RECOMMENDATION LETTER

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EUROPEAN AND TURKISH NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

What is fitness?

Fitness includes cardiovascular functioning, which is improved by aerobic activities that get your heart and lungs working faster. It also includes muscle strength, flexibility, and balance. You don’t need to get fancy, expensive equipment to improve your fitness.

Why it is important ?

  1. Decrease risk of disease
  2. Feel great physically
  3. Look better
  4. Sleep better
  5. Live longer—up to five years according to the American Journal of Preventative Medicine!
  6. Keep in shape so you can enjoy leisure activities
  7. Avoid injury and safely perform work and home chores
  8. Increase mental health and social wellbeing

As ”Fitness For Youth” project team our goal is to strengthen young people’s opportunities and their own potential for active leisure spending through sport fitness activities. The project aims to create opportunities for free online youth education and to provide a tool for youth workers to enhance this potential.
Even people know the importance of Fitness, it is not something easy to start and go on with the same focus and enthusiasm. And some time they do something wrong while they are thinking that it is something correct.

In this case MOTIVATION, NUTRITION and CRITICAL THINKING IN SPORT are very important aspects
Here we have some recommendations for you

MOTIVATION

How do we develop motivation for sustained striving? If we take our cues from everyday life, then it may be associated with arousal, such as the “motivational” tirades of coaches in the locker room. Former players of Manchester United Football Club have often remarked about the halftime locker room “hairdryer treatment” talks of the legendary coach of Manchester United Sir Alex Ferguson. Some believe it is a measure of confidence, a winning attitude that motivates one to better performance. Some believe it is a simple matter of positive thinking: Believe and you will achieve! Some believe it is a personal entity or is genetically endowed; you either “have it, or not”! However, these beliefs do not begin to capture the complexity and richness of contemporary motivational theory and research
Have you ever started a fitness program and then quit? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. Many people start fitness programs, but they may stop when they get bored, they don’t enjoy it or results come too slowly.

Here are some tips to help you stay motivated :

  • a) Start with simple goals and then progress to longer range goals. Remember to make your goals realistic and achievable. It’s easy to get frustrated and give up if your goals are too ambitious. For example, if you haven’t exercised in a while, a short-term goal might be to walk 10 minutes a day five days a week. Even short amounts of exercise can have benefits. An intermediate goal might be to walk 30 minutes five days a week. A long-term goal might be to complete a 5K walk.
  • b) Find sports or activities that you enjoy, then vary the routine to keep it interesting. If you’re not enjoying your workouts, try something different. Join a volleyball or softball league. Take a ballroom dancing class. Check out a health club or martial arts center. If you like to work out at home, look online for videos of many types of exercise classes, such as yoga, high-intensity interval training or kickboxing. Or take a walk or jog in a local park. Discover your hidden athletic talent or interests. Remember, exercise doesn’t have to be boring, and you’re more likely to stick with a fitness program if you’re having fun.
  • c) If it’s hard to find time for exercise, don’t fall back on excuses. Schedule workouts as you would any other important activity.You can also slip in physical activity throughout the day. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, or park further away from the store. Walk up and down sidelines while watching the kids play sports. Take a walk during a break at work.
  • d) If you work from home, stretch, walk or climb your stairs on breaks. Or do squats, lunges or situps. Walk your dog if you have one. Pedal a stationary bike, walk or jog on a treadmill, or do strength training exercises during your lunch break or while you watch TV at night. Research has found that sitting for long periods of time may negatively affect your health, even if you otherwise get the recommended amount of weekly activity. If you sit for several hours a day at work, aim to take regular breaks during the day to move, such as walking to get a drink of water or standing during phone conversations or video meetings.
  • e) Are you hoping to lose weight? Boost your energy? Sleep better? Manage a chronic condition? Write down your goals. Seeing the benefits of regular exercise and writing your goals down on paper may help you stay motivated.You may also find that it helps to keep an exercise diary. Record what you did during each exercise session, how long you exercised and how you felt afterward. Recording your efforts and tracking your progress can help you work toward your goals and remind you that you’re making progress.
  • f) You’re not in this alone. Invite friends or co-workers to join you when you exercise or go on walks. Work out with your partner or other loved ones. Play soccer with your kids. Organize a group of neighbors to take fitness classes at a local health club or work out together virtually on video. After each exercise session, take a few minutes to savor the good feelings that exercise gives you. This type of internal reward can help you make a long-term commitment to regular exercise.
  • g) External rewards can help too. When you reach a longer range goal, treat yourself to a new pair of walking shoes or new tunes to enjoy while you exercise. If you’re too busy to work out or simply don’t feel up to it, take a day or two off. Go easy on yourself if you need a break. The important thing is to get back on track as soon as you can.

NUTRITION

A celebrated saying “you are what you eat”. A sound count calories comprises of a wellbalanced eat less composed of all critical supplements in right extent. It avoids ailing health and onset of illnesses like weight, diabetes, heart maladies, cancer & stroke to title a few. Your food decisions daily have an effect on your health — however you’re feeling these days, tomorrow, and within the future. Good nutrition is a vital a part of leading a healthy life style. Combined with physical activity, your diet will facilitate your to succeed in and maintain a healthy weight, cut back your risk of chronic diseases (like cardiovascular disease and cancer), and promote your overall health. The risk factors for adult chronic diseases, like cardiovascular disease and both types of diabetes, are progressively seen in younger ages, typically a results of unhealthy ingestion habits and increased weight gain.

