Do You Really Need To Warm Up Before A Workout?
Why do you warm up before a workout? It’s all in the name. It’s warming up your muscles to help you avoid a potential injury. It’s like priming the pump and preparing both your body and your mind for the workout you face and doesn’t have to be hard. Jumping rope, doing jumping jacks or a brisk walk for ten minutes can be a good warm-up session.
You’ll raise your body temperature and stimulate your cardiovascular system.
If you’re a morning exerciser, your body temperature is at slightly lower temperature, since you just woke up. Warming up helps increase your body temperature and because of that, burns more calories and improves your workout. It also gets your heart ready for a tough workout, making the transition from sedentary to a demanding workout easier. It can help prevent a sudden rise in blood pressure that can come from a sudden demand on the heart.
You’ll improve your co-ordination.
A warm-up prepares the nervous system, too. That makes muscle control better, more agility and quicker reaction times. When warming up, always use dynamic stretches, which involve movement that loosens the muscles and joints, while static stretching, like touching your toes, simply stretches the muscles, pushing it past resistance. Dynamic stretches include mountain climbers, planks and lunges, besides the others already mentioned.
You’ll workout longer by preventing lactic acid build-up.
Lactic acid builds up in your blood if you don’t get enough oxygen or have a sudden increased demand for oxygen, which occurs if you go from sedentary to extremely active quickly. It builds up too quickly and can’t be removed by the body, making fluids in your body, such as your blood, become too acidic and causing an imbalance in the body’s pH level. Too much lactic acid in your blood can make your workout far more difficult at first and maybe even cause you to quit too early.
- Have you ever heard of “getting your head in the game?” Warming up helps you do that. It prepares you mentally, turning your thoughts away from the day’s stressors and onto exercise.
- Your muscles will be more pliable when you warm up the tissues. That means you’ll be far less likely to have muscle strain and far more delivery of oxygen and nutrients to them.
- A warm-up can help you talk yourself into exercising on days when you simply don’t feel like it. That easy warm-up may be just enough to help you feel better and overcome that feeling.
- At The Worx, we always emphasize dynamic stretching before working out and also include cool-down time to help you finish your workout safely.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx Fitness
Invest In Rest With Nighttime Yoga
I see so many of the same faces early in the morning at The Worx in Alexandria, VA. Many of you have told me how you love that early workout to jumpstart your energy for the day. While building your energy is important, if you don’t get enough rest, it will never happen. Even though working out can help you sleep better, sometimes you need a more right before bed to calm you down, and that’s where nighttime yoga can help.
A lot of things can keep you awake at night and cause a multitude of sleep disorders.
Do you have trouble going to sleep or simply poor quality sleep, waking up several times throughout the night? No matter what the problem, getting adequate and a more restful sleep is important to both your physical and mental health. Even if you normally sleep well, sometimes, stressful events can throw it off. During the pandemic lockdowns, recent studies showed that insomnia increased. Part of it was a change in routine, part was lack of exercise and some came from stress or depression.
Try this quick five minute yoga stretch to relax your body and sleep better.
What’s keeping you awake? Is it lower body aches and pains or those thousands of thoughts running through your brain? Stretching the muscles can help and so can deep breathing and meditation. Always breathe in through your nose, hold and breathe out through your mouth, doing each to a count of five or more to slow it. Start by sitting with legs outstretched, exhaling as you bend your body over your legs, grabbing your toes. If you prefer to stand, breathe out as you bend forward and allow your arms to dangle. Lift your arms parallel to the floor with palms downward facing as you exhale and stand up straight or sit up straight.
The key is calming the mind and breathing, but adding the cat-cow can help.
If you work at a desk all day, this exercise will release the tension you hold in your spine, shoulders, back or neck. Start with the cat part of the cat-cow position by beginning with knees and palms on the floor, your shoulders directly above your wrist and knees right below your hips. Inhale through your nose and as you exhale, round your back, pushing it toward the ceiling, attempting to get your belly button to touch your spine. Your head should be dropped with your chin tucked in toward the chest. Inhale deeply through your nose, hold and as you exhale, lift your head and tailbone as you drop your middle toward the floor with your body forming a U. You’re now in cow position. Alternate between the two.
- You can do the happy baby pose laying in bed. Lie on your back, bending at your hips and your knees, lifting the soles of your feet toward the ceiling. Grab the big toe of each foot, attempting to put your knees in your armpits. Breathe deeply as you do and rock from side to side for a more relaxed feeling.
- A yoga child pose can also relieve lower back and neck tension. Sit on your calves with your shins touching the floor and breathe in deeply. Fold forward and as you do, exhale, bending at the hips.
- Just rolling your head and stretching your neck can help relax muscles. Try other stretches before bedtime to lower your blood pressure and relax your body.
- Your personal trainer will be happy to create a relaxation routine you can use before bedtime. No one stretch works for everyone, so trying different ones can help.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx Fitness
Are All Processed Foods Bad For You?
I know this may sound contrary to most of the things you read, but not all processed foods are bad. Before you run out and buy a bag of Cheetos, thinking they may be healthy, let me qualify that. All foods are processed. In fact, the healthiest of foods, such as ripe, fresh tomatoes and broccoli are processed. Washing them means and removing dirt is part of processing fruits and vegetables. In most cases, processing is defined as being canned, cooked, frozen, packaged or changing their nutritional composition by adding preservatives, fortifying them or preparing them in a variety of ways.
Cooking food, such as tomatoes, may actually make them healthier.
While cooking destroys some nutrients, like vitamin C, it can actually enhance others. For instance, tomatoes contain lycopene, which is a strong antioxidant. Fresh tomatoes also contain vitamin C, another antioxidant. When you cook tomatoes, you destroy the vitamin C, but you also boost the amount of lycopene per serving. Now compare that to the processing of wheat into flour. Milling removes the bran and germ, leaving the endosperm. The bran has fiber and the germ has many nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, healthy fat and protein. That flour is then bleached and bromated. In fact, there’s no need for insecticide with white flour. Eating the flour kills bugs.
Another health processing is freezing.
Frozen fruits and vegetables are actually better for you than fresh. If the fruit or vegetable has to travel to market, it’s picked early, before it ripens, so it has fewer nutrients. Frozen vegetables and fruit are often processed right where they’re grown. They are left on the vine or tree longer and picked at optimum ripeness. When fresh fruits and vegetables are shipped to the store, it takes a while to get there and then sometimes they sit on the shelf for days before you buy them. Each day they lose a little nutrition. That’s not true with frozen fruits and vegetables. They’re as healthy as growing them yourself and eating them immediately from the garden.
Don’t avoid canned food either.
When you eat canned food, you’re probably eating healthy, but need to read the label. Some of the food contains additives, salt or added sugar. Canned tuna, salmon, canned fruit and vegetables can be an affordable option for people who want to eat healthy but are on a budget. Green beans, for example, often have added salt. You’re better off opting for a can with no salt added, but if it is, you still can use it even if you’re on a low sodium diet. Just dump the liquid and rinse the beans and most of it will go down the drain. If you read on the label that the fruit has you chose added sugar, don’t buy it. It is definitely not healthy. It’s linked to high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, dental carries and other diseases.
- Avoid the snacks and food with empty calories. If the first ingredient is white flour or sugar, walk away. Even food you might think that’s healthy isn’t. If you read the label on granola or protein bars, you’ll find they’re often nothing more than really expensive candy bars.
- Peanut butter is a healthy option for protein and will fill you up, so it makes a good snack when combined with apples. Read the label and make sure the only ingredient is peanuts.
- Another processed food that’s healthy is yogurt, but you have to be careful. Make sure it doesn’t contain extra sugar to improve the flavor and also has live bacteria. Opt for full fat yogurt if possible.
- The best way to choose healthy foods is to look for food with the fewest ingredients. You don’t have to destroy your budget to eat healthier. Wise use of canned and frozen food in your diet can help you keep costs lower.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx
Why Is A Food Journal Important?
Many of my clients at The Worx in Alexandria, VA, have found that keeping a food journal made big difference in not only how successful they were with weight loss, but also opening their eyes to the amount of food they eat without thinking. While they might skip lunch or dinner, they may snack a little at a time throughout the day. On the surface, it seems like they barely eat, but once they write everything down, it’s amazing the number of calories consumed and how unhealthy their choices were.
You have to record everything you eat or drink.
Luckily, technology makes it far easier to track your food intake. There’s no need to carry a pencil and paper with you to record it. You can use the note area in your phone and later transcribe it and add in the amount of calories. The more information you give, the more benefit you’ll get. If you record your mood when you eat something, you can learn if you’re a stress eater or are stuffing your emotions with food.
It may not be the food that’s the problem, but what you drink.
