Some careers are near enough impossible to break into. What little girl hasn’t dreamt of being a pop star at some point? For the most part, we learn that these careers are out of reach early on. By the time we reach our teen years, we barely remembering wanting them.

But, some dreams are harder to shake. For the sporty among us, the ideal career would, of course, be the chance to compete professionally. But, making a career as an athlete is tough. There isn’t much money in the field unless you’re top of your game. Olympians and world champions can afford to give up the day job, but that’s about it.

It may be that you had some success, but never quite managed to make it big. Or, perhaps your dreams never got off the ground, and your chance has passed. It can be heartbreaking, especially if you’ve held those dreams since you were young. But, hope isn’t lost. Holding onto an impossible dream will do damage and lead to financial trouble. But, the passing of your athletic ambitions could mark the time when you start making money from sports. Why? Because you’ll be more open to alternative options. These can be as satisfying and are, for the most part, easier to achieve. Finally, you’ll be able to make an income from fitness!

Here, we’re going to look at a few of the options available. You never know; one may catch your eye.

Become A Sports Teacher

Be honest; the statement ‘those who can’t do, teach’ came into your head the moment you saw this. But, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, teaching is an amazing way for the best athletes to spread what they know. If you want to specialize, you could work with college kids who are studying for degrees. Or, perhaps you would rather work with a variety of sports. In that case, secondary and primary education would be your best bet.

You will need a degree to make full-time teaching work for you, but studying part time means you could earn and learn at the same time. Or, you could opt to work as a supply teacher. This will mean less money, but it’ll ensure you can get straight to it. Whatever you decide, it may be worth going down this route before you commit. That way, you’ll be able to see whether this suits.

Could You Coach?

Teaching may have its merits, but when you’re dealing with a classroom full of kids, you may not get the engagement you’re after. Often, they won’t want to be there. And, the number of children you teach will make it difficult to form one on one relationships. If that’s what you’re after, you’re better off becoming a coach. Here, you’ll work with a few students individually. The chances are you’ve had plenty of coaches in your life, so you should already know what’s needed. You’ll be able to draw from your own experiences to provide coaching which works. This also has the benefit of keeping you in the athletic surroundings you love. With a bit of luck, your clients will lead you to those same rooms you competed in during your youth.

Go Down A Clinical Route

A clinical route to sports may take you away from the field, but it’s well worth considering. You could opt to specialize in helping rehabilitate sporting injuries. Here, you’ll need to develop your understanding of body and recovery. Using physical therapy, you’ll be responsible for getting athletes back up and running.

Or, perhaps you’d rather go down the psychological route. Sports psychologists stand to make a lot of money if they’re successful. Plus, this opportunity would reveal to you a whole new side of this thing you’ve loved since you were young. Bearing in mind that you would need to study to qualify for this role. But, something like an online Master of Science in Psychology would allow you to study when it suits. That way, you could complete your course in a shorter or longer period, depending on your needs.

Become An Event Organizer

Or, perhaps you’re ready to take a step back. Being at the forefront can be exhausting, and you may well have had enough. It’s possible to move from the limelight and remain within the environment you’ve come to know. Becoming an organizer for athletic events means you can sit back and enjoy the ride without having to worry about getting too physical.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science.

If there is one goal which we would all generally agree to being important, it is to remain as fit and healthy as possible for as long as possible. However, put this way, it doesn’t really tell us much. The truth is that there is much more to it than it at first appears, and getting to grips with that is the first essential step towards understanding it more fully. As it turns out, anyone who wants to improve their health in any big and lasting way will benefit massively from understanding a little about the psychology behind it all. Fortunately, such psychology is easy to understand and will help you with any health goals you hope to achieve. Let’s take a deeper look into the world of psychology to understand health a little better.

A Two-Way Relationship

It is often helpful to think of the relationship between health and mind as a yin and yang situation. In one sense, being healthy helps to promote a more positive psychological outlook, and improves mental well-being. But at the same time, fostering a healthy mindset is always going to improve the effectiveness of any decisions you make regarding your physical health. It might be beneficial to visualize the mind and body relationship as a swinging door: no matter which way you push it, it comes back the other way with equal force. Alternately, you might want to go the way of certain spiritual traditions, and consider the mind and body to really just be two parts of the same machine. Seen from this perspective, it makes little difference what you do for one or the other. Improving your mind strengthens your body, and boosting your physical health likewise brings about more positive and beneficial states of mind. We all already know that getting the mind and body in harmony can have hugely positive effects. This is made all the easier by considering that they are really just one thing anyway. Understand the basic nature of this relationship as well as you can; it will help you no matter what you attempt to do to improve your health.

Building A Strong Foundation

Seen from that viewpoint, it is clearly beneficial to try and build a strong foundation from both the physical and mental sides of the equation. If you look at http://trainingtips.com/strong-foundation/ you will get a good idea of what we are going for here. The better the foundation, the starting point, the more effective any subsequent actions to improve one’s health will be, so this is worth looking into at your earliest convenience. In truth, there is practically no end to what you can do to bring about this harmonious foundation – but there are particular first steps which are worth attempting.

