Balanced Nutrition Essentials for Adolescent Athletes: Fueling Excellence
In the world of sports, nutrition is the cornerstone upon which great athletes are built. For high school athletes pursuing excellence in their chosen sports, a well-rounded and balanced diet is not just a choice; it's a necessity. In this blog, we will delve into the crucial role nutrition plays in adolescent athlete performance, provide meal plan and snack options for busy schedules, and offer guidance for parents on making budget-friendly nutrition choices that support their child's sports goals.
Gaining Muscle and Getting Shredded: The Power of Nutrition
Balancing muscle gain and fat loss can be a complex task. Many individuals struggle to understand how their nutrition habits can support their efforts in the gym. Our targeted member avatar seeks guidance on optimizing their diet for maximum results.
Can you get six-pack abs from running versus walking?
The journey to achieving 6-pack abs often involves cardio training to shed that stubborn belly fat. Walking and running are two popular options, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this blog post, we'll present two 6-week cardio training programs, one for walking and one for running, to help you decide which path is right for you in your quest for 6-pack abs.
Maintaining a 20-25 Pound Fat Loss: The Role of Consistent Strength Training"
Losing 20-25 pounds of body fat is an incredible accomplishment, but the real challenge lies in maintaining that hard-earned weight loss over the long term. Many individuals find it difficult to sustain their progress without making drastic changes to their diets, often leading to the frustrating cycle of yo-yo dieting. In this blog post, we will explore how a consistent strength training routine can be the key to maintaining significant fat loss without the need for drastic dietary alterations. Let's delve into the problem, its impact on health and performance, and the detailed solution we offer through our Atlas Performance Training (AP Excel) Personal Training Program.
The Problem:
Six-Pack Abs in 6 Weeks: Nourish Your Way to Success
It's time to turn that dream into reality. In this blog post, we'll provide you with a complete nutrition and exercise program that focuses on developing and maintaining those coveted six-pack abs. This program includes a 7-day nutrition plan, meal ideas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a grocery list, recommendations on alcohol consumption, and an 8-week strength and cardio exercise training program.
Navigating Weight Loss: Medication vs. Nutrition & Exercise
Today, we're shedding light on two pathways to shed body fat: the innovation of the weight loss medications Wegovy and Ozempic compared to harnessing the power of nutrition and exercise for long-term well-being.
Wegovy and Ozempic: A revolutionary approach to weight loss, the cutting-edge injectable medicine by Novo Nordisk, is tailored for adults with obesity (BMI 27+) aiming to embark on their weight loss journey. Building on the success of Ozempic, Wegovy offers a targeted solution backed by clinical evidence.
How to Maintain Wellness and Self-Care Goals
8 step to help you create a plan of action to manage you Goals
With the hustle and bustles of our busy days, it's not always easy to take care of ourselves. But now, there are tons of wellness goals you can achieve with just 10 minutes per day, like eating healthier or getting more exercise throughout your weekdays……
Why You Don’t Have to Spend a Fortune on Getting Healthy and Fit
While it would be nice to have a personal trainer on standby for personalized fitness sessions, not everyone can afford this route. However, that's not to say it's your only option to lead a healthy, active lifestyle. There are, of course, other alternatives (many of them free) that you can make use of, too.
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….
The New and Old Smarter Cardio Training of the 21st Century....
The goal of any training program should be to develop these energy systems and “train” them to produce the energy in an efficient manner during practice and competition so that energy is readily available to the muscles during physical activity. All three energy systems are interdependent of each other, but in most situations, one energy system or a combination of two of the three is required to make things happen. This goes into the concept of performance-specific training and how to create training programs that are designed specifically to produce improvements in muscular endurance, cardiovascular fitness, and improvements in speed and power of the individual….
Sleep: The "Magical" 8, Quality or Quantity
The issue usually is not the amount of sleep as measured in time, but the quality of sleep that you have, and this goes back to your habits and rituals if you will that you have established over your lifetime. There is usually no preparation for sleep time, and if you are over the age of 10 years old you have not had a ritual for sleep time that has worked to help you sleep in over 20-30 plus years, but even with that said we still fought the idea of going to sleep “early” before 9 pm. I remember when I was around 8-9 years old and it was the beginning of the school year and the time had not changed and it was still light at my bedtime(6 pm) and I literally had a temper tantrum in the bed kicking and crying because I could hear the other neighborhood kids playing outside and here I was being put to bed like a baby….
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
The Butt and Gut Connection: The Top 5 Core Exercises
What are the known and some not commonly known benefits of strong Core muscles?
When we see someone with a six-pack we automatically associate that with strength, and while improving the tone and the look of the muscles has its benefits, you can’t ignore that the function of the core muscles is to stabilize the center of the body during movement.
Some of the benefits of having strong core muscles are:…
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.
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.
High-Intensity Interval Training
What is the AP HIIT method? Well, it is a training method that I turned into a small group training class in 2015 when I was finishing my bachelor's degree in Fitness and wellness. The concept was developed from a boot camp and a small group training sessions that I ran at the second gym I worked at when I first started. Most boot camps use just body weight for resistance and are really heavy cardio training (at least from the ones that I have attended and or seen) I wanted to include resistance training exercises within the session along with heavy to medium cardio, and core training. One of the main areas that I wanted to focus on was limiting injury but maintaining a medium-high heart rate and allowing the individual to focus on the movement first and not have to focus on counting reps. Here is an example of a training session………
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!
Energy System Development Series
Just a brief overview of what Energy Systems Development training is by definition is training specific energy system to produce the desired training effect that is specific to the goals of the training program. There are there main energy systems that the body taps into to acquire the energy to perform tasks depending on the duration and the intensity of the task. Here is a brief description of the three energy systems……
Energy System Development Series
Whether you are a high school athlete looking to gain an edge on the competition in your offseason/preseason training program or a weekend warrior training in your spare time for an obstacle race, marathon, or an adult athletic league, or trying to lose those last 10 - 15 lbs of holiday weight, the old way of improving your physical performance and condition has changed. Enter the phrase Energy System development (ESD) training. ESD training should be the foundation of any training plan to improve your performance; it could be the difference between competing at a high level or coming up short in a game. In order for muscles to contract and produce movement ATP (adenosine triphosphate) must be present. The body’s energy system is responsible for converting ATP to a usable form of energy called ADP (adenosine diphosphate). ADP can be produced using three energy systems: