5 Simple Ways to Take Advantage of Your Body Type and Outperform your Competition!

In physiology, the human performance can vary from many factors which include body types or somatotype as it is scientifically known. We make references to these body types and refer to them as fat, thin or lean. To better educate the layman, it helps to know which category of the body types you fall under and to use the following general physiological terms to describe these body types. These definitions are courtesy of www.brianmac.co.uk. 

Are you fat, beefcake or athletic?

Mesomorph

A mesomorphic individual excels in strength, agility, and speed. Their medium structure and height, along with their tendency to gain muscle and strength easily makes them a strong candidate for a top athlete in any sport. They can sustain low body fat levels and find it easy to lose and gain weight.

Endomorph

An endomorphic individual typically has short arms and legs and a large amount of mass on their frame. Their mass hampers their ability to compete in sports requiring high levels of agility or speed and perform sustained weight bearing aerobic activities such as running. Sports of pure strength, like power lifting, are perfect for an endomorph. They can gain weight easily and lose condition quickly if training stops.

Ectomorph

Individuals in this category are typically long, slender and thin, and therefore power and strength sports are perhaps not suitable as their slight build leaves them susceptible to injuries. While they can easily get lean and hard, their lack of musculature severely limits their chances in sports requiring mass. Ectomorphs dominate endurance sports and gymnastics. They can archive low levels of body fat which can be detrimental to health and for females in endurance sports it can result in a cessation of periods and iron deficiency. 

So what can you do about it?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. As much as you would want to change your body type; genetics play a huge part in what kind of athlete you already are. However, here are 5 ways for you to get the most of your god given body. 

1)Master the technique of your sport well

Whichever the chosen sport that you engage in regularly, it makes sense to take advantage of your body type by mastering the technique well. Mesomorphs who play soccer can learn to sprint faster, ectomorphs in volleyball to spike better and endomorphs to powerlift with better form. You will learn to generate better performances simply by complementing your genetics.  

2)Take advantage of your strengths

God gave you your body for a reason so use that body in the best way possible. Try sports that fit your body type and you never know it might be the right direction for you. 

3)Adapt to a diet suitable for your goals

Eat right!

If you wanted to lose weight, eat a diet that will help you lose weight and vice versa. It will not help one bit if you knew you were an ectomorph but you are still eating like a mouse trying to gain weight. Fit your diet to your goals and see more performance increases in your strength and general health.  

4)Understand the training responses for your body type

Ectomorphs respond to training with heavy, low rep sets with a minimal number of total sets per workout.  Ectomorphs need to resist the urge to increase volume because it increases metabolism and depletes glycogen. 

Endomorphs are better suited to short-term high intensity cardio of 15-25 minutes total duration, 5-6 times per week. Endo’s also respond better to multiple short sessions of hard cardio spread throughout the day. Endomorphs rarely exhibit overtraining symptoms. 

Mesomorphs make good bodybuilders but have a tendency to gain fat easily. They need to follow a program geared toward building a harder and leaner physique. They respond well to heavy, high-rep work. There is also a need to include basic movements without neglecting detail and finishing exercises.

5)Create a positive image of what you want to be

You will never be happy with the body that you have unless you already have a positive mental picture of yourself. Your body is the physical ambassador of your thoughts so believe in the strength of your body type regardless of how it looks now. Believe in a stronger version of yourself and work towards that goal constantly. 

you can do it!

Although we have been given the body to start with it is very much a degree of 'you are what you train for' It does form a starting point for sports selection but learning to deal with it and taking advantage your body's abilities will psychologically push you ahead of the competition! If you like this post, please share it with your friends and like the Facebook page @  Paddlegeeksingapore 

New Research Shows Scoliosis in Dragon Boaters. How do We Avoid it?

A medical student friend of mine posted this scholarly research paper on a local facebook page and it caught my attention. It happens to be a biomechanics related paper that hypothesized on the possibility of Scoliosis of the back in dragon boaters of the Iranian National Dragon boat team. 

