Fitness & Wellness

Clients who workout in Alexandria, VA, at the Worx, do so for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is to help improve their overall health. Working out affects the balance of hormones in the body, such as cortisol and hormones affect your health. So while most just want to get into shape, the added benefit of balancing hormones is an added benefit. Hormones affect your health. They are the messengers that trigger all the functions in the body to keep it functioning at its best.

Stress hormones not only affect your health, they affect your appearance, too.

If you find that all your fat collects in your abdomen and your waistline just keeps getting bigger, you probably have a problem with stress and the accumulation of cortisol. Stress hormones make changes in the body to prepare it to fight or run. There are receptors for cortisol, one of those hormones, in almost all cells in the body. It’s the messenger that affects your memory, controls blood sugar levels, maintains blood pressure and regulates your metabolism.

Too much cortisol in your body contributes to health issues.

Do you have a rapid heart beat? That’s probably from too much cortisol that wasn’t burnt off with exercise. It does more than just increase your heart rate, it increases the potential for obesity and is one of the leading causes for heart disease and high blood pressure. One way you can improve your health is to keep stress at a minimum. It’s not an easy task, but finding ways to prevent it before it gets out of control, such as meditation or even immediate exercise like running up and down stairs can relieve the stress-response quickly.

There are all types of hormones, including sex hormones that contribute to health issues.

Stress can affect the balance of female hormones, just as toxins or poor nutrition can. If a woman has too little progesterone and too much estrogen, it can show itself with weight gain on the hips, thighs and abdomen, fibroid tumors and a low sex drive. Gall bladder disease, heavy bleeding, painful periods and mood swings are also symptoms. Women aren’t the only ones to face health risk by hormonal imbalance. There are issues with both too much testosterone and too little for men. Too much or too little can create heart issues, with too much increasing the risk of prostate cancer and too little causing weight gain.

• If you’re having problems sleeping at night, maybe your hormones are out of whack. The pineal gland creates serotonin that affects your ability to sleep. Adequate sleep is important to good health.
• The system that creates hormones is the endocrine system with the hypothalamus as the major gland. Hormones control thirst, sleep, body temperature and more.
• One of the most severe hormonal problems comes from too much insulin or too little, also known as type 1 diabetes or hypoglycemia.
• Exercise helps regulate many hormones. Eating healthy is another way to help boost hormonal health. Come in for a free training session and see how good you really can feel.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx by Maia

It’s so much fun to watch clients in Alexandria, VA, get fit and make changes not only in their body, but also in their life. Whether it’s going from fitness zero to fitness hero or helping someone make the changes to extend their lives, it all brings satisfaction. It’s also why I do it. One of my biggest pleasures is seeing girls gone strong. Just thinking back and reading about the lives of women 30, 40 or 50 years ago, building muscles wasn’t encouraged or even suggested in many cases. Stick thin women, like Twiggy in the 1960s and the scary skinny models in the 2010s are gladly out of vogue and healthy and strong women are now a hit.

Healthy with lean muscle mass is what it’s all about today.

I love seeing women come into the gym, a little intimidated by the strength building workouts. It always makes me smile when they realize how great they feel when they do strength building and learn all the workouts that involve barbells and dumbbells. I’ve seen them go from intimidated to getting excited when it’s strength building day. I’ve even caught some flexing in front of the mirror and smiling. That’s okay. I do it too.

Why is getting strong important. Let’s start with weight loss.

One of the best types of exercise for weight loss is strength building. While running and other aerobic workouts will burn tons of calories, there’s no discrimination in whether those calories came from burning fat or muscle tissue. In fact, running will burn lean muscle tissue. Strength building burns lots of calories, too, but it also helps build muscle tissue. Why is that important? The more muscle tissue you have, the more calories you’ll burn 24/7. That means strength building will not only burn calories now, it will build muscles to burn more later.

How can getting stronger help keep you healthier.

