By Henry O’Brien ’20 News Reporter
Q: What is the best way for an athlete to prepare for a games?
A: In reality, preparing for any athletic activity should involve the same key elements, both practices and games. Hours and even days prior to intense athletic competition, athletes need to hydrate appropriately. You should drink when you are thirsty. The day of an event is a little more specific with guidelines of 16-20 ounces. An hour before the event, 6-8 ounces. 15 minutes immediately before and an additional 6-8 ounces with every 15 minutes of participation (when you are sweating heavily). Being appropriately hydrated allows your body to perform optimally. The next level of preparation involves nutrition. Eating a well balanced meal 3-4 hours before your event is ideal. Ingesting a high carb meal will help you have enough energy to exercise for your events. If you know your body, you can also eat a small snack about 30 minutes prior to a game as well.
In terms of physical preparation, every practice and game should involve a warm-up period that allows your muscles to warm up gradually until reaching maximum exertion. Within the warm-up period, athletes need to engage in a full-body, dynamic stretching period to increase flexibility and decrease injury. Looking at the big picture, preparation for events takes place weeks and months before the season even begins. Taking time to increase your strength, power, agility, speed, and flexibility will prepare you to perform at your best for games and practices and to prevent injuries.
All fall (and winter and spring) teams are participating in one strengthand performance session per week to provide education and a foundation of strengthening concepts. Hopefully, these sessions will give athletes and non-athletes the confidence to continue workouts in the future either on their own or with their teams. Students will also be able to take good workout habits with them over the summer and into their lives after Mercersburg.
Ultimately, preparing for a game is NOT something that you do an hour before kickoff. It takes time, dedication, hard work, etc. Thankfully, athlete at Mercersburg have tremendous resources available, allowing them to achieve their athletic performance goals, and they need to take advantage of those opportunities.