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Lifting weights is a fantastic form of exercise, so is core work, and so is cardio... if you do it correctly. The reason why say that it must be done correctly is because I notice very frequently how often people lift weights with a good program, but follow improper form. It pains me to see runners limping along, obviously struggling, yet still shuffling along. One of the easiest ways to hurt yourself is to try to lift too much weight in the weight room, run too fast on the track, or generally just exercise too much without enough recovery. The one overarching skill that you can cultivate in order to prevent this is to bring the entire experience internal.  What I mean by this is that instead of looking externally toward the numbers:
Have you ever seen somebody in the weight room who can lift an obscene amount of weight on the bar but hardly has any muscle development? On the other hand, have you ever met somebody who has very developed muscles yet is not the strongest person in the gym? Have you ever met someone who looks like a fit runner, yet only runs 3 miles per week? On the other hand, have you ever met an accomplished marathoner who looks as if their body is so tight that it's a wonder that they can still stand upright? Of course, some of the above scenario’s can be chalked up to genetics. But, I have also seen my fair share of poor training practices contributing to poor results, even if they looked good on paper. So what is the differentiating factor? What makes a program good and another in effective? Focus. It’s all about focus. Focus is what makes one fitness program good, specifically one person‘s execution of the fitness program.  If you are going to do an exercise, do it 100% correct. If not, you are risking a lot. First, you are setting yourself up for injury. Second, you’re basically taking a good program and making it sub par. You can take the best program, used by professional athletes, and make it into a bad program if you do it improperly. On the other hand, you can use a very basic program and make it great if you focus on form and proper progression. Some ways to prevent yourself from exercising improperly are:
I hope this helps inspire you to put yourself first. Make the shift from an externally-driven fitness program to one that is solidly focused inside yourself. Nobody can do this for you. Fitness is the one endeavor that you can't outsource (that sounds like a good blog post title in itself). Get serious about your health. Put it first. It's hard to get it back once it starts to slip. Going inside, checking on what your body needs, is the best first step to reaching your fitness goals. All the best to you. If you need help, let me know. 
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What’s easier, pushing a boulder up hill, or keeping it up the hill? What’s easier, getting fit, or staying fit? If you are new to fitness, there’s one thing that you need to know. You’ve heard that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Well, with fitness, the fit get fitter. I’ll be brutally honest here, if you are not in shape right now, the deck is stacked against you. Your body does not want to be fit. It’s not efficient. Your body will only lose weight if it absolutely has to.  That might be bad news at first, but it should also keep you motivated during hard times. Think of it like this. If you know that it will take you at least six months of dedicated effort to achieve results, then you shouldn’t complain about why things are not happening unless you’ve gone through those six months with full effort. This is why having a personal trainer so valuable, because that trainer is at the top of the mountain and they can reach their hand down to help pull you up. Your friend who is also not fit, is not in the position to pull you up like a trainer does. One very important thing that can help you climb the mountain of fitness is to find something that you enjoy, or at the very least can tolerate. But beware, enjoying your fitness program typically only happens when you are fit. The fit get fitter. If you can just hold on, just long enough for some "magic" to happen. Because once you start seeing just a little bit of results, you will start to associate those results with what you did to get them. At that point, you may begin to develop that fitness mindset. That pure enjoyment, not because it’s so fun, but because the results are so great.  Let me break down the three steps that I just detailed. STEP 1 You are not fit, and you don’t like exercising. It’s a chore. Somewhere deep down you don’t even believe that there’s a connection between fitness workouts and results. You live in Hopelesstown, USA. STEP 2 You are still not really fit, but you’ve begun the process. You’ve seen enough to be able to correlate your exercise program with your preliminary results. In this step you have "directionality," meaning you are not to the final destination but you can tell that you are on the right path. You know at a deeper level that if you continue to walk this path you will get to where you want to be. STEP 3 You have built up some serious momentum. Momentum is your friend here. You are in the stage where you could stop working out for months and still at least maintain a general fitness level. But you would never let that happen, because you are so tied to fitness as part of your life that not working out seems weird to you. You are fit and the fit get fitter. If you are a beginner, don't give up. Reach out to someone who can help you get past the hard part. Because, I promise you, there does come a point where it's harder to NOT workout than it is to workout. Let me know how I can help. Thanks!  