A lot of you may be wondering, are body-weight workouts enough for me to get stronger and see results? Many people underestimate the benefits body-weight exercises provide and limit their thinking to only one or two exercises, when there is literally hundreds of amazing varieties you could use. The best thing about these exercises is you are not limited with time and you need no equipment meaning you can get a great workout in almost anywhere! This can be a real game-changer for the person who travels a lot, or someone unable to get to the gym. These exercises are often prescribed by physical therapists and rehabilitation trainers to people with injury for they are excellent choices for improving stability of joints in a closed kinetic chain. And many of the advanced exercises like plyometric training are used by many elite sporting athletes for improving strength and power. In this article we will explain everything you need to know about body-weight exercises and provide you with several simple workouts for general muscle toning and losing fat no matter what level of fitness you think you are at!
Can You Build Muscle Size Using Functional Strength Training Methods?
I believe most people are aware of the amazing benefits to their body by using functional training exercises over machines and various isolation exercises for improving movement in daily life and sports. I have posted numerous articles and videos explaining this concept in great detail for many years and the knowledge and education of this is training method much better than what it was 10-15 years ago. However, there still is a misconception that these exercises will not help you improve muscular strength and in particular hypertrophy (muscle size). There are several reasons why people fail to put on muscle size when using a functional training approach, but what you will find it is not the exercises that are to blame. In this article, I will show you exactly what you need to know to improve your movement efficiency and muscle size if that is something you are wanting to do.
Why Most People Have Weak Lower Abdominal Muscles
If you have read any of my previous articles about core training you would know that I am not a big fan of isolated abdominal exercises. However, the question that often comes up is why do I use the lower abdominal test as part of our assessment? And why do I often prescribe it as an exercise to do at home with most beginners? It seems like a complete contradiction that I often rate isolated abdominal training very poorly, yet I still use an exercise like the lower abdominal leg test. There are several reasons for this as I will explain in great detail today. But the most interesting fact with this exercise is that 90% of all clients I test in our assessment fail! And it is the reasons they fail that find this exercise very useful.
When Is The Best Time To Stretch, Before Or After Exercise?
The importance of maintaining our flexibility or mobility of joints in order to move well is very important but just how is it best to do that. We have all been convinced that spending time holding static stretches is the best way and we should always do this before exercise to prevent any injuries. If there is one thing I have learned over the last 20 years of working in rehabilitation with people suffering severe injuries to elite athletes looking for sporting performance it is that there are no absolutes, there is no black and white, there is only a lot of grey area. And when it comes to stretching not only are many of the age old beliefs incorrect, but the exact opposite is what is required! But not always! This is definitely one of the most confusing topics to discuss, as many times I will contradict myself and say do not do this, and the very next minute I tell that is exactly what you should do! The reason for this contradiction is we are all very unique with what out body needs, we just have to be smart and listen to the signals our body is giving us. One thing is for certain we all need to devote some time to restoring optimal flexibility. How we might do this can vary a lot, which is what I will show you in this article.
How To Improve Endurance Without Losing Strength, Speed & Power
Ask anyone who plays in sports like AFL football and basketball how tough it can be to train for speed and power, yet at the same time try to improve your fitness endurance capacity. Many sports demand that you have high levels of strength and power and be able to sustain these repeated bursts in games that last between 2-3 hours. Physiologically the two processes of building strength, power, and speed versus endurance are completely opposed to each other and training both methods at the same time cancels out their effectiveness. This is the equivalent of trying to be a 100m sprinter and a marathon runner at the same time! All good strength coaches and elite athletes are aware of this principle and know that to improve performance these two opposing methods are best trained on their own which is known as periodization. Unfortunately, sporting codes that run for several months of the year do not allow for this perfect recipe to be adopted. Compromises must be made, and usually, it is strength, power, and speed sacrificed for fitness and endurance. But is there a way you can minimize the losses of strength and power by adopting smarter implementation of your fitness training? This is the question we explore in this article and provide you with some simple ideas you can implement into your training that could be a real game changer.
Are You Eating Enough Green Vegetables?
