Congratulations to Madelyn Cheatham for being chosen as the Hartselle Encore Athlete of the Month! Madelyn is a 6’1″ (Or 5’13” as she says it) Junior at Hartselle High School, and plays vollyball for the Lady Tigers, as well as travel ball for RCVC out of Huntsville. She hopes to play volleyball on scholarship for the University of Alabama after graduation.
At the ATC conventions many of the topics are around concussions; “how do you properly diagnose an athlete with a concussion?” “What are the signs and symptoms?” We wanted to help inform athletes, parents, and coaches on what exactly a concussion entails and what to do if you think you have one. Below are two lists, one for adults and one for children, that will help you be able to recognize the signs of a concussion. If you have signs of a concussion, please see a doctor immediately for further instruction and proper procedures.
*These two lists can be found at WebMD.com and MayoClinic.org.
“It is not always easy to know if someone has a concussion. You don’t have to pass out (lose consciousness) to have a concussion. Symptoms of a concussion range from mild to severe and can last for hours, days, weeks, or even months. If you notice any symptoms of a concussion, contact your doctor.” – WebMD
Symptoms of a concussion fit into four main categories:
Symptoms in Young children:
Sources:
“Concussion – Overview.” . Healthwise, Incorporated, 29 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 June 2014. <http://www.webmd.com/brain/tc/traumatic-brain-injury-concussion-overview>.
Mayo Clinic Staff. “Concussion Symptoms.” . N.p., 2 Apr. 2014. Web. 25 June 2014. <http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/basics/symptoms/con-20019272>.
“What if all it took to improve your running immeasurably was a few minutes marching in place?
In a 2011 New York Times Magazine feature, Christopher McDougall, author ofBorn to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen experimented with just that.
“I was leafing through the back of an out-of-print book, a collection of runners’ biographies called ‘The Five Kings of Distance,’ when I came across a three-page essay from 1908 titled ‘W. G. George’s Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise,’” he writes. “According to legend, this single drill turned a 16 year old with almost no running experience into the foremost racer of his day.”
Walter Goodall George’s earliest sporting interests were rugby and cycling, but he went on to win over 1,000 amateur prizes and races and set long-standing records as a professional runner. “He became unbeatable over the middle distances in an era before training became scientific,” the Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography writes, all while pioneering his own personal brand of “scientific” training, namely the 100-Up. In 1878, at age 19, he wrote a plan to break the then-world record for the mile — and proceeded to run nearly exactly his plan’s predicted time in 1886. In addition to his 100-Up essay cited by McDougall, he also published a short book on the exercise in 1913, according to the Oxford DNB.
George’s 100-Up routine is divided into two parts, the minor and the major. The minor involves standing with both feet about eight inches apart “and your arms cocked in running position,” McDougall writes. Then, raise one knee at a time to hip height, bringing it back down lightly to its original position. All that’s left after that is to repeat this movement 100 times. The major involves the same movement at a higher speed. McDougall quotes George: “The body must be balanced on the ball of the foot, the heels being clear of the ground and the head and body being tilted very slightly forward…. Now, spring from the toe, bringing the knee to the level of the hip…. Repeat with the other leg and continue raising and lowering the legs alternately. This action is exactly that of running.”
Sounds a little too simple, no?
Experienced runners will likely recognize these movements as the tried-and-true running drill commonly referred to as high knees, a simple way to up strength and endurance of the hip flexor and quad, according to New York Road Runners (NYRR). Straightforward as it looks, high knees –and other running drills — canhelp you become a better runner, says NYRR coach John Honerkamp. The 100-Up is essentially exaggerated running form, and performing 100 repetitions can help build muscle memory during a similar state of fatigue that a runner might experience at the end of a tough workout or a grueling race, he says.
But it’s the focus on form that’s most important. “You’re reinforcing poor form if you’re doing it improperly,” says Honerkamp. “Once you stop doing it correctly, you shouldn’t do it at all.” That means concentrating not just on returning each foot to its starting point, but paying attention to arm swing, keeping the core stable and landing close to your center of gravity on the balls of your feet every single time, he says. For most 100-Up beginners, 100 reps is a long-term goal. Aim to start with maybe 20 repetitions instead — or however many you can complete with perfect form.
Don’t expect to see immediate results, either, Honerkamp warns. Running on your toes, typically considered more efficient because you’re spending less time on the ground, may be the end goal, but heel strikers need to ease into adaptations. “I worry about people trying to drastically change,” says Honerkamp. “It’s something to work on and think about, but don’t over-think or overcorrect,” he says.
