The Olympic Games are the maximum sportive expression in which the athletes of different disciplines and sports can be measured. When the goal is reached or any competition is finished, the athlete cries, celebrate and others even lament or get enraged for having failed, all of this flowing feelings are part of the atmosphere present and lived at the end of the competition; but behind the passion that they transmit and make us feel through each breath, is a great Olympic preparation that only the best can achieve with their effort and discipline.
Being a high endurance athlete requires years of training, most of them start from a young age. The trainer Josue Lionel Rivera thinks that “it is necessary to offer an individualized training program, based on the particular needs and short term and long term goals of the athlete, and their level of development. This is why it is important that the trainers, parents, and anyone who works with kids in development, understands that the juvenile sport is to foment the athletic development and help them achieve their goals and not to try to win championships”.
Each athlete requires a multidisciplinary work that accompanies their training to achieve their dream of participating in an Olympics. The most important things are exercise routines, diet regime to cover the caloric needs, trainers, sport psychologists, medics and physicians, but the most important thing is the determination that athlete must maintain, because only with their effort and conserving the discipline will they achieve the difficult task that represents being able to participate in the Olympics.
In some countries, sports are taken very seriously, and above all, acquiring of an Olympic medal, a peculiar case is that of China, where children are recruited and taken from their families and their childhood becomes adolescence through hours of intense training until transforming them into potential athletes to represent their country with the only goal of achieving triumph and obtaining an Olympic medal.
Olympic swimmers live a healthy lifestyle and dedicate a great part of their time training in pools. They must also submit to strict diets, outside of the water they have to train with weights to strengthen their muscles, especially the superior part of the body, reason why we see swimmers with their characteristically wide and powerful shoulders. Swimmers must consume a huge amount of calories because their training burns a great amount of them; the Olympic medalist Michael Phelps said that he consumes 12,000 calories per day.
The recovery period is also very important for athletes, so the athlete must receive massages in regular intervals. After a hard training, the muscles need to recover and massages are a good ally; they also accompany their recoveries with baths of freezing water.
There’s a lot of sacrifice involved in training for the Olympics, their lives are pretty much dedicated to these events.