Guide to Improving Your Reflexes for Any Extreme Sport

Extreme sports, also dubbed action or adventure sports, are more intense than the average type of sport.  These types of sports usually involve high levels of danger and risk of injury, exaggerated speeds and heights, and emphasized levels of physical exertion.  Thus, prepping to partake in any extreme sports requires much more time and a honed sense of reflexes and strength.  Because extreme sports require heightened levels of coordination and balance, this type of athlete must greatly improve the viability of his/her reflexes.

Coordinated strength training is a great way to work out your body and improve your balance, coordination, and reflexes for any extreme sport.  As opposed to isolated strength training, coordinated strength training places the athlete in an unstable environment in which he/she must follow through with the primary strength move while maintaining stability.

For example, try assuming the supine bridge position while stabilizing yourself on a balance ball.  Then, using one dumbbell, so a single arm chest press while still assuming that bridged position.  This works the core while forcing the athlete to increase the quickness of his/her reflexes in order to maintain stability and balance on the ball.  The key concept to having the athlete perform this multi layered work out is to challenge his/her ability to work on the stability, coordination, and reflexes of several different parts of the body while working that single exercise.

Special balance boards are typically used by skateboarders, snowboarders, or wakeboarders to work on and improve their balance and reflexes.  These boards resemble skateboards, however, they have no wheels and are balanced on a roller on the bottom of the board, which makes the athlete training on the board have to utilize more skills to balance more dynamically then statically.  This adjusts the extreme sports athlete to the form and coordination it takes to maintain balance while working on bettering the athlete’s reflexes and response time to the moving of the board.

Static balance training, when incorporated with weight lifting and training, can also be a beneficial training tool to improve coordination, balance, and reflex response time.  Like the single-arm chest press on the balance ball, lifting weights while balancing on a static balance board challenges the athlete to utilize and react with all parts of his or her body and forces the athlete to use each part of his or her body together as one in order to maintain balance and stability.

Power training with medicine balls and plyometrics also challenges the extreme sports athlete’s reflexes and strength.  Upper body ball exercises, like the chest pass or overhead slam, work with the athlete’s ability to adjust different parts of their body to the shifts in weight and angles of throwing.  Plyometrics is the best way to increase the athlete’s quickness and speed, but should only be done once or twice a week with a maximum beginning number of jumps starting at fifty to eighty contacts, for it is quite intensive on the body and with too much force and not enough preparation, can easily result in injury.

Carol Montrose is a writer for MBA Online where you can browse top online MBA programs.