It’s every man’s fantasy: a girlfriend who loves to play and watch sports as much as he does. But dating a tomboy has its flip side. Do you play as hard? Do you let her win? Can you handle it if she’s better than you? Frankly, boys, it’s a minefield. Follow my advice if you want to get through it with all your parts intact.

The situation: She’s seriously athletic and has no qualms beating you. In front of your friends. Often.
The upside: She’ll never make you come home at halftime. (And why would she? For her, that’s just midway through the game she’s winning.)
The problem: She knows your weaknesses and injuries. She is wily, aggressive, and unrelenting. She has no problem handing you your balls at the end of any game you’re playing.
The solution: You can’t ask her to take it easy on you, but you can recruit her to your team. So whenever you can, partner up with her. Get her to savor winning together, and maybe she’ll have some pity next time you’re head-to-head.

The situation: Her passion for sports is not exactly matched by her prowess.
The upside: Tag football, Frisbee, miniature golf, kickball … If it’s a sport, she’s in. And shotgun.
The problem: She strikes out, drops the ball, fouls, spaces out, and is in general the weakest link. She’s also your girl, so crushing her makes you feel like a cad.
The solution: Level the playing field any way you can so she can still enjoy herself. Come up with an excuse as to why you should give her a head start or yourself a handicap. Most important in this situation: Allow yourself to really enjoy the game for the game’s sake.

The situation: She has a team for every season.
The upside: She can pontificate on how Tiger’s scores are affecting the game of golf. She can home in on Jerome James’s apathetic performances. She can detail why the ref is picking on LeBron yet again.
The problem: It’s always the opposing team. That’s right. You are UNC, she’s Duke. She’s Yankees, you are Red Sox. You are sleeping with the enemy. What this means? You disagree about sports. All. Year. Long.
The solution: Enforce a “no talking about sports in the bedroom” rule. Pronto. You can agree to disagree about a foul or shot or resume the discussion the next day, but in general, when you pass through that doorway, sports banter should end and the pillow talk begin. Explain it to her this way and she’s sure to be game.

The situation: She’s obsessed with competition -- even more so than you are.
The upside: If there’s a dart board, pool table or hacky sack in sight, she’s making a beeline for it.
The problem: You never thought you’d say this, but you wish she’d pay more attention to you -- and not just to beating you.
The solution: Your best bet here is honesty. Level with her. And then make plans for “we” time that doesn’t involve a pigskin, goal or referee: Try renting a movie or going to a concert. The more non-sports-related things you do together, the more non-sports-related content there will be to talk about, and all eyes should soon be on you.

The situation: She’s always in, whether she’s invited or not.
The upside: While your buddies are getting the eye roll or pout from their ladies, yours is already changed into her sweats.
The problem: It’s endearing but annoying that she’s always in tow when it comes to sports. Sometimes you wouldn’t mind playing -- or even just hanging -- with the guys.
The solution: She lets you slither away when her friends mention a sale on boots or start complaining about their boyfriends. Well, flip the script. Tell her the guys want to talk guy stuff (if a buddy’s having girl trouble, even better), and she’ll most likely bow out of her own accord.

Photo Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/StanleyPhotography

Snowboard-and-ski season is fast upon us. And while your mind may be ready for the powder, chances are your body isn’t. That’s because skiing and snowboarding are sports that require a specific type of lower-body muscle strength, which you don’t typically get from summer activities. Fail to build up the right muscles -- primarily supporting the knees and lower back -- and you leave yourself open to some nasty injuries.

Think about your body when you ski: Your knees are absorbing all the impact from the terrain up through the body. “The knee gets tremendous overuse due to the forces placed on it,” says Mike Wunsch, CSCS, director of fitness at Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, Calif. “And it has to take the slack from the now locked-in ankle.”

Weak quads and hamstrings can make the knee joint vulnerable to a ligament injury, such as an LCL or ACL tear, either from a fall or from ski tips running in opposite ways.

“The lower back is the other area that absorbs a lot of impact,” adds Courtenay Schurman, MS, CSCA, co-owner of Body Results Fitness in Seattle and author of The Outdoor Athlete. “Since a downhill skier spends so much time in a crouch position, if he or she has a weak core, like the weakest link in any chain, that area runs the risk of injury.”

For a safe and successful winter-sports season, Wunsch recommends the following workout. Do two to three sets of eight to 12 reps of each exercise twice a week.

SNOW STRENGTH

Box step-down: Stand on a box 12 to 24 inches high and step off, working on controlling your body’s downward movement and nailing the landing. Alternate the lead leg throughout the set.

Lateral hops: Keeping feet directly underneath you, quickly hop sideways without pausing during landing phases. After several hops one way, reverse direction. Keep chest up, and maintain good posture throughout.

Pause squats: Simply pause in the bottom squat position, keeping your muscles flexed, before coming up. You can use a light load (a bar or dumbbells held at the sides) and pause several seconds or go heavier and pause for just two seconds.

Single-leg balance: Snowboarders need to work on balance and building up endurance in the foot-stabilizing musculature. Work up to several minutes (as that’s how long a run can last) standing on one foot with the other lifted off the ground, knee up.

Lateral lunge: Step to the right with the right foot, keeping toes forward and your feet flat. Squat through the right hip while keeping the left leg straight. Squat as low as possible, holding this position for two seconds. Push back to the starting position and repeat to the opposite side.

Diagonal wood chops: Keep legs shoulder-width apart, knees soft. Using both hands, hold a dumbbell alongside your right ear, with elbows slightly bent. (Picture yourself holding up an ax, ready to chop wood.) Flex abs and do a slight squat as you rotate and bring arms down to the side of your left knee. Slowly bring arms back up to starting position. Switch sides after each set.

The Pallof press: Standing with the side of your body next to a cable machine, hold the cable handle with both hands (one on top of the other) right in front of your chest. The cable pulley should be in the same horizontal plane as your abs, and the cable should be taut. Brace your abs and “press” the handle straight out in front of you. Then return the handle back to your chest. Keep moving the handle back and forth while trying to keep it in a straight line (indicating that you are stabilizing your torso well). Switch sides.

SNOW CARDIO
Cardio at the end of your workout should be in a similar ratio to the work/rest ratio for your sport. If your slope runs are short and sweet (like for rails, jumps, etc.), do several short, super-intense bursts followed by short rest periods (such as 15-second sprints followed by 30 seconds of rest). If you expect to do long runs, surfing and carving the mountain, do longer periods of medium-to-high intensity with longer rest periods (three-minute bouts on the elliptical, for example, and two-minute rests).

Going out for the varsity football team? The company dodgeball league? The New England Patriots? (OK, scratch that last one -- potential Patriots probably don’t need our advice.) Whatever your team tryout situation, there are six strategies every future hall of famer (or weekend warrior) can use to grab the coaches’ attention:

Be Pre-pumped
As they say, an ounce of muscle is worth a pound of fat (or something like that). Don’t wait until the week before tryouts to hit the gym. Remember this: While you’re lounging around the house nursing a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and watching “SpongeBob,” someone else who wants your position is already up and running, getting in shape.

Stand out From the Crowd
We’re not saying you should draw attention to yourself by, say, singing “Pants on the Ground.” (You probably won’t make the team based on that ability -- or lack thereof.) But doing certain little things -- like running all the way through the finish line, taking that second shot at a rebound, putting out that extra bit of effort during position drills and otherwise playing hard through the whistle -- gets coaches’ attention.

Be a Leader
Maybe you’ve been playing your sport since you were knee-high to a shortstop. But there will be other guys on the field who won’t even know which end zone to run to. Sure, you could just laugh at ’em. Or you could take them under your wing and help cut their learning curve. While you might not believe it (or want to admit it), there was a day when you stepped onto the field for the first time. Coaches respect leadership. Other players do too.

Be Coachable
No matter how good an athlete you may be or what level you’re playing at, there is a hierarchy in sports. Simply put, the coach is the general, you’re the private, and tryouts and preseason practices are boot camp. While working on “mundane” skills might be boring, good coaches put a lot of effort into drilling you with the fundamentals. Slam dunks may make headlines, but free throws win games. Don’t ignore a coach’s constructive criticism just because you want to be the brightest flash in the pan.

Have Skills
Some people are born with them; others have to work a lot harder to develop them. But nothing will get you a spot on the roster faster than having hands of glue, lightning-fast speed or “natural instinct” for your sport. And no matter how good you are, you can always get better. (See Training Strategies section below.)

Be Versatile
Ever since you were a kid, you dreamed about playing quarterback in the Super Bowl. But right now, the coach needs you for defensive end -- or maybe he just thinks your talents would be better suited to that position. Either way, be flexible -- a team player, as they say. Otherwise, maybe you’d be better off taking up an individual sport.

Bonus: Training Strategies

As we mentioned above in the Have Skills section, actually having abilities to perform well in a particular sport will take you far. Here are a few general talents you need and a quickie guide on how to get them:

• Grip: Most sports benefit from -- make that require -- a powerful grip (e.g., holding a racket, golf club or baseball bat; making a shoe string tackle; or putting the right spin on a bowling ball). Training via dead lifts, the “fat bar” or the “Farmers Walk” (an exercise requiring you to walk holding heavy dumbbells) can give you a handshake you can be proud of.
• Hips: In every sport, from Aussie-rules football to ultimate flying disc, your hips are your prime power source. Instead of doing set after set of abdominal crunches, focus on hip-dominant exercises such as squats, dead lifts, cleans (lifting a barbell from the floor to your shoulders) and lunges. Depending on your particular sport, variations of these exercises could emphasize different speeds, rep ranges, plane of motion, etc.
• Footwork: Sooner or later, most sports require you to get from point A to B. Nothing will get you the position of equipment manager faster than getting tripped up by your own two feet. Try jumping rope, doing ladder drills -- heck, even ballroom dancing -- to get your left foot to play along with your right.

Photo Credit: Meghan Holmes

Fall sports season is kicking into gear, but you’ve committed to doing more than just watching sports on TV. You want to play ’em. Moreover, you want to participate in the ones that will actually be good for you. So which fall sports offer the best cardio workout?

There are countless pastimes to choose from -- everything from archery to wallyball. For our purposes, though, we’ve narrowed down the field (pun intended) to three top contenders, and from there, we’ll declare the best.

Contender No. 1: Soccer
While many red, white and blue-blooded Americans used this year’s World Cup as an excuse to go out and celebrate, most still don’t accept soccer as a real sport beyond the youth level. But the 6.39 billion people outside the U.S. do take the game seriously. Very seriously.

One of the great things about soccer is that it requires next to no equipment to play -- all you need is a ball and a couple of sticks to mark the perimeters of the goal. It also requires very little skill to get a good workout.

Now, before all you Cristiano Ronaldo fans start sending hate mail, we’re not saying soccer requires no skill. We’re saying anyone can run around for 90 minutes on a soccer field for the sake of a good workout -- and possibly have a little fun in the process!

As for the workout, soccer demands an hour and a half of starting, stopping, direction changing, sliding and jumping in the middle of an open field, all while you maneuver a ball with your feet (or at least try to). The near constant movement of soccer challenges your aerobic system, but the occasional bursts of speed can really push your anaerobic threshold to the max.

Note: If there’s one position you don’t want to play when a good cardio workout is your goal, it’s goalie. Sure, your heart rate will occasionally spike when you’re trying to stop a 1-pound, 70-mph bullet coming at you and the net. But you can get the same heart-pounding effect when you realize you just accidentally tipped over your friend’s 50-inch plasma TV.

Contender No. 2: Football
A typical game consists of approximately 125 plays, each lasting an average of seven seconds and distributed over four 15-minute quarters. Even if you play on both sides of the ball, you’ll still only get about 14 minutes of work before the final second ticks off the clock.

So why, then, is football such a good cardio workout?

For starters, wearing a helmet and shoulder pads adds close to 30 pounds to your weight load. Throw in highly intense, short blasts of activity requiring power and quick reaction time while simultaneously trying to avoid being tossed aside by one or more of the 11 adrenaline- and testosterone-fueled opponents, and you’ve got yourself some cardio!

Contender No. 3: Basketball
Take a constant action sport like soccer, make the playing field a lot smaller, toss in some aggressive physical contact like football, add a small steel rim at each end of the playing court, and what do you get?

Well, yeah, basketball obviously. But more important, you get a nice blend of the types of cardio workouts you’d get from soccer or football. Additionally, basketball can be played indoors or out, any time of year.

Even if you don’t boast the kind of ball-handling skills worthy of an hour-long circus-like ESPN press conference (cough ... LeBron ... cough), you can still get your cardio workout in by being Johnny Hustle and setting picks, going after rebounds and boxing out your opponent in the paint.

The Winner: Football
Basketball and soccer fans might be surprised when we say football is best for your heart. While the plays are relatively short, the sheer intensity of the game requires you to work your muscle fibers to the max -- all of which require oxygen. How does that oxygen get to your muscles? Via your cardiovascular system, of course!

With only 30 seconds or so of rest between each play, a gridiron workout may just be the ultimate in interval training.

Regardless of whether your gym has an Olympic-size pool, it’s sure to have a great dating pool. And let’s face it: Unless you go there to sit outside the trampoline classes and stare at the leotarded (in which case … eww), you are at your buffest and best there. So don’t blow it with an opening line that’s so lame she shoots you down before you get anywhere near the part about her joining you for a smoothie and a protein bar.

Here are five common gym scenarios where you may find yourself weight belt to sports bra with a hot gymette. Follow this workout, and you might just meet a woman on your first set:

Location:

Stretching mats

Worst line:

“Wow, I see you’re really flexible. Are you a dancer?”

She thinks:

“‘Flexible?’ I know where your dirty mind is going with that, you perv.”

Best line:

“You seem like you know what you’re doing. Got any suggestions to stretch my hamstrings? They’re killing me – they’re so tight.”

The logic:

The second question seems more legitimate.

Location:

Water fountain

Worst line:

“Hey, leave some for the rest of us!”

She thinks:

“Wow, jerk. I’ve only heard that 50 million times.”

Best line:

“I swear, they really do manage to keep the water nice and cold here.”

The logic:

The first doesn’t leave her any way to respond if she does want to talk to you. The second one could be a conversation starter, plus it’s something everyone who’s parched might actually be thinking. (Of course, if the water’s a bit warm, you can comment on that instead -- though you might come across as a bit of a whiner.)

Location:

Free weights

Worst line:

“Need some help? You should hold it from this angle.”

She thinks:

“Just because I’m a girl using free weights, you assume I need help? You could use some help with your approach, tool.”

Best line:

“Damn -- 20 pounds. Not bad!”

The logic:

At last, an honest compliment from one fellow gym rat to another. That you noticed makes her feel strong.

Location:

The weights (machine or free). The situation: resting between sets

Worst line:

“I love this song,” referring to the music playing. Alternative: “Who’s winning?” referring to the game on TV.

She thinks:

“I’m wearing an iPod, dummy. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Best line:

“Do you mind if I work in?”

The logic:

This is the only direct question that makes any sense here. Any other directive breaks the gym cardinal rule, “Thou shalt never interrupt someone’s flow with an irrelevant question” (unless she’s screaming, “Drop dead, ref!” at the TV -- then, by all means, comment on the score).

Location:

At the bikes, treadmill, Stairmaster or elliptical

Worst line:

“Can I buy you a drink when we get there?”

She thinks:

“Aren’t you the same guy who used that stupid water fountain line before?”

Best line:

“Ugh cardio, it always feels so good to get it over with.”

The logic:

It doesn’t mean you love or hate cardio; it’s just a general feeling about how good it feels to be able to check it off your list. If she wants to add to your comment, she can; otherwise, you give her the out of just panting and nodding yes in agreement.

In case you haven’t figured it out after all this, when it comes to meeting women at the gym, the best lines don’t make a girl feel trapped -- or obligated to answer you. They also let you save face in case her boyfriend is the huge power lifter giving you the evil eye across the room.