Tag: exercise tips
The Holiday Aftermath: How To Reset Your Workout

The Holiday Aftermath: How To Reset Your Workout

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and you know what that means: Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, stuffing, pie, sweet potatoes, and every other delicious, carb-heavy food you can imagine. However, that’s not always the most exciting prospect if you’re on a diet. If after Thanksgiving you find yourself sluggish and struggling to get back to your normal healthy diet, here are a few exercise tips that can get you back on track.

The hard part: getting started

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, the hardest part of getting back into the swing of things after a big holiday is getting your momentum back. Disruptions to your normal routine make it easy to put off working out again, especially if you generally live a fairly sedentary lifestyle. There’s no shame in struggling to stay active; in fact, around 28.0% of Americans, or 80.2 million people, aged six and older are physically inactive. The best way to get past this is to pick a day and do some sort of exercise – it doesn’t have to be much, it just has to be enough to get you off the couch. From there, you can use these methods to stay moving more frequently.

Pick an activity you like

When most people think of exercise, they think of it as a hassle or a boring part of their day they don’t want to do. Instead, try to pick an activity you already know you enjoy and make it into your daily workout. Are you a sports fan? Instead of watching your favorite game on TV, get involved in the action yourself. You don’t have to be a professional athlete to see benefits – simply playing tennis for fun, for example, can burn around 169 calories in 30 minutes for a woman, and 208 calories in 30 minutes for an average man. Many gyms offer indoor spaces for you to practice your favorite sport, so pick an activity and get to it.

Take advantage of chores

Not much of a sports fan? There are still plenty of opportunities for you to tackle two chores in one by incorporating exercise into your other daily to-dos. Try to stay moving while cleaning up around the house, or take a few more trips up and down the stairs instead of carrying everything in one go. If you’ve got a household pet, try taking them on more frequent walks. Most dogs benefit from daily aerobic exercise and a 30-minute walk, and your own fitness goals can benefit as well.

Have fun with it

Finally, one of the easiest ways to get back into the swing of working out is to make it as fun as possible. The more enjoyable you find exercise, the more likely you are to keep at it, even on days where you might feel a bit tired. Set goals and reward yourself for hitting them. On top of that, try adding something you enjoy to your normal workout routine, like listening to music. Listening to music while exercising can actually improve work out performance by 15%. Maybe invite a friend or two and turn your work-out routine into a group activity. The more ways you can make exercise enjoyable, the likelier it is you’ll be able to get back to it after the holidays.

Thanksgiving can throw a serious wrench into anyone’s diet and exercise plans, and if you’re not careful, these bad habits can set you up for a struggle going into the new year. Instead, make use of these tips to crush your fitness goals as 2019 draws to a close.

I’ve Hit A Workout Wall, So Now What?

I’ve Hit A Workout Wall, So Now What?

By Lori Nickel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (TNS)

MILWAUKEE — I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I have hit a wall I can’t climb over or run around.

I am in this netherworld right now, amid fighting for my health and fitness, battling my sugar addiction and getting in my exercise _ and just accepting that I’m always going to tip the scale in a direction I don’t like.

I swing on that pendulum pretty regularly, but I almost always try to pick myself up, dust myself off and fight for another day.

Right now I’m stuck. Doldrums. Neither here nor there.

I recently completed a 12-week weight loss program at my gym where I actually gained weight. I am a little worried that the next time I go back, the trainers will pull my membership card and tell me to go to Planet Fitness.

My struggles are even more frustrating because I write this health and fitness column, for crying out loud, and when I set up my interviews, I have to warn people in advance to not expect someone skinny when they meet me.

I even have my lines rehearsed: “I like working out _ as much as I like chocolate.”

And: “I lost 40 pounds with Weight Watchers. And I kept 30 of them off.”

Here’s the deal: Three years ago I joined a weight loss program at my gym, added a lot more strength training to my existing cardio routine, dropped two pants sizes and got to a weight that was good for my height and age, even if I didn’t appreciate that at the time since I thought I still had more to lose.

It was not my first dive into our culture of weight loss.

Ever since it’s been a battle to hold my ground, especially in the winters, when I always gain around 5-10 pounds. Last summer I dropped them in training for the Spartan Sprint. This summer they’re still here.

Instead of going to the gym five or six times a week, I go three. Instead of going for a six-mile jog, I take a three-mile walk.

My MP3 player and my Fitbit One died in the same week, and so did all the motivation I had to resist the naughties at the Wisconsin State Fair and the brownies at the PGA Championship. MyFitnessPal has unfriended me.

If you think 5 or 10 pounds isn’t something to freak out about, just ask anyone who has ever lost significant amounts of weight. They know that 5 can turn to 10 on one long vacation and 10 can turn to 15 by the Super Bowl.

So I start each day at my closet; one side has the skinny clothes, the other side has the baggy ones. These twins fight every day.

I’m mostly burned out from tracking what I eat in my food journals. Dieters know how important this accountability is _ “If you bite it, you write it” _ but my food diaries feel like another form of punishment, not an educational tool.

