Monthly Archives: May 2012

Deliberate Practice and Intent – Daily Challenge 5/9

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Deliberate Practice

Practice is the single most important factor in the control of learning.  Some might think the more we practice the more we learn, but if there is no quality or substance in that practice then learning is slow and tedious.  It has been suggested that at least 10 years of effortful practice under optimal training conditions is required to reach international-level performance (Ericsson, 1996, 2003; Ericson et al., 1993).  Optimal conditions require a well-defined task of appropriate difficulty for the athlete, information feedback, and sufficient opportunities for repetition and correction of errors.  Deliberate practice is a training activity that contains all of these elements (Williams, 2010).

Intent

Deliberate practice isn’t enough to enable athletes to learn a skill correctly.  For a practice to be effective the athletes must be motivated to learn.  Athletes must practice with the intent to improve.  Rowing Fitness allows for this by providing daily competition so that athletes come to practice constantly motivated to improve their performance.  Deliberate practice and the motivation to improve through daily competition is what Rowing Fitness seeks to provide and teach.

Daily Challenge 5/9:

Pick a goat and put in 10 minutes of deliberate practice.

A goat can be any skill in fitness, rowing, or life that is currently a challenge or weakness for you.  Try to focus on one or two aspects of that goat that you can control and improve.
Share what goat you’re working on and what your focus and motivation was during the 10 minutes!

References

Ericsson, K. A. (2003). Development of elite performance and deliberate practice: An update from the perspective of the expert performance approach. In J. L. Starkes & K. A. Ericsson (Eds.), Expert performance in sports: Advances in research on sport expertise (pp. 49-83). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Ericsson, K. A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance: An introduction to some of the issues. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 1-50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.

Williams, J. M. (2010). Applied sport psychology (J. M. Williams, Ed., 6th ed.).  Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.

High Five! – Daily Challenge 5/8

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The High FIve is a tried and true method to get Awesome!  It is used in sports to substitute people in and out of games.  
Coaches use it to motivate players before competition and afterward as a form of congratulations.  Teammates get creative and make up crazy secret high fives.  Parents give children high fives for accomplishing things.  Also, if you think about it, when a baby finally learns to give a High Five it’s like they’ve joined society and have plugged into the joy of life.

Renegade Rowing is all about enjoying the journey and finding your passion in everyday life.  Get excited about your day and share your passion with someone in the form of a High Five!


Daily Challenge 5/8:

High Five the first 5 people you see after reading this post!

Share your experience!

The Power of Squats – Daily Challenge 5/7

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The Air Squat

Sarah D’s Firsthand Experience with the Air Squat

The Squat is one of the most important Functional Movements.  Practicing squats daily, even if they’re just air squats with no weight, can prolong our ability to be independent beings as we grow old.  Everyone wants to be able to sit down and stand up whether it’s to the couch or the porcelain throne.

Functional movements are movements that mimic motor recruitment patterns found in everyday life.  They tend to be compound movements involving multiple joints.  For regular people, that means sitting and standing or picking something up off the ground.  Movements also known as squatting or deadlifting.  At Renegade Rowing we learn, train, and continually develop functional movements because they develop the strength and power needed in the sport of rowing and life, but also because it would be impossible to live and row without them.

Daily Challenge 5/7:

Perform 10 Air Squats every two hours throughout the day.

Share your experience in the comments!

Sit Ups are bad for your back? – Daily Challenge 5/4, 5/5, 5/6

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Core Stability

Sit Ups are bad for your back?  What?  Yes, think of your back, especially your lumbar spine (low back), as a credit card.  You can only bend that credit card forward and backward so many times before eventually it snaps.  Sit Ups put excessive compressive loading on your spinal discs and can easily lead to disc bulge and disc herniation.

Rowers with no posture or core support end up bending from their lower back rather than pivoting from the hips, which leads to all the horror stories of slipped discs in rowing.  Different coaches may or may not have you reach from the thoracic spine, but a common theme that any coach will agree with is keeping the lumbar region stiff, supported, and protected.  Rowing is all about the legs after all!

That being said, without core stability it is impossible to transfer the force from your legs to the oar and move the boat at any type of speed.  This idea of core stability and the ability to connect your feet to your hands through the core is a skill needed in life and fitness as well.  There is no way to do an Olympic Lift like the Clean without having a solid core to work from.

From a leader in backs and biomechanics…

Daily Challenges for the Weekend!

5/4 – Complete 10 McGill Curl Ups.

Make sure to take at least three regular breaths on each curl up so that you’re not relying on your diaphragm and the inter-abdominal pressure created when you hold your breath.  We want to work and strengthen our core stability.  Share what you felt and think about the curl up!

