Year: 2015

New to exercise and don’t know where to begin?!

Strength Made Simple

Taking a BIG step forward and deciding you want to regain control of your health with exercise is often scary because people simply don’t know what to do. That’s why I’m writing this post, I want to give you a simple guideline you can follow to make the most out your gym experience.

Side note, I commend every single person I see in a gym because it generally can be a very intimidating place, especially for beginners.

Let’s break this down beginning with your warm up…

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The warm up is simply a way of helping your body transition from a relaxed state to point where it is prepped to work. You essentially want to warm up all the parts of your body that you will be working out in the session. Traditional methods of warming up involve things like jogging or cycling, which really only prep the ankles, knees and hips, ignoring the upper body.

For that reason I suggest hopping on the Elliptical at your gym for 5-10 minutes. Start slow and add some light resistance as you go along. You want to warm the body, break a sweat and elevate the heart rate gradually. The Elliptical is great because not only is it low-impact on the joints, it incorporates the lower and upper body musculature at the same time!

I should note the most effective ways of warming up and preventing injury are through Specific and Dynamic warm ups… but they can be very individualized based on the person…..and I can’t give away all the trade secrets…..sorry

Next lets get in to the working portion of your session!

If you are new to exercise you’ll want to do what is called compound, or multi-joint exercises. These use exercises that require movement at more than a single joint. For example, a bench presses utilizes movement in the shoulder and also the elbow joints, versus a bicep curl which only requires motion at the elbow.

these compound movements involve more muscle mass which can lead to more of a metabolic disturbance and essentially help you burn more calories overall.

Now we can break this down many ways, but for the sake of simplifying the post we’ll choose one of each: Push, Pull, Hip Dominant, Knee Dominant, Core

With these categories we can put together a very basic but effective workout…

1. Push

The pushing movement I’m going to choose is a Pushup. I love this as an upper body exercise because it can be manipulated to fit pretty much anybody.  It also involves the anterior core musculature to hold that neutral spine position while performing them… it’s also just a really great workout for your chest, triceps and anterior shoulder.

Here are a few videos with different variations you can choose from

Next lets pick a Pulling exercise…

2. Pull

One of my favorites is the one-arm dumbbell row. Here’s a great instructional video on how to perform them.

Next a Hip Dominant exercise…

3. Hip Dominant

Another one of my favourites, the Hip-Thrust or sometimes called the Glute-Bridge. This is an amazing exercise for your glutes that is really simple to execute.

here is another video with a few variations to make it more challenging and different…

If these are to easy and you can bang out 15 – 20 no problem….try putting a dumbbell or a barbell across your hip for some extra resistance…never sacrifice form for weight though, and make sure each repetition is a full extension at the hip!

Now a Knee Dominant!

4. Knee Dominant

A simple movement that is really effective is the lunge. It also comes with millions of variations to keep it interesting. But for this post I’ll provide you with what I believe to be the easiest ones to perform, the reverse/forward lunge.

I’m using my bodyweight in the video… but again, if this is far too easy grab some dumbbells and hold them at your side for more resistance! And remember a 90 degree bend in the front and back knee at the bottom for both variations.

Now finally…..CORE!

5. Core

There are hundreds of exercises you could choose from but these two I love and program them into mine and my clients workouts all the time. They’re called Deadbug and Bird-Dog!

As you can see I showed a few progressions for both. Start with the first of each and work your way up to the harder ones. During these there should be absolutely no movement in the hips or spine. The only moving parts are your arms and legs.

There you go, that’s all for a full body workout!

Now you have a couple options of how you can do these and I’ll leave that choice up to you.

You can either…

do 1 set of each exercise, one after the other with no break in between….like a circuit and take a break after the last one then repeat that circuit 2 or 3 times

or

You can do each exercise individually for 2 or 3 sets of 10 repetitions. Resting after each set and moving on to the next exercise after the last set.

If you’re just starting out, and don’t know how much weight or how many reps you should do… pick a weight the you can use for each exercise to bang out 3 sets of 10 reps. Don’t go to failure on the 10th rep, by that point the muscle should be burning…but save a couple reps in the tank for the other sets. If you can’t make it to 10 reps on each set with whatever weight you choose then go a little lighter and work up to it.

That’s always a safe place to start and each week you can increase the weight by 2.5 – 5lbs.

As always finish the workout with a nice stretch session to cool off…stretch the areas of the body you worked….chest, hips, legs etc.

Give this a try and leave any questions you have in the comment box and I’ll do my best to get to them.

Stay fit everyone!

Do Detox Diets Work?

Strength Made Simple

Many celebrity names can come to mind when thinking about these diets. One in particular, the infamous Dr. Oz!

