Healthier Hips and a Better Butt

One of the first things we look at when a new client comes in is how well their hips are working for them. When the hips are not functioning properly, it can lead to the hip joint wearing out prematurely, knee problems, foot issues, and a low back that stays painful all the time. Muscle imbalance of the hips is common and often leads a person to overuse their lumbar spine. When we identify just how the hips need to be stretched and strengthened and give the right exercises, the imbalance goes away.

After the hips have been corrected or if the client comes in functioning properly, we move into exercises that continue to increase the function of the hips, but also focus on the best aesthetic development of the glutes … aka, the butt, the booty, the bum, and the junk in the trunk. A great looking butt is something that you should want, not only to turn peoples’ heads, but it a great indication that your hips are at their optimal level of function.

To see an exercises that can take your bum to the “boom boom pow” (as the Black Eyes Peas would say) that it should be, take a look at the following video. In the video, Marty Linclau-Miller, Human Performance Consultant, is demonstrating a Stability Ball Hip Extension. You can also go to our Longevity Studios YouTube Channel to view more exercises.

To learn more about how you can get the most from your exercise, you can sign up for one of our seminars or have a consultation with one of our trainers.

But do you squat?

Back in my heyday of powerlifting, it became a running joke with my workout partners that when someone bragged about their bench press, curls, or 6-pack, we would jump right into the question “…but do you squat?” The main reason for this, in our minds, is that this separated the fitness enthusiasts with the serious lifters. Heavy squatting is arguably one of the hardest exercise you can perform.

Since that time, my appreciation for the squat has remained the same, but has changed in its focus. I use to have the gym rat mentality of “go heavy or go home” pertaining to the squat. Now I realize just how important the squat is for functional movement and how everyone should be incorporating some form of it into their fitness program.

Squatting is a basic, functional movement pattern that we all need in order to live our daily lives. When we are unable to perform this movement is when the problems arise. Many times I have had clients walk through my doors from their orthopedic doctor and the first thing that comes out of their mouth is “The doctor said I shouldn’t squat”. One of my colleagues, Josh Rubin of East West Healing and Performance, created the video clip, Squatology 101, that gives the answers to why the squat is essential to perform. He does a excellent job of pointing out all the benefits the squat provides.

If I kept my old paradigm, then I guess I would have to agree with the client that said they shouldn’t squat. But the new thought process would have me say, “let’s find a way to get it done that will help to improve your life and performance”. To give you some appreciation of the variety of squats that you can perform, Marty Linclau-Miller, another Human Performance Consultant at Lonegevity, and myself developed the following videos of different squat versions.

Hopefully these videos and commentary will give you a new appreciation for the squat and ways that you can include it in your exercise program. If you need some suggestions as to ways that the squat can be modified to help you, leave a comment. Otherwise ….. Happy Squatting!

Happy New You … NOW!

When I talk to people around this time of year, who are interested in starting a fitness program and losing weight, I hear some interesting reasons about why they’re going to wait until New Year’s to do it. “The holidays are coming and I’m too busy”, “I want to start fresh with a new year”, or my favorite, “I’m going to gain weight through the holidays, so I’ll wait until after to start”. Right! … did you know that only about 12% of people who make New Year’s Resolutions actually keep them?

There are many reasons for the low success rate, but the most important one is that there is no plan put in place. When a plan is developed and effectively implemented, the success rate goes up significantly. But a plan can be developed anytime and get you going at the most important time … NOW, when you are motivated to change! When you come to Longevity and want to start working out, we sit down and develop a plan that gets you started at the appropriate place and level.

If one of your objections is that the holidays are too busy, then what you are saying to us, is even after New Year’s when you get busy, you’re not going to keep working out. We are always busy! And yes the Holidays do put extra pressure on us, but I can tell you without hesitation that the people who find a way to maintain a schedule during this time of year are the ones who do not let the fitness goals slide any other time of year, no matter how busy they get. If you start during a busy time, you are better at planning to get your workouts in and you start at an amount that you can maintain, then increase as the busy times pass.

Externally imposed deadlines never result in permanent change. People who come to us who have an arbitrary timelines to their weight loss goals, follow a pattern of temporary success followed by dramatic failure. If you’re waiting for that cruise, wedding, or that New Year’s resolution, then you’re more than likely to lose the weight for a short term, but then goal will pass or you will get get bored and the weight will come back … and sometimes even more than before. What it takes to sustain your results is to connect the goal to what is really important to you. This may be health, appearance, or what fitness allows you to do and then develop goals that keep you motivated and on task.

