At Personal Best Fitness we offer you all 3 of these mediums to help you look, feel and function better. Recently, when some of our personal trainers have taught group exercise classes, we have had some questions and comments about why the class has been a different format, had different exercises or varied intensities.
If you read below this may help, explain to why some classes are taught in a different way or format.
Remember, ‘change is as good as a holiday’!
What is Group Exercise?
• This type of exercise involves instructors teaching and leading individual through in-person classes, usually more than 8 participants.
• Group exercise classes are designed for different fitness levels utilising a variety of equipment to teach many types of classes, from cardio based, indoor cycling to fit bar and forever Active.
• The class is pitched to the ‘middle’ and then some regressions and progressions of each exercise are offered where possible. The goal is fitness with fun!
• Classes and instructors vary from time to time so please check Facebook each Sunday for an updated timetable.
What is Small Group Training?
• This type of exercise expands the personal trainer’s role from strictly one on one to small group training by working with two or more people, but in a small group of less than 6 typically.
• The focus is on providing some personalised programming within the workout to cater for individual’s needs.
• As the group is smaller more attention can be given to technique and individual feedback.
And how is Personal Training different?
• Personal training is a specialised service which includes individual goal setting, fitness appraisal and exercise programming with a personal trainer in a one-on-one setting. Personal trainers provide exercise technique instruction, monitor progress, and progress your program based on your individual response to the program.
• It may include but not be limited to improving balance, co-ordination, functional strength, injury and exercise rehabilitation and cardio fitness to improve activities of daily living. Exercises are likely to reflect actual activities someone might do during the day.
• Personal training also caters for people with chronic health conditions such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, joint replacement and the like.
• It enables you to gain the maximum benefits from the time that you have available.
If you would like to know more, please have a chat with one of our team.
As a Personal Trainer we have several tools that occupy our ‘toolbox’ and what often differentiates good from outstanding personal trainers is their ability to prescribe the most appropriate exercises for each client. The TRX is one such tool.
The TRX suspension trainer stands for ‘Total Resistance Exercise’ and it is essentially 2 straps anchored to a ceiling, back of a door or high on a wall.
The TRX helps you to improve mobility, flexibility, strength, endurance, and power whereby your bodyweight becomes your machine and gravity your resistance.
Arguably, the TRX is one of the most functional pieces of equipment as you must engage all muscles simultaneously rather than isolating smaller ones. You attach yourself to the TRX by gripping the handles with your hands or placing your feet in the foot straps.
Suspension training works by challenging your body in a somewhat unstable environment. This forces you to constantly engage your core to perform each exercise and to also improve your balance. Adjusting the level of difficulty for each exercise on the TRX is as easy as moving your hands or feet and like all exercises, you can regress and progress with the TRX.
For those new to functional exercise, it is best to start with small body angles and after 4 to 6 weeks, increase the degree of difficulty by increasing the angle you are working with. For beginners, performing exercises like rows, it is helpful to have the straps short. This reduces the degree of instability which a longer strap would provide.
Left to Right: Beginner TRX Row and Intermediate TRX Row
When performing a pushing movement using the TRX it is beneficial to have the straps fully lengthened. This is because it too reduces the degree of difficulty as the angle you are on is less. Sometimes changing the position of your feet before changing the position of the straps can alter the degree of difficulty of the exercise.
When you are performing exercises with a foot or your feet in the foot strap’s, it is helpful to have the straps set at mid-calf length. This is because it again reduces the degree of difficulty by keeping your feet close to the floor and your body streamlined.
Left To Right: TRX Lunge Starting Position and Bottom Position
Using the TRX is ideal for varying the level of instability, from beginners through to advanced. I recommend asking your personal trainer or having a personal training session to learn more about the benefits of the TRX for you and developing some challenging, but exercises that will add variety to your program.
Frances Sullivan
Master Personal Trainer
Improving Quality of Life and Brain Function
One of our goals at Personal Best Fitness is to encourage everybody to look and feel better and function in a more optimal way.
Robert is certainly a ‘shining’ example of that. Diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) over the last 3 years. FTD is characterized by the nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain being lost. It can impact behaviour, personality, language and movement.
