Mix up your exercises every 4-6 weeks!

Your muscles will adapt to the load of your workout over time. Mixing up your routine every 4-6 weeks means your muscles have to adapt to a new angle or way of working. This means your muscles continue to change, shape and improve strength. Here are just a few choices for strength training:

Examples: use free-weights, barbells, body weight, cables, bands.

Important Rule for Strength Training

Get Fit Quick Tip:

Always warm-up for your workout!

A warm-up is an essential component of your workout and should NOT be skipped, or even abbreviated. Prepare your body for exercise with 8-10 minutes of dynamic (moving your body continuously) exercise. You’ll prepare your muscles and your cardiovascular system for the increased work load of exercise. A proper warm-up is any movement of your major muscle groups aerobically. For example:

Walking. Walking outside or on the treadmill makes a great warm up for just about every activity. Start slow and build up speed.

Calisthenics. Jogging, jumping jacks, hopping are all great warm up activities that move many muscles and increase our core temperature.

No load exercises. Perform your weight exercises, without weight. No load exercises are great to develop muscle memory patterns as well.

Range of motion exercises. Move each joint through it’s natural range of motion. For example, wrist circles, ankle circles or knee bending and extending. Do 5-8 reps.

*Consult your physician before beginning exercise.

Should you skip the warm-up?

3 Workout Etiquette Reminders

Your workout is exactly that, YOUR workout.  Pick up after yourself and clean up your area when done . Here are 3 etiquette reminders next time you’re at the gym:

Rack your weights! Please take your weights off the bars, off the machines and up off of the floor when done. Place them on their proper rack, so others don’t risk injury lifting weights that are too heavy just to clean up your mess.

Take turns! Allow another exerciser to “work in” a set on your rest interval if possible. If you notice someone waiting, please offer a work-in set to make the best use of everyone’s time.

Put equipment back where it belongs. Wandering around the gym floor looking for equipment is a waste of time. Please return equipment like safety collars, different attachments and rack pads to their proper place.

3 Reminders for your Next Workout

Get Fit Quick Tip:

Be Smart with your Fitness!

Pain means stop. Pain has a very different feeling than muscle fatigue or muscle burn. Muscle fatigue is acceptable, joint pain is not. Don’t work into pain.

Dizziness should not be a part of your workout. Dizziness can be a signal that your body is not meeting its oxygen demands and intensity is too high. Decrease intensity.

Use muscles, not momentum. Swinging weights around uses momentum, not muscles. Momentum is where injuries happen. Ideally, you should be able to control the entire range of motion to overload the muscles adequately. Control the exercise for best results.

Be Smart with your Fitness

Find the FUN!

Having fun with your fitness, means you’ll want to workout! A consistent workout is where results happen. Let loose, explore and experiment, be open to not exactly knowing what comes next. Here’s how to have fun with your fitness:

Be vulnerable. Take a chance on a workout, where you don’t know exactly how it will go. Do something different!

Be a beginner. Not all workouts need to be about 100% mastery the first time. Try something new!

Abandon structure. Play, run, jump, skip, dance!

FUN Fitness!

Get Fit Quick Tip:

Go All-Out!

When was the last time you experienced true muscle fatigue in your fitness plan? True muscular fatigue means you’re working to your max. Choosing a workout that requires your maximum physical effort and full mental attention keeps motivation high. It’s also a great method to assess your fitness abilities and progress. Experiment with different workouts once a week or once a month to see what requires 100% of your body and your mind. You may even find a new sport to love!

Take your fitness All-Out!

Get Fit Quick Tip:

Pain should NOT be included in your workout!

Every exerciser will benefit from being able to differentiate between pain (injury, radiating pain, limited range of motion, numbness, tingling) and muscle fatigue (muscle burn, feeling tired.) Pain should not be a part of your workout. If you’re having pain with exercise, STOP! Discontinue that exercise, regroup and try a different exercise or mode of exercise entirely.  The following 4 statements provide a general definition of pain and should NOT be experienced during or after your workout. Common sense is paramount. If an exercise doesn’t “feel quite right” during a workout, it probably isn’t.

Sharp, shooting, stabbing pain in your muscle or around your joint.

Sudden loss, restricted or change of range of motion.

Pain that is nauseating, leads to dizziness or instability.

Pain that worsens with exercise.

No Pain, No Gain?

Get Fit Quick Tip:

Get Uncomfortable!

Part of your fitness journey may be uncomfortable, unsettling or uncertain. Guess what? Feeling uneasy about your fitness goals is common! Physical fitness gains, and mental personal growth, happens when we overcome an uncomfortable feeling. We learn about our inner-strength and realize we are so much stronger than we think. It is through this principle that we feel empowered and confident, and these qualities carry over into all aspects of our life. Fitness is about so much more than the time we log in a workout!

