Action Steps:

1. Buy an exercise ball

Keep an exercise ball at home, and practice balancing on it. You can buy one on the web (do a search fr swiss balls or exercise balls) for under $20. Start off on your hands and knees, and work up to kneeling. Eventually, try kneeling, and then standing on the ball (at first only do this right next to a solid support you can grab onto for balance or in case of a fall). Once you’ve got the hang of balancing on the ball, you can begin doing exercises like curls, rotations, squats, and wood chops while kneeling or standing on the ball. Balancing on the ball is great training for the core musculature and nervous system, and will pay dividends for any athlete.

2. Save 5 minutes out of your workouts for pliometrics or other explosive exercises

Pliometrics are body weight exercises in which you repeat a given motion as fast as possible for a brief burst. Jumping in place is the most basic pliometric exercise. Skipping, hopping and even sprinting can also be pliometric. The difference between pliometric exercise and other types of exercise is that pliometrics are focused exclusively on training the nervous system. The idea is to help your muscles fire as quickly as possible. You do this by moving as explosively as you can for a low number of reps (usually 6-8). A set of pliometrics should generally be short, only lasting  5 to 20 seconds. As soon as you start to slow down in any pliometric exercise, stop.  If you push for extra reps, you’ll start to slow down, and at that point, you’re defeating the purpose of the exercise, which is to train you to move as quickly as possible. Our Improving Quickness and Leaping Ability Tutorial goes over pliometrics in detail.

3. Visualize achieving your performance goals

We devote a whole section to visualization on this site for a good reason – because visualization can help you get better at just about anything. Visualization is an especially powerful tool in training for sports, so much so that the US Olympic committee has employed psycologists since the 80’s who assist athletes in visualization exercises. Check out The Power of Visualization for tips on how to incorporate visualization into your training.