When we embark upon a new fitness program, we naturally assume that over the course of those workouts we will progress in our ability. Whether that means we can lift more weight, or perhaps run faster, or recover quicker. But if you are a human, I recommend that you do not worry about the quantitative numbers when you are thinking of progression. Instead, think about the qualities that you want to progress. I made a distinction in the last paragraph between quality and quantity. Specifically, in fitness I mean that the quantity refers to the cold hard numbers. How much weight did you lift? How fast did you run? How many reps did you do? These are very easily quantifiable, and because of that easy to track and determine whether not you are progressing. But tracking numbers only can be limiting. Mainly, It sets us up for externally-driven results. And instead of trusting our own inner guidance, we are being driven by numbers, data, and analytics. This is why I don’t wear a "smart" watch when I workout. Frankly, I don’t give a $*!+ what my watch says about my workout. My experience of the workout is much more important.  I will admit that tracking qualitative data is more difficult, but, in my opinion, far more valuable. Tracking things like the ease at which you lifted a weight, how it felt when you ran up that hill, or which muscles you felt in a specific exercise are incredible ways to gauge progress. I’m very fond of saying that fitness is just a two-step process: step one is figuring out where you are at this moment right now, and step two is taking the next logical step or progression. Where people get into trouble, and by that I mean injury, is either they are not honest with themselves in regards to where they actually are. Or they think they are taking one step when in reality they are trying to take seven. Or, of course, they could be doing both. So how do you know if you are progressing to quickly? I love using this little graphic to explain this to people. Especially people who don’t think so kindly of the fitness Industry. The whole “no pain no gain“ propaganda in the past decades has scared off so many people. When you were a little kid, recess was your favorite subject because it was fun and you got to play with your friends. As an adult, exercise should be your favorite subject. If it’s not, one reason might be because you have accepted some of that no pain no gain garbage as gospel truth. You have a specific ability level that can be represented by a circle. All movement within that circle can be done by you easily, with good form, and you feel all the right muscles. Any motion that falls outside of that circle, does not feel good, you can compromise or form, and you feel all wrong muscles.  The no pain no gain philosophy will have you do workouts all over the place, with little regard to how it feels or how it looks. This is a recipe for disaster. Not only are you going to get injured eventually, but you really are not even going to get the results that you want because you’re not targeting the right muscles properly. Instead, our goal should be to do exercises and workouts with in our ability, but just pushing up to our limit. And because our abilities change every day, based on a lot of factors such as how much sleep you got last night, how you've been eating, sleeping, and the stresses in our lives, etc. We should track qualitatively how we are doing in our workouts. Yes, we should use “soft“ assessments such as feelings. Living in Silicon Valley, I am constantly inundated with people's over reliance on technology. Technology has a place, but for the most part outside of your workout. No amount of technology is going to help you get to your pinnacle level of fitness, because your pinnacle is inside of you. Ultimately, getting fit, healthy, and happy takes a connection to the deeper part of you, your spirit. The more you gauge your progress based on the needs of your spirit, the better off you will be. Chime inDo you agree? Disagree? Let me know below, I’d love to start a dialogue about this.  The foundation for any fitness program is the core. But how do you begin to develop the core? Search YouTube for the best core videos? Sure, you could do that. But first, I recommend a quick assessment to determine how strong and balanced your core is to begin with. Because then you will know what you actually nee to work on. The term core is a bit of a buzz word. It’s commonly known as the abdominals, or six pack. I take a broader view of the core muscles. So, I consider hips and shoulders to also be a part of the core. Core also refers to your front and your back. When you are balanced in all the core muscles, your body functions properly and you feel strong. I’m going to take you through the My Core Balance Core Assessment so that you can know where you stand with your core strength, stability, and balance.  If you haven’t already downloaded the scoring sheet from the previous two assessments, be sure to click here so you can download that document. At the end of this workout, you will not only know which of these exercises your weak in, but you will know which general ranges of motion you are weak. That way, you can systematically work on strengthening those weak areas. Once all the areas are brought up to a strengthened and balanced position, then I would recommend that you are ready to do general core workouts that you find on YouTube. But until then, it definitely would be beneficial to focus on your week areas to bring them up.. We will be assessing the following exercises:
Watch The following video and follow along with your scoring file. If you haven’t done the flexibility and range of motion assessment, I recommend that you also do those. Each of these exercises in the core assessment falls on a continuum. Every exercise has a way to make it easier, and also a way to make it harder. So when you were good at all these core exercises in the assessment, Then you’re ready to progress all of these exercises together. How did you do on the assessment? Can you honestly say that you are balanced? If not, seriously think about bringing up your deficiencies before you try to make your strengths stronger. The assessment tells you have strong each exercise is and even color codes it for you so that you can see it with a quick snapshot. Self assessment is great, and sometimes you want a little bit a help. I understand it, and would be happy to help. Click here to schedule a 30 minute assessment with me, either in the studio or through a video call. Questions? Comments? Leave them below. Thanks!   Range of motion is foundational. Do you have a mobility to move your body in multiple ranges of motion the way that you were designed? Any limitation can hurt your performance in sports and life. Much more, limitations in range of motion can cause physical pain. You might have already read the flexibility assessment from yesterday's blog post. Maybe you're wondering if they're the same thing. So first, we need to briefly define the difference between flexibility and range of motion.  Simply, flexibility is passive and range of motion is active. What I mean by that is to determine my flexibility I can lie on my back and have somebody manipulate my legs or arms. When I refer to range of motion, I’m talking about my ability to contract a muscle in order to take its opposite muscle into a full range of motion. It’s helpful to get some background knowledge first. Specifically, about muscle action, and muscle opposites. When you do a bicep curl, your tricep is lengthening. The tricep is the opposite muscle from the bicep. Every muscle in the body has at least one opposite. When you shorten a muscle to its absolute full shortened end range, the opposite muscle is at its lengthened end range. Watch this video about the end ranges of the biceps and triceps. Benefits of range of motion I am a much bigger fan of range of motion then I am of flexibility. Here’s why. When you are stretching muscles, there is very little muscle engagement when you are doing flexibility work. On the other hand, with range of motion you are not only increasing flexibility but you are gaining strength and stability at the same time. When one muscle is engaging, the opposite is forced into a stretch. So limitations in your range motion usually occur when one muscle group is not strong enough to overpower the tightness of the opposite muscle group. The following 14 exercises represent a large part of your body, and will help you accurately assess your range of motion. If you have not downloaded the free assessment tool, click here to download it now.
How did you do? The good news is that the first step in getting more range of motion is to assess where you are. Once you know that, It’s very simple to take the next step and simply do the exercises daily that you are not very good at. You will notice that as you get better at the deficient exercises, you will be feeling much better. The body likes balance. The body likes symmetry. The closer you get to full balance and symmetry, the better you’ll feel. Try to do these exercises daily, and when you’re ready move onto the next assessment, core. Is there anything that was unclear? Let me know what questions you have, and I’ll be happy to clarify. Thanks!   As an individual who is looking to better their life, naturally fitness will be a major piece of that improvement. This 4-part series of blog posts will help you achieve your goals, by first ensuring that you have a good place to start: assessing your progress. Today let's talk about flexibility.  Flexibility is more than just whether not you can touch your toes. Flexibility is dynamic, it’s 3-D, and a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Obviously we cannot change what you were born with. However, many of us can make great strides in our flexibility… Once we have identified where we need work. It’s not enough just go to a stretching class and stretch every muscle that feels tight. What ultimately helps, is when we pinpoint the exact ranges of motion that we are deficient, and systematically work to improve those. That’s the point of this blog post today. These 10 basic exercises will give you an accurate gauge of your flexibility. In addition, we have a pattern assessment tool that can help you understand if you have specific patterns that are tighter than others. The assessment tool that we are using can be downloaded right here. This tool also includes the other units of Range of Motion, Core, and Strength. Based on your scores, not only are you going to notice patterns and get recommendations for which exercises you should be doing, but we’ve also programmed the document to give you recommendations on which type of strength training and cardio you should be doing. The video below will take you through the following exercises.