Robert’s wife Heather has been a regular at Personal Best for some 10 years and is well aware of both the physical and mental benefits of exercise and knew that Robert was eligible for the Home Care Package that included funding for personal training.
Prior to starting personal training with Fran, Robert had difficulty getting into and out of a chair due to his posture and lack of strength. He had put on weight due to his brain wanting him to be sedentary.
Since Robert has started personal training with Fran, Heather can see many positive changes.
‘He is learning new motor patterns and movements and when he comes home from Personal Best Fitness, he is more engaged with the world around him and is more vibrant. Robert even now notices weeds in the garden and pulls them out, which is a great help to me.’
Robert’s carer Sandy brings him to Personal Best Fitness in a taxi and recently Robert gave the driver directions to the gym from the Eastern Shore!
Heather feels that going to the gym is the most stimulating part of Robert’s week as it extends his brain function and it is significantly slowing down the rate of deterioration in brain function.
Six months ago, when Robert started on the exercise bike, he could pedal for 3 minutes on resistance 4, now he has progressed to 2 x 5 minutes on resistance 7. Robert’s walking gait has also improved, and he is able to co-ordinate his opposite arm and leg.
‘It is so rewarding to work with Robert, he has a wonderful sense of humour, and he has started to ask why we are doing specific exercises. His posture, balance and strength have improved greatly, and he has lost weight’. Fran
Robert now moves with more confidence and feels a great sense of achievement when mastering new exercises.
If you know of someone who is eligible for the Home Care Funding Program and could enjoy a better quality of life, please have a chat with our front desk team.
I’ve been in the fitness industry for a while, I’l like to think for long enough to recognise the difference between function and fiction.
If there’s one thing that really bugs me about what I do, it’s what I call the “cerebral onanism” of human movement. You see human movement isn’t that hard, we all start practicing it long before we learn language, and yet I see youtube videos where the explanation of a movement, takes 10 times longer than the movement itself!
I often think, how am I supposed to teach all that instruction, in the time the movement takes?
I can label many of the muscles in the human body in Latin, and every good Personal Trainer should know flexors from extensors, but I cringe when I hear people primarily cuing muscles instead of movement.
If I can get through my life without ever seeing another fitness video where the trainer instructs participants to “engage your core”, I’ll be happy.
Why?
Because while human movement is easy, the human body is an incredibly complex system which thankfully is largely automated because without the automation we would all stop breathing the moment we went to sleep. There are many many muscles in the trunk that our body uses to stabilise the spine in response to different force vectors, velocities, and movements, a handful of which someone decided to label “core”.
The idea that I need to activate muscles in order to move well raises many questions, that I cannot think of good answers too, here are some examples:
I know that there are 3 branches of the thoracodorsal nerve that goes into each of my left and right Latissimus Dorsi, the big muscles in my back I use for pulling actions. But I can’t feel any of them, nor can I point to them without a textbook the way I can point to my big toe. So, If I cannot locate them by feel, how am I supposed calculate how many electrons I need to send to each branch to get the best results based on the angle of my shoulder when I’m pulling?
There are 10 muscles that stabilise the sole of my foot, I can’t think of two things at once, how am I supposed to think about 10?
Does anyone really think Logan was calculating which of his core muscles he needed to activate and how much, in response to his flipping/ twisting inertia and the rapidly changing direction of the pull of gravity when he was 6 metres off the ground in his freestyle BMX final, or was he just thinking about spotting his landing?
I once heard probably the best skateboarder in human history describe a trick as “it’s all in the big toe”, as opposed to saying, “I just activate my Extensor Hallucis Longus”, now if they are both the same thing why does it bug me?
Here’s why:
Done well, explanations of what is occurring during a movement can be informative, and if the client/athlete believes that activating something helps, it probably does, because belief is a powerful performance enhancer. Athletes that believe in a god outperform those that don’t, regardless of which deity they believe in. Who remembers Power Bands?
But what matters is the movement and feeling confident in the movement.
I met someone at a function recently, he told me “I’ve been working with my trainer weekly for years, I never go to the gym without him, because I’m afraid of doing something wrong”,
I changed the topic so I could avoid telling him that if he continued doing this, he would never be fit, strong or healthy.
Similarly, I once overheard someone in the gym saying, “I’d much rather lift light weights with correct form, than trying to lift heavy weights”.
These are both examples of an idea becoming a barrier to movement and human movement is rarely, if ever perfect, but it improves with practice, without doing something wrong, you’ll never do it right.
Our body responds to stimulus, form follows function, it builds muscle in response to regular movement, it lays down myelin around the nerve sheath in response to repetition, tendons thicken in response to loading, our body produces Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone in response to strenuous lifting (heavy things). Lung capacity increases if we regularly get out of breath.
Lean muscle mass, and lung capacity are two of the more reliable predictors of longevity.
Some people don’t have the metrics to be great dead lifters, or rowers, me, I am too tall and have to much bulk to be a great hill climber on the bike. But that doesn’t mean I can’t ride my bike up hills, enjoy doing it, get benefit from it and get better at it. When I think of my most ‘successful’ clients, they all have one thing in common. It’s not a great knowledge of anatomy, nor is it the ability to activate many muscles at once while concentrating on the task at hand. It’s consistency, they exercise regularly, with many of them I know when they will be at Personal Best, even if I’m not there, and because of the work we have done together, I know they are safe and building strength and fitness while practicing the movements I have programmed for them.
I’ll leave you with a case study.
I spent over a decade coaching someone who loved competitive sport and worked very hard at it. During the 15 years we worked together he won state, national and world titles. When we first started working together, he told me “No matter how much I try I can’t activate my glutes”.
Glutes are a hip extensor, it quickly became apparent that he couldn’t get good extension from his hips, and because of this, his glutes were doing very little. So, we spent a year stretching his hip flexors, and all of a sudden, his glutes started working, no thought required! On his part anyway.
Marc Hand
Master Personal Trainer
Why Spin?
Have you recently woken up from a comfortable night’s sleep and opened your curtain, only to be greeted by an ever-darkening morning sky, the feeling of cold coming through the glass window against your face and thought to yourself, “Going out there for my morning walk just doesn’t look too enjoyable today.”? Despite this, you go anyway. Happy that you’ve stayed true to yourself and your fitness goals. But all the while wondering if there’s an easier and more comfortable way of doing this at such a time of year. Fortunately, I have a solution for you!
Indoor cycling classes can go by many different names. Spin, Spinning and Spin class are frequently used and what you may have heard your friends, family or other gym members speak of. Spin classes are typically 30 – 60 minutes long and simulate riding a bike outside by increasing and decreasing the “spin bike” resistance dial. Up hills, down hills, flat roads, standing or seated. You name it, a qualified indoor cycling instructor can put it into a Spin class! Whether you’re a novice gym goer, aspiring athlete or somewhere in between, spin classes can be of huge benefit to your mental and physical health, and overall wellbeing. In addition to these benefits, here are some reasons to make it a part of your weekly routine at Personal Best Fitness.
The cycling action offers a low impact form of huff n puff exercise. Spin classes are perfect if you’re recovering from an injury, starring down the barrel of knee surgery or just feel as if you need to take things a little more gently on your joints. Regardless of your fitness goals, you will still achieve a great workout. A well-designed class by an experienced instructor will allow you to go at your own pace. Afterall, fitness and physical activity is about improving the way you look, feel and function.
Whether you’re looking to increase your huff n puff fitness, lose weight or increase leg and core strength, spin classes can offer it all in a single workout. The action of pedalling with resistance will help your body deal with any instability as a result of weaker muscles. Increasing your heart rate will help you burn calories and increase your metabolic rate. You can burn up to 600 calories in a spin class. That’s the equivalent of 6 glasses of wine.
Increasing heart rate for prolonged periods like you will experience in a spin class will help to increase your bodies tolerance to other physical activities such as weight training, bush walking or hanging out the washing.
Beyond the physical benefits you gain from a spin class, you will not find a single person arguing about the benefits exercise can have on mental health. Increasing your heart rate and moving your body is scientifically proven to relieve stress and anxiety. This partly occurs as a result of the body producing endorphins, sometimes known as the “feel good” hormone. Spin classes are a great way to do this, along with the added social benefits of being in a room with like-minded people and the affect it can have on your mental well-being.
Here at Personal Best Fitness, we currently offer two spin classes per week. Both are 45 minutes in duration. This gives you enough time to properly warm your body up, enjoy a good workout and finally a cool down and stretch to aid the bodies recovery process. I invite you to join me for Spin on Wednesday at 6.15am or Saturday morning a 8am. We will help with your bike set up and teach you all you need to know.
Tristan North
Certified Spin Instructor
How often have you made it to the end of the week and thought ‘thank god it’s the weekend’? Or not wanted to do a workout only to finish it and feel a whole lot better? High intensity exercise has been a prevailing force in the fitness industry for the past 10 years. We get this big endorphin rush, it makes you sweat, feel good and forget your problems.
Movement is anti-inflammatory, hydrating and energising. It creates resilient tissues, hydrates, efficient mitochondria and cellular function, and is vital for the brain, mood and self confidence. However, we have seen a massive boom of exercise programs such as P90x, Crossfit and F45. All of which are types of HIIT training and are great programs when implemented at the right intensity, with the right recovery and with the correct frequency.
Unfortunately, a lot of these training methods aren’t true ‘HIIT’ sessions. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It is designed to get your heart rate up or above 90% of its max, followed by an equal or longer period of time in your recovery zone, the ‘interval’ aspect of HIIT. It can help with fat loss, reduce your heart rate and blood pressure and results in an increased metabolic rate. The often misconception is that going harder means going for longer periods and resting for shorter periods. I’d definitely agree that these types of sessions are tough, but are they productive? A better description of the types of workouts listed above would be High Intensity Steady State Training, or fatigue sessions! I.e. you’re likely getting your heart rate into a moderate zone (not as high as a true HIIT workout), while not allowing yourself sufficient recovery.
It can take up to 48hrs for our body to recover after a high intensity training session. We create a high level of acidosis, resulting in the breakdown of muscle cells and the decrease in immune function. So by completing multiple of these sessions within a week, you are not only creating muscle breakdown, but you are releasing higher levels of cortisol and adrenaline into the body.
The thing is, our body doesn’t differentiate between physical and mental stress. So what are the repercussions of this constant cycle of our stressful, sedentary working life, interspersed with many bouts of high intensity training? Just like any form of stress, exercise releases cortisol and adrenaline into the body. In the right doses our body is able to adapt to this release and create positive changes, however if we’re not giving our body adequate time to recover (i.e. completing HIIT sessions often), this becomes detrimental to the system.
Being super fit and punishing yourself at the gym doesn’t equate to longevity. In fact it can do the opposite. Over training, under recovering, repetitive movement, too much muscle mass, and chronic cardio, are all examples of how movement can hurt you. There is no denying that people who chose to practice one sport are highly competitive in their chosen sport, however they’re rarely able to adequately replicate this ‘fitness’ across other sports. They’re often missing one key component; variability.
When it comes to longevity, the key component in training is variability. This means being strong and resilient for whatever comes your way. It means you can go fast, or slow, lift heavy, or light, move and adapt to awkward and challenge angles, etc. Variability means your tissue has the strength, tension and elasticity to respond to different speeds, loads, positions and vectors.
Our heart rate is a great responder to variability. It is important to have the ability to get your heart rate high (above 90% of heart rate max), for SHORT periods of time and it is just, if not more, important to have the ability to get your heart rate back down quickly and keep it there for sustained periods of time. We have looked at one form of heart rate variability training (HIIT), however we will have to save the full discussion for another time. For the time being, I want you to have a think about whether all of your training sessions are ‘smash fests’ in the gym or whether you are incorporating variability into your training and in fact aiming for wellness and longevity.
Signs you need to switch up your exercise and focus on wellness and longevity are:
Chronic stiffness and pain
Lack of mobility and strength in varied positions
Lack of heart rate variability – HR stays high, won’t go up, or takes longer to recover!
