Christmas Season Fitness Frustration

Most of us have had the weight loss or fitness frustration during this time of the year. Here we are struggling all year to do well and then the Holidays come around. All of a sudden there are Christmas parties everywhere, the end of the year work stress, kids and partners being sick, we are low on cash because of bills and Christmas gifts. It is the season that probably puts on the most pounds on people. The stress, the food and the time restrictions make it seemingly impossible to make it through. 

Don’t be mad!

Here is one thing, being frustrated with yourself does not make it any easier, quite the opposite, the likelyhood of you eating more food, especially comfort food rises.  We are all aware that this is coming around, most of us have seen it for a couple of decades (including the weight gain). If you have gained weight until now during this season, be okay with it. It is not like the weight drops right away if you are mad at yourself right, and I am sure you have felt the hunger cravings for chocolate or other comfort foods during that time when you are mad at yourself.

Now it is easier said that done. If you are mad, then you are mad, right? Well, kind of. It has actually shown that people active pursue some self compassion, like in the form of saying to yourself: “It is okay that I have eaten too much, most people struggle during this time, I am not alone”, really seem to be doing better and compensating less with food afterwards.

Move on!

Some of us live in the future and always worry, some of us live in the past and feel eternally guilty for something. Accept your responsibility and move on. We all fail, all great leaders have failed in one way or another, the difference usually is that they are capable of moving on. It does not mean you don’t take responsibility but guilt tripping yourself for all eternity has not changed anything yet other than making you eat more and feel bad. Next time you make a mistake, may that be eating or otherwise, take responsibility, have some compassion for yourself and move on by doing differently again. Thomas Eddison once said: “I have not failed. I have just found 1000 ways that won’t work.” In the end he was successful.

 

Reset!

How do you move on? You reset your day. You have eaten badly? You have not exercised? Reset the day. Start again. Eat healthily for the rest of the day, get  a short workout in, even 10 min are better than nothing. You can do it

Sincerely,

 

Michael Anders

Head Trainer Shape Up Fitness & Wellness Consulting

 

As a personal trainer I always ask my client for her/his goals. I often get to hear that she wants to be as fit as she can be. At other times I hear people compare athletes from different sports with each other and how one athlete is fitter than the other.

Fitness is a vague term and cannot be entirely nailed down. At the same time, when you are looking to work with a personal trainer it is important that you know what you are aiming for, what your definition of fitness is. A sprinter, a marathon runner, a weight lifter or a basketball player, they all require a certain fitness that pertains to their sport and their goals. It is really hard to compare them with each other though. All of them have a very specific goal and the adaptations in their body aim to improve on what is necessary to have a better performance. A true sprinter will not be able to run a marathon and the marathon runner is so slow over a 100 m dash that you can drink a coffee. Why? Their muscles have adapted to the requirements of their sport. 

If you want to get fit, then you have to find out what that means for you. Do you want to acquire what I call a general fitness, meaning, improve your cardiovascular fitness (in this case endurance >30 min), your strength, even some of your sprint ability? Then you need to understand that you cannot be great at everything. Up to a certain point you can improve on all of those but there is a turning point where you will have to specialize in a discipline in order to keep improving. Why is that?

Because sometimes the required adaptations contradict each other. Take me for example: I want to be stronger, be more explosive, run marathons and do martial arts. Well, good luck with that! I have become faster in my marathons, I have become stronger and faster for my martial arts but… I will level out. Someone who runs long distance trains slow twitch muscle fibers, someone who sprints, fast twitch muscle fibers. A body running long distance cannot carry a lot of muscle and stay fast. There is an optimum. At the same time a sprinter needs fast twitch muscle fibers that are able to contract explosively and generate more force than slow twitch muscle fibers. Those muscle fibers are bigger if trained.

I know I will never be as fast a sprinter, a marathon runner, or as strong a lifter as if I specialized on one thing only. I am getting better at all of it, but it takes longer which I am okay with. 

Even if you consider being a specialist, you still need to cross train in other areas because they can help improve your performance up to a certain point.

Most of our clients look for general fitness, some are specialists. We make sure our personal training is catered to the specific needs of our clients. I hope this article was able to help you find out what you are looking for and help you understand the importance of knowing your goals.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

 

Michael

Which Fitness Trends are going to stay in Charlotte?

Like every year there is always someone who tries to predict the fitness trends for the following year. This article is based on the article posted by the ACSM. I will comment on each of the top 10 trends and tell you what makes sense and what is most likely just a fad that is going to go away or is going to hurt you.

According to a survey they did the upcoming year will  see the following fitness trends:

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

is signified by short hard intervals followed by a resting period. This has been big already this year. I think depending on your goals this kind of training is actually here to stay. It shows some significant promise in weight loss as well as improving cardiovascular fitness fast. It is definitely NOT the holy grail. It will still have to be supplemented by other training depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

Body Weight Training

allows you to train with minimal equipment and get in shape. A great choice for many people, and definitely should be in your arsenal in the pursuit of fitness. Be aware though that if you are really out of shape even body weight might be too heavy and once you have accomplished a certain fitness level the training stimulus might just not be enough to help you improve.

 

Educated and Experienced Fitness Professionals

it seems that people are looking for more qualified trainers and professionals. This is definitely a trend that I embrace with all of my heart.

 

Strength Training

This has been a staple for a while and properly executed is an important part of your physical fitness, especially considering that our professions have become more and more sedentary.

 

Exercise and Weight Loss

This is a trend that keeps coming and my feelings are ambivalent about it. The reason for that is that despite all efforts with diets and exercise the overall population is still getting more obese. What has worked for us is guiding our clients to a healthy lifestyle instead of a diet, which includes cooking unprocessed food instead of counting calories. Counting calories seem to put the clients mind too much towards food and as we all know it is impossible not to think about a blue elephant in the room if someone tells you not to.

 

Personal Training

Education has become increasingly more important in this field and I can fully embrace that as well. Education and knowledge should be a minimum requirement, not optional.

 

Fitness Programs for Older Adults

with our populations average age rising fitness in our older population becomes more and more important and that is definitely important to keep health care costs low, improve quality of life and general fitness.

 

Functional Fitness

this term is frequently abused. The way I look at it: Functional training is the training that prepares the individual best for their daily living activities, their sports activities without hurting them but improving their performance. Balance, strength, coordination, stability and mobility are all part of this.

 

Group Personal Training

Offering a cheaper alternative to personal training it can be a good choice for clients and trainers without compromising the quality of training too much.

 

Yoga

the different variations of yoga can have beneficial effects on people, physically as well as mentally. It is crucial though to have a good instructor otherwise you might have the same experience as some of our clients that come to us after injuries to wrist, neck, back and knees.

 

One of the problems that a lot of personal training clients have is that they  do not have enough time. Since about 60-65% of clients seek a personal trainer because they want to tone up or lose weight this is a great way of intensifying your training. Complex training in this context means that you have one piece of equipment that you use to switch from one exercise to the next without actually stopping and by doing that creating a complex.

Here are a couple complexes that can work wonders in your training routine and increase your metabolic output while toning your muscles into something beautiful:

 

DB Complex:

1. Db Squat w/ Overhead Press leading into x10
2. Bent Over w/ Db  x10
3. Reverse Lunge w/ biceps curl coming forward x10
4. Single Leg Db deadlift x8

BB Complex

1. Barbell Clean x5
2. Front Squatx10
3. Military Press x 8-10
4. Single Leg Deadlift x5-8
5. Reverse Lunges x10

Landmine Complex

1. Reverse Lunge + Front Press x10
2. Torso Rotation x 16
3. Single Leg Deadlift x8ea
4. Front Squat + Press x10
5. One Arm Row

These three complexes are just three that you can use in your pursuit of melting away the fat. So let’s get of your butt and work those arms and legs.

 

I hope you have a great day,

 

Michael

Squats have been a part of strength training routines for a long time and are  excellent exercises for not only sports performance but for creating a nice fit look in your lower body as well. They train multiple muscle groups like glutes, hamstrings and quads, and back. For that reason they should not be amiss in one shape or another in any strength training routine unless medically contraindicated. One squat that we do not perform anymore is with the barbell loaded on the back due to increased injury risk.

The following squat variations are great training tools:

• Body Weight Squat
• Goblet Squat
• Front Squat
• Split Squat
• Weighted Split Squat
• One legged Squats

As you can see I have not added the pistol squat into the arsenal. Looking at the biomechanical position of the pistol squat I cannot recommend it since the shearing forces on the knee seem to be too big and the risks outweigh the benefits.

In general we tell our clients to lower their hips until their thighs are parallel to the floor or slightly below. It is important that the glutes fire properly. Should your knees cave in you are probably better of doing some glute activation / correction exercises prior to your actual lifting.

Another mistake we commonly see in squats: people either push their knees excessively forward and have reduced hip flexion or do not bend their knees enough and have trunk flexion with increased spinal load. It is important to us to find out why our personal training client does what they do and our initial assessment usually gives us a good indicator on lack of mobility, stability or coordination or a combination of any of those three.

Many people want to go to the most advanced technique right away thinking that more is always better. I strongly disagree with that. Proper progression in your technique not only keeps you safe but also guarantees the most success.

In the next post we will dissect the body weight squat, the goblet squat as well as the front squat in more detail.

Until then:

Yours,

Michael

 

This is actually a really important topic to me since we strive to be the best personal training company in Charlotte. The question is though, what does that mean. Does it mean the fastest results? Be the cheapest personal training company? Have the best service?

 

Here is how I understand how an excellent personal training company should look like:

Atmosphere and Trainer

• Your trainers are genuinely interested in fitness and have a passion for supporting others
• Your personal trainer is focused on you and continuously strives to be better at what they do
• When you train you should feel a warm welcome that goes along with a sense of honesty and caring
• The atmosphere among clients is friendly and supportive, like a family of like minded people.
• You should be able to connect to a trainer and your trainer should be willing to have you train with someone else if you don’t feel that connection

Training and Studio

• The training should be built on sound principles, a thorough assessment leading into comprehensive training methods to bring you to your goal
• The training should not reflect the latest fad but the most current research on training.
• It should be fun and entertaining to work out
• Your trainer should hold you accountable and give you all the information you need in order to achieve your goal.

 

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to talk to me,

 

Michael

 

Many of us personal trainers and our clients look in a mirror and might see something that we are not 100% satisfied with. Honestly I do not think I know one person that looks the way she/he wants to look like. There always seems to be the one elusive element that we are unhappy with. This can be pushed to the point of what we fitness professionals call body-dysmorphic disorder which we will address at another time.

Let us assume that you do not suffer from this disorder but have a relatively realistic view of your body. You are a couple of pounds overweight, your health has gone somewhat south and sometimes in the morning you feel like you are ten years older than you are. Your fitness level is reduced to taking two flights of stairs without a heart attack. I know I am making light of this, but this actually can happen.

You start out great, you start working out, you might even start with a trainer. Even better you start watching what you eat (and I don’t mean just watching it going into your mouth). For many people this means cutting back, counting calories, etc. Here is where the thinking is flawed. People usually still eat predominantly the same food as before but try to cut back. This works great as long as your initial motivational push lasts but dies out pretty quickly. Is that your fault? Actually no, you are programmed that way. Basically we are just intelligent apes, meaning our gene pool is about 4 million years old and oriented to a lifestyle that frequently suffers from famine and hunger. We do not have that problem in our society anymore and food or food-like products are offered everywhere. The food you are cutting back is designed to be explosive in taste by mixing sugars and fat into a concoction of deliciousness that our body craves. Cutting back on those products is like telling a junkie that he can have a little bit but just that. Initially he/she might be able to do that but not for long and soon we fall back into our old eating patterns of highly processed and engineered food.

And all this started with you wanting to make a positive change! If you could just count your calories or cut back then we all would do it and the USA would not suffer under the “weight of hundred millions of overweight or obese people”. Please think about this 2/3 of us are overweight or obese that means roughly 200 million people. I call this an epidemic!

Now here is what you can do about this and the recipe is so easy it is laughable and would take care of obesity, Type II Diabetes and other related diseases.

• Make a commitment to a healthy eating and stop eating food like products like pasta, breads, etc. Instead focus on eating unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
• Learn to cook, there are plenty of great recipes on the internet, the excuse I cannot cook is LAME! Just admit that you don’t care enough about yourself if you don’t want to learn how to cook.
• Eat vegetables, salads like kale, broccoli, carrots, and so on. The list is forever long. Spend most of your shopping time in the produce section.
• Eat fruits that are in season.
• Eat grass-fed beef, pork, organic chicken and wild caught fish (caveat: mercury pollution).
• Eat nuts and honey only in small amounts.
• Cut out any sugar or products with added sugar.
• Honestly, cut out grains altogether. You get plenty of fiber in veggies and fruits.
• Be AWARE that your food bill will go up, probably by a good bit, but that is the choice you make for being healthy.

 

Like the title already said, in order to accomplish things you have never accomplished before you have to do things you have never done before. It is time to take your life into your own hands and own up to your responsibility for it.

 

Michael