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5 Beginner Pilates Exercises
Pilates exercises strengthen what Joseph Pilates called the “Powerhouse”. Most people refer to it in the fitness industry as your core. The muscles that make up your powerhouse are the abs, buttocks, lower back, hips and inner thighs. When these muscles are strengthened they protect your back from potential injury and can alleviate most existing back problems. A strong powerhouse also helps to take undo load off of your joints and spine helping the body to work more efficiently. The Pilates method is also excellent for rehabbing repetitive stress injuries, shoulders, backs, knees, and hips by focusing on strengthening the deepest muscles of the body and increasing flexibility.
The 100 – This exercise is called the 100 because you do the exercise for 100 beats. It is for breathing, getting the blood flowing and strengthening your abdominals and torso.
The Roll Up – This exercise strengthens your core and stretches your hamstrings and back.
Rolling Like a Ball – This exercise will improve your balance, work and massage your back.
Double Leg Straight – These next two exercises are part of the stomach series. This exercise here works your Powerhouse to the extreme! It gets your entire core while fueling the stretch in the hamstrings.
Criss Cross – This exercise works the obliques and increases flexibility in the back, hips and torso.
5 Keys to Boosting Your Metabolism
RESISTANCE TRAIN & BUILD LEAN MASS
What is your metabolism and how does it affect you? Well, metabolism is just a fancy word to describe the rate at which the body carries out chemical processes, which in turn burns calories. Scientific research has shown that commitment to a resistance training program yields significant results to boosting the metabolism. After any resistance training session, the metabolism operates at a significantly higher rate than cardiovascular training alone. While cardiovascular training should be a part of almost any exercise program, more emphasis needs to be placed on building lean muscle mass. In the battle of resistance training versus cardiovascular training in terms of raising the metabolic rate, resistance training wins.
IT’S ALL ABOUT INTENSITY
It goes without saying that pushing it to the limits every time will yield better and faster results. Some ways to increase intensity in a resistance training workout are to increase reps, sets, tempo (rate at which reps are performed), and range of motion. Another way to increase intensity is to decrease rest time between sets.
INTERVAL TRAINING TO FINISH
Performing interval training on a cardio piece after a resistance training workout is a sure way to attack fat stores in the body. Glucose stores are completely depleted after resistance training which means the next line of defense in energy production is fat. Performing intervals is done by completing a 3:1 active rest to work ratio where the work session is done at 80-95% of the maximum heart rate.… [ read more ]
The Best Interval Training Protocols
By: Adam Rankin
20/10 Tabata Protocol: Commonly known as the “Tabata” protocol, the 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest is one of the best and widely used work to rest ratio’s used in interval training. For good reason, this protocol has proved to be more effective than 60 minutes of steady state cardio. In fact, the interval protocol got it’s name from the study that proved maximal gains can be made in minimal time, if the intensity of the training is maximal. In this groundbreaking cycling study, researchers discovered that only four minutes of a 20-10 interval protocol (20 seconds of maximum effort followed by 10 seconds of rest) provided greater fat loss and conditioning than 60 minutes of steady-state cardio.
Now, one of the problems with this study is that in the real world most people aren’t able to perform multiple bouts of max effort for the same exercise with short rest periods (in fact, most of the elite cyclists in the study couldn’t complete all four minutes of the 20-10 protocol because it was too intense). This is exactly why it is important to employ non-competitive exercises (upper body exercise superset with a lower body exercise) so that high intensity work can still be accomplished with very short rest.
8-12 Sprint Protocol: Since we’ve already determined that short bouts of high intensity are better than long, slow steady state cardio, what do you say we ramp up the intensity even more than the Tabata Protocol. With… [ read more ]
5 Innovative Ways to Train without Going to a Gym
You get home from a long day of work and the last thing you want to do is drive to a gym, so you say, “maybe tomorrow”. Well, those days are over because now all you need is your living room and a few cost-effective tools that can be found at any sporting goods store.
In later articles, we will introduce you to the vast world of training that can be done at your bedside when you wake up in the morning, or at night while watching your favorite television show. For now, here is a preview of the cool new ways to train.
Resistance Bands: Resistance bands are quickly becoming one of the best ways to train due to their variable resistance and the fact that literally hundreds of exercises from strength training to flexibility, can be done with them.
Body Weight Training: When you think of using your own body weight for training, the most common preconceived notion is that it doesn’t look very difficult. On the contrary — mastering your own body is a key step on the road to using external forces for resistance such as dumbbell or free weight training.
Plyometric Training: Also known as jump training, plyometrics is a sure way to boost heart rate and metabolism to the max. Once a base strength foundation has been developed, it has been proven that light to moderate jump training can improve tendon, ligament, and muscle strength of the lower leg.
Physioball Training: Also known as… [ read more ]
3 Keys to a Proper Warm-up
The best way to prepare for more strenuous exercise is to perform specific warm-up exercises because they provide an increase in body temperature. The warm-up can be considered the most important part of your workout. This is a period of transition from normal to athletic activity that will prepare you for what is going to follow. The purpose of a warming up is to prepare the body through gradual movements for the full effort it will perform during the workout session. Properly warmed muscles respond quicker than non-warmed muscles. Take the warm-up seriously, concentrate and work hard to develop fundamental movements. This is important in preventing injuries.
There are three types of warm-up methods: Passive, active and dynamic. Regardless of the type of warm-up activities used, the general purpose of warming up prior to physical activity is to increase core body and muscle temperature.
Passive Warm-up
Generally, a passive warm-up involves such methods as hot showers, massage or heat pads, but most research has shown that this type of warm-up does not achieve the desired increase in tissue temperature needed to cause a warm-up effect. Due to this, a passive warm-up may be better termed a pre-warm-up and may allow the individual to relieve some muscle pain and stiffness and therefore enhance facilitation of body movements for the general warm-up to follow.
Active Warm-up
The active warm-up is probably the most commonly used technique and employs various movements not directly related to those employed in the activity itself, with the… [ read more ]
What’s For Breakfast?
By: Andrew Pescovitz
It has become many people’s usual routine to get out of bed, get ready for work, and grab that cup of coffee calling that their “breakfast.” I mean let’s face it, fixing breakfast takes up time that we could be using to get more sleep, get dressed, take a shower, or extend the time for any necessary morning activity. Could this be one thing holding you back from reaching your weight loss goals? There is plenty of evidence to show that simply by eating breakfast alone, this has a very large impact on losing weight, and lots of it. Skipping breakfast not only sets the body into starvation mode which is not ideal for calorie burning, but it also causes people to do thoughtless snacking over the course of the day and possibly even bingeing at lunch or dinner. Definitely not the ideal environment for weight loss.
Two particular studies done by The Journal of the American Dietetic Association can back up this evidence. One of the studies followed 2000 girls from the age of 9 to 19 and clearly showed that the girls who ate cereal for breakfast everyday had a very low percentage of weight problems at an older age compared to the group of girls who did not eat breakfast. Another study was done on 4200 adults which showed that the people who ate breakfast were not only more likely to exercise, but generally ate fewer calories over the course of the day.
If… [ read more ]
5 Ways to Increase the Intensity of Your Workout
Starting an exercise program can be one of the most exciting changes in a person’s life, if they are committed and hold themselves accountable for the long haul. One of the very first questions we ask clients when we’re training them is, “Should exercise be easy or difficult?” They almost always respond with, “Difficult”. And it should not be just difficult, but progressively more difficult. The body will always return itself to a state of homeostasis (internal stability), and so it is that we must challenge our level of homeostasis to always function at a higher level. What was just described is the principle of Progressive Overload and it is essential if continual gains are to be made in your program.
The 5 factors that make up Progressive Overload are as follows:
1.) Increase Resistance – One of the most basic ways to break through plateau’s in fitness and to ensure that new, lean muscle tissue is packed on, increasing resistance is essential for continual growth but be patient with it and ensure that is done systematically over time.
2.) Increase Repetitions– The second most popular way to make your routine harder, increasing the amount of reps is a safe an effective way to ensure progress is being made. Exercise logs are a must because from week to week, remembering how many repetitions can easily be forgotten unless written down.
3.) Increase Range of Motion – Every muscle in the body has a specific distance in which it can work,… [ read more ]
Nike BOOM 2.0
Check out the new Nike BOOM 2.0 App. They’ve changed the design, added the SPARQ Rating and allow you to get geared up. I was involved in some of the recording with some the NFL Attaboys and I have to tell you those guys get into it. The app is well worth the time to set up. This app will continue to evolve as Nike puts more time into developing content and integrating some of the performance assets they can utilize.