Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman is in full-on training mode for the Summer Games in Paris 2024. Newman, 29, shared pictures of herself wearing a two-piece running outfit, flashing the peace sign at the camera. “Happy Monday! Back on the road this week, taking every day of rest as a blessing to reset 😇🫶🏼 I can feel the greatness for the upcoming competitions, going to make you guys & myself proud ♥️🇨🇦,” she captioned the post. Here’s how the Olympic athlete trains, eats, and stays fit and focused.
1. Athlete Diet
Newman is careful about her nutrition, and tries not to eat late at night. "If I were going to put it on a scale, my mentality is priority number one, nutrition is number two, and practice is number three," she told Bodybuilding.com. "I put my nutrition before practice because I have to fuel my body with the best nutrients to get the best results. It's extremely important to put the proper nutrients in your body, especially during long, hard, and critical practices. If you don't eat right, it's like putting cheap gas in your car. Yeah, it'll drive, but not as well as it should. Our bodies are the same way."
2. Intense Training Regimen
Newman’s training routine is so intense she needs two days a week for recovery. "During the week I stick to a specific schedule," she told Bodybuilding.com. "I usually have two technical days comprised of pole vaulting, gymnastics, and plyometrics. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I run—anything from tempo runs to quick 60-meter sprints. I finish those running days with weight training. Whenever my competition schedule allows it, I take off Saturdays and Sundays to rest."
3. Core Strength
Newman’s pole vaulting training includes plenty of core exercises. “We do very elongated exercises,” she told Muscle & Fitness. “Not crunches or any of that. It’s rope climbing while upside down. We’re doing pole-rope climbing, wall bar where you’re laying on your back and lifting your legs up but we don’t crunch at the hips; we crunch at the shoulders. When we talk about abdominal strength in the pole vault, it’s literally from the chin to the pelvic region. So, it’s our lats, core, obliques and all that stuff is activated while we’re doing core work.”
4. Pole Vaulting Drills
Newman’s training also includes lots of drills. “We do a lot of sled pulls. We do a lot of box horse drills,” she told Muscle & Fitness. “You have this huge box right in front of the pole vault pit and you’re doing drills to avoid the run up. You’re just doing pole work on the actual pole. Then, we’ll head back and start working on — right before you bend the pole — we call it a takeoff. So you work on getting your arms up, getting activated, and quick feet at takeoff. Then they’ll decide to see where you are energy-wise and we decide which pole you’re going to go on that day.”
5. Lots of Good Sleep
Newman tries to keep her stress—and cortisol—in check by getting the right amount of good quality sleep every night. “My number one secret that people ask me about my beauty regime […] it’s not products, it’s sleep,” she told Elixuer. “I really make sure I give myself that eight hours of sleep. [Your body] needs to decompress, and it needs to not feel stressed, and it needs to not be on social media or interpreting everything you see on the internet, allowing your brain to rest and really recover, [stopping] those endorphins from being released, the cortisol stress levels.”