Whether or not you devote yourself to the 100-Up for life or simply dabble in running form drills periodically, incorporating focus on form into a warmup or regular training routine is a good idea, says Honerkamp. “People skip [warmups] because they’re busy getting out of the door,” he says, “but five minutes probably will go a long way.”
Source: Klein, S. (2014, June 4). The One Exercise That Just Might Change Your Running Forever. . Retrieved June 20, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/04/100-up-running_n_5406664.html
Encore is proud to be a sponsor of the Distinguished Young Women’s program, and is excited about the 57th Annual Nationals competition, June 26-28, 2014!
“For more than 56 years, Mobile, Alabama has been the home of Distinguished Young Women, formerly the America’s Junior Miss scholarship program. Each year fifty of the nation’s brightest and most accomplished young women visit the Gulf Coast to compete for more than $100,000 in cash scholarships and the opportunity to represent the program as the Distinguished Young Woman of America.“
We would like to congratulate all of the 2014 National Finalists and wish them good luck as they make their way to Mobile next week! To see a list of all the contestants, please follow the link: http://www.ajm.org/programs/national_finals/participants/
Parents: David & Nancy Powell
College Preference: University of Alabama
Career Goals: Physician
Talent: Dance – Jazz (So Much Better from Legally Blonde: The Musical, by Choreographed by Jamie Grimes)
Parents: Alvin Darby & Vonda Reeves-Darby
College Preference: Harvard, Yale, or Stanford
Career Goals: Chemist or Chemical Researcher
Talent: Instrumental – Piano (Rolling Thunder, by Lionel Yu)
Encore ATC’s were proud to covered Rashad Johnson‘s 4th Annual Free Youth Camp at Sulligent High School, June 13th and 14th!
Pictured left to right:
Ryan Cooke, Nikki McBrayer, Rashad Johnson and Drew Battle.
Congratulations to Eian Headley and the Central Alabama Crush 10U state Champions from Clanton, AL! Eian Headley will be 11 on June 22nd and has 6 home runs this season. Last year, Eian was picked as MVP and attended the All-Star World Series where he won the Home Run Derby in his age division. His older brother and sister, who also play baseball and softball, have been his mentors and both work with him on the side. Eian and the team have been playing baseball together since they were 5 years old, and are headed to the World Series in Panama City Beach, FL June 23-27th. The coaches of team are Head Coach: Jeff Green, Asst Coach: Oliver Headley, Jeremy Baker, Chris Miller, and Jamey McCauley.
Eian Headley
Central Alabama Crush 10U State Champions
Superfoods for your Heart:
“Salmon, oatmeal, blueberries, dark chocolate, citrus fruit, soy, tomatoes, nuts, legumes, extra-vergin olive oil, red wine, green tea, broccoli, spinach, cale, coffee, and flax seed, avocado, and pomegranate.”
Superfoods for you Skin:
“Almonds, Asparagus, Avocado, Broccoli, Cantaloupe, Carrots, Citrus, Kiwi, Olive Oil, Papaya, Spinach, and Apples.”
Superfoods for you Overall Health:
“Beta-carotene and other carotenoids: apricots, asparagus, beets, broccoli, cantaloupe, carrots, corn, green peppers, kale, mangoes, turnip and collard greens, nectarines, peaches, pink grapefruit, pumpkin, squash, spinach, sweet potato, tangerines, tomatoes, and watermelon
Vitamin C: berries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cantaloupe, cauliflower, grapefruit, honeydew, kale, kiwi, mango, nectarine, orange, papaya, snow peas, sweet potato, strawberries, tomatoes, and red, green, or yellow peppers
Vitamin E: broccoli, carrots, chard, mustard and turnip greens, mangoes, nuts, papaya, pumpkin, red peppers, spinach, and sunflower seeds
These foods are also rich in antioxidants:
Other antioxidants that can help keep you healthy include:
Zinc: oysters, red meat, poultry, beans, nuts, seafood, whole grains, fortified cereals, and dairy products. Also, Selenium: Brazil nuts, tuna, beef, poultry, fortified breads, and other grain products.”
Sources:
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/antioxidants-your-immune-system-super-foods-optimal-health, Health & Wellness @ActivelyFlT, and http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20720182_1,00.html.
“In the not-so-distant past, your food grew on a farm. Meals were home-cooked (on an actual fire, in an actual stove). The outdoors was your gym. Watches? They tracked time, not activity. Blue light, texting neck, and the masses getting supersized by McDonald’s were issues for a future generation.