Only 25% of the people we talk to about food eat three or more servings of vegetables a day! And the ones they do happen to eat are not often green leafy vegetables or cruciferous veggies. If you are in the majority who is not eating enough veggies full stop, you are missing out big time on major benefits, as these food groups are one of the pivotal cornerstones to optimal health. Just doing more workouts is a waste of time if you are not getting your nutrition right. The more unhealthy you are the more important green vegetables & cruciferous foods become. Vegetables contain an array of antioxidants and other disease-fighting compounds that are very difficult to get anywhere else. Plant chemicals called phyto-chemicals can reduce inflammation and eliminate carcinogens, while others regulate the rate at which your cells reproduce, get rid of old cells and maintain DNA.
Try These Deadlift Variations To Find What Works Best For You
Without a doubt the Deadlift is one of the best exercises you can ever use in the gym. Whether you are a keen sporting athlete, someone recovering from injury, or even an 80 year old looking to maintain quality of life this exercise provides amazing benefits and is something we use everyday in life. Outside of the gym it is simply known as “bending”. For this reason we tend to refer to this as a foundational movement pattern first and an exercise second. As much as the benefits from learning and developing your skills with deadlift are amazing it also comes with high risk if performed poorly. Injuries such as herniated discs are so common with this movement with many of these occurring outside of a gym and from daily activities like picking up a pen off the floor. There are so many versions of this exercise it is important to know which one is best for your body right now. This article we will explain everything you need to know about deadlifts and which version works best for you.
Aim for Consistency and NOT Perfection with Your Health & Fitness Goals
People assume that because I live and breathe health and fitness I never make a mistake, or I never feel the urge to eat a hamburger with fries eat a piece of cheesecake and a have few glasses of red wine with friends or my family. And if someone happens to see me out at a function doing exactly this they will tend to give me a funny look as if to say you cannot eat that. The following question will usually be something like – “that’s okay because you will probably go for a 15km run after this to burn off all the calories.” While it is true I do not regularly eat junk food or over-eat sugary desserts, I do not avoid them altogether. And I definitely do not use exercise as a form of punishment to burn off the calories. The secret to staying in great shape and still being able to enjoy the finer things in life is CONSISTENCY! This means you must be consistent with your exercise, consistent with your nutrition, consistent with your sleep, and all the various other lifestyle factors that contribute to good health. The people who achieve great health and fitness results are not perfect all of the time and they do not try to be. They accept mistakes are a part of life and understand the secret to success is to aim for consistency.
8 Exercises That Help Improve Your Mobility and Stability at the Same Time!
Many people will tell you the answer to this question is to join a Yoga class. To some degree they are right as there are many poses that demand these two skills, however, not all Yoga classes provide this and not all of the exercises will relate to functional movement. Holding a pose for set period of time is great, but the timing is not what you would encounter in a real-life situation that often moves fast and requires instantaneous reflexes. There are many people who come to see me for help who possess great flexibility but lack joint stability and control of movements. On the flip side of this are others who have incredible stiffness but lack mobility. Finding ways to improve both of these essential skills is critical for improving their movement efficiency so they can achieve their goals with health and fitness. In this article, I will share with you a workout I have used successfully with many people in the past. Not all of the exercises may relate to your specific needs so you can easily add or subtract exercises as you feel necessary.
4 Brutal High Intensity Circuit Workouts To Accelerate Strength & Fitness Gains
One of the oldest and most commonly used training concepts used in many gyms around the world today would be high intensity circuit workouts. This is a workout that involves a series of exercises performed in rotation usually with minimal to no resting time producing huge levels of fatigue in a very short time. This is a great way to combine strength and fitness methods within the same workout and for this reason are used by many sporting athletes seeking to improve strength and endurance at the same time. They are also very popular among many gyms and group training classes and are often viewed upon as a very simple way to use strength training, when in reality it is far from that when you know how to manipulate certain variables with this method. There is many ways you can utilize the circuit method to achieve different types of goals than the general strength and fitness approach. In this article, we provide you with 4 different circuit workouts you can use to challenge your body in ways it has never seen.