I always seem to have a little anxiety the night before racing, so it wasn’t a big surprise the night before my first triathlon that I was lying awake at midnight looking at the ceiling. But, when I found myself laying on the floor at 2am with my restless and screaming two-year-old son, Braden, while […]
As the year is coming to a close, I am proud to say that I have witnessed and trained several athletes who made the jump to endurance events and completed their first 5K, half marathon, or triathlon this year. What a wonderful accomplishment that has left many of you wanting more of this in the […]
Vitamin D for Athletes With all the rage about finding the newest supplement for performance and recovery in the endurance world, we may not need to look any farther then a tried and true vitamin that is quickly becoming a major fixture in ergogenic aids for athletes (see SportLegs.com). Vitamin D is best known […]
Every year I get asked the same questions around this time. Instead of hearing the same old rant from me, I’ll let Meredith Falcon, head personal trainer at ActivEdge Fitness & Sports Performance, answer: Ladies, here we are once again, in a new year with fresh goals, high expectations of ourselves, and the top button […]
This is the second part of a two-part article covering different, alternative treatments of chronic tendonitis or tendinopathies. In the first part, I discussed the use of low-level laser therapy, or cold laser therapy, and its effectiveness in providing relief and recovery in quadriceps knee tendonitis. For the second part, I will cover another type of treatment that is gaining popularity in the United States, but is still not fully supported by the medical community, known as prolotherapy.
“Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” was a popular book released in the early ‘90’s about the differences, mostly in personality, between men and women. But does this saying need to be applied to the gym setting as well? Are there really big differences between the way men and women need to workout?
For all athletes, recreational and elite, it is important that stretching as a means of warm-up as well as recovery, be incorporated into their training schedules in order to achieve optimal performance. There are many theories and anecdotal stories of what one should or shouldn’t do to attain the best results. And while there are indeed differences amongst individuals in how they respond to one or the other, I hope to review the current literature to help dispel any myths or fallacies.
It has been over 3 years since former Durham Academy golf standout, Rob Kirkland, first approached me and asked if he and fellow DA teammates could train in the winter and spring for the fast approaching 2006 varsity golf season at ActivEdge Fitness & Sports Performance. A junior then, Rob was regarded as one of the best young amateur golfers in the state and looking to better his game and help lead the varsity team at DA. Rob was different then the traditional golfer of past. Not only was he gifted, but very athletic, a trend that has started to emerge the past few years in the top Tour players and carried over to the younger generations.
Following an overwhelming response to a previous topic covered, tendonitis in the knees, I have been asked several questions about treatment options for current and chronic tendonitis. In my last article, I covered proper training and exercise technique to hopefully prevent tendonitis in the knees. Unfortunately, most of us don’t like to take preventative measures and only seek treatment after it becomes a problem. Although I did briefly discuss traditional treatment practices for tendonitis, I have decided to address some of the “newer”, trendier, treatment options for various musculoskeletal ailments including, but not limited to, knee and other types of tendonitis. The first treatment option that I will cover in this article is low-level laser therapy.
For most endurance athletes that look to compete hard and run most of their races in the spring and summer, they are just starting to make plans for the fall and winter in preparation for peak performance next year. Unfortunately, what many forget to take into consideration is how to stay injury-free through these next several months so that they can continue to train with the intensity that they want in their workouts.
They spend hours calculating distances and time spent running, biking, and swimming, while continuing to work 50 hours at their job and trying to cram every last minute of training before the sun goes down. Many think they have it figured out, filled with proper rest and gradual progression of training intensity. Some even add a balanced nutritional diet with every gram of protein and complex carbohydrate accounted for over the day and week. Despite all of this, they still end up getting hurt. Why?