miércoles, 2 de marzo de 2016

MY OWN VOLLEYBALL LESSON

In this new entry, I'll be talking about the volleyball session I made for my classmates. It was divided in several parts:

Warm-up:

-3-4 laps running (low intensity)

-Stretching (ankles, legs, arms, waist, wrists, neck)

Individual technique exercises:

-Each person will have a ball and will try to make 20-30 touches in both ways of passing (overhead pass, forearm pass).

-In pairs, one person at each side of the court, they will have to make 50 passes to each other using all the moves they know. 

Team tactics exercises:

-Three people in one side, one person in the other. The one person passes the ball, one receives, then passes to the person next to him/her and then that person passes to the last teammate and that teammate does a smash.

-Small circuit with cones, this circuit will improve your skills (rotation, skipping, jumping and positioning). Three cones in front of the net, two at both ends of the back of the pitch. Three people in front, one in the back. The people in the front-cones will have to jump 6 times and do a sideways jump to pass through the next cone and repeat. The one at the back will have to move sideways with the legs open. (Be careful with the landing, keep your knees in neutral position).




And here is a self-explanatory vid (thank you, kbandstraining, for the useful video): http://kbandstraining.com/circuit-training-volleyball-players/

Feint Tactic (most important team tactic):

-Two people in one side, and another one in the other. The pair of players will have to be in a specific position (one on the back, one close to the net). The one player will do a normal set, when he does, the player in front will jump and do as if he was going to do a smash (feint) but will not do a smash, instead, the player on the back will receive the ball and do a forearm hit.



Individual tactics exercise:

-One person on one side, the rest on the other. The person that is alone will have to make a quick decision and decide in which side to throw the ball, the rest of the people will have to position themselves in any volleyball position, and leave a free space on porpoise (they cannot move to get the ball). The objective of the attacking player is to find out where the free space is and accurately throw the ball there.


Cool down:

-1 lap at a low intensity.

-Stretch as in the warm up and perform “breathing exercises”. 


OPINIONS:

Throughout the session, I asked my teammates what they thought about my session, their general opinions were:

- "A very enterteining session, with the same exercises that profesional volleyball players use, I ended up a bit tired, but it was worth the effort because we have been able to improve our skills."

- "The exercises used were great for training and improving, and most importantly, I had lots of fun during the overall session".

- "It was great fun, all the exercises were very accurate for training specific sections of volleybal"

- "A very fun and interesting session, thanks to it, I think I got a bit better at synchronizing with nmy teammates during matches".








domingo, 13 de diciembre de 2015

THREE SESSIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR STRENGTH CAPABILITY AND MEDICINE BALL TEST

In this post, I'm going to give you three sessions that helped me improve my strength capability and get a better mark at my medicine ball test. These three sessions will have three parts, WARM UP, MAIN ACTIVITY and COOL DOWN.

First session: This session doesn't require any specific equipment, it will be focusing on exercises that can be done easily. The only thing you will need is a pull-up bar.

WARM UP: 5/10 minutes running at a low intensity. Do NOT get tired at all. After running, be sure to stretch both your lower and upper body. This will prevent any injury that could happen while doing the rest of the session and will get your body ready for the exercises.
After warming up, rest for a minute and drink a bit of water if necessary.

MAIN ACTIVITY: In this part of the session, the exercises don't need to be done in order.

-Squats: 3 sets of 30 repetitions.

-Push- ups: 3 sets of 15 repetitions.

-Sit-ups: 4 sets of 15 repetitions.

-Pull-ups (optional): 2 sets of 10 repetitions.

-Burpee: 3 sets of 10 repetitions

(RECOMMENDATION): After you finish a set of an exercise, don't keep doing the rest of the sets for that exercise, change of exercise after doing 1 set.

COOL DOWN: For cooling down, you will need to stretch every part of you body for some time, this will help your body to relax.


Second session: This session will require a bench, a couple of one-handed weights and a two handed weight (not too heavy).

WARM UP: This session should be 5-10 minutes long. Use about 50% of strenght and do 10-20 easy lift-reps. Do NOT get exhausted AT ALL. You should next do a set of around 5 sets with 60-70% with a heavy weight which allows you to do 10-12 reps. This is done to acclimate the body. The way the you do the lift in this warm up doesn't matter, the important thing is that you lift weight so the body gets used to it. 

MAIN ACTIVITY: Use a weight that you can do no more than 5 or 6 times with good form. 2-3 working sets is plenty, as long as they are heavy and intense enough, with 15-20 reps.

-Bench press: 2 sets of 5 or 10 repetitions.

-Squats: 3 or 4 sets of 30 repetitions.

-Biceps curls: 2 or 3 sets of 15 repetitions. This exercise can be done either sitting or standing, with both weights at the same time or one weight at a time.

