that if I could jump just a little bit higher or dive an inch further I would be that much more difficult to beat.
And as the strength and conditioning of the men’s soccer team at the University of Toronto, power development is one of my biggest priorities for our team.
But this is where it gets difficult…
Bringing it All Together
This is a similar dilemma encountered by most complex sports…
How do you train to better your aerobic and anaerobic endurance while devoting time to strength training and power and speed development?
It’s certainly best not to do all of it at the same time.
That’s where the training concept called periodization comes into play. Basically, this means planning your training calendar to devote certain blocks of time (ie. training cycles) to certain elements of fitness.
For instance, at U of T, our off-season conditioning begins with 2 weeks of general full body conditioning followed by 6-8 weeks of strength training and then about 4-6 weeks of power development.
During this time, we still practice 1-2 days per week with about 1 game. So our guys are still getting their aerobic/anaerobic conditioning through their on-field play. As the season approaches, we begin to spend more time really maximizing their VO2max and lactate threshold through all sorts of interval training runs, hill runs, and more.
So as you can see, soccer players have a wide array of fitness components that need to be addressed. And let’s not forget perhaps the most important part of soccer – actually being able to play the game. This requires countless hours of ball work, tactical understanding, and so many other intricacies that I can’t possibly mention here.
And that’s why soccer players take 2nd spot on my list of the world’s fittest athletes!
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where we’ll be looking at the fitness of hockey players.
Fittest Athletes?
March 1st, 2010
Having played soccer pretty much all my life you would think that I would have a biased opinion as to which athletes I believe are the fittest.
But that isn’t necessarily the case.
I used to think that soccer players were easily the fittest athletes, until I got into high performance conditioning and coaching. I quickly began to realize the physical (and mental) demands of many other sports. This was taken to the next level after having watch the winter Olympics over the past 2 weeks and seeing some amazing olympic athletes in action.
So which sports do I believe have the fittest athletes?
Here’s my top 5 (with the fittest at the top):
(NOTE: I’ll be devoting an entire post to each sport individually)
Now, after reading this list, you might be saying…
“But Yuri, what about cyclists, cross country skiers, or long distance runners?”
Trust me, I understand where you’re coming from. And I certainly believe that these athletes possess some of the most highly conditioning aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. However, they just don’t have the multifaceted fitness that is required by my top 5 sports.
So…
Why Rugby?
In my view, rugby players overtake soccer players as the fittest athletes. Why?
Well, not only do rugby players need to be able to run just as much as soccer players (ie. on average 8-11 km per game over 80 minutes) but they also need to possess a huge amount of explosive power and strength. They need to train for muscle development, strength, power, agility, speed, AND aerobic and anaerobic endurance.
Just look at most rugby players. They aren’t dangly weak athletes. They are solid, well built machines. And they have very high VO2 max levels. In fact, the fittest soccer players that I ever played with (Abidal, Ribery, and other top players in Europe) recorded beep test scores around level 18-19. And these guys are fit.
However, some of the top rugby players have run all the way up to level 21 and 22 on the beep test. That’s absolutely ridiculous!
Elite rugby league players are quick, with many of them being able to perform a 40-meter sprint test in just over 5 seconds! They also possess good speed off the mark and acceleration power.
Considering that most rugby players have to carry that much more mass than most other athletes, it’s amazing that they can do so so efficiently. And that’s all about power.
In sports, it’s not whose the strongest that wins. It’s who is the most powerful!
Power is the ability to move a certain load (ie. weight) over a certain distance as fast as possible. Thus, if 2 athletes can push a 50-pound sled over 40 yards, he/she who gets their first is more powerful (in that endeavour).
Here are some more examples of sheer power…
If 2 people both squat 200 lbs, he/she who moves the weight the quickest (concentrically) is more powerful.
In sports, there’s no point in being strong if you’re not powerful. There’s no point in lifting heavy weights if, down the road, you can’t move them more explosively. That’s why athletes train to be faster – not slower.
Back to our rugby players….
The amazing thing about rugby training is that these athletes need to train hard to first pack on some muscle. Then they need to train to build their muscular strength. Then they need work hard to make those muscles react quicker and more explosively. And then they to fit some good old fashion interval training aerobic/anaerobic conditioning to last an entire rugby game!