For a start, it is a good idea to try and clear both mind and body of any particularly toxic substances. In the physical realm, this means avoiding any genuine toxins which your body probably doesn’t appreciate having inside it. In many cases, this is extremely difficult to do, especially if those toxins are highly addictive substances which you have been dependent on for some time. If this applies to you, consider visiting somewhere like www.orlandorecovery.com to try and rid yourself of the addiction. It might take a long time, but it will be worth it.

On the mental side, getting rid of toxins means working to remove the basis of unhelpful and damaging thought patterns. This, again, is for many people the work of a lifetime. You might even say that useless mental chitter-chatter is something of an epidemic human disease. Nonetheless, you can make small changes each and every day to gradually do away with these types of thoughts. Take up a meditation routine, even just half an hour a day, and you will be well on your way with this side of the bargain.

Keeping The Balance

Your main mission now is to continue to try and keep the balance between body and mind as you work on improving your health. There are countless fitness and health goals which you might be set on achieving. Regardless of what yours are, you should try to ensure that you always work towards them with both body and mind in the center of the issue at all times. This will ensure that you do not focus too heavily on one to the detriment of the other – a common but often unseen flaw which upends many attempts to improve one’s health. Put simply, you need to work on both improving your physical and mental well-being at the same kind of pace.

The Physical Side

When it comes to looking at improving your physical health, there are a number of easy and common changes which you might want to make. If you feel that you have become sluggish, then the first port of call will be to simply get moving in whatever way you can. This might mean going for a jog every other day, or it might even be something much smaller, to begin with. Whatever it takes, make sure you go at a speed which will not cause too much stress to either side of the equation. Take it as slow as is necessary in order to enjoy it, but as fast as you need to in order to see those changes you want to see.

The Mental Side

Of course, in tandem with this, you will want to think about tending to your mental side. This means continuing with that daily meditation practice, for a start. But it’s also a case of keeping stress at bay, killing it the moment it arises within you. This practice alone will do plenty in terms of keeping you centered and healthy, and you might be surprised at what a difference it really does make overall.

Health only comes to you when you focus in a balanced way on both your body and mind. Focus on those aspects of wellbeing which tend to both, such as good nutrition and plenty of rest, and you will be well on your way to greater health.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science.

While often used as a comedic device, the idea of being able to “walk off” an injury is nevertheless a persistent one. Trip and fall while out running? Walk it off! Stretch too far during a yoga class? Walk it off!

The whole idea is based on a fundamental lack of understanding about the human body. While there are some injuries which are temporary – momentary spasms of pain that will recede on their own – there is a huge threat caused by trying to “walk off” an injury that can’t be walked off. Of course, you have no way of knowing if the injury you have sustained can be walked off before you try it – but what happens if you give it a go, and what harm are you doing if you’ve calculated incorrectly?

Think About R.I.C.E.

You’re more than likely aware of what “R.I.C.E” means in an injury capacity, but if not, let’s be clear – it’s not this:

What it actually stands for is the way that you should handle an injury:

R – Rest
I – Ice
C – Compression
E – Elevation

While you might think you will always know which injury needs the R.I.C.E. treatment and which doesn’t, you’re probably incorrect. R.I.C.E. is not just for those sudden, sharp injuries like turning your ankle – it should also be used for gradual stress injuries, that you might not even notice are building up.

As a rule, if you feel persistent pain – no matter how mild – in any area of your body, it needs to be R.I.C.E-d.

Strength Through Rest

You might think that because you work out regularly, use supplements like AlgaeCal, and have done your research, then you know best. You know that resting an injury can sometimes be worse for it than anything; back injuries, particularly, have a tendency to get worse rather than better if you cease all exercise.

However, learning about the AlgaeCal plant calcium side effects and researching the latest exercise techniques does not mean that you have the power to see into the future. How do you know the pain you’re experiencing in the moment is the kind that won’t benefit from rest?

Put simply: you don’t. It’s great that you have educated yourself on the supplements you should be taking if you exercise regularly and know your way around dealing with workout aches and pains, but you can’t predict the future. It’s far better to stop the moment you feel pain and make a clear-headed assessment of what’s happening to you.

Pain Isn’t Embarrassing

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the “walk it off” line is often used in comedic terms – i.e. someone walks into a door and is told to “walk it off”. This suggests that pain is an embarrassment, the fault of the person who is feeling the pain.

This isn’t the case. It might be embarrassing to trip over while running, but the pain itself should never be a cause for shame. Bodies go wrong. We make mistakes, miscalculate, and hurt ourselves – it’s completely natural. What is embarrassing is trying to carry on when your body is telling you to stop, thereby inevitably making life worse for yourself. Don’t fall into this trap; if something hurts, stop, evaluate, and then make a decision on how to proceed – no matter what anyone else thinks.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science.

