From Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training blog:
http://turbulencetraining.blogspot.com/

Sports for Fat Loss?

Lots of you are playing sports and wonder how does this fit into your fat loss schedule.
Can you replace interval training with a sport?

Absolutely - assuming of course you are talking about a sport that requires high-intensity sprints (such as soccer, basketball, rugby, hockey, or Ultimate Frisbee).

Sports such as golf should be kept to your day off (you can also perform the sports listed above on your day off as well).

Sports can be a big help to your fat loss program.

BUT…

Sports can ruin your fat loss program if you follow them up with 3 pints of beer and 2 pounds of wings. Take a look around the dressing room after next game.

Even while everyone’s shirt is soaked with sweat, some people are lean and others remain overweight. Despite giving the same effort on the field, those that don’t eat right will get fat. Playing sports and working out hard don’t make you immune to the side effects of a junk diet.

Now let’s turn our attention to kids. Sports and other unstructured physical activities are essential for children. Research has shown that kids who regularly participate in at least 3 h per week of sports activities won’t get fat, while kids that avoid physical activity have a greater tendency to become overweight.

Sports also help kids develop more muscle mass and stronger bones. Both of these are important to overall health for the rest of their lives.

Another study from the International Journal of Obesity identified the following factors associated with overweight kids:

• Parental obesity
• Low parental educational level
• Low total family income
• Long hours of TV watching
• Playing videogames or computer utilization
• Absence of breastfeeding
• Physical inactivity

Now personally, I grew up with some friends that met most of those conditions above, but my friends were not overweight.

Why not? Because while they watched a lot of TV, played a lot of vids, and didn’t have a Cosby-show family background, my friends played a lot of sports in and out of school. Heck, we probably played sports at least an hour everyday.

So for young kids, physical activity can trump almost every “obesity-causing” effect…
EXCEPT…maybe for the nutrition problems that exist today.

While it wasn’t hard for us to get jumbo sodas at 7-11, we just didn’t seem to buy those as much as kids do today.

So keep an eye on your kids nutrition…and…

I encourage you and your family to be as active as possible,
CB

To find out more about Craig and his services, please visit: www.cbathletics.com