Women are protected from high blood pressure and even bone loss, with hormones before menopause. Unfortunately, after menopause, that protection disappears. It’s at that time, that they’re more susceptible to these conditions, particularly osteoporosis, which can make bones fragile and impact lifestyle dramatically. Getting stronger at an early age and maintaining that strength, helps reduce the potential for both high blood pressure and osteoporosis.

• Seriously, one of the great motivators to do strength training is the fact that exercise helps slow the aging process. It does it in a number of ways, from lengthening cellular telomeres to increased circulation.
• Getting strong can help keep you safer. While you may never need to defend yourself, you’ll be fit enough to do it. Best of all, you’ll look more confident and feel more confident, which is a huge deterrent to anyone planning harm.
• Being safer by being stronger is more than just defending yourself from others, it also prevents injuries from doing every day tasks. You’ll be functionally fitter when you get stronger, no matter whether you’re a male or female.
• At the Worx by Maia, we offer a free week of boot camp to let you see how great getting strong and fit can feel. Try it. You’ll be hooked on that feeling.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx by Maia

While I love our P90X training, some of our members swear by the small group training or Beach Body Live events as the most fun. It’s important to enjoy what you do and also to try new things to get fit. In fact, finding more fun ways to improve your fitness is a great addition to any fitness program. It creates variety that even makes your normal workout more enjoyable because you aren’t doing the same thing every day.

Have you considered rock climbing or hiking as an alternative to working out.

You might not want to go rock climbing every day or hike through the hills, but both activities will certainly add to your overall fitness. If you go to the gym every other day, use your days off to do active things when you can. It’s one of the reasons you’re working out, so you have the energy for more fun in your life. The best type of workout from hiking comes when you tackle uneven terrain and keep a brisk pace.

A night of dancing can be fun and a great workout.

Going out to boogie down can burn tons of calories, boost your flexibility and improve your stamina. You do have to make sure you do a ton of dancing. Just sitting at the table and ordering a drink or two is counterproductive. Stick with water or just one drink to help keep calories down. Go with someone who loves to dance so you aren’t warming the chair all night. If going out to dance isn’t your thing, turn on the music loud and dance at home. Get the whole family involved. It doesn’t have to look fantastic, just be energetic.

Swimming is perfect when you want to burn calories and enjoy the day.

Whether you hit the beach or go to a pool, doing laps can be enjoyable and provide great exercise. Some pools offer water aerobics, but if your favorite spot doesn’t, you can use your gym workout in the water. It will definitely be tougher when you try it in water. You can also play water games, such as water polo or race the kids across the pool.

• Get out in nature and enjoy a walk, run or bike ride. Vary the speed and you’ll create a HIIT—high intensity interval training—workout by walking, running or bike riding at top speed for a few minutes and then going at recovery speed for a few minutes.
• Shoot hoops with the kids or play a rousing game of tag or hide and seek. Playing with the kids can be super active and exercise can give you the energy to do it. However, doing it can also be great exercise.
• Try Parkour. You’ve seen kids do it. They use the environment as their training tool. From jumping over tables to trying to run up a wall, Parkour can be a lot of fun, but you have to use common sense and safety, too.
• Take adult gymnastics or adult ballet classes. Both of these will get you into shape, while providing an outlet that’s fun and gives you a special talent you can show off to friends.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx

Everyone has heard of someone that wants a breast implant to get a Hollywood looking bosom, but most people aren’t aware that there are women whose bust size is so big, it causes pain and discomfort. If you’re one of those people, you don’t have to go under the knife to get a bust reduction. There are methods and exercises to reduce breast size naturally.

Excess breast tissue is adipose fat.

Breasts are made of nothing more than supportive tissue, glandular tissue and adipose fat. The glandular tissue is what produces milk after a woman has a baby. The adipose fat is what makes up the size of the breast. The more fat you have, the bigger your breasts. Hormonal changes affect the size of the breast, but so does weight loss. If you’re overweight and lose a significant amount of weight, your breast size will also change. A healthy diet can help you do this.

Exercise can help reduce those large breasts.

