Cardio and Core Workout: Get It!

Happy Workout Wednesday, everyone, and welcome to one of our favorite workouts! Everyone has a different approach to training, and it may take a trial with every single one of those to find out what works for you, but one popular tactic is taking care of two important aspects at once. Combining core and cardio can be effective, since they’re extremely important to overall health, but can be painstakingly boring. It’s like vacuuming and scooping litter at the same time, in a way.

Now, to be clear, core refers to exercises that will help strengthen muscles throughout your abdomen, on your front and back. That means, you’ll be working your abs, obliques, lower back, hips and even glutes since they all work closely with one another when you’re performing more complex, or demanding, exercises and activities. Cardio is a misunderstood and overused word that we’ll use today to refer to exercises that will help you elevate your heart rate significantly in an effort to either burn fat or increase your athletic performance by building endurance. I hope that explanation makes sense.

Feb232016

Wake Up with a Walking Meditation

Hooray, another “mental health” post! While we are obviously “physical” fitness trainers, we know that without the mental part, you haven’t got much. Today, we bring you a walking meditation. What is a walking meditation, you say? Well, it’s rather simple–you meditate while walking. These doesn’t mean your humming “om” to yourself while walking blind down the street. It’s more about leaving your own concerns about yourself behind and simply become an observer and a sponge. You take everything in while simple taking step after step. You listen to your breath, you listen to the birds, you feel the wind, you see the sun rising, and so forth. This exercise can be incredibly rewarding while also saving time. If you have a dog, I hope someone in your household walks it every morning. This can be done with your dog! Let’s get started. And if you think you can master the walking meditation, consider running, but first check out Nicer Shoes for their comparison between the two activities.

Sunrise today

Jan182013

Priorities: Putting Your Health First

Sometimes it feels as though we live in a sad world. A world where money and material wealth comes first. A world where personal relations get shoved aside. A world where should-be-top-priorities such as health gets ignored in the dust. Working as a personal trainer, this last one can bother me the most. Here’s why:

People whine and complain about prices of the gym, personal training, or exercise equipment. They complain that the money could be elsewhere spent and that the time working out could be used doing something else more important. I’m certainly not saying that you need a gym or personal training to be healthy (although it does help), but instead towards the overall sentiment about the importance of getting into shape and maintaining your fitness.

My trainer shirt … and Sajah

So let’s say you suggest you could be doing something else with your time rather than exercising. Alrighty, let’s look at the building blocks of life. Health…hmmm…if you take away health, it is seeming to my eyes that everything falls apart with it. Take away health, and what do you have? Seriously. Sit on that question. Don’t just brush it off, I want you to think about it. Think about all the other bills or activities you pay for and balance it with the necessity of life: being healthy. If you aren’t healthy, you aren’t going to live the quality life you could.

And then we meddle over to the topic of money. It’s often the biggest excuse I hear. Not enough money for a gym membership? Hmmm, okay, let’s examine that. I want you to take a look at all your entertainment bills–television, cable, internet, etc. I am confounded to think that television (which is equal or more to gym membership cost per month) could weasel its way to be more important than the building block of life–HEALTH. Re-examine what you spend your money on. It could be that you know (deep down), the only way you will get into a continual exercise routine is if you subscribe to a gym. Step up, cancel unneeded entertainment services, put your health first, and sign up.

Health (Photo credit: Tax Credits)

Now, say you’re borderline obese or diabetic, and have a strong dislike for working out. In fact, the only way you workout is if you are held accountable by someone else. Or, say you’re a person open to working out and exercising, but unsure about how to start. In both situations, a personal trainer would be dandy. I have one client who will not exercise unless she knows she’s coming to see me. She knows I’m waiting for her and despite how tough the workouts may be, she shows up each day. And she has gone from borderline obese down to overweight.

Often you find, “Personal training? There’s no way I could afford that.” Don’t be so quick to write it off. Many gyms have discount deals and some even have scholarship forms you can fill out to get a discount. They want you to sign up, so give them the chance to make it easier for you. Let’s take a look at the other side of the situation. Why do you think you can’t afford that? Perhaps because you spend your money on other things. I find so often, it is–ironically–that people go out to eat too much, causing them to be more unhealthy, racking up the restaurant bills and stopping them from hiring a personal trainer to change their life. Because that is what normally happens.

Personal Training Overlooking Melbourne (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This may sound like a lecture, but it is a plea. A plea for you and/or your loved ones to realize the importance of health and make it a priority over other things like entertainment or dining. So look at your account book and balance the budget to fit getting healthy and active in this year.