Food that we eat acts as a fuel to the body & give fundamental supplements which assist act as:

  • Energy-giving foods – Carbohydrates, Fats- Energy required constantly for the voluntary & involuntary activities of the body.
  • Body-building foods – Proteins, Minerals- Muscles, bones & organs are built up and maintained by the protein supplied by the food. Minerals like iron, phosphorous affect the formation of the blood – skeleton tissue (bones).
  • Protective foods – Vitamins, Minerals – essential for safeguarding the body against diseases.
  • Regulatory foods – Water, Roughage- Water is required to regulate body processes such as digestion, excretion, maintenance of the body temperature and the electrolyte balance. Roughage helps normal body movements.

What to eat and what not to?

it’s imperative for us to understand what to eat and what to take care of a strategic distance from. Your plate should be wholesome and balanced and must embody the proper fixings to produce you the correct nourishment that you just need. As expressed over you want carbohydrates, proteins, fats and vitamins and minerals beside water and foodstuff.

WHO recommends this diet for adults :

A healthy diet includes the following:

  • Fruit, vegetables, legumes (e.g. lentils and beans), nuts and whole grains (e.g. unprocessed maize, millet, oats, wheat and brown rice).
  • At least 400 g (i.e. five portions) of fruit and vegetables per day (2), excluding potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava and other starchy roots.
  • Less than 10% of total energy intake from free sugars (2, 7), which is equivalent to 50 g (or about 12 level teaspoons) for a person of healthy body weight consuming about 2000 calories per day, but ideally is less than 5% of total energy intake for additional health benefits (7). Free sugars are all sugars added to foods or drinks by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, as well as sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.
  • Less than 30% of total energy intake from fats (1, 2, 3). Unsaturated fats (found in fish, avocado and nuts, and in sunflower, soybean, canola and olive oils) are preferable to saturated fats (found in fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oil, cream, cheese, ghee and lard) and trans-fats of all kinds, including both industrially-produced trans-fats (found in baked and fried foods, and pre-packaged snacks and foods, such as frozen pizza, pies, cookies, biscuits, wafers, and cooking oils and spreads) and ruminant trans-fats (found in meat and dairy foods from ruminant animals, such as cows, sheep, goats and camels). It is suggested that the intake of saturated fats be reduced to less than 10% of total energy intake and trans-fats to less than 1% of total energy intake (5). In particular, industrially-produced trans-fats are not part of a healthy diet and should be avoided (4, 6).
  • Less than 5 g of salt (equivalent to about one teaspoon) per day (8). Salt should be iodized. Of course it changes according to your phyisical performance in a day. Just remember how much action you perform that much energy you need. And nutrition is the energy of body.

CRITICAL THINKING IN SPORT

Critical thinking is the opposite of regular, everyday thinking.

Moment to moment, most thinking happens automatically. When you think critically, you deliberately employ any of the intellectual tools to reach more accurate conclusions than your brain automatically would.
It is generally agreed that a very important part of the game is the mental part of any sporting activity. Good thinking skills help from just beginning to the professional level at any level of sport. At the college level, however, and especially at the professional level, it is even more important because the physical abilities between athletes are often very minor and it is the way athletes think and use good judgment that will make the biggest differences. In fact, the better your mental abilities are, the better your physical abilities. How you think can have a profound effect on maximizing your physical abilities at a very basic level.

Ask yourself ! Why am I doing this?

If we keep doing the same things to prepare, train and develop as an athlete but never get stronger, fitter or faster then it’s time to question your assumptions and evaluate beliefs about the “right way” to do what you have been doing.

Find where do you get the information you need?

If you have been doing the same training repeatedly and the results are failing you look to peer-reviewed sports science studies, not blogs, not vlogs and not your training partners. Taking the time to understand your strengths and weakness by using your data and then looking for topics on ways to improve upon these weaknesses will help you immensely. However, when looking at studies make sure you find a few studies that have similar outcomes so that you are not wasting your time trying to put a one-off study into practice. You might be asking yourself what does critical thinking have to do with athletic performance. It’s actually pretty simple. I want my athletes to graduate from hindsight thinking and become more active in developing positive thoughts when things don’t go to plan. In other words, I want to stop the woulda’, coulda’ shoulda’ mentality that plagues so many athletes.My desire is to give you a simple set of steps to apply them to various athletic scenarios in an effort to help you think critically without being critical of yourself.

Ask Basic Questions

Let’s pair them down and set up some examples of basic questions after a workout or race. I like to work from a who, what, when, where, how and why – line of questioning. Not necessarily in this order.What happened in the performance that caused you to not do your best, finish higher or miss out on a higher podium spot?

How do you know this information?

Are you guessing or are your thoughts based on facts? Such as I didn’t get the win because I was poorly positioned or I lacked skills or a level of fitness to make the race-winning move. As you are setting up these basic questions you need to determine if you are trying to prove, disprove or just critique your efforts.

 

We,“ Fitness for Youth” project team, strongly recommend you to visit the web site and social media adresses of our project. If you visit our project web site, you can find a structured set of free educational online materials including educational videos and a methodological guide. Free educational online videos have an impact on motivating youth to perform sporting activities, on the dangers of using anabolic steroids, on integrating disadvantaged young people into fitness activities, on injury prevention and healthy sports nutrition, on strengthening of critical thinking in connection with fitness lifestyle. And methodological guide gives informations about the basic and the important rules of fitness for trainers that takes into account the involvement of disadvantaged young people in fitness activities.

The web site and social media adresses of our project :

https://www.fitnessforyouth.eu

https://www.facebook.com/Fitness-for-Youth-167850197671612/?ti=as

Serkan TEZCAN

Coordinator of Sultangazi Olimpik Spor Kulübü Derneği, Istanbul, TURKEY

SOURCES:

https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/why-physical-activity-important
https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-150
https://positiveperformancecoaching.com/2020/02/26/athletic-success-demands-critical-thinking-skills/
https://medlineplus.gov/sportsfitness.html
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet