The Unwritten Rules of the Gym
Navigating the gym can be intimidating, especially if you're new to the fitness scene. Understanding the unwritten rules of the gym can help you feel more comfortable and ensure a positive experience.
Weightlifting at a Young Age: Pros, Cons, and the Right Approach
The appropriate age for a child to begin a weightlifting program is generally around 7-8 years old. However, it's crucial to note that this age can vary based on individual factors, including physical maturity, emotional readiness, and proper supervision. Children should only engage in weightlifting under the guidance of qualified coaches who specialize in youth training.
"Fitness Center 'Don'ts': Common Mistakes to Avoid"
In today's fast-paced world, finding time for exercise can be challenging, especially for busy professionals and remote workers. However, with a well-structured workout plan that fits into your daily routine, achieving your fitness goals is entirely possible. In this blog post, we'll provide a workout schedule tailored for individuals with tight schedules, allowing you to work out 3-5 days a week for 35-45 minutes per session. We'll break down each training session, focusing on resistance training, and provide exercises for the upper body, lower body, and total body workouts.
Are there specific foods or supplements that can enhance golfers' endurance on the course?
Endurance is a critical factor in golf, especially during long rounds or multiple consecutive days of play. If you're looking to enhance your endurance on the golf course, your diet can be a game-changer. In this blog post, we'll explore specific foods and supplements that can help golfers improve their endurance. Golfers may struggle with endurance, which can lead to fatigue and decreased performance, particularly during multi-day tournament
Get Strong to Hit’em Long
Strength training can help improve your golf swing in 2 major ways, but first lets look at the terminology and how most avid amateur golfers approach their health and performance training. In most cases non-professional golfers approach their physical fitness/strength and conditioning with a attitude that it is optional, or they don’t think it is important at all, until they are forced to take it more seriously due to a lower back issue or injury that is preventing them from play the game at level that they find fun and somewhat competitive. They key is to take the bull by the horns and be proactive in your health and performance so that you can enjoy the game and play without any physical limitations.
Maintaining Your Health at an Older Age
As you’ve grown older, you may have noticed that things don't feel the same as they used to. You might not have as much energy, and you might want to change things in your life that don’t benefit you anymore. Don't worry; there are several ways to reinvigorate your health and improve your mood….
Specific Health and Performance Training For Athletic Development
All great gains and achievements on the field and or court of play are made possible when athletes chose to dedicate themselves to the process of developing the work ethic needed to achieve their goals in the offseason, and between seasons if they are multi-sport athletes to compete and win in the regular and post-season. The four areas of focus mentioned above should be the foundation of any comprehensive training program. There may be other elements that could be included but for the sake of time, I chose to focus on these 4 elements that have shown results for my clients over the years. Let’s also keep in mind that this process is for the long-term growth and development of the athlete and there is no such thing as a quick and easy path to improving the physical and mental development of a youth athlete. Any youth training program should have the long-term development of the athlete in mind, and address all areas that will improve their physical and mental performance…..
Joint pain Series: Blog Post #1 Knee Joint Pain
In this post, we are going to look at 5 exercises that can help manage, reduce, and or eliminate knee pain. There are several issues that may be the cause of knee joint pain, but the most common issue is caused by strength imbalances within muscles the leg, namely the quads the muscles in the front of the upper leg or thigh leg and the hamstrings, the muscles in the back of the upper leg or thigh. Mobility issues in the two joints that are on the top (the hip) and the bottom of the leg (the ankle) also could be the cause of pain in the knee joint, or a combination of both.
Goal Setting: Create your outcome
This is something that we all use to give our wants and dreams a destination. I first learned about goal setting was my sophomore year in high school during a black student union meeting. Todd Lyght from the University of Notre Dame was invited to speak to us about his experience and to give us some tips and advice on how to set yourself up for success. The steps that he used were simple and straight to the point. At the time Notre Dame was the top college football organization in the country. One of the first topics he covered was goal setting and his system for setting his goals. Being a guy who loves examining systems and processes this was right up my alley!
Top 6 Health and Performance Nutrition Tips that can Improve your Recovery and Healing
These all help in the management of the inflammatory response that is triggered from heavy bouts of exercise and or competitive events. These foods also provide the vitamins and minerals needed to promote healing and repair
3 Tips To Help you lose that last 20 lbs
This is a basic form of calorie restriction. Although there are several different versions of intermittent fasting, they all have the same fundamental rule; No Food or drink with a caloric value are to be consumed during the fast….
This is tried and true way to increase your energy expenditure to 525-625cal of energy per day. This could possibly help you hit that 1 lb- 1.5 lb fat loss per week. However, the 1# rule to remember is that you can not train yourself out of a bad or inconsistent nutrition/diet routine…
This is a more holistic way of planning out your weight loss program, and in my opinion, this should be the first method you should try to lose unwanted fat….
Nurturing Wellness | Habits for a Healthy Body and Mind
When it comes to practicing daily health habits, pretty much the easiest thing to turn into a routine is the basics. Of course, life is not always cooperative, but ask yourself how consistent you are with self-care. Do you shower daily? Are you staying hydrated throughout the day? How much walking do you do weekly? Being healthy doesn't have to take up a lot of time. Instead, look at what you can do to make adjustments to your lifestyle. Add fruit and veggies to your diet. Make a conscious effort to head to bed earlier. Switch off from tech in the evening. Reduce your caffeine intake. Avoid sitting for long periods. These may seem like small things, but they are not trivial to your well-being. Over time, they build up to have a meaningful impact on your health, from head to toe.
Build a Stronger Kid: Lift and Learn
There is an age old question that goes back as far as I can remember, I tried to find out where or who came up with this myth and google failed to give me the definitive answer. But that is not important, what is important is that we are going to look at the benefits of learning to lift by briefly looking at the process of LEARNING to lift weights, which is based on two important principles. The first principle is developing the young person’s Relative muscular strength, which learning to perform basic bodyweight movements like a push-up, bodyweight squat, and lunge Pull-Ups, etc. with proper form and body control. In developing youth strength training programs for beginners exercises should in my opinion be limited to the use of specific types of resistance equipment like dumbbells, rubber bands, and tubes, with minimal intensity (lightweight) after they have learned how to properly execute the basic exercises that improve their Relative muscular strength. Developing relative strength varies and depends on the commitment of the individual youth, and their parents. After a solid foundation of relative strength has been developed, start developing their Absolute muscular Strength. This is when Free weights and resistance machines are added to the training program, examples of Free weight movements are……
Stay Ahead of the Game and Away from Pain
Joint pain and discomfort are two of the main factors that prevent people from maintaining an active lifestyle. If you are a fairly healthy person you may take for granted the normal function of your joints and ignore the factors that will have a negative effect on your joints if you don’t apply some preventative measures to help you manage the pain and discomfort you may experience while exercising. The is no absolute way to eliminate pain from physical activity especially if you are out of shape due to an old injury, a sedentary career, or any other physical limitation.
Dying a death of 1000 Breaths
There are several techniques that can be used to train your lungs and diaphragm to work more effectively, by increasing the lungs capacity which will help increase the amount of oxygen that is drawn into the lungs and strengthen the diaphragm. As an athlete, I would do a self-audit once a year always trying to see what I could do to improve my performance from year to year. I realized that my breathing was the one thing that was an issue and seemed to not improve as I played until later in the season and my endurance was below average. So I thought about what sport was dependent on developing endurance, so I started researching distance runners and I found that there was are breathing exercises that some of the top runners would do to improve their lung capacity.
Finding The Function in Disfunction: The Foundation of Functional Training
In 2010 2 years after I retired from professional football, I decided to enter this industry and to learn how to train and develop programs for individuals specifically youth athletes correctly, I did not want to give someone a canned program I received from a coach that made up based on an old program that was developed for college and professional athletes. So I started to reads every book, dozens of articles about strength and conditioning, and performance training. that is where I discovered the FMS (Functional Movement Sytems)……..
Is your success Too expensive?
Over the last year, my goals have been good but that was not great! And so went my effort, it was good on a great day and ok on a good day; which equals average. As I prepare for the mid-year and as I look forward I will make my goals larger than my current life, this is scary but I need this more than anything. I don’t like being comfortable but it’s easy to be comfortable. I DON’T NEED IT EASY! As an athlete, I truly loved everything thing about playing sports but there were days that I did not like the preparation, the long hours watching game film, and even sometimes lifting weights (and anyone who knows me knows how much I love lifting weights).
Body Composition: Body FAT Mass v.s. Lean Muscle Mass
I can speak from experience as a trainer and former college and professional athlete that recording and tracking your body composition during training can improve your results and give you the blueprint to reaching your goals even if you fall off the wagon and regain that extra 20 - 25 lb over the holidays or on a vacation. There are 4 ways body composition can help improve your training experience along with your health in general, but only if you are looking for a long-term solution and not a quick fix plan that will leave you 30-40 lb heavier and wondering what happened. These are the 4 reasons you should be using body composition to improve your training experience………
Energy System Development Series
Lifting heavy weights to become stronger is one of the most popular reasons to lift weights. But the combination of using various weightlifting principles and program variations to improve muscular Hypertrophy (increase in muscular tone and size) is even more effective and fun. Lifting to increase muscular size helps individuals improve not only their physical appearance but also their physical performance. One of the factors that are important is the use of set and rep manipulation. This means programming different sequences sets and reps to increase the stress applied to the muscles that are being trained and. In theory, the number of sets should be about 2-4 sets and the reps should be 8-12 reps using 65%-85% of the maximum weight you can lift for 1 rep for that exercise to achieve hypertrophy. One other important factor is limiting your rest in between sets to less than 1 minute. This limit in the recovery time will increase the stress on your muscles which increases the growth response your muscles have during the recovery process. THE MAGIC HAPPENS IN THE RECOVERY!
What is Your WHY?
My "Why" is and always has been to help and serve people. That is one of the reasons I love team sports, it gave me the opportunity to be a part of a team and be a part of a collective unit. I never really paid attention or put a high value on my individual stats, my main goal was to be the best team player I could be and do whatever it took to win....