If you play sports, exercise should be a crucial part of your lifestyle. In fact, it is not just competitive sportspeople who need a good exercise regimen, but anyone who enjoys the challenge of their favorite sport. This is the idea of this post – to give you the right exercise advice, so that you can get better and stronger at your sport.

The most important exercise advice for sports is: warm up well before you start playing. While serious sportspeople generally warm up religiously before beginning a training session or a game, this is not a common practice amongst people who play sports for leisure. However, it is the occasional sportsperson or the Sunday athlete who needs the warm up more! Warming up allows you to stretch your stiff muscles and improve their range of motion, before you begin any intense sports activity. This prevents common muscular stress-related injuries like strains and muscle pulls. It also leaves you feeling more supple and energetic, which will allow you to enjoy your game more.

While doing warm-up exercises, focus on those particular stretches that are devoted to the muscle groups you are going to use during your sport. For instance, if you are about to play a game of football, your stretches should be devoted to your core and all the muscles in your legs.

After you have finished a session of your sport, it is equally important to do a round of cooling down exercises. The stretches should be similar to the warm up ones, although less strenuous. The idea is to stretch and relax the tired muscles. This will improve your recovery time dramatically and prevent soreness.

Apart from warming up and cooling down, there are a lot of other exercises that can add great value for your particular sport. Exercise for improved muscular strength and endurance, for example, will only help you get better, no matter what sport you play and what muscles you use. The best bet is to consult a certified fitness trainer, who will tell you the best muscular strength and endurance exercises for your sport. Remember, build your endurance and strength in gradual, properly planned steps. That is how your body will be able to perform better and withstand longer and more intense sessions of your favorite sport.

As a person who is actively into sports, you must remember to balance your exercise regime with a good diet. You would need more protein than the average individual and a combination of healthy carbs and fats. Try to avoid junk food and sweets as far as you can.

On the whole, you must bear in mind that sports and exercise go hand in hand. A lot of people believe that playing a sport is a substitute for exercise. However, without the right training and base-strength, your body will breakdown at some stage or the other, with the intense strain of a sport. However, as argued above, preventing injuries is not the only role of exercise for sports. Exercise will also help you get better and stronger. After all, even if you play your sport as leisure, you would want to do it as well as you can, wouldn’t you?

Many people are propagating different kinds of diets, and there is so much conflicting information out there, that a lot of people end up really confused about their daily protein requirements. It is time to clear the confusion!

Since the primary function of protein is to help with building muscle tissue, and eventually developing muscle mass, people who are doing any form of muscle building need a lot more protein intake daily than individuals with a generally sedentary lifestyle.

For an average person 0.8 grams of protein, per kg of body weight, per day is more than enough. This would mean that a 70 kg adult man would need a daily protein intake of about 56 grams. However, for athletes, bodybuilders and fitness buffs, this is not enough to support muscle repair and growth, and to counter the stress and strain of increased training. At an average, they would need twice the amount of protein intake daily. This would mean about 1.5-2.0 grams of protein per day, per kg of body weight. So, for that same 70 kg person, if he was doing intense physical training, his daily protein requirement would go up to about 115-120 grams.

A lot of bodybuilders realize that they need excess protein, but the problem is that they don’t know where to stop. They take it to an extreme, by packing their food with protein. This is a very bad practice, because if your daily protein intake is too high, it means that your body is probably not getting enough carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are critical for the muscles, because they provide fuel (glycogen) for the muscles to burn. If there is a shortage of carbohydrates in the body, the muscles may begin to burn the protein for energy. This is detrimental for a bodybuilder, because they need to preserve the protein for muscle repair and growth. Also, excessive daily protein intake could be hazardous for people who have kidney or liver problems, and those who are obese or diabetic.

Refer to this chart to find out how much protein different food items contain: