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UC Davis Sports Performance and Wellness

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UC Davis Sports Performance and Wellness

UC Davis Sports Performance and Wellness performs a variety of assessments to help you track and improve your fitness and well-being.

01/30/2026

Proper Hydration

Hydrating before, during, and after a workout is essential for supporting performance, recovery, and overall well-being. Knowing when and how much to drink can make a noticeable difference. Here’s a simple breakdown.

Before Exercise:

Hydration before a workout is arguably the most important step. A general guideline is to drink 16–20 ounces of water about 1–2 hours before exercise. This gives your body time to absorb fluids and eliminate excess. Proper pre-hydration helps your heart work more efficiently, supports oxygen delivery, reduces fatigue from sweating, and improves how you feel during your workout. Electrolytes can also be beneficial, especially before intense or prolonged exercise. Just be sure to follow the brand’s recommended dosage.

During Exercise:

Staying hydrated during exercise helps maintain performance and regulate body temperature. While your body may not absorb all fluids immediately, consistent intake supports cooling through sweating and helps prevent dehydration and heat-related illness. A good rule of thumb is to sip 7–10 ounces of water every 10–20 minutes, adjusting based on workout intensity, duration, and environmental conditions.

After Exercise:

Post-workout hydration is key for recovery. Replacing lost fluids and electrolytes helps restore balance, reduce muscle fatigue, and prepare your body for the next training session. Drinking water along with electrolytes, especially after heavy sweating, can speed up recovery and rehydration.

Bottom Line:

Staying on top of hydration is critical, particularly during vigorous or prolonged exercise. Listening to your body and hydrating consistently can improve performance, recovery, and overall health.

01/27/2026

When training the lower extremities, the hip flexors are a commonly overlooked muscle group. Beyond their role in hip flexion, they help anchor the pelvis, thus limiting excessive anterior pelvic tilt and lumbar extension. This pelvic control allows the gluteal muscles to function with greater mechanical advantage, enhancing force production during sprinting and jumping.

In cyclical activities such as cycling and running, the hip flexors also play a critical role in controlling the swing phase and repositioning the limb, which contributes to improved movement economy. Incorporating targeted hip flexor strengthening can therefore enhance both performance and injury prevention.

Effective exercises include dead bugs with a hip-flexion bias, step-ups with an active knee drive, and hanging knee raises performed with controlled pelvic positioning.

01/26/2026

Balance Training: A Key to Preventing Ankle and Knee Injuries
Balance training improves proprioception; your body's ability to sense joint position and react to movement. By strengthening stabilizing muscles around the ankle and knee, athletes can improve control, reduce injury risk, and enhance overall performance. In performance training, single-leg balance and stability exercises play a critical role in keeping athletes strong, stable, and game-ready.

01/23/2026

What is the difference between Mobility vs Flexibility?
Flexibility is the ability of a muscle to lengthen. Mobility is the ability of a joint to move through its full range with control. You can be flexible without being mobile, but true athletic performance and injury prevention require both. Prioritizing mobility helps athletes move better, feel stronger, and stay healthy on and off the field.

01/20/2026

Cardiovascular training offers substantial benefits across fitness regimens; however, distinguishing between different modalities is essential when tailoring exercise to specific goals.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves brief, near-maximal bursts of effort (typically ~30 seconds) performed as sprint intervals, rowing, or assault biking. The high metabolic demand of this training enhances glycolytic capacity through increased carbohydrate utilization and can contribute to improvements in VO₂max.

In contrast, long slow endurance (LSE) training consists of sustained, steady-state activity performed at Zone 2 intensity for extended durations. Due to its lower intensity, the body shifts toward fatty acid oxidation, making this form of cardiovascular exercise particularly effective for improving metabolic efficiency and supporting fat loss.

01/13/2026

A common question is whether cardiovascular training should be performed before or after resistance exercise. The answer depends largely on an individual’s training goals and the intensity of the cardiovascular work.

Aerobic training can complement any training regimen and plays an important role in maintaining cardiovascular fitness. When the primary goal is maximizing hypertrophy, strength, or power, cardiovascular exercise is best performed after resistance training or in a separate session on a different day. This approach helps avoid an interference effect, as endurance training can reduce neural drive and compromise force production — both of which are critical for high-quality resistance training. Similarly, for individuals focused on fat loss, completing resistance training first can deplete glycogen stores, thereby shifting subsequent aerobic exercise toward greater fat oxidation.

Conversely, when the primary objective is to improve endurance or aerobic capacity, performing cardiovascular training prior to resistance exercise is more appropriate. In this case, resistance training should be kept shorter in duration and focused on technique, movement quality, and injury prevention to ensure that the quality of the aerobic stimulus is preserved.

01/12/2026

Why should I get a DEXA scan?

A DEXA scan is a tool that allows us to obtain a detailed body composition analysis, revealing one’s fat mass, lean mass, and bone density.

These scans are commonly ordered by orthopedic doctors to assess fracture risk and monitor age-related bone decline in older individuals. A DEXA scan is not a routine procedure in younger populations. It is often only after a stress fracture or serious injury that a physician will proceed with a DEXA scan for younger individuals. But this is often too late; many individuals will be well on their way towards osteoporosis before signs become outwardly apparent and a cascade of injuries begin.

Making matters worse is that bone density typically peaks in your mid-to-late twenties. After this age, the goal is no longer to increase bone density but rather to slow its decline. Thus, the teen and early 20’s are a critical period to prioritize bone health. Entering young adulthood with a poor BMD is a recipe for poor mobility and frequent injuries as an older individual.

Populations that are at particularly high-risk for having poor bone density include:
Endurance athletes
Amenorrheic individuals (lacking a regular menstrual cycle)
Those with low Vitamin D and/ or calcium

Be proactive and schedule a preventative DEXA screening today!

12/19/2025

Is There an Optimal Way to Warm Up?
Warming up is an essential component of injury prevention and exercise performance and should be performed before any physical activity. While the specific warm-up should be tailored to the demands of the sport or exercise, an optimal warm-up generally consists of four components: a general warm-up, dynamic mobility, muscle activation, and sport-specific preparation.

General Warm-Up:
The purpose of the general warm-up is to increase blood flow and elevate body temperature. Activities such as brisk walking or light jogging help prepare the cardiovascular system and signal to the body that physical exertion is about to begin.

Dynamic Mobility:
Dynamic mobility involves moving joints through their full ranges of motion in a manner specific to the upcoming activity. This prepares the muscles, joints, and connective tissues for the movement patterns and ranges of motion required during exercise.

Muscle Activation:
Muscle activation focuses on engaging primary muscle groups and stabilizers relevant to the sport or exercise. Activating these muscles enhances neuromuscular readiness, promotes efficient movement patterns, and supports injury prevention.

Sport-Specific Warm-Up:
The sport-specific warm-up is the most critical component, as it allows the body to gradually adjust to the exact demands of the activity. This phase should mimic the movements, intensity, and coordination required in the sport. For example, a long-distance running warm-up may include progressive increases in cadence and short accelerations to prepare the body for sustained effort.

It is important to avoid prolonged static stretching before dynamic activity, using the same warm-up for every exercise, or warming up with excessive intensity that leads to fatigue. These practices can negatively impact performance and increase injury risk.

Allocating time for an appropriate warm-up before every training or sport session helps maintain mechanical health and enhances overall performance.

12/16/2025

Because aerobic exercise can be highly physically demanding, appropriate precautions are necessary to reduce the risk of lightheadedness, dizziness, or syncope. During intense aerobic activity, the sympathetic nervous system is highly active, heart rate is elevated, and blood flow is preferentially directed toward the working musculature. Just as a warm-up is important at the beginning of a session, incorporating a cool-down phase at the end of exercise facilitates a gradual return to baseline physiological function. This controlled transition allows the skeletal muscle pump to remain active, promoting venous return and the clearance of metabolic by-products. In addition, a cool-down helps reduce mental stress and supports post-exercise calm and focus. Overall, an effective cool-down phase enhances recovery, safety, and long-term physiological adaptation.

12/15/2025

Concussion Awareness: Recognizing a concussion early is one of the most important steps in protecting an athlete's long-term health. Symptoms like headache, dizziness, confusion, and blurred vision, or sensitivity to light can appear immediately or develop overtime. If an athlete takes a hit and "just doesn't feel right," they should be removed from play and evaluated with no exceptions. Playing through a concussion can increase the risks of serious complications and delayed recovery. When in doubt, sit them out. Safety always comes before the scoreboard.

12/12/2025

What type of cardio should you do?

Cardio is a crucial component of overall fitness and is something we must maintain throughout our lives. It is hard knowing which type of exercise to do and what intensity zone to be in.

What exercise?
This comes down to what you enjoy. There are numerous methods of cardio that all enhance overall cardio-respiratory fitness and elicit specific muscular adaptations. If your primary goal is to get out there and get the heart rate up, choose something you enjoy doing. The important factor to consider is what exercise works best for you to reach every intensity zone.

Cardio intensity zones can be explained the easiest through your heart rate. The higher your heart rate gets, the higher the intensity you're working in. These intensity zones are split into 5 categories: Zone 1, Very Low Intensity, Zone 2, Low Intensity, Zone 3, Moderate Intensity, Zone 4, High Intensity, and Zone 5, Very High Intensity. Each zone contains specific metabolic processes that separate them from each other.

Zone 1:
50-60% of Max Heart Rate. This zone is primarily for recovery purposes. It slightly increases blood flow and promotes fat burning.

Zone 2:
60-70% of Max Heart Rate. This zone improves your aerobic capacity and increases your VO2max. Zone 2 sessions need to be long and slow to elicit the aerobic adaptations. Exercising at this intensity improves your body’s ability to burn fat efficiently.

Zone 3:
70-80% of Max Heart Rate. Zone 3 is known as the tempo zone, where your body utilizes both fat and carbs as fuel. If you’re competing in any endurance competition, this is like the intensity your body will be in through the duration of the race.

Zone 4:
80-90% of Max Heart Rate. In zone 4, you will burn all carbs and increase your maximum performance capacity during shorter efforts.

Zone 5:
90-100% of Max Heart Rate. Helps develop speed and maintain high-intensity fitness.

If you’re looking to improve overall cardio fitness, it is crucial to target all of these zones to a certain degree. The general rule is to spend most of your time in zone 2/3 and occasionally push zones 4/5 to maintain both high-intensity and low-intensity fitness.

12/12/2025

ACL Prevention: Strong glutes and proper knee alignment are your first line of defense against ACL injuries. When the hips are weak, the knee collapses inward during cutting, landing, and change-of-direction which is one of the biggest risk factors for the ACL tears. Adding simple glute activation and strength drills to your warm-up like lateral band walks and single-leg stability work, helps keep the knee tracking correctly and reduces strain on the ligament. Train your hips, control your landing, and you'll protect your ACL every time you move.

Address

3301 C Street, Ste 1600
Sacramento, CA
95816

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Telephone

+19167346805

Website

http://health.ucdavis.edu/sports-medicine/

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