For those that think they will just gain the weight through the holidays and then do something about it … you are starting with an huge assumption … YOU HAVE TO GAIN WEIGHT! If you do start exercising now and give some thought to all those holiday events, meals, and snacks I’ll give you an eye-opening revelation … YOU DON’T HAVE TO GAIN HOLIDAY WEIGHT THIS YEAR!!!

Whether you are looking to start a fitness plan or have been exercising regularly, I urge you to take a look now at how you can develop a plan that utilizes the holidays to focus your fitness or weight loss goals to gain even more success in the coming new year. If you need help, you can checkout our specials that can help you be a Happy New You in the Happy New Year!

Exercise and Breast Cancer

At Longevity Studios, we serve clients trying to achieve a vast array of goals. Some of the most inspirational goals are for those clients that are fighting to overcome significant health issues. In this blog, Natasha Atkinson discusses exercising with breast cancer. She has worked with several clients who are survivors of this condition (see testimonial). Working with these clients requires her to be very precise with the exercise program, really listen to their individual needs, and embark a great deal of empathy and understanding. While the exercise helps the body, our trainers are always engaged with their mind and spirit, thus truly assisting to lift them above their circumstance and enhance their survivorship!

Natasha has been in the fitness industry for two decades and understands the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. It’s through this commitment to fitness and living a healthy lifestyle that she expresses her passion and gets her clients to reach their full potential. She enjoys training clients of all fitness levels. She especially enjoys working with women to help them overcome the many barriers they face in their pursuit of fitness. Her certifications include Holistic Lifestyle Coach Level 1 and Exercise Coach from the C.H.E.K.Institute, National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) and American Council on Exercise (ACE) Personal Trainer certifications.

As many of you know, October is breast cancer awareness month. I have been reading the statistics on breast cancer and the numbers are astounding. According to Tricia M. Peters, of U.S. National Cancer Institute (USNCI) in Maryland, who led one study on the subject:

With an estimated 182,460 new cases diagnosed in the United States in 2008, breast cancer is recognized as the most common cancer affecting U.S. women.

As a trainer, I have had the pleasure to work with several clients that have struggled with the surgery and follow up of chemo and radiations treatments. I do say pleasure because these clients come with a different idea of training and a determination that others do not necessarily have. The idea of working out and getting fit has with it the meaning of a real change in nutrition, stress management, and lifestyle … but more importantly, life itself. This change is often overlooked by the general group of people that frequent gyms. I think the word I’m looking for is “awareness”. They come with a new awareness of the quality of life they want for themselves, which makes my job even more rewarding.

Many people do not realize that you can continue to workout while you’re receiving treatments. With a modified exercise program, working out can actually make you feel better. The best exercise program is one that meets you at the level in which you start it and continues to adjust to fit your needs. A regular exercise program can assist with weight gain, maximize body strength, improve body composition, and bone density. This is no different than for the general public. In my observation, what seems to be more valuable to my clients affected with breast cancer is the mental sense of accomplishment that you get from working out. The feeling of determining your own course and putting the control back in your own hands. This strengths the body, energizes the mind, and soothes the soul. All of which, help to offset some of the side effects of chemo and surgeries.

In the fight against breast cancer, exercise does not have all the answers. What it does come down to is that exercise is an integral part of healing yourself and another place to building your community that is going create the environment to boost your cancer survivorship.

Even if you are not impacted by breast cancer yourself, you probably know someone who is. I encourage all women to start activities that could help to prevent it. A reason to start an exercise program is that research has found that exercising more, eating healthier and lowering body fat, could prevent as many as 38 percent of breast cancer cases in the United States alone.

For more information about exercising with breast cancer, or any cancer, checkout the LIVESTRONG website. This site has tremendous amount of information, not just about exercise, but about cancer in general. We support this organization and how it’s trying to help the world!

If breast cancer has affected your life, let us know how by leaving a comment. If you like to contact Natasha, you can through her email, natkinson@longevitystudios.com or by calling the studio at 301-934-8855.

EDU-train-ment

For us to move you in the right direction for achieving your goals, we have adopted a word as the framework for how we deliver our exercise sessions. The word is “EDU-train-ment”. When I was discussing this concept with our marketing person, he thought that we had come up with an original concept … until we Googled it – Google search for edutrainment. It became obvious we were not the first to think of it, but is one of the philosophies that does make our service a wee-bit more interesting.

