Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions.

Julie Soar, Physical Pursuit

ACE Certified Personal Trainer

Apex Fitness Professional

Making New Year’s Resolutions is easy.  Sticking to them is another story.   If you can find out why your resolve diminishes after some time, you can help yourself overcome and stay with the goals you have set.   I’m giving to you my best ideas on how to make them and how to keep them.

Create at plan. 

Setting a goal without putting together a plan is simply wishful thinking.  Make sure your plan is clear and has specific objectives.  In order to succeed with any goal, it must have a clear plan of action.  Merely stating that you want to be healthy is great, but something more specific would be better to focus on, like “I want to lose 10 lbs by April”.  This is a realistic and attainable goal.   Create your plan now so you’ll have it in place come January 1st.   If you wait for New Year’s and don’t have your course of action, days and weeks may slip by without anything being done to accomplish what you’re setting out to do.   Write it down and look at it every day.  Or put that dress you’d like to get back into somewhere where you have to look at it each morning.  (I like to hang these items on my dresser mirror.)   Having your goals visible will help keep your motivation high. 

Plan an attainable exercise plan for your busy schedule. 

Planning to exercise everyday is not specific enough and unrealistic.  Look at your schedule and start planning what days and time you will be available to hit the gym or exercise class.  Choose a mixture of activities that interest you and include cardio fitness, strength and stretching for a well rounded fitness program.  Make sure you go the steady course; too much, too soon will surely lead to burn out or injury.

Enlist in the guidance of a professional. 

Everyone can benefit from exercise.  But it’s important that you have the right program.  Seeking the advice of a professional is beneficial to ensure that you have a program that will work for you and will not aggravate any existing conditions you may have. 

Having fun is vital to exercising. 

Finding a friend to go to the gym, exercise class or walk with is great for motivation and a lot more fun.  Making sure you enjoy the activity is necessary as well.  If you don’t enjoy running, try a group class instead.  Variety is the spice of life; it’s true.  Mix up your exercise program to stay interested.  If you’re bored, you won’t follow through.

If at first you don’t succeed…

This old axiom is so true, but we do a great disservice to ourselves if we do not “try, try again”.  If you sneak a snack, miss the gym or indulge in a craving, it doesn’t mean you have to give up.  Getting back on track after a mishap is essential to creating great habits that will last well past New Year’s.

– Eight Simple Ways To Watch Your Weight

by Jim Evans

Try these healthy hints to help you control your weight without a lot of inconvenience to normal everyday activities.
 

Walk While You Talk
Instead of sitting around after a meal, get up and walk. You don’t have to be a party pooper and leave any company behind – invite them to walk with you. A brisk walk around the block will be invigorating, and you can continue your conversation with any company along the way.
 
Drink Lots of Water
Don’t just sip on your water bottle during the course of the day. Drink a full 8-oz glass of water when you first get up in the morning, before every meal, before every snack (but ask yourself WHY you are snacking), and before you go to bed at night. Another little trick is to take a drink of water between every bite of food. All of this will help you to eat less and improve digestion too.
 
Eat Smaller Portions
First, serve yourself smaller portions – you can always go back for another serving if you are really that hungry – and cut the servings into several smaller pieces. Of course, this is a psychological ploy to fool your brain into thinking you are eating more than you really are, but it DOES work because generally you will eat less if you eat smaller portions. Eat more slowly, too, instead of trying to wolf your food down as if there was no tomorrow – what’s the hurry, anyway? Enjoy!
 
Always Eat Breakfast
Studies indicate that people who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight. But you don’t FEEL like eating breakfast, you say? Do it anyway. Start small with something like a glass of orange juice and a bagel, but eat something. Gradually increase your consumption until you are eating a full, healthy breakfast. If you don’t eat breakfast, you are forcing your body into a self-preservation mode, so that when you DO finally eat, it stores more fat. The main reason why many people don’t eat breakfast is simply because they are always in too much of a hurry and have gotten out of the habit. Remember, you probably ate breakfast every morning as a youngster. What happened?
 
Walk In Place
Most people watch a lot of television while sitting around like couch potatoes. You don’t have to sacrifice your favorite television programs to exercise. How? Just stand up during every commercial and walk in place in the middle of the room. It might sound stupid, but just think about how many commercials appear on each program. You can log a lot of miles and burn a lot of calories without even leaving the house. Think you might feel embarrassed in front of family and friends? That’s THEIR problem, not yours, and you might be pleasantly surprised when they join you (it might be fun for the kids, too).
 