Unable to get down to the ground and up again with ease
Coordination and balance challenges
Are you struggling with complex movement sequences?
If any of these signs ring true in your ears, think about changing up your exercise routine or book in a personal training session with us to move and exercise more effectively and efficiently.
Sofia Tsamassiros
Senior Personal Trainer
One of the first questions we ask those who are new to Personal Best Fitness is “What would you like to achieve?” Often the response is “I want to get fit.” Sounds quite straight forward doesn’t it, but what does it actually mean? Getting fit means different things to different people. A common definition is,
“To be physically fit means to be in a state of health and well-being. Physical fitness is defined as the body’s ability to function efficiently and effectively in work and leisure activities, to be healthy, to resist disease and to react to emergency situations.
Helping a client “become fit” can take a variety of approaches and avenues and can be very different for ‘everybody and mind’.
There are 3 or 4 aspects of “Being Fit” that we may focus on with you at Personal Best:
Improving your cardiovascular/aerobic fitness/ huff and puff.
Help you increase your range of motion or flexibility.
Improve your strength.
And we will program this in such a way that is functional to your needs.
The aspects that we focus on will depend upon your goals and how your body is currently functioning. It is important to recognise that different approaches and focuses will result in different outcomes and will facilitate significant improvements in both your health and fitness.
Cardiovascular fitness or endurance can be improved with exercise that is performed at a medium level, greater than 20 minutes in duration. This helps improve the health of your heart and lungs. Running, walking, rowing, swimming and bike riding are all activities that help enhance your cardiovascular or aerobic capacity.
The formula used to decipher what your exercise training zone is 220 – age =? divided by 65% and 85%. Below are some examples for a 40 and 60-year-old who is looking to work at either training zone.
If you are age 40 years a ‘starting’ exercise zone would be a heart rate of 117 beats per minute (bpm) and the high-end intensity would be 153bpm.
If you are aged 60 years a ‘starting’ zone would be a rate of 104 bpm and a high-end zone would be 136bpm.
When getting started at Personal Best your personal trainer will direct you to the appropriate zone for you, taking into consideration the following:
Your health
If you have done vigorous exercise recently
Any aches and pains that you may have
And what goals you have
These zones should be viewed as a guide and individual advice should be sort.
Flexibility refers to the range of movement in a joint or series of joints, and length in muscles that cross the joints to induce a bending movement or motion. Flexibility varies between individuals, particularly in terms of differences in muscle length of multi-joint muscles. Some examples of multi joint muscles are the hamstrings, which cross both the hip and knee joints.
Flexibility in some joints can improve their range of movement. Stretching being a common medium to maintain or improve this range of movement. Stretch receptors have two parts: Spindle cells and Golgi tendons. Spindle cells, located in the centre of a muscle, send messages for the muscle to contract. On the other hand, golgi tendon receptors are located near the end of a muscle fibre and send messages for the muscle to relax. As these receptors are trained through continual use, stretching becomes easier. When reflexes that inhibit flexibility are released joints are then able to have greater range of movement.
There are a number of reasons why strength training is important. Some of these reasons are to maintain muscle tissue to protect your joints, build and maintain strong bones, control body fat, and decrease the risk of injury. Depending on what your goals are, your personal trainer will set your program accordingly.
If it is hypertrophy that you are after then 4 reps at 90% of your maximum load to 10 reps at 75% of your maximum load is required. Hypertrophy is a term for the growth and increase of the size of muscle cells.
If muscular endurance is what you are after approximately 15 to 20 reps at 70% is required. Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to sustain repeated contractions against a resistance for an extended period of time. Some of the activities that require muscular endurance are, sustained walking or running, cycling, swimming, circuit training, aerobics and of course resistance training.
Functional exercises train your muscles to work together and prepare them for daily tasks by simulating common movements you might do at home, work or in sports. For example, a squat is a functional exercise because it trains the muscles that you use when you stand up and sit down from a chair or pick up objects off the ground.
When rehabilitating a client from injury, or building function back into their daily life, exercises are ‘regressed’ so that the client can move with confidence again and trust their bodies as they perform these movements. Understanding how the body moves is part of the rehabilitation process and the personal trainers at Personal Best are able to deliver this knowledge with skill and professionalism. Some of the exercises personal trainers prescribe their clients may be walking along a plank of wood on the ground heel to toe to improve balance, reaching up the wall with one hand while in a staggered stance, to improve posture. These types of exercises then lead to more complex forms of movement and with weights and or resistance.
“Being fit” has so many different meanings. Ask the question, fit for what? Fit to wash the car, run a fun run, pick the grandkids up, play netball, or fit to walk 15000 steps each day on holidays. All of these things are important as long as they are gradually progressed and applied in an individual manner. Remember, not everything fits the same person and we all require different approaches. Your goals over time will evolve as you progress along the continuum that is your fitness.
If you are unsure what is ‘best’ for you, ask us about booking a personal training session.
Fran Sullivan
Master Personal Trainer
We’ve all read that exercise is great for mental health and there is exponential research to support that claim. Exercise releases ‘feelgood’ hormones such as endorphins and serotonin, boosting your mood and reducing stress and anxiety. What if I were to suggest that you can approach exercise in a more effective manner in order to reduce these symptoms?
Having recently reading ‘How to Change Your Mind’, a book about psychedelics and their potential as a treatment for mental disorders and higher thinking, it intrigued me from both a personal and professional aspect. I definitely recommend the read!
One such discussion was that on low entropy state. Essentially explaining how excess order (eg. Rigid thinking and obsessive behaviour) results in a hyperactive ‘default mode’. This ultimately traps us in a repetitive and destructive state of rumination. – Think classic signs of Obessive Complusive Disorder, anxiety and depression and to a lesser extent, obsessive eating or exercise habits. If on the other hand, we are able to access a high entropic state, the brain becomes less specialised and more globally interconnected.
Learning entails the establishment of new neural networks (neuroplasticity) – If we are able to boost the diversity in our mental life (ie. high entropic state), the more possibilities the mind has and the more creative our solutions will become.
Where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with exercise?
Most of us understand that we need to change our exercise program routinely in order to see improvement; whether it be increasing the resistance, trying a new exercise or trying a completely different sport. When we first try something new, it’s hard and we’re rarely a natural at it. It is this same concept that we can employ with our workout routine. We want to ‘surprise’ our body as often as possible, not only to improve our physical function, but also our mental function.
If you always exercise on the same day, at the same time and do the same routine on those days, try changing it up. Come to Personal Best Fitness at a different time or try a different workout routine or class. The members in my small group personal training will know I love using ViPRs and will often introduce a few group activities or exercises in which they’re made to focus on what they’re doing and creating ‘game’ based training. This can be as simple as throwing a tennis ball or other games you used to play as a kid such as Simon says. You’d be surprised about how quickly this kind of exercise can get your heart rate up, all the while putting a big smile on your face. And better yet, you’re improving your brain’s ability to wire itself and improving your mental health.
Sofia Tsamassiros
Senior Personal Trainer
Here is some further reading on the research discussed in the article:
Dufek S, 2002. Exercise Variability: A prescription for Overuse Injury Prevention. ACSM’S Health & Fitness Journal.
Mohan, Akansha, Aaron J. Roberto, Abhishek Mohan, Aileen Lorenzo, Kathryn Jones, Martin J. Carney, Luis Liogier-Weyback, Soonjo Hwang, and Kyle A.B. Lapidus. 2016. “The Significance of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Disorders: A Review.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 89 (1): 49-57.
Pollan M, 2018. How to Change Your Mind. Penguin Group, United States.
Ross R, Goodpaster BH, Koch LG, et alPrecision exercise medicine: understanding exercise response variability. British Journal of Sports Medicine Published Online First: 12 March 2019. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2018-100328
Farmer’s Carry
Farmers are some of the strongest, healthiest and most mobile people you’ll find, but it’s not because they spend their days lifting weights in a gym. However, they arelifting heavy things – bags of feed, mechanical equipment, hoses, hay bales, buckets of water, sick animals, you name it – and they’re carrying them from one place to another. Most of the rest of us aren’t occupied carrying heavy things around all day so for us, we need to think outside the square if we want to mimic what the strongest people do. Hence, Farmer’s Walk.
