Office Workouts (calves)

Fitness tips: Office workouts Tapping your toes can make you run faster. You can do it almost with the click of the heels. Your gastrocnemius and soleus muscles (calves) help to flex your foot, while the Tibialis anterior, Extensor hallucis longus and Extensor digitorum longus (shin) muscles are right above your ankles. These two groups of muscles are some of the main movers in aiding you to push off and absorb the corresponding shock that is absorbed with each step. The stronger your muscles are in this area, the more you are able to exert and absorb power. That power is an important factor to helping you to walk and run faster. Office Workout: Try heel raises while standing at the filing cabinet. Use the filing cabinet for support as you lift your heels off the ground as high as you can while distributing your weight throughout all 10 toes. 2 sets of 20 reps should get your calves burning and get you ready for that quick jaunt off to the copier. While you are resting at your computer, try lifting your toes as high as you can . This helps to strengthen your shin muscles in the front of your leg which absorb a lot of the shock while running. Pick a song to hum to yourself or sing out loud (if your coworkers don’t mind) while you tap your toes along. Stronger calves and shin muscles help to create balance while you walk and/or run faster. Whether you are striding it out to the copier or tapping your toes at your office desk. Keep yourself healthy and try something fun each day.

Nature versus gym equipment part 1

An associate of mine asked me the other day about exercise equipment. I must first say that even though I am an outdoor enthusiast as it pertains to training the body, but I also my way around exercise equipment and could tell anyone the benefits of the each equipment sometimes without even having to use it. It is interesting at times, to see how we can get washboard abs with just the swivel of a chair or firm glutes with a ball that is the size of the palm of my hand. How do they all work? Why do they all work? Most importantly, do they all work? We should explore this for the sake of a new series of posts I like to call nature vs. gym equipment. There are a variety of exercises that can be done outdoors. Many of these exercises and movements are mimicked and modified to create new exercise equipment. Exercise equipment will be an industry that will last forever for the shear fact that there are a plethora of movements that the body can make in just a single day. If you add resistance to any of these movements and do it repetitively, all of a sudden you have an exercise and subsequently, a workout. Today we will discuss the newest workout craze, the perfect pull up. These new contraptions are simply a bar that you can put up in your home and do pull-ups from a door frame. This is a very handy device. I have actually been tempted to buy it a few times for myself. This bar is built to strengthen the muscles that help you pull, mainly your back muscles and those muscles to the outside of your shoulder blade called latitimus dorsi (known as your lats for short). You also can strengthen your abdominals, but as with almost all exercise, your abs will come into play someway or another. There are exercises that you can do outdoors that replicate this and are actually more effective as they help you with stability and balance while working targeted muscle groups. The outdoor equivalent of the perfect pull up bar is of course, the monkey bars that you used to use in grade school. There are still many of these located in almost any park and playground in your area. If you are not by a park or do not have monkey bars at your park, you can also find a tree (make sure the branches are strong) or you can use the base of a light post. You can always find a great adventure outdoors if you are looking. Just make sure you are paying attention to your surroundings. There is always a great workout hiding in plain view.

Balance Your Life

The feet are made up of many bones and muscles to help you move fluidly throughout the world If we did not have feet, you could imagine that we would have a tough time walking or running. Biologically speaking, without our ankles we would not be able to push off our feet with any stability and it would be extremely possible that we would increase the chance of foot pain or much worse, knee and back pain. Those who work in office setting or are not incredibility active, suffer the risk of losing overall stability in the feet and ankles. Increased knee pain was one symptom to have been recognized in a 2002 study of strength and balance. The results from this 30 month long study showed that an overall correlation to balance and joint pain. “…an overall significant decline in knee and ankle strength , and balance..,” (Messier, Glasser, Ettinger, Craven, Miller, 2002). If you experience pain in any of these areas you might want to read on. The most common thing people do when they experience back or knee pain is to take an over-the-counter pain killer. While this may relieve you of the pain symptoms, this can actually further damage the joint and create more pain in the long run. The best thing to do is to take a brief second to analyze the activities in your life. Active people are not necessarily exempt from the pains. As a runner, I used experience pain in my knees all the time. I had tried every stretch possible and even resorted to prescription esthetics. It was not until I had taken a ballet class in college (thank you liberal arts education) that I had found that the strength in my ankles was extremely weak. After a semester of ballet, I never experienced any knee pain while running and subsequently broke the 200 meter record by almost a second in the NCAA conference championships. Many of the exercises employed by instructors at Valley Forge Fitness are designed to strengthen you in ways that would other wise be impossible with barbells and treadmills. No matter if you are training for a triathlon, strong man competition, or specific sport, you have to train properly. Let nature train your body; not machines.

Get Better in Bed

Sleep is something that most people take for granted. It is the one thing that people are willing to compromise even more than food or money. It is estimated that between 40 to 60 million Americans are sleep deprived. Different people can get by with different amounts of sleep, but the average person actually needs anywhere from between 7-9 hours a night. Why does one need sleep? When human bodies do not get enough sleep they tend to lose strength, the immune system decreases, and there is an increase in blood pressure. Dr. Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, says that the best thing for your body is consistency. This can be fulfilled by simply going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every day. But, it is important to note that making up for lost sleep on the weekends is a big negative. It is preferable that if one likes to sleep on the weekends wake up at the same time Saturday and Sunday. As you sleep through the night, your body produces a "hum," vibration, or waves during the delta wave sleep. Scientist are not sure how, but this event causes organs to manufacture vital hormones, during the next phase in your sleep cycle, your body mobilizes those hormones. Not having a good night sleep will restrict your body from producing human growth hormone (HGH) and other natural hormones, like thyroxin (that makes you lean). Consistency is the key to all things healthy, including sleep. A sufficient amount of sleep, can make you less prone to injury, have more cognitive functioning and decrease your appetite. Get some sleep tonight. References Sleep and Wakefulness: Nathaniel Kleitman. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, and Cambridge University Press, 1939. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 21:370-371. J., E. (1940).

Your Workout Play List is Too Old

Variety is the spice of life. It is also the spice of exercise. When exercising, your body develops a sensitivity to the exercises that you are doing. This explains why Michael Jordan was not great at baseball and why Deion Sanders did not have a particularly high on base percentage. Think of exercise as music, Each individual note is an exercise and every movement is a melody that composes your full workout “song”. If you hear the same song enough, you are going to eventually develop a certain sensitivity to a song. You will be able to recognize the melody and have the ability to recite some if not most of the words. When your body has the sensitivity to recognize the “melody” to your workout you loose the shock factor and your muscle growth is going to be limited. Every form of exercise is based on the idea that the muscles of the body adapt to what you are doing. If you can constantly vary what the muscles are doing you become stronger faster. Strong is a relative word and some would say that being able to push 50 pounds off your chest is strong, but how many times can you do it or in how many different directions can you push that 50 pounds? This is the basis of functional strength training at Valley Forge Fitness. Exercising on all planes of anatomical possibility is what makes the body stronger. Having the ability to train the body to do that will only help your workouts. When designing workouts, the more you can train the body to do, or the more songs you have on your “play list” of workouts the better your body will respond to all your training.

5 Rules to Exercising Outdoors

Nothing beats working out outdoors. Natural light, grass, fresh air. It can all be an exhilarating experience. Here are 5 rules to outdoor training that will keep you outdoors longer and make your exercise routine a more enjoyable experience. 1. Proper training shoes- When working out outdoors, make sure you have the right shoes for the activity you are doing. Walking shoes are good for walking, but not as good for running or cross training. They normally have a little more cushion on the bottom making them heavier. The instep of a walking shoe is also a little less pronounced than a running or cross training shoe. Opt for a cross training shoe if you are unsure of what activity you may be doing outdoors. These have good ankle support and are good for a majority of outdoor activities. 2. Weather- A beautiful day can attract a lot of people outdoors, but sometimes it can be too hot or too cold for even the hardest of hardcore people to exercise outdoors. There is no magical temperature or limit for your exercise. You know your body best. What you should know, is that you must dress for the occasion. If it is cold outside layer to keep your body warm. The most danger is when it is cold and windy and or rainy. The wind can take the heat away from your body faster than you can generate it. When it is hot, dress appropriately and stay hydrated. 3. No pain no gain- This is not always true. There is a difference between training through soreness and working out till the point of injury. The general rule is that if you have an ache or soreness that lasts more than 5 days, you should see a doctor. Runners should be especially wary of joints (e.g. your ankles or knees) that are consistently sore or achy because that could mean something more serious than just a cramp or a strain. 4. Rest- The key to staying in shape is to let your body recover. Athletes and everyday Joes alike need to let their bodies rest. If you are working out vigorously 7 days a week that might be too much for your body to handle for the long haul. Think about switching up your routine. Try a Pilates class or maybe yoga. You can even try just taking a day off just to get your energy levels back up and to let the creativity in your workouts return. 5. Eat-So many people have tried and eventually failed with fad diets where you don’t eat this or you don’t eat that. You only eat one thing all day and it helps you to get in great shape. Well the only diet is really no diet at all. You may remember that food pyramid that you got in third grade that had the grains, dairy, fruits/vegetables, meat/beans and oils. This is the only way to get into and stay in shape by giving the body what it needs to work efficiently and turn fats into energy.