Stand Up and Suck It In
It sounds simple because it IS simple. Many people walk around slouched over, shuffling along dragging their feet with absolutely no sense of energy. Make a concentrated effort to stand up straight, throw your shoulders back, hold your chest high, suck in your tummy and walk with purpose. It takes a little more effort in the beginning, but after a while it will become a habit.
 
Climb Stairs the “Right” Way
You probably didn’t know there was a right way and a wrong way to climb stairs, did you? Typically you just put one foot on the step in front of you, lean forward on your toes, and lift the other foot off the ground to advance to the next step. WRONG! You will probably have knee problems if you continue climbing stairs this way. Instead, stand up straight and push off of your instep – NOT your toes – using the larger hip and thigh muscles to lift you to the next level. As these muscles become more accustomed to being used, they will become stronger and more supportive, and it will be much easier for you to climb stairs. Skip the elevator, and climb the stairs whenever you can.

Try Circuit Training
Circuit training is more effective in burning up calories and reducing body fat than almost any other form of physical activity. It is a total body workout that stimulates the cardiovascular system while firming and toning muscles at the same time. The best part is that it only takes about 20 minutes! It’s quick, and it’s easy.


Jim Evans is a 38-year veteran of the health and fitness industry. He has been published in magazines such as Iron Man, Strength & Health, and Natural Bodybuilding & Fitness, to name a few. He was a pioneer in the natural bodybuilding movement. He founded the North American Natural Bodybuilding Association (NANBA) and ran it from 1984 to 1990. He can be reached at pacsd@aol.com. The NANBA was one of the earlier drug-free bodybuilding federations to operate in the United States. It’s currently known as the North American Natural Bodybuilding Federation (NANBF), the name it was changed to in 1994.

– Rate of Perceived Exertion

You want to get fit. You want to look good. And you want to stay healthy. But how hard are you going to have to exercise to achieve those things?

To reap the most cardiovascular benefits from your workout, it is necessary to exercise within a recommended intensity range. In some respects, gauging our exercise intensity can be a difficult task.

Heart-rate assessment is a commonly used method for monitoring exercise intensity. For some, however, this method can be difficult to master, particularly during exercise.

One of the easiest ways to monitor your exercise intensity is to rate perceived exertion (RPE). Whether you walk, jog, bicycle, bench step, climb stairs or perform low-impact aerobics, your exercise intensity should be within a range of comfort.

By becoming familiar with the RPE scale, you can continually assess your exercise intensity and ensure a level of exertion that is comfortable.

Why use RPE?

Monitoring exercise intensity with the RPE scale is beneficial because:

1. It provides a double-check on heart rate, especially when the target heart-rate zone is estimated from age.

2. Assessing RPE can be performed without stopping to ''check'' it, as is necessary with heart-rate monitoring.

3. There is no equipment you can buy to accurately describe your perception of intensity (whereas heart-rate monitors can be expensive for accurate pulse count).

An increase in exercise intensity is directly related to elevation in exercise heart rate and other metabolic processes. Consequently, RPE can be used alone or together with heart rate when monitoring exercise intensity.

During aerobic activities, perceived effort is a combination of sensory input from muscles, joints, breathing rate and heart rate. By using the RPE scale, you can more accurately ''describe'' your sensation of effort when exercising and gauge how hard you are working. Plus, RPE helps you evaluate your internal comfort zone, or ''how you feel'' during the exercise session, with respect to the normal sensation of exertion, breathing, and even discomfort.

How many times have you exercised and not felt comfortable, or seemed to be extending beyond your comfortable exertion level? The use of your perceived exertion is helpful in monitoring intensity in order to avoid uncomfortable exercise sessions.

How to use RPE

Perceived exertion is assessed by use of a 0-to-10 chart to rate the feelings caused by your exertion. For example, quietly sitting in a chair would have a rating of 0. Adding a gentle waving of your arms might increase the effort rating to 0.5. Walking at a pace that you feel is moderate would be given a rating of 3.

Remember, the rating of your exertion should be completely independent of the pace you think you are walking; it is dependent solely on the feelings caused by the exertion. Increase the pace to a run and add a hill and you could work your way up to a 10 on the scale.

