Staying Injury Free

Have you started to exercise and are fearful of becoming injured?  Here are a few tips and tricks to stay injury free.

Take care of your knees. Whether you are running or cycling the best way to protect them is to do quad strengthening exercises. If the inner part of your quadriceps are weak then the knee will be pulled out of alignment and cause discomfort.  To strengthen, try rotating your feet slightly inward and outward when on the leg press machine.  You can also try squats on a hill or a down-sloping a Bosu ball.

If pain persists for two days it is time to stop. If you experience pain after the workout – then take two full days off.  You can always work the rest of the body during this time with cross-training.  If there is improvement, start back at a slower pace or resistance than normal.  If pain persists, take a break until it is completely gone and make a plan with your doctor. Listen to your body, and if something is wrong you will need to change your training so that the pain does not become a full-blown injury in the weeks ahead.

Go slow and steady.  Make a plan with gradual increases in your routine each week.  Every forth week, cut back on your resistance or weights to give your body a chance to catch up.  You can incorporate other workouts such as yoga or pilates during this time, or other activities you enjoy such as tennis or swimming.

Make sure to stretch and strength train regularly. This reduces the risk of injury because it keeps your body in balance.  Tight or weak muscles can cause imbalances and make you more susceptible to injuries.  Stretch after every workout and incorporate strength training workouts at least 2-3 times per week.

Ice-cold baths!  It seems to help professional athletes recover faster and reduce inflammation if you soak once a week after your workout- but you have to be brave to try it!

Maintain a positive mindset and keep active. If you are currently injured, try not to focus on what you are missing.  Instead, focus on what you can do to stay fit while you are healing.  Are you eating lots of dark green vegetables to reduce inflammation and heal faster?  Create a plan to get back into shape with physical therapy in order to return to normal training. Your body knows how to heal itself, just be patient and positive.

 

How to Calculate Your BMR

Your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR is the number of calories you burn each day for basic activities, such as breathing, eating, and drinking. This number helps you to calculate how many calories you burn per day without exercise. It is a great starting point to determine how many calories you can consume to reach your ideal healthy weight. Here’s how to do it:

Your weight: ___

Add zero to your weight: ___

Add your weight to that number: ___

Total = BMR: ___

For example, if you weigh 170 pounds, you add zero to come up with 1700. Then, add your weight of 170 to calculate your total of 1870 calories. Once you add exercise into your daily routine, you will burn more calories depending on the activity. Let’s say you want to lose one pound per week. One pound of fat equates to 3500 calories, or a deficit of 500 calories each day of the week. You can acheive this by decreasing caloric intake and increasing exercise. If you jog for 30-minutes each day and burn 300 calories, then you only have to decrease your calorie cosumption by 200 calories. That means you can eat 1670 total calories per day of health promoting foods.

Calculate your BMR and determine how to reach your ideal healthy weight!

What’s On Your Playlist?

It’s always interesting to see people jamming out in the gym with their headphones on. Most people don’t even listen to the music that’s being played overhead unless they are in a class. Now a days you can plug into the tv on your cardio equipment. Do you prefer your own music to get pumped up to exercise? Does it help you focus through the workout? Does it help you escape your worries for a little while? What is on your playlist?

Are You Ready to Commit?

It seems this new year that almost everyone says they are committed to adopting healthier habits, and then there are the undertones of defeat and self-recrimination. You fall off the health wagon. You think you will never succeed and write yourself off as “a failure.” You’re self esteem and self worth crumble because you’ve victimized yourself. What would happen if you changed your dialogue?  Instead say, “I had a failure, now let me learn from it to do better and move on.”

We have to face reality: maintaining healthy habits can be extremely difficult. We are constantly tempted to make unhealthy food choices. Walk through any grocery market, drugstore, airport or go to the movies. Processed junk food is the majority of what we see. So, how do you create a new reality for yourself that help you maintain the life you profess to want?

First, that new reality comes from having an honest, introspective conversation with yourself. Take the time to go deep with the questions. What would you like your life to be like 5, 10 or 50 years from now? During this introspective conversation with yourself, address the value of full functionality- physical and mental.  Ask yourself how you’d like to interact with the younger generations – with your children and grandchildren.

The answer of course is in healthy habits. You change habits and build confidence when you decide what is really important to you. If all these things are important enough, you’ll establish new habits. Every day you maintain them increases the likelihood they will stick.

You’ll begin to feel the difference. You’ll like the feeling, and after a few weeks you will feel like a new person! Commitment is embedded and the habits are formed. After that, you won’t think about exercising four or five days a week and eating healthy food because it is a part of your normal routine.

Are you ready? It’s up to you to make the commitment. Plan for the future you want to have.

We can direct you down the right path – you still have to walk it.

Limited Time to Workout

Do you struggle to find the time to exercise?  It can be challenging to balance daily responsibilities and staying healthy, without spending an hour in the gym each day. If you want to make exercise a priority, take the time to map out exactly when you will workout.  This is a strong starting point to focus your weekly calendar in line with your goals.  When time is limited to 20-30 minutes, go for maximal intensity with interval training.

Reducing the amount of time you spend in the gym means performing shorter bursts of activity with greater intensity.  This way you can schedule 2-3 workouts a week.  To boost the efficiency of your workouts, try using compound exercises that require multiple muscle groups.  These are exercises such as pushups, squats, deadlifts and lunges.  You can perform a total-body routine in a short amount of time by incorporating the arms, legs and core into one exercise.  These are exercises such as squats to overhead presses, deadlifts to reverse flys, lunges with biceps curls, burpees and plank variations.  Begin with a 10-15 exercises, moving from one to the next, for 30-seconds to 1-minute at a time.  Performing your exercises with little to no rest in between will burn more calories.  See how many times you can repeat the circuit (aim for 3 x in 30-minutes).  Not only will you feel the burn in a short time frame, it is a wonderful way to keep your workouts fresh and fun.  My individualized workouts and specific packages are designed to help you fit exercise into your busy schedule.