Nov052012

Swim to Workout, Swim to Live

Pressured by Alana to write a post because our consistency has been awful lately (we are very busy, but no real excuses exist, I have enough time a day to write ONE post), I am going through the most difficult process.. deciding what to write about. I can write about anything, or try to… I mean it might not be good but I can go on and on if I want to. So I’ll save the favorite video games of the past year post for when I’ve played a few more I want to finish, my dinner tonight was disgusting so forget that (over 1600 frozen calories), I took the past two days completely off workouts and three from climbing because of forearms splints and just being sick.

I need rest to recover quickly (I hope), so let’s talk about something obvious for me… swimming. This isn’t going to be in detail, I’m just going to talk a bit about swimming. Of the over fifty hours a week that I work, or will be working, almost all of it is related to swimming or aquatics. So let’s break it into a few categories… continue if interested:

Swim training

Water Safety: This is the most important of all aspects of aquatics. Whether you’re at a birthday party playing pool games, swimming laps to stay in shape, working on your strokes to qualify for an event, surfing in Southern California, snorkeling in the keys, or scuba diving in Southeast Asia, you always need to consider safety and it starts at a very basic level.

Learning to be comfortable and not scared of the water is the first step before you can become proficient at any aquatic skill. If you’re scared of drowning at a very forward level (everyone should be aware of it) then you need to get over that fear quickly. Having children get comfortable with the water at a young age will allow them to break into learning how to actually swim easier, so it’s never too early to start. But it’s also never too late to start! Better early than late but better late than never. If you aren’t comfortable or children that are dear to you aren’t either, then you need to find someone to work on that.

English: A breaststroke swimmer, in a hotel sw...

Just keep swimming!

Swimming: Swimming is a great way of moving efficiently, doesn’t always have to be quickly, once you’ve got your water safety and comfort taken care of. The key here is to conserve energy and have a means of moving that utilizes your arms, legs, and ability to breathe. That’s right, obviously, breathing is the most important aspect of swimming. I don’t care how fast you can swim with your face in the water if you can’t breathe. Swimming is about survival when it comes down to the nitty gritty. Whether it’s rolling onto your back to float or using a rollover breathe to replenish air before going back into a faster means of moving, breathing it key. Once you have those motor skills involving your arms, legs, and breathing operational, it’s time to think of the next step.

Swimming to workout: Now at the highest level this would include competitive swimming, but the basic level means that you can kick, stroke, and breathe properly so that you can workout without hurting yourself. If your stroke is off, you might hurt your shoulders or something else. If you breathe to one side you might develop a huge knot over there, or you might just develop an uneven stroke. If you don’t kick, you won’t swim as well or you could pull a groin or a muscle in your leg. If you don’t breathe, your workout won’t last long. Even if you’re not competitive think about taking stroke classes so that you can get a better workout by doing breast stroke, back stroke, flip turns, butterfly and other advanced techniques that will activate muscles you’ve never used. You can expand your lung capacity, burn fat, and even more. (Note: Please get proper instruction in how to do butterfly, it’s far too easy to hurt yourself if done improperly.)

Competitive: If you have all your strokes and techniques down, and you’re in good shape or want to be, join a team or a program to keep swimming. United States Masters Swimming will take anyone not affiliated with some other organizations if you are over 18. It’s a great chance to keep or start competing. United States Swimming is another huge program to look into especially for youth, and there are local clubs for people of all ages if you are in the right spot and look hard enough. Otherwise, join a class and compete against yourself in a strict environment. YMCAs usually offer lots of programs.

Competition

Recovery: If you are injured or your body has become more fragile there are tons of water therapy and recovery, and fitness, classes that are much easier on your joints. AEA and Waterart offer some certifications in teaching these courses if you are interested. You are never really too old to stop getting in the water.

Extreme: If you want to surf, go for it, I recently did and feel comfortable although we just moved after Alana got a new board. Snorkeling is a great tourist activity and scuba diving is the ultimate underwater adventure. Scuba stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus and it, and the aqualung, were in great part the result of the efforts of the late Jacques Cousteau. I recently had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with his son, Jean-Michel. You can either go to SSI or PADI to get certified and they last for life and offer endless specialization continuing education opportunities. I am currently enrolled in SSI’s Open Water Diver course, and I plan on completing that and my Advanced OWD by the end of the year. Then it’s onto Rescue Diver and Dive Master but we’ll see how long that takes.

Scuba-ing

If you have any questions about anything aquatics, even ocean conservation, please feel free to leave a comment. I’ll get into more detail about each of these over the next few weeks, possibly expanding by giving each its own post, including ocean conservation and preservation, and everything else.