The recommended RPE range for most people is usually between 3 (moderate) and 5 (strong).

Who uses RPE?

Regardless of fitness or training, anyone can use perceived exertion to effectively gauge exercise intensity.

Whether you are new to aerobic exercise, or a fitness enthusiast, use the RPE scale to become familiar with your perception and description of exercise effort. Using RPE, your exercise sessions will be more effective and more enjoyable.

– Women Should Lift, and Heavily

Women should lift, and heavily.  To create curves, tighten up, and lose inches
By Jillian Coleman

So you have a client who has been going to the same fitness center for years. And through the years , she and her buddies there have talked about why their bodies are the exact same shape they were when they all 1st met: “I’ve been coming to the &*^%$ gym like, forever, and I have not lost a &**&^ pound!” And somewhere along the way, the topic of “bulking up” has surfaced: “If I just look at weight, I put on muscle! That’s why I do tons of cardio. But dang, my thighs are still fat!”
These women have never talked about how to change body fat percentage, how to lose inches or how to increase the intensity of that popular barbell class.
So how are you, the new (or inexperienced) trainer, going to deliver results and keep this trainee from spinning her wheels? The trick to losing inches, strengthening bones, increasing metabolic rate and turning your trainee into fat-burning machine is simple: Lift Heavy!

Is there such a thing as “bulking up?”

What about the much feared bulking up? Is there such a thing? Yes, but it’s not from putting on excess muscle mass. You’ve probably heard plenty from your female trainees that one of their biggest concerns is the dread of bulking up, as they insist that their legs or shoulders respond quickly to heavy weights, that they put on size easily with heavy resistance. (I wonder what all those skinny men, who eat and eat and lift and lift and still can’t put on size, would think of these claims!).
The truth is that bulking up does not happen to women unless there is no effort applied to fat burning. The idea is to lift heavy and get out of your comfort zone (i.e. Within 10-12 reps the weight should become too heavy to lift), so that your body responds by breaking down the muscle tissue and building you back up stronger and leaner.
When gym-goers refer to bulking up, what he or she is really describing is the larger appearance that exists when the same amount of fat remains on top of this newly developed muscle.
The best scenario is to burn fat, build muscle, lose inches, and reveal a more sculpted muscle belly and actually overall smaller limbs. However, it is a unique situation because the only way to get the fat off is to lift weights that challenge the muscles to grow and increase the body’s amount of lean body mass. Consider that a pound of muscle burns 30-50 calories at rest each day, where as a pound of fat burns only 2-5 calories per day. This clearly shows that the more lean muscle mass a person has, the more calories burned at rest.
In other words, with each pound of muscle mass acquired, the trainee increases metabolism and burns more calories just sitting at a desk. On top of the calorie comparison is the fact that muscle takes up considerably less space than fat; thus, losing fat while gaining muscle causes an overall loss in inches. The benefit of increased muscle is even greater during a workout. The more lean muscle mass a trainee has, the more calories are toasted off during the workout.
For example, take 2 150 lbs. women, same-age women, one with 20% body fat and the other with 40%. The woman with less body fat will burn a lot more calories if the 2 engage in the same workout.
Lifting Heavy Weights is the #1 way to change the shape of the body
Everyone knows that cardio queen at the gym: on the elliptical machine for hours or doing step class after cycle class after kick box class. Chances are this person is thin. But, she probably doesn’t look athletic, toned, or tight. In fact, it’s not uncommon see a woman going at it on the cardio equipment who initially looks strikingly thin. But if you view her for a few moments longer, you’ll notice that her midsection (which is often bare) is soft and has a spread-like or dough-like quality about it; ‘round and ‘round her pipe cleaner legs go, and you can bet she has trouble carrying heavy grocery bags.
This “thin” woman hardly touches the weights. She’s 20-something and her youth protect her from being blubbery. But if she continues to shy away from serious weight lifting, this fear will eventually catch up to her. By age 35, she’ll be taking clothes off the size 12 or 14 rack.
The thing that happens when someone does a lot of cardiovascular activity s essentially the same thing that happens when he or she lifts lighter weights; using a lot of reps. They get smaller or larger but always have the same exact frame. In other words, their curves, or lack there of, are the same. Jog all you want, but only heavy resistance training can change the shape of the body to create a loss in inches and a more balanced physique.
How to lose the fat on top of the muscle
In order to burn fat while maintaining muscle mass, it’s important to use exercises that affect the hormonal situation in the body. The amount of weight lifted, or more specifically, the volume of weight lifted, is directly correlated to the amount of testosterone released by the body. And the amount of testosterone released by the body is directly correlated to the amount of fat the body will burn.
Women should not be afraid of testosterone. In fact, even when women are able to create higher levels of testosterone, they will never have enough to create a masculine look without the help of anabolic (“banned substances”) supplementation, not to mention a lot of time in the gym and at the protein shake blender.
The key to changing the hormonal situation to become an efficient fat-burner is to achieve both mechanical and metabolic failure in a workout. Mechanical failure occurs when the weight lifted simply becomes too heavy to be lifted anymore and assistance is needed. Metabolic failure occurs when trainees experience that burning sensation in their muscles.
Efficient weight-lifting should yield one or both of these phenomena, and this is the most important time to squeeze out one or two more reps. Reaching the point of failure ensures the release of testosterone and human growth hormone to maximize fat-burning both during the workout and deep into the hours following.