-Shoulder press: 2 or 3 sets of 15 repetitions. 

COOL DOWN: For the cool down, you will need 5 or 10 minutes of stretching and relaxation.


Third session:  For this session you will need a medicine ball or something similar. This session will only focus on medicine ball workout.

WARM UP: To get used to the medicine ball's weight, do the same warm up as before. However, instead of using weights, use the medicine ball.

MAIN ACTIVITY: 

-Big Circles: Standing with your feet shoulder-width apart and knees slightly bent, hold a medicine ball with your arms extended directly above your head. Without bending your elbows, rotate your arms counter-clockwise, using the ball to draw large imaginary circles in front your body. Do 10 circles, and then reverse direction to clockwise and do 10 more.

-Wood-chopper: Stand with your feet just beyond shoulder-width apart. With your arms nearly straight, hold a medicine ball above your head. Now bend forward at your waist and mimic throwing the ball backward between your legs—but hold onto the ball the entire time.Quickly reverse the movement with the same intensity, and return to the starting position. That's 1 repetition. Do 10 more repetitions.

-Standing Russian Twist: Hold a medicine ball with both hands in front of your chest and your arms straight. Without dropping your arms, pivot on your right foot and rotate the ball and your torso as far as you can to the left. Then reverse direction: Pivot on your left foot and rotate all the way to the right. Do 15 repetitions.

- Medicine-Ball Sit up: Grab a medicine ball with both hands and lie on your back on the floor. Bend your knees 90 degrees, place your feet flat on the floor, and hold the medicine ball against your chest. Now perform a classic sit up by raising your torso into a sitting positionLower it back to the start.  Do 20 repetitions.

COOL DOWN: For cooling down, you will have to stretch and relax for 10 minutes.

















FITNESS GOES MOBILE

As everybody knows by now, technology is improving at an incredible speed, and now with smartphones, we have a lot of things at our disposal (games, social websites, books, articles) and sports and fitness is not an exception. There are many apps dedicated to fitness and personal training, I'm going to tell you three of them which I think are more useful.

The first one is called Fitness Point by Zero One GmbH. This app is very easy to use and is great to follow your progress in the gym or in your house. Fitness Point focuses on muscle workout. You can create your own personal training programme or just select one of the programmes made by personal trainers. One other feature is the resting time selection, you can set your own timer that will tell you when to stop and rest and when to change of exercise. Here is the link to Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.std.fitness.point&hl=es 







The second one is called Google Fit by Google Inc (no surprise there) This app is meant to tell you how much progress you make when you are jogging, cycling or walking. You can set objectives based on how many calories you want to burn, how far do you want to go or how long do you want to be exercising. One of the best features is that Google Fit is compatible with every Android Wear device and you can change of device with ease. Here is the link to Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.fitness





  Google Fit: captura de pantalla




The third one is called Total Fitness by Total Fitness Blue Corner. This app is similar to Fitness Point in some ways (personal trainers, focused on working out muscles, gym activities) but has many other features. One of those features is the introduction to Nutrition Guides, there are some guides that are useful to build your body as you want to. There are also Routines, which tell you what exercises to do and for how many days you have to keep doing those exercises. There are also Challenges, such as the 300 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, or the running for 40 minutes challenges. The thing that I liked the most was how well explained every exercise was, the app tells you information of how to do it and shows you a picture which shows what muscles you will be working out with that specific exercise. Here is the link to Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluecorner.totalgym























THE BEST BLOG FOR A LAZY SPORTSMAN

Hi everyone, my name is Yassin, and in this post I'm going to explain why I created this blog.

I created this blog for a P.E project that I was told to do for my high school. However, this blog has a deeper "meaning" and it's to spread the word of FITNESS (even though the name isn't very appropriate)

If you aren't from my high school don't worry and take a look around my blog, because the only thing that matters is that you are interested in training and fitness. If you have a question, a recommendation or just want to say hi, don't be shy and post a comment, I'll be more than happy to answer it.

I'll be posting useful info about sports, fitness and how to live a healthy life in the future, so be expecting more posts from this blog.

sábado, 12 de diciembre de 2015

¿NEED A WEBSITE WHICH SPECIALIZES IN FITNESS TESTS? I GOT YOU COVERED



I was looking for some fitness tests and I found this website full of them. It is called Topend Sports. This website has a section for Fitness tests and I was very surprised with all the content in it. Here's the link: http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/

All the tests are gathered there, ordered alphabetically. There are all sorts of test such as the well-known beep test, the medicine ball throw, the wall-sit test, squat jump test, and many many more.

This websites explains the purpose, the equipment required, any variations of the test, how to score and the disadvantages.

I must say that I found this website extremely useful when I needed info about the Medicine Ball test. If you need help with a Fitness test, be sure to give this website a try.