5/5 – Complete 10 Bird Dogs.

Make sure to keep a neutral spine and continuously breathe.  Imagine your back is a dinner table while you move through the bird dog.  Don’t spill that home cooked meal on the floor!  If it’s to easy try to draw squares with your hand and foot.

5/6 – Complete 10 Side Bridges (Hold for 10 seconds each side)

Ensure you keep the hip up and inline with your head and feet.  Also, don’t break at the hip, you won’t be working those core muscles if you do.  Instead think about gently pushing the hips forward and squeezing the glutes.

Be sure to share your experience with each of these in the comments section!

If you have questions let us know!

Color Color Color! – Daily Challenge 5/3

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Here’s this weeks Nutrition Post and Challenge from our Renegade Dietitian – Alex Black!

COLOR COLOR COLOR!

Skittles candy made the slogan “Taste the Rainbow” famous with edgy ads marketing their colorful candy. But the same idea applies to fruits, vegetables, meats, and other foods too. Colorful foods like fruits and vegetables have higher concentrations of vitamins than some plainer foods like white bread, fried potatoes, or baked goods, and certain colored foods have higher concentrations of particular vitamins or minerals than others. Nowadays many foods like cereal and juices are fortified with certain vitamins and minerals, but fruits and vegetables still provide the most variety of nutrients in a single item without any added sugars or preservatives. For example, many cereals are fortified with small amounts of B vitamins, folic acid, and in some cases iron, but if you eat a cup or two of spinach you can get vitamin A, folic acid, iron, calcium and fiber.  And like we talked about Friday, food is always better than a multivitamin, because the body only absorbs about 10% of the nutrients from a vitamin pill. The best way to be sure you get all the nutrients you need is to eat a balanced diet with plenty of colorful foods. Here area few examples of vitamin and color combinations:

ORANGE = Vitamin A and carotenoids

Vitamin A plays an important role in maintaining healthy vision and bone growth and helps regulate the immune system, allowing it to better fight off infections. It also aids in keeping the surface lining of your eyes, respiratory tract, and digestive system healthy. You can find vitamin A in small amounts in milk, cheese, and eggs, but orange-tinted foods like sweet potato, carrots and carrot juice, and cantaloupe have over 100% of the daily value per serving. Other good sources of vitamin A include spinach, kale, apricot, mango, broccoli bell peppers, and papaya.

GREEN = Folate

Folate is a B vitamin that is important for making new cells and is very important during times of growth and pregnancy. Your body needs folate to make DNA (a key component in your genes). Folate is also needed to make red blood cells and is important, along with iron, for preventing anemia. Anemia causes tiredness and lack of energy and can negatively affect your performance. Many foods are fortified with folate, but some good green sources include spinach, asparagus, broccoli, avocado, and peas. You can also find it in fortified breakfast cereal and lentils. In addition to folate, green vegetables provide a variety of vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, and fiber.

RED = zinc and iron

Iron is a mineral that is part of many proteins and enzymes (enzymes are proteins that help speed up important reactions in the body). Iron is most well-known for its role in hemoglobin, a component of red blood cells that help with the transport of oxygen throughout the body. Without enough iron you can develop anemia, which occurs when your red blood cells don’t have enough hemoglobin. Anemia causes symptoms like fatigue, decreased ability to concentrate, trouble maintaining body temperature, and poor immune system function.

Zinc is an essential component in many reactions in the body including those that keep your immune system healthy, help the body make proteins (part of muscle), help wounds heal, and is important for growth during adolescence. You need to eat zinc regularly because your body has no real way of storing it.

Zinc and iron are both found in red meat such as beef and buffalo, but you can also find both in oysters, pork loin, and chicken. Other sources of zinc are yogurt and cashews and other sources of iron are crab, tuna, and turkey.

Daily Challenge 5/3:

Eat a meal with at least 3 colors.

You can mix them up in a salad, have a meal or snack with a few different items, or blend it all together in a smoothie. Let us know what you ate, or take a picture and share it! Below you’ll find a recipe to get you started.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK:

Sweet Summer Salad

1 breast of chicken, grilled or sautéed with cooking spray

¼ cup feta cheese

½ cup strawberries

1-2 slices red onion

2 cups lettuce (romaine, spinach, or a combination)

2 TB walnuts or sliced almonds

1 TB sunflower seeds

Mix together in a salad bowl or plate and enjoy. If you don’t have sunflower seeds or nuts you can leave them off. You can also add bell peppers or shredded carrots if you have them. This tastes great as is, but if you need salad dressing the best option is light balsamic vinaigrette. This salad makes a great lunch paired with a piece of fruit or some baked sweet potato.