Are you cross-training?

Many athletes or fitness enthusiasts tend to stick to what they like or are good at when training.  This type of training will lead to limited growth and not meeting ones full potential.  Integrating such things such as functional fitness, boxing, TRX and so on into your workout regimen will help you meet your full growth and go beyond it often into levels of fitness you never thought possible. 

For example Boxing is a relatively short, quick sport, rather than a lower-intensity one, performed for a longer period of time. It is more than 60% anaerobic exercise. Wikipedia says this about anaerobic exercise:It is used by athletes in non-endurance sports to promote strength, speed and power and by body builders to build muscle mass…. Fast twitch muscle (as compared to slow twitch muscle) operates using anaerobic metabolic systems.

So, boxing is a great way to add intensity to your workout and refine your agility, speed, power, and strength while burning calories.

Taking on a different sport or fitness routine will help "shock" your muscles and keep you from hitting plateaus when you have hit a level of mastery in a certain sport or activity.

Cross-Training can also help prevent serious injury.  "The harder you train your body for just one activity, the more stress you put on all the muscles and bones involved in that one activity, so the more you do and the better you get, the more you risk overuse -- and the greater your risk of injury"

Push yourself to get to that next level and step outside your comfort zone and do some cross-training.  You will see and feel the difference!

-PTA Prez

PTA FitPro workout 5/21/2013

Dynamic Stretch WarmUp

Functional Fitness Circuit

20 minutes

Elevators x10
PowerDeck Squat x10
Grasshoppers x10

3 sets
Tire Flip (for distance) 60 sec

Sledge Overhead-20 sec

Sledge left/right-20 sec


Athletic Fitness Circuit

Knees to Rope-15 sec
Box Jumps
plyo box

Static Stretch Cool Down

PTA FitPro Workout 5/14/2013

1. Dynamic Warm-Up
2. Functional Fitness

15 min rotation

1. 12 walking plank rows
2. 10 dumbbell chops
3. 8 jump pull ups
4. 5 tire flips w/explosive push ups
5. 5 tire flip and jump through
6. 20 sec.  overhead sledge slams
7. 20 sec offset sledge slams
8. 20 sec rotational slams
1. Athletic Fitness
1. 15 sec Quick knees
2. TRX Jumps x4
3. bear crawls
2. Static Cool Down Stretch

Taking your athletic career to the next level: Functional Fitness 101

We train many different athletes who compete in many different sports so as an organization we focus on bringing the inner athlete out of our competitors.  Strength training can only take you so far and in most cases pure strength training via conventional weight training does not directly correlate to success in your given sport.  The main reason being that conventional weight training isolates muscle groups, and encourages lifting a certain amount of weight in an idealized posture created by a gym machine.  The key to functional exercise is integration. It's about teaching all the muscles to work together rather than isolating them to work independently.

This is absolutely critical in any athletic arena for the simple fact that muscles never work in isolation in any sports movement.  Does your squat help you make a tackle?  Certainly to a degree to bring power through contact, however it does not help you react, breakdown, wrap up, and accelerate through contact.

Functional fitness introduces core stabilizers that help you facilitate the full athletic movement of similar actions to a tackle.  Take seated row for example:  You're sitting in a chair with your chest pressed against pads, and you pull two levers back. You may be strengthening certain muscles, but your body's not learning anything, because you don't have to activate your core stabilizer muscles or the stabilizers of your arms and shoulders. The machine's doing it for you.

The next time one of your athletes does not see the value behind this alternative style be sure to point them to some of the most well rounded athletes for major sports teams such as Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jens Pulver of the UFC and Floyd "Money" Mayweather just to name a few.  Functional Fitness is surely the next step to taking your athletic potential to the next level.

* Retrieved From:  http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/working-out-for-real-life-functions

Prime Time FitPro workout 4/30/2013

Functional Fitness Circuit

25 min max

20 box jumps
20 jumping pull-ups
20 kettle bell swings
20 walking lunge steps
20 knees to elbow
20 push press
20 back extension
20 wall ball
20 burpees
20 double unders

Athletic Circuit

Agility ladder

high knees for speed

plyo box x2

FitPro™ Tuesdays @AMS

PTA is putting on its weekly FitPro™ workout at Academy of Martial Science in Avonsworth today.  Can you keep up?

Dynamic Stretch Warm-Up

Buy-in

60 DU-Advanced
80 SU-Novice

Function Fitness Circuit

3rounds

3 bear complex 135#-Advanced  65#-Novice
12 toe to bar
13 TRX plyo pushups

Cash Out

27 burpees

Athletic Fitness Circuit

3 rounds

 10 TRX squat jumps
10 TRX pistol jumps
15 sec high knees
15 plyo box

Static Stretch Cool Down

PTA now offering Wedding Day Shape-Up 101 classes

Wedding Day Shape-Up 101

If you're altar-bound right now, odds are that as you're playing with your soon-to-be new signature and agonizing over centerpieces, you're also considering what you'll look like to your nearest and dearest as they stare at your backside on your way down the aisle.

Of the 2.3 million American weddings every year, 80 percent of brides and over half the wedding party and family members will take steps to change their eating or excercise habits for the big day, according to the Brides.com 2006 American Wedding Study

Of course losing your love handles isn't going to make you a better bride -- or even a happier one, as anyone who's watched a carb-free wife-to-be lose her mind over place settings at the rehearsal dinner knows. No, getting yourself in shape before your wedding really can be summed up by two words: Super confidence!

Being engaged is an awesome time of relationship transition. You're starting a new life with the person you're mad for and you're about to spend the next couple of months getting used to what the rest of your lives will be like together. If that's not heavy enough, the chaos that comes with planning a wedding can quickly zap your feel-good mojo. Squabbles about seating, dimwit caterers, getting intimately acquainted with your soon-to-be mother-in-law -- both your mind and your body are going to be running on overdrive until you've hugged your last guest goodbye. Our expert PTA staff will help you de-stress and be ready for every moment this wonderful but hectic time offers you!