It consists of 3 elements: Education, Training, and Entertainment. Each element is adjusted to the right proportion and to fit you at the appropriate level for that particular exercise session.

Education – This factor is capitalized because it is the foundation for what we do at Longevity Studios. We delivery the necessary information in order for you to understand, not only the how but the why, and allow you to take accountability for your own exercise and lifestyle. We determine what the best style is for your learning and then deliver the information in that style at a level that you will completely understand.

Training – If education represents the why, this is the how. Behind the session is a collection of thought that has combined the exercise program variables (i.e., reps, sets, intensity, tempo, duration, recovery) in a very specific way. This specific way is implemented in the session and performed to achieve a specific outcome. This is the physical road that leads to your goals.

Entertainment – We are here to engage you and connect you with your deepest session experience possible. A bored, or even worse, a client completely disengaged from the session will not put forth the effort to learn and perform at their optimal level. Yes, it’s a little bit of show business!

After we have gathered assessment information, developed goals, and designed the exercise program, we determine the best proportion we should give you of our EDU-train-ment model. The proportions change based on your personality, stage of training progression, and desired session outcome. In other words, the amount of each factor in your session is in a floating range that is best suited to get you closer to your goals.

Some clients liked to be entertained more than others. The early stages of training are much more concerned with the learning process. A client training for competition in the middle of their power phase should be putting more of their energies into their physical effort. Respectively, the dominant element of the framework for these 3 scenarios would be entertainment, education, and training.

We take a lot of care to delivery to you more than just exercise. We consider your individuals needs and create an environment that supports you in your journey. We know that you come to us for more than just learning how to exercise better. You come to us to help you change yourself and your life for the better.

Tabata Training for a Cardio Alternative

After my last post I received a lot a questions about cardio for weight loss. First, I don’t believe cardio is bad. I do feel like it is over-emphasized and too easily adapted as a weight loss solution. I also find, for the most part, that long-duration, steady state cardio training DOESN’T produce sustainable weight loss results! If you think you need a second opinion on this, read Stop Getting All Cracked Out On Cardio! 4 Reasons To Try Something Else from Erin Huggins. I’m gonna say she agrees. Pay attention to her point about the adrenals glands, because many times it’s that issue holding back your weight loss progress.

Second, if you are a cardio athlete … this obvious doesn’t apply to you. If you’re a Lance Armstrong, you have to ride your bike for long periods of time! But many times, there are smarter ways to train for those events as well!!

So I got alot of the same questions about “what else is there to do?” The function of cardio training is to increase your heart rate for sustainable periods of time. You can do this without the “cardio” mind-frame that is so pervasive.

One way to do this is a protocol called The Tabata Method. You perform 20 seconds of an exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. The traditional Tabata Method only has you performing the high intensity cycles for 4 minutes. This form is for highly conditioned people, but the form can be adjusted to fit any level of fitness. You perform cycles of these exercises, much like a circuit, and it can get your heart rate to the appropriate level. You can modify the exercises and intensity to make it right for you. If you are just starting, you can work at a slower pace and use easier exercises with smaller ranges of motions. As you progress, or if cardio fitness is already high, you can turn the workouts in some specials experiences. This is not the same ol’boring routine.

Some examples of these workouts are:

Now, I don’t promote any of these workouts, exercise form, and intensity … and of course, you should always consult your physcian prior to starting any exercise program (for sake of my lawyer!). This may be a way to change your cardio to get some real results.

So let me know what you think … or if you try a Tabata workout, let me know how it goes!

The Real Stair Climber

I see too many people going to the gym and jumping on a piece of cardiovascular equipment and hitting that “steady state” heart rate training zone for hours on end. First, for many, I think this directly opposes their fitness goals, but it’s what they know, so they just stick to it without thought. It’s also what’s accepted by the general masses. And “they” can’t be wrong, can they? To hear more about why cardio might be a problem, listen to the UnderGround Wellness interview with Paul Chek entitled, Is Cardio Sabotaging Your Weight Loss Program?

Second point to make here, if you’re going to do something to try to “burn calories” and lose fat, you can at least do something a little more functional. Moving your body through space is much different than moving it on a fixed piece of cardio gear. It’s amazing the workouts you can get done without any equipment and a little “imagination”! Walking, climbing stairs, or even doing some physical work, but with a fitness goal in mind, can move you to better shape.

