Archive for June, 2009
Roll away the pain
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have ever been in or trained at Force Fitness you know that we are huge advocates of foam rolling. Foam rollers are one the most important training tools in our arsenal! I honestly believe that everyone should have one at home and probably thier office to help alleviate a lot of shoulder, back and knee pain that everyone seems to have now.
If you are only foam rolling when you are training, or (gasping in disbelief) not at all you aren’t doing yourself any favors. Foam rolling is a simple and effective means to break up scar tissue and knots in the muscle that cause a lot of pain and imbalances. There is reason it is called the poor man’s massage tool! It is cheap and can be done anywhere at anytime. Well, you might get some funny looks carrying around a foam roller and lying down on the sidewalk or at the store to get in some foam rolling, but I have seen a lot more insane things in Bloomington! Keeping one in the living room and getting on the roller in the morning and evening should suffice.
Here is an excerpt from a recent article I wrote for athletes warm ups. It can be applied to any one so use the info and get started with your rolling!
Unfortunately the pictures were too big to place in this post so hopefully you get the jist of each position from the description.
The beginning of the warm up always begins with the athletes using a foam roller. Foam rolling is a self-myofacsial release used to improve the quality of the muscle tissue. The foam roller will increase blood flow to the muscles and help to work out “knots” in the muscle tissue. It has been called the poor man’s massage therapy. Using the foam roller will give you many of the benefits of static stretching plus the benefit of breaking down scar tissue and adhesions within the muscle and its fascia. The roller works by manipulating the Golgi Tendon Organ and causing a relaxation within the muscle itself. The roller will be focused on the upper back, pectorals, latisimus dorsi, posterior hips, hamstrings, adductors, abductors, hip flexors and quads. The time spent on each area is athlete dependent. We recommend between 10 and 15 rolls per area at a minimum. If you have trouble areas or “hot spots” you will give more attention to these areas. Up to ten or twelve minutes can be allocated prior to beginning the actual warm up for athletes to foam roll.
Areas to foam roll:
Upper Back/Thoracic Spine
Lie on the foam roller placing it horizontally across your back right underneath your scapula. Pull your arms in front of you placing your elbows together and lift your hips off of the ground. Using your feet to move your upper body roll back and forth over the roller feeling for any tender areas or “hot spots”. You may adjust your weight as needed to isolate certain areas.
Pectorals
Lie on the roller face down with the roller at a 45 degree angle to your body. The roller will be placed at the top of your pectoral muscle and right below your deltoid. You will apply as much weight as needed and move across the roller rolling up and down your pectoral muscles.
Latisimus Dorsi
Lie on one side of your body and place the roller under one of your arms right under your arm pit. Reaching your arm straight above your head you will roll up and down your latisimus dorsi and into the rear deltoid region.
Gluts/Piriformis
Sitting on the roller with it perpendicular to your body you will roll your glut muscles and those surrounding your hip. With a straight leg tilt to one side and roll the entire area surrounding the posterior hip. You will then cross over the leg of the hip you are rolling and roll the hip area again.
Hamstrings
Placing the roller at the top of the femurs on your hamstrings you will roll across the roller. If you wish you may change the position of your feet to isolate the different hamstring muscles. You may also roll one leg at a time to increase the pressure on the foam roller. To do this simply slide to the edge of the roller.
Hip Flexors
Lie face down and place the foam roller under your hip flexors. To find the correct placement flex one hip as if you were running and find the place where your hip creases. You will roll in this small area and to the side of this area. It is easiest, especially for male athletes to lean slightly to one side and roll each hip flexor area independently. You may also roll one side a time.
Quadriceps
In the same position when rolling the hip flexors you will simply slide the roller down to the top of the thigh and roll each quad from the t of the thigh to the top of the knee.
Hip Adductors
Lie face down and place the roller parallel to your body on one side. You will then bring your leg up to the side and place it over the roller with a bent knee. Place your leg with the inside of the thigh touching the roller. You will then apply pressure by picking your hips off the ground and rolling from the inside top of the knee to the top of the inner thigh.
Illiotibial Band
Lie on your side and place the foam roller under your hip on the outside of your thigh. You will then place the top leg over the bottom leg and position it on the floor as seen in the picture. Roll from the top of the outer thigh to the top of the knee. This is a painful position for many athletes and they can alleviate some of the pressure by pushing off the floor with the top foot. As you progress with rolling you may need to stack your legs to apply enough pressure to the illiotibial band.
Gastrocnemeus/Soleus
You sit facing up and with your legs straight. Place the roller under the bottom of your knees. You will then roll over your gastrocnemeus and soleus muscles.
You can progress to rolling with a massage stick or a tennis ball if the foam roller becomes ineffective. Rolling your gastrocnemeus, pectorals, gluts and piriformis with the tennis ball is extremely effective.
If you would like to get a foam roller Perform Better is the best place! Follow the equipment link at the top of this page, or CLICK HERE to get your roller!
Kettle Bell Fat Loss Training Tips
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday I had the honor and pleasure of heading down to Louisville, Ky for a closed door invite only Kettlebell Athletics Certification. My good friend and colleague Pam MacElree was kind enough to give me a thorough beating with a few kettlebell workouts and also got me all caught up on the latest in kettlebell training. Pam runs Kettlebell Athletics with Jason C Brown.
Pam definitely humbled me with the workouts and kettlebell movements that we learned yesterday. She taught me a lot of easy and effective teaching tools so that we are able to use more of this awesome tool in our training programs.
I wanted to share a little bit of what I learned yesterday with you and give you few ways that kettlebells can be used in fat loss workouts.
There are numerous benefits of using a kettlebell including time, space requirements, and effectiveness. One of the best things about kettlebells is that they can be used to increase your cardiovascular fitness, strength, power and stabilization. When using kettlebells you are using a lot of large muscles so that you create a huge demand on the body. This will cause a huge spike in your metabolism and allow you to burn more fat.
Kettlebell training also allows you to easily perform circuits using a kettlebell, body weight, and other tools that allow for easy transitions. A great fat burning circuit might be KB Swing, Push Up, Pull Up, KB Two Hand High Pull and Burpees. If you perform each of these movements or exercises for 45 seconds in a continuous circuit and rest for 90 seconds at the end of each round you will be well on your way to a smaller pant size. The circuit should be performed 3-5 times for best results.
I will post a quick video later in the week showing you how I am using kettlebells and my new knowledge in my own workouts to keep me in tip top summer shape. I am all about short and intense workouts during this busy time of year!
Keep an eye out, we might just be starting a new kettlebell conditioning class for everyone to try!
If you want to experience the awesomeness of kettlebell training leave me a comment and let me know!
Boot Camp Workout of the Week!
Posted by: | CommentsFathers Day Fat Loss Tips
Posted by: | CommentsFather’s Day is rapidly approaching this weekend and I hope that all the fathers out there have a great day and weekend, you certainly deserve it! I hope that you call or visit your Dad on this special day to let them know how much you appreciate everything that they have done and currently do for you.
I get to see a lot of dads at Force Fitness either bringing in their young athletes or training themselves. Unfortunately most of these dads are really out of shape and let themselves get out of shape taking care of their families. Alot of dads are in the worst shape of their lives and it only gets worse.
As men get older we tend to gain fat around our mid section. We get that typical beer belly! The hard, protruding belly that hangs out over their belt. It isn’t pretty and it sure isnt’ healthy. In fact it is an indicator for Metabolic Syndrome X.
This is a very scary disease, and while you or your dad might not have it yet it could not be far off.
Here is the definition of Metaboic Syndrome X from the American Heart Association:
What is the metabolic syndrome?
The metabolic syndrome is characterized by a group of metabolic risk factors in one person. They include:
- Abdominal obesity (excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen)
- Atherogenic dyslipidemia (blood fat disorders — high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol — that foster plaque buildups in artery walls)
- Elevated blood pressure
- Insulin resistance or glucose intolerance (the body can’t properly use insulin or blood sugar)
- Prothrombotic state (e.g., high fibrinogen or plasminogen activator inhibitor–1 in the blood)
- Proinflammatory state (e.g., elevated C-reactive protein in the blood
The dominant underlying risk factors for this syndrome appear to be abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is a generalized metabolic disorder, in which the body can’t use insulin efficiently. This is why the metabolic syndrome is also called the insulin resistance syndrome.
Other conditions associated with the syndrome include physical inactivity, aging, hormonal imbalance and genetic predisposition.
Some people are genetically predisposed to insulin resistance. Acquired factors, such as excess body fat and physical inactivity, can elicit insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome in these people. Most people with insulin resistance have abdominal obesity. The biologic mechanisms at the molecular level between insulin resistance and metabolic risk factors aren’t fully understood and appear to be complex.
How is the metabolic syndrome diagnosed?
There are no well-accepted criteria for diagnosing the metabolic syndrome. The criteria proposed by the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III), with minor modifications, are currently recommended and widely used.
The American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommend that the metabolic syndrome be identified as the presence of three or more of these components:
- Elevated waist circumference:
Men — Equal to or greater than 40 inches (102 cm)
Women — Equal to or greater than 35 inches (88 cm) -
Elevated triglycerides:
Equal to or greater than 150 mg/dL - Reduced HDL (“good”) cholesterol:
Men — Less than 40 mg/dL
Women — Less than 50 mg/dL - Elevated blood pressure:
Equal to or greater than 130/85 mm Hg - Elevated fasting glucose:
Equal to or greater than 100 mg/dL
Carrying around a beer belly is like holding a ticking time bomb next to your chest! Although it might affect more women than men, there is no shortage of middle aged men walking around with a belly that hangs out over their belt!
This is a scary, scary disease, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. One of the causes of Metabolic Syndrome is lack of exercise and poor nutritional habits.
Here is our top 5 fitness tips to save the lives of all the fathers out there:
1) Stop guzzling those ice cold brews!
It isn’t hard to imagine most fathers with a six pack in the fridge but not on their stomach. If you put enough beer down your throat to fill a keg, guess what your belly will look like?
Alcohol makes you fat because of its absorption into the blood stream and nessecity of its processing through the liver. Because it is a toxin it has to be processed and during this process a another waste product is produced called acetyl CoA, which signals the body to produce and store more body fat.
Along with this waste it has also been shown that the body cannot process and burn off body fat as long as their is alcohol in your system. So if you are out throwing back a few cold ones you will be stopping your fat loss in its tracks!
Do you have several hours or even the entire day to waste not burning fat?
One 12-ounce beer can halt your fat loss for up to 6 hours! One day out drinking can halt your fat loss for a long, long time! I will let you do the math.
If you are a hard liquor drinker and mix your drinks with sugary drinks or mixers you are doing even more damage by raising your insulin levels and promoting more fat storage.
Doesn’t all this sound like a recipe for a keg gut and not a six pack?
If you do have to drink choose wine, or hard liquor only or a “light” beer. These aren’t perfect subsitutes but they will help. You should also limit your drinking to 1 or 2 nights a week max and just 1 or 2 drinks on these nights.
Don’t kill your ability to burn fat with your brain cells. I love beer as much as the next guy, but I can assure you having a six pack under your shirt is more rewarding than any night out!
2) No more chicken legs!
Most guys love the idea of lifting hard and heavy. That is fine, but not at the expense of training your lower body with the same intesity and frequency as your upper body. Training the lower body with big compound movements that use a lot of muscle mass burns up a lot more calories than benching and curling all day long.
Johnny Bravo doesn't train his legs!
Perform workouts that include the entire body (leg curls and extensions don’t count fellas) and you will be better off than 90% of the guys out there. If you want to look like a light bulb (think big up top with no support on the bottom) keep doing what you are doing.
If you are training for fat loss there is no better way to speed up your metabolism and crank up your fat burning potentional than to perform squats, deadlifts, lunges, split squats, and all the other variations of good lower body lifts.
3) Pull yourself together…
This directly relates to the previous tip but it is worth mentioning. You should stop doing so many bench presses and curls and start doing some pulling exercises to balance yourself out.
Just because you can’t see your traps, lats, and rhomboids in the mirror everyday doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. I know, I know, every guy wants a great set of guns to show off to the ladies. You have to get serious and start doing some rows and pull ups to balance out those huge guns and massive chest.
Don’t do a million bench press reps to build up your chest to stick out further than you gut! There also isn’t a much better exercise for the biceps than pull ups or chin ups.
So get yourself to a bar, no not that kind, and starting doing some pull ups.
4) Eat yourself sexy!
You don’t have to eat rabbit food or eat like the guys in the NutriSystem commercials to get in great shape. In fact I wouldn’t recommend touching the bite sized protions of flavorless cardboard that they call food. I know it is easy to convince an ex-high school football player that sits on teh couch all day that he will get in great shape just like Dan Marino and Chris Berman but you won’t. I would bet a lot of moolah on the fact that they didn’t eat any of those crappy meals they show you on TV.
Start by eating healthy protions of lean meats and veggies. This will take you a long way and tastse a heck of a lot better than getting a prepackaged, preservative filled meal shipped to your door.
Don’t think that you can eat the same foods that you have eaten to get that belly and eat them to ge lean and sexy! You are the one that controls what goes into your mouth and ultimately the only one that controls how lean you look.
5) Seek the advice of a fitness professional.
I might be a bit biased about this but I think that most people should hire a coach to get them on the right path at least noce in their life. I have hired coaches to get me to my goals. At Force Fitness we have coaches that help us with our business.
Guys are mostly intimitaded and scared to hire a coach or come to a boot camp because they are afraid it will be painfully obvious how out of shape they have let themselves get. It is an ego thing. Most guys think they know it all, few us really do! (The one exception being me obviously) **This was a joke**.
Go out and get yourself in a boot camp that can help you move better and look better. Hire a trainer or coach to help you design a program that will get you on the right track. It will be worth every penny and more to just have the accountability and guidance of a qualified fitness professional.
If you are tired of spinning your wheels you will simply do what most smart people do and outsource your fitness needs to someone that really knows what they are doing.
I could go on and on with tips and advice for all the guys out there. I will leave you with just these 5 things to get you started. Make Father’s Day something really special and change your life or someone elses. Share these tips with your dad or a dad that you know so that they can make the steps needed change their lifes and be able to play with their kids for years to come!
Have a Happy Father’s Day! Thanks for everything Dad and Terry!
Be Force Fit!
Ryan
Crazy Summer Fat Loss
Posted by: | CommentsSummer is a rough time to stay on track with your fat loss goals or any fitness goal for that matter.
It is nice outside and hard to get into the gym when there are so many fun things to do outside. It is hard to stay on track with your nutrition when there are cook outs, get togethers, parties, weddings, and days on the lake with plenty of adult beverages!
And VACATIONS! I don’t even need to tell you the troubles that arise with vacations and your six pack!
There are a few things that will help you stay on track and make great progress while still having fun.
Summer Fit Tip #1
If you are invited to a party, cook out or other big eating event make sure that you bring something that you are able to eat without much regret. Most of the time you will bring an item with you for everyone to eat, if this is that case make sure that you make something really tasty that is also good for you. We ahve given numerous recipes and will be bringing you more that you can take with you and have without having to loosen up the belt a notch or two.
A cookout you might not want to go to!
Here is a great recipe for you to work with:
Raspberry Spinach Salad
1 large tub of organic baby spinach
1 small tub of low fat blue cheese crumbles
1 bottle of Ken’s Steakhouse Spray on raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing
1/2 cup crushed or chopped walnuts
2 pears sliced thinly
All you have to do is mix in the walnuts, pear slices and spinach and you are set. Take the spray on dressing for people to add their own amount and you have a great tasting healthy snack. I have to be truthful in the fact that I stole this from my favorite salad at Uptown Cafe! (I never said that my recipe was original)
I can’t promise that you will be as bit of a hit at the cookout as the guy that brought the case of beer, but you will look better!
Summer Fit Tip #2
Get your butt outside and do your intervals! This is the time of year when you can get a great tan and also get in great shape, so take full advantage. Get out on your bike or run and do those intervals in the sun. We posted a 16 week interval training program for you to use, so use it!
Summer Fit Tip #3
Do your best when on vacation.
We all know that you aren’t going to workout for an hour everyday when you are at the beach or on vacation with your family. And you shouldn’t!
Vacation is time to relax and reap the rewards of looking great from all the hard work you have put in over the past several months. If you can work time in between relaxing and/or spending time with your family to get in a quick 20 minute workout you will be doing really great for yourself.
What I would like to see approaching me on the beach!
Two or three of these workouts a week will be enough to keep on track and not let you get to far from the beaten path of your goals.
Here are a few examples if you have no equipment:
Perform the following circuit 3 times:
Jump Squats x 10 reps
Push Ups x 15 reps
Y-Reverse Lunge (a reverse lunge while holding your hands over head with thumbs pointed behind you and arms in a Y position) x 10 reps each side
Plank Push Ups (start in plank position on elbows and move up into the push up position with arms extended before lowering yourself back into the plank position on your elbows) x 30 reps
Mountain Climbers x 40 reps (20 each side)
Those are you staying fit for fat loss summer tips!
Now I need your help….
Let me know by leaving a comment what you would like to see more of at Force Fitness.
Is it more boot camps? More boot camp times? Better nutritional support?
Be brutally honest so that we can provide you with the best possible service and value!
Now get to it and start leaving a comment!!!!!
Are your fat loss goals making you happy?
Posted by: | CommentsSometimes we have to stop and really take a good look at what we want in our lives and what we want them to look like.
It isn’t always what you think it might be.
Do you want to be lean and fit?
Do you want to be rich and successful?
Do you want to have a family and spend all your time with them?
These are all very general ideas of what people think that they want. They want to have these things and I have no doubt that it is true, but I am going propose a different idea.
Take a minute and write out what you want your life to look like and be specific. If you want to wake up at 7am eat breakfast with your kids, get them off to school, workout at 8am at Force Fitness (who doesn’t want this), have your post workout shake, get showered and off to work by 9:30am, work for the morning in your dream job, go to lunch with someone that you care about at 1pm, back to work to finish up a few projects that you just can’t get enough of and then head out of work at 5:30pm to go home and eat dinner with your family or watch your kid’s soccer match, once done with that it is an hour or two of family time watching your favorite TV show or playing a game and then off to bed at 10pm ready to start the day again in the morning then write it down.
You need to be specific. This is how you should set goals.
I know that I am guilty of setting generic goals and not being able to see the life that I really want to live, but I am working on it. Wil and I recently sat down for several hours this past weekend to determine what we wanted from our lives and why we are doing what we do. It is refreshing to truly understand what you want to accomplish.
After you do this it is a lot easier to set up a plan to get you to this goal.
If I want to lose some weight, how much? By when? How am I going to do it? How much time am I willing to put into exercise?
These are all things that you need to be thinking about and not just I want to look better.
If you want to really get a weight loss goal then you need to say I am going to lose 15 lbs in the next 4 weeks by decreasing the number of starchy carbohydrates that I eat everyday, start eating breakfast, include Prograde Lean and VGF+ 25 in my nutrition plan and I will add three different 20 minute interval sessions each week. This is a goal and a plan to lose 15lbs in 4 weeks.
I have to admit that we have not been giving you all the resources that you need for the best possible results with your fat loss. Honestly, if you aren’t taking Progade supplements you can lose weight but it would be much easier with a few additions to your plan.
I think it should be mandatory that everyone use the VGF+ multivitamin and EFA ICON. These two things are just way too important to leave out. If you have another source of multivitamin and fish oil that is fine, but we only recommend the best and we truly believe that Prograde is the best. I have mine on auto-ship and get new bottles each month without having to think about it.
We also have some samples in the gym of Prograde Lean and Workout, both incredible additions to a program where you need to replace a meal with a healthy option or are rushed during the day and can’t get in a good snack. The Workout formula will boost your performance in the gym and give you the needed energy and recovery that is essential to putting in the effort to get the best results possible.
We wouldn’t expect you to recommend us to anyone else if we didn’t think that we were the best choice for your fitness program. It is pretty simple. We run the best boot camps, fat loss and athletic training programs in Bloomington. I might be biased but our results speak for themselves.
The same thing goes for the supplements that we recommend. My good friends Jim Labadie and Jayson Hunter, the masterminds behind Prograde, wouldn’t expect us to recommend a load of crappy supplements. They give us the best. They even give you a tour of the facility, have the products pharmaceutically tested and only use all natural products.
If you are happy with your progress and the supplements you are taking right now you are doing great, if not it isn’t too late to get started and one of the easiest ways is to include Prograde into your routine.
If you are interested you simply need to go to www.forcefitnesssupplements.com and find your favorite product. If you don’t like it there is a 60 day money back guarantee! It is a win-win for you!
The Frightening Ab Domination Workout
Posted by: | CommentsNo humans were harmed in the making of this video, but some abs were created!
Ab-Domination Today!
Posted by: | CommentsToday at 12pm we will be crushing a few brave individuals with out brand new music interval training system. The workout for today is going to make you feel your abs like never before and all without doing any crunches or sit ups.
If you want to know how to get the flat, rock hard stomach that you have always wanted to show off in your swim suit then you better get your butt in here !
12pm Force Fitness- a strict no whining policy!!! Animal noises and groans of pain are allowed.
If you can’t make it check back for the video.
The New Addition to the Boot Camp Family
Posted by: | CommentsDuring our boot camps we have been seeing some great progress and results over the last few months. It is really exciting to see everyone progress and make changes to their body that they never thought possible.
We truly feel like we have something very special in our Be Force Fit! Boot Camps. It is a big community full of support and the hardest working members are seeing great results. I am comfortable saying that their is no better program in Bloomington!
One of the best new additions we have added to boot camp is the brand new Workout Muse soundtracks. Workout muse is a fantastic music interval training system that allows you to focus on burning some serious fat while focusing on the intensity of your workout and exercises being performed rather than watching a clock or counting reps.
With summer upon us and vacations all planned a great way to get in extra workouts is to use these short 20 minute intense workouts where ever you go to keep you in bathing suit shape.
I will do my best to get up a video of a boot camp workout using Workout Muse and one of me kicking my own butt to the rockin’ soundtracks later this week.
Let me know if you are interested in setting up a time to go through a brutal session and we will get it going on Saturday afternoon. Even if you aren’t a member of Force Fitness we would love to have you come try it out!
Post your interest in the comments section.
