Get Yourself Ready for the Olympics: The Training Geek Way.

It is coming. The London Olympics are so close and we are all excited to see records being broken or even simply anticipating to support the athletes we know who are participating in the Games. But are we ready to do all that? Even though we may not be the athletes who put their bodies through the intense training and the crazy athletic performances in their events, we as spectators need to prepare ourselves for the toll that we will experience watching the Olympics. So here is a different perspective to getting yourself and your body and mind ready for the Olympics:

Work on our postural muscles.

"Shoulders back", "long spine" etc. Working harder during this time to maintain good posture is important. As spectators, we are always in a single position when watching the athletes perform: sitting down. If we do not maintain good sitting posture, we put ourselves in a bad position for the duration of 30 days, considering that we are going to watch the action everyday. So a simple workout like some core stabilization exercises or postural muscle activation exercises will take you a long long way during this exciting period. Not to forget (from my weightlifting perspective), your pulls (or deadlifts) and squats will help with maintaining posture as well (in a heavy way).

Do lots of stretching especially for the posterior chain.

Why do I say that? What position would you be in when watching the Olympics? Sitting down most of the time right? So, stretching muscles like your hamstrings and glutes are critical to maintaining back health when we are going to be couch potatoes for an extended period of time. By keeping our muscles nice and loose, we would not end up tightening up into a slouch position and end up straining our lower back. Good time for some yoga or pilates at home just to maintain flexibility and mobility and best part is you can do it while watching the Olympics.

Ensure proper recovery techniques.

Sleep deprivation has been found to provide the same amount of stress to the body as exercise would. This means that if you are up catching the Games and neglecting your sleep, you would end up feeling as fatigued as going through an intense workout. So if you do not ensure that you sleep enough, your body is definitely going to take a toll from the Games. Also, with your attention devoted to the Games, our regular routine gets messed up. Meals are at irregular hours because you do not want to miss a certain event or you hardly drink any water or might even be drinking some other forms of liquid (a beer always goes well with television). So your hydration levels and nutrition plan would be thrown out of the window. So ensuring that you maintain your recovery techniques in terms of nutrition, hydration and rest is definitely critical for you to pace yourself through the Olympics.

So, want to make sure you enjoy the Olympics? Bear in mind these tips and hopefully they will help with keeping you in shape while supporting our athletes as they put themselves on the line for the medals.

Picture by Jason Lee (Reuters).

Stay Ready and Keep Watching The Olympics,

The Training Geek.