Fruity Yogurt Pops

Almost everyone I know loves a nice bowl of ice cream every now and then – and for some now more often than then. This recipe is great to have as a healthier option to traditional fat-laden frozen treats. You will still find your sweet tooth satisfied without the guilt setting in later. Try it with your favorite flavor of yogurt.

Yields: 10 servings.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (16 ounces) reduced-fat strawberry yogurt
• 1 can (8 ounces) unsweetened crushed pineapple
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• 2 to 3 drops red food coloring, optional

Instructions:

• In a food processor or blender, combine the yogurt, pineapple, honey and food coloring if desired; cover and process until smooth. Pour 1/4 cupfuls into 10 plastic molds or 3-oz. paper cups; top with holders or insert wooden sticks.
• Freeze until firm, about 8 hours or overnight.

Nutritional Analysis: One yogurt ice pop equals: 61 calories, trace fat, 13g carbohydrate, 2g protein.

Banana Fritters

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tablespoon margarine
• vegetable oil for frying
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Instructions:
Mix together mashed bananas and milk.  Sift in the baking powder and salt. Blend in the eggs and margarine.  Heat oil in skillet. Carefully drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil. Like you were making a pancake, Fry until edges set, flip, fry until golden brown. Transfer to a plate with paper towels to drain off excess oil/grease. Sift a dusting of confectioner’s sugar over fritters at serving time.

A Practical Way to Prevent Overtraining

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com.

In far too many situations throughout North America, strength coaches and personal trainers make common errors in their programming for young athletes, many of which can lead to overtraining syndromes -

Critical Analysis of Biomotor Ability

In working with young athletes, there is very little reason to ever ‘test’ their ability at certain lifts or speed variances. Your programming guidelines must be based around instilling proper execution of technique in your young athletes from a lift and movement economy standpoint. Having said that, gleaning 1, 3, 5 or 8 RM values on any particular exercise should be deemed a distant secondary consideration to teaching the proper values of form and function.

By using a ‘Teaching Model’ of exercise development rather than a ‘Training Model’ you are taking the pressure off of kids to reach for biomotor improvements at the expense of developing sound technique.

Changing Exercises to Often

Although when training adult clientele, there are neural advantages to altering your exercise selection often, with young athletes the reality is that the initial stages of training should comprise little more than dedicated time to teach and become proficient in the basics of lift and movement economy.

Far too often, trainers work to make young athlete routines challenging and neurally stimulating by incorporating complex programming and exercise selection into the mix early in the athletes’ training life. Resist the urge to make a neurological impact and instead, focus your efforts on developing sound competency in just a few basic lifts – the foundation you build during this time is paramount to eventually increasing both the volume and intricacy of your programming.

Consider the Athlete’s Entire Life

When creating a training program for a young athlete, you must take into consideration their entire life – that is, don’t just make training sessions hard for the sake of making them hard. You do a disservice to the athlete and your business by following this practice.

For instance, if the young athlete is in-season for a particular sport, there practice and game schedule must be considered into the reality of your overall programming. Soccer practices, for instance four days per week coupled with one to two games per week, will leave any young athlete bordering on the verge of overtraining syndrome as it is. Your job during times like this is to augment them with restorative training that does not serve to push them lower beneath what would be considered normal and healthy biological levels.

Additionally, you must work to understand your young athletes’ eating and sleeping habits as well. Inappropriate nutrition and poor sleeping patterns (which many teenagers face today) are precursors to overtraining syndrome in that they are two of the more important restorative elements trainees can use to combat such concerns.

As a professional trainer working with young athletes, you are responsible and must assume accountability for their overall health and wellbeing. When training young athletes and in an effort to ensure quality, efficacy-based training practices, resist the temptation to do the ‘norm’ by making exercise sessions hard and physically challenging. Instead, follow the three key points above to ensure optimal training conditions and guard against the very real concerns of overtraining.

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes – www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

Apple Nachos with Peanut Butter Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 apple (diced)
• 1 banana (halved and sliced)
• 2 whole pita breads
• 1/4 cup butter, melted (1/2 stick)
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup of whole milk
• 1 tablespoon of honey

Instructions:

• Cut the pitas in half so you have two half circles, then cut in half again, creating 4 triangle shapes from each.
• Separate and pull bread apart at the edge where it’s still attached.  Brush pita chips with butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 400 degrees F for 5 – 7 minutes.  While baking, prepare sauce by melting together peanut butter, honey and milk in a small saucepan.  Serve chips drizzled with sauce and add sliced apples and banana to the plate for a fun lunch or after school snack.

