The Game Plan
A publication of the National Senior Games Association
The NSGA is excited to announce their new email newsletter, The Game Plan. We're automatically sending it to any emails we had for 2009 Summer National Senior Games competitors. If you'd like to be added to our email list, please fill out the sign up information on the right of this page.
Below you'll find the full content from the newsletter, or click a link below to go straight to the story :
Welcome from NSGA President & CEO, Phil Godfrey
Athlete of the Month
Joint Juice Offers a few Joint Health Tips
Breakfast Advice to Chew On
The Power of Active Aging
NSGA Briefs
Calendar of upcoming State Senior Games
We apoloigze for the error in the newsletter - the 2011 Summer National Senior Games are June 16-30, 2011 (not in August). Thanks
Welcome to the first issue of The Game Plan
By Phil Godfrey, NSGA President & CEO
We’re very excited about our new email newsletter, The Game Plan, and we hope you will be, too. Every month in this e-newsletter, you’ll find timely and useful updates about NSGA events and state senior games.
We’ll also supply important training and nutrition information to help you be in peak condition when you’re ready to compete. And we’ll select an inspiring “Athlete of the Month” from an NSGA-sanctioned event.
We're automatically sending the newsletter to those who qualified for the 2009 Summer National Senior Games and those who signed up for Masters Athlete magazine. If you’re not part of that group, but would like to receive the newsletter just fill out your name and email in the right column of this page. And feel free to forward this e-newsletter to friends, so they can benefit, too. We hope you, your family and your friends find this and our newly re-designed web site to be valuable resources that you refer to often.
Athlete of the Month: David Hockersmith
David Hockersmith is our inaugural athlete of the month for his strong sprint performances at the Arizona Senior Olympics, which were held in Phoenix, Feb. 20-Mar. 14.
Hockersmith, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., won two gold medals and one silver medal in the men’s 50-54 age group at the Arizona Senior Olympics. He won gold in the 100-meter dash, finishing the race in 12.89 seconds. He also took gold in the 200-meter dash, completing the race in 26.11.
Hockersmith, who runs with the SoCal Track Club, placed second in the 50-meter dash, running the race in 7.08. He was beaten to the tape by David Woodbury of Mesa, Ariz., who won the race in 6.96.
Photo courtesy of Chris Stone
Joint Juice Offers a few Joint Health Tips
Dean Karnazes is an ultramarathoner and advocate for healthy, active living. Here are his tips for training and maintaining healthy joints:
Tip 1: Run longer, early on.
Whether you’re training for your first marathon or simply a personal best, you need to build up more than the minimal amount of endurance. Work longer runs into your training by doing your first longer run at least six weeks before race day.
Tip 2: Think of food as fuel.
Eat more natural whole foods (vegetables, meat, dairy) and avoid modern processed foods (fast food, packaged products, soft drinks). Basically, eat what works for you and experiment early in your training. On longer runs, calorie-dense foods like granola, trail mix and nuts are mainstays for me.
Tip 3: Be supplement savvy.
I put a lot of stress on joints so I need something that goes down easy and absorbs well. Glucosamine in liquid form works great, which is why Joint Juice has long been a part of my health regimen. Joint Juice tastes great and gives my joints what they need to keep moving.
Tip 4: Listen to your body.
Since a cramp or a gut stitch is caused by oxygen and electrolyte deficiencies, breathe deeply to pump fresh oxygen to your muscles. And if possible, swig a salt tablet with an electrolyte beverage.
Tip 5: Rest, recover, repeat.
It’s essential to find the right balance of rest and recovery, especially for older athletes. And make sure to build some time for a walk, soccer with the kids, or a yoga session into your training. Just make sure you put the running shoes away.
Breakfast Advice to Chew On
By Lisa Menninger
Contradictory advice on what to eat is all around us: Avoid caffeine! Caffeine is good for you! Carbs are bad! Carbs are good!
What follows is some simple advice for eating a healthy breakfast, whether you’re an athlete or not.
First, keep in mind that the more processed a food is, the more suspect its nutritional value. The bulk of your diet should be whole foods: fruit, vegetables, lean meats, dairy and grains. Avoid processed foods.
Every meal and snack should include a lean protein accompanied by non-processed carbohydrate or minimally processed carbohydrate. Lean proteins include lean meats, white poultry, legumes, nuts, low fat dairy and even some whole grains. Non-processed carbs include fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
The body recognizes and properly digests natural foods. The body doesn’t know what to make of processed foods, often storing them as fat, especially if they are high in saturated fat, sugar or white flour.
So for a healthy breakfast, I suggest oatmeal with a bit of brown or raw sugar, cinnamon and a splash of low fat milk. You can also add a piece of fruit. This meal provides you protein and fiber - both which are longer burning fuels and allow you to feel full longer.
Eggs are another good morning option. They get a bad rap for being high in cholesterol, but it’s all right to eat them once or twice a week.
A cup or two of coffee for the average person is just fine. Don't add large amounts of processed creamer or sugar, or your breakfast will become a dessert. Also avoid processed breakfast cereals. They can be high in sugar and simple carbohydrates and low in protein and fiber – all of which is not good.
Breakfast cereal is often a culprit in a poor diet. The serving sizes printed on the box are usually half of what the normal sized person eats. Find a cereal that has between 7 grams and 10 grams of protein and 4 or more grams of fiber per serving. There should also be 35 grams or fewer of carbohydrates or less and 8 grams or fewer of sugar per serving.
