4 Must-Do Exercises To Get Ready For Spring!
I wanted to share a few quick videos of some exercises that will help you to prepare for your spring and summertime activities. These exercise demonstrations will be particularly useful for those of you who like to bike, walk, run, hike, golf, play tennis or other racket sports.
The muscles these exercises will address are the hips, front and back thighs, calves / ankle muscles, and some exercises for the forearm flexors, extensors and pinching muscles as well as the biceps.
It is important to have a general regime to prepare for sport and activity, particularly if it’s been a few months since you’ve participated in these activities. As a general recommendation, perform each of these exercises twice per week and attempt to perform between 10 and 15 repetitions of each. If 15 repetitions becomes easy and you do not feel fatigued, find a way to make the exercise more challenging. I will give some examples of how to do this corresponding to each exercise demonstrated in this article.
Stationary ‘split squats’
This exercise works the muscles of the hip flexors and extensors as well as the front and backs of the thighs. A perfect exercise for runners, hikers, bikers and even golfers. If 15 repetitions on each leg is too easy for you and you are looking for more of a challenge, the first approach I’d recommend is to try and move slower. Aim for 5 seconds down, pause for 2-3 seconds and then 5 seconds up. After this you could hold weight in your hand for extra resistance.
Hip Thrust
This one is very easy to perform as there is not much coordination required. However, its important that you think about squeezing your gluten (butt) muscles at the top position. Remember your objective with every exercise here is to fatigue the target muscles so you must challenge yourself to do what feels hard. This exercise is great for the hips, gluten and lower back muscles. Perfect for anyone really, however I’d highly recommend it for golfers and runners.
Grip exercises
1. Grip strengthening device: Essential for golfers and racket sports enthusiasts. These guys can be purchase pretty much anywhere sporting goods are sold. I bought this one at Winners for ~$12. The cool thing about this one is it has a gauge that allows you to alter the resistance. This way you can build your strength up progressively. Aim for 10 slow repetitions for each hand, once you achieve this, crank up the resistance.
2. Reverse wrist curl: Use a light dumbbell and aim for 10-12 repetitions. It should be performed very slowly because it is a short range of motion (not much movement). Ensure that you don’t feel and strain or pinching in the wrists.
3. Wrist curl: Same approach as with the reverse wrist curls.
4. Hammer curls: This one addresses the ‘brachioradialis’, the strongest of the forearm muscles. It also addresses the biceps muscles. Aim for 10 with each arm and once achieved increase the weight on your next workout.
Heel Raises
Use a stool and hang off the edge of a step with only the balls of your feet on the step itself. Slowly lower yourself by dropping your heel and feeling a slight stretch in the ankle tendons and calf muscles. Slowly press back up by pushing through the balls of your feet and lifting your heels up as high as you can. Pause for 2 seconds at the top and squeeze your calf muscles tightly. Aim for 10-12 repetitions and once you can perform that, try doing one leg at a time during your next workout.
It isn’t essential to do all of these exercises, nor do all of these exercises comprise a full body workout. I share these with you because I think they are great exercises to help to prepare you for most outdoor physical activities.
If you would like a more comprehensive workout regime, contact us to discuss your goals and what you’d like to physically prepare for. I’d also love to know if anyone is interested in a full body workout video series that could be performed at home and how much that would be worth to you. It does take quite a bit of time to prepare, film, edit, and post videos but if there is enough interested I would be happy to prepare some videos.
I hope you find this helpful, please drop me a note and let me know what you think! —> [email protected]