Kid Friendly Workout Advice

Does your young child show an interest for physical fitness? Have they expressed the desire to start exercising and lifting weights? With childhood obesity rates continually rising, you might be tempted to jump right in and not only encourage your child to workout but to push them to limits beyond his or her capability. Take caution. Keep a few tips in mind when considering training your child in weight lifting.

Remember: They Are Still a Kid

Though they have small bodies, kids are not miniature adults. Their bodies are still developing with muscles and bones still growing. Therefore you have to use different methods when training a child than you would for an adult. Emotionally, anatomically, and physiologically, kids are very different from adults. So don’t just pick up a weight lifting manual and start with the first exercise.

Bone Health

At the very earliest a child’s bones mature at the age of 14. Some kid’s bones will not reach their full maturity until age 22. So consider this when allowing a child to lift weights. They have immature skeletons. Girls especially can experience negative results that affect the rest of their lives if pushed too hard.

Childhood Diseases

Keep an eye out for irregularities as your child works out. Osgood schlatter disease, for example, results from growth related overuse injuries. Additionally, children need to warm up more than an adult would because of their immature temperature regulation systems. They have a much larger surface area to muscle mass ratio compared to an adult.

Keep the Limits Low

Because they do not sweat as much as an adult, a child is much more prone to heat exhaustion. So watch them carefully. Even heat stroke can result if a child is not properly hydrated or cooled. Additionally, low muscle mass and an immature hormone system make strength and speed development much slower than an adult’s. Children will have a smaller capacity for exercise because of their breathing limitations and heart response differences.

The Workout

So how SHOULD the workout differ for a child than for an adult? First of all, make sure your child stretches completely before working out. Additionally, if you insist on having your lift weights begin with light loads and smaller increments of weight increasing. I personally recommend children perform mostly bodyweight exercises to begin with. Especially until they know how, and are able, to perform the exercises with correct posture and technique.

Children also should not work out any more than three non-consecutive days a week. And in the midst of their exercise, they should continue to drink water as they are prone to dehydration.

Many hard core exercising adults will want to push their children. They will think that they need to encourage them to do more and to push their limits, but they need to realize that they can’t just expect a child to “suck it up,” because a child’s body has limits that an adult does not have to deal with.

Kristy Lee Wilson

Contact me

Mini Tomatoes with Cottage Cheese

What You Need:

• 30 cherry tomatoes
• 1 C small curd cottage cheese
• 1 tsp. celery salt
• 1 tsp. mustard
• ¼ tsp. onion powder

How to Make It:

• Remove the tops of the cherry tomatoes.
• Remove the seeds and set tomatoes aside.
• Place the cottage cheese in a mixing bowl.
• Fold in the celery salt, mustard and onion powder being sure to mix together well.
• Fill each tomato with the mixture.
• Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Kids like these because they are easy to just pop in their mouth while on the run.  They are great with just plain cottage cheese too.

How to Design a Warm-up For Young Athletes

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com.

This may be among the most controversial and misunderstood topics within the entire youth development industry.

Warming up for sport or activity is, in essence, preparing the body for the task it is about to do. This includes increasing body temperature and improving the efficiency of the nervous system (which controls movement). Warm-ups can generally be classified into two categories:

1. General – Incorporates a broad assortment of movements in order to prepare the body as a systemic unit. Arousal of an appropriate ‘mental attitude’ for the upcoming competition or practice is a valuable component of this phase.

2. Specific – Involves precise actions or exercises relating to the particular sport. This serves as a more accurate neuromuscular preparation for the movements and tasks about to take place in the game or practice.

There are two misleading notions regarding warm-up design that are generally believed to be true by many coaches, trainer and parents:

1. Aerobic activity is the best choice as a warm-up exercise.

2. Static stretching must precede all workouts, practices or games in order to reduce the potential for injury.

The ‘aerobic activity’ phenomenon is a wide spread myth to say the least. Soccer, football and baseball coaches often send their athletes on 5 – 10 minute jogs around the field prior to the start of a game. Likewise, Personal Trainers will habitually have their clients ‘warm-up’ on a stationary bike or treadmill prior to a strength-training workout. This type of pre-event warm-up equates to dogmatic practice without any analysis of what the warm-up is meant to supply. Specifically, a warm-up must elevate body/muscle temperature to a certain point, increase both respiration and blood flow as well as enhance nervous system activity thereby heightening coordination and movement aptitude – this must all be done to level at which the athlete is not fatigued but prepared.

With aerobic-based warm-ups, energy reserves may be diminished and the ability to exhibit speed, strength and motor control lessened. This is quite problematic considering most sports and workout programs involve either displaying speed and strength abilities or are designed to enhance speed and strength capacities. More over, if a given training session is geared towards upper body strength exercises, how does running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike prepare the body for the specific neuromuscular demands about to be placed on it?

With static stretching, it must be understood that any type of prolonged, held stretch can actually CAUSE injury. The concept of flexibility as a whole is largely misunderstood in contemporary sport performance (and fitness for that matter). The notion that static flexibility exercises are necessary as a pre-event habit in order to both prevent injury and prepare the body for movement are two primary incorrect ‘facts’.

Firstly, static flexibility exercises can disturb the stability of joints to a point that may actually serve to increase the potential for injury. Acting on nerve transmissions from the brain and spinal cord, muscles serve to move joints through various ranges of motion in order to produce a desired task. Understanding the laws of human motion, their exists a delicate balance between mobility and stability within the context of any movement. A muscle’s job then (in conjunction with both ligaments and tendons), is to produce movement (mobility) while protecting a given joint from ‘over-movement’ (stability). ‘Over-movement’ refers to uncontrolled motion that exceeds the natural limits of a joints capacity – this could result in acute trauma of varying degrees of severity. This mobility-stability interplay can be disrupted if statically held stretches are performed prior to a period of physical exertion.

The other primary factor to consider is that static exercises of any kind cannot be judiciously thought of as precursors to a movement-based activity. All sports and training exercises involve movement in varying extents. Slow and easy-paced multi-directional movements, sudden bursts of speed and maximal strength efforts are all part of either sport participation or training programs. It is only sensible to prime the athlete specifically for what they are about to do – Prepare To Move By Moving To Prepare.

In reality, understanding the concepts of warming-up for sport could be a book unto itself. How to design an efficient and functionally-sound warm-up is based on several factors including –

• Type of activity
• Duration of activity
• Age of Athlete
• Injury History
• Exercise history

*Adapted from ‘Facts & Fallacies of Fitness’ by Dr. Mel Siff

Here is what a general warm-up may look like for an adolescent athlete (of virtually any sport):

Movements are performed for 20 – 30 feet. Walk back to the starting point and begin again.

• Jog X 3
• High Knees X 3
• Butt Kicks X 3
• Carioca X 2 each way
• Back Pedal X 3
• Lunge Walk X 3
• Walking Hip Thrust X 2 each leg
• Walking Skips X 2 each
• High Skips X 3
• Skipping Bounds X 3
• Tempo Runs X 3

Movement aptitude is taught and perfected during warm-ups. It is not enough to simply ‘go through’ the motions – coaches and trainers must teach adequate movement habits and force productions skills.

For both lower and upper body strength training days, I will incorporate a specific movement complex prior to the actual lifting exercises:

Lower Body

These exercises are performed with a 45-pound Olympic bar without any other external loading. Each exercise is performed in sequence one after the other.

• Good Morning X 5 reps
• Overhead Squats X 5 reps
• Back Squats X 5 reps
• Front Squats X 5 reps
• RDL’s X 5 reps

Perform 2-3 sets

These exercises are specific preparations for the movements the athletes are about to perform and elicit a more particular neuromuscular response. Again, impeccable form is both taught and practiced during these movement complexes.

Upper Body

These exercises are performed with 3 – 5 pound dumbbells and are performed in a sequence or circuit type manner.

• Rainbow Arc X 5 (start in anatomical position, raise your arms in a rainbow-type motion until the dumbbells touch above your head)
• Shoulder Press X 5 (standard)
• Forward Arm Circles (standard)
• Crisscross X 5 (start with dumbbells held at 90 degrees of shoulder abduction, ensuring that the scapulae are retracted and depressed. Horizontally adduct until the dumbbells reach the sagittal midline of the body. Perform a quick over-under crisscross with the dumbbells and return to the starting position)
• Bent Over Fly X 5 (standard)

* Perform 2 – 3 sets

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes – www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

Cookie Cutter Veggie Bites

What You Need:

• 2 prepared pie crusts
• 1 (8 oz) pkg. cream cheese, softened
• 1 TBSP milk
• ½ tsp. onion salt
• ½ tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• Cucumber slices
• Tomato, sliced or diced
• Radish slices
• Carrot curls or shredded
• Pimiento slices
• Green onion slices or diced
• Cookie cutters

How to Make It:

• Lightly flour a flat surface.
• Lay the pie crust on the floured surface.
• Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes in the dough.
• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Place the cutouts on an ungreased cookie sheet and prick slightly with a fork.
• Bake 7 minutes or until golden brown.
• Remove and allow cooling.
• In a mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, milk, onion salt and Worcestershire sauce mixing until smooth.
• Spread each cut out with the cream cheese mixture.
• Decorate with the vegetables.

Let the kids have some fun helping with these. Use whatever veggies you like and their imagination.

Why Play is So Important for Children

Have you ever noticed how your child looks ready for a nap when they come inside after an afternoon of playing? Who wouldn’t want to take a rest after several hours of running, jumping, yelling, and laughing? Not only does physical play benefit a child physically, it has countless mental and social benefits as well.

Play as Exercise

With childhood obesity on the rise, children who engage in physical play are less likely to deal with the long-term effects of extra weight, such as diabetes and the social stigma of carrying around a paunch. Also, children who regularly engage in physical play are more likely to continue to engage in physically challenging activities throughout their teen years, and during their adult life. Playing actually produces a lifelong habit of exercise.

Play Teaches Lessons

Physical play teaches children how to interact with other kids. Whether they’re playing a game of kickball on the playground or engaging in an organized sport like soccer with a coach and uniforms, children learn how to work with other kids when they play together. As a result, children learn valuable life skills such as teamwork.

Playing with others also teaches children how to react to set backs, how to read body language, and how to cope with undesirable reactions. They learn not only how to work with others but how to interact with them as well. This skill alone teaches a child to listen to his body and mind in the midst of chaos. For example, as they’re engaging in a game of soccer, they have to control their physical actions with their mind. So when they want to kick their opponent instead of the ball, they learn self control … a skill that will be invaluable in the real world at times!

Children also learn about limits when engaging in physical play. They learn their own physical limits, and they also learn how to push themselves to break through these barriers. Sometimes a coach or an encouraging teammate can help them with this, but ultimately, once they’ve broken a barrier, they’ve built self confidence that will help them succeed in life outside of that playground.

Ultimately play teaches kids great lessons, and while some parents and adults want to dismiss children’s play as just that, we have to recognize that it’s an extremely important part of a child’s physical, emotional, and social development.

While we adults just want to make our kids into responsible mini adults with chores and other responsibilities, we have to remember the importance of play time. So the next time your child seems a little antsy in the house, send them outside to play a pickup game of touch football, tag, or some other game with their friends. It can only benefit them in the end.

Kristy Lee Wilson

Contact me

Mushroom Toast Nibblers

What You Need:

• 1 (4.5 oz) jar of whole mushrooms
• ¼ C plus 2 TBSP margarine, at room temperature
• 1 TBSP lemon juice
• 2 TBSP parsley, minced
• 3 slices of white bread

How to Make It:

• Place the ¼ C of margarine in a large skillet over medium heat.
• Place the mushrooms, lemon juice and parsley in the butter.
• Cook until heated through stirring constantly.
• Remove and place in a bowl and set aside.
• In the same skillet place the remaining 2 TBSP of margarine.
• Cut the bread slices into 1 inch squares.
• Add them to the skillet.
• Cook them around 5 minutes or until toasted on both sides.
• Remove from skillet and place on a paper towel.
• Place a mushroom on top of each square of toast and secure with a toothpick.

Try adding a slice of cheese to each square of toast before the mushroom.  Swiss cheese is always a hit but Cheddar works well also.