Image taken from: http://z6mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dr-oz-3-day-detox.jpg

Detoxes tell us that we need to cleanse the body of toxins and chemicals, poisons that enter our body through our environment and all that we ingest in our diet. Now, although the specifics of the diet can change they tend to begin with a period of fasting, followed by a very strict/restrictive diet of things like raw vegetables, juice, water and most likely a specific regimen of supplementation unique to the particular diet.

Now to save you the time of reading the rest I’ll give it to you straight because I get it, we all have busy lives. Understand the Detox industry is HUGE ($$$)…. just Google searching “Detox Diet” turned up nearly 2 hundred million results!

but it has been completely debunked my medical science. So in a nut shell, no they do not work….Bummer…

Here’s the break down…

One thing I want you to remember, only the dose makes the poison.

The human body is a REMARKABLE thing! It can easily take almost any type of edible, drinkable thing which could be considered low-level poisons, and process them! Now I’m sure your mind may have went right to things like alcohol, or sugar from colas, but I’m talking about things like water, salt, even oxygen! Almost any element you can think of, in a high enough dose, can kill you! So again…only the dose makes the poison!

Your body is able to detoxify itself, and quite well I’d have to say. Your Liver and Kidney’s are responsible for cleaning and filtering our blood. Anytime we consume something which may be toxic they filter it out of our system and send it out of our body as waste. They do this better than any product you could ever buy.

Now you may have heard from someone, or read somewhere of people finding success in these diets, this can possibly be attributed to a couple of things.

First of all it could be just a placebo effect. If you don’t know what that is, it simply means that although there were no actual benefits caused by the placebo (the placebo being the diet), someone may feel as if they were received something beneficial, strictly due to their belief in the product.

The human body once again is a remarkable thing. There a tons of reports indicating the existence of a placebo effect. Most of the ones I’m familiar with are in the field of sports performance because that was my area of study, but if you search PubMed there are tons of articles at your fingertips on this.

On another note, the promises of weight loss are a shady area. Again, these diets are generally very restrictive. Getting enough calories from vegetables to maintain weight can be a pretty daunting task (2,000 calories is a lot of broccoli!). These diets are most likely going to put their consumers in a severely hypocaloric (low calorie) state. Now, although this is a good thing in terms of weight loss, it is not realistic to eat like this in the long run. And once the diet is over, and you reintroduce your old eating habits, the weight is just going to come back full circle.

The body needs protein and fat. If you’re on a weight loss journey you want to conserve as much muscle mass as possible and get rid of the fat mass. Protein is a muscle sparing nutrient, meaning it helps to preserve muscle mass! Fat is also key in a weight loss program. It helps keep you full, it also plays an important role in the formation of certain hormones key to maintaining order within the body, and a bunch of other goodness!

So to put this simply, these Detox diets usually cannot be sustained for more than a couple weeks because it forces you into this really low energy position. Initial good feelings can be from more activity in the brain, because it’s on high alert trying to find energy from other sources now that you’ve just taken away from it. But over time, your body is likely to crash. Any time you’re required to eliminate something from your diet you’re just putting yourself in a bad position, moderation is key!

Now if you want to really Detox your body I’ll keep it really simple. Eat as well as you can and EXERCISE!

…and by limit, I’m not saying quit cold turkey.

But dial back on things like smoking and alcohol consumption, also watch your sugar and salt intake. These are things we know we should be doing but for some, taking a pill is just more convenient. Let your body do what it is supposed to do and all will be fine!

Till next time friends!

Shoulder Injuries: Training adjustments for long-term shoulder health

Strength Made Simple

Let me start off by saying this is a topic that really hits home with me. I was a swimmer for quite some time, unfortunately that eventually led to a lot of crappy shoulder aches and pains. From tendonitis, to impinged tendons I had it all! Luckily for me I was able to turn things around before anything really serious happened.

But…enough about me, time to help you!

The shoulder, specifically the front of the shoulder joint, is often the most unstable and “lax” portion of the shoulder. Exercises that stress this area are often going to result in your chronic or even acute injuries. The movements/exercises I’m referring to are ones that externally rotate the arm (thumbs turning away from your body), abduct the arm (movement you do in the typical lateral dumbbell raise), and horizontally abduct the arm (the down portion of a bench press where your arms move away from mid-line of your body).

Exercises that are going to put you in this position, are any typical overhead press or pull or lateral raise, an extreme example would be a Behind-The-Neck Lat Pull-Down or a Behind-The-Neck Overhead Barbell Press. Honestly, the only type of person I believe should ever consider doing these types of movements would be competitive bodybuilders. It’s in the nature of their sport to attempt to develop a muscle in all ranges of motion. For any other person or athlete, these are exercises you can seriously do without.