How'd you do? Make sure to set a reminder to check back in on these in a month. In the meantime, just work on the exercises that you're not very good at right now. You will be surprises at how good you get with some focus. I can tell a lot about your level of fitness by how flexible you are, and more specifically, the relationship of your tight muscles to your flexible muscles. If you want a one-on-one assessment, let me know and I can help you with this step of the process. Any other questions, let me know. Thanks!  So you’ve finished your workout. Congratulations! Although oftentimes it's tempting to forget about the other side of the coin, it’s so important to remember recovery. If you are doing workouts that are not particularly challenging, and are more about stretching and balance, then in a way your workout is your recovery. But if you are doing intense workouts, you will definitely need to actively pursue some recovery. That’s what we are talking about in this blog post. If you did not check out the first four parts on how to build a my core balance work out, click here to start at step one, the hips. If you’ve already finish your workout, let’s get started with recovery.  There are two main categories that we are going to discuss in this post, the first is stretching and the second is myofascia release. Stretching From the term stretching, you would think that the main goal is to elongate the muscles. Although this is only half of the equation. What this should be more accurately called is gentle range of motion. Every muscle has the ability to contract and relax. When a muscle contracts fully, it takes a joint to a particular range of motion. Another thing that happens as one muscle contracts fully is that it’s opposite muscle stretches fully. Every muscle in your body has at least one opposite muscle, called its antagonist. We want to think in terms of antagonists when we are stretching. After all, we did that when we were engaging muscles too. We always want to think in terms of opposites. So, when you stretch the hamstrings, you also want to stretch your quads. When you stretch your biceps, you also want to stretch your triceps. Thinking of stretching in this way will help you learn more about muscular anatomy, too. This is a very beneficial thing to learn, because you will be taking this body of yours with you your entire life. Thinking of stretching mainly as range of motion is beneficial, And it’s also easier. Because now we can apply the same range of motion knowledge just in a more gentler way. The main stretches that I recommend are the following: Prone quad stretch Static wall Static wall splits Sitting floor twist Cats and dogs Foot circles Shoulder rolls The second part of recovery is myofascia release. You’ve probably seen foam rollers. And, in fact, you can actually use pretty much anything to help release the muscles and the fascia. Fascia is a web-like part of your body that covers the entire anatomy. Everything is wrapped in this stuff. And just like muscles, it can get tight and pulled out of whack. Imagine wearing a skintight shirt, and you pinch part of the shirt and pull. This pull will affect the shirt material even several inches away from where you pinched. This is how fascia works as well. It travels in lines, and one injury can affect the entire body.  A quick note about intensity This should not hurt. In fact, it should feel fantastic. Imagine getting a massage where you got to control how much pressure they put into your body. That’s what you’re doing right here. Lie down on a foam roller, tennis ball, or any other firm object, and explore where you feel tight. Your exploration will take you to wherever you are tight, but I recommend hitting these major areas on your body as a starting point: Quads IT band Glutes Calvs Rolling out on these areas will help you get close enough to the tight spots in your body, then you can follow the feeling and find some details as far as what is tight. There you go! You are done with your full balanced workout in five parts. Follow this template, and gradually ramp up the intensity of the exercises as your body adapts to get stronger and more flexible. If you have any questions on how to create a balanced, stable, core workout, let me know by commenting below. You can also email me at chris@mycarbalance.com, or text me at 408–883–4442. And I'd like to offer you a bonus, because you read to the end of the 5 blog posts. Get a 15% discount on our online programs. Be sure to enter 15discount in the space provided to get your 15% discount on our online programs. Thanks!  Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for… The workout! If you’ve followed the first three days of this week, you’ve seen the step-by-step progressive warm-up to get you to this point, and now you are ready for the workout. If you missed those blog posts, click here to start at step one - the hips. If you did not read those posts, I recommend that you do so, because a workout's worth is in its warm-up. So you’re all warmed up. If you are doing the full version of this workout, you’ve been moving for 30 minutes already. Then this current step in the workout with last you another 20 and 30 minutes, putting your total time to 50 to 60 minutes. If your fitness level is a skyscraper, the height of your skyscraper will depend on how well you have prepared the foundation. Your foundation is solid, so let’s get ready to build!  