How Does a Pro Athlete’s Fitness Regime Looks Like?

So you are determined to lose that extra fat that shows up in your paunch, or have just embarked upon a fitness plan after a long break, and I’m sure you must be enjoying.

• But have you ever given any thought as to how professional athlete’s train themselves?
• What sort of fitness program they must be following?

Here’s a peek into a sportsman’s diet, mental conditioning and fitness regimes.

Its Brutal

That’s how you may describe the fitness programs that most top-level sports-persons follow. While most of us would be happy to spend an hour or two at the gym, a typical pro athlete can easily train for around 5-6 hours everyday, and that too for all the days in the week (barring a rest day).

And you thought you were fit? I bet you would struggle to make it through even the warm-up sessions of some of these athletes.

Here’s one regime that a former Squash player would follow (not recommended at home).

‘The exercise involved getting on a spinning bike with a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest. He’d then start pedaling hard until his heart rate hit 190 beats per minute which he’d maintain for a duration of 10 minutes. This would be followed by a 3-minute break and the cycle would be repeated 6 times!’

How difficult is that? Well, doing that even for 20 seconds would be a great deal for most of us. Though most of the athletes may not do the same sort of exercise, the the principle remains more or less the same, in terms of pushing oneself.

Is Fitness Training Sports Specific?

Yes it Is! The fitness regime of an athlete, a weight-lifter and a swimmer is going to be different. Some sports will require you to have tremendous power, some will require endurance, and some flexibility.

Sport is incredibly competitive these days and you have to train the right way, which could be different for different sports. After all, each sport works different group of muscles in your body.

Having said that, one should constantly alter the type of exercises, because the body starts getting used to those exercises over time.

How About the Diet

Contrary to what you may think, most sportsman are pretty chilled out about their diet & nutrition plan.

The top performers do follow a pretty healthy & balanced diet (most of the time) and are conscious about the quality of food they eat and the number of calories they consume, but the fact is that most of them are not really obsessive about it.

In fact, you would be surprised to know the kind of food some of the top performers have consumed the night before an important match or event.

Here are a couple of examples (it would be interesting to hear what all the dietitian’s have to say here…):

• Usain Bolt had a bucket of KFC chicken wings before breaking the 100m world record in Beijing to win the Olympic Gold.
• When Micheal Phelps won 8 gold medals in a single Olympics, he used to eat pizzas, pancakes, French toast and many more things

So, do follow a healthy diet, but you really don’t have to deprive yourself of anything!

Mental Conditioning

This is what separates the winners from the under-performers, and it all comes down to how badly you want to win something. Almost all the sportspersons are talented and work really hard, but some of them want it really badly.

Its also about how you react when the chips are down, in the middle of a match, and how you fight back without throwing in the towel.

Most athletes discuss the following aspects of mental conditioning with their psychologists:

• Fear of failure: almost everybody experiences it, including the pro athletes.
• Fear of winning: Some underdog’s are almost there, have the ability to win big games but don’t. Because the mind begins to think of the outcome rather than the process.

There are also other areas where psychologists help pro athletes so that they can perform well, to their peak potential.

1. Controlling the Emotions: Most athletes struggle to sleep before a big match, or are detached from everything around them and are constantly thinking about the game ahead. Controlling these emotions is important to deliver peak performance.
2. Lack of self belief: How do you deal with a situation where you face an opponent who’s the current world champion and has won numerous championships? This is where positive mind management helps to create a positive self-image of yourself and not worrying about your opponent.
3. Neuro-linguistic programming: Most trainers in the corporate world use this method! Its about using the right words and thoughts to convey yourself that you can do it. Instead of constantly thinking about how good your opponent is, or that you are going to lose, or that your ankle is still sore, you should change your self talk to get positive thoughts in the mind. This helps to alter your self-image, and your performance during the match.

What Separates the Best From the Rest?

Most of the time, its about how badly you want to win, that separates the best from the rest.

But then, there are hundreds of athletes who train INCREDIBLY hard, and are really competitive. So is there any concrete step/s that one could take to be the best?

Honestly speaking, its difficult to answer that question, though we all would love to know it.

There are some fitness experts & coaches have written about ‘attaining greatness’ through the 10,0000 hour rule or the notion of deliberate practice over many years (Talent Code) which suggests that greatness can be linked to ‘hours and hours of ridiculous hard work’.

To a large extent, its true, but there’s no concrete evidence to prove that its 100% accurate.

Can anyone really answer for sure why Virat Kohli, Usain Bolt, Messi or Micheal Phelps, are a notch higher than their counterparts?

There’s no specific training or technique that makes them better, every other sportsman has access to that, including their trainers & psychologists.

Though not many may agree with this reasoning, at times, probably it’s just safe to assume that some men are blessed!