For a reference here are the behind the neck movements I was talking about…

Pull-down

Press

So first tip….

#1 – Don’t do these, keep the weight infront of you!

Now, there are a lot of people that believe pressing weight overhead shouldn’t be done and that it’s just to risky of a position for the shoulder. I believe all exercises have their risk so I’m going to tell you it’s perfectly fine. There are perhaps just better ways to do it.

Pressing overhead requires you to balance the weight as well as muscle it up. Having that weight above you forces your rotator cuff (muscles located on the back of the shoulder) to kick in and stabilize the joint, which is one of the primary functions of these muscles. In the end it ends up being a great workout for maintaining shoulder function and stability.

…and pressing something overhead is just a really great and empowering feeling!

I’m rambling on but this is leading to my second tip.

#2 – Work in the scapular plane!

The scapular plane is your best and safest position to do all of your lateral raises, pull-downs and overhead pressing. What it is referring to is the position of your upper arm when you do any of these movement. Here is a picture belowscapular-planehttp://www.sportsmedicineofatlanta.com/downloads/reference/AvoidingShoulderInjuryFromResistanceTraining.pdf

..So whenever your doing something like a lateral dumbbell raise, instead of raising your arms directly out to the sides, your elbows are slightly more infront of you and not to the side. You can also use this arm positioning on your lat-pulldowns, pullups, overhead presses and lateral raises.

The scapular plane is referring to the position of your shoulder blades. They don’t sit flat on your rib cage, they are slightly angled. Working with your arms in this position is just mimicking that same angle  but providing a safer platform for movement at the shoulder at the same time!

Here is another video example….. of me!

Finally my last tip… for now

#3 Work with a neutral grip whenever you can

Put your arms directly out infront of you with your palms facing the ceiling. You’re thumbs should be turned away from your body. In this position your arm is externally rotated (supinated). A neutral grip would be thumbs pointing up.

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This is another safe position to work in. When your arms are internally rotated (pronated), so thumbs facing inward and palms facing the floor, there is a bony structure on your upper arm called the greater tuberosity that can rub up against and pinch the subacromial bursa and rotator cuff tendons.

Having a neutral grip when you exercise clears the greater tuberosity out of the way and creates more room for the shoulder to move freely. This is one of the reasons I prefer to do my overhead pressing with dumbbells instead of barbells, because barbells force you into a pronated grip and with dumbbells I can use any grip I like.

..so there you have it

My three tips for altering resistance exercises to keep your shoulders happy and healthy!

#1 – Don’t do anything behind the neck
#2 – Work in the scapular plane
#3 – Use a neutral grip whenever you can

Until next time, keep posting your questions and stay tuned for the next post to cover shoulder exercises for longevity and health!

Nutrition For Promoting A Lean Body!

Strength Made Simple

Here is a great article with incredibly simple tips to promote fat loss and muscle gain by Poliquin Group. I kept the take away points but all the rest of the material can be found in the link provided below. Enjoy a good read!

Six Incredibly Simple Nutrition Rules To Be Lean & Muscular For Life

Link to article: http://www.poliquingroup.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/1092/Six_Incredibly_Simple_Nutrition_Rules_To_Be_Lean_M.aspx

#1: Understand Why High-Protein Diets Promote Leanness
#2: Focus On Protein Quality For Fat Loss: Get 10 Grams of EAAs Per Meal
#3: Enhance Fat Metabolism With Balanced Macros & Whole Food
#4: Don’t Get Confused By Protein Backlash
#5: Improve Gut Health to Optimize Protein’s Benefits For Muscularity
#6: Balance High-Quality Protein With Fruits and Veggies

Variable Resistance: A very small introduction

Strength Made Simple

That number on the side of your dumbbells and weight plates is in no way shape or form and accurate representation of the amount of force placed on muscles, they are merely just a reference point. Your muscles are stronger and weaker depending on where it is in its range of motion. In this example at the top of the bicep curl you are much stronger than you are at the start/bottom, this is why it is usually hardest to get that weight moving but by the end of the curl it’s much easier to move the weight. This is because of the biomechanical factors that are coming in to play.

The resistance band I’m using in the video is changing the amount of force placed on the bicep throughout the range of motion based on when I’m in my strongest or weakest range. As i curl up, and get into a stronger range of motion, the band gets stretched and more tense adding more resistance. As I lower the weight the band returns to its original length and has a lot less tension. Variable resistance is just referring to this change of applied force 🙂

Just something new to spice things up, give it a try!

….and ya ya ya those are only 10lb dumbbells…I’m not trying to show off this time 🙂

Here’s another video showing bands being used with a squat variation. You gotta love these things!