Are You Wearing Your Shoulders Like Earrings?

Ok try this, go look in the mirror and raise your shoulders up towards your ears. Got it? Now say, “I don’t know.” You really don’t know do you.

Lifting your shoulders up towards the ears, while working out, is something most everyone does without realizing, but unless you are doing shoulder shrugs and training your traps you really shouldn’t be popping those shoulders up at all.

Do you really want your neck to hurt when doing exercise? I’m guessing the answer is no, so this is what we need to do. Drop those shoulders back down, keep your head and eyes level and maintain a good posture. Exercise in front of a mirror and watch yourself, not the floor. If you keep from raising the shoulders and trying to wear them like earrings you will put the focus back into the muscles you are trying to work and get more out of your workouts with less discomfort.

Crunch Tips!

Most people complain that their back and or neck hurt when doing crunches so here are a few quick tips to help you out.

Press the low back into the floor as if you are trying to touch your belly button to your spine. Keep your abs tight when crunching up and down, don’t loosen up when you go back down and just flop to the floor.

Continue pressing the belly button into your spine and your low back pressed to the floor. A little trick to get you out of the neck is to bend your head forward and use your chin to hold a tennis ball, a towel or something small between your chin and chest. If you are throwing your head all over the place this is an easy way to keep that head still.

One last thing is to stop going up so far with the movement. Abs are supposed to flex the spine not throw your torso off of the floor. Shorten the motion. If you feel your feet jumping off the floor or moving around you’re throwing from your back and trying to go up too far. If you find you are sitting on your tailbone at the top half of the exercise you are going too far. It is a crunch, not a catapult, just squeeze the abs and keep them tight, up and down, every repetition.

Hope these help!

Resistance Training

Mention weight lifting or resistance training and the first thing you hear is, “I don’t want to get big!” Yes, lifting weights can have that affect, but trust me, unless you are making a very committed effort to gain size, it just isn’t going to happen.

Working out with weights helps you firm up the muscles you have and burn the body fat you tend not to want so much of. You can use weights to train for the look you want, whether tight and tone, sleek and fit, or firm and fantastic, but you need to know your body well enough to keep the goals realistic.

Remember training with weights is just one aspect of a well-rounded fitness routine. Stretching, cardio and as always and most importantly, proper nutrition all are just pieces of a fitness puzzle that fit together to create a better and healthier you.

Let a personal trainer teach you the proper way to use weights and don’t worry about “getting big”.

Little Things...

I know you have heard this before, but maybe not in regards to working out, little things do mean a lot.

So many times I work with a person who has never been with a personal trainer and they are amazed at how many little things there are to do in an exercise that can make all the difference in how it feels and what type of result they can get. Where we place our hands or how we move our feet, breathing in and out at the wrong time, good posture, all can make a big difference to the success in whatever particular exercise we are doing in the gym.

For the most part we can all be successful engaging in a consistent program of exercise doing basics movements, but as you get more used to what you are doing, you try more weight or more exercises and strive to improve and that is a good thing, however just doing more isn’t always better. Taking the time to learn some finer points to movements you already perform can change your workout and results and re-energize a stagnate routine.

Bear in mind it is wise to get some help when you get to a point in your exercise routine where you just are not sure what to do or how to do it better. You can always find people at the gym, who think they have all the answers, but I would strongly suggest checking with a fitness professional to find out what little things you could do with your form and routine that could make big differences in your fitness level.

The Next Level

All of us want to “get into great shape.” This can have a different meaning for all of us, from losing 20lbs, lowering blood pressure or cholesterol and getting off medication to the oh so popular, “I want to see my 6-pack.”

All are great and reasonable goals, but the majority of us find that we fall short a lot of the time in reaching those goals. You work hard in the gym, you eat right and you are doing your cardio faithfully so why don’t we have what we want? One answer may be that your body is just used to what it is doing. There comes a point in time when you must change the routine to make the body respond. You have to move beyond what you normally do and do something different.

Now that can mean doing less weight and more reps, or walking for longer on the treadmill, scheduling and planning out meals more efficiently…it takes effort, work and consistency. Move to the next level and see if it doesn’t get you moving closer to getting in great shape.

What is Valuable to You?

Is it your car or your house, maybe some jewelry or it is an antique piece of furniture that you view as your greatest treasure? Whatever it is that has value to you, don’t you treat that object differently? You handle it with care and will spend money on maintaining it and even showing it off at times. You have a certain amount of pride and emotional attachment to these particular things.

We all have things in our life we view as valuable but more often than not we don’t place that value on our health and fitness. You think you eat right…you don’t. You think you know what you are doing in the gym, you don’t. You think you do all the right things and work out hard and really…you don’t. The truth is for many people, the value you place on your health and fitness is less than the thought, effort and money you put into your car each month.

It is unfortunate that most don’t find the value of their health a priority until something goes wrong and even then there is a defiance to accept the truth that if you don’t have a healthy life all the other stuff means nothing. We are all guilty of a certain amount of vanity but getting a B-12 shot to lose weight is not the best way to maintain a healthy lifestyle. No one can simply tell you to find value in something, but do you see a value in examining a healthy lifestyle? You can eat right; you can workout more effectively and you can ask for help, because there are people like me that find a value in seeing you change your life for the better. The only thing is that you have to establish the value it has to you and then treat it with all the respect and care that you would give those other valued objects in your life.

What is the best investment We Can Make?

In these challenging economic times we struggle with investment decisions made in the past and what to do when things do not look so promising in the present. People who have invested wisely have a good quality of life and those not so wise struggle and some even break. Do you want the benefits or do you want the struggle?

Each and every one of us makes an investment decision everyday with our own personal fitness. I know there is no price to be put on good health and those who do not have good health know exactly what I am talking about. Keeping yourself fit is the investment that always pays us back in good times and bad. Making the commitment to put time into a fitness routine and the effort to stick to it, even in the more challenging moments, can create a solid foundation for us to face those challenging situations life will throw at us. If our health portfolio is weak it makes the tough times tougher, if the portfolio is strong it can hold us firm as we weather the storm.

When faced with the choice, invest wisely in your health. If you need help then get it and realize anything spent will pay you back all your life. There are no magic pills and there is no magic in doctors that can fix a lifetime of not taking care of the one thing you truly own, your health. The best investment is to be and stay fit for life.