FitSugar

Back to Basics: Side-Lying Neutral

FitSugar — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:00:19 -0700

Working in a neutral spine is a core component of Pilates. That little pun is intended, too, for working in neutral ensures that your back and abs are both engaged, often turning simple ab exercises into core work. There is a side-lying neutral, too. This is important if you're a fan of floor exercises used in Pilates and aerobics classes around the world.

When side lying, the bottom waist tends to touch the ground, curving the spine like a smile-like shape, unleveling the pelvis by raising the top hip. Not only can this position be bad for your back, it oversimplifies many exercises. To find your side-lying neutral:

Lie on your side with the back of your body against the wall, this prevents you from rolling back or leaning forward.
With your heels against the wall, lengthen your top waist by reaching through your heels until your pelvis is level and your bottom waist is pulled from the floor. You will feel your abs engage.
Keep this position as you move your top leg for leg circles or your lower leg for inner-thigh leg lifts. Maintaining side-lying neutral will decrease the range of motion of your leg, but the movement will be concentrated where it should be rather than in your spine.

If you want to test your newfound neutral, try this Pilates inner-thigh workout.

Band It: Upright Rows

FitSugar — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 -0700

It's never too late to shape your shoulders by doing upright rows. Using dumbbells is effective, but you can make this basic exercise even more challenging by using a resistance band, too.

Grab your weights and a band and read more.

Stand on the middle of a resistance band with your feet hip distance apart. Place a dumbbell in each hand and grip the handles of the resistance band. Your closed palms will be facing your body.
Stand with your shoulders over your pelvis, and your knees slightly bent.
Keeping the dumbbells close to your body, raise them to your shoulders, bending your elbows out to the sides.
Then with control, slowly lower them to the starting position.
This counts as one rep. Complete three sets of 10 to 12 reps.

Back to Basics: Supersets

FitSugar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:30:00 -0800

Gym jargon is often tossed about like a lightweight medicine ball, and if you don't know the lingo you can end up not only feeling lost but skimping on your workout. One term likely to be skipped over is "superset." It sounds intimidating and therefore not at all super, but supersets are a great way to move beyond a strength training plateau. Essentially, a superset is two exercises performed one right after the other, rather than simply resting between sets. You can work opposing muscle groups or challenge your muscular strength and endurance by working the same muscle group with different exercises. Reducing rest time increases the cardio component of strength training and keeps the calorie burn going. Plus, supersets save time, and less time in the weight room means more time for a post-workout sauna.

For a few examples of supersets read more:

Supersets for opposing muscle groups:

Bicep curls followed by triceps kickback create an upper arm combination.
Alternate a back extension exercise, like superman, with ab work, like bicycle crunches, to work the front and back of your body.
To work the chest and back, mix a set of push-ups with seated rows with a cable or a resistance band.
Tone the thighs by starting with the leg press machine to work quads, then move to the hamstring curl machine to work your hamstrings and glutes.

Supersets for the same muscle group:

To work the quads one leg at a time, combine single leg squats and step ups.
Combining side lunges with side step downs will work both the outer and inner thighs.
For the hamstrings, pair donkey kicks with reverse lunges - working in two completely different configurations changes your relationship with gravity and challenges your muscles in different ways.
Target the back of your arms with triceps dips followed by triceps presses on your back.

You should repeat each superset two to three times, resting for a minute between supersets, which is much more efficient than resting between each individual set. If you have a strength training superset combo that you love, share it in the comments section below.

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Back to Basics: Calories Explained

FitSugar — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:00:00 -0800

We talk, or at least think, about calories almost daily. You cut calories. You count them. You burn them. But do you know what a calorie is?

Simply put, a calorie is a unit of energy. When you eat, you're fueling your body with potential energy in the form of calories, which your body uses not just for exercise but for vital functions like breathing. Basically, a calorie is the amount of energy it takes for the temperature of one gram of water to increase by one degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. However, when we talk about calories burned or calories consumed we are technically talking about kilocalories, each of which equals 1,000 calories. Kilocalories are most often referred to as calories for short. Scientifically speaking, the term is capitalized, but in most literature about food and exercise "calorie" is written in all lowercase and it's assumed we are all talking about the same unit of measurement.

Foods are made out of mixtures of macronutrients: protein, carbs, and fat. Protein and carbs each contain four calories per gram, while fat contains nine calories per gram. These caloric amounts represent the amount of potential energy these macronutrients provide.

To see how the body burns calories, just read more.

The body uses calories for three distinct categories of activities. One is your basal metabolic rate (BMR), or how many calories your body burns just to keep the basic operations going - heart beating, kidneys functioning, lungs breathing. Sixty to 70 percent of all calories go toward just keeping your body operational, kind of like overhead expenses. The body also needs calories for physical activity, be it washing your dishes, walking your dog, or running a marathon. The third component of calories burned is the thermic effect of food, or how much energy it takes to digest your food to turn it into energy. Your body burns 10 percent of overall calories consumed to fuel the digestion process of those calories you just consumed.

Food is energy, or calories, that you put into your body to fuel all your activities for the day. If you do not use all that fuel, your body stores the fuel just in case you need it during a famine, and you gain weight. If you use more fuel than you have consumed, by burning more calories than you have eaten, you will lose weight.

The Health Guide has some pretty cool tools to help you understand your personal relationship with calories. To see how many calories your body requires to maintain your weight, check out this Nutritional Needs Calculator. To see roughly how many calories you're burning during a variety of activities, visit the Calorie Burner Calculator.

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Back to Basics: Pilates 100s

FitSugar — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:30:00 -0700

The Pilates method is full of wonderful ab exercises, and the 100s is no exception. Often considered a warm up exercise, the 100s challenges your abs but also challenges your breathing coordination. It helps to get the blood circulating through your body to prepare you for the workout to come.

Start lying on your back with your legs in table top position (hips and knees at right angles). Engage your deep abs to round your lower spine into the floor. Make sure you are not "pooching" your abs, which means you are just working the top layer of abs – a definite no-no in Pilates.
Exhale and lift your upper back off the floor, until the bottom tips of your shoulder blades are just off the floor. Reach your arms toward your feet. Your arms will be about two inches off the floor.
Pump your arms up and down with a small range of motion, keeping your elbows straight. Inhale for five arm pumps and exhale for five pumps. That completes one set or cycle. Repeat cycle nine more times for a total of 100 pumps.

For some helpful hints read more.

Do maintain your upper body position – don't roll back and don't rock. Your abs are working to stabilize your torso against the pumping action of your arms.

Do keep space between your chin and your chest. Imagine you are holding a medium size orange with your chin. If you don't have an orange to experiment with, try using your fist.

Do keep your low spine on the floor by scooping your deep abs for the entire exercise.

You can experiment with using a percussive exhale, which feels a little like the yogic Breath of Fire. To do this focus on your deep abs contracting and pulling toward the spine to force the breath. After inhaling smoothly for five arms pumps, coordinate five short exhales with the five arm pumps left in the set.

To add more challenge to your abs, straighten your legs toward the ceiling. As you become stronger, challenge your abs by lowering your legs toward the floor. Only lower your legs as long as you can maintain the connection of your spine to the floor and your deep abs. Work towards lowering your legs down to a 45 degree angle.

I love the 100s and think they are a great endurance ab exercise. I have had clients curse me, literally, when informing them we are about to do the 100s. If you have done them, share your feelings, love or hate, in the comment section below.

Back to Basics: Anaerobic Training

FitSugar — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:00:00 -0700

Anaerobic literally means "without oxygen." This doesn't mean the sensation of gasping for breath after you've climbed 15 flights of stairs; it is a little more complicated than that. It really just boils down to what fuel your muscles use to do whatever it is you are asking them to do.

For contrast, let me explain aerobic training. When you go for a long run, oxygen is released to metabolize, or make, energy for the muscles. So aerobic means with oxygen and is generally any activity lasting more than two minutes. When you exercise anaerobically, like sprinting, you're burning energy too quickly to use oxygen as fuel and your muscles turn their own stored glycogen into energy, without the help of oxygen. There is a price for this convenience; you only have 90 seconds to two minutes worth of stored energy in your muscles. Plus, as by product in that energy conversion your body makes lactic acid, which is responsible for that burning sensation you get in your muscles when working at high intensity.

