Start Position

1. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and pointed straight ahead.
2. Lift chest, slightly lower and squeeze shoulder blades, tuck chin, place hands on hips.

Movement

1. Squeeze butt muscles, balance on one leg and lift other directly beside it.
2. Hop forward, landing on opposite foot; hold two seconds.
3. Hop backward to starting position, landing on opposite foot; hold two seconds.
4. Hop to side, landing on one foot; hold two seconds.
5. Hop to other side, landing on opposite foot; hold two seconds.
6. Rotate body outward and hop to rear on opposite foot; hold two seconds.
7. Return to start, landing on opposite foot; hold two seconds.

Start Position

1. Stand with feet straight and shoulder-width apart.
2. Lift chest and tuck chin.

Movement

1. Draw-in belly button and squeeze butt muscles.
2. Jump forward and land softly; hold two seconds.

Start Position

1. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and pointed straight ahead.
2. Lift chest, slightly lower and squeeze shoulder blades, tuck chin, place hands on hips.

Movement

1. Squeeze butt muscles, balance on one leg and lift the other directly beside it.
2. Hop to side, landing on opposite foot; hold two seconds.
3. Hop back to start; hold two seconds.

Start Position

1. Stand with feet straight and shoulder-width; knees slightly bent.
2. Hold cable with both hands at shoulder level, arms fully extended.

Movement

1. Draw-in belly button, squeeze butt muscles and tuck chin.
2. With extended arms, lower cable diagonally and rotate body, pivoting on back foot.
3. Lower until hands reach knee level.
4. Return to start.

Start Position

1. Place 4 cones in shape of box -10 yards between each.
2. Stand in athletic position, at bottom corner of box.

Movement

1. Sprint straight ahead, to top corner of box.
2. Side shuffle across top of box.
3. Back pedal to bottom corner of box.
4. Side shuffle across bottom of box.

Start Position

1. Begin in push-up position with feet together and toes on floor.
2. With hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, place one hand on medicine ball and one hand on floor.
3. Draw-in belly button and squeeze butt muscles.

Movement

1. With flat back, slowly lower body toward floor, lowering and squeezing shoulder blades.
2. Push up to starting position – do not jut head forward.

Single day wins Bobby Lane 2008 ROY title

BASS Communications

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — While he has suspected for a few weeks now that the victory was his, Bassmaster Elite Series pro Bobby Lane of Lakeland, Fla., did not want to put the hex on his luck in the race to claim the 2008 Advance Auto Parts Rookie of the Year award, so he patiently waited out the final few Elite Series tournaments of the season.

At the season-ending Champion’s Choice presented by Ramada Worldwide, Lane, 34, officially accepted the Rookie of the Year trophy during Bassmaster Elite Series festivities Thursday at Oneida Shores County Park. Conveniently, a lot of his family was present to celebrate with him, including his brother, Chris Lane of Winter Haven, Fla., also a Bassmaster Elite Series pro. Bobby’s wife and children, as well as Chris’ wife and children, are also attending the Champion’s Choice.

In winning the $25,000 top prize, Lane cinched the title after the first day of competition at the Champion’s Choice with 12 pounds, 4 ounces. Wade Grooms of Bonneau, S.C., finished in second place. Through 10 Elite Series tournaments, Lane placed in the top 50 and earned a check in seven, including two top-10s.

In 2003, Lane sold his Florida landscaping company and set out to become a professional angler.

Lane signed up for the three annual Bassmaster Southern Opens in 2007 and qualified for the 2008 Elite Series season with finishes of 20th place, (March; Kissimmee Chain) 10th (May; Santee Cooper Reservoir) and fourth (October; Wheeler Lake).

He also qualified for fishing’s most prestigious event, the Bassmaster Classic, held in 2008 on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell. Lane finished fourth and earned $30,000 in the biggest tournament of his life so far, which he said was “an amazing experience that words can’t even explain.”

“Fishing with the Elite anglers, they make me a better fisherman,” said Lane, whose first Bassmaster event was the 2005 Southern Open out of Kissimmee, Fla., in which he finished a very respectable seventh. “Every day this year, I’ve been at the boat ramp as early as they open, as soon as the sun comes up. You know you’ve got to catch them. Whatever you caught the first day, you better double it just to remain in contention at all.”

As the 2008 Bassmaster Elite Series season started, Lane’s odds for performing well weren’t hurt by tournament locations: two Florida chains on which he had spent a decent amount of time fishing while growing up, the Harris Chain out of Leesburg and the Kissimmee Chain out of Lake Wales.

He finished third in his first tournament as an Elite Series pro, on the Harris Chain, and seventh on the Kissimmee Chain. After the Florida swing, his season progressed less predictably with finishes of 73rd (Falcon Lake); 37th (Lake Amistad); 72nd (Wheeler Lake) and 58th (Kentucky Lake) as Lane visited some lakes across the country that he’d never seen, much less fished.

“Starting out the year, it was awesome in Florida,” Lane said. “But if I didn’t do well the first day, I never let it get me down, I’d always go back on the second days and do something different. You have to make yourself learn a lake that you’ve never been to.

While he bounced around in the midseason standings, other rookies had success:, such as Billy Brewer of Bruceville, Texas, who finished eighth and 45th on Texas’ lakes Falcon and Amistad; and Wade Grooms of Bonneau, S.C., threatening Lane’s ROY lead. But eventually Lane realized the ROY trophy was his to lose.

While he took 20th at the Tennessee Triumph on Old Hickory Lake out of Nashville, Grooms — who was in second place in the ROY standings — stumbled, closing the door on any chance to catch Lane.

“I knew I did well at Old Hickory, made a big mark,” Lane said. “When it came down to it, I knew I had to do well at Lake Erie and I’ve never been there and the waves kind of had me a little worried.

Lane joins past ROY winners Derek Remitz of Grant, Ala. (2007); Steve Kennedy of Auburn, Ala. (2006); Dave Wolak of Wake Forest, N.C. (2005) and Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La. (2004). All are BASS tournament winners.

“It means everything, to earn that title. My success has come from dedication and a lot of hard work,” Lane said. “I know there were nine or 10 other rookies who were trying just as hard as I was. Just because I’ve fished professionally before doesn’t mean I’m any better than these guys.

“The next goal is to go out and get a Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year title, a Classic title and an Elite Series win.”

The Advance Auto Parts Rookie of the Year award is determined by anglers’ positions in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings. All standings will be finalized after the final day of the Champion’s Choice and posted on www.bassmaster.com.

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Body monitors on Swindle and Martens give glimpse into anglers’ athleticism

By Sam Eifling
ESPNOutdoors.com Features Editor

LAY LAKE, Ala. — Gerald Swindle boating a big bass is medically comparable to an average man suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

As the Warrior, Ala., angler prepared to embark on Day 2 of the Bassmaster Classic, he took a second to show off a heart monitor that on Friday registered a high of 218 beats per minute as he caught a 5-pound bass.

“That’s about like an event, like suffering a stroke,” Swindle said.

He and angler Aaron Martens have been allowing their vitals to be tracked, in order to determine how best to eat and to train. The numbers that emerge would give pause to anyone contending that elite pro anglers don’t resemble athletes.

Martens, as mellow a customer as you could care to encounter, jacked up to 221 beats per minute at his high Friday. And Swindle said he burned more than 4,100 calories over the course of a day of fishing that he described as only moderately strenuous.

He became concerned last year when he lost 14 pounds during the course of the Elite Series. Turns out he simply wasn’t eating enough, nor was he getting the most of his training. By monitoring his heart rate and eating more protein throughout his days, he trimmed his body fat from 13 percent last year to 9 percent this year.

The 37-year-old angler learned that he burns 750 calories an hour. His training consists usually of 20 minutes of cardio followed by 45 minutes of weight training. He favors a high number of reps for relatively modest weights — 300 reps of 115 pounds on the bench press, say.

“We may not be running up the middle and getting my helmet knocked off, but I’m riding 50 mph, standing 13 hours a day, not eating,” Swindle said. “I challenge any athlete to do my workout and fish for three days a week, and I’ll come do yours, and we’ll see how we both do.”

Martens, one of the last anglers to launch Saturday morning, strapped his monitor to his torso in the final moments before he took off. His wife, Lesley, handed it to him from the bank just before take-off.

His workouts, she said, consist mostly of walking. He’d like to do more weight training, she said, “but he can’t find the time.”

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Davis Vows That BassFans Will See Less Of Him In ’09

Monday, August 25, 2008

Mark Davis believes that carrying fewer pounds on his frame next year will result in more pounds in his livewell over the course of the season.
Mark Davis is about 100 pounds lighter than he was in the early 1990s, and the records show that he fished pretty well back then. But by his own estimation, he was too heavy to compete to his full potential on the Bassmaster Elite Series this year.

