Olympian POWER Moves…
Men’s Health Magazine debriefed a select group of America’s top winter athletes and coaches, and came away with their training secrets for building the extreme strength, speed, endurance, and agility that can give you a gold-medal edge in your own life. Fair Warning: You may be seeing these and more moves in your next Bootcamp or CrossFit class…
Sculpt a Sprinter’s 6-Pack
Core strength is critical for peak performance. Master your midsection the way Gay does with this novel move: 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. As you push the weight, your abs have to contract even harder, says Gay. Do 12 presses, rest 1 minute, and repeat once or twice.
Save Your Back
out back. Olsen protects himself with beefed-up hips,hamstrings, and glutes. Use these two exercises.
Good morning: Stand holding a bar across your upper back. Then bend at your hips until your torso is nearly parallel to the ground. Raise back to the starting position and repeat. Do 3 sets of 6 reps.
Lopzez relies on the Houston-based trainer Danny Arnold for conditioning. Instead of instructing his athletes to sprint a specific distance, Arnold uses time. “Your body learns to pace its movements,” says Arnold. “If I tell you to sprint 100 meters, your brain knows how fast you should run. But if I tell you to run at full speed for 8 seconds, you’ll go faster than you normally would.”
Sprint on a stationary bike for 8 seconds, then pedal slowly for 12. Repeat the sequence for 5 minutes, and work your way up to 20 minutes over a month. In an Australian study, people who did this 3 days a week lost more fat than those who jogged 40 minutes. As you know, this may also be done with jump rope intervals and jogging……
Rob Roy, the veteran coach who oversees Chris Klug’s training, uses an obstacle course to teach snowboarders to look ahead instead of down at their feet.
