A Low Impact Alternative

Running, plyometrics and other high impact exercises are great for burning calories and building muscle, but too much can cause problems in your joints. Swimming is a great low impact alternative, which offers many of the same benefits as land exercises.

Swimming not only builds endurance, strength and cardiovascular fitness, but it also tones your entire body because it uses almost all of the body’s major muscle groups. This means that you will also be scorching calories!

If you find that just doing laps in a pool gets boring, try the following swim workout. It will allow you to develop your swimming skills further and make the time go by faster.

Keep in mind that the following drills are in yards. A common lap pool is 25 yards each way.

Warm up: 

• 200 slow freestyle stroke

• 50 catch up: Swum like a regular freestyle stroke, except one arm is stationary, always extended forward, while the other performs the stroke. When the working arm “catches up” with the stationary arm, they change places.

• 50 empty pool water drill: Freestyle, but fling as much water as you can out of the pool.

• 100 3-5 breathing: Take a breath of air every 3rd and 5th stroke.

Pre-work:

• 5*75s build (slow, moderate, fast): Start your freestyle stroke slow for 25m, moderate pace for the next 25, then fast for the remainder. Repeat 5 times.

Work set:

• 6*100 race: Sprint for 100, rest 30 seconds and repeat 6 times.

Kick set:

• 200: Using a kickboard 

Cool down:

• 100: Slow freestyle.
  

Read more!

Sunday 1/23: Total Body Workout

Today’s workout consisted of twenty minutes of cardio followed by a few intense circuits and cardio intervals. The entire workout took me about one hour and ten minutes to complete. By the end of the workout, my polar heart rate monitor indicated that I had burned six hundred and fifty calories. My heart rate still feels elevated a few hours after the workout. Burn baby burn…..

Go through each circuit three times with little or no rest, then move on to the next circuit and do the same. I used an eighteen pound versa bar as a weight, but these exercises can also be done with dumbbells or a barbell, if you’re really buff. : )

Warm up: 20 min jog/run

Circuits:

1. a) Jump roping (30 seconds)

b) Push up into a twist (10 reps, alternating sides)





c) Walking lunges. (10 steps)
Hold weights in each hand at the sides of your hips while keeping your shoulders back. Take a big step forward with first leg. Lower your body by flexing the knee and hip of your front leg until the knee of your rear leg falls just above the floor. Lunge forward with opposite leg and repeat.

d) Upright row to shoulder press (10 reps)
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and with a slight bend in the knees. As you exhale, pull the dumbbells up along the outside of your body until your elbows are parallel with your shoulders. Once the dumbbells reach shoulder level, rotate your arms so that your palms are now facing forward and the dumbbells are above your shoulders. Press the dumbbells up above your head until your arms are straight. As you inhale, follow these steps in reverse by lowering the weights, rotating your arms and lowering the dumbbells to starting position.

e) Front shoulder raises (10 reps)

f) Walking lunges (10 steps back to original position)










2. 10 minutes of interval sprinting: 30 seconds sprinting, 30-45 seconds recovery, repeat.

3. a) jump roping (100 jumps)

b) Ab pull ins:
Lie on the floor with your hands under your butt, your palms down, and your legs extended. Bend your knees and pull your upper thighs into your midsection. Return to the starting position.

c) Reverse crunches (20)
Lie on the floor on your back. Put your hands by your sides with your feet up and your thighs perpendicular to the floor. They should not go down lower than this during the movement. Using your lower abs, roll your pelvis backward to raise your hips off the floor. Your knees will now be over your chest. Return slowly to the starting position. You can use ankle weights to make it more difficult.

Read more!

Time crunched? Try Circuit Training.

Circuit training involves a sequence of exercises performed back to back with little or no rest. The sequence, or circuit, is then performed to a desired number of repetitions. Because sequential exercises carried utilize different muscle groups, the body is able to actively recover from the previous exercise and move on to the next with little or no rest.

This type of training keeps the heart rate elevated throughout the entire workout, burning more calories in a limited amount of time. Circuit training provides some of the benefits of an aerobic workout and an anaerobic workout: increased muscular strength and endurance, as well as an increased cardio-vascular capacity.