He carried about 285 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame this season. He thinks if he’d been down around 250 or a little under, he could’ve finished higher than 12th place in the Angler of the Year (AOY) race in his return to the Bassmaster circuit.

So as he was wrapping up his 12th-place finish in the season finale at New York’s Lake Oneida, he vowed on the weigh-in stage to slim down before the start of the ’09 campaign.

“I should’ve done so much better this year, but I just didn’t have the stamina at the weight I’m at,” said the three-time Bassmaster AOY. “The Elite Series is a grind, and once that thing starts, it’s go, go, go, go, go – it’s a tough regimen of events and it’s a lot different than it used to be.

“In the last 24 months I’ve gained some additional pounds, and it took its toll on me. It’s very hard to lose weight on the road, or at least it is for me. You’re fishing all day, and then you eat dinner and go to bed on a full stomach. It’s a horrible scenario that you’re in.”

Once Pushed 4 Bills

Davis weighed 390 pounds a decade and a half ago and found himself unable to drop weight no matter what he tried. He resorted to the stomach-shrinking gastric bypass surgery and quickly got down to about 250.

He kept it off for quite a few years, but said the effects of that operation have worn off and his stomach has re-expanded. If he doesn’t take action now, he fears he’ll continue to creep back up toward his high-water mark.

That would not only hinder his fishing, but seriously threaten his health.

“I’m back to the point where it’s pretty easy to gain weight again, and I’m getting older, too,” the 44-year-old said. “And the older I get, the harder it’ll be to take it off.”

He’s already eliminated fried foods from his diet – a big step because his favorite meals center around fried crappie or walleye. He’ll kick off an exercise program with a lot of walking and will add a weight-training routine. He may also enlist the services of a personal trainer from Texas named Ken Hoover, who works with several Elite anglers.

“I’ve seen him around the tour, and some guys use him who don’t have weight problems but still have a stamina issue. According to him, the problem is lifestyle – you go all day without eating anything, and then you eat a bunch at night. That’s exactly what I do.”

On-Water Decisions Affected

Davis’ 2008 season got off to a great start. He led the AOY race after three events, but then began to descend down the ladder as the spring wore on.

He’s historically excelled during the post-spawn, but that wasn’t the case this year. If he’d finished two places lower at Lake Murray (where he was 49th), he would’ve missed four straight Top-50 cuts from the start of May through the middle of June. He bottomed out with an 83rd at Kentucky Lake.

“I had a year that started out good and wound up mediocre, and I’m not satisfied with it,” he said. “I’d start out fine in practice, but after 3 days of that I’d be behind on my rest and so forth and so on, and then when I needed (stamina) the most during the tournament, that’s when I was really feeling the effects of it. It’s a cumulative thing.
Davis weighed about 285 for most of this season, but wants to be no higher than 250 in 2009.
“Like that last day at Oneida when I’d made the 12-cut. That’s when I really needed to pour it on and be 100%, and I wasn’t. The competition out here’s getting tougher and tougher, the stakes are higher and everybody’s performing at a high level. I can perform at a much higher level than I did this year, but I can’t get it done in the physical shape I’m in right now.

“You will make poor decisions if you don’t feel good,” he continued. “You don’t think as good, and that’s a fact. And not thinking good leads to poor decisions, and poor decisions lead to poor finishes.”

Will-Power Required

Davis said his wife, Tilly, has had success with the Weight Watchers program, and he thinks it might work for him because it offers a wide variety of food choices.

“She’s pretty much convinced me that’s the way to go,” he said. “You get to eat a lot of different things, so you don’t feel so deprived. And the other part of it is the accountability of having to weigh in every week.

“I’m sure I’ll have problems staying with it. It’s all about will-power and I’ve always had problems with that, and I don’t expect it to be any different this time. But the thing about diets that helps you is once you start losing the weight, you get to feeling so much better. That’s my motivation to go on it and keep it going.

If he can come back next year at 250 pounds, or better yet 240, he’s confident he can make a run at his fourth AOY.

“If you don’t feel good, you don’t fish good and your quality of life isn’t where it needs to be. But if you can get your energy level up, it’s a lot easier to keep focused on what you need to do out there.”

Notable

Davis was a football player in high school. “I was big, but I was in shape. I’ve lost a lot of that muscle and I need to get some of it back.”

He started a low-carbohydrate diet last week, but plans to switch to the Weight Watchers program soon. “The (low-carb) is just for the time being to get started. In the long run it’s not really healthy. It works, but in my experience you tend to gain back the weight you lose real easily.”

Photos: ESPN Outdoors