Super Bowl XLVI is just around the corner, and we can’t be more excited! Whether you love it for the partying, the food, or for the game, it’s inevitable not to notice the skill and passion each player puts out in the field. In fact, it sometimes makes us wonder: What does it really take to play in the NFL?

Well, thanks to a little research, we've come up with some of the requirements most NFL scouts look for in college draft prospects. Who knows, you might just be what they need!

A body built for the NFL. Endurance, strength, flexibility, and power are abilities you'll need to be an effective football player, whether you're a quarterback, middle linebacker, or wide receiver. Of course, it's expected that you have all four to gain the position you're in; however, will it be enough for the NFL? To gauge this, scouts invite potential players to the NFL Scouting Combine.

The NFL Scouting Combine or National Invitational Camp is a week-long series of physical and mental tests conducted in front of NFL coaches, general managers, and scouts every February. Examples of physical tests include a 40-yard dash, a 60-yard shuttle, and position-specific drills, among others. Every year, around 335 players are invited to participate and showcase their skills in hopes of getting drafted into one of the 32 teams in the NFL.

If you think you can complete the camp with flying colors, then you could be well on your way into the league.

The right mindset. What's a healthy body without the right frame of mind? The answer: not NFL material. This is because an athlete's mental aspects, together with his character, are major factors scouts look at when considering prospects. An athlete's frame of mind is directly related to his discipline, comprehension, and ability to work well in a team.

Discipline is a major factor required in football; someone who just does their own thing regardless of the agreed play isn’t someone you want on your team. Scouts look for players who can be relied on even during the tightest situations.

Comprehension is also important since scouts look for athletes who can easily learn new things and adjust to changes in a snap, even under pressure. Someone who's easily confused can become a weak link during the most complicated plays.

Finally, the ability to work well with a team is essential. From the way he interacts with teammates to how he reacts when things get tough, ideal college prospects should be able to encourage the rest of the team to do better with a Never Give Up Attitude, instead of bringing morale down with rash behavior, projected insecurities, and other negative behavior.

These are just some of the factors NFL scouts look for in college prospects. Do you think you have what it takes to get into the NFL? We'd like to hear what you've got to say!

If you want to be as good as LeBron James, Rajon Rondo, or Blake Griffin on the basketball court, then you have to realize that these athletes don’t rely on the sport alone to improve their performance. To develop certain strengths and work on their weaknesses, NBA players do a number of different exercises that help them bring their A-game to the court.

When it comes to working out to improve your basketball game, you have to remember to focus on two things: your vertical jump and your mobility or flexibility. Here are some examples of exercises that work on these three:

It's all about explosion. The secret to a higher vertical jump is to generate as much force in as little time as possible. This explosion of force results in your legs launching you up like a cannon, enabling you to do that dunk you've always wanted to try.

To exercise your jumping skills, try standing under a basket or next to a wall while holding a medicine ball. Hold the ball over your head and quickly bring it down to your waist. Then, explode straight up as you lift the ball above your head again. After landing, pause for a couple of seconds and then repeat.

Try this until you're able to touch the ball to a target such as the bottom of the net, the rim, the backboard, or the highest point of a wall.

A body like rubber. Aside from jumping skill, your mobility on the court will define how well you do in a game. Without flexibility, you could pull a muscle and get injured; on the other hand, by working on your moves, doing side steps and quick turns will be a piece of cake.

You can test your flexibility by doing the sit and reach test – a test that helps you gauge your lower back's and hamstring's flexibility. If you find that reaching is painful, you may need to work on your flexibility a little more to prevent injuries while playing basketball.

These are just some examples of exercises that can greatly improve your basketball game. Got any more to share? Feel free to leave a comment – we'd love to hear from you!

Having a favorite body part to build up is fine; in fact, seeing the results of your workouts and getting compliments about these parts you've worked so hard on are the best ego boosts you can get. However, simply focusing all your attention on your favorite body parts isn't recommended – unless your target physique is similar to a certain spinach-eating sailorman.

When working out, it's important you create a balanced regimen to exercise your whole body. This way, you can certainly attain your fitness goals without making your shoulders and arms look too big for the rest of your body. Here are a couple of tips to make sure you make good use of your gym-time:

Keep yourself motivated. Laziness is one of the worst things any gym-goer can experience while working out. From skipping exercises to dropping the program altogether, laziness can have devastating effects on a perfectly good routine. Usually, this happens after you've worked out your favorite body parts, leaving you content with that you did for the day and disregarding the need to exercise more. Doing this constantly will get you imbalanced results, as you've only worked on one part of your body while the rest stay idle.

You can do a couple of things to counter these lazy spells. These include setting goals, getting a workout buddy, and even buying new workout clothes. These should make sure you keep yourself driven to reach your fitness goals.

Redo your routine. When creating workout programs, most people prioritize their favorite parts first, and then work their way down. Why not do it in reverse? Pick workouts for your least favorite body parts first. This way, you'll always be reminded to work on everything else on your next visit to the gym.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can forget about the basics of a proper workout. Keep in mind that it's still best to work on bigger muscles, like the chest, back, and legs, before proceeding to the smaller ones. Just put the least favorite parts at the top of the list as a reminder of what you have to do for the day.

By following these tips, you can rest assured that your physique will end up as balanced as your fitness program.

Do you have any personal tips on how to achieve a balanced physique? Feel free to share your exercise regimen by leaving a comment – we'd love to hear from you!

January is the month when resolutions are at their strongest. Whether it's finding a new hobby, planning trips for the year, or quitting a vice like smoking or drinking, you can be sure that people are most determined to attain their goals at the beginning of the year.

Sure, making a list of resolutions is easy; all you have to do is look for things in your life you want to improve on, write them down, and do something about them. However, the problem arrives after the first few weeks – come February, some give up and go back to their old ways. This is especially true when it comes to fitness resolutions since diets can easily be broken and workout routines put on hold for a variety of reasons.

If you plan on losing the holiday gut by including it in your New Year's resolution, then here are a number of tips that may help you stick to it:

Find a friend. Whether for working out or following a diet plan, having a friend or family member with the same fitness goals can help you stick to your weight loss resolution. In fact, it would be best to find someone who's at the same fitness level as you are. According to studies, we tend to view the success of people similar to us as the more attainable option as opposed to dieting with a friend who already has a six pack. Sure, your fit friend can give you helpful tips, but it may seem too intimidating and unrealistic.

Diet in secret. If you want to stick to a diet, it's very important that you don’t announce your plans to the world. This is because telling others about your diet plans will garner countless praises and compliments from your peers even if you haven’t even started the diet yet! Because of this, your brain gets tricked into thinking that you've accomplished the task, making it more susceptible to giving in once a huge dessert plate is set in front of you.

But if temptation does come by, always keep in mind that balance is the key to keeping your fitness under control. Try not to stuff yourself too full and always try to squeeze in some physical activity every day.

Know any more techniques that can help people stick to their fitness resolutions? Feel free to leave a comment – we'd love to hear from you!

With countless celebrations and the most irresistible foods served, packing on the pounds is inevitable in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. In this span of time, most people drop their diets and indulge in the festive spreads, assuring themselves they'll lose the extra pounds right after. However, this is easier said than done.

Holiday nutrition can be one of the most challenging feats to accomplish. If you can maintain it, then your weight will be in control and you deserve congratulations for your iron-clad willpower; but if you give in to all the delicious holiday treats, then you can be sure that getting back on any diet will be even harder, if not impossible.

Whether or not you're able to keep away from the holiday temptations, be confident that the coming year will present a lot of opportunities to make amends for stuffing your tummy with, well… stuffing, among other things.

As early as now, there are a number of diets recognized to be some of the best for 2012. Here are some examples of diets you can consider as part of your New Year's resolutions:

The DASH Diet

Originally created to lower blood pressure and the risk of heart disease, the 28-day DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet was also found to be an effective weight-loss regimen. This is attributed to the low-salt, whole food meal plans it requires people to follow. For example, instead of stuffing yourself with salty foods, you may have a sandwich with soup and veggies on the side, or a large salad with chicken, followed by a frozen yogurt sundae.

This diet is best for people with time to cook since it involves a number of recipes that will need kitchen work.

The Paleo Diet

Also called the Caveman Diet, The Paleolithic Diet is a modern dietary regimen that consists of foods presumed to be the main sources of nutrition during the Paleolithic era – or in short, caveman food. The general approach to this diet is to avoid processed foods, cereal grains, legumes, dairy products, refined sugars, and starchy veggies. Although not originally designed to be a weight-loss plan, the Paleo diet proves effective because it eliminates excess carbohydrates from your diet.

Meal plans include fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, vegetables, fruits, roots, and nuts. What's more, this diet is naturally casein and gluten-free, making it a great choice for people with milk or wheat-based food allergies.

These are just two examples of the coming year's most recommended diets. So, lose that holiday gut and say hello to 2012 with a well-balanced dietary strategy for a healthier you!

Know any more diets we should watch out for this coming 2012? If you do, feel free to leave a comment – we'd love to hear from you!

From feeling the icy cold wind on your cheeks to getting an adrenaline boost as you go faster and faster downhill, there's nothing like celebrating winter by going skiing or snowboarding.

However, as much fun as these activities are, it's important that you keep safe at all times as accidents can happen on the snowy slopes of your favorite ski resorts. In fact, accidents can result in anything from mild bruises and sprains to grave and fatal injuries.

For this reason, here are a number of safety tips you can follow to ensure fun and safe skiing and snowboarding:

Get Full Equipment. Before hopping into the cable cars and ascending to your favorite slope, always make sure to wear proper equipment. Skiing and snowboarding gear was created to protect you from more than the blistering cold, after all. The proper gear can offer protection against injuries and help you stay secure on your board or skis.

Speaking of your skis or board, make sure to keep them properly maintained. Part of this is keeping them well-waxed to ensure smooth and fast descents.

If you want to look your fashionable best as you shred some slopes, feel free to find whatever ski or snowboarding gear that tickles your fancy. But don't forget that aside from making sure that these will help you move freely, make sure you don't deck yourself out in all-white. Being camouflaged will increase the chances of having collisions with incoming skiers and snowboarders.

Pace Yourself According to Skill. Sure, being brave and expecting to fall is part of having fun in a ski resort; however, this doesn’t mean you should skip the bunny slope and head up to the highest elevation right away. Remember, there's a fine line between courage and recklessness. For this reason, it's always wise to stay on a slope you're comfortable with, master it, and then move on once you're genuinely confident in your skiing or snowboarding skills.

Keep Your Body in Sync. Before getting your gear and finding the softest snow trails, make sure that your body is up for the activity. You can do this by keeping yourself hydrated, stretching, and making sure you can balance correctly.

You can also wear iRenew bracelets to make sure you maintain the strength, energy, and balance you need to effortlessly ski or snowboard downhill.

These are just some tips you can keep in mind to assure you of fun times this winter. Got any more skiing or snowboarding safety tips? If you do, feel free to leave a comment – we'd love to hear from you!

With so many workout options available today, it can be difficult to choose which one is right for you; in fact, it can be overwhelming. One of the worst things you could do is randomly pick a set of exercises and just perform them without thinking twice.

Although this seems like the most practical thing to do in the gym, winging your program can end in two ways: first, getting the wrong results; and second, getting no results. Depending on your body type and the physique you're gunning for, there are different techniques you have to incorporate to create an effective exercise regimen.

So, before compiling a week's worth of exercises from the net or from your favorite fitness magazine, think about your goals first. If you know how you want to end up, you'll know how to look for the right exercises as well.

Here are a couple of result-based workout techniques you could try:

Be a lean, mean, lifting machine. Besides going on a diet, attaining a lean, ripped, Hollywood physique requires a different approach to working out as opposed to those with different fitness goals.

To get ripped, it's recommended you cut back on the total number of sets and reps per exercise. This is because you won't have enough fuel to recover from heavy workouts if you're on a limiting diet; you could be burning muscle mass instead – and this isn’t the best way to get the results you want.

For example, if you used to bench press four sets of six reps at 180 pounds, you should decrease your set count to two or three while still retaining the bar's weight. You can do this together with other compound exercises.

Just like He-Man. If you prefer to bulk up or gain mass, your gym routine should incorporate more sets per exercise, with low reps. This is known to be the most efficient way of building muscle since high-rep exercises won't stimulate as much muscle growth. Doing less reps will have you use all your energy and strength in those few reps, while high-rep exercises may have you losing focus after the first half of the set, rendering the workout ineffective.

For example, instead of your regular full sets of 15 reps each, you can choose to do five to seven reps; and instead of changing the number of reps per set, you can change the amount of weight you lift to keep the rep-count the same all throughout.

These are just some of the different workouts you can do based on your fitness goals. Achieve your dream body by knowing the correct exercise programs to follow.

Got more weightlifting tips for specific fitness goals? Feel free to share your gym techniques – we'd love to hear from you!

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you probably aren’t maximizing your time when you workout. You may need a change of pace in your daily routine, and here's how to do it:

Mix It Up. Most of the time, the reason behind this lack of drive can be attributed to a poor workout program. Remember, it's important to keep challenging yourself to attain your fitness goals, and the best way to do this is by introducing new exercises to your usual program. By doing so, you can keep yourself from being bored by the same old routine every week.

In addition, this also helps to prevent your muscles from reaching a plateau or homeostasis. The Muscle Confusion Principle states that by continually stressing your muscles the same way, you could render the workout ineffective. On the other hand, adding new exercises can make sure your muscles are constantly challenged by varying movements, sets, reps, and weights top achieve the opposite effect.

Ditch the machine. Yes, using workout machines is very convenient; but are these contraptions as effective as the other exercises in the gym?

Although machines tend to allow faster workouts with a reduced risk of injury, and are easy to use, they can also lead to the increased risk of pattern overload injuries and a false sense of strength gain and safety. Machines limit their users' body movements, which is detrimental to achieving the stretch that some muscles need to develop further.

Free weights like dumbbells and barbells, on the other hand, present a number of benefits that can really maximize your time and energy in the gym. One of these is its ability to increase the use of stabilizing muscles. When you do free weight exercises, you don’t only enhance your target muscles, but also the synergistic muscles that support your body through the lift, your balance, and proprioreception.

The right workout, the wrong way. Now, if you're the type who gets his programs online or through magazines, you have to make sure to read the exercises thoroughly. In fact, if you're unsure of how to do a certain exercise, you should skip it. This is because, no matter how effective an exercise is claimed to be, doing it wrong renders it useless, or worse, dangerous.

For this reason, it's always best to consult with a trained professional about the proper posture and lifting procedures involved in the new workout. This way, you can rest assured you aren’t slowly injuring yourself in the gym.

Don’t worry! You don't have to hire a personal trainer for this; just ask any trainer in your gym about that specific exercise, he'll surely accommodate your inquiry.

By following these tips, you can make sure you aren’t wasting your time in the gym. Make every second count in achieving your fitness goals, whether it's to lose weight, gain muscle, or sculpt washboard abs.

What your favorite workout routine? Feel free to leave a comment – we'd love to hear your workout stories!

When thinking about Thanksgiving, one thing usually comes to mind – the food! From juicy, stuffed roast turkey and mashed potatoes, to an assortment of cakes, pies, and other desserts, this holiday is easily one of the most sumptuous ones in an entire year. For this reason, it's hard to imagine anyone not enjoying the festivities. Well, if you’re one of the many of health-conscious Americans trying to keep the pounds away, you might beg to differ.

Thanksgiving can be torture if you're on a very strict diet. With everyone having a feast over so much food on the table, it's hard not to get jealous as you keep to your grilled veggies and lean meat.

But whoever said you had to skip on the delicious holiday spread, anyway? Here are some tips on how you can indulge in your favorite Thanksgiving meals without totally abandoning your fitness goals:

Boost your metabolic rate. One way of preparing for the holiday feast is by creating a special exercise routine and meal plan that will increase your metabolism before Thursday. Having a high metabolic rate means you'll burn more calories at a higher rate, even when your body is at rest.

In terms of exercise, there are two routines that stimulate calorie-burning: One is through interval training, a proven way of training your body to burn more calories through alternate sets of high and low intensity exercises; and the other through strength training, which increases muscle mass, allowing you to burn an extra 50 calories for each extra pound of muscle.

Your metabolic rate also depends highly on your eating habits, and the best way to increase your calorie-burning rate is through eating right. Plan your meals and avoid depriving your body of the fuel it needs to keep going. Before you know it, you'll be a calorie-burning machine, ready to take on Thursday's Thanksgiving turkey without hesitation!

Pace yourself. Remember to eat slowly; this way, you can enjoy all the dishes you love while consuming lesser calories. This is because, according to a growing number of studies, it takes about 20 minutes for our brains to realize that we're full, and that it's time to stop. On the other hand, if you hulk down mountains of stuffing in record time, you may already be eating past full tank, resulting in two things: a food coma and the nagging feeling that you've had too much to eat.

If you happen to have been working hard on your fitness for a while, indulging in your favorite Thanksgiving dishes won't be a problem. Make it your reward for doing your best! Even better, you may be burning most of what you'll eat, thanks to your high metabolic rate.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to schedule a post-Thanksgiving workout either. This way, you can make sure that all the holiday calories are burned away.

What did you do to enjoy last year's Thanksgiving? Got more tips on staying healthy and avoiding holiday weight gain? Leave a comment – we'd be happy to hear from you!

There's nothing like getting good air to perform awesome grabs and flip combos on the half pipe. But before you're able to do this, you have to know the risks involved. After all, without proper preparation, you could seriously injure yourself.

Here are some things to remember before attempting to pull off some wicked stunts:

Wearing safety gear doesn’t make you a sissy. There's nothing wrong with worrying about your safety when you're on your board. Equip yourself with a helmet, wrist guards, as well as elbow and knee pads to buffer your falls and prevent nasty bruises and scratches. It's a must to do this, especially when you're out on the field to do tricks. A fall may hurt more than you expect it to.

Practice makes perfect. As cliché as it sounds, this is very true. Before attempting to ride the half pipe, it's always good to polish your board-riding skills on flat surfaces first. This way, you can work on your skateboarding skills at your own pace without gravity getting the best of you on the half pipe.

Once you get the hang of flat surfaces, you can start riding down slopes and ramps to get used to handling semi-uncontrollable speeds. In time, you can be confident enough to get on a half pipe to show everyone what you've got!

Staying on your feet. Of course, the most integral factor in successfully riding through the half pipe is balance. By distributing your weight evenly on your board, you can prevent yourself from making an unplanned nosedive or even landing flat on your back.

Keep in mind that even if you're used to falling off your board, falling from a half pipe involves height; this means injuries can range from mild bruises to fractures and cuts that could need hospital care.