Improve Your Sports Game

Are you a weekend warrior? Ready to get out into the fray but finding yourself wounded for work on Monday? You're not alone:

A lot of people are finding that I'm running so much… I'm exercising, but I'm always injured…and probably because there's some sort of improper balance issues going on in the muscle structure.

The answer could be something called "functional training". When applied to sports-movements it can keep you injury free and in the game.

This is a great exercise for planting and turning or change of direction

which would apply to basketball, football, baseball, soccer and a host of other sports. The idea is to balance and strengthen.

If there are any imbalances it's an easy way for them to get injured. So identify what the imbalances are and try to correct them through strengthing and lengthening or making sure they're flexible enough to handle it. This is the direct reverse of a tennis serve…

This exercise is specifically designed to help avoid the notorious 'tennis elbow'.

So that ballistic force that goes through the tennis racquet, through your wrist through the elbow to the shoulder can be abated by having a little bit of muscle to kind of take away that chop.

And this one could improve your golf swing.

What we're trying to do here is develop core stability…

If this sounds like the battle plan for you, look for a training who has been certified as a strength and conditioning specialist—and be sure to mention any injuries.

When I first see them I ask, 'are there any injuries?' 'are there any things that I need to know about?' if a trainer doesn't ask this and puts you straight into a workout, you're probably going down the wrong road.

For more details on how to do these sports exercises, check out our Improve Your Game series of videos.

We do 10 to 12 reps to warm up…

For WebMD, I'm Sandee Lamotte.