A New Breed Of Enlightened Athletes

The world advances, and each new generation quickly absorbs knowledge from passing generations and advances.  Meanwhile the passing generation clings onto the principles it lived and survived on, declaring most confusing developments as “newfangled”. We have seen the history of training many advancements.  Sometimes we even reach back and grab up principles and techniques we nearly left behind.  One thing is clear, the body of knowledge available to the athlete is enormous.  The only downfall to this, is that it’s overwhelming, and time consuming, but never the less it is available.

Some countries are far behind in training technology.

As I travel the world and visit training centers all over the globe it is also clear that each country has different foci and some countries are far behind.  Counseling with top coaches and athletes in India was a true eye opener.  In many ways training technology is far behind.  I could spend the rest of my life just getting gyms and organizations in India up to speed.  Of course, each country also teaches me, and in India I am learning much about Yoga, and mostly the benefits it can provide athletes mainly in the form of hip mobility, and muscular restoration. We have Russia on the horizon this year.  A country which has led many training enhancements.  The teaching of dedicated trainers such as Yuri Verkhoshansky are still trickling down.  Most athletes don’t have the time or patience to sift through the dense wealth of information they left behind. In America we have many athletic movements.  Yoga, Tai bo, Pilates, Cross Fit, High intensity training, west side, p90x… the list goes on.  But I also see a new breed. The new breed of athletes has been able to gradually soak up the information without getting “sucked” in to one fitness faction or another.  This athlete realizes that each training method serves a specific function, and uses each technique and practice as another tool, in their training toolbox.

The new breed of athletes each has specific training goals, but doesn’t see a need to ascribe to one of the fitness cliques in order to make serious progress.

I see these athletes as becoming enlightened about the bodies abilities and how to properly stress and recover the body to achieve any training benefit they desire.  Equipped with the proper knowledge, the enlightened athlete can properly assess new training fads and practices with a proper measure of effectiveness.  An enlightened athlete doesn’t needs hype, but instead is motivated by their knowledge that proper training is followed by it’s inevitable reward. It’s these athletes and trainers who will lead the way to athletic achievements that we have yet to behold! Get ‘er done! Jacob Hiller How to jump higher