Is your spine aligned? if not you may be suffering from scoliosis

Here's some screenshots! 

What is it about? 
The basis of the experiment was to derive a relatioship between posture and body type and other biomechanical measurements of the body and test whether they may be suitable as a competitive athlete in dragon boat.  

 A quick read of the abstract suggest various variables that were tested including lumbar scoliosis i.e. curving of the spine from normal and uneven shoulders; common "side effects" of training intensively in dragon boat. This study was set against a similar group of women to be used as a control group and the results have been conclusive. In fact, the paddlers have shown to exhibit higher levels of lumbar scoliosis and uneven shoulders. However, it does proceed to conclude that a better interpretation of the results could be established if this experiment was conducted over a longer period of time. 

How does it affect us paddlers? 
So how does this affect us as dragon boaters? Should we stop dragonboating altogether? Fortunately, as most of us paddlers only do so for recreation on the weekends and participate in less competitive events, this  is unlikely to happen to the everyday Joe. 

However, I believe competitive paddlers who paddle more than 4 times a week face this condition more readily that their recreational counterparts. Unfortunately, many of them go unnoticed for the fact that athletes do not wish to be sidelined knowing that this may affect their paddling career. For a fact, I believe it can be avoided as well as reversible. 

Paddling on your weaker side
Many paddlers become stuck with the fact that they will and only can paddle on the side they started with, which is a load of BS. No one is born to start and end off paddling on one side only. I can paddle on both and I started learning to paddle on my left. Who is to say that you can't paddle on the opposite side? Not me. Paddling on your weaker side generates much as many nerve connections to your brain just as you were learning how to walk as a baby. It will be fun to understand and go back to the days where you learnt how to paddle wouldn't it? It will also help to balance your pulling muscles and exercise your central nervous system to learn to build new connections to the brain; creating new pathways for new learning. This can help your brain grow too. Killing many birds with just one stone. 

Have a Break!
Competitive paddlers simply love going through the hard part of training, constantly thinking about pitting themselves against their teammates or thinking about the competition in the next race. Most however, fall into the trap of not allowing themselves to rest and recuperate especially if the body tells them that it can't do any more or if they are at the brink of an injury. Rest is an essential component  to training and it cannot be more than emphasized in a training cycle. It also allows the body to regenerate poor muscle imbalances especially after injury. 

Kayaking
Participating in kayaking builds not only strength in both sides of your pulling muscles but its also a great cardio workout and creates good practice for your core rotational skill which is hardly emphasized in dragon boat. Any kayak will do and you reap the benefits of the exercise just as well. 

Strength and conditioning
For elite paddlers, conditioning will form a key function in the training cycles of the athlete. Does the recreational paddler benefit from it too? Knowing how strength and conditioning can play a vital role to increasing longevity of the used muscles in dragon boat and add years to your sporting life. 

Till the next post! PaddleGeek signing off! 

References: Click here for the research paper!

5 Quick Ways To More Successful Goal Setting and Win Races!

Goal setting is a very common phrase everyone uses in many fields to establish absolute success in the different areas they may be in. Although individually it may be very simple to set goals for yourself, it is incredibly challenging for a coach or a captain to really define and set goals in the context of a team because of many different reasons and factors involved. I hope that with these 5 quick tips and lots of hard work, you are able to bring your team to podium finishes and act as a guide for recreational or competitive teams  to define a particular set of guidelines to set the all important race targets!

1) Establish Ground Rules - Before we set up any goals at all, each of the paddlers must be able to agree to a set of ground rules for the team to apply any sort of goals at all. Based on my experience as a team vice captain as well as a coach, it has been a challenge for myself to set any sort of definitive goal when most of the team can't even arrive on time for trainings. As simple as it may sound, set standards for starting on time; even starting without 5 paddlers who are late. It will emphasize great credibility in the team's culture and accepted practices and maintain discipline in an otherwise chaotic mess of 30-40 people. Peer pressure works everytime. 

2) Break Things Down - Getting the paddlers to know what they are aiming for in a particular race may be challenging to paddlers especially if they are new to the sport. Apart from the more experienced paddlers, these newer paddlers may need to be educated in what entails a good timing for a 500m race. For example, I break each race phase down to expected timings for them to visualise and internalise; hit their max speed for starts within 20 seconds or maintain an average of 250m splits in 1:04 minutes. breaking things down this way helps them understand better how their timing can improve in each part of the race while building up to the full race sequence. It definitely creates better mental focus in each phase that they try to execute.

3) Be Specific - I think this point could not be stressed more. Coaches these days use the ever popular phrase "try your best" which I sometimes am guilty of using alot. However, it makes more sense to the paddlers to strive for " 15km/hr in the first 20 seconds of your starts by May" or " Maintain an average speed of 14.5km/hr for at least 250m in a 500m race by July 2013". It makes the team clearer about what, when and how they are going to achieve these goals and creates a sense of urgency with a time parameter.

4) Let the team set the goal themselves - This may sound very inherently impossible to accomplish because the team may not exactly understand how to define the goals. This is where the coach must come in to educate the team in providing choices to how the team can meet these goals. It can be a multiple choice question where 3 sets of timings leads to 3 different sets of training programmes; the faster timings attached to the more intensive training programmes. Or it can be as simple as going around and asking "what do you think our likely timing for a 500m race should be?". Question and answer sessions can greatly increase the sense of ownership for the team's members and create a high level of enthusiasm in the team's goals.

5) Be Realistic - Eventually the coach will need to assess whether the team is able to accomplish the goals set within the given time frame; sometimes given the team's recreational nature, it won't make sense for him to set goals close to elite timings. The coach therefore needs to make a fair judgement of where his team is and truth be told if they can win races. While it is possible for a varsity team to win medals at the tertiary finals, are they really ready to beat the rest of the nations top teams considering their experience level?

Based on a fair amount of experience at the varsity levels, these guidelines have helped me establish goals that are literally SMARTer; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time Based. Establishing these guidelines will definitely help your team in one way or another get to a podium finish or even ending off a fantastic season with a bang. I hope everyone enjoyed this post thoroughly. Till the next time! PaddleGeek signing off!

How a Dragon boat Event in Penang turned into a tragedy.

I recently came back from the Penang Pesta International Race with my team OneStroke aka Kaki Bukit Constituency Sports Club full of great memories and lessons learnt. The race was held in Telok Bahang Dam in Penang Island; well known for their Unesco world heritage site and tantalising Penang cuisine. The race atmosphere was fantastic, the water conditions were perfect and the race organisation though hectic and haphazard proved to be worth our while. It was a great first for many of my paddlers I was coaching; a great virgin overseas experience that exceeded everyone's expectations. Well having said that, it was unfortunate that the races on the second day were marred by an unfortunate incident that involved a young 19 year old race official who supposedly drowned in the waters that he ever was so comfortable with.

Teluk Bahang Dam (Credits to Timothy Tye)

Up until lunchtime on Sunday, everything seemed to be going perfectly well and the weather conditions were set for the final stages of the competition. Although the sun was unbearably hot, the paddlers were well sheltered from the scorching sun with the sufficient tentages around the athlete's village. The sun wasn't too kind to one of the race officials who had to bear the brunt of the scorching heat in the open waters on a pontoon 500m away from shore. Rumour has it that he suffered a heat stroke and collapsed into the water unnoticed during the lunch break. Why was he on the pontoon in the middle of the heat was unknown to all of us but it was truely sad to hear how he was left baked in the hot sun unnoticed at all. 

I wouldn't blame the organisers who decided to rush everyone to get the race to proceed as smoothly as they could. Having taken care of the paddlers who were their money machines, inadvertently they forgot to take care of the people who had seemed oblivious to them all this while. The boy was still missing by the time we left the race site. With emergency personnel rushing to the scene 30 minutes after the incident was reported, we really wonder if he would be alive at all.

It just goes to show that safety is still an essential part of our responsibility as coaches just as much as training is important. It was a good lesson for me to take away as a coach and teacher that life to is too fragile to take chances. My condolences to the family and friends of this young man, who could have, would have lived a promising future ahead of him. May peace be upon him. 

Discover 7 Secrets to Achieve a Stronger, Athletic Body

In my years of training as an athlete, I have had many experiences of friends and family asking me how I got a body like mine and I find it distracting knowing that I trained without even thinking of a a nice lean body in the first place. It just came with all that training. With some knowledge and experience, I began to understand why exactly it was so easy for myself to build a strong athletic body through these well known secrets.. 

1. Do Pull ups. Period. There was a reason why armies around the world believe that pull ups are the most effective exercise for gauging strength in the upper body for its recruits. How else could they have tested thousands upon thousands of recruits coming through its doors? It is the best compound exercise that involves the arms, traps, lats , shoulders and even your abdominals, so nothing else really beats it. If pull ups are not in your regime, you can really forget about building strength at all. Just get a pull up bar start pulling. Period!

2. Eat your greens. Eating vegetables have always been a part of my diet ever since my mum told me its good for me. Yeah and I really ate anything that looks green because I know it is good. A good balance of fruits do just well and it does help in the overall immune system. If you're not a green person, you better start now. 

3. Do not think about the outcome. It is ok to think about your goal of becoming the lean, mean, fighting machine that you want to be, but its easier if you take it one step at a time. I think you should be looking forward to creating a new experience with your body with every training that comes along so that you will feel more pumped and regenerated, looking forward to the next workout. If looking at the mirror and seeing that extra few inches is so important to you, the trouble is, it will never be enough. 

4. Do interval training, I hate it but its good. Nothing else in the world gets your body to sweat, your heart to race and your testosterone pumping than a good old interval workout. Studies have shown tremendous results in  athletes engaging in interval training for increasing VO2 Max, muscular endurance as well as just general aerobic conditioning for the fitness enthusiast. It can be done through weights, running or just about any cardiovascular activity. So what you waiting for? 

5. Get yourself out of the couch more. Move, just start moving. Do anything other than sit down. The human body is created in such a way that sitting down on a chair is the most unnatural thing to do but people do it for more than 8 hours a day. So what is the problem? When you sit down, you disengage the back muscles from doing its work, which is to stabilise the core. Your posture starts to sag and before you know it, TA DA!! Backpain! Which brings me to my next point..

6. Work your core. Stop doing crunches because they don't work. Yes of course, that's the easiest one you can do but why do easy when you know it doesn't work. There is a plethora of core exercises you can do that you can find on the internet. Wipers, L-sits, L-sit pull ups, superman, back extensions and many more. But that is harder to do you say? That's the point isn't it?

7. Have fun with friends. I think the one key ingredient to really working out and having that athletic body is really just to have a blast with your friends. Being in a team sport really makes it much easier to do this as everyone would have the similar fitness goals as you do and it makes training a whole lot more fun. Let your body experience new challenges and frontiers together with friends and you will reap the benefits as a RESULT of your efforts. 

Nothing difficult to think about really but these were really fundamentals that made me who I am today. Staying really active and getting into an atmosphere where training is fun. Give it your best shot! You really never know what your limits are until you go for it!

Learning to learn. A skill for Lifelong Learning.

All of us have many motivations when it comes to learning the subject of our choice. Many children learn as a result of exploration just like how my baby niece does. They do it through trying by trial and error many different ways of how to balance themselves on their feet, legs and hands to move forward or toward a toy that they may be interested to play with. Naturally, they also learn through mistakes that there are certain ways that do not make moving feasible such as walking with their feet pointed in so on and so forth. 

Why are you afraid to learn a new skill?

Then why else does an adult learn differently? How exactly does an adult learn at all and why is it that he or she doesn't learn a skill as well as he should have. Adults generally set limitations on themselves on the things that they want to learn because of the fear of people judging them. That they cannot do a better job that others can. That they are not good at a skill. Logically, it does make common sense to not do the thing that you can't do well.

