Image Via Flickr by blmiers2

When you work as a team, sweat as a team and put in your heart and soul as a team, your season is a big deal. So when the season ends, you feel like you’ve really accomplished something. The best part isn’t that you can take some time away from grueling practices. The best part of a great season is when you’ve won and you get a chance to celebrate.

Every Sport Has One Thing in Common

Sports vary in almost every possible facet. Some are on land, some are in the water and some seem to be pushing toward the clouds. The skills, the arena and even the breathing technique of one sport can be totally different from the components of another. Some sports seem like they couldn’t be any more different.

But regardless of what sport you play, there is one element that binds it all together: the cycle of hard work, pain and the ultimate reward of victory. There are few things in this world more emotionally fulfilling than being drenched in sweat, barely able to stand, breathing like your life depends on it and knowing that all of this has led to victory. Pushing yourself to your real limits, leaving behind what you used to consider your limits, and beating your opponents is the ultimate rush.

It’s Time to Have Some Fun

After your season’s ended and you’ve caught your breath, you might just feel like taking a nap. While that’s perfectly natural, a nap isn’t much of a celebration. You ever think about taking a cruise? Not every cruise has to be a month long trip across the ocean. Some cruises are just a few hours or a couple of days of partying it up. There are so many options for different kinds of cruises that you might have trouble making up your mind which one to take.

You’ve Earned It

A major part of sports is to be hungry. Your hunger has pushed you all season long. Every time you’ve trained, you’ve had your eyes on the prize. Now that you’ve conquered your opponents, and most importantly yourself, it’s time to relish the prize you’ve earned. This isn’t the time to sit in quiet reflection. Somewhere between the podium and the first training session of next season, there’s a little time that’s built for kicking back and soaking up some relaxation time.

You came, you saw and you gave it everything you had. Now that the day is won, it’s time to bask in the afterglow of a well earned victory. There’s no better way to have a great time and really celebrate your victory than by taking a cruise and unwinding a little. Let next season’s training start in a day or two. For now, have some fun!

Image Courtesy of Flickr

Today people live busier lives than ever before. While it’s true that every generation seems to get busier than the last one was, today it almost seems like even keeping track of your favorite teams is getting to be a serious challenge. Between working, family obligations and keeping up with house and car maintenance, it can be a serious challenge trying to make everything work long enough to steal away and catch your game of choice.

The good news is that you can still catch a game. You can relish the game, in fact. So whether you’re out to follow the Indians, the Cavaliers, the Monsters or even your favorite local skaters, you can finally find time to do it. The big secret isn’t one, and all it really takes is a Windows phone and the wherewithal to figure out how to use it properly. It’s a definite labor of love, but it pays off the first time you catch a truly great play.

Big Plays

There’s a pretty pronounced difference between an ordinary play and a big play. When you hear about an ordinary play, it might be something that’s athletically impressive and interesting to hear about. But when you hear about a big play and you missed out on it, you tend to genuinely feel sorry for not being able to look back on that. When you see a really big play, it becomes a part of you in a way that’s hard to describe.

Unfortunately, there was a time not that long ago when an imperfect memory was the best you could do. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t do much but hear the stories and wish you’d been able to be there in that moment. However, nowadays a good smart phone can let you do way more than that. You can both catch the big plays as they’re happening and actually record them in a lot of cases. Some phones even let you catch and edit videos, so you can make your own highlight reel.

Making the Time

Have you ever heard the old saying that if you really value something, you will always make the time for it? While you only get the standard 24 hours in your day like everybody else does, you don’t have to let the best plays get past you. In some cases, you can actually be doing something entirely different and occasionally steal away to catch something that’s bound to be awesome. It’s a little bit like that multitasking stuff women seem to be naturally gifted at.

Multitasking for Guys

As guys, it can be hard to multitask. You get into doing one thing, and it just seems like you can’t pull away for anything. But when multitasking is nothing more than being able to snatch the occasional glance at your phone, it becomes a lot easier. You can walk the dog, mow the lawn and change the oil without having to race inside to catch the best plays. Isn’t technology wonderful?

It took a while for NBA commissioner David Stern to nod his approval and sort it all out to his dictatorial whims but Chris Paul is now a member of the Los Angeles Clippers, who will now emerge as a much more popular choice with the NBA betting lines for the 2012 season.

Paul arrives in Los Angeles from the New Orleans Hornets, who are struggling in a weak market with league ownership and without the ability to sustain picking up the tab for All Star point guards such as Paul, who is expected to make the Clippers a perennial contender with Blake Griffin on the front line. The Clippers, who have put together just one winning season in the past 19 years, are going “all in” as they have also added Chauncey Billups and Caron Butler to bring a presence of veterans who know what it takes to earn a NBA championship ring.

Billups nearly retired but decided to go ahead and suit up for his fourth team in five seasons. That being said, although Billups knows his role as a backup point guard, the Clippers have a third point guard in Mo Williams that may want more playing time than what is possible now that Paul has arrived. Paul himself isn’t concerned at all about the overload of point guards simply stating that there will be two guards and that nobody should be worried about titles and such. Meanwhile coach Vinny Del Negro says Billups and Paul will start with Williams getting plenty of playing time is supporting both starters with an active role off the bench.

The big fixation of course is with Paul feeding alley-oops to Griffin, who was the NBA Slam Dunk contest champion after leaping over a car last year at the Staples Center. Paul said that he expects his relationship with Griffin to be similar to that of what he had in New Orleans with Tyson Chandler. Paul fed Chandler many memorable alley-oop jams in the Crescent City. Griffin has downplayed the hype simply stating that he is glad Paul is there to help and that the team is better and should win more with his presence.

There is even talk of the impossible, which is that the Clippers can overtake the glamour and glory of the Lakers and win the hearts of LA. Now that would be a longshot in NBA betting lines but a shot they seem to have nonetheless.

The power of supplements should never be overstated, according to leading bodybuilder Dusty Hanshaw, who has hit out at companies offering “quick fix” solutions to athletes seeking optimum nutrition for training.

The popularity of protein supplements such as instant whey powder from companies like Myofusion has, according to Hanshaw, led to a misconception amongst the public that perfect physique is available to anyone – as long as they take the right supplement.

“Everybody wants the magic pill,” he said, speaking at a Predator Nutrition retail store in the UK. “If someone invented that pill there would be a line out of the door of the shop and the owners would be billionaires!
“That’s why they’re called supplements – they supplement your diet and they supplement your workout. That’s why supplements get a bad rap, because companies want to make their products sound bigger than they are, saying things like “take this pill and because 10,000% stronger”, so then someone takes the pill but they don’t do anything. They don’t work out, they don’t get stronger, then they say that supplements don’t work. You need to match their work.”

Sports betting is just as big a deal as sports in general. It is enjoyed by millions, whether it is with the office group or with a bunch of friends. Sports betting is more common among the hardcore fans, and most beginners tend to watch and learn rather than bet. The money involved ranges from small to large, but that depends on the group of people participating. Often this takes place at a bar or at a club, but if you are interested in joining in, you don’t have to wait to be a member of one of these groups. With the Internet, you have the option to review many betting sites and actually participate right from your home. It is like having online casino games right at your desk.

Betting is not encouraged in any way, but for those who have been participating for many years, online betting is just another way to get involved. You can just about bet on any sport and certainly on your favorite teams. A good piece of advice is to bet small until you get the feel for the game. If you are unsure of what to do, make it a priority to read up on as much information as possible before you decide to bet. It is an investment like any other, but sports betting can also get addictive. The best way to control how much you spend is with a group, since you are limited to your maximum bet. This type of betting should never be viewed as a source of income but more as a source of entertainment and only with disposable income. Once you are able to control your betting habits and you can ground yourself to what you should spend, then you will be able to sit back and enjoy betting from the comfort of your home.