There are many different types of workouts that you could do at this point. You could go play a soccer or basketball game. You could run in the mountains. You could go to a yoga class, or lift weights, or do interval training. Your options are pretty much limitless. In fact, because your warm up was so balanced, you could theoretically just go online and find a workout that looks fun, and do it. However, if you are still concerned about balance, and making sure that this workout follows similar principles to your warm-up, then stay here and explore this path with me. When I build workouts, I usually don’t follow a pre-planned template. However, I do follow general patterns. The main pattern is your work-rest interval. Specifically, how much time are you going to spend on the exercise versus the rest in between exercise. If you are going on a long distance run, for example, your interval pretty much takes care of itself. You will be doing many minutes of running followed by your rest at the end. If you’re lifting weights, your interval might be 30 seconds of work followed by 30 to 60 seconds of rest. If you are doing a high-intensity workout, your interval might be 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest. So you see how just creating different interval frameworks will produce different results, regardless of which exercises you choose. Once you create the general framework, then you can populate that framework with specific exercises. Again, you can go dip your hand into the bucket of exercises randomly, or you can get very clear on why you would want to pick certain exercises over others. I recommend you get a full body workout every single time you exercise, both because they are more effective and a better use of your time. I divide up workouts into four main categories:
Push and pull both relate to the arms. The corresponding warm-ups were labeled shoulders. The shoulders are more central toward the core and need to be addressed first, whereas the arms are more peripheral and can be addressed later. Legs corresponds to hips. The hips served as the primer, and the legs flesh out that movement Core here is labeled the same as core in the warm-up. The main difference would be the intensity and the goal. The goal of the warm-up was to move the torso through all ranges of motion without compensation. The goal of the core workout is to produce enough work to fatigue the area, producing the resulting strength and endurance. Here is the exercise list that I would use for the specific parts of the workout: Push ExercisesBody weight Push-up Dip Handstand presses Weights Bench press Overhead press Pull ExercisesBodyweight Pull ups Inverted rows Weights Lat pull down Rows Leg ExercisesSquats Lunges Hamstring lean Wall sit One legged squat Core/Full Body exercisesJump rope Treadmill push Farmers walks/loaded carries full set ups Hanging leg raises As you can see, the intensity is elevated with these exercises. But again, you should be ready for them because you’ve done your hips, shoulders, and core warm-up. If you feel like these exercises are too demanding, then your option is to do the core warm-up section for longer and create a full workout with those exercises. You might also noticed that there are not very many exercises in this section. The main reason is because, well, we don’t need that many exercises. By manipulating the parameters (the intervals) we can create different and unique workouts without really needing to add exercises. How many sets should you do? Typically, I will do three rounds of intervals. Here’s one example of a push, pull, legs, core workout: Interval: 60:30 Push-ups, pull-ups, squats, treadmill run Another example: Interval 20:10 Bench press, jump rope, inchworm, Rose, lunges, farmers walk, bear crawls The options are unlimited. You can combine intervals, exercises, and sets/reps for a lot of different variations, depending on your goals and your current ability level. I hope this all was clear. I feel like I could write an entire book just about this one blog post, and I might in the future if you are interested. Let me know what questions you have, and what clarifications I can make. We are not done yet, though. After doing this workout, you will most likely be pretty fatigued. The last section is about recovery, which will help you to be in a position to exercise again and not be too sore in the coming days.  We are halfway through the week of our five-part series about creating an effective and balanced workout. But we are not quite halfway through the actual workout yet. After you do this part, you'll be halfway done. The third part out of the five is core. If you missed the first two parts, click here to go to step one.  "Core" is definitely a popular fitness buzzword. You’ve more than likely heard the term before. Before we get started I want to make sure that we clear up one common misconception, and that is that the core is just the abdominals, or six pack muscles. Sure, the core includes those muscles, but it is definitely not limited to those muscles. The core muscles including the abs, obliques, lower back, intercostals, QL, psoas, TFL, iliacus, glutes, pecks, lats, traps, rhomboids. If you’ve read the previous two posts, you'll notice that there is a lot of overlap. Yes, I consider the glute a core muscle. I consider the rhomboids part of the core as well. So there is some redundancy built into the My Core Balance workout system. You’ve already isolated the “hips“ and "shoulders,“ and now we are going to hit the hips, shoulders, and everything in between.  