Fitness

Summer sports secrets from the pros to help you get back in the game injury-free | CNN

Published

2 years ago

July 30, 2024

Summer sports secrets from the pros to help you get back in the game injury-free | CNN

Editor’s note: Dana Santas, known as the “Mobility Maker,” is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and mind-body coach in professional sports, and is the author of the book “Practical Solutions for Back Pain Relief.”

CNN
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Whether you’re a former athlete looking to get back into summer sports or someone just wanting to participate in the family kickball game, you don’t want to deal with an aching back for weeks afterward. Never mind the shame of not being able to hold your own in front of friends and family.

To help everyone get back into seasonal recreational activities safely and effectively, I enlisted four good friends and coaching colleagues from professional sports for expert insights and practical tips to stay active, perform better and enjoy summer activities injury-free.

Read on to learn how you can unlock your summer sports potential and get back in the game.

Jason Glass, a top performance coach who trains elite athletes on the PGA Tour, emphasizes the importance of daily habits. “Whether you’re a professional athlete or a weekend warrior, you can’t prepare for game day on game day,” he said. “Proper preparation comes from your daily habits.”

Glass recommends creating a daily lifestyle checklist he calls his “Foundational Five”:

Sleep like it’s your job: Quality sleep is essential for recovery and performance. Aim for consistent, restful sleep.

Stay hydrated: Drink half your body weight in fluid ounces per day. For a 200-pound (91-kilogram) athlete, that’s 100 ounces daily.

Eat clean: Know what’s in your food and how it affects your body. This awareness helps you make better choices on game day.

Move beautifully: Engage in an activity every day that makes you feel great, whether it’s yoga or weight lifting. Listen to your body.

Live with intention: Train with specific outcomes in mind. Even napping can be beneficial if done with the intention of resting up before a big game.

Glass advises that you score yourself on each of these five foundations at the end of each day, using a scale of 0 to 5. Aim for 20 or more total points at the end of each day. “Master these five foundations before adding any other performance-enhancing modalities,” he suggested.

Bill Burgos, the former head of strength and conditioning for three NBA teams, offers advice for those returning to sports after a hiatus. “For someone who has not participated in any sporting activity for quite some time, it’s crucial to start safely and effectively,” he noted, not waiting until game day to get going again.

These are Burgos’ three tips:

Prepare your body for movement: Use foam rolling and dynamic stretching exercises such as walking lunges with elbow-to-instep and walking knee hugs to enhance flexibility and mobility.

Gradually elevate your heart rate: Begin with low-intensity activities such as a slow jog and progressively increase to a moderate intensity that mimics your sport.

Listen to your body: Pay attention to how your body feels and adjust the intensity of your workout accordingly.

Maintain strength and speed

Paul Fournier, a strength and conditioning coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers who has worked in Major League Baseball for over 30 years, highlights the importance of strength and speed for longevity and injury prevention. “Maintaining strength and speed of movement is key to preventing chronic pain and injuries,” he asserted.

Fournier recommends incorporating calisthenics, weight training, sprint work and plyometrics into your routine. He suggests starting with twice-weekly sessions that include:

Low-level plyometrics: Jump rope, step-ups and light medicine ball work will build neurological and muscular endurance.

Core strengthening: Perform exercises such as planks, dead bugs and rollouts to enhance torso stability and protect your back.

Strength training: Focus on compound movements for the lower body with exercises such as lunges and squats while incorporating more isolating upper-body exercises like chest presses, rows and curls.

Matt Nichol, a coach with three decades of experience training professional and Olympic athletes, emphasizes the critical role of a proper warm-up. “The warm-up is as important as the workout,” he said.

Nichol offers these practical warm-up tips:

Arrive early: Just like professional athletes who arrive at least three hours early on game days, give yourself extra time before your recreational activity or competition to warm up.

Walk more: Park farther away to incorporate some light movement as you walk to your activity.

Get warm: Avoid stretching cold muscles. Instead, perform sport-specific movements (i.e., running, dribbling, swinging a bat or racquet, etc.) at a lower intensity and gradually increase speed until you’re at game speed.

Listen to your body’s cues: Pay attention to any aches and pains during your warm-up. These can be early warnings of injury potential. It’s better to dial back your intensity for one game than to push too hard and miss the entire season.

As a mobility coach in professional sports for more than 20 years, it has been my job to ensure that athletes can move at their fullest range of motion in the positions of their sport. To that end, I encourage athletes to follow these three strategies:

Have clear goals and a plan to achieve them: Your objectives should align with the needs of your sport and provide direction for your mobility program. For instance, if you want to get back into playing golf, tennis or any other rotational sport, focus on mobility exercises that will improve rotation.

Build strong, powerful movements: Enhanced movement that improves sports performance requires strength and power behind the movement. As Fournier mentioned, core strengthening is essential for stabilizing the low back and preventing injury. Building core strength and stability also provides a foundation for expressing power through spine and limb movements.

Train for controlled movement: Avoid solely relying on stretching to create passive ranges of motion that could lead to injury during activity.

Instead, focus on targeted strength and mobility exercises that promote control in end ranges of motion.

As an example, rather than doing seated toe touches as a passive hamstring stretch, practice single-leg Romanian dead lifts that lengthen and strengthen hamstrings while also promoting stabile and mobile pelvic movement.

Before you jump into the next neighborhood pickup basketball game or sign up for the town softball league, take these practical insights to heart to enhance your performance and reduce your risk of injury.

Sign up for CNN’s Fitness, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide will help you ease into a healthy routine, backed by experts.

Fitness

Put the fun back in your fitness routine with this 10-minute follow-along workout from The Curvy Girl Trainer Lacee Green

Published

5 hours ago

April 22, 2026

Press Room

Put the fun back in your fitness routine with this 10-minute follow-along workout from The Curvy Girl Trainer Lacee Green

Ever feel like beginner-friendly workouts are anything but?

That’s how BODi Super Trainer Lacee Green felt, so she devised a three-week, entry-level program designed for genuine newcomers to exercise—or those just getting back into it.

“My beginner-only plan is for every body and everybody,” Green tells Fit&Well.

Green’s program combines low-impact cardio, strength, core and mobility workouts for a total of five sessions a week and 30 minutes a day.

One of the routines she loves—that she says will provide a flavor of the plan—is a total-body cardio workout inspired by seven different sports.

“There is no repetition, it’s all bodyweight and super fun,” she says. “We do basketball, we do pickleball, we do soccer, and it’s really going to get your heart rate up.”

It will all count toward the CDC’s recommended 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity per week, while incorporating resistance training elements to strengthen your bones and muscles, she explains.

And Green has provided the full 10-minute routine below for you to try.

10-minute cardio workout for beginners

Press play on the video above and Green will guide you through the workout, or keep reading to see what’s in store.

Green’s 10-minute beginner-only cardio workout is inspired by seven different sports that she says will help channel your inner athlete.

Each sport links to an exercise during the routine. Follow the short warm-up, then perform each move for 40 seconds and rest for 20 seconds, for one round per sport.

In the video, another trainer demonstrates variations of each exercise so you can make it slightly more challenging as desired. The workout concludes with a short cool-down.

Here’s a brief breakdown of each exercise.

1. Basketball catch and shoot

Step to your side, then reach up into full extension as if shooting a three-pointer. Repeat by shuffling from side to side.

2. Quick football feet

Lower into a quarter squat with your feet wide apart and alternate quick stepping onto either foot. On Green’s cues, switch the direction you face from center to left and right.

3. Skater side-step

Step side to side as if skating, hitting an imaginary hockey stick across your body.

4. Soccer kick-up

Keeping light on your feet, hop from side to side as if juggling a football with your feet.

5. Pickleball shuffle

Lower into a half squat with your hands together in front of you. Keeping low, step or jump forward, then shuffle back to the start position.

6. Boxing jab cross

Stand side on with slightly bent knees and your guard up. Alternate throwing jabs with your left and right, switching your stance after 20 seconds.

