Exercise, stop making it a chore!

Nobody enjoys taking out the trash or doing the dishes or doing the never ending pile of laundry. Most people don't even enjoy mowing the lawn or going grocery shopping. Chores aren't fun. So I ask you then, why are you making your work outs a chore? Working out shouldn't be a punishment for you. I think most people see it as a disciplinary action for letting their bodies get out of shape. STOP THINKING THAT WAY! If you aren't making your work outs enjoyable you won't stick to it and you will never see changes in your body. Here are a few tips to help change your mindset:

1. Workout in a place that gives you good vibes.
If you hate the gym then you will NEVER enjoy working out in the gym. Ever. Shop around a little bit before you commit. If it doesn't feel good to you, you will certainly HATE it even more when you start paying dues every month to sweat there (or not because you probably won't end up going anyway). There is nothing wrong with working out at home. If you are more comfortable there, you are more likely to stick to a workout program. My suggestion, if you choose to work out from home, is find a trainer that will come to you to show you how to do this effectively and safely. Some of the best clients I have I train from their home. It is amazing what you will make yourself do when your comfortable with your surroundings.

2. Find something you love.
If you hate walking on the treadmill for an hour, then stop. Going to the gym and spending all that time on a piece of 'cardio' equipment is a waste of time anyway. Find the exercises you enjoy doing (mind you I'm saying "that you enjoy doing", not the exercises you find easy to do. If you aren't challenging yourself you won't get results.) and make a circuit out of them. Try a Spin class. Make your workouts work for you. If you like it, your chances of sticking with it greatly increase.

3. Define the reason 'Why'.
Why are you working out? Do you even know? How can you measure results when you haven't even set a goal? Make short, achievable goals for yourself. Write it down on a sticky note and take it with you to the gym. Put it on your water bottle so you always look at it every time you take a drink. If you see your goal you are much more likely to achieve your goal.

4. No workout works without the proper diet.
No matter the caloric expenditure, if you are leaving the gym and going straight to Whataburger thinking that an awesome source of protein is a hamburger, think again. Fast food is a fast way to sabotage all of your hard work. Eating healthy doesn't have to be strenuous or boring. Just eat a little of everything from every food group several times a day and watch your metabolism sky rocket. Exercise programming and proper diet go hand in hand. You can't successfully accomplish one without the other. 

DOMS, what is that?

DOMS or, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, is the acronym we give to the feeling your muscles have the next day or maybe even two days after a really great or really strenuous workout. For most of us, DOMS is exactly what we need to tell us that our time in the gym was well spent. Do we need to feel sore to get results? No, there are a lot of ways to program a workout so that you don't get sore and it certainly isn't mandatory to see health benefits. Being sore is also nothing to be wary of. That is your body rebuilding itself to make it stronger.
Let's talk for a second about why we actually get sore. The basic component of EVERY single muscle in your body is built up of a bunch of strands wrapped around each other. These strands are called myofilaments. These myofilaments wrap around each other to form myofibrils (last fancy word I promise) which is what actually gives muscle that striated or strand-upon-strand look. If you lay all of the fingers of your right hand in the spaces between all the fingers of your left hand this is exactly how those filaments are layered in muscle. When we do any sort of weight training or even any sort of aerobic exercise we actually tear those filaments. It isn't a bad thing to do this because your body will actually come back and repair itself making that muscle bigger and stronger which can be seen by the eye over time because we get bigger arms, legs, shoulders, back etc. This rebuilding process is also why we have found that muscle confusion is really the only way we keep seeing strength gains. Your muscle rebuilds itself so to protect it from getting torn in the same way. So when we take a rest from our workout due to DOMS it is important to come back to the gym with a different work out in mind because your body has already prepared itself and you won't get any more results from the same old workout.

Finding perspective, reaching goals and finally getting it.

I find that the best relationships whether they be between lovers, friends, co-workers, clients, family, whoever they may be are the relationships that you never stop learning from. This (being what I'm about to talk about) especially could not have come at a better time for me in my career. I really am reminded I have the best clients.

I have a client who I see several times a week. I actually picked up this client outside of the studio so I make personal house calls 2-4 times a week. This client of mine has been by far the most committed I have ever had. They have also been the client I have struggled with the most as far as reaching goals and really changing our programming to fit injuries and  weaknesses to really get results. We have had some great discussions and some great breakthrough moments lately that I have just been dying to share because I know someone out there could use this advice. Mind you, all of this advice is coming from the brain and mouth of my client, not me, and it is really, truly brilliant.

My client is a recovering alcoholic and is very proud to now be sober. They are always telling me stories of the things they went through and the things rehab taught them and how they have had to apply all of this to their life to make them a stronger person. Just the other week we were finally seeing a HUGE breakthrough in performance and endurance. We went from barely be able to hold a plank with good posture to a 2:30 min plank with perfect posture. Seriously! That is the best barrier breakthrough I have seen so far in my career! I was astonished and asked them where did that come from?! This is what they said to me (not verbatim but it is close):

"Keyton, I finally stopped and asked myself what my real goals were and why I wasn't getting anywhere. I was honestly struggling so much with making goals that seemed so unreachable. It is so hard for me to stay motivated like that. I then remembered what I learned in rehab. Never promise you wont drink again. Make the promise that I wont drink today and worry about tomorrow when it gets here. I say the same thing with my diet. Today, I'm going to eat right and exercise. Tomorrow will be tomorrow I will worry about it then. I can only promise today"

Breakthrough.

Take these words from one of the strongest people I know and I bet you will see results too.

Promise today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

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The unreachable, never to be reached?

I apologize for the 6 month hiatus from posting blogs but it has been crazy busy and I promise I am back and will post regularly (maybe not monthly, but regularly). It has been a rough few months as well with my career and my drive to do this job that I love so very much. The love and my passion for exercise science will never dwindle as long as I'm alive but the effort it takes to get to people and to get people to actually stick to a plan that is long term and indeed does work and change their life has proven to be nothing but exhausting and extremely uphill. Humans are very set in their ways. This is regardless of gender, age, race, health, education, background, or status in the world.
One of my very best friends just two weeks ago stood pointing a finger in my face screaming at me how ignorant I was for telling her how unhealthy and how much waste of time the Atkins diet was. THE ATKINS DIET!!!! YOU REMEMBER THE DIET PEOPLE DIED ON?! YEAH, THAT ONE! I will refrain from getting on that soapbox. That horse should be dead and buried already. I still have clients two years into training that are still getting on the scale every day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. They come in so ecstatic they lost 2 pounds that day. And when they come in the next day 3 pounds heavier they blame me. I'm not doing my job correctly, they say. I had clients who are still smokers who think smoking really can't be the reason they aren't seeing results. "It's just smoking. What does that have to do with exercise?" REALLY?! I threw an empty water bottle at them that day, no lies. I did that. That is also the reason I say 'had' that client. I can't work with someone who refuses to work with themselves.
It is so discouraging, friends. I don't know how many times I have to say this before it sets in. I am not here to sabotage you. Why would you reach out to me for help and then tell me I'm the one that is doing it wrong? Do you think I do this solely for the money? Because if that is the reason let me tell you up front my income from training alone wouldn't pay me through a single month of bills. I do the things I do and I do the side jobs I have to so that I can be there as your coach and help you change your life. That is a commitment I make every day of my life. I did not get into this business to be the trainer that brags about getting paid to work out. Want honesty? In the past year alone I have lost 5 pounds of muscle because I have given up my time to workout so that I can bring you on as a client to give you your time to workout.
I love my job and I have so much fun doing what I do but I also take it very seriously. I take your body and your program very seriously. The hours I spend a week actually training you I spend just that much time away from you making your sure program is exactly what it should be and every rep planned before I see you next. All you have to do is trust me and meet me halfway. Just meet me halfway.
These are words not only from my mouth but from a lot of other Fitness Coaches as well. All extremely talented and very well educated, might I add. We do what we do because we are passionate. The passion to take you and change you for the better is what we live for. The best of us study and keep up with the ever changing trends and we research to find out what are good changes and what are bad changes. And from that we come up with your workout plan. The lesson in all of this? Trust your trainer. Trust can be a HUGE factor in getting results.

Stretching, why are you so against it?

In my club I have started seeing a rising trend in clients and participants skipping out on stretching. I'm curious if this is happening in other clubs and studios as well. I have clients tell me they don't want to waste any of their hour with me by stretching at the end. I have participants in my classes leave right after core before the final stretch because they don't feel the need to stay. They will also just stand there and stare at me blankly when we stretch a particular muscle group we just worked during class. I don't understand the concept of not stretching after your workout. It makes no sense to me. It's just like the vitamins that you get from the food you eat for your body. If you don't get enough of a particular vitamin from your diet then you take a supplement. Stretching equals the same as a supplement.
Let me first start off by clearing up this short fact. Yes I said stretching after you are finished with your workout. If any of you are STILL stretching before your workout you deserve a thump on the head. Quick reason why we don't do this. Our muscles have what is referred to as autogenic inhibition (also just called AI and I'm sure it has other names as well). When we stretch AI is actually what tells the muscle it's being stretched and it stops the muscle from fighting against that stretch. In simpler terms, it shuts the muscle down. This is what leads to injury during a workout. So, stop stretching before your workout. Now back to the real topic at hand!
Stretching is such an important part of your workout. Skipping out on any stretching can seriously mess with the results you get from all of your hard work in the gym. Stretching returns those worked muscles to its original resting length so that it can better and evenly repair itself after a good exercise routine. Your body just needs it. Think about this:
You have a great (or not so great) nights rest, you wake up and roll over and reluctantly stand to get out of bed. What is the first thing you will probably do after standing? Simple answer. Stretch.
In addition to returning our muscles to normal resting length we also stretch to improve our ROM (range of motion) in our joints. A greater ROM means less tendency for injury. This is especially true for athletes. Can a joint be overstretched? Absolutely. Just like anything else, too much of something can never be a good thing.
A good effective stretch after a workout should last about 5 minutes. Spend 20 seconds per each muscle worked (and if you've been reading my blog up to this point you should be doing full body workouts EVERY workout so stretching should fill a whole 5 minutes). Some good stretches can be found all over the internet. A few stretches I definitely recommend avoiding would be the full plow (I have never understood this stretch to begin with), the hurdler's stretch, straight legged toe touches, and for those with lower back issues, any other unsupported spinal flexion (forward folds) stretches.
So, what have we learned? Stretching is a must. STOP skipping out on it. You might actually find that was the reason you weren't getting the results you were looking for.

Your core, it's more than just abs.

If anyone has ever told you that you need to work your core and all you did was add a couple of abdominal exercises to your workout regimen, you are only getting a third of the job done. Your core involves a lot more than just that so-sought-after six pack. I often refer to the core as the powerhouse of your body. Almost every single move your body makes involves your core. So, back to the question. What exactly is your core?
Of course a part of your core is the front of your midsection or the rectus abdominus (abs). But even this part isn't that simple. There is more there than just that. You have muscles all around that that act as postural muscles to keep you upright. Below your rectus abdominus is your transverse abdominus. Just consider this another layer to your abs. To each side of your rectus and transverse abs are your obliques. These muscles are called obliques because of the direction they run. They actually run diagonally through your midsection. SO MANY AB MUSCLES, how do you work them all?! Simple. The most effective ab workout is the plank (also called a hover). Another great exercise is the Ab Rollout on a Swissball. The great thing about the Ab Rollout is that you can progress from a Swissball to lower apparatuses such as an Ab Dolly, Ab Wheel, or just a barbell with different sized plates when you get the hang of it and want to keep challenging yourself.
Alright, so the front of the midsection is taken care of. What about the back of the midsection? This is also a part of your core, a very important part of your core. Your back muscles are what keeps in you good posture and keeps you from slouching forward as you get older. Also, keeping the back strong greatly lessens your chance of having any lower back problems. One of these muscles is called your erector spinae. You work this by doing Pointers or Swimmers. Depending on who you talk to some consider your latissimus dorsi part of your core. I'm one of those. Your lats are a key part of having good strong posture. A simple exercise for the lats is the Lat Pull Down. If you want to shake things up a Bent Over Row works great too.
The last and final piece of the core puzzle is your hips. YES, your hips. There are A LOT of little muscles that make up your hips and I won't even begin to name them all here. The most important fact to know is that working these muscles is just as important as working everything else. Any exercise that has you working your legs from side to side or outside to inside (in the frontal plane, if that makes sense to you) is going to work the muscles of your hips. A couple of examples is a Banded Step Touch or a Power Step Touch. Squat with a Hip Abduction is an example you see a lot with trainers or group fitness instructors.
All of these different systems of muscles all work together to make the core. It's more than just ab work that is going to give you the strong core you want and need. Results really should come in a total body package. Now you understand why I refer to the core as your powerhouse. It initiates almost every movement you will ever do in a day whether inside the gym or at work or even at home. So take all this, let it soak in, and on your next trip the gym try out some of these exercises and see if it doesn't make a difference in your results.

So you have the summer body, now what?

Alright so you worked all winter long to get your figure right for summer, now what are you going to do? First and most importantly you can't stop working for your goal just because you acheived it. If you stop working out you will lose that beach bod much faster than it took you to get it (assuming, of course, you did it the right way). You need to find a good maintenance program. Obviously the routine you had worked so I recommend tweaking that a little to last you longer or trying out Female Body Breakthrough my Rachel Cosgrove or The New Rules of Lifting For Abs by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. Both programs are also great if you haven't reached your summer goal yet. They will definetely get you there.
Secondly you have to make sure your eating habits match your body. A bad diet will always overrule a good exercise program no matter how long you've been on that program or regardless of how great the program is or how long you've been doing it. Pick a diet high in protein to help maintain muscle and rich in all nutrients to make sure you are keeping your body healthy. And also remember having a little cheat treat once or twice a week isnt going to ruin your results. So get out there and show off your new bod!
If you have any specific questions on a diet or exercise program for you please feel free to email me or contact me on facebook!

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