How to maximize Fat-Burning

An important point to remember is that everyone has a different level of fitness. To ascertain the correct amount of intensity and the correct amount of rest, use the talk test. During working sets, an individual should be out of breath and speech should be labored. Once the set is over, wait 1-2 minutes (but no more!) before beginning the next set or exercise.
Make the trainee truly reaches failure, in order to “earn” a 1-2 min rest. The last few reps should be a heartfelt struggle. In fact, in a 6 rep max set, the struggle is evident from the 1st rep. In an 8 rep max set, struggle may not be evident in the 1st or 2nd rep, but come in the 3rd or 4th rep, the trainee clearly begins to fight.
Sometimes, as a trainer, it’s hard to discern the point at which a trainee is lifting heavily enough to get real results. Pulling out a weight that generates failure within 8-12 reps is a good idea here. This part may take some trial and error, but I would always recommend choosing a weight heavier than lighter. Only 4 or 5 reps may be the result of the 1st try, but at least failure is reached and the muscles are being forced to react. For the 2nd set, decrease the weight only slightly, and still try to induce failure by rep 7 or 8. For the final set, keep the weight the same or decrease it only slightly to induce failure at rep 9 or 10, even if “loose” form is necessary.
Both trainers and clients probably agree that safety is the number one priority while resistance training. However, in the name of heavy weight-lifting to generate results, remember that loose form here and there is perfectly fine and in fact, recommended in the last rep or two for the sake of the workout. (Loose form is that which, for the most part, continues to adhere to proper biomechanics, but there’s a slight component of cheating --- but not to the extent that the trainee is risking injury or defeating the purpose).
If someone is skilled or has a good amount of experience weight-lifting, use this technique to generate the burn and get a little deeper into failure mode. However, remember that if someone is extremely frail or a beginner, he or she should ease into resistance training and steer clear of cheat reps or swinging weight until more comfortable with the movements.

Additional Benefits to heavy resistance training

Everyone has heard that resistance training helps to increase bone density or maintain bone health once a person reaches the mid 30’s. What most fitness professionals forget is that the benefits for bone increase almost linearly with the amount of weight lifted.
Most trainers will shy away from using heavier weights with older adults and those with existing injuries. A good trainer will put safety first, but heavy weights can be used safely and effectively I even the frailest populations, and are the absolute best way to stimulate bone growth. Both the fit and frail should be lifting heavy and reaping the benefits.
Additional muscle development increases neural function including balance and coordination, along with core development and even flexibility. Achieving failure safely in a workout will prime the nervous system and provide more functional advantage than using balance boards and other functional devices. After all, a stronger and more flexible leg is automatically more stable.
Some of the best exercises to profit in this way include clean presses, heavy barbell squats, or barbell push-presses. Experiment with hybrid movements that challenge both the upper and lower body together such as a squat and press or a lunge curl and press. These types of exercise provide superior benefit over the current trend of using single-joint movements coupled with a balance board.
As a personal trainer, I have seen first hand the incredible balance and coordination advances, plus improvement in fat-burning, noticeable inches lost and a tighter, shapelier and leaner physique achieved through lifting heavy weights.

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