Is your enthusiasm for exercise fizzling out? Are there more excuses than workouts lately? If you feel your routine slipping and you want to do something about it, here is my best advice to avoid completing falling off the fitness wagon. Evaluate your current stats: Record your weight, body fat percentage, resting heart […]
Did you start exercising to lose weight? How’s it going? Chances are, you’re looking more “toned,” you have more energy, you’re sleeping better a night, aches and pains have subsided, you have more confidence, and maybe your clothes fit better. But the scale hasn’t budged. Don’t cancel your gym membership or fire your trainer, blame […]
Your chronological age is the number of birthdays you’ve celebrated. You can lie about it, but you can’t change it. Your biological age, your REAL age, is more malleable. It’s influenced by lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, stress management, sleep hygiene, and other factors all under your control. If you want to know how old you REALLY […]
Do you check your heart rate on your smart watch or activity tracker during workouts? Do you know what it means or where it should be? Heart Rate Training Zones are based on percentages of your maximum heart rate. To figure out your Zones, you’ll need to find your maximum heart rate and your corresponding […]
When we exercise, our heart speeds up, we sweat, muscles get tense, and our blood pressure rises. We are in “fight or flight.” Introducing a bit of stress this way is beneficial: our muscles grow stronger, our bones become denser, immunity improves, as our heart gets more efficient resting heart rate decreases, and we become […]
Q: My back hurts when I deadlift. Should I wear a weightlifting belt? A: The purpose of a weightlifting belt is performance enhancement, not injury prevention. When used correctly, it creates additional intra-abdominal pressure to support the back through a lift. The belt is worn for compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, Olympics lifts and […]
Stress has a bad rap. The right amount of stress at the right time, however, is key for our survival, our growth, and our happiness. A stressful event triggers our body’s stress response. The response ranges from jolting us into action in a life-threatening emergency to driving us to reach our goals and tackling our […]
Everything is hard before it is easy. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Having trouble committing to an exercise routine? When you do get to the gym and you see all those fit, dedicated people, are you envious of their level of discipline? Here’s the secret: they are no more disciplined than you. They have a habit […]
Q: A colleague asked “How do you stay motivated in your own training?” A: Sometimes it’s tough to find motivation for myself after a day of motivating other people. Here’s what helps me stay on track: Having someone else write my programming. Not just for the accountability factor, but also so I don’t have […]
Q: Bianca, corporate fitness student asked “Why don’t we bench press in class?” A: Bench press usually isn’t part of my group programming for a few reasons: In the limited amount of time we have, I want to include the exercises that will give them the most benefit for their time and effort. The goals […]