Some people pride themselves on eating healthy, but slug down a soft drink or two with every meal. Even if it’s liquid, it still counts toward calories and in the case of a soft drink, a lot of empty calories. Think of it this way, gravy is fattening and you probably don’t pour it generously on your potatoes for that reason. It’s also a liquid. Just one small fast food 16-ounce cup of cola with a meal increases your calorie intake by 130 calories. Drink three or four of those a day and you’re adding between 390 calories and 520 calories every day. If you drank four a day and gave them up, changing nothing else, in one week you’d lose a pound.
Is a food allergy or intolerance a potential problem?
Tracking your issues, whether it’s hives, diarrhea, bloating or gas, particularly if you’re food journaling to find out if you have a food allergy or intolerance, is important. If you record feeling bloated or sick after eating certain foods, you have more of an idea what’s making you sick, particularly if it occurs several times. You’ll have more information for your health care professional if it is severe enough to go, with anecdotal incidences that provide clues to your discomfort or illness.
- When you track your food, you can identify those times you eat mindlessly, like grabbing a few chips as you pass by a bowl or open bag or cleaning up that last bit of food from the serving bowl when you do dishes.
- Learning portion control is another great lesson from food journaling. You’ll be able to identify what a portion size of any food is after a while and be more aware of how much you really eat.
- You can monitor your balance of food and the percentage of carbs, fats and proteins that you consume daily to be more aware of your macronutrients.
- There are several studies that show the benefit of food journaling. One study noted that just by journaling, without dieting, people lost weight during a three-month period, compared to a control group that didn’t.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx
How Many Times Should You Workout A Week?
If you’ve wondered how often to workout a week, you might be asking the wrong question or have missing information, like what types of workouts should you do and should they be varied. While it’s true that working out at least three days a week is a great start, you can actually do more and get good results, but not if you’re doing the same type of exercise every day.
You need all types of training.
If you’re only doing cardio, you’re not doing yourself a favor. You need a variety of training to achieve fitness in all areas, strength, balance, flexibility and endurance, also known as cardio. You need balance when you workout. If you do strength training every day, you’ll actually be doing your body a disservice. Your body needs at least 48 hours to recover, since strength training causes micro tears in the muscles. If you don’t have that time for your body to heal, it can cause muscle loss and set you back, rather than aid you in achieving your goals.
Start slower and add to your workout.
If you haven’t worked out for a while, you shouldn’t start by planning to work out at high intensity for an hour a day. It’s better to start slowly and work up toward a tougher workout. The reason is simple. Those initial workouts prepare your body and get it ready for tougher ones. If you do too much initially, you’ll either end up sore, which can lead to skipping the next workout, or injured, which leads to skipping the next month of workouts. Starting with a half-hour three days a week and building up to an hour, can help boost your chances for success.
Supplementing your workout can be quite beneficial.
If you’re working hard in the gym or online three days a week doing flexibility training and strength training, with a touch of cardio, there’s nothing wrong with going for a walk on those days off or doing yoga. Those types of workouts help you stretch your muscle groups and participate in active recovery. They’re easy on the body, but increase circulation to boost the healing of muscle tissue.
- At The Worx, we can provide a program of healthy eating and exercise designed specifically for you. You won’t overwork your body, but will get in the right amount of exercise to see the transformation faster.
- The longer you participate in a fitness program, the more days a week you can exercise, as long as it’s not all strength training. For the average person who isn’t a bodybuilder, strength training should never be done two days in a row.
- No matter what your workout program, the key to success is consistency. Even the best program created by a personal trainer won’t work if you don’t do it on a consistent basis.
- If you’re unsure where to begin, at The Worx, we offer two weeks of free at home training. You’ll get zoom workouts, meal plans and so much more, which takes the confusion out of how many days a week to train.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx Fitness!
Can Running Make You Fat?
I love watching all my people change and become their best versions of themselves at The Worx in Alexandria, VA, whether it’s working with them online or in person. I have clients that have added to their workout at the gym or the online workout by running on days they don’t do the traditional workout programs. One client was visibly upset and asked whether what she read about running was true. Does running make you fat or is that another myth?
People tend to forget the most important part of a fitness program.
If you go out for a run to the local donut shop and stop for a while to sample their wares, you probably will gain weight if you go running regularly. Running does burn calories, but it can’t compensate for a bad diet. Just one donut contains about the same number of calories as you burn in a half hour run. You’d have to run for about two and a half hours to burn off the calories of a Big Mac, without the fries and drink. There’s a saying, “You can’t out=exercise a bad diet.” It’s very true.