 I realise that I fall into this trap where I would be afraid to learn something especially if people were able to judge me or look at how lousy I was. This is especially true of when I see adult swimmers in the pool whom had no swimming background trying to swim their laps for the first time. 

An example: Adult Swimmers

A  few minutes of close observation in a typical public swimming pool will reveal a stark reality of adult swimmers; that most of them will not even go back to learning how they used to as a baby or a child, via exploration. All they want is to get from point A to point B (i.e. one end of the pool to the other) in the shortest time possible. But with swimming being such a technique driven skill that is very much alike to walking, why is the adult skipping the steps of nature to get towards the desired outcome? Shouldn't we be learning just like how our children do? 

Race for knowledge vs Exploration 

As much as our pursuit of knowledge comes at a price, be it in time, effort or money, I believe that the learning of the knowledge through exploring the subject matter has more desirable outcomes than if it was to pursue the skill in the shortest amount of time. It drives the creativity out of learning to see someone racing to get learn the skill without going through the necessary steps to success. 

To put theory into practice, I have begun a personal journey of learning to learn again in various subjects. One of them being writing this blog, learning to swim, picking up new sports, learning German, revisiting strength training fundamentals and even learning to do a muscle up all in the name of fun. Although there were outcomes I knew I wanted to achieve, I knew the entire process of trial and error was inevitable for myself to achieve success. I look forward to learning more in my journey for personal development and I hope this article has inspired you to do the same. 

Learn to learn. It will feed your mind for life. 

Supplements. Do they Work?

I have been a personal fan of supplements when I was a beginner paddler about 8 years ago, when all the rage was about getting the biggest muscles and getting stronger. It wasn't exactly the cheapest way to get my daily protein intake and I wasn't exactly seeing much of the results from training. I was very much discouraged looking at how things were going with my body and how little effect they had on my overall physique. Well, who could deny that it did give me a mental boost to know that supplements could indeed boost my performance but do they really work. In this article we will focus on the few traps of the supplement industry and how we as athletes can avoid it. 

1) Protein shakes are the king of building muscle. I have experienced many a times athletes taking in countless scoops of protein supplements in various forms after training expecting a bigger gain in growth or strength just after eating that. I definitely agree to a certain degree that they have their benefits just that its inconclusive that we really need that much protein in our diet at all. Unless you are a raging bodybuilder or power lifter who needs to gain over 40 kilos to build the almighty herculean physique, athletes would only need enough from their typical diets. In fact most of the excess protein becomes pure waste product that the body would not be able  synthesize. The key to building muscle can really be as simple as the training methods you are engaged in. 

2) I need to maintain a high protein diet. Such diets are unfortunately unhealthy especially if you're an athlete regardless if you were strength training or not. Your main staple should consist of carbohydrates even if you were someone who strength trains 6 times a week. Carbohydrates induce glycogen which help to provide the energy for your body to continue exercising at that rate. It would be a dumb deal to stick to a high protein diet because energy levels will deteriorate after a certain period and it induces catabolism (atrophy of muscle) due to high levels of acidity from loss of glycogen. Its like using your muscles to build muscles. get it? 

3) Supplements give me a mental boost to go push for the last rep. I use water to do that. Many studies have shown much gains in strength really come from mental training as compared to the supplement taking effect at all. You can't put away the obvious fact that the supplement industry makes use of the opportunity through their marketing ploys to induce their customers to buying more of their product. One company tells you this and tell you that but another says another thing altogether. So who do you believe? I believe in something that we already have in the first place; our brain. We have capabilties to push beyond our limits through the power of our mind and with proper mental training in place, it beats drinking down a pound of protein shakes down your throat. 

Well, I have my say of supplements but they are definitely not extensive. So do your research and really search out the diamonds from the rough if you are really keen on taking supplements. I think with proper training, nutrition and diet, performance gains can far outweigh taking pound after pound of powder.