Yet somewhere along the way, conventional wisdom got muddled with modern mechanisms. And the results weren’t pretty. We became much more sedentary and got fatter. And slower. And weaker (seriously). At the table, our food began to look less and less like it ever came from the ground.
“Western society is the most overfed but malnourished, sick society due to the imbalance of physical activity and real nourishment, says Stacy Sims, MSc, Ph.D., co-founder of Osmo Nutrition. “The body is designed to move all the time and use food that supports health, not quick hits of ‘feel good’ sugar and fat.”
So how do we go back? By homing in on the fundamentals and returning to the principles that have stood the test of time. Here, 10 laws of fitness your grandfather would approve of.
When Charles Atlas promised the men of America that he’d transform them from weaklings into masses of muscle, the fitness industry was forever changed. But “Dynamic Tension”—for all its faults—also had its strengths. It was a program based on the basics: bodyweight. As the legend goes, Atlas studied lions, noticing that animals had no exercise equipment. They had no gyms. Instead, they pitted one muscle against another. And dropping down and giving 10—or 20 or 50—should still have its place in your routine. “With proper form, your pushups and pull-ups are still the best exercises you can do. They engage your core with a functional push-pull action,” says Sims.
Focus on form. If your technique is all wrong, you might be doing more harm than good. Why? Misalignment means the biomechanics of movement are out of whack. The result: increased stress in different joints and potential muscle imbalances—the perfect setup for overuse, chronic pain, and injury, Sims says.
But mastering the “how to” isn’t all about taking preventative measures. “The other aspect of proper form is that you end up using the smaller, stabilizing muscles giving you core stability for daily movement,” Sims explains. And if you’re engaging your muscles all day—with good posture (yes, you really should pull your shoulders back), or by perfecting a pushup—you’re building core strength without realizing it. Slouched over, resting on your elbows, back twisted? It should be no surprise that you make grandpa noises when getting up from your chair.
Athletes have been around far longer than Gatorade and the new class of beverages strewn across supermarket shelves (ones that promise to replenish, hydrate, and boost performance). And when a run was no more than a run, athletes didn’t swear by high-concentration sugary liquids.
When a workout isn’t long enough or intense enough to result in severe fatigue, plain old water works, says Matt Fitzgerald, sports nutritionist, and author of thebook Diet Cults. “In fact, it’s not necessary to drink anything in most workouts lasting less than an hour,” he adds. That’s not to say that drink scientists aren’t onto something: “You need a small amount of sodium to actually pull water into the body,” says Sims. That’s why low-concentration approaches (Nuun, SOS, and Sims’ OSMO) have become popular.
Rising with the sun means more hours to move and more hours to eat well. “One of the overlooked benefits of eating breakfast is that it provides an early and additional opportunity to make progress toward meeting daily quotas for high-quality food types such as vegetables and fruit,” says Fitzgerald.
It’s not hard to start knocking out nutritional requirements before your day begins either—one serving of vegetables or fresh berries added to whole-grain cereal—can make all the difference, says Fitzgerald.
Just remember composition, says Sims. A croissant and a coffee won’t cut it: “You wake up with high levels of cortisol (the belly fat hormone), and adding sugar and caffeine will perpetuate cortisol’s actions,” she says.
You won’t find the recipe for a healthy diet on the back of a package. Change the way a food naturally exists, and you change the way your body absorbs it. “There is a disconnect between the marketing claims of pre-packaged food and real food made from scratch. And food can’t just be reduced to single compounds,” says says Allen Lim, Ph.D., founder of Skratch Labs.
To that extent, Fitzgerald has spent time analyzing world-class endurance athletes—a group as fit and healthy as any population on earth—finding a simple trend: “what I call ‘agnostic healthy eating,’” he says. What that means: eating inculturally normal ways, but not avoiding food groups entirely; filling meals with vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish and high-quality meat, whole grains, and dairy; and only sparingly eating low-quality refined grains, processed meat, and sweets. “If this formula is good enough for athletes who place tremendous demands on their bodies, it’s good enough for us,” he says.
The most sophisticated and reliable fitness monitoring device that exists—or will ever exist—isn’t a device at all: it’s your brain, says Fitzgerald. “If your body needs rest, your brain will communicate that to your conscious awareness in the form of feelings of fatigue and low motivation,” he explains. The symptom: a greater perceived effort: “If the body is fatigued or if its performance capacity is compromised, the brain will have to work harder to get the same level of output, and the greater the effort the exerciser will perceive.”