One of my favorite cardio workouts is to simply find a long set of stairs and perform repeats. Repeats are what they sound like. You go up and down the stairs and then you repeat. You can do the repeats by picking a certain number of reps and sets to complete, say 3 reps up and down for a total of 5 sets, or you can perform until you move to your desired training hear rate zone for the number of sets you want. Using heart rate to determine your pace makes the workouts more custom for you.

On my last stair climbing workout, I performed 5 reps for 10 sets. The video clip below is of my last set. As you can tell, I was losing steam, but I had a great time!

If you’re tired of the same ol’ cardio boredom, try to add a functional cardio routine to your workout and see how your body and mind responds! If you do, let me know how it goes.

How many reps?

Many times when someone finds out I help people with their exercise programs, I get the inevitable question, “how may reps should I be doing?” At that point, I grab an envelope and place it on my forehead (as in Johnny Carson’s the Great Karnak skit) and say the answer is, “I haven’t a clue! … since I don’t know your goals, needs, and training experience.”

What they typically want to know is how many reps they should be doing if they’re trying to make esthetic changes to their bodies. While this answer can get complicated, here’s the “Reps 101″ version. First, the number of reps completed in a training session is probably the most important short term exercise variable. The total number of reps you perform during a session equals your total volume for that training session. There is an inverse relationship between exercise volume and intensity. The higher the volume, the lower your intensity.

If you’re looking for “bodyshaping” changes, your reps should be in the hypertrophy (muscle building) training range. This means you should be doing from 8 to 12 reps per set. When I say this could be more complicated, it’s because you also have to consider a person’s genetic potential with muscle fiber type, their nervous system training response, their training age and experience, and the speed of exercise movement, just to name a few.

For those looking to maximize strength gains, the ideal rep range is from 1 to 8. Muscular endurance takes place within a rep range of about 12 to 25. Our personal training services are offered at La Plata Fitness, which has a women’s only and a coed component. I find myself having two frequent conversations there. With men, they’re looking for the hypertrophy changes, but performing reps in the max strength range and not enough “time under tension” to stimulate the muscle to the results they want. The conversation with women is just the opposite, they are performing loads of reps, with no intensity, mainly because they don’t want to “get big” … which is a whole other conversation! This is pushing them into muscular endurance and again, away from their desired results.

Hopefully, this clears up the general question about where you should be with your reps during your workouts. For more specific answers to exercise needs, you can set up a consultation with one of our Human Performance Consultants to get clarity on all the exercise program variables and ultimately “moving” to the body you want!

Young Athletes

I tend to find two types of “kids” coming to me these days. One is not doing much in the way of exercise, and sometimes even movement. For the most part, this is an easy fix. You get them moving … you get them enjoying the moving … and you get them seeing the benefits and they do the rest.

The other group is young “athletes”. These are kids involved in EVERYTHING! If they don’t participate in every sport or activity possible, then they have already specialized. They are a “volleyball” or “soccer” or “baseball” athletes. Some of the trends I am seeing are no off-season, over focus on skill development, over-trained, and over scheduled. These are mini-stressed out individuals!

The problem here is more complicated. They tend to believe that this is the ONLY way that they can succeed. If they aren’t going at 100 m.p.h., then they are going to be left behind. When I tell them about “backing off” their training and using a model of periodization for their training, they look at me like I have more than one head. After all, according to one of them , “if we aren’t doing it 100% one hundred percent of the time, we’re not really doing it!”

I was reminded of this the other day when I saw this short clip - Over Worked Child Athletes & Young Pros – byPaul Chek at the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s Annual Convention.

As a parent, I cringe at what fate awaits them. Burnout … injury … resentment?! If you are a parent reading this, I encourage to take a hard look at your son’s or daughter routine and ask the question, “is he/she going too hard?” If the answer is even close to yes, I suggest you look to slow then down. It will allow them time to grow, recover, and really develop into the athlete that they can be!

It would be great to hear your feedback on this. Some that I have talked to about this, absolutely disagree with me. So how do you feel? Is this the “necessary path to greatness” or the “road to ruin”?

2009 Civista 5K Run/Walk

It’s that time again! The annual 5K race in which we love participating is coming up. This year we will again have a team and have a station where we are doing the stretching before and after the race. For those of you interested in being a part of the Longevity Studios Team, please contact Mr. Marty Linclau-Miller. You can either email him at mlinclau@longevitystudios.com or call the studio at 301-934-8855.

I look forward to as many of you as you can getting out there are doing some morning activity with us!

Click here for race information. To see some pictures from the 2008 Civista 5k Run/Walk you can go to my Facebook page.