The right type of exercises help tone the breasts and makes them perkier, while others can reduce the size, while still improving their appearance. A wall press, incline press and decline press can do the latter and improve your appearance as it reduces pain. A wall press is an upper body push up while standing, using the wall as you would use the ground. If you have weights and a table, lay on your back with a weight in each hand and lift your hands toward the ceiling. It’s an incline press if the back of the table is up at an angle lifting your upper body and a decline press if it’s flat.

A push up builds upper body strength and can reduce the amount of upper body fat.

Add a pullover to that pushup and you’ll tone your chest muscles, while reducing the size of your breasts to improve their overall appearance. A pullover requires a lightweight weight. Hold the weight in both hands as you stand with your legs apart, weight in front of you and back straight. Raise your hands slowly until they and the weight are above your head. Hold then slowly lower the weight behind your head as far as possible. Hold and return to starting position by raising the weight above your head and back down in front of you. Repeat.

• The chest press is one of the best breast reduction exercises around. Lay flat on your back on the bench with leg on the ground. Hold weights in each hand with arms extended out, then bend the elbows 90 degrees until they’re perpendicular with the body. Hold, return, repeat.
• Do some cardio exercises for shedding weight. Cardio burns calories and the more you can burn, the more fat you use for energy. Run, jump or do a session of HIIT. It’s all good.
• Try a yoga pose for some benefits. The tadasana or palm tree pose is effective. Start with your hands in front of you with fingers interlocked and feet apart. Raise your hands above your head and push the palms toward the ceiling. Push upward hard, lifting your rib cage as you raise your heels.
• Come to the Worx, where we can help you achieve any fitness goal. I’ll be happy to create a workout to help you get the transformation you hoped to achieve and create the body you’ve always wanted.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx by Maia

If you come to The Worx in Alexandria, VA, you know that working out can make you feel great, both physically and mentally. There’s a reason for that. Whether it’s boosting your cognitive functioning or raising your spirits, fitness helps with mental health in a number of ways. One of the biggest ways is to burn off the hormones created by stress, which can clear your mind and help you to think better. Those stress hormones are for running or fighting if there’s danger and the changes they make in your body cause health issues and mental fog if they’re not burned off with exercise that simulates running or fighting.

Studies show that exercise can actually help depression and anxiety.

There’s been a lot of interest recently in using exercise as an adjunct therapy for people who are depressed or anxious. It works for a number of reasons. Eliminating the stress hormones is just one. However, the body also produces hormones that make you feel good. Studies show that for depression or anxiety, even moderate exercise several times a week can get great results and eliminate the need for medication.

If you want more brain power, try working out.

A number of studies show that exercise is good for your mental functioning. It gives you more brain power and increases cognitive abilities. Several studies have been done using exercise as a method of fighting dementia and mental decline. Some show that cardio can actually boost the creation of new brain cells—neurogenesis. That improves how well the brain performs. It strengthens the hippocampus, which also boosts memory.

Lack of sleep can leave you loopy and fuzzy brained.

If you’ve ever tried to sit through a class and tried to learn after staying up late several nights in a row, you know that too little sleep can cause a decline in cognitive functioning. Insomnia or trouble sleeping can interfere with your thought processes, but insomnia can be prevented in many cases. Working out helps you sleep sounder and get the right type and amount of sleep that can improve your mental functioning.

• If you don’t believe that working out can help you eliminate anxiety, consider people who pace. There’s a reason they do that. It’s calming. The next time you’re anxious, run up and down a set of stairs until you feel exhausted. You’ll be amazed at how much it helps.
• Sometimes, lack of confidence can muddle your brain and put it on the back burner. Working out not only improves your posture, it boosts your confidence. Not only will you be looking more confident, you’ll feel more confident, too.
• When you workout, you’ll increase your heart rate and that can stimulate the body to create neurohormones that help improve your mood, while improving cognitive functioning.
• Come into the Worx for a free small group session and you’ll see how great you feel after you’ve exercised. Our six week transformation program not only helps transform your body, but also your mind.

For more information, contact us today at The Worx by Maia