On the other hand? If your body is responding well to your training and is ready for more hard work, your brain will let you know that too in no uncertain terms, Fitzgerald says.
“The more you enjoy your training, the more you’ll put into it,” says Fitzgerald. “And the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.” The research agrees: Your best efforts will likely come when you’re having the most fun, a 2012 study by Alan St. Clair Gibson of the University of Worcester found. Find something you like and the addiction will come naturally: “Research indicates that the association of ‘fun’ with things you do perpetuates stress release, making you want to go back for more,” says Sims.
One of the problems with the evolution of cross-training is that you can go hard every day. The problem: That’s not what your body needs. The key is finding an easy-hard cycle you can give into, says Michael Joyner, M.D., and physiologist and anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic. “People have forgotten to make the hard days harder and the easy days easier.” Think in terms of “active rest”—a 3- or 4-mile run for a distance runner, calisthenics, jumping rope, or classic conditioning drills, Joyner says. “That’s really important.”
Aerodynamics, biomechanics, breathability—they’re words that get a lot of ink (on labels, in magazines, and in the scripts of gear salespeople across the world). And yeah, tech has its perks. Breathable fabrics make long and hot hikes more bearable. But will your gear always make the difference?
A recent University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill study found only 14 percent of runners who laced up in lightweight kicks reported injury in a year’s time; almost half of runners in traditional sneakers did. So plus one for minimalism? Not so fast. The same University of North Carolina research revealed that people who chose traditional shoes landed differently from those who donned the minimalist shoes (on their heel or mid-foot versus on their forefoot).
The point: Everyone is different. And gear that works is subjective. “Good gear makes things more enjoyable, and most importantly prevents injury,” says Sims. So don’t skimp on no-brainers: proper bike fit, shoes, and protective items—but don’t become slaves to them.
Take this in the most expansive and philosophical way: Build movement into all aspects of your life—work, home, play—and throughout your life. You name the disease and exercise is the cure. “It’s proven to reduce the likelihood of weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis,sexual dysfunction, and a host of infectious diseases,” says Fitzgerald. Work out, and not only will you be healthier, but happier, more confident, and (bonus!) smarter, Fitzgerald adds.”
Source: http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bodywork/the-fit-list/10-Timeless-Fitness-Laws.html
“Laura Newton, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), offers these 10 suggestions:
Plan ahead: “Choose foods to take in the car, eat before arriving at the airport and consider the options available upon arrival at the destination,” Newton said in a UAB news release this week.
Keep it on ice: Put a cooler in the car and pack it with such healthy treats as fruit, yogurt, water, cut-up vegetables and sandwiches on whole-grain bread.
Eat this, not that: Make the best food choices you can when you’re on the road. At convenience stores, go for yogurt, fresh fruit, fruit cups or nuts (which are good in moderation.) At burger joints, the most simply prepared items are the healthiest choices, according to Newton. She suggests a plain hamburger with lettuce and tomatoes or a grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes. You can also hold the mayo and dressing and choose kid-size portions.
Don’t eat out all the time: If possible, rent a hotel room or vacation home with a refrigerator and stock it with good food. “It can be easier to eat healthful meals when cooking yourself,” Newton said.
Moderation, moderation: Try not to miss meals, because this can cause you to overeat at the next meal. “Pack a cooler for the beach and take water, fruit, maybe some nuts and string cheese,” Newton said. “This type of mini-meal is easily portable and can help tide people over until they can have a regular meal.”
Go ahead, be good to yourself: Don’t feel you have to completely give up favorite vacation foods. “You should definitely indulge, but in moderation, maybe one small treat a day or one splurge day during the week,” Newton said. “Ask for a small portion of the regional favorite or order from the appetizer menu.”
Start restaurant meals with salad or veggies: “This will help fill you up so you don’t eat more of a higher-calorie item,” Newton said. “Ask for extra vegetables or substitute another vegetable in place of a starch.”
Search the web: Look online for restaurants in the area you’re visiting. Review the menus in advance and decide what to eat before you go.
Drink lots of water: People often mistake dehydration for hunger, according to Newton.
Stay active! “This doesn’t need to be strenuous exercise, such as running or lifting weights, but do go sightseeing on foot or take a hike, swim in the pool or at the beach,” Newton said.”
Source: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2014/05/post_1150.html
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Encore Rehabilitation, Inc. 