Olympic Training Tips

MSNBC has a couple of great articles featuring Olympic trainers and athletes talking about some of their training habits and techniques. Here is a summary of some of the strength training tips:

Warmups. “Place eight cones three feet apart in a line, and then do three sets of each of the following exercises: Weave through them at a sprint, weave through them while high stepping, jump over them with your feet together, and weave through them while facing sideways.”

Core. “Lie on your back on a decline bench, holding a weight plate against your chest with both hands. Then lift your upper body off the bench about 6 inches. Holding this position, press the weight plate straight up from your chest, as if you’re doing a bench press. Lower the weight (but not your torso) and repeat. Do 12 presses, rest 1 minute, and repeat once or twice.”

Dips. “In the ‘up’ position of the exercise, raise your thighs in front of you until they’re parallel to the floor, and bend your knees 90 degrees. Hold your legs that way for the entire movement — instead of crossing them behind you. This redistributes your weight so that your torso leans forward as you lower your body, placing more of the stress on your chest instead of your shoulders.”

Improving Balance. “The best way to bolster [balance] is with an overhead squat. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and grasp a length of PVC pipe with a grip that’s slightly wider than shoulder width. Hold it eight to 12 inches above your head, keeping your chest out, torso erect, and heels on the ground. Press the pipe upward as you squat down as far as you can go without arching your back, and then rise up. Do three sets of five to 10 reps. Start doing it with a barbell when the PVC pipe becomes easy.”

Hitting a wall. “When you hit a wall don’t train harder or attempt to force muscle growth by piling on more weight. Reduce your load by 10 to 20 pounds. In other words, if you want to bust out of a rut, undertrain for a week or two.”

Body weight exercises. “…most guys do body-weight exercises incorrectly. They focus on reps when they should really be concentrating on time. Rather than shoot for, say, three sets of 10 push-ups, do as many as you can in 30 seconds. Employ the same strategy with pull-ups, dips, and single-leg squats, resting for 30 seconds between each set.”

We will post some more tips for specific sports, from running and swimming to volleyball and basketball, so stay tuned.

Links to the MSNBC articles here and here.

Spotlight on “Talk” Feature

One of the new features on introPLAY is the Talk feature. Talk lets you directly communicate with other users to provide (and receive!) motivation and advice. You can also banter with other Players (also called trash talking). Talk provides encouragement and support.

Best of all, you receive an email from introPLAY when you receive a new message, so you know when someone is reaching out to you on introPLAY–this is great to encourage another Player to stay motivated when you see him or her dropping off a bit, especially in an introLEAGUE.

There are three kinds of talk on introPLAY. Let’s look at each kind.

• 1-on-1 Talk. 1-on-1 Talk is found in the Locker Room. These are messages from one Player to another. 1-on-1 Talk is perfect to reach out to a teammate in an introLEAGUE who has not posted a workout recently. It is also great to provide private motivation to Players.The most recent messages from other Players will appear in your 1-on-1 Talk area. To see the entire conversation, just click “Reply” next to the message. You can type a message to respond or click “Close” to return to the main 1-on-1 Talk Screen.You can also send a 1-on-1 Talk message from another Player’s Player Card or from your Partners listing.
• Public Talk. Public Talk is found on your Player Card. These are messages from other Players that everyone can see when they visit your Player Card. Send some public support to your workout Partners. Or let others know what you are up to by posting a Public Talk message on your own Player Card.To add a Public Talk message to another Player, visit his or her Player Card and enter a message in the Public Talk area.
• League Talk. Each introLEAGUE has a League Talk. Motivate teammates, brag about moving up in the standings and talk trash to other Players using League Talk. Everyone in your introLEAGUE will be able to see your messages.

As you can see, no matter who you want to Talk to and how public you want to make your message, there is a way to Talk to them now using introPLAY’s new Talk feature. Enjoy!

An Olympic introLEAGUE

Source: Wikipedia

I am sure we are not alone when we say we are really inspired by the Summer Olympics every four years. The best athletes from all around the world together and competing in pure sport. Every time we sit and watch the Games, we want to get up and channel our own inner Olympic athlete to run faster, jump higher and be stronger.

To capture some of that inspiration and to celebrate the Olympic Games in Beijing, we here at introPLAY have started our own introLEAGUE workout competition to run at the same time as the Games. It is called “The *Official* introPLAY Olymics introLEAGUE”  and it is scheduled to run from the 9th to the 24th of August.

We hope that our introLEAGUE is a celebration of sport and camaraderie, much in the same way that the Games are. We want everyone to be competitive, but to have fun as well. Our goals and performances may be different than the Olympians, but by taking part in the Olympic introLEAGUE, we will all share in the spirit of the Olympics as the best athletes in the world motivate us in our own workouts. In many ways, that is what introPLAY is about!

If you would like to join, you must be a registered Player on introPLAY. Then head to the introLEAGUE home page and click “Join!” Sign ups end this Friday, the 8th, so hurry and sign up now.

(Check out the tour to learn more about introPLAY).

An All-New introPLAY

We are proud and very excited to announce the launch of the new introPLAY site. Here are just some of the new features you will enjoy:

• Faster and easier to navigate
• Talk features to send messages to other Players and in introLEAGUES
• Workout “Partners,” or introPLAY’s version of friends
• More stats, charts and analysis everywhere
• Alerts. Get important messages and notifications on introPLAY
• Easily track previous workouts from the workout entry screen
• Public Player Cards to increase your visibility

Current Players should take note of a couple of changes from the former site:

• Calisthenics and weight training have been combined into one activity called “Strength Training”
• Forums have been taken down for retooling and updating

Our “official” launch is going to be Monday but we wanted to try and roll the site out as smoothly as possible. Of course there are always obstacles: we have been bumping into issues with Internet Explorer. We recommend using the Firefox browser while we get all the issues sorted out with IE. We agree that this is far from ideal but we will have it resolved shortly. If you experience any other problems, please use the contact us form at the bottom of the site or email us.

Lastly, we want to thank all the Players who have participated in introPLAY from its early stages. We truly appreciate all your support. We are excited to get things rolling from here! The new introPLAY site is a major milestone as we strive to be the premiere Athletic Performance Network, providing the best community-based services to help you train and achieve your individual goals.

Welcome to the new introPLAY! Sign up today.

UPDATE (8/4): Check out the press release related to our launch.