Therefore, putting together a properly periodized training program for a rugby player is necessary considering that concurrent strength and endurance training can negatively impact strength and power gains.
It truly is a science.
Rugby players know that being big is not the name of the game (unless most football players). It’s about being big, strong, and being able to move that bodyweight as quickly as possible with great speed and agility.
That’s why I think rugby players are the fittest.
In my view, any athlete that possesses great strength, muscle mass, agility, explosive power, and high aerobic/anaerobic endurance is an athletic machine.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at why soccer players take second spot on my top 5 list of fittest athletes.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments.
My Olympic Workout Week
February 26th, 2010
As I’ve mentioned a few times already, I’ve really been bitten the Olympic fever. I don’t know if it’s because the Olympics are taken in my home country – Canada – or that we’re getting 24/7 coverage of the games? All I know is that I’m hooked and inspired.
Since I still like to consider myself a high level athlete in my own little world, sometimes I like to imagine training and competing as if I were in the Olympics. So this week, I decided to spice up my workouts with some more sport-specific athletic training sessions.
(side note: actually, now that I say that, most of my workouts are athletic in nature – oh well)
Lower Body Power Workout
On Tuesday, I hit the gym and was pumped to crank out some great lower body exercises. My legs were feeling good so I wanted to push myself on my squats – after all, the benefits of squats for athletic performance are well known.
So after a comprehensive warm-up I proceeded to do this following superset workout:
1a. Front Squats – 3 x 8 reps
1b. Kipping Pull-ups – 3 x 15 reps
2a. Back Squats – 3 x 6 reps (here I pushed myself to test out my low back since my squatting accident in Deceember – still not as stable as I’d like but it’s almost there!)
2b. Hanging Leg Lifts – 3 x 8 reps (maybe not the best combo with squats considering it causes core muscle fatigue – but I did it nonetheless)
Once this strength component was complete, I finished off the workout with some explosive plyometric exercises which included:
- squat jumps – 3 x 4 reps
- speed skater lateral jumps – 3 x 8 reps
- ski tuck lateral hops – 10 seconds @ 100% : 30 seconds recovery x 3
It was an awesome workout and it definitely got my body ready and strong for my next workout – a 56-minute hill training run!
Hill Training Workout
After giving my body a day off to recover (one of the most important elements of any training program) I felt doing some hill training interval runs. My legs felt great from the previous workout on Tuesday and I really wanted to push myself aerobically and anaerobically. What better way than by running hills?!
So I grabbed my iPod, loaded up Treadmill Trainer Hill Runner 1, and jumped on the treadmill. I completed 3/4 of the 79 minute hill workout and boy did I feel amazing.
In case you haven’t yet used this running workout (I highly recommend it!), it involves interval runs of varying intensity and duration while running on a 4% incline. Not an easy feat.
Not only did I sweat up a storm and feel amazing for the rest of the day but I also noticed much less leg stiffness than I normally do after many of my “level-surface” runs.
I have a theory that because incline running forces you to run with better technique – such as foot striking with your mid-food instead of your heel – there is more muscular work done by the calves, quads, hamstrings, and glutes, and less force transmitted into the passive structures of the body (ie. the joints).
This is just my theory but I’m going to test its validity.
Although I’m not an Olympian these 2 workouts really pushed me as if I were. I have to say that after being inspired by the numerous Canadian champions like Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, Jon Montgomery, and many others, I was pumped up to train harder than ever.
Watching the winter games this time around has also given a much deeper appreciation for the physical (and mental) of all these sports.
Figure skating – a sport I could never get myself to watch – has really impressed me. Watching Virtue and Moir win the gold the other night really highlighted how much strength, power, stability, endurance, and mental focus this sport requires. I have a newfound appreciation for the sport.
How about the aerial jumping?
Those guys (and gals) are crazy! Talk about spatial awareness, lower body strength, and sheer guts. It’s unbelievable.
I could go on and on about every winter sport but my conclusions are all the same – these sports require an immense amount of preparation. If I can do my part to push my body to my limits, that’s all can I ask for. And that’s really all any of us can ask for, right?
It’s about improving every day and realizing your full potential. We may not all be Olympians but we can certainly pretend we are!
Go Canada!
