Ilya Ilyin Quotes

My long arms help me as I try to become more versatile.

I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.

You need to have explosive power. So you need to have good agility to move your feet quick and be in the right place at the right time. So you have to be an overall athlete: you need to be in shape to be able to throw.

Overall strength work - if you can do it regularly - makes a massive difference on the pitch, especially when you are fatigued. If you are stronger, it helps you deal with that.

The hardest for me is rings because it is a lot more strength-oriented, while all the other events are about fluidity and flexibility. It's the one event that doesn't coincide with the fluidity, which is my strength.

You need to become more than one type of athlete. You have to be a sprinter, a weight man and a distance guy all in one.

Lifting weights is obviously important, because you want to be strong and fast and all of that, but it's not one of those things you gotta go and try to bench as much as you can every day. A bench press isn't going to help you throw a 15-yard out or a deep comeback. It's not about that. It's about training right.

For me, the reason I keep working out and want to get bigger and focus on staying fit is because when you do fall it's easier to tighten up and not get hurt. I also wrestle, and that helps me a lot with taking a fall. A lot of what I do at the end of they day are things that will help me to not get hurt.

My coaches have told me my muscles and body structure are perfect for skating.

All physical activity begins with the body's core. I maintain the strength in my core so that I can jump, run, start, stop, and accelerate at the highest levels.

In the game of football, you need to be strong, and at my position, you need to be able to put up a good fight. So I work on my upper body and lower body strength because your body's got to be able to last.

Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones.

We have two trainers at the polo ground and do a mix of aerobics, gymnastics and stretches before we start riding. As polo players, it's very important for us to keep in shape. We do a bit of yoga and Pilates sometimes, too.

With dancing, it just brings out more flexibility, more core strength, and you definitely get a great workout.

I work a lot on my coordination and starting speed.

I can't do much about my height, but I can do a lot of things in strength and speed and work on that. I'm going to try to do that the best I can to make me a better ballplayer.

I think flexibility in general is something that needs to be reinforced, and not only baseball players but all sports.

I do a healthy blend of mixed martial arts, dancing, functional training, and swimming. These exercises give me ample strength, endurance, flexibility, and stamina.

Maybe it's innate: I have a body built to jump.

I'm not privy to the English set-up, but at the academies in Ireland, there is a huge focus on the weights room as opposed to whether they can throw a 10-metre pass on the run. They should be rugby players becoming athletes, not athletes becoming rugby players.

With speed skating, it's like doing one-legged squats over and over again, with that one leg absorbing more than 80 percent of your weight. It takes an enormous amount of strength, and you're in such a weird position.

When I was younger, I used to wrestle, and I feel that it contributed to my athletic ability because as a wrestler you have to be an all-encompassed athlete. You need stamina, strength, endurance and mental capacity. You also have to learn how to adapt in any situation.

I grew up an athlete. Track and field and dance. In track, I actually went to the Junior Olympics. I've always been very athletic.

For obstacle racing, you wanna be as light, lean, and fast as possible. So, if I lift a lot of weights, I'm gonna be a little bit heavier, which will make it harder for me to hold myself up.

A guy like Bruce Lee, I've always been a fan. How he used to be able to move and be so quick. You look at some of the exercises that he did, and it was all majority free weight, like standing on your hands. That works every muscle. Everything is firing.