Running can stress the body.
Not only does running long distances cause stress, which causes cortisol to be released—that increases belly fat, it also burns calories. However, when you run, those calories come from both fat and muscle tissue. Muscle tissue uses more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does, so the more you have, the higher your metabolism will be. If you burn muscle tissue during a run, you will actually be lowering your metabolism by burning off lean muscle tissue.
Do a combination of a healthy diet and a variety of exercises.
Any exercise is better than no exercise at all, but if you have strength training built into your program, weight loss will be easier. You’ll be building muscle tissue, thus boosting your metabolism and making pounds come off more quickly. There’s nothing wrong with going for a run on your days away from your regular program, particularly if you enjoy it, but don’t skimp on strength training either.
- When you go for a marathon run, you’re more likely to be either hungry throughout the day and eat more or lounge on the couch because you’re exhausted when you get home, burning fewer calories.
- Vary your intensity to create a HIIT—high intensity interval training—workout. HIIT workouts burn tones of calories, so if you’re going to run, make it worth your while on those days.
- Plan your snacks ahead. If you eat a small amount about an hour-and-a-half before a run, you’ll have the energy to run at your peak. Make sure you have a healthy snack following it. Peanut butter and jelly on whole grain or Greek yogurt with fruit makes a good combination of carbs and protein.
- At The Worx, we can create the best diet for you with meal plans to make it even easier. You’ll lose weight in a healthy manner when you follow these and never feel hungry.
For more information, contact us today at Team Worx Fitness!
How Yoga Can Be Good For You
We use a wide variety of workouts at The Worx in Alexandria, VA. We incorporate many of the yoga moves, particularly for flexibility training. Like strength training with weights, or running for endurance, yoga is great to help you improve your flexibility and protect you from injury. It improves your range of motion and is good for you. Many of the yoga moves and positions are used in traditional exercise programs, since they work. My goal is to always use the best exercises possible to get the fastest progress.
Exercise helps reduce chronic pain and yoga can be a start.
Whether you want to increase flexibility, which can reduce pain or improve your muscle strength and tone, which helps reduce pressure on joints and lower pain, yoga positions can help. Even though these movements may look easy, they still burn calories, which can help with weight control. Like any type of exercise, it improves respiration and boosts your energy level, lowering blood pressure in the process, too.
Many of the yoga poses are quite similar to western bodyweight exercises.
No matter what continent you’re from, everyone’s body gets the same benefits from doing certain types of exercise. If you do lunges, you’re making moves that are similar to the warrior position in yoga. Like all exercise, yoga can help with lower back pain, arthritis, headaches and improved cardio and circulatory health. Like other exercises that build strength and flexibility, it can protect your body from injury.
You’ll build strength with yoga workouts, too.
You might wonder why I promote yoga. It’s because I promote all types of exercise and am constantly working to help you reach your goals and get your healthiest. When you come to The Worx or become an online client, you’ll get the best of all types of exercise. For instance, the phalakasana forearm movement is called the forearm plank at the gym, but it’s the same move that works the whole body.
- To get the most out of your exercise program, combine it with a program of healthy eating. Your body needs the nutrients from healthy food to be its strongest and to lose weight. No matter how hard you workout, if you eat junk, you’ll delay your weight loss or compromise it.
- Is stress a problem in your life? Just like any type of exercise, yoga helps.
- If you want to sleep better at night, you can turn to traditional exercise programs or turn to yoga. Both help you sleep sounder, with a higher quality of sleep.
- When you learn exercises at The Worx, we also focus on when to inhale or exhale. Breathing techniques are important in both traditional Western exercise programs and yoga. The correct breathing techniques can help relax you and improve your workout.
For more information, contact us today at The Worx Fitness
Is It Safe To Workout While Pregnant?
Clients often ask, “Is it safe to workout while pregnant?” Most know that I’ve had three babies, so they feel that I’m an expert in that area, particularly compared to most male trainers. The answer is yes, but with qualifications. It actually depends on when you started working, the type of exercise you do, what month of pregnancy and the intensity of the workout. It’s one reason I tell women that they always should check with their doctor first. With that being said, exercise during pregnancy can actually make delivery easier.
In some situations, unguided exercise or exercise in general need to be avoided.
