Diet and Nutrition

balanced diet / Baseball Basics / Diet and Nutrition — No Comments
20
Aug 12

Baseball Injuries: What You Need to Watch Out For

Any sport involves much physical activity. Your body needs great endurance and strength to win a game or even outlast the entire game or season. Sometimes, even with all the preparedness you have, injuries can come from anywhere. Here are the common injuries you need to watch out for.

1. The Little League Elbow

This injury is known for its name because this injury is very common to amateur and rookie baseball players. It is also called medial epicondylitis and is a common injury not just in baseball, but also in golf and tennis. Repeated use of the muscles of the arm may tear some parts of the tendons that results in elbow pain and weakness. Athletes should stop their activities first, rest their arm and have ice compression and elevation to provide temporary relief. It takes two to six months to recover from this injury.

2. Tendinitis

Tendinitis is common to shoulders or legs. They usually have the tendons of the shoulders and biceps inflamed or irritated. Shoulder bursitis is caused when the bursa sac in the shoulder lying between the tendon and skin becomes inflamed. The sacs protect the shoulder from impact and disjointness. This can also be treated like the Little League Elbow.

3. Torn Rotator Cuff

The tendons and muscles that support the arm to move up and down is called the rotator cuff. When these become inflamed and some tendons torn, they can cause great pain and severe limitation to movements. Swollen muscles push against the nearby bone and the muscle can lead to internal bleeding or bruising. Treatment for this injury requires surgery involving small incisions. Physical theray exercises are required to bring the body part to full strength.

4. Frozen Shoulders

This is an inflamed action in the shoulder joint. These might not be caused by tendon tears or damage, but a result of a disease. Usually this is caused by bad diets resulting to diabetes, strokes and other heart problems. Impact injuries are also the cause of frozen shoulders. Medication is often used to take care of the injury. Joint movement exercises are also needed to recover the strength of the shoulders. Critical conditions might involve surgery.

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Diet and Nutrition — No Comments
31
Jul 12

Simple Ways to Introduce Exercise to a Hectic Lifestyle

Today, people spend most of their time facing the computer monitor and doing work or surfing the Internet during their leisurely periods. People often complain that they’re too tired to do exercise when they get home or from the office. Working 9-5 is indeed a very tiring thing, but there are simple ways for people to get exercise. Follow these simple solutions.

1. Park a Few Meters From Your Office

Surely, you’ll find that you want to park near to your office or in your office building in itself to avoid hassles, but parking a bit farther away from your destination actually helps you get exercise. It won’t make much difference to you, but to your body it does. Walking helps the body burn more calories. It is estimated that you burn 10 calories as you walk a few meters from where you parked your car to your office and vice versa.

2. Take the Stairs

Elevators are usually the best solutions to get up to your office, but if your office is situated just a few floors above, consider taking the stairs. Taking the stairs helps your body energize and use energy to consume calories in your body. It can beat the parking lot advice by 20-25 calories as you’re pulling your own weight too.

3. Walk To Convenience Stores

Care for a quick cigarette but the convenience store is two blocks away? Don’t even think about using your car. Walk to the convenience store. It helps burn more calories the same idea as with parking your vehicle far from your office.

4. Commute

Taking the bus early means walking to the nearest bus station you find. Most of the time you’ll find buses or train carriages full of people especially during rush hour. The added rushes, the time you spend standing up during the commute and walking to your office doesn’t only save you money, it also allows your body to use more calories. Doing all these tips five days a week can help you burn around 10-20 pounds per month if you yourself can keep a good food diet!

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Diet and Nutrition — No Comments
08
Jun 12

Healthy Benefits of Playing Baseball

Everyone knows that baseball is an athletic sport that involves running, throwing and batting for the whole duration of the game. It is a game packed with adrenaline rush especially during the last parts of the game. Like every other sport, baseball has many benefits for the body. Aside from having a healthy diet and staying in shape, in game, your body develops the following:

1. Upper Body Strength

Your body develops an immunity against back, neck, shoulder and chest pain as you play baseball. The entire game is concentrated mostly on the upper body and the legs. The upper body is important because as a batter or a pitcher, you will need your body to have the strength to throw the ball or bat the ball out of the field to respectively take out the batter or score against your opponent the best way possible.

2. Stamina

With the development of upper body strength, your stamina also increases. Baseball involves many bouts of running and catching, and you will need stamina to survive against fatigue in-field. You are practically ‘jogging’ around the field for hours until the game is up and a winner is declared. Imagine how many hours is that compared to an hour of jogging.

3. Leg Muscles

When jogging, you practically tone your leg muscles. But the continuous cycle of movement your legs do make it ‘warm-up’ to the routine, therefore making the development of leg muscles slower. In baseball, you run continuously at one point, jog at one point, run very fast at one point in the game and you even slide. The short spurts of acceleration affect the way your leg muscles react. While it may induce violent cramps (especially if you do not do stretching before games), it improves your leg muscles better than jogging.

4. Arm Muscles

Batting, catching, pitching. These are all the tasks of two hands in-game. The strength of your arms are very well improved in baseball games. For hours you’ll be relying on your hands to accomplish tasks and win the game.

5. Flexibility

Catching scenarios definitely help your body become more flexible and have quick responses to certain events during the game. The flexibility you have also develops your concentration, which helps you avoid being distracted in the outside world as in game, your concentration will take hours to win the game.

Diet and Nutrition — No Comments
01
May 12

Exercises to Prepare for Baseball Games

Let’s face it; baseball is one of those games that involve much running, precision, accuracy, you name it. If you can’t stay fit during the off-season of the games, don’t expect to make it to the baseball team. Staying fit for the games requires physical exercises, but more importantly discipline. Having the discipline to practice all these exercise routines and observe them properly should make you the team ace in no time.

Weight Lifting

The best way to begin your exercise is by introducing weights in the equation. However, unlike football where you will need a large build to suppress opponents, in baseball, you need endurance. Endurance is achieved when you use lighter weights and focus more on the repetition of the activity. Repetition is very important; it builds your muscles steadily while not too bulky. Most baseball players favour a leaner muscle build as it helps them run faster without the extra weight. It is important to treat your upper and lower body equally during weightlifting. Your pitching, hitting and running depend greatly on your legs too.

Stamina

Building stamina is the key of any sport. Having the stamina ensures that you have the competitiveness to stay in the game and maintain a great performance on your game review. Jog daily. Jogging sessions will last longer as your stamina builds. Remember to avoid any vices such as smoking. This can reduce the performance of your lungs as well as your stamina. It is ideal to jog at least three times a week and as much as a mile on every session. Remember to only jog on the same days you are weightlifting. Your body needs complete rest at intervals or you will burn yourself out.

Diet

Eating food that is high in protein and carbohydrates is the key to winning a game. Healthy food can develop your stamina and muscles faster. It will also condition your body automatically during work out sessions, which will be very helpful during your game.

Diet and Nutrition — No Comments
25
Apr 12

The Importance of Watching Your Diet as an Athlete

Nutrition begins with the foods you put in your body, proceeds to absorption, and culminates in elimination. Too often the advice we hear about nutrition focuses only on food choices. This is certainly important. But we react to foods differently. These tips can help you choose good foods , but also help you understand your personal metabolism.

If we want to be healthy, it is important that we avoid heavy consumption of soda. Soda can provide high amounts of sodium and calories, which directly relates to coronary disease and obesity. The best alternative is water. Drink water instead of soda and be prepared to see great changes in your health.

When you have that sugar craving after working out, don’t ignore it. It’s important to eat some sugar immediately, along with a form of protein (like a protein shake). Sugar aids your body in moving the protein efficiently to the muscle groups you just worked, helping you strengthen your muscles.

High fructose corn syrup, sugar, and other forms of carbohydrates are all essentially the same when it comes to nutrition. They might react in a different manner with the body, diffusing sugar faster, but they all carry similar calorie contents and behave like sugars. Starches like bread and pasta provide a large portion of carbohydrates which allows you to store up energy in fat cells.

Quinoa is a tremendously healthy whole grain, one of the healthiest. It has more complete protein than any other grain, although it is really a seed. Eating quinoa is a great way to get a dose of B vitamins, iron and potassium. You can use this healthy grain as an alternative to rice.

We hope these tips will help you sort out the bewildering array of food choices and find those best for you. They have also mentioned the value of consulting a professional nutritionist, and explained more about the intricacies of your digestive system. They are meant to help you give your body the right foods–both for good health and enjoyment.