Anyone who says losing weight and getting in shape is painless is a liar – or are they? The fact is that often the process of shedding those extra pounds and building up our fitness levels is a long road and one that takes a lot of time, hard work and effort. However, just because taking your body from doughy to trim and perfectly toned can be painful, that doesn’t mean it has to be
The fact is, you can get in much better shape without the stress and hard work that comes with a lot of weight loss and fitness programs, it’s just a case of knowing what steps you need to take, that’s all. Don’t believe that it is possible to take the pain out of getting trim and toned? Then prepare to be proved wrong – read on for all the best hacks for getting in shape without the pain.

Stand and work

The more you are on your feet each day, the more calories you will burn. If you have a job where you tend to sit for most of the day, it is worth considering swapping to a standing desk. Admittedly, this will only equate to burning an extra 20 calories or so an hour compared to sitting, but over time, it all adds up. If you work for six hours a day, five days a week, using a standing desk will mean that you burn an extra 600 calories per week. Plus, standing will help to tone your legs, bum, and stomach, so on top of burning the extra calories, standing while you work will also increase your body’s toning.

Cooking from scratch is so last year

While cooking from scratch is all well and good, in today’s hectic world it’s not always doable, is it? That’s why it’s easier to opt to follow a diet and fitness plan provided by a specialist company that offers ready made, healthy, calorie-controlled meals. This will make eating healthy (and consuming fewer calories) much easier. Obviously, before you sign up for a certain diet plan, it’s worth looking online for an in-depth diet review of the company and their products, to ensure that it will meet your dietary needs. Cooking from scratch can work well when you’re on a diet, but it’s just too time-consuming for most people.

Tone here, there and everywhere

Don’t leave toning up for the gym, instead aim to tone wherever you are, whatever you are doing. When you are cleaning the house (a task that can burn hundreds of calories each time), tense your stomach and buttocks muscles, to help improve how toned your body is. To tone up your legs and buttocks, always take the stairs at speed, and never use an elevator or escalator. Tone your biceps at your desk by doing bicep curls with a water bottle while you are at work – do this for just a week and you will notice a difference. While watching your favorite TV shows workout – whether that’s with toning pilates exercises, weight lifting, or planking, it doesn’t matter, just make sure to take advantage of this time to tone, instead of being a couch potato.

The fact is that getting trim and toning up is never going to be easy, but you can take some of the pain out of it by making the process easier to do and simpler to fit into your daily routine.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science.

The early days of weight loss are arguably the most difficult. Not only are you getting used to exercising again after a certain period of time, but you’re probably adjusting your diet so that unhealthy food doesn’t hinder your progress. However, it’s easy to lose your motivation if, after a few weeks of healthy habits, there has been no change on the scales. Losing weight is a long process, but it can boost your enthusiasm if you see visible changes on the scales, or in your dress size. So here are a few ways to boost your weight loss, no matter where you are on your journey.

Fat-burning foods

No matter what adjustments you make to your diet, the one thing you must never do is cut out food altogether; just as a car won’t get very far on an empty tank of gas, your body won’t function well without the energy it makes from food. Instead, you can boost your weight loss by eating food that gives your body the vitamins it needs, without adding to your weight woes. Avocados, almonds, and sweet potato are all fat-burning foods that curb your appetite for several hours and keep you full of energy for longer. They’re also full of good fats that help you burn calories at the gym later.

Supplements

If you’re eating a more nutritional diet, then supplements might not do much for you. However, shakes and supplements are good if you’re temporarily trying to replace meals to kick start weight loss. When the body has no calories to burn, it enters a metabolic process called ketosis, which means that your body starts burning fat to make energy. For the first week or so of your weight loss process, you can look into meal replacements or buy Isagenix to lose weight; meal replacement shakes will give your body the nutrients it needs to stay healthy, while still allowing your body to enter ketosis. Meal replacements are also good as a post-workout meal in the evenings, as your body doesn’t have to waste energy on digesting solid food.

HIIT

There’s so much debate whether cardio or weight training exercises are the best way to burn fat and build muscle. The truth is, the best kind of workout incorporates both. When you join a High Intensity Interval Training class you combine 30 seconds of weights and 30 seconds of cardio in three-minute increments for a 30-minute workout. It’s intense, but it can fit into even the busiest schedules, targets all your muscles, and has been shown to zap more belly fat than steady-paced moderate workouts. In addition to reducing body fat and improving muscle tone, HIIT helps to boost your metabolism, so you keep burning fat after your workout is complete.

Drink more water

Drinking water helps to boost your metabolism, cleanse your body of waste, and acts as an appetite suppressant. Also, drinking water helps your body stop retaining water, leading you to drop those extra pounds of water weight.

Ally Gonzales

Ally Gonzales is the founder & editor-in-chief of RunningSoleGirl. Along with blogging she is also juggling attending college and majoring in Exercise and Sports Science.