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Lead Stories: Sunday, September 7, 2008

Massage offers benefits for athletes and exercisers at all levels

Posted July 17th, 2007 at 9:00 AM by Bridget Sullivan

Section: Running & Training, Injury & Rehab, Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab

Summer is the season of swimming, tennis, and being outdoors. But along with summer sports, the season brings sprained ankles, pulled muscles and shin splints. This summer, and all year round, athletes of all levels are turning to massage therapy to combat these mishaps.

Once considered an alternative medicine, massage has staked its claim to the mainstream. Americans make about 114 million visits to massage therapists each year, and spend about $6 billion total. Moreover, the American Massage Therapy Association reports that 2 million more people sought out massage therapy in 2005 than in 2004.

Robin Helton, massage therapy department chairperson instructor at Everest College, in Burr Ridge, Ill., says that the massage industry’s huge growth is about more than just our nation’s need for relaxation. “Medical professionals now recognize the benefits of massage, not only in alleviating certain medical conditions, but also as a form of preventative medicine, and a key to overall well-being.”

Massage Offers a Range of Benefits for Even Casual Exercisers

Read the rest of this article at our partner site: HerActiveLife.com

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How to get the most out of your late race push …

Posted April 29th, 2007 at 9:00 AM by Jim Fortner

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips

Jim Fortner is a weekly, guest contributor to TheFinalSprint.com. Make sure to also check out his own personal running and advice site: “Jim2’s Running Page”.

[After recently discussing a reader’s questions regarding their problems during a late race push], I thought I would offer a few things that I do to help maintain or increase pace in those late stages of a race when your legs and cardio-respiratory system are crying for relief.

There are certain things you can do in training to help prepare you for this challenge, such as increasing the pace toward the end of a long run when you are tired. And making sure that your speedwork is paced so that the last couple of intervals or hill repeats are the fastest, as well as the hardest. But, once you are in a race, it’s too late to deal with training. You’ve got to make the most you can of the preparation that you have.

If you have run the first part of the race much too fast and are in severe oxygen debt with a lot of lactic acid built up in your legs toward the end, you probably blew it and won’t be able to maintain pace. You will just have to accept a slower finish and learn from the experience. If you have run a smartly paced race, or even more conservatively than necessary in the first part, you have a good opportunity to really “go for it” at the end.
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Baking soda may help athletes to exercise longer

Posted April 10th, 2007 at 8:00 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Health & Fitness, Exercise

Sodium bicarbonate, commonly known as baking soda, is used as a medication to neutralize stomach acid in ulcer patients and as a home remedy for stomach distress.

Now researchers in Greece have shown that it may neutralize the acid in muscles during intense exercise and helps athletes to exercise longer (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise).

If you run or cycle as hard as you can, you start to breathe hard, and suddenly your leg muscles start to burn because your muscles have become acidic. It’s the burning in your muscles that forces you to slow down.
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Does your heart get tired when running and/or during other types of exercise?

Posted March 26th, 2007 at 9:59 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Health & Fitness, Exercise

A healthy heart is so strong that it is almost never a cause of tiredness during exercise.

Tiredness during exercise comes from your muscles. They run out of fuel or out of oxygen. Skeletal muscles use both fat and sugar for energy.

When your muscles run out of their stored sugar supply, called glycogen, they cannot contract and function adequately. You feel tired, your muscles hurt and you have difficulty coordinating them.

On the other hand, your heart muscle gets energy directly from fat and sugar in your blood and even from a breakdown product of metabolism called lactic acid. It is virtually impossible for the heart muscle to run out of fuel unless you are starving to death.
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Amino Acids 101: Do they positively affect performance?

Posted March 11th, 2007 at 12:52 PM by Megan Hueter

Section: Nutrition, Supplements

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. About two-thirds of a person’s body consists of water, and most of the rest is made of proteins. Proteins are one of the three principal nutrient elements, along with carbohydrates and fats. About 100,000 different kinds of proteins are found in the human body. These proteins are made up of only 20 amino acids, some of which are produced by the body (non-essential amino acids), others of which we have to ingest (essential amino acids). (1)

Amino acids act in various ways. During physical exercise, your body needs energy to do work. Initially, the body uses carbohydrates for energy, and then after a period of time, it resorts to fat. When the body breaks down fats, it goes through a process called the Krebs Cycle, where lactic acid is formed. A buildup of lactic acid makes muscles very fatigued. During prolonged physical activity such as a marathon, if sugars and fats are no longer available for energy, lactic acid builds up in the muscles and stamina declines and the athlete tires very quickly. (1)
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Studies: Older exercisers recover as fast as children

Posted February 5th, 2007 at 9:45 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab, Exercise

As lifelong exercisers age, they find they can’t hit a tennis ball or golf ball as hard, run as fast, lift as heavy, or perform as well, whatever their sport. A study from Yokohama City University in Japan shows that this gradual decline is caused by loss of muscle strength.

