Want an Athletic Body? Work towards it

Work your way towards an athletic body

How often do you find yourself GLARING at an Olympic or pro athlete on your television screen or staring at the fitness model on the cover of a popular health and fitness magazine, AMAZED by their physique and level of leanness, WONDERING to yourself if you could ever look as good as they do?.

The easiest way to build an athletic body is to be an athlete, but if that’s not you, there are a few other tactics you can employ to build an athletic body.

Squats

Squats are the king of the lower body exercises. Any athlete who needs power in his lower body is doing squats. Don’t be one of those people with a built upper body and chicken legs. Squats target a number of different muscle groups all over the body: the core muscles including the abdominals and lower back, the glutes, and the thigh muscles. Hit the squats hard and hit them often.

Lifting weights

Lift weights like an athlete. Rather than wasting time on biceps curls and leg extensions, athletes utilize explosive full-body movements. Dead lifts, thrusters, clean and jerks, snatches and all variations of squats can effectively target and strengthen nearly every muscle in your body. Strength train three to four days a week with at least one day of rest between sessions.

Perform two to four sets of each exercise. The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends using 85 percent of your one-repetition max for six reps or less to improve strength or six to 12 reps to build muscle.

Chin ups

Chin ups are common exercise for many athletes as part of their training to improve pulling movements; they will also help you get that nice V-shape we all love.

Upper-Body Supersets

If you’re looking to really challenge your upper body, it’s time to try supersets, which are two exercises performed back to back without a rest. If you’d like to fatigue your biceps, for example, complete 15 bicep hammer curls before immediately completing 15 resistance-band bicep curls.

Sprints

Sprints are another biggie in an athlete’s training; athletes not only want power and explosiveness but as the old saying go “speed kills!” Speed can be a huge asset to many athletes, whether it is going deep on a passing route, a fast break in basketball, or stealing second base in baseball, having speed is essential.

Not only does sprinting build speed but doing sprints in interval training will burn fat like crazy. If you haven’t noticed pretty much all sprinters have an athletic build.

Create Upper-Body Symmetry

When you lift weights, chances are you focus mostly on pushing motions, just like that gym rat on the bench press day in and day out. This short-sighted type of training often leads to imbalances, which can hinder progress in other motions and lead to injury down the road. Symmetry, both front-to-back and side-to-side, helps us function every day and prevents injuries says. “Athletic upper-body exercise programs are often designed to balance strength and muscle development.”

For example, instead of doing a just a regular bench press in the gym, football players mix in the incline bench press to improve their pushing strength from that angle, and therefore their ability to block. Baseball players do wood chops not only to work their abs and core but in hopes to increase their swinging power so they can hit home runs.

Lunges

Lunges are widely used to build strength in the quads, glutes and hips. They will also help you get a nice round butt we all like.

Diet

Eat low-calorie and low-fat foods. These items help control your weight, allowing you to look athletic and healthy. Fill your plate with a variety of foods from each food group, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy and lean protein.

These foods satisfy hunger and help you get adequate amounts of protein and carbohydrates, which are important for energy to exercise and build muscle.

Rest is important too

Built-in rest days are physically necessary for your body to get fitter. When you work out hard, you create tiny tears in your muscle tissue; those fibers can’t rebuild and strengthen if you’re asking them to go at it again the next day.

So see, we’re not saying you deserve a rest; it’s part of your training! That also means no junk workouts. Skip kickboxing if you’re really tired. Don’t run 30 minutes longer than you’d planned, just to make up for eating brownies the night before.

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