· Increase strength and endurance throughout your whole body
· Burn more calories and build lean muscle that continues to burn calories at rest
· Break up the monotony of cardio machines, or slow paced strength training
· Utilize dynamic exercises to increase nervous system activation, and improve balance, coordination and core strength



Example workout:

1. Burpees: Start in a push-up position. While keeping the abs tight and back straight, do one push up, jump quickly bringing your feet into a squat position then proceed to jump into the air with legs extended and land as gently as possible back into a squat position. Bring hands down to the floor and thrust feet back out into a push up position. Repeat the sequence.
10 repetitions

2. Reverse-crunch: Lie flat on the floor with you knees raised forming a 90 degree angle, thighs perpendicular to the floor. Using your abs, bring your knees to your chest, while simultaneously bringing your chin to your chest. Lower legs to starting position and repeat.
20 repetitions

3. Squat-jumps: Position feet so that they are hip width apart. Drop into a squatting position making sure that your knees do not go past your toes. Thrust your body up into the air from the squatting position. Repeat the sequence in a fluid motion.
15 repetitions.

4. Plank to Row: Start in a push up position with a dumbbell in each hand (8-12.5 lbs). Keeping your abs tight, back straight and hips steady, row one arm up bringing your elbow just past your back. Slowly lower the arm down while keeping the push up position and repeat with the opposite arm.
12 repetitions, alternating arms.

5. Lunges with a biceps curl: Stand holding dumbbells at your sides. Take a big step forward with your right foot and bend your back leg down until your shins are parallel to the floor. The front leg should form a 90 degree angle. Hold that position while doing a bicep curl both arms. Push up with the front leg back to the starting position. Repeat with the left leg.
10 repetitions on each side.

6. Squat to shoulder press: Stand with your feet hip width apart and dumbbells in line with your shoulders. Drop down into a squat position making sure that your knees do not go past your toes. Come back up and extend arms up and above head for a shoulder press. Lower dumbbells down beside your shoulders and repeat.
10 repetitions.7. Teaser: Lie with your back flat on a mat and lift your arms up and back above your head. Lift your torso and legs up to a center position and swing your arms towards the center. Your body should form a “V”, creating a 45 degree angle with your legs. Slowly lower yourself down keeping your abs engaged and your arms and legs straight. Try to use the least amount of momentum as you can and focus on engaging your abdominals.
10 repetitions.

Go through exercises 1-7 straight through doing your best not to take any breaks. When you have completed the last exercise, take a minute break and repeat the circuit.

Not clear on how to do the exercises? Ask Jessica!
Good Luck!
Read more!

Squats: How low should you go?

Many fitness professionals, athletes and coaches consider squats one of the most important and effective overall exercises for building muscle mass and tone. Squats contribute to leg muscle growth by working the quadriceps, as well as what is sometimes referred to as the “posterior chain:” the various muscles comprising the hamstrings and glutes. Free-weight squats also give your lower back and abdominals a great workout, as you use your core muscles to stabilize yourself throughout the movement.



Because the exercise involves the largest muscles in the human body, squats generally burn more calories and build a large amount of calorie-burning muscle. In fact, studies have shown that squats, when performed at high intensity, can even release hormones that facilitate muscle-growth in the upper body. So they might even be just the thing to get over your bench-press plateau. Moreover, squats give you functional strength and flexibility where you need it most for athletics and daily activities: your legs and core. Think squats will bulk you up too much? Unlikely. If losing weight is your thing, squats can only help by building fat-burning muscle in all the right places. Even long-distance runners and endurance athletes can benefit from improving their upper-limit leg and abdominal strength as this strength helps maintain proper form.

Now that we’ve sung the squat’s praises, how do you get started? The seemingly simple movement can in fact be deceptively complex. Depending on your training goals, you may want to use resistance in the form of a barbell over your shoulders, or just your own body-weight. You can place a swiss-ball between your back and the wall for balance. Next article we’ll cover how to perform a plethora of squat variants, but by definition pretty much all squats involve bending your knees and lowering your upper body.

Much of squatting form is pretty well settled: try not to let your knees extend past your ankles so as not to over-stress your knees, keep your head up and back straight (don’t arch forward or back), and push off with your heels.[1] One age-old and potentially thorny question for would-be squatters is how far to go down. For many of us, much of this decision is decided by the limits of our own flexibility. But as you lessen the resistance, perform assisted squats, or develop strength and flexibility over time, you may discover the possibilities….

Standing: You aren’t even squatting yet. But good start. If you can’t stand, you can’t squat.

Quarter squat: You pile on the weights and sink your hips a couple of inches. We’re all very impressed. Actually, even these baby-squats start to develop leg strength, flexibility, muscle recruitment, and balance. If this as far as you can or want to go for now, that’s fine. But if you are using a lot of resistance and only performing quarter-squats, try de-loading and getting yourself a bit lower. The gains you realize will be worth the blow to your ego, I promise. On the other hand, if you been training by squatting much lower with lighter weight and feel like its getting harder to add more poundage, it might help to return to quarter-squats for a couple of sets in order to get yourself used to carrying the big weight again.

Hamstrings parallel: A lot of folks tell you to squat until your legs are “parallel to the floor.” Problem is, if you are like most humans, viewed from the side your leg is probably somewhat oval shaped. So which part should be parallel? If you were to draw an imaginary line parallel to the floor from your knees and extending out behind you, the first benchmark would be to get the bottom of your oval-shaped leg to touch that line. Congrats, you are hamstrings parallel.

Half-squats, or legs parallel: Now imagine squatting down lower so the middle of your leg is aligned with that same imaginary line. No easy feat, and tough to change the momentum of the resistance by pushing up here. This is an effective squat. Try pausing in this position.

Quads parallel: Go even lower, to where the top of your quads are aligned with a line parallel to the floor. Here your butt will be slightly lower than your knees, you’ll have to lean very slightly forward to keep balanced, and you have to use your muscles in a slightly different way to push back up. Be careful, this will feel awkward at first so don’t try it with a lot of weight. This is the position that qualifies as a “convincingly deep” squat for powerlifters: athletes who compete for the heaviest deadlift, benchpress, and squat.[2] Working from this position can make for an extremely intense workout. Some maintain that this is the best position, because only in a low squat like this does your posterior chain of glutes and hamstrings get properly worked.[3] According to these sources, more shallow squats work your quadriceps too much and your posterior chain not enough, potentially leading to muscle imbalances. There is some disagreement on this point, not everyone is comfortable or flexible enough to get to this position right away, and you may have to work at properly flexing your posterior chain in order to properly engage those muscles. But most everyone would agree that squatting to a quads parallel position is a super-effective way to build leg strength. So take off even more weight if you must, and squat low.

ATG (Butt to Ground): Olympic-style weight-lifters do it all the time because it is an integral movement to catching the bar in their two events: the clean and jerk and snatch. However, for those without training in those disciplines, bending your legs until they are touching your heels and cannot possibly go any lower may not be possible, or even desirable. The ATG squat changes your body-mechanics significantly, and can put stress on the lower back or knees if you aren’t used to performing it properly. The name of the game is to go slow here. For those that do venture to the depths, the rewards are great. Besides legs of steel, you can easily quantify your progress when doing ATG’s. There’s no wondering if by ramping up the weight you have also been unconsciously compensating by not squatting as far down.

For most exercises, we advocate using a full range of motion whenever possible as good form. Squats may constitute a special case, however, as the physical limits, training goals, and development of each individual may be better served by either limiting or periodically varying the depth of the squat. In doing so, we develop body awareness at each position and confidence with increased loads, as well as add a destabilizing element that helps fool your body into continuing to develop instead of stalling out at a plateau. For the most effective gains, try to progress to deeper and deeper squats. Remember to pair squats with hamstring exercises such as hamstring curls and straight-leg dead lifts in order to maintain a strength balance in opposing muscles.
[1] If you restrict your knees from extending past your toes, the exercise will produce less shear force of the knees than leg extensions. But by not letting your knees move forward as you go down, you may have to slightly increase forward lean to keep the weight balanced. Lean too far and you’ll be putting too much torque on your hips and stress on your lower back. See “Optimizing Squat Technique,” by Paul Comfort, MSc, CSCS; and Peter Kasim. December 2007, Volume 29, Issue 6, NSCA Strength and Conditioning Journal. Stop if you feel joint pain. Keep your back straight, and control your form by flexing your glutes and hamstrings as you go down.
[2] For more on legal squat depth for powerlifting, see “Squat Depth Clarified” by Wade Hanna. http://www.usapowerlifting.com/newsletter/06/novice/novice.html
[3] See Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore.
Read more!

Welcome!

Hi! This is my first post on blogger. I'm a personal trainer in Boston, Massachusetts, and I work at the Beacon Hill Athletic Club in Cleveland Circle. I love my job and helping others achieve their health and fitness goals! Check back here for workouts, articles, and news.

Check out my website at http://www.jbptraining.com/, and feel free to email me at jbergenfield@gmail.com. Read more!