Here’s how to get uncomfortable with your fitness (and enjoy it):

Take a class. Been interested in learning about the latest workout craze at your gym? Show up and try it!

Register for a race. Athletic competition is not just for kids. Enter a race and enjoy the motivation boost.

Master a new skill. Never learned to golf? Take a lesson. Always interested in stand up paddle boarding? Take a lesson.

Join a team. Check out your local recreation center to learn about local adult teams and leagues.

Revisit a old short-coming. Did you fall short of a goal previously and then abandon the goal entirely? Consider revisiting the goal again. Doing so will allow you to work through all the emotions that accompanied your efforts. The outcome may be different this time around.

Get Uncomfortable with Your Fitness

Encourage a fellow exerciser. Encouraging another exerciser costs nothing and requires no time. Everyone loves positive feedback for their efforts. Offer a few positive words to someone you see working hard every morning at the gym, or someone in your class who’s come a long way or go to a spot on a local race course and cheer on the athletes running or riding by. Your positive words really do matter to others who may be struggling to keep his or her fitness focus. Kind words really do make a difference.

Volunteer for a community event. There are many races in many sports that happen year round. Find one that interests you and ask how you can help. Volunteers help at registration, at the hydration stops and at the finish area, there really is a task for every helping hand. Many race directors also need volunteers for several days prior to the event, so just drop a quick email or phone call and ask!

Register for a race. Consider competing in a race as a victory lap to celebrate all your training and hard workouts mastered. And keep in mind, registering for an organized race doesn’t always have to come with hard core expectations. Racing expectations are set by you. In fact, sometimes racing can simply provide a fun opportunity to get active with others who share our passion for living healthy.

Get active for a cause. Form a team and register to raise funds and participate in an organized event for a cause that’s close to your heart. The process is very simple: recruit your friends, family, co-workers, neighbor’s and sign up! The American Heart Association, Alzheimer’s Association, the Arthritis Foundation, the MS Society, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Team in Training are all worthy causes to consider lending your fitness to, just to name a few.

Plan an adventure outing. Why not plan an outing and invite others to join you? Consider a hike in the front or back country, a day long kayak excursion or maybe a bike ride is more your pace. Try a new physical activity or a great way to challenge your fitness even more. An outdoor adventure is also a great way to celebrate a birthday or other significant milestone. It’s also a great way for your guests to see the town when visiting you. And who knows, you all may even find a new activity to love.

Often we’re so focused on race to our end goal or even on setting the next goal immediately, we forget to take in the view and celebrate our progress as we go. Stop! Look around you and acknowledge how far you’ve come in your fitness journey. Congratulations!

Appreciate your Fitness by Nicole Bryan

Thinking of joining a class at the gym? Here are a few tips to get you started safely.

Know the class description. Most gyms offer a class schedule (either online or via hard copy) along with a brief description. Still unsure, ask a staff member for more information or do a little google search for more information. Walking into a class that you don’t know about is simply careless.

Be realistic in your fitness ability. Know your capability, what you want to accomplish and know your strengths and weaknesses in the exercise world. We don’t gain our goal fitness in a single workout or single day. If upon reading the class schedule, something interests you, but seems like a stretch in your fitness consider adding it to your three or six month fitness goal list.

Know the fitness that is required. In the schedule, you’ll find a degree of difficulty, beginner, intermediate or advanced. There is a reason for the listing!

Get proper guidance, instruction or set-up. If you’re joining a class that includes equipment or gear, make sure you know how to properly use the equipment. For example, if you’re trying a spin class for the first time, ask the instructor for a set-up. If you’re joining a boot camp class for the first time, ask the instructor for guidance how to perform the exercises.

Be prepared. Knowing what the class entails, also means showing up prepared. In most cases, being prepared means being hydrated prior to the class, having eaten prior to the exercise if that is what you usually do, wearing proper clothing (breathable, clothes you can move in), wearing proper footwear for the activity, bringing a water bottle, bringing a towel, turning your cell phone off during the class,

Pace yourself. Your goal during the first class is to be an active observer. Do the moves if they feel comfortable, but mostly observe to get an idea of the flow and intensity of the class.

Give it a few chances. If the first class doesn’t go as well as you expected, try again! If the second class doesn’t go as well as expected, but you find you do enjoy the style of workout, try a different instructor. Every instructor has a different teaching style, personality and instruction back-ground. It would be a shame to not pursue an interest, on account of not enjoying the instructor’s style.

Considering an Exercise Class? By Jennifer Austin