August 23rd marks the beginning of our fall schedule. (To see our hours of operation refer to the last post or click the “schedule” tab at the upper right hand corner of our website.)  High School athletes begin school and several of our collegiate athletes that trained with us have returned to be with their teams and programs.

The fall will give us time to catch up on several projects as well as fine tune our program with new exercises, methods, and programming. Keep an eye out on our website because we are currently working on a new program designed for those wanting to get into shape and lose weight. We will be posting information in the next few weeks. We will also offer a discount for those who discoverd the program on our website. So stay tuned!

With the summer schedule as hectic as it was, it was hard for us to keep everyone updated on all the projects and new things that took place. So the next few weeks we will get everyone up to date.

Director of Sports Performance and Strength Coach Justin Adkins was recently interviewed by Samantha Horwitz for her monthly podcast. Samantha is the founder and director of www.100percentstrength.com. Samantha collects and interviews information from some of the top strength coaches in the field on hot topics related to strength and conditioning. You can hear Justin’s interview by clicking HERE.  Samantha is doing a great thing by educating others who are interested in these topics. Visit her website to check it out!

     With School about to begin our hours will change to better accomodate the High School athletes. This year we will offer groups that begin in the mid-afternoon and continue into the evening. The following schedule is for our Sports Performance athletes only. To view the weightlifting schedule and our small group technique sessions visit the “schedules” tab in the upper right hand corner of the page.

The following is our Sports Performance Groups for the fall of 2010.

Sports Performance Group # 1 = 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Sports Performance Group # 2 = 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Sports Performance Group # 3 = 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Sports Performance Group # 4 = (Tues. & Thurs. only) = 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

We encourage those who are currently training to sign up immediately to reserve your spot today!

     The WCS/Gattone Sports Performance staff would like to thank the great staff we had for our summer internship program. We had 4 great interns who completed a great 3 months of training. Within the 3 months the interns were able to sharpen their coaching skills along with finishing up credit hours for school. We wish the best of luck to Jenny Eckhart, Will Werner, Milo Swain, and Dan Byrnes. Our staff did a fantastic job and we wish them the best of luck with their future positions.

As July winds down and August quickly approaches we would like to thank everyone for such a successful summer. This summer has been busy, successful, and fun. We have had great numbers in athletes, adults, post therapy clients and weightlifters who have trained with great consistency and gotten some great results.

We now have one month left in our “summer schedule” before athletes return to school and we switch back to our “fall schedule”. This change will occur during the week of Aug. 23rd. This gives athletes time to schedule an evaluation and to get training for their fall sports. Call today and set up an evaluation to get into the gym! 

Also, we have had great turnouts to our bi-weekly Olympic Weightlifting small group sessions. These groups meet on Thr. evenings and Sat. mornings at designated dates/times. Many of you have called to schedule slots and I urge you to continue to do so. The courses are taught by Roger and Mike and with their consistent traveling schedule due to Olympic Weightlifting events the times and dates do vary. So, if you are interested call or email for availabilities!

847-947-7398 or www.wcsgattonesports.com@gmail.com

Todays good read comes from another article I stumbled across on the internet. This article is reason number 1,089,356,999 that you should get off your lazy butt and start exercising.

Yahoo.com recently posted this artcile titled Your Ultimate Power -Brain Workout.

This article discusses the importance of exerciseand its role inimproving brain function. Scientist had sedentary adults perform exercise 2-3 times per week and discovered that their memory and ability to juggle tasks improved by 30%. Even more importantly when the subjects returned to being couch potatoes they lost 10% of the gain after 6 weeks.

With the amount of cases of disease such as alzheimers on the rise. Studies such as this show that even with a small amount of exercise added to your routine, you can take steps to combat these terrible diseases.

Get out and try some of the exercises they suggest, it will only help improve the all important brain!

As many of you already know, summer is our busiest time of the year. With athletes out of school, football training at its peak, and college kids back home, we see almost twice the number of athletes we normally do. Our days are longer, program writing is at its peak, and duties are multiplied.

The combination of all these tasks leaves little time for our own workouts. Being in the strength and conditioning field it is important to practice what you preach. We like to work out and think it is very important to do so. Not only do we like to preach it, we like to practice it. Honestly, how many of you would take directions from an overweight strength coach or personal trainer whose diet consists of beer, cigarettes, and fast food?

To fit in these workouts on days where you have little time we need to make sacrifices. On some of our busier days we only get 15 minutes or so to complete a workout. Instead of taking the easy route and skipping your workout for that day, try to fit in at least something. Even if it is as simple as taking a walk around your building or grabbing a quick stretch. Skipping a workout is the beginning of a bad habit. Before you know it, you will have skipped 4 workouts in a month. Devoloping the mindframe of never skipping that workout is a great way to stay on track to reaching your goals.

Whether you are trying to gain muscle, lose weight, or get faster, skipping a workout is a great way to never acheive those goals. On days where you have little time (10-20 minutes) simply take a few of your favorite exercises and break them down into reps. Try to complete as many rounds as you can with those exercises keeping good technique. Rest when you need too. It might look like this.

Body weight squats x 10 reps

Push Ups x 10 reps

Jumping Jacks x 20 reps

This requires no gym equipment and I gurantee it will raise your heartrate. At some point you will have to stop and rest. Record your total number of rounds completed and next time you only have 10-20 minutes to workout try and beat your old numbers.

Now, this isnt the answer to all of your goals and workout needs, but it is defenitely better than doing nothing at all. Be creative and make your own “quick workout”. It is a great change of pace and will help you reach your fitness goals.