Life of an Athlete: The Human Performance Project
When: Monday March 9th, 2015
Time: 7:00-8:30
Where: MASH Read and White Theater
Presenter: John Underwood
Topic: Life of an Athlete: The Human Performance Project
John Underwood is from New York. In college, he went and ran track for Bill Bowerman (Began NIKE) at the University of Oregon. After his college and athletic careers finished, he went on to study oversees.
"He has trained more than two dozen Olympians including many World and Olympic Champions. He studied Human Performance at the Sport Institute of Finland. He holds three International Olympic Solidarity diplomas for coaching and has been a crusader for drug-free sports at all levels. John is an internationally recognized human performance expert, specializing in recovery, peaking training and lifestyle impact on mental and physical performance." (All taken from website)
He now works for his company "Life of an Athlete" trying to teach and promote health and drug free lifestyles to athletes. He gives talks to high school athletes, works with professional teams (ex: The Philadelphia Eagles), and also works with studying US Navy Seals and trying to understand how they are able to perform both physically and mentally in the extreme conditions they work in.
John covered many very interesting topics during his talk. He covered the following: 1) The importance of recovery in sport performance 2) The importance of diet in sport performance 3) The importance of Sleep in sport performance 4) Unplugging from technology and other things that cause neural fatigue 5) The current American diet and its effects on our health 6) Athletic Development 7) How our brain and body are effected by what we eat, marijuana, and alcohol.
This was an amazing talk. This guy was so interesting, it is an interest area of my own, but I felt like I could have listened for another 2 hours. He had great information for athletes, coaches, and parents. He talked about sugar and its effects on our health, he talked about how we build fat cells, he talked about the junk in our foods, he talked about everything. I suggest playing around at his site and seeing what you find.
Written by: Varsity Basketball Coach: Ryan Brown