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5 Fitness Tips by John Erickson, N.A.S.M
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1. WORK OUT ALL DAY
Work at all day, every day.
For example:
Walk up stairs with enthusiasm and good posture.
When you vacuum I want you in a good forward stance and you
are aware that you are alternating chest and back exercises.
Change hands every now and then to give equal work to your
right and left sides.
If you drop something on the floor I want you to do a perfect
deadlift or lunge to pick it up.
When reaching for something, lift your rear food off the ground
as if you were performing a single leg Romanian dead lift.
2. CROSS TRAIN TO GET A BALANCE OF
CARDIOVASCULAR, STRENGTH, FLEXIBILITY, AND CHOOSE EXERCISES
THAT CHALLANGE YOUR BALANCE.
Perform active stretching exercises before you workout. Strength
training activities use weight or your own body weight to
provide resistance. Cardiovascular activities are also called
"heart-racing activities" where an elevated breathing
rate is maintained for an extended period of time. The best
time to perform static, or "still" stretching is
after you exercise, or at night before you go to sleep.
3. THINK IN TERMS OF PUSHING
AND PULLING
Your workout plan should
integrate pushing and pulling motions. For example, alternate
chest with back, thighs with hamstrings, and biceps with triceps.By
alternating pushing and pulling movements, you allow proper
time rest. While you are exercising your chest, your back
is getting a rest and vice versa. Some people like to alternate
pushing and pulling each day -I like to alternate pushing
and pulling each workout. This is mainly because I want reciprocal
muscle groups to be tight together.
4. EXERCISE LARGE MUSCLE GROUPS
FIRST (UNLESS YOU ARE DOING A TOTAL BODY WORKOUT)
You are supposed to work out the largest muscle groups first.
For example, fatiguing your triceps before exercising your
chest would not be advantageous.
The largest muscle groups for the upper body are your chest
(pushing) and back (pulling).
The largest muscle groups on the lower body include the thighs
(pushing) and hamstrings (pulling).
After you have exercised your chest/back or thighs/hamstrings,
you can sprinkle in the smaller body parts (shoulders, biceps,
triceps, calves, abdominals, lower back, obliques, etc).
When I design a total
body workout I prefer to start with chest and back. I save
the legs for later because I utilize the legs during every
exercise. For example, if I wear out the legs by working them
first thing, my client will have little left when I make her
do a single leg dumbbell row. Therefore, when performing total
body workout, I like to do chest/back first and about 30 minutes
into the workout I will start legs.
5. DO NOT
PUT THE RADIO SO LOUD
Do not put your MP3 player
so loud. Obnoxiously loud music takes away from maintaining
steady breathing patterns and keeping good form. A loud sensory
input overloads your attention system and less focus will
be dedicated on your exercising technique or breath. What's
the first thing people do when they are driving in a car and
get lost? They turn the radio down because there is too much
stimuli at once.
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