Benefits Of Practicing Competitive Sports That Nobody Thinks About!

Playing sports directly improves your health, helps you stay in shape, teaches you how to organize time and boosts your energy levels. BUT, not only that! Practicing sports has many side benefits!

Friendships

Playing sports enables you to create friendships with multiple persons, friendships you would have otherwise not made. Sports bring teens together from different backgrounds, schools and communities. Many times, the friendships you create from that remains intact even when you stop playing that sport.

Family

The fans on the sidelines are one of the most important parts of the game. The constant support of your parents helps you to feel good about yourself and strengthens your connection to them. And vice versa if you're a parent you should encourage your kids to practice sport.

As a teen, it is not always easy to find time to spend time with your parents. Sports give you and your parents time to appreciate one another. 

Coaches

Providing wisdom and encouragement, coaches can be very good role models. The relationship that you develop with your coach is very important to the success of the team. 

Positive coaching helps to bring the team together, and gives players the right tools to push themselves academically and physically. 

Health

Participating in sports improves your health in different ways. To be a good athlete, you must take care of yourself. This gets you thinking about what to eat and how to treat your body to achieve peak performance levels.

Sports Nutrition

When engaging in sports for the first time, you may feel hungrier than usual. This is normal, because your body is expending much more energy than it is used to. Here are some nutrition tips to help keep you healthy while you participate in sports.

• Eat fat. About 20 to 25 percent of energy comes from fats, so to keep energy levels high, your body needs you to consume fat.
• Make sure to eat before, during, and after your sport. The helps maintain blood glucose levels, which in turn will help enhance your sports performance.
• Keep hydrated! When playing a sport, your body loses a lot of fluid, which can cause dehydration. This is dangerous – and potentially fatal – so drink plenty of water.
• Eat a balanced diet. An athlete's diet should include plenty of complex carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and fats.
• Limit salt and simple sugar.

School

It's a common misconception that being both a student and an athlete is hard, if not impossible. Participating in sports can actually have a positive impact on school. 

Sports force you to organize your time so that you can both go to practice and finish your homework. The key is finding a balance. If you can learn to organize your time then you can succeed in both.

Leadership skills

Participating in sports helps build leadership skills. Sports teams give you an opportunity to surround yourself with competitive people and role models, and learn from them both. You can demonstrate your own leadership through team captainships and individual actions to improve your team's success.

Read more

7 Tips To Start Losing Weight FAST

Nobody can deny that many people face problems with being overweight, and most importantly they face problems when it comes to sticking to their programs and diets. It might be you.

They think that they need years of hard work and discipline to finally enjoy their new body. Well, yes and no. Having a long term approach to losing weight is a wise choice because it means that you'll lose them steadily which means you're more likely to keep them off. However, there are some little tweaks that you can use starting now to start losing weight on a regular basis.

1. Drink green tea. 

Get this: When a recent study compared the metabolic effect of green tea (in extract) with that of a placebo, researchers found that the green-tea drinkers burned about 70 additional calories in a 24-hour period. If you can believe it, those 70 calories a day add up to a total of 7.3 pounds of fat a year! It's not magic, it's science: Researchers believe the difference is caused by metabolism-enhancing antioxidants known as catechins, which are found in green tea.

2. Avoid calories in a glass. 

Scientists now know that the body does not register liquid calories in the same way it does solid calories. Drinking a grande caffe mocha, for instance, won't make you feel satiated the way eating a bowl of pasta will. Which means that although the caffe mocha actually has a greater number of calories than the pasta, you're still more likely to want a second cup from Starbucks than another plate of linguine. So gauge your intake of juice, soda, coffee drinks and wine. If you consume one of each of those beverages during the day, you'll have taken in at least 800 extra calories by nighttime — and you'll still be hungry. (Incidentally, alcohol may suppress the metabolism of fat, making it tougher for you to burn those calories.)

3. Lose the salt. 

Sodium contributes to water retention, making you look and feel bloated. Do you eat too much salt? Probably — the daily value suggests no more than 2,400 milligrams of sodium each day (or about one teaspoon), but most of us are getting more than twice that amount. So keep an eye on your sodium intake, and that doesn't just mean ditching the saltshaker. Hidden sources include soups, canned foods and drinks (did you know a serving of regular V8 juice has 800 mg of sodium?), salty snacks such as chips and pretzels and many prepackaged foods.

4. Get some sleep. 

As funny as it sounds, sleep deprivation may make you fat. People who get less than four hours of sleep per night have a slower metabolism than those who snooze for a full eight hours, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. So don't skip on your zzz's, and you'll be rewarded with an extra edge when it comes to dropping pounds quickly.

5. Go for an evening walk. 

Don't get me wrong — exercising at any time is good for you. But evening activity may be particularly beneficial because many people's metabolism slows down toward the end of the day. Thirty minutes of aerobic activity before dinner increases your metabolic rate and may keep it elevated for another two or three hours, even after you've stopped moving. What that means for you: Those dinner calories have less of a chance to take up permanent residence on your body.

6. Add 20 minutes of exercise per day.

 If you're on a diet, you're probably already working out a couple of times a week. (No? Well, you should!) But whether you exercise or not, you can get a leg up on all those other weight-loss wannabes by doing a little something extra each day. Take the stairs instead of the elevator; walk to the bus, train, or all the way to the office; window-shop with your best friend rather than sit over coffee. Taking the dog out, gardening and even housecleaning all increase the number of calories you expend. You don't have to go for a jog (although that would help a lot!) to speed up weight loss. Twenty minutes of moderate exercise a day means you'll burn approximately 700 calories.

7. Don't go for the gimmicks. 

At any given time, there are tons of weight-loss hypes in the marketplace that claim to have the ability to take off 10 pounds in 10 days, or whatever. Desperation can tempt us to try anything, but you and I both know these schemes don't work. Save your money, but more importantly, save yourself from the emotional pain when these gimmicks fail. Be realistic. Jump-start your weight-loss program in ways that make sense, and not only will you be thinner, you'll be happier too.

Those informations are only advice, please consult your doctor before taking any new decision.

Read more

6 Reasons To Start Exercising Outside Right Now

Now with winter left behind us, there's no reason not to go work out outside.

But many people are still unconvinced, they think that hitting the gym is the only viable way to exercise. So let us try to convince you with these six reasons.

1. Outdoor exercise lifts your mood.

A 2012 report found that spending time in the out of doors made people 50 percent happier than spending time at the gym, according to the Telegraph. 

Previous research has linked outdoor exercise with a reduction in tension, confusion, anger and depression, when compared to indoor activity. And it doesn’t have to be a long stroll in the park, either: A 2010 study found that even just five minutes of exercise in a green space can improve mood and self-esteem, the BBC reported.

2. It will help you stick with it

While every little bit of exercise counts, let’s be honest: Most of us could probably afford to do a little bit more. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend the average adult get two hours and 30 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio every week, plus two or more sessions of strength training. 

Between seemingly endless work hours and the demands of family life, it’s all too easy to skip a workout. However, a 2011 survey found that exercising outdoors is a reinforcing behavior: Outdoor exercisers “declared a greater intent to repeat the activity at a later date” than gym-goers.

3. It improves your attention and focus

A small study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that kids with ADHD were able to concentrate better after a 20-minute walk in a park rather than a walk through city or neighborhood streets. 

“What this particular study tells us is that the physical environment matters,” Frances E. Kuo, director of the university’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory and one of the study’s co-authors told The New York Times. “We don’t know what it is about the park, exactly — the greenness or lack of buildings — that seems to improve attention.”

4. It will boost your energy

Exercise itself is sure to energize you when you’re feeling lazy, but fresh air can boost the effect. A 2009 study from the University of Rochester found that just 20 minutes outside can boost you up as much as a cup of coffee, The Telegraph reported. 

“Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee, but this suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature,” lead author Richard M. Ryan, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the university told the publication.

5. It helps you control your weight

The fresh air, the sunlight, the scenery, the open space — there’s a lot about being outside that can inspire more activity, especially compared to the beckoning couches and screens of indoor spaces. All that extra movement adds up to tangible results: A 2008 study found that rates of overweight among children who spent more time outside were 27 to 41 percent lower than in kids who spent more time indoors.

6. You can tone you're whole body for free

You may not notice it on first glance, but parks are FULL of things (free things!) that will help you tone muscle. Simon says: "Hill sprints are a great way of getting maximum results, particularly as sprinting is one of the most effective ways to burn fat. Short, sharp bursts of movement at an incline will help push you to the limit while also building and toning muscle. Plus, local parks and green spaces are home to a wide range of objects that can double up as exercise equipment. Take a park bench – you can do tricep dips or step-ups. Even a tree can enhance your workout: try some explosive jumps where you aim to hit as many branches as high as you can. Or do a 3:1 ratio jog where you jog to three trees and then sprint to the forth – get creative!"

Read more