Typically you will start this part of the work out at the 21 minute mark. He did hips for the first 10 minutes, shoulders for the next 10 minutes, now we will do the course for the third 10 minutes. After you finish with core, you will have completed a nice little 30 minute workout, or you are setting yourself up for a warm-up of a much longer work out. Either way, you should feel pretty good after this. With the common misconception Of the limitation of the core being just the abdominals, one other misconception and limitation is that the court is best activated by crunches. And again, this is partially accurate, in that crunches are a valuable exercise to work the abdominals in one range of motion. But, we are three dimensional beings, meaning we need three dimensions, or planes of motion in our workouts for them to be successful. The planes of motion that of the limitation of the core being just the abdominals, one other misconception and limitation is that the court is best activated by crunches. And again, this is partially accurate, in that crunches are a valuable exercise to work the abdominals in one range of motion. But, we are three dimensional beings, meaning we need three dimensions, or planes of motion in our workouts for them to be successful. The front motion is one out of six directions that we want to hit with the court. The other five includ The front motion is one out of six directions that we want to hit with the core. Mechanically, this is called flexion. The other five ranges of motion that we want to get our extension, rotation to the left, rotation to the right, lateral flexion to the left, and lateral flexion to the right. Each of these ranges of motion is produced with a different set of core muscles. In addition to the movements, we want to think of the car as being “and tire rotation“ muscles. The best way to think about anti-rotation is to think of a sprinter. If you’ve watched track in the Olympics, you have seen the requirements for a strong core with these sprinters. As you watch the hundred yard dash, you will notice that the arms and legs of the runners are moving incredibly fast, and there is almost no movement in their midsection, their cars. Don’t be deceived, though. Their corners are working incredibly hard presenting their spine and rib cage from twisting. The core is effectively neutralizing the movement of extremities. One great analogy of the above example is thinking about boats. Imagine a huge ship pirate ship with a cannon. The captain shoots off the Canon which produces incredible force. Yet, the ship as a whole is unaffected by the blast. Contrast that to a smaller C vessel like a canoe. Imagine putting the same cannon on a canoe, and then shooting the Canon from the canoe. The canning supplies the same amount of force, yet doesn’t have the same stability in the form of a large stable ship. This is the flaw of training the arms and legs and ignoring the core. You’re trying to build up your cannons, yet you are trying to fire them off of a canoe. Long-term this does not work. The following core exercises include a lot of movements, and also some static isometric exercises. Beginner Exercises Prone arm raises Incline front raises Basic crunches Cats and dogs Pelvic tilts hip lift – assisted Hip crossover Hip twist Upper spinal floor twist Sitting floor twist Windmill Intermediate Exercises Crossed-Leg crunches Cross crawl crunches Leg raises Weighted windmill Plank Twist plank Side plank Bear crawl position Table top Advanced Exercises Hollow body Superman Supine with milk Jack Lalaine plank Bruce Lee dragon flag plank Planche progression Inchworm Bear crawls Crabwalk Bilateral hanging leg raises And… There’s plenty more where that came from. There are thousands of core exercises. A quick search on YouTube will help you find them. However, usually they are out of context. This is where you would probably put those core exercises, after you’ve already prepped the hips and shoulders and before you get started with the “meat“ of your workout. There are so many exercises to choose from, can I do longer than 10 minutes? Sure, of course! This is where there is some flexibility in the My Core Balance system. Sometimes this category can go on for 40 minutes total, making it the majority of the workout. The hips and shoulders provided the warm-up, and this is the entire workout. This would especially be the case if you are rehabbing from an injury. As challenging as many of these core exercises are, most of them are very restorative in nature. You will feel fantastic after doing 20 to 40 minutes of core work from this section. Have fun with this. These exercises require no equipment. They are easy to do in a hotel room while traveling. Alternatively, if you really want to nurture yourself, get outside and do these exercises at a park. Relax, take your time, and make sure you stay