Anaerobic conditioning helps with speed, strength and agility. Three very important fitness elements for athletes. In fact, anaerobic training was considered essential for elite athletes, but not important to average fitness folks. Times sure have changed because interval training, a mixture of aerobic and anaerobic exercise, has made its way to the masses. To add anaerobic training, adding sprinting intervals in your runs, bike rides or swims, you do need to have an aerobic fitness foundation.

Strength training, from push ups to leg presses, is also considered anaerobic.

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Back to Basics: Tricep Dips

FitSugar — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:45:00 -0800

Toning your triceps - the muscles that run on the backside of your upper arm from your shoulder to your elbow - is one way to really help prep your arms for tank tops. Tricep Dips are a great, basic exercise for working your triceps. What's more? They're pretty easy to do and don't require much equipment.

Here's how you do them:

Position your hands shoulder width apart on a secured bench or stable chair.
Move your booty in front of the bench with your legs bent and feet placed about hip width apart on the floor.
Straighten out your arms and keep a little bend in your elbows in order to always keep tension on your triceps and off your elbow joints.
Now slowly bend at your elbows and lower your upper body down towards the floor until your arms are at about a 90 degree angle. Be sure to keep your back close to the bench.
Once you reach the bottom of the movement, slowly press off with your hands, and push yourself straight back up to the starting position.

Fit's Tip: Don't allow your neck to sink and your ears to fall close to your shoulders. Also, straighten your legs as you get stronger, this will make the exercise harder.

Back to Basics: Alphabet Workout

FitSugar — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:30:00 -0800

Looking for a new workout to do with a medicine ball? Try the alphabet workout - a great way to work on your core and upper body strength. Here is how you do it.

Take a 5-20 lb medicine ball (depending on your strength level) and extend your arms out in front of your body. Proceed to slowly spell the entire alphabet with the ball in the air in front of you.

Fit's Tip: To make this exercise even more challenging, do the Alphabet Workout while in a lunge or squat position, or stand on an unstable surface such as a BOSU.

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Back to Basics: Overhead Press

FitSugar — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 04:00:00 -0800

Putting all the fancy machines and accessories aside, sometimes you just want to get in a good workout without having to decipher how to use the gadgets. The overhead press is a great way to work your deltoids, biceps and triceps using a set of dumbbells. Pick a dumbbell weight that tires your muscles by about 12 lifts, a good weight to start with is five pounds.

Here's how:

Stand with your legs hip-width apart, knees soft. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and raise arms so that your biceps are parallel to the ground, arms at 90 angles, palms facing forward.
Exhale as you slowly straighten arms until they are extended as you press your hands straight-up toward the ceiling.
Inhale as you return your arms back to the starting position (biceps parallel to the group and at 90 degree angles).
Repeat 12 times. Do three sets.

Fit's Tip: You can also do overhead presses while sitting on a bench. Or to challenge yourself a little more do them while sitting on an exercise ball.

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Back to Basics: Tempo Run

FitSugar — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 04:00:00 -0800

In the world of running, there are some basic terms for basic elements of training. One such term you might run into often is tempo run, and believe it or not, it doesn't mean running to the beat of your favorite JT song.

The tempo run is an essential part of any race training routine, and is simply an approximately 20 to 40 minute run at a hard, but controlled pace. Tempo runs have many aliases, and you might have heard them referred to as lactate-threshold, LT, or threshold runs. But a tempo run by any other name would still be just as sweet.

On second thought, "sweet" might not be the most appropriate term for a tempo run since they can be fairly taxing. On a more technical level, you are physiologically hovering just below your anaerobic threshold. That is the greatest effort your body can put forth without building up lactic acid, the muscular waste product that causes discomfort and fatigue, aka heavy leg sensation. So a tempo run is taxing, but you shouldn't be out of breath while running it. The goal of this type of practice run is to improve your race pace and help improve your overall efficiency.

To see how to figure out your tempo just read more

Here are a few ways from Runner's World to figure out how to find your tempo for a tempo run.

Recent Race: Add 30 to 40 seconds to your current 5-K pace or 15 to 20 seconds to your 10-K pace.
Heart Rate: 85 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate.
Perceived Exertion: An 8 on a 1-to-10 scale (a comfortable effort would be a 5; racing would be close to a 10).
Talk Test: A question like "Pace OK?" should be possible, but conversation won't be.

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