While I’m a huge fan of exercise during pregnancy, since it offers so many benefits, there are some conditions and situations where it could be dangerous or only done after consulting your doctor. If you have a preexisting condition like diabetes, asthma or heart disease, always check with your health care professional before starting any program of exercise. Spotting, a weak cervix, low placenta or anyone with a history of miscarriages or premature births should be very careful and stick strictly to the recommendations of your medical expert, no matter how easy the exercise program is.
If you’ve never exercised before getting pregnant, take it easy.
If you led an active life before getting pregnant, most physicians agree that continuing exercise should be okay, depending on the type of exercise you did. For those that lived a sedentary lifestyle, stick with simpler exercises, like walking. They should be low impact, such as riding a stationary bike or using a step machine. Swimming is an excellent exercise if you’re pregnant and never exercised before pregnancy.
Even if you were active before you became pregnant, you should still follow some rules.
Doing high impact exercises, those that involve contact or falling should be avoided. These include exercises that involve jumping, hopping, bouncing or skipping. The jarring movements and movements that shock the body, or participating in basketball, skiing or volleyball, where you have contact or shock to the body should be off your list during pregnancy. Some exercises you might not consider potentially dangerous, but are, are those that put pressure on the abdomen, leg lifts, full sit-ups, deep knee bends and toe touching fall in that category.
- Form is extremely important, especially the further along you are. If you’re stretching, don’t hold your breath or bounce. Twisting at the waist and doing HIIT workouts should be avoided.
- There’s a lot of benefit that working out brings. It can help you have a safer, quicker delivery. You can use light weights for exercise, just don’t do lifting laying on your back.
- The kneeling and standing pelvic tilt are both great exercises for back pain. Squats help with delivery, just as kegels will. If you did aerobic exercises before pregnancy, don’t quit as long as they’re safe. You need to have good cardio workouts to make delivery easier.
- The temperature of the room or area where you exercise is important. Avoid working out in the heat. It’s always best to error on the side of caution, since you’re protecting more than your own health, you’re protecting the health of the baby, too.
For more information, contact us today at The Worx Fitness
How To Stay Fit As You Get Older
At The Worx in Alexandria, VA, I work with people of all ages. I see how discouraging it can be older and see how fast the younger people make fitness gains. It’s not only harder to get fit as you get older, it’s also harder to stay fit as you get older, too. Hormone levels drop and make it more difficult to build muscles. It’s also harder to maintain gains than it is for younger people. Sarcopenia—age-related muscle loss—is the reason for that. Your body changes as you age. Not only are hormone levels lower, processing protein for fuel is more inefficient. Nerve cells die and inflammation can cause changes.
There’s hope on the horizon, don’t get discouraged.
Do you want to reverse the signs of aging, then it’s time to start working out and get back into shape. Strength-training helps. Whether you use bands, bodyweight workouts or weights, it can help build muscle mass and reverse some of the signs of aging. You can maintain muscle mass and even build it. That can improve your quality of life.
If you want great results faster, HIIT—high intensity training—can help.
Keeping your heart healthy is important as you age. You can do that with cardio workouts and the best way can be HIIT training. It improves your body faster and can be done with any type of workout. It’s simple, just adjust the intensity of the workout continuously. Exercise at top intensity for a few seconds and then slow it down to moderate output or recovery intensity. Continue to alternate between high intensity and recovery throughout the workout.
Don’t forget that excess weight increases your risk of serious diseases.
If you’re older and weigh too much, you could be setting yourself up for a serious disease, such as diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure. If you already have those problems, exercising, a healthy diet and losing weight can help. It’s never too late to start to shed those unwanted extra pounds. You’ll probably find that as you lose weight, all those joint pains will improve too.
- Don’t discount walking as part of your exercise regimen. A brisk walk improves muscle mass and bone strength. You can even modify a walk and make it a HIIT workout. Just adjust your speed throughout.
- Flexibility training is particularly important as you age, so is balance training. Both help you avoid injury and keep you self-sufficient.
- Staying fit is good for both the mind and the body. Mental issues, such as depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s are helped with regular exercise. It even boosts cognitive functioning.
- You’ll get more out of life when you workout. Just enjoying the social part of coming to the gym and being with people can improve your mental attitude. You’ll also be fit enough to keep up with the whole family and enjoy more family fun.
For more information, contact us today at The Worx
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- …
- 20
- Next Page »
© 2022 | TEAM WORX PERFORMANCE