Category Archives for "fitness"
How to maximize your functional fitness
Functional fitness is a term that has been made much more common with the creation and growth of crossfit. Basically, functional fitness means training your body to deal with everyday activities. When I work with my clients at Forever Fitness, I ask them to project their vision of health and fitness and then we can develop a program to get them there. Functional fitness typically involves using non-traditional training equipment.
Define Functional Fitness
To train for functional fitness, you should start by defining your current (benchmark) state. Do you have any physical limitations such as injuries or weaknesses? What are your strengths? What are the current demands on your body? As you can tell, these questions are very individual to you. Don't skip this step as it is critical to know the answers in order to design a program that will work for you.
Next, you'll determine what functional looks like to you. This vision statement gives you a picture of what you want to be able to do. For me, I want to be able to have the stamina to play sand volleyball. I want to be able to move my body and objects without injuring myself, especially my lower back.
Focusing on functional fitness is going to push you to do workouts that are relevant. As a result, you're much more like to stick with the program and meet your fitness goals.
Training for Functional Fitness
I strongly encourage you to hire a personal trainer to help develop a functional program. It can be quite difficult to build an exercise program that will effectively hit on multiple fitness modalities and avoid injuries. A dedicated personal trainer can help you get started and stay engaged as you build your functional fitness.
Part of your programming should focus on correcting your weaknesses. Strengthening my core is integral for me to avoid back injury while I lift weights to build the strength I want. I also need to focus on my mobility for the same reason.
After considering your weaknesses, you can get some work done to improve your strengths. But it might take some patience to get your weaknesses addressed to a point it is safe to train strengths. Again, that is an area where a personal trainer can help. Once you're ready, you'll likely work on continuous improvement on your weak areas while you progressively push your strengths.
Functional Fitness Tools
Here are a few tools you may want to invest in (or seek out at the gym):
- Kettlebell – A ball with a handle in many different weights. The awkward shape of the kettlebell makes it valuable across many fitness modalities (strength, balance, endurance). An example of a good kettlebell exercise is the Russian kettlebell swing. This exercise works endurance and builds strength across the posterior chain (back, butt, and hamstrings).
- Agility Ladder – A ladder-like piece of cloth or plastic that you lay on the floor. The various exercises are to move through the ladder from side to side as you go through. The object is to move through the ladder as quickly as possible to build agility and speed.
- Medicine Ball – A large, soft, weighted ball. The most common exercises for the medicine ball are wall balls and medicine ball slams. In the wall ball, you hold the ball at your chest facing a wall. You squat and on way up you throw the ball (using your legs) up to a target that is 8 – 12 feet off the ground. Medicine ball slams involve bringing the medicine ball over your head and throwing it against the floor. Both of these exercises work endurance and strength.
- Battle Ropes – Long, thick (1 1/2 – 2 inch) ropes. The length and thickness of the battle rope determines the intensity of the exercises. The rope is attached to a wall or post and you grasp both ends of the rope. Making various wave patterns builds endurance and strength.
- Weighted Sled – A sled that allows you to stack weights to add resistance. You grasp the handles and using your legs you drive the sled forward as quickly as possible (much like pushing a car).
- Sandbags – Sandbags come in different sizes and weight. Some have handles, but I find the ones without handles to be more effective for functional fitness as grasping them is harder. You can build an entire workout using sandbags and bodyweight.
- Clubbells – Invented in India, clubbells are clubs with weighted ends. Swinging the clubs helps build strength and thorasic mobility.
- Tires – Old truck and tractor tires provide for strength, endurance and power work when you work to flip and jump over them.
- Rubber Mallets/Sledge Hammer – Using tools like this to hit or pound a tire helps build strength and endurance, expecially grip strength.
Obviously, I've gone over a lot of exercises and you may not be able to picture all of them. You can find examples on youtube, but I'd strongly encourage you to work with a trainer so you can maximize your functional fitness and avoid injury.
August 15, 2016
- in fitness , guest/interview by allan
Play Golf Forever | Suzanne Clark
Yes, we're staying on our “play” theme for just one more episode. In episode 136, I explained how playing sports can help keep you motivated to workout as a way of improving your performance on the court, field, or in this case, golf course. Our guest, Suzanne Clark, author of Play Golf Forever, shows you how to make sure that you're in shape for golf, but these lessons are applicable to any sport you choose to do.
Key take aways from this episode:
Sarcopenia is a muscle wasting that affects us as we age. It can begin as early as age 30. Most of us will lose 1% of our muscle mass each year, which means we've lost 30% or more by the time we're in our 60s. Resistance exercise is the best way to slow or stop sarcopenia.
To avoid injury on the course, players should:
- Get lessons: Taking golf lessons will ensure you're swinging the club properly and help you avoid injury.
- Conditioning: Having an “off the course” workout program can ensure your body is properly conditioned for the game.
- Warm up: Have a regimen of warming up before you practice or play. Having your muscles warm and primed for the work ahead does matter and so many golfers skip this step.
With attention to your body you can ensure you stay healthy and uninjured. And then you can play golf forever.
Contact Suzanne Clark at: Fitter Forever
The value of play part 3
This is part three of a three-part series on play. In episode 136 we covered sports and in episode 137 we got into kids games. In this episode, I want to go back even further to when we were babies and toddlers.
While you probably don't remember what it was like for yourself back then, I'm sure you've seen babies and toddlers. But did you pay attention to the movements they were doing?
Being on the floor, crawling, squirming, standing and sitting. These movements are primary for helping us build strength and balance and maintain mobility. And the nature of children had us constantly working at a progression, getting stronger, faster, and more capable across multiple fitness modalities.
When was the last time you sat on the floor?
Just the practice of getting down and getting up are valuable movements. I've developed a mini-course that I've opened up. This Uncommon Exercises mini-course will help you go through some movements that are similar to what we did as kids. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
The value of play part 2
This is part two of a three-part series on play. In episode 136, we discussed the value of sports. In this episode, I want to go back a bit and explore some of the games we played as kids.
Be it hopscotch, foursquare, or kickball, the games we played as kids were integral in helping us build important fitness modalities.
Let's just go through hopscotch. Tossing the rock to land on a square for hand-eye coordination. Hopping on one foot for balance. Bending to pick up the rock for mobility and balance.
Add to that, the joy of playing with children and I think you can see how playing kids games can be a great way to build fitness and live a more joyful life.
The value of play part 1
This is part one of a three-part series on play. Play was an integral part of us developing fitness modalities as we grew up. Unfortunately, we abandoned many of those aspects of our lives and as a result, have lost fitness. In this episode, we are going to explore the value of sports.
What sports did you play as a child and teen?
Even if you weren't the best at it, do you remember the joy of playing? How it kept you moving even when you were fatigued? Competition, being on a team, having fun. All this helped you keep you more fit.
Perhaps it is time to look for a sport you can begin playing now. Or at the every least, start working on your fitness so you'll be able to participate in a sport soon. Sports can be quite motivating and you deserve to play again.
August 5, 2016
- in fitness , health , solo show by may lynne Sim
A secret weapon in your health and fitness journey
In this episode, I reveal a secret weapon for health and fitness.
The secret weapon I’m talking about is keeping a journal or a log. It allows you to collect information about the things you do in life and gives you the opportunity to look back and understand where you were.
One of the things you need to do once you’ve started writing a journal is to express gratitude every day. This simple act puts you in a frame of mind that great things will happen. Start your day right by documenting how good your life is. If you’re having a bad day, pull out that journal to relieve yourself of stress.
Log workouts to keep track of your progress. Log the weights you used before or how far you’ve walked in 30 minutes. Logging gives you a mindset of completion and allows you to see what you’ve accomplished which helps with your persistence. You also achieve patience because you can see you’re getting better as you progress. Occasionally, I log my food, particularly if I notice I’m stalled a little bit.
Log how many hours of sleep you get. If you notice that you didn’t sleep well on the other nights, you can go back to see what was going on.
The data you get from logs is a powerful thing. Don’t shy away from keeping information that will help you become a better you. Logging lets you track your goals. Write your ultimate goal on the first page and mini goals on the next pages. Track how well you’re doing as you progress.
How to of strength and mass
Looking for a how to of mass and strength? It’s only natural that many people will be interested in building muscle mass and also gaining strength, but these two do not always go hand in hand.
Interestingly, the overall process for building muscle and strength is the same basic process. There is a level of work required to break down the muscle and build new muscle. To do the work, consider using your body weight, elastic bands, or other items around the house if you don’t have actual weights. However, the body also needs to be fed building blocks in the form of protein and water to build new muscle. Another critical component is rest, which refers not only to the time between exercises, but getting quality sleep each night. This cycle of work, feeding, and rest is what allows for muscle growth.
To build mass, you will do three to four sets of eight reps each. Between exercises, you will rest for about 60 seconds. To build strength, you have to add more weight to your reps, though you will be doing fewer reps than you would when building mass. Strength building can fatigue the muscles faster, so you will want to add extra rest time in between sets, allowing for a greater rebuild. In either case, when you can complete all sets with up to 10 reps, you know it’s time to add more weight. Keep stepping up the weight to advance your progression.
You can choose to work on building mass and strength at the same time by alternating your focus on different days. Though you will see gains over time, you may see greater gains by following a periodization approach. In this approach, you will focus on each individually for a period of three to six weeks, and then alternate back to the other—mass or strength.
Incorporate this how to of mass and strength to optimize your workouts. Doing so will ensure that you are maximizing your opportunity to add muscle mass, strength, or perhaps both.