Unlike most exercises one does in the gym, there’s almost no technique to be learned in a Farmer’s Walk. You simply pick up a weight or two and start walking with them by your side. While you can use dumbbells for this exercise, kettlebells are almost perfectly designed for the purpose with the handle making them feel very natural to carry.
The benefits of picking up and walking with heavy ‘things’ are many, below are a few of the key upsides:
They strengthen your grip. And everything else.
This has carryover effects to numerous day-to-day tasks like opening jars and carrying shopping, and anything else which requires a tight grasp. Studies have also shown a direct correlation between grip strength and longevity: the stronger your hands, the longer you’re likely to live. It doesn’t stop with the grip though. Your forearms, shoulders, upper back, abdominal muscles, glutes and all of your leg and foot muscles are working overtime to help you move the weight from one end of the room to the other end – and strengthening and stabilising you in the process.
They help correct your posture.
When you’re walking with kettlebells in your hands, your body can no longer get away with moving on autopilot; the only way to fight the extra weight pulling you forwards or to the side is to actively engage your postural muscles. Even after you’ve put the weights away, your body remembers what it did to stay upright and starts to do it unconsciously.
They build muscle.
In addition to making you stronger, they add some muscle to your frame and tighten everything up. It certainly won’t be ‘bulky’ muscle; it will be a little bit added to your whole body, working with your added strength to make you more resilient. As with all resistance training, this is especially important as you age: the loss of muscle in older age known as sarcopenia is one of the main issues leading to poor health and loss of independence.
They improve balance.
Every time you take a step when you walk, you’re balancing on one foot, brief as it is. When you add weight to your hands, your balance is being tested more than usual – everything is working harder to stop you falling over. This is especially true when you’re holding a kettlebell with a single hand as you’re not only fighting extra total weight; you’re also working against being pulled over to the side. If you slow the movement down, you’ll find it’s a very intense exercise in controlling your entire balance system.
They boost fat loss and cardiovascular health.
Farmer’s Walks have the effect of turning the very natural movement of a short walk into an exercise, which elevates your heart rate and your breathing due to all of the muscles in the body working with every step. A working muscle is also a muscle which is burning energy so you’re really ‘stoking the furnace’ of your metabolism when you add a loaded carry to your program.
They’re easy.
And by ‘easy’ I mean they’re simple. They require no learning. You’ve been walking since before you can remember; you’ve probably been picking things up off the ground since even before then; and you’ve been combining the two for your entire life.
Combine all of the benefits above and you arrive at a life in which every daily physical task feels easier. Shopping bags, loads of wet washing, gardening equipment and unruly children suddenly become manageable. Well, maybe not the last one. So what are you waiting for? Pick up a couple of kettlebells and get walking!
Written by Tom Flint | Personal Trainer
“What’s in the mind is in the body and what’s in the body is in the mind.”
Have you ever caught yourself suddenly gasping for air or getting out of breath quickly? Be Activated
In a society filled with stressors, we believe we all too often get stuck in a “fight or flight” state, resulting in poor health, such as sickness or injury and fatigue, both physical and mental. We use a system based approach termed ‘Be-Activated’ to help the body fire in the correct sequence. This helps to reduce the highly alert state of living into a more relaxed state, thereby allowing us to handle and overcome our stressors more efficiently and effectively.
Be-Activated can help you interrupt these stress evoked patterns and find a state of balance. We can help you identify and more easily manage stress, resulting in increased productivity.
What is Be-Activated?
Based on the concepts of muscle activation and sequencing in movement, ‘Be Activated’ is a powerful yet simple hands-on system developed by physiotherapist and kinesiologist, Douglas Heel.
Be Activated is the science and art of getting your body to work the way it is meant to, and in doing so allowing it to break free from pain and dysfunction. From here your body can move into higher states of performance on all levels allowing you to not only move, function and feel better but also giving rise to massive shifts in strength, speed and flexibility.
Why have an Activation?
