Posts tagged basketball
Warming Up
Warming up before a workout is beneficial to any athlete no matter what the skill level. It allow you to warm and prepare your muscles for intense exercise, by doing this gradually rather than quickly you give you muscles time to adapt and therefore reduce injury. However, warming up does more than just prevent injury it also increases nerve activity and body responsiveness.
This allows for faster contractions and greater power output by the muscle groups. Before a work out take 5-10 minutes to adequately prepare your body.
Warm Up:
Slow:
- Knee to Chest
- Lunge Walking
- Toe Touches
Medium:
- Power Skip
- High Knees
- Skip for Hight
- Knee to Opposite Elbow (Right then Left)
- High Knee Kick Outs
Fast:
- High speed high knees
- Butt Kickers
- Carioca
- 75%, 85%, 95%, increasing sprints
Overall Body:
- Jogging in place
- Jumping Rope
- Jumping Jacks
- Jogging 2 Laps
Static Stretches: (Performed with sub maximal effort at 10 second intervals)
- Legs together, straight down
- Deep Knee Bends
- Quad Stretch
- Left over Right/Right over left
- Deep Lunge
- Calf Elongation
In Or Out? The Fighting Illini!
Before I even start with this, I am going to admit that this will be slightly biased in favor of Illinois since I am a student here. So lets get it started. The question is, will the Fighting Illini make it into this year tournament?
Strengths and Weaknesses:
I really like that the Illini are a young team and can still pull off big wins. They only have one senior on their roster, who receives relatively low playing time, plus they have some big play freshman and an even better recruiting class next year. Sorry about that tangent; its this year we are worried about!
Their lack of leadership makes them relatively inconsistent: they have won huge games away against Wisconsin, away against Clemson, home against Michigan State, and home against Vanderbilt. One the contrary, they have lost games they should have won against weak teams such as Northwestern and Utah, and had an embarrassing performance against Minnesota the other night, scoring only 14 points in the first half.
Along with these loses, the fact that only 6 of their 18 wins have been against opponents ranked higher then 149 is going to hurt them. If they want to be guaranteed a spot, they need to win at least one of their two next games, against tough opponents Wisconsin and Ohio State, along with at least one or two wins in the Big 10 tournament.
In or Out?!
So its all been laid out.. are they in or out?
My vote puts them IN! This team is a young talented team capable of big wins. They would be a great addition to the tournament and deserve a spot.
NBA Dynasty In the Works?
With team NBA team deadlines quickly approaching many players contracts will soon be up. What does that mean? It means that gives the player the chance to look for new work and new pay. Three key players this year that are up for contract expirations are LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh.
Why does this matter? It matters because there is potential for the three of them to all sign new contracts…..with the same team.
What would happen if the these three all-stars decided to sign with the same team? A dynasty would be formed to say the least. With three players of this caliber all on the same page it is a recipe for success. Rumor has it that the three of them are looking to possibly sign with the New York Knicks.
If this sounds too good to be true thats because it is. In order to accommodate all of these players the New York Knicks would have to pay them each significantly less than what they already are making. However, none of these players are lacking financially. All of them have salary earnings upwards of 100 million.
So it comes down to whether or not they will be willing to sacrifice pay for a dynasty? The NBA these days has become so full of contracts and money making that if they did all decide to make pay cuts they would be able to say that they did it for the love of the game. It would be great to see a group of players who gave up what they wanted for the chance to win championships and leave an unforgettable legacy.
