- The Authors
Jeff Thiboutot
Matt Schoeneberger
As you all know, we’re getting closer and closer to being finished with this weight loss ebook. It’s getting more exciting each day. We apologize for our infrequent posting lately, we’ve just been pouring our energy into the book itself rather than this blog and our L.E.A.N. Wellness Letter. We thank you for your patience and we hope you find the posts we have been making useful and intriguing.
Now to the point. We’ve nailed down most of the original myths we came up with for the book, and we’ve thought of some more issues we’d like to tackle. Two of them are the hCG diet (Simeons Protocol) and the whole B12 shot fad. We’re digging into the science and evidence for these right now. But, we wanted to ask you…
What controversial weight loss topics do you want us to investigate? Are there any diet or exercise programs for which you would like to see the evidence (or lack thereof)?
Reply with a comment and let us know.
Filed under: Exercise, Research, body composition, diet, fat loss, nutrition, weight loss — Tags: diet, Exercise, nutrition, S.P.E.E.D. Weight Loss — Matt Schoeneberger M.S. @ 2:44 pm
Exercise Tip – Pick Multi-Joint Movements for Effecient Workouts
When exercising, pick movements that require the use of more than one joint.
For example, consider the bicep curl. Only the elbow is moving so only the muscles around the elbow are working through a range of motion. Now consider the row. The elbow is performing the same movement as in the bicep curl, called flexion (the wrist is getting closer to the shoulder) but at the same time the shoulder is moving as well. This exercise uses the muscles around the elbow as well as the muscles around the shoulder.
Multi-joint exercises: more work, less time.
Filed under: Exercise, Quick Thoughts, Uncategorized, health — Tags: Exercise, resistance training, weight loss, weight training — Matt Schoeneberger M.S. @ 12:36 pm
Here’s a little something I wrote a while back. More musing than anything….
Exercise is boring. Exercise is a waste of time. Exercise is dying. Exercise is dead.
Living a healthy lifestyle requires motivation. It’s easy to slip into a cycle of laziness and gluttony, to let your health take a back seat to any number of other things. With schedules full of responsibilities, full of chores and tasks, it can become daunting to add exercise to the list. After all, we know we feel better when we exercise, but that fact alone is rarely enough to get us in the gym after a stressful, tiresome day.
The Common Cure for Motivation
What if there was a cure for this motivation problem? What if we could simultaneously add joy, fitness and long-term health to our lives all while making it easier to find the motivation for gym-going? Well the truth is we can, it just takes an adjustment in the way we approach exercise.
Exercise is a replacement for levels of activity our distant ancestors achieved through survival activities. We used to need to hunt and gather, to build shelter, protect our families, and to travel long distances by foot. Modern life has made these activities largely unnecessary, so we have invented ‘exercise’. Our distant ancestors, however, partook in one form of activity that exists today, and has existed in many different species for many years; play. We adapted play to our modern lifestyle and sport was born. Sport, or play, is the key to our new motivation.
Sport
We all need heroes or role models to look up to. As children, we often look to athletes as role models, as someone to model ourselves after, to make us work harder and excel in sports as well as other areas of our lives. When we grow into adulthood, we often continue to admire sports figures. We devote chunks of our time and energy into our fanaticism, all while letting our own athleticism slip away. This is our mistake, our wrong turn on the path to health and happiness. We stop playing.
The excitement we feel when watching one of our favorite sports teams or athletes compete is little compared to the feeling of our own involvement in competition. The ‘butterflies’ prior to competition, the level of unparalleled focus during competition and the feeling of satisfaction after playing your hardest and knowing you performed to the best of your ability are rarely felt by many of us after childhood. These feelings of accomplishment and involvement are important for health and happiness. The athlete inside of us demands increased performance each time we compete and this is our new motivation, our source of drive.
Exercise is Dead
Exercise is an activity for regular people. Exercise is regular people’s modern day replacement for survival activities of the past. Exercise is their means to an end they know they need, but have no real desire to achieve. Health alone is rarely a motivator. We, as athletes, do not exercise. Athletes train.
The difference may be undetectable to some, but training is worlds apart from exercising. Training involves a focus, a drive, a desire that is fueled by the need for performance, for victory. Training allows you to achieve feats you never thought possible and acquire confidence that carries over to all other aspects of your life. Our natural competitiveness makes getting to the gym after a stressful, tiresome day a no-brainer, a non-decision. We’re already there. We’re athletes. We train.
Becoming an Athlete
We, as adults, sit and remember the games we played as children and file these memories away, not realizing we could capture that excitement all over again. There are recreational leagues for many sports and many age groups. If we feel we’re not in shape to begin playing in a local league, our time in the gym should be focused on regaining the athleticism needed to compete at the most basic level, while adding sport-specific practice (i.e. shooting baskets for basketball) as part of our routine. Once able to join the games, our training focus shifts to increasing performance for our sport and position. Training continues as long as we improve, and for as long as we continue to play at any level.
Remember, we’re athletes. We train. Get to it.
New recreational sports league:
For more about training:
As a personal trainer, I have to find solutions to a lot of problems. One obstacle that appears for many of my clients is work-related travel.
“My hotel didn’t have a gym.”
“My hotel had a gym, but I didn’t know how to use any of the equipment.”
“My hotel had a great gym, but it was a hassle to get there from my room.”
Travel and the lack of hotel gym equipment are no excuse to miss workouts. Many of the exercises I do with my clients in my gym are bodyweight only exercises, or can be modified to be so. After covering the material in this article, we’ll never have a good excuse to miss a workout in any city.
Bodyweight exercises are some of the most challenging and also the most modifiable exercise choices available. Some coaches even recommend that a certain level of performance be achieved on bodyweight exercises before weights are used in any situation. If we plan correctly, we can easily develop enough total body workouts to get you into shape without a single dumbbell.
Before we get to the workout, a few notes about modifying bodyweight exercises and knowing how many reps of each exercise to do. The first rule of bodyweight exercises is that we want to be able to perform repetitions with good form, as with any exercise. If the exercise is so hard that our form is atrocious, we modify. The second rule is that when we modify an exercise, depending on the situation, the modification may make it almost too easy. This is better than too hard, since we can always do more repetitions and sets to make up for the level of difficulty. The third rule is, no matter what exercise we’re using or what set and repetition parameters we decide on, each set should nearly fatigue the muscles we’re working. In other words, we don’t want to take each set to complete failure, but maybe just one or two reps shy of complete failure. For timed exercises, stop when you feel yourself start to lose form or feel pain in an area that is unexpected.
Bodyweight Workout:
Bodyweight Squats – stand with feet between hip and shoulder width apart. Push hips back and down like you were going to sit in a chair. Once you reach average chair height, return to standing. Feel free to raise your arms out in front of you for balance as you complete the movement.
Modified Push-ups – to modify a push-up, lean on a raised surface so that your shoulders are above your hips, but your body is still in a straight line. The higher the surface, the easier the push-ups will be. Look for tables, chairs, countertops, etc. for modifications.
Planks – Lie face down to start. Then lift your body up so that your weight is supported on your forearms and your toes, with your body as straight as possible. Brace your abdominals (hold them tight like if someone was going to hit you in the stomach) and squeeze your glutes (butt muscles). Do not let your lower back arch excessively. This should look like upper push-up position only with your arms bent and your forearms on the floor. Hold for time.
Squat Thrusts – stand with feet hips width apart. Squat down and reach your hands to the floor in front of you. Let your weight rest on your hands and kick your legs back so you end up in a push-up position. Jump your legs back to your hands and stand up.
Leg Lift Holds – Lie on your back and lift your legs up to a 90 degree angle at the hip. Lower your legs, keeping your abdominal muscles tight, until you start to feel your lower back come off the floor. Stop here, press your back onto the floor, and hold for time.
That’s it. Now we never have a reason to miss a workout while traveling. This is a great workout and it can be completed anywhere. Now get to work!
Killer Computers!!!
The information age has enabled us to communicate in incredible ways, ushering in a fast-paced society where anything is possible. We can accomplish anything we need with a few clicks of a mouse or keyboard. We’ve become best friends with our computers, dependant upon their service and lost when they fail. Could this relationship be the death of us?
The human body is not designed to sit in a chair at a desk hour after hour, day after day. The human body is built for moving. Unfortunately, we don’t move much at all. The information age has also ushered in a new posture, one with rounded shoulders, a forward positioned head, misaligned hips and the pain and dysfunction that result. Associated symptoms and conditions include, but are not limited to, headaches, neck pain, back pain, bulging or herniated disks, degenerative disk disease, facet syndrome and other more complicated impairments.
A well designed corrective exercise program can help you avoid or repair postural distortions that could lead to pain and dysfunction. After all, it is the imbalanced muscular system that creates a misaligned skeleton. But, what you can fix in the gym in 30 minutes, you can easily tear down in the other 23.5 hours in the day. So, be mindful of your posture throughout your day. Maintain proper alignment, avoid repetitive movements while seated (like twisting and reaching into a filing cabinet), and get up and move around as often as possible. Remember that the best posture is one that is always changing.
Matt, I'm sore. Should I stretch?
It’s a common misconception that stretching before/after/during a workout will help relieve the soreness we feel from a challenging workout. While it’s very rare that I’ll tell a client not to stretch, I make sure they understand it’s not going to help soreness disappear.
Stretching before a workout or athletic event also doesn’t appear to prevent injury, although I wouldn’t say that it’s been shown to promote injury either.
This doesn’t mean I’m telling anyone to stop stretching. We sit too much and move too little, so a little stretching couldn’t do us any harm, provided it’s done correctly. When studying the effects of stretching on range of motion, Decoster et al. found that 30 seconds is the magic number. One set of 30 seconds or smaller sets that add up to equal 30 seconds had the same effect on range of motion. Anything over 30 seconds showed no greater result. Hang out in a stretch longer if you want, just don’t expect to become rubberman by stretching for hours at a time.
Andersen JC. Stretching before and after exercise: effect on muscle soreness and injury risk. Journal of Athletic Training. 2005;40(3):218–220.
Decoster LC, Cleland J, Altieri C, Russell P. The effects of hamstring stretching on range of motion: a systematic literature review. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2005;35(6):377-387.
We have no mirrors in our workout room at L.E.A.N. We decided, based on some research we read (of course) that mirrors may be detrimental to some of our clients’ self-image. We’ve been asked quite a few times if we could add mirrors to our facility. There is some new research, however, saying that mirrors may not be detrimental to exercisers’ self-image.
What does this mean to you?
If possible, ditch the mirrors while exercising. The benefits don’t outweigh the possible drawbacks. In fact, I’m not sure there really are benefits.
Many of our clients argue that mirrors help them make sure they are performing the exercises correctly. Since we’re in a personal training environment, where every exerciser has a coach, this shouldn’t be necessary. In addition, relying on visual feedback does not carry over into real-world situations. If you’re used to checking your form in the mirror while dead-lifting, what do you do when you have to pick-up something heavy from the trunk of your car without a mirror. If you learn what it FEELS like to lift properly, you’ll always have good form.
Outside of making our workout space look bigger, what are the advantages to mirrors? If you have any suggestions, or want to share how you feel about mirrors in your workout space, leave a comment for us.
Filed under: Quick Thoughts — Tags: Exercise, fitness, psychology — Matt Schoeneberger M.S. @ 11:12 pm