Whether you are in pain or want to feel, function and move better, activation will help you get there.
Our body’s ability to overcome the stresses and pressures of life can result in reduced movement and exercise, putting us at risk.
Through systematic manual therapy, activation techniques are simple to teach and offer unique, powerful tools for control over your own health.
Who would benefit from Activation?
Everyone.
Whether for athlete performance or stress relief, activation can help you find centre.
Postural muscles of the body are all slow twitch muscle fibres as they need to hold up the body for sustained periods of time with minimal movement. Slow twitch muscle fibres are oxygen dependent, which means they require oxygen to operate effectively. If we are not breathing correctly and therefore not getting enough oxygen to the muscles, they cannot function correctly to support our body’s continuous fight against gravity. This means that if we can influence our breathing we can influence our ability to maintain good posture.
How is Activation different from massage?
Where massage is looking at muscle tightness, activation is a systematic system designed to prioritise the two necessities for survival; to breath and to move. Without both, we will die. Our body finds ways to meet those priorities and is willing to sacrifice anything in order to do this. That is when we see dysfunction and/or pain.
How often should you be Activated?
Everyone is different. The idea of activation is to teach your body new (correct) patterns of movement – essentially creating new habits. You may have significant gain and hold this pattern effortlessly, or you will need more intervention and reminding. This is why we also teach you to activate on yourself, to take control of your own health and maintain the new patterns of movement we have taught the body.
Written by Sofia Tsamassiros – Movement Specialist and Personal Trainer
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Unfortunately, a lot of these training methods aren’t true ‘HIIT’ sessions. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It is designed to get your heart rate up or above 90% of its max, followed by an equal or longer period of time in your recovery zone, the ‘interval’ aspect of HIIT. It can help with fat loss, reduce your heart rate and blood pressure and results in an increased metabolic rate. The often misconception is that going harder means going for longer periods and resting for shorter periods. I’d definitely agree that these types of sessions are tough, but are they productive? A better description of the types of workouts listed above would be High Intensity Steady State Training, or fatigue sessions! I.e. you’re likely getting your heart rate into a moderate zone (not as high as a true HIIT workout), while not allowing yourself sufficient recovery.
It can take up to 48hrs for our body to recover after a high intensity training session. We create a high level of acidosis, resulting in the breakdown of muscle cells and the decrease in immune function. So by completing multiple of these sessions within a week, you are not only creating muscle breakdown, but you are releasing higher levels of cortisol and adrenaline into the body.
The thing is, our body doesn’t differentiate between physical and mental stress. So what are the repercussions of this constant cycle of our stressful, sedentary working life, interspersed with many bouts of high intensity training? Just like any form of stress, exercise releases cortisol and adrenaline into the body. In the right doses our body is able to adapt to this release and create positive changes, however if we’re not giving our body adequate time to recover (i.e. completing HIIT sessions often), this becomes detrimental to the system.
Being super fit and punishing yourself at the gym doesn’t equate to longevity. In fact it can do the opposite. Over training, under recovering, repetitive movement, too much muscle mass, and chronic cardio, are all examples of how movement can hurt you. There is no denying that people who chose to practice one sport are highly competitive in their chosen sport, however they’re rarely able to adequately replicate this ‘fitness’ across other sports. They’re often missing one key component; variability.
When it comes to longevity, the key component in training is variability. This means being strong and resilient for whatever comes your way. It means you can go fast, or slow, lift heavy, or light, move and adapt to awkward and challenge angles, etc. Variability means your tissue has the strength, tension and elasticity to respond to different speeds, loads, positions and vectors.
Our heart rate is a great responder to variability. It is important to have the ability to get your heart rate high (above 90% of heart rate max), for SHORT periods of time and it is just, if not more, important to have the ability to get your heart rate back down quickly and keep it there for sustained periods of time. We have looked at one form of heart rate variability training (HIIT), however we will have to save the full discussion for another time. For the time being, I want you to have a think about whether all of your training sessions are ‘smash fests’ in the gym or whether you are incorporating variability into your training and in fact aiming for wellness and longevity.
Signs you need to switch up your exercise and focus on wellness and longevity are:
