Health & Fitness: Know how to train like a professional athlete
Every new year often brings a renewed commitment to fitness, with people setting fitness resolutions as targets. But what if you could re-prioritize your health goals by adopting a workout routine inspired by the top professional athletes?
Some of the top sports athletes like Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Rafael Nadal etc. are known for their intense workouts and enviable physique.
Fitness for athletes is absolutely paramount to deliver commendable performance, a combination of physical and mental well-being. In the field of competitive sports, the holistic approach to fitness for athletes goes beyond mere exercise, ensuring a diet controlled and nutrition focused plan for the success of these athletes.
Athletes prepare for fitness by involving themselves in a structured training regimen, that includes a bunch of exercises focused on several key areas: These include
- Building strength, endurance, power, and agility
- A meticulous nutrition plan
- Adequate rest and recovery
- Mental training to optimize their performance in their specific sport
The core elements of an athlete’s fitness preparation are as follows:
- Strength Training: Lifting weights to build muscle mass and power, focusing on exercises that mimic movements in their sport is the most crucial part of any training. This S&C technique forms the foundation for improved athletic performance, and lays emphasis on accelerating power, endurance, and injury prevention for athletes.
- Functional Training: In the pursuit of optimal performance, embracing functional training for athletes has become a cornerstone in recent times. This specialized approach goes beyond conventional workouts, focusing on movements intrinsic to sports, thus enhancing both strength and agility. Several sporting icons have vouched for this kind of workout openly.
- Flexibility Training: Stretching exercises to improve the swing and range of motion comes under this category. Unilateral exercises play a crucial role in elevating the athletic fitness by focusing on individual limbs at any given time and providing a guided approach to fitness training for athletes. These exercises engage only one side of the body at a time, which helps to promote the balance and stability.
- Power-Packed Exercises: In any comprehensive fitness training for athletes, power exercises play a significant role. These evolving and dynamic movements focus on internal strength, required for activities with quick and forceful actions. Integrating power exercises into fitness regime enhances the agility, speed, and overall athletic competence and thereby fostering a well-though approach to physical conditioning.
Like it is rightly regarded, ‘quality over quantity’. A real athlete gives high regards to having a ‘mind over body’ attitude. Athletics is a celebration of human potential in true sense. There may not be a shortcut to training hard but with proper application of the above given strategies, success can be achieved. After all, training regularly to get that perfect shape and lean physique takes consistent efforts, commitment, and perseverance.