And now my failings and imperfections have turned me in to a head case. So, when I skip a day at the gym, I feel guilty, not rested. When I eat something unhealthy, I feel guilty, not treated. It leaves me stuck in the middle, not winning, not fighting, nothing.

You can imagine what a treat I am to be around to my family and closest circle of friends. One of them even wondered if we had anything to talk about other than food and working out.

I’ve always wondered if there’s an obsessive compulsive nature about dieting, but right now the line for me is blurred between self-awareness and self-absorption.

These are unchartered waters for me. I am active. I have made monumental lifestyle changes that I still practice. I am trying to do the right things.

But in some ways, I am tired. I am weary. And I am taking a break. I wrote this sitting on the couch with a big bowl of chips, watching the Jim Gaffigan Show (I think we’re related).

What that means, exactly? I don’t know. The elite athletes I cover all have their own ways to fight off a slump. But what about the rest of us?

From the expert

“Everybody deals with this,” said Corey Paszkiewicz, the owner and head trainer at CrossFit Oak Creek. He’s a weightlifter, bodybuilder and credentialed personal trainer. “I struggle with this all the time, too. Here are a couple of things I do:

“One. Write down your goals. They have to be written down in order for it to work. If they are not written down, then they really do not exist.

“Two. I am a big believer in setting big goals. Often times people do not set goals big enough. They set small goals, reach it and then have nothing else to look forward to or train for. Set goals that seem slightly out of reach. Even if you fall short you will still be further ahead than you would be if you set a smaller goal.

“Three. Make them realistic. This is not to be confused with setting goals out of reach. What I mean by realistic is setting something that you can physically commit to that would be realistic. For example, an unrealistic goal is to lose 50 pounds in 30 days. While it could be possible for someone who has a few hundred pounds to lose, it is not realistic for most people. Another example of an unrealistic goal would be to start a workout program of training six to seven days a week when you have never worked out before. Be realistic.

“Four. Also set small frequent goals, for each day, week, month, and then in three months, six months and a year. Setting the smaller goals help stay on track and you can celebrate the ‘wins’ each day and week. With the end in mind, that will help people stay on track.

“Five. When those do not work and you are still in a slump, I re-write-down my goals and re-evaluate them. I ask myself if what I am doing will move me closer or further away from my goals. If it is going to move me further away from my goals, I do not do that.

“Six. Find a coach and a mentor. At CrossFit Oak Creek we have a great support system where we help and teach people to be accountable. Every successful person has a coach and mentor. All professional athletes train and work out with other people as well. It’s all about the accountability. You can only get so far by yourself and most people are not self-motivated. Even though I am very self motivated and knowledgeable in fitness, I have made most of my gains and successes working in groups and finding accountability partners. I network with other professionals and surround myself with others that are more successful. It holds me to a higher standard and helps me push myself and stay on track.”

(c)2015 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Beginner CrossFit Workout That Will Make You Come Back For More

The Beginner CrossFit Workout That Will Make You Come Back For More

By Emily Abbate, rodalewellness.com (TNS)

To say that watching the 2015 CrossFit Games may have been intimidating, well, that’s an understatement. Completing a total of 13 events that included everything from paddleboarding to wearning a 20-pound weight vest to run one mile, do 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats and then run another mile is no easy task.

But for beginners, watching a competition with that sort of intensity can make the sport as a whole majorly unattractive.

“The biggest thing is separating CrossFit as a sport, and CrossFit as a form of fitness,” said Liz Adams, coach at CrossFit Fifth Avenue in New York City. “(In reality) CrossFit as a form of fitness is what the other 95 percent of people are doing in their local gyms everyday. Functional movements practiced at a high intensity that can be universally scalable. You don’t have to have any athletic background to be able to do CrossFit. There’s a big misconception that you have to be this elite athlete and it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a large percentage of my members don’t have any athletic background at all. Everything we do in CrossFit can be scaled and modified to any skill level.”

Adams recommends this beginner CrossFit workout to get you started. Do three rounds, 1 minute per station.

Bodyweight Squat
Begin standing with your feet slightly wider than hip-width and your toes turned out slightly. Your hands are by your sides with your palms facing inward. Pull the shoulders down your back toward your hips. Engage your abdominal/core muscles to stabilize your spine. Keep your chest lifted and your chin parallel to the floor. Shift your weight back into your heels as your hips begin to push toward the wall behind you. Begin hinging at the hips, shifting them back and down. As you lower your hips the knees bend and will start to shift forward slowly.

Lower yourself until your thighs are parallel or almost parallel to the floor. Keep the knees aligned with the second toe and body weight evenly distributed between the balls and heels of both feet. While maintaining the position of your back, chest and head and with the abdominals engaged, exhale and return to start position by pushing your feet into the floor through your heels. The hips and torso should rise together. Keep the heels flat on the floor and knees aligned with the second toe.

Lunges
Stand with your feet together. Pull your shoulder blades toward your hips. Slowly lift one foot off the floor and find your balance on the standing leg. Hold this position briefly before stepping forward. Slowly shift your body weight onto the lead foot, placing it firmly on the floor, landing with heel first.

Continue lowering your body to a comfortable position or until your front thigh becomes parallel with the floor and your shinbone is in a slight forward lean. During the movement, slightly bend forward at your hips. Keep the back straight. Firmly push off with the front leg, activating both your thighs and butt muscles to return to your upright, starting position.

Burpees
Start by standing up straight. Bend over at the hips, pushing the hips back and reaching down to touch the floor with your hands while keeping your whole foot on the floor (your knees can bend, but you want to make sure you’re loading your hamstrings while you do this). From there, jump back with your feet into a push-up plank position.

Your chest should then touch the floor. You don’t necessarily need to do a true push-up, but you can let your knees go to the floor and then roll down to your chest without compromising back position. Return to plank position by pushing up with your hands (again keeping the core pretty tight).

Pop up using the power from your hips to bring your legs in toward your hands. Try to land on the whole foot in the same position as you passed on the way down, then stand up from there. Explosively jump upward, most people add a clap or throw their hands up into the air for the final hoorah.

Butterfly sit-ups
Lie faceup on the floor with a folded towel under your lower back, soles of your feet together knees open to the sides, and arms overhead on the floor. Brace your core and sit up, reaching your fingers toward or past your toes. Slowly return to start.

Rest.

(Note: This story originally appeared on Rodale News, formerly known as fitbie.com.)

(c)2015 Fitbie.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Amber Karnes

Tempo Workouts Could Help Rectify Your Weak Spots

Tempo Workouts Could Help Rectify Your Weak Spots

By Wina Sturgeon, Adventure Sports Weekly (TNS)

Let me start with a rarity: a personal story.

As some readers may know, my sport is ski racing. It’s a sport that requires power, balance, and most of all, speed. One summer, the only training I did for skiing was working in my large garden.

I thought all the hard shoveling would get my legs ready, and all the weeding would work my core. After days of wearing my body out in the garden; I thought ‘Wow, I’m really going to be in shape for the season!’ Except I overlooked a few realities. Ski racing requires quickness, strategy and instant decisions. Gardening is slow and methodical. It may build strength, but it does nothing to improve speed or quick reflexes. That ski season was my worst ever in terms of results.

I’d forgotten one of the most important truths of training for a sport: train at the pace you intend to play. Get your brain adjusted to that desired pace. The brain and muscle memory will adapt so you won’t start a race or competition too fast and bonk before the finish, or start too slow and stress because you have to make up time.

If you’re not an elite athlete or don’t have access to an elite coach, you may have never heard about a ‘tempo’ workout. This is a conditioning technique that matches the speed used in your training program to the pace of movements in your sport–and also works on speeding things up while training, so your entire system adapts to a faster pace, making you a better and more competitive athlete.

Some descriptions of tempo training are made much more complicated than necessary, with the use of a heart monitor and an array of percentages for the eccentric (lowering) and concentric (lifting) phase of an exercise.
There’s no need for all the complications.

Tempo training simply conditions the body to be faster and more coordinated while allowing athletes to locate and get rid of the weak areas in their performance. As an example, take the pedal cadence of a cyclist. Perhaps that cyclist has a ‘dead spot’ after reaching the top of pedal, and doesn’t immediately push down with sufficient force. Maybe that athlete has a muscle weakness that can be trained away in the gym, or perhaps they don’t know how to create a more forceful cadence.

With tempo training, a cyclist–or any other kind of athlete–can pay more attention to every aspect of their sport’s movement. In my particular case, I learned that my ‘dead spot’ was after completing a turn around a gate. I would just ‘glide’ into the next turn without forcefully accelerating, losing a potential one or two seconds at each gate. Doing tempo workouts on practice race courses helped eliminate that weakness. The results showed a gratifying improvement.

You can also do tempo workouts in the gym, and definitely should, according to Chere Lucett in her article, “What is Tempo Training,” on the site Dotfit.com.

She writes, “Most people are aware of how many sets and repetitions they are going to perform on each exercise at the gym, but have they thought about how long each repetition should take? Tempo training is often the most underrated component to resistance training, yet its role in muscle development is significant. Altering the tempo of your training workouts can alter the way your body adapts to your training.”

Often times, you will be lifting a maximal load (95-100 percent of your one repetition maximum) so your repetition tempo will be only as fast as you can handle the load. Basically, even though the weight used is very heavy, you want to think of moving it fast, even though it may not (be fast). This will excite the nervous system and ask it to involve more muscle fibers for the challenge.”

Recruiting more muscle fibers makes any movement stronger. Strength and speed together are the two qualities that equal power. Tempo workouts will create the power and precision that is every athlete’s goal.

Wina Sturgeon is the editor of the online magazine Adventure Sports Weekly, which offers the latest training, diet and athletic information.

Photo: MilitaryHealth via Flickr