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Total Fitness Training
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the most common reasons for training injury other than performing exercises incorrectly or with the wrong weight, is due to muscle imbalances and the excess wear and tear it causes on the joints.
Many people, without even realising it, tend to favour a few exercises or a particular muscle group, and training this muscle group more than the opposing muscle group causes imbalance in the body, and pulls joints out of their ideal alignment.
A classic example of this is Bench Press. With so many gym-goers obsessed with increasing their bench and working their chests, they neglect to train the upper back muscles to the same extent, leading to the classic shoulders forward, arms turned in “gorilla” look.
It is important then to make sure you have a balanced gym programme that doesn’t favour any muscle groups more than the others.
Including exercises to work opposing muscles equally and through their full range of motion (rather than the partial reps that result from trying to lift a weight that’s too heavy) will ensure that balance is maintained, keeping the body in alignment, and reducing the stress on your joints.
In order to get the best results, as well as balancing out the muscle groups and picking appropriate weights, it’s important to work all of the muscle fibres, both fast and slow twitch.
This means including a range of weights, both heavy and light, and using full range of motion. This will strengthen your muscles in both fast and slow movements, and at the extremes of the movement too, increasing strength and control, and reducing potential risk of injury.
Neglecting to train all of your muscle fibres will result in poor performance, poor carry-over to everyday activities, and reduced muscle hypertrophy (growth).
It’s also important to include in your training programme a week or two every couple of months, of large, full body movements to integrate your new strength gains into more functional movements. It’s all very good being able to bench 100+kg’s, but without the bench to support you, you won’t be able to use that strength outside of the gym.
Bodyweight exercises are one of the best ways to do this, as all of your muscles have to work together to power the movement. This includes all of the smaller stabiliser muscles that aren’t challenged with machine-based or traditional body-building type exercises.
Another useful tool to get your entire body working as one is the Kettlebell. The nature of this versatile tool lends it to large, swinging and explosive movements that require the involvement of many muscles and joints, and just about every stabiliser muscle in your body.
The dynamic movements require stabilisation, acceleration and deceleration of forces, and changes of direction. This provides a very real challenge for your body and you’ll be surprised how tough just a light kettlebell workout can be.
So be sure in future to include all of these movements, fast and slow, light and heavy, large and small into your workout programme and don’t fall into the trap of repeating the same exercises, with the same weight every time you visit the gym.
You’ll soon notice the results.
Mark Broadbent is a Personal Trainer in Kent, England. Specialising in Weight Loss and Correctional Exercise to help people achieve their health and fitness goals and reduce (or even eradicate) aches and pains that result from muscle imbalances and postural distortion.
12 Days Gift: Total Fitness Workout Package
The Total Fitness Workout Package gives you a full range of resistance workouts, covering strength, muscle-building, and muscular endurance. There are also two Kettlebell workouts to give you some full body, power exercises to build strength throughout your entire body. You’ll also get two bodyweight workouts that will help to integrate your new strength gains into functional, graceful movement. These workouts will cover the full spectrum and even get your cardio done at the same time!
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Fab in 15 Minutes
Posted by: | CommentsFor anyone short on time, workouts that can be completed, start to finish, in around 15 minutes are ideal.
This is entirely possible, and long, boring workouts are definitely becoming a thing of the past. People have been advocating interval training for a while now; and now people are coming round to the idea of shorter, higher intensity workouts, we’re seeing new training protocols in gyms and elsewhere.
If you can get as much work done in 15 minutes as most people get done in a full hour in the gym, then who wouldn’t want to train this way?
Especially when you can devise these workouts so that you can even do them AT HOME with minimal equipment! So you’re not only saving time IN the gym, but travelling to and from it too.
Surely then this is ideal for anyone who struggles to find the time to workout, whether it’s down to a busy job, family commitments, the high cost of gym memberships or whatever else tends to get in the way of regular exercise.
By combining the cardiovascular element of training with the resistance element, you’re killing two birds with one stone. Large, full-body exercises that use most, if not all, of the muscles in your body will burn far more calories than your average gym exercise like a bicep curl or triceps push down.
By involving more muscles in each exercise (you’ve got over 600 in your body), your body needs to fuel more muscles. This means more calories are being burned (since it’s the muscles that burn calories – a calorie is a unit of energy).
This means that simply by swapping a chest press for a push-up and involving at least twice as many muscles, you’ll be burning around twice as many calories! So by swapping all of the inefficient exercises for bigger, more challenging exercises, the amount of calories you’ll burn will increase dramatically.
As an added extra to this, muscles need oxygen to produce energy, so by involving more muscles in your exercises, your demand for oxygen also increases, so you\rquote ll be out of breath from doing your resistance work too – what does this mean? It means that you’re getting your cardio work covered at the same time, because if you’re out of breath – IT’S CARDIO!
Now you’re not only burning more calories, but you’re also getting rid of the need to spend hours on a treadmill or bike too. And building your strength-endurance too.
You also need to consider the other benefits of this type of training (yes, there are more!).
Due to the nature of these exercises (large, full body), you are training your muscles to work together to perform a movement, rather than training one small movement at a time. This will lead to easier, more co-ordinated movements, improved balance and stability, and less muscle imbalances (which often lead to pain or injury).
So I urge you to try this type of training for a few weeks and see if you feel the difference. Not only will you have plenty of extra time on your hands, but you should see improvements in fitness, strength, co-ordination and mobility.
Mark Broadbent is a Personal Trainer in Kent, England. Specialising in Weight Loss and Correctional Exercise to help people achieve their health and fitness goals and reduce (or even eradicate) aches and pains that result from muscle imbalances and postural distortion.
12 Days Gift: Fab In 15 Minutes Bonus Workouts
To help get you started with these short, fat-blasting workouts, here are five 15-minute workouts that you can do anywhere with just a pair of light weights. They’ll keep you moving and keep your heart rate up, burning hundreds of calories during AND AFTER the workout! Whether you’re out of shape or fit as a fiddle you’ll find a challenge in these workouts, and can’t fail to see results.