Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exercise. Show all posts

Friday, 3 February 2012

The Importance of Mobility for Exercise

When you are training, you will find that mobility is essential. When you have poor joint mobility, you are going to find that you will experience balance issues, but there will also be a higher risk for injury. This stems largely from reciprocal inhibition or tightness in the muscles. This then forces the muscles to improperly flex and that leads to them having to work harder to function. When a joint is involved, you will find that can potentially lead to joint dysfunction. When that occurs, you will notice an increase in pain, micro stress and serious injury.

It is because of this that you will want to improve your mobility. As it improves, you will find that there is an increase in joint integrity as well as the amount of flexibility and strength that your muscles have. This means a reduction in the risks that are associated with a lack of mobility. More importantly, you will be able to enhance the overall benefits that you get from your training and the ability to move will greatly increase as well.

What you are going to find is that as you age, the level of mobility you have greatly decreases. This doesn't occur from unhealthy lifestyle choices. Instead, you are going to find that the natural aging process causes the muscles to begin to slow down. This helps to protect muscles that have become weakened because of time or injury. To offset this process, many exercises can actually help to improve the amount of mobility that you have. This can be a series of stretching and muscle building exercises that focus on the areas that are commonly affected. More importantly when you take a synchronized approach, you can improve your coordination and dexterity without too much effort and improve the overall mobility levels that you have.

What you will need to keep in mind is that balance can greatly be affected in this process as well. When this is the case, you do end up becoming a higher risk for a dangerous fall as you get older. However, with regular exercise, you will find that you can potentially improve your balance and improve the condition you have by using proprioception exercises. These exercises are designed to help ensure that the signals between the brain and the muscles remain strong.

Something you will need to keep in mind is that functional training has the potential to help people. These exercises focus on the core of the person and are used to help build up their level of fitness and to ensure that they have a better level of balance and durability as well. Most core exercises will help you to focus on this area of the body and ensure that you improve your health enough that you can restore your mobility to a point as well.

For you to be successful in improving mobility, you do need to spend time working on it. You will not only find that the best approach you can take is seeking out the advice of a trainer or other qualified individual that will be able to present you with some daily tasks that are going to be helpful to you. In addition to these exercises, you are going to find that things like posture and routine schedules are going to be just as essential as well. These items are going to ensure that you avoid further injury and that you do end up with an increased level of mobility in the safest manner possible. Just be sure that you do listen to your body above anything else and don't push it to avoid the risk of serious injury.

Darragh Holland is a Cavan Personal Trainer and also runs his own Bootcamps.

He has helped people to lose weight and get toned so be sure to check out his Cavan personal training studio.


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Friday, 13 January 2012

Take a Break! Proper Exercise Rest Intervals Explained

Exercise rest intervals are one of the most heavily researched topics in all of the fitness industry. Simply put, the amount of rest time you take between your exercises will help determine the way your body develops--ultimately the way it looks. Unbeknownst to most, rest periods are a critical part of defining the body you want. And there's actually a science behind it, too! Below, I will provide you with a brief overview of the three relatively agreed upon standards of exercise rest intervals. Let's dive in...

0 - 60 seconds rest.

Time to sweat!

Programs that use this rest protocol are going to be fast and intense. Their primary focus will be to shed as much body-fat as possible. By keeping your heart-rate high and your down-time short, your body will be burning extra calories at an amazing rate. Couple that with a good, quality fat burner, and you can just watch the body fat liquify!

But remember, that lack of rest is going to come with a price. In order to combust all those extra calories, your body will be working overtime... The result of your intensity will be higher Lactic Acid levels which will cause your blood's PH Level to plummet--making your workout even more difficult to complete.

But fear not! It's all part of getting lean & mean!

Additionally, you will be rewarded by your strenuous effort on the back end. Extra hard work during workout means extra Growth Hormone (GH) production POST-Workout! Extra GH production in the body will help:

Lower Body-Fat & Increase Muscle Tissue
Reduce the symptoms of aging
Improving Metabolic Rate
Reduction in Alzheimer's symptoms
Improving Chron's Disease symptoms

The best utilization of this rest protocol is to choose 2 - 3 exercises that will utilize more than one muscle group. Ideally, you would choose antagonistic muscle groups (Chest / Back) or divisional exercises (Chest Press / Squats). The purpose is to recruit as many muscles into your circuit as possible to increase the lactic acid generation.

Speed work is all kinds of fun!

60 - 90 seconds rest.

Most of us who lift recreationally, though, will find ourselves using this bracket more often than not. Many studies (6) have shown that for pure hypertrophy (muscle size increase), using a 60 - 90 second rest window is ideal. There is no rule to tell you how to match up your body parts when training with this rest interval.

If you are concentrating on purely muscle size increases, picking one to two body parts to work out in the day would be an option; however, if you still want to get your size increase while having that minimal cardio element there, try picking one exercise per muscle group for the whole body!

It will provide the right mix of keeping your heart rate elevated while at the same time allowing you to recover your strength to perform well on the subsequent sets. It's like getting the best of both worlds.

90 - 180 seconds rest.

This rest protocol is for the big dogs. It's for the powerlifter's who are interested in nothing more than moving as much weight as possible. This is where it's less about your 'show' muscles, and more about your 'go' muscles. To do this most efficiently, athletes will be required to put a maximal effort into a lift--usually only 1-3 times. And then take a rest. Repeat.

Working near your maximal strength output will have you pretty much running on empty after just a few repetitions. Using this extended break time allows your nervous system, metabolic system, and cardiovascular system to almost fully recover, thereby allowing you to lift your heaviest. This is essential for the athlete working towards improving a 1 Repetition Maximum (1RM). It is important that if you find yourself training in this bracket to be lifting 90%+ of your 1RM.

Go Heavy or Go Home!

0 - 60 sec | Fat Burn
60 - 90 sec | Muscle Building
90 - 180 sec | Max Strength Work

While the above list is incredibly simple, it will give you a good point to jump from when designing your next weight training routine. So grab your stopwatch and get to tracking that rest time!

My name is Michael Baes. I am a personal trainer & nutrition coach based in Murfreesboro, TN.

With over 10 years of full-time personal training experience, I provide my clients with the best & latest fitness information; additionally, I offer many unique articles, products, and services!

All of these are available at:

http://www.michaelbaes.com/blog

Thanks for reading!

MB


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