at the appropriate level for your ability until you are ready to progress to the next fitness level. Your body will tell you when it’s ready. Don’t force it, you have plenty of time. Core training saved my life. Coming from a childhood of competitive sports, I was always injured. This type of training absolutely saved me from those injuries. I want to reiterate that this section of the workout can be a workout in itself, and you should not feel pressured to progress to the next level. For those of you who are ready for that next level, and are ready to take the plunge into the meat of the workout, let’s move on to the next step. You are primed, not only warmed up, but every single muscle in your body is awake. Your brain, your nervous system, has a direct connection with each muscle, so that when you go to lift weights or do your interval training you are safer and more effective. A workout's worth is in its warm up. If you’ve successfully gone through the hips section, shoulders section, and core section you can consider yourself a success. Your workout from here can be as diverse as you want to make it. There are a million different ways to get fit, and now that you’ve had the solid foundation to stand on, you can have confidence that you are going in the right direction. If you are ready for the next part of the My Core Balance workout system, join me on the next page. Questions? Comments? Leave them below. Thanks!  Now we move onto part two of five in our series about how to make an effective workout. If you missed part one, click here and check that out first. The second part of your work out is targeting the shoulders, through full range of motion, stability, flexibility, and stabilizing strength. This part of the workout should start at about the 11 minute mark and go until the 20-minute mark.  As with the hips, we'll divide the shoulder exercises into three parts, based on planes of movement. As a refresher, we have three planes of movement:
A few things you want to keep in mind with the shoulders.
The shoulder joint can be a very complicated joint. It involves the actual shoulder socket where the humerus inserts. It also includes the shoulder blade, or scapula. And also the clavicle, or collarbone.  The muscles involved are the actual shoulder itself, the deltoid (all three heads). Also the rhomboids, infraspinatus, supraspinatus, teres major and minor, pectoralis, and the latissimus dorsi and trapezius. So as you can see there are a lot of bones, joints, and muscles involved in the shoulder. The range of motion or the shoulder is broad. You can bring your arms out to the side, cross the midline, raise them out in front or behind, and you can also rotate them in a circle motion. The shoulder can be easily injured. Not because they are inherently weak, but because of the way that we use, or don’t use them. Think about the last time you did significant amounts of work overhead. Even doing simple things like using a screwdriver or hammer overhead can cause a lot of soreness to an unconditioned person. So when you’re thinking about progressing, be absolutely sure that you have mastered the exercises in the current level. If you are feeling any work whatsoever at the level that you are at, there’s usually no need to progress to the next level. Progressing to the next level should only happen when you find no benefit whatsoever from the level that you’re on right now... when it is really really easy. Here are the exercises to insert into the second part of your My Core Balance fitness program. Beginner Exercises Elbow curls Reverse presses Goal posts Pullovers Snow angels Rotator cuff Sidelying arm circles Intermediate Exercises Shoulder rolls Sitting elbow curls Sitting side lateral raises Sitting goal posts Sitting wall Glides Sitting pullovers Advanced exercises Arm circles Hands and knees elbow curls Off wall side lateral raises How much time should you take? This part of the workout should last about 10 minutes, meaning you should choose somewhere between six and eight exercises in order to get the amount of work needed. Remember, you will not necessarily always be improving. You have good days and bad days, so don’t be afraid to go back to the beginning exercises. If you have any questions about this or any of the other blog posts about how to create your own work out, let me know in the comments below. Thanks!  |
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©2018 My Core Balance. All rights reserved.
"Achieve all your fitness goals without injuring yourself" is a goal not a guarantee. Each individual must take full responsibility for their own health, fitness, and pain levels. My Core Balance programs are for informational use only and should not be construed as medical advise, nor should it ever replace speaking to your physician. A complete physical is recommended before undergoing any form of exercise.
"Achieve all your fitness goals without injuring yourself" is a goal not a guarantee. Each individual must take full responsibility for their own health, fitness, and pain levels. My Core Balance programs are for informational use only and should not be construed as medical advise, nor should it ever replace speaking to your physician. A complete physical is recommended before undergoing any form of exercise.