I suggest becoming a label reader. It is very important to know what a serving size of a product is and how much fat (saturated and trans fats), fiber, carbohydrates, sugar, vitamins and minerals a food has. It will often change your habits when you see what is really in the food you are eating.
Eating well and healthy should not be a prison sentence. You don't need to eat rice cakes for breakfast to lose pounds or maintain a healthy weight. You should enjoy the food you eat and frankly, good food tastes good.
Lisa Menninger is a personal trainer for triathletes, runners, and cyclists. She has competed at an elite level in running, cycling and multisport. You can contact Lisa via her website at www.lisamenninger.com.
The Power of Active Aging
By Vonda Wright, M.D.
Is aging a number, a feeling or an inevitable biologic process we can’t alter? Much of what we know about the aging process has come from studying sedentary people.
The problems typically attributed to aging have less to do with actual aging than the sedentary way that more than 70% of people in this country choose to spend their lives. This sedentary living results in 35 chronic diseases that kill more than 250,000 people a year in the United States. This is many times more than any bacteria or bird flu out break ….it is our couches that are not only aging us but killing us!
It occurred to me that in order to understand the true nature of musculoskeletal aging that we had to eliminate the variable of living a sedentary lifestyle…only this way could we answer the question of “What are our bodies really capable of if we aged the way we were designed for….actively?”
For this reason I started studying you -- Senior Olympians. This group of active agers consistently exhibit high levels of functional capacity and a high quality of life. I wanted to know why the 50-year-old male winner of the mile run was capable of finishing in 4:34 or why the 70-year-old winner still can blow away many sedentary people half their age by running a mile in seven minutes.
I began looking at performance times of the top eight finishers in every track distance from 100 meters to 10k from age 50 to 85 in the 2001 Senior Olympics. Would there be any kind of pattern to how we age? When does biology take over no matter how active we are?
What I found amazed me. Masters athletes’ performance declined less than 2% per year for both men and women from age 50 to 75. This means that you could put a 50 year old and a 70 year old in the same race and no one gets lapped. This was true for the sprint distances as well as the endurance distances.
After 75 years old, however, something happens. The slow 2% decline in performance times suddenly becomes more than 8% decline per year. Why does performance plummet? Is it the cumulative factors of loss of muscle mass, flexibility, coordination or aerobic capacity that suddenly catch up with us?
To evaluate this effect further I looked at American track and field record holders…the bests of the best. From 30 to 50 years old there is less than a 1% decline in performance. From 50 to 75 the rate of decline in performance increases to less than 2%. But after 75 years old, there is again a sharp decrease in performance.
In future editions of this newsletter, I’ll be exploring more aspects of active aging and how and why it can benefit you.
Vonda Wright is an orthopaedic surgeon, author of Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age, and director of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes at the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine.
NSGA Briefs
2010 National Senior Games Championships & Euflexxa Hockey Classic taking place Sept. 29-Oct. 3
The 2010 National Senior Games Championships & Euflexxa Hockey Classic takes place Sept. 29-Oct. 3 in Rochester, N.Y. In addition to ice hockey, the event includes competition in team bowling, team curling, team golf and pickleball. No qualification is necessary for this event, but you must be 50 or older by Dec. 31, 2010, to compete.
Take note of cool changes to the 2011 Summer National Senior Games
The Summer National Senior Games presented by Humana, will be held next year on June 16-30 in Houston. Note that 13 of the events will be held indoors in air-conditioned facilities. The NSGA recently announced that all tennis and archery competition will be held at indoor facilities. To participate, athletes must be at least 50 years old and qualify at an NSGA State Games during calendar year 2010. For more information, click here.
New directors named to NSGA board
Four new directors have been named to NSGA’s board. The new members are: Bill Milks from Hawaii; Jack Mordini from Wisconsin; Ed Roberts from Texas; and Joe Rossi from Ohio.
State Senior Games Calendar
Upcoming state senior games are listed below. Remember: It’s a qualifying year, and the only way to have a chance of qualifying for the Summer National Senior Games in 2011 is to compete in an NSGA-sanctioned state event. For a complete list of state games scheduled for this year, click here.
May 19-22
South Carolina Senior Sports Classic
Florence, South Carolina
May 21
Alabama Senior Olympic Games (TT)
Montgomery, Alabama
May 21-23
Connecticut Senior Games
Manchester, Connecticut
May 26-31
National Veterans Golden Age Games
Des Moines, Iowa
May 27-28
Idaho Senior Games (Archery)
Boise, Idaho
May 31
Alabama Senior Olympic Games (5k/10k)
Montgomery, Alabama
June 4
Green Mountain Senior Games (CY/RQ)
Lyndonville, Vermont
June 4-6
Ocean State Senior Games
Providence, Rhode Island
June 5-27
California State Senior Olympics
Pasadena, California
June 8-13
Empire State Senior Games
Cortland, New York
June 9-13
Rocky Mountain Senior Games
Greeley, Colorado
June 10-13
Missouri State Senior Games
Columbia, Missouri
June 10-13
Montana Senior Olympics
Kalispell, Montana
June 11-13
New Mexico Senior Olympics (Volleyball)
Las Vegas, New Mexico
June 17-20
Indiana Senior Games
Carmel, Indiana
June 17-20
Iowa Senior Olympics
West Des Moines, Iowa
June 17-20
Massachusetts Senior Games
Springfield, Massachusetts
June 25-26
West Virginia Summer Sports Classic
Charleston, West Virginia
June 26
Green Mountain Senior Games (TF/BW)
Burlington/Barre, Vermont