7. Baseball squat to high plank

With your feet wide apart, lower into a deep squat with your hands up like a catcher. Place your hands on the floor and step back into a high plank, then back to the low squat.

About our expert

Lacee Green

Lacee Green is a BODi Super Trainer, certified personal trainer (CPT) and coach with more than 10 years of experience. She hosts a number of BODi on-demand fitness programs that are designed to challenge and motivate you while also providing a supportive and inclusive environment.

Fitness

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

Published

17 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

research review

People with high cardiorespiratory fitness were 36% less likely to experience depression and 39% less likely to develop dementia than those with low cardiorespiratory fitness. Even small improvements in fitness were linked to a lower risk. Experts believe that exercise’s ability to boost blood flow to the brain, reduce bodywide inflammation, and improve stress regulation may explain the connection.

Fitness

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

Published

1 day ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

While many swear by them, most people see burpees as a form of punishment – usually dished out drill sergeant-style by overzealous bootcamp PTs. Often the final blow in an already brutal workout, burpees are designed to test cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and mental grit. Love them or loathe them, they deliver every time.

For Max Edwards – aka Busy Dad Training on YouTube – they became a simple but highly effective way to stay fit and lean during lockdown. Once a committed powerlifter, spending upwards of 80 minutes a day in the gym, he was forced to overhaul his approach due to fatherhood, lockdown and a schedule that no longer allowed for long, structured lifting sessions.

‘Even though I was putting in hours and hours into the gym and even though my physique was pretty good, I wasn’t becoming truly excellent at any physical discipline,’ he explained in a YouTube video.

‘I loved the intentionality of training,’ says Edwards. ‘The fact that every session has a point, every rep in every set is helping you get towards a training goal, and I loved that there was a clear way of gauging progression – feeling like I was developing competence and moving towards mastery.’

Why He Walked Away From Powerlifting

Despite that structure, Edwards began to question whether powerlifting was sustainable long-term.

‘My sessions were very taxing on my central nervous system. I was exhausted between sessions. It felt as if I needed at least nine hours of sleep each night just to function.’

He also noted that his appetite was consistently high.

But the biggest drawback was time.

‘I could not justify taking 80 minutes a day away from my family for what felt like a self-centred pursuit,’ he says.

A Simpler Approach That Stuck

‘Over the course of that year I fixed my relationship with alcohol and I developed, for the first time in my adult life, a relationship with physical training,’ says Edwards.

With limited time and no access to equipment, he turned to burpees. Just two variations, four times a week, with each session lasting 20 minutes.

‘My approach in each workout was very simple. On a six-count training day I would do as many six-counts as I possibly could within 20 minutes. On a Navy Seal training day I would do as many Navy Seal burpees as I could within 20 minutes – then in the next workout I would simply try to beat the number I had managed previously.’

This style of training is known as AMRAP – as many reps (or rounds) as possible.

The Results

Edwards initially saw the routine as nothing more than a six-month stopgap to stay in shape. But that quickly changed.

‘I remember catching sight of myself in the mirror one morning and I was utterly baffled by the man I saw looking back at me.’

He found himself in the best shape of his life. His energy levels improved, his resting heart rate dropped and his physique changed in ways that powerlifting hadn’t quite delivered.

‘It has been five years since I have set foot in a gym,’ he says. ‘That six-month training practice has become the defining training practice of my life – and for five years I have trained for no more than 80 minutes per week.’

The Burpee Workouts

1/ 6-Count Burpees

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor (count 1)
Jump your feet back into a high plank (count 2)
Lower into the bottom of a push-up (count 3)
Push back up to plank (count 4)
Jump your feet forward to your hands (count 5)
Stand up straight (count 6)

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor
Jump your feet back into a high plank
Perform a push-up (chest to floor)
At the top, bring your right knee to your right elbow, then return
Perform another push-up
Bring your left knee to your left elbow, then return
Perform a third push-up
Jump your feet forward
Stand or jump to finish

Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.