However, the most significant finding of the study was that older men can recover from hard workouts as quickly as younger men (Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, June 2006). Another encouraging study in the same journal, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, shows that men over 60 who exercise regularly are far stronger than their non-exercising counterparts.
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Heart Rate Training

Posted January 21st, 2007 at 2:00 PM by Emily Hoskins

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips, Health & Fitness, Exercise

Monitoring your heart rate during exercise is an excellent way to improve performance, avoid overtraining, and track your progress. Heart rate training is popular because it is easy to monitor and for most athletes if offers a practical way to measure exercise intensity. Heart rate training relies on the fact that as your exercise intensity increases so does your body’s demand for oxygen.

It is important to monitor your exercise intensity because (1) there are different physiological adaptations associated with training that depends on the intensity being implicated, and (2) you can manipulate your entire training program to reach your own personal goals based upon your specific sport or event.
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TFS Review: The Stick’s “Sprinter Stick”

Posted January 10th, 2007 at 10:00 AM by Adam Jacobs

Section: Running & Training, Injury & Rehab, Gear & Apparel, Miscellaneous, Product Reviews, Special Features, Health & Fitness, Injury & Rehab, TFS Reviews

The Stick’s “Sprinter Stick” is an exceptional tool for injury prevention & treatment and was chosen as a “TFS Top Pick of 2006″.

Product: The Stick’s Sprinter Stick
Price: $32.95
Rating: Excellent 8.9/10.0
Pros: Improves performance by accelerating recovery; portable; good value; versatile
Cons: Difficult to use on arm muscles and feet without a partner.
Overall: This is a one-of-a-kind self-massage tool that can reduce muscle soreness, prevent injuries and even make you a better runner.

For those who have never seen it used, The Sprinter Stick is likely to seem quite peculiar. As a matter of fact, when one of The Final Sprint’s product testers first received it, he thought we had sent him: “Some type of a hybrid between a rolling pin and a weapon from ‘Karate Kid’“.

Believe it or not, this observation was quite perceptive. The Sprinter Stick, one of the many models in the The Stick’s product line, is a 19-inch rod of plastic with grey, grooved handles on each end and nine, independent spindles surrounding it’s core. Just as a rolling pin is used to knead and reshape dough, The Sprinter Stick is used to stretch and manipulate muscle. The Intracell Technology of The Sprinter Stick can also be thought of as a type of weapon; one that has proved extremely effective for runner’s in the battle to stay injury-free.
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Train your muscles to use lactic acid as fuel

Posted January 6th, 2007 at 11:00 AM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Running & Training, Training Tips, Health & Fitness, Exercise

You exercise so intensely that your muscles burn and you gasp for breath. Then you slow down for a minute or two, catch your breath, and then go very fast again. This training technique has been used in all endurance sports since the 1920’s. Now George Brooks of the University of California at Berkeley has shown why interval training makes you a better athlete.

Inside each muscle cell are mitochondria, the little furnaces that burn fuel for energy. A major fuel for your muscles during exercise is the sugar, glucose. In a series of chemical reactions, glucose is broken down step by step, with each step releasing energy. When enough oxygen is available, the glucose releases all of its energy until only carbon dioxide and water remain; these are blown off through your lungs.
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Will oxygenated water make me a better athlete?

Posted December 13th, 2006 at 4:00 PM by Martin Kennedy

Section: Nutrition, Hydration, Health & Fitness, Exercise

Have you seen ads for oxygenated water, claiming to cure tiredness, improve memory, help you to exercise longer and make you a better athlete? A study from Austria shows that oxygenated water offers none of these benefits for humans (International Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 27, 2006).

When you exercise as hard as you can, you gasp for breath because you cannot meet your needs for oxygen, no matter how hard or fast you breathe. Lack of oxygen prevents you from breaking down lactic acid so it accumulates in your muscles and blood, and you develop severe shortness of breath.
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