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4 Reasons to Become a Coach

July 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Coaching is one of the most rewarding teaching careers you can choose. Along with teaching children about their bodies and fitness, there are 4 very good reasons to become a coach.

  1. Fight Childhood Obesity - Obesity is an epidemic in the United States. Children simply don’t get the proper nutrition or exercise to keep a safe weight. This leads to diabetes, and that leads to a shorter lifespan. A coach is well positioned to teach children about good nutrition while introducing them to sports that become lifelong activities for them.
  2. Be a Positive Role Model – Many kids lack a positive role model in their lives. They have no real direction, and therefore lack personal discipline. Coaches are uniquely positioned as a figure of positive authority. As a coach you can help direct an aimless kid while instilling self-esteem and good character traits. Look into online Bachelors programs to get your coaching certificate.
  3. Help Kids Develop a Successful Career Path - It is hard to be a champion team, and this is a great parallel to life itself. It is hard to be successful as an adult. As a coach, you can help kids adjust to the ups and downs of winning and losing. Kids love to win, but they also need to know what it means to lose. Then they need to know how to overcome that loss and become champions.
  4. Be a Life-long Mentor – When asked which teacher influenced them the most, many young adults say it was a coach. Coaches are more than teachers. They are life-long mentors who often guide their students for many years after they graduate from school and embark on their own lives.

Coaching is about more than sports. It’s about life.

 

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Maintain Proper Hydration During Your Marathon

July 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Preparing for a marathon involves more than constant training so that you can push your physical endurance to the limits. You also need to learn how your body responds to the heat and stress of a marathon. That means finding out how much water or other liquids you should drink during your run.

Dehydration is a Major Problem for Marathon Runners

You don’t need a medical degree to know that most runners worry about dehydration. Unfortunately, they might worry about it enough. Runners collapse from dehydration at just about every major race in the country. Clearly, they haven’t consumed enough liquids.

Try mixing one part Gatorade or some other sports drink with one part water. Anyone who has taken online college courses in health can tell you that the salt in sports drinks allows the hydration to stay in your body instead of letting you sweat it out immediately. The calories can also help fuel your race.

Too Much Hydration?

In your quest to stay hydrated, don’t forget that you can have too much of a good thing. When a runner consumes so much water that her sodium levels fall, it results in a condition called hyponatremia.

Lest you think that you don’t need to worry about hyponatremia, remember that a woman died from the condition during the 2002 Boston Marathon. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

Test your hydration limits by looking for signs of dehydration. Confusion, headaches, thirst, and dizziness can indicate the beginning of dehydration. Severe dehydration is marked by rapid heartbeat and breathing, lack of sweat and a very dry mouth. If you experience these symptoms, stop all physical activity and hydrate to keep yourself healthy.

 

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Strategy When Playing Together As A Team – A Certain Level Of Cohesion Is A Must

December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There is a huge difference in training as an individual and training as a team. The individual is most important in an individual sport. He or she is the person who stands to gain or lose the most depending on performance. Hence, the individual will either have the desire to make it big or will back out after discovering he or she does not have the ability to translate talent into success. The coach acts as a guide or mentor.

Since performance is completely dependent on a single individual, there is only so much that a coach can do from the outside. However, role of coach in training and practice becomes completely different when the person is a part of a team. For starters, the interpersonal dynamics have to be considered. People are very completely comfortable when working alone as there is no scope of discontentment or irritation.

However, when you are in a team with four or five other individuals, you will have to learn to work together. You can afford to be self centered in individual sports. However, being self centered in a team sport can backfire if your teammates end up on the losing side. History is filled with instances where self centered individuals have worked well in a team environment by ensuring that the team won.

However, nobody likes a selfish person who gets what he or she wants without caring about the team. This mentality must percolate down in the training process as well. If you focus on your fitness and ignore the requirements and needs of your team members, chances are high that you will get booted out without any delay.

Another important factor that one has to consider is the level of comfort between various team members. A team with zero personal comfort between members will not win when against a team that is not only good on the field but is also a very close knit unit.

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Team Building – A Very Important Part Of Training For Team Sports

December 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Good coaches always focus on team building exercises. When you are training as a team, it is important to understand that you will be operating against your instinct. Any and every sportsperson who has invested a lot of energy and effort in the training process will want good results. To find one’s effort being nullified because of flaws in other team member can be very painful.

It takes a lot to understand that working as a team requires accepting things that may seem unfair. The presence of a weak link should not just be tolerated. Rather, all other team members should take steps to encourage the weakest link to improve. This is the reason why we see many average athletes coming together and performing well as a team while a team full of Prima Donnas and individually brilliant athletes often fail to make it big.

Team building exercises are essential because working as a team under high pressure and high stress environment requires a lot of practice. It is important to adapt one’s expectations and desires to that of the team. At the end of the day, the individual must understand one’s role in the team and perform it well. All this should be a part of the training process. Nowadays, corporate agencies are borrowing exercises from sporting activities to build a sense of fraternity and cohesion in their team members.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that team building is a waste of time. To presume that everything will fall in place as long as each and every person does his or her job well will not work. There may be instances where you may have to put in that extra effort to cover for your team members who has failed. Not just in sports but it is equally true for other team works also like online trading broker and others. In most cases, teams succeed because they have persons who are not just good but are prepared to be better when the team requires them to be.

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Training And Performing As A Team – Be Wary Of Cliques In The Team

December 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There are certain basic rules and norms that must be followed when one is training together as a team. A certain level of bonding is expected between each and every member of the team. However, you certainly will have some team members with whom you are closer. This is perfectly acceptable and even advisable.

To have the same level of comfort with half a dozen individuals does not make sense. On the other hand, having closes sense of friendship or bonding with one of two members is often beneficial for the team. At the same time, it is important to make sure nobody is left out. People do not play sports just for commercial and monetary benefits. There is also a question of self respect and satisfaction.

At the end of the day, working together and sweating it out for success is what makes the effort worthwhile. If any team members feels isolated and left out, it is only going to backfire on the team’s performance. Hence, while close bonding between one and two members is acceptable, it should not end up in formation of a clique.

A team that solves its problems and issues off the field is the one that will perform well on the field. The training process should not only focus on the best case scenario but also on the worst case scenario. Sudden injury to a fellow team member and poor performance by a substitute should not be treated as an excuse. Rather, the training process should be so comprehensive that remaining members are in a position to step it up when needed.

To ensure this, it is important to identify where you differ with other team members. To know that you disagree with your team on specific points and to have the ability to deal with these disagreements in a professional manner is very important.

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Training Together As A Team – Important For The Coach To Get The Strategy Right

December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The training process of a team invariably consists of certain procedures, routines and drills. The goal of training is to ensure each and every individual reaches minimum level of physical and mental fitness. From this point onwards, onus is upon the coach to identify the best individualized and specialized form of training. A person who is a natural athlete should be trained differently as compared to one who is not. A person with self doubts will require not just physical training but mental conditioning as well.

If the member is very good, then the coach can easily step it up and try to make him or her the star player of the team. On the other hand, if any member is just not up to the mark, the coach can go out of the way and set up a training regimen that will give the member a last shot at staying in the team.

This means that the training process should not only focus on winning the next game but also on converting the existing unit into a winning unit at all times. Needless to say, there are too many variable factors involved for any team to successfully win all the time. It is only an idealistic goal to ensure the training process caters to the specific requirements of individual.

Training is not just about lots of exercise and drills. It is also about smart changes in the diet. A person who does not enjoy a good health should resort to sports drinks to boost health. On the other hand, it is advisable to ensure team members do not become too muscular for their own good. Excessive muscle by spending lots of time pumping irons and consuming sports drinks may backfire where flexibility and agility is important. The team training process should consider all this and more.

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Individual vs. Team Sports: Benefits and Downsides

December 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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There is debate as to which types of sports are better, particularly for children who are just getting started to be set up for a lifetime of good exercise habits. If you encourage your child into the wrong type of sport, he may be turned off from them entirely. Some parents worry that a child that prefers individual activities may lack the social skills that learning a team sport can provide. The fact is that any sport is beneficial to your child and both have their ups and downs.

Individual sports, such as swimming, distance running, dancing, and golfing provide the same physical challenges as other team sports. Athletes that play individual sports are often less competitive with other people, but still relish in the challenge that their particular sport offers. Instead, they are competitive with themselves. Competition starts when they square off against other individuals, such as in a marathon. Individual sports might even take more discipline, because you do not have other teammates to help encourage you along the way.

Sportsmanship and team-building skills are two life skills that may not be acquired through individual sports. Due to these facts, you will need to have your child find some other method of learning these skills, whether it be at home or through a group activity.

Togetherness is a common theme associated with team sports. Every member of a team plays a role, which is something that a child can relate to in other areas of life as he grows older. Without every member, a team is no longer a team.

Team sports can also be more costly as they require more equipment. This is especially true as your child grows rapidly during the adolescent years. For instance, a football uniform and gear is much more expensive than shoes and clothing needed for track and field. However, cost itself should not keep you from enrolling your child into a particular sport. There are accredited online colleges which provides courses on sports management and skills.

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Equipment Requirements: Which Team Sport is the Most Expensive to Play?

December 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Football shoulder pads.

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Major team sports, including hockey, basketball, soccer, football, and baseball all require different equipment from clothing to gear. If you are new to a sport, the basics can seem astronomical in cost. It is not wise to base your choice of sport on cost.  But like it is good to hire a tax services company to be informed about how much you will have to pay for taxes, it is always good to know the facts on costs in case you wish to play multiple sports.

Football is the most expensive of team sports to play. For your safety, you are required to wear protective gear such as helmets and shoulder pads. You also need a uniform on top of that as well as gloves and cleats. Do not be surprised if even the most basic non-fancy football equipment runs $400 or more.

Hockey is similar in cost to football, as the protective gear is similar. Hockey skates are another expense. Although the skates themselves do not have to be replaced as often as shoes do, you will have to frequently have the blades sharpened to avoid accidents on the ice. Hockey sticks are usually provided by the team.

Baseball is not as expensive as the aforementioned team sports, because the only protective gear you really wear are helmets. Plus, you are not likely required to wear one throughout the entire game. Little leaguers may rotate helmets between batters to save costs. However, you will likely need to invest into your own fitted mitt and bat if you have a certain preference.

Basketball and soccer are generally the least expensive of team sports. Aside form uniforms, you need shoes for basketball and cleats for soccer. The type of footwear you can choose from ranges in price. For example, there are basketball shoes available for hundreds of dollars, but they are not necessarily as effective as an $80 pair.

Also keep in mind that the more you advance in a particular sport, the more you travel with your team. Depending on what level you are at, you may have to front the costs yourself.

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