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Benefits of personal trainers and how they keep you accountable

11/28/2017

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personal training Eugene Oregon
How many times have you told yourself that you are going to stick to a workout routine only to give it up after a week or month? This quick burn out is all too common. Personal trainers are an effective instrument to help prevent this gym fatigue, keep you accountable, and help you reach your fitness goals. Here are four reasons personal trainers are beneficial.

External Accountability
It's harder to stay home from the gym when you have someone else checking up on you. Reminders from your trainer will convince you to keep going. Furthermore, having an appointment will make you less likely to skip out on your workouts. Lastly, if you build a good relationship with your trainer, you will have someone to socialize with making the gym more enjoyable. 

Encouragement and Proper Training
With a trainer cheering you on, you will feel better about your workouts and yourself. What’s more, personal trainers know how to push you to work harder and reach your goals faster. Your trainer will also create a workout plan with exercises targeted at your specific areas of concern. 

More than Exercise
More often than not it takes more than a workout plan to get fit and stay fit. Many personal trainers are well equipped to offer diet advice as well. A personalized diet plan that works in conjunction with your trainer's recommended workout plan will help you reach your goals even faster. 

Break Free from Routine
Chances are if you go to the gym you hop on the same machine time and time again. This routine, in time, will become boring and make you want to quit. Personal trainers know exactly how to use each machine and how to do other types of exercises to add variety to your workout. Changing it up will keep you excited about working out and make you want to keep it up.

Call today to schedule a session with one of our personal trainers. He or she can develop a plan to help you reach your goals! (541) 505-8180
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How to prevent injury on "back day" at the gym

11/29/2016

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Bodybuilder back muscles
The back isn't only one of the body's biggest and strongest body parts, it's also the most complicated in terms of being a series of interconnected muscle groups. Here are a handful of tips to help you avoid injury next time you go to the gym for "back day" (or even if you workout at home).

Things to Avoid During Back Day:
  1. Never think of your back as a single muscle
    Your back is an intricate collection of several muscles, although the latissimus dorsi does most of the work on back day. When training your back, you also target the lower and middle portions of the trapezius, the rhomboids, the rear delts, the teres major, and the erector spinae.

  2. Don't do lower back movements early in your workout
    With many free-weight back exercises--especially rows, in which you're pulling very heavy weights—it's critical that you maintain your natural spinal curvature. This will prevent your lower back from rounding during the movement. A rounded spine makes you susceptible to a disc injury, which can be debilitating.

    The muscles that allow you to protect your lumbar spine, called the erector spinae (sometimes just called the lower back muscles) need to be strong to get you through those heavy sets of bent-over rows, deadlifts, and other bent-over movements. They work isometrically to hold your lower back muscles in a position that keeps the discs safe, so you don't want them fatigued until the very end of your workout. Restrict dedicated lower-back exercises to the tail end of your workout.

  3. Never compromise the natural arch of your spine
    To ensure spinal health, it's important to keep your back neutral, which simply means in line with your torso or in a slightly arched position. But beginners frequently find this position difficult to master.

    Here's a tip: Stand sideways to the mirror and practice your form without added weight until you get it right. As you exercise, hold your back in a safe, neutral position for the duration of a set, never trying to extend the bottom of the range of motion at the risk of rounding your back.

    Once you can't hold the arch in your back on exercises like bent-over rows and standing T-bar rows, end your set. It will help to keep a slight bend in your knees.

  4. Don't sacrifice range of motion for weight
    Extend your arm straight out in front of you, bend your elbow, and pull it as far back as possible behind the plane of your body. That's what a full range of motion looks like when doing a rowing exercise. The thing is, when you use too much weight, that range is typically reduced on both ends of the movement, especially during the contraction. While you'd never think of regularly doing short range of motion bench presses, that's what many people do when they use too much weight.

    When pulling, bring your elbows as far back behind the plane of your body as possible. Consciously squeeze your shoulder blades together, then allow the weight to pull your arms back to full extension.

  5. Never raise your head to look in the mirror
    Craning your neck to watch yourself in the mirror during moves like bent-over rows disrupts the spinal alignment of the cervical vertebrae. While it might be tempting and maybe you think you're looking awesome, think about it: Your body is bent over about 45 degrees, but now you cock your neck back when looking up. (The same goes if you try and do this with bent-over lateral raises and when lowering the bar on Romanian deadlifts.) You've got heavy weights in your hands, which pulls through your shoulders and lats right into the spinal column—but your neck is out of position. Once again, you've discovered an opportunity for disc damage.

    The solution is an easy one though: During any rowing movement in which your body is bent over, simply keep your head aligned in the same direction as your torso. If your body is bent over 45 degrees, your head should be too. Resist the temptation to tilt your head up.

To learn more about proper workout positions and how to avoid and/or minimize injury, please contact us to schedule a session with one of our certified trainers.

Source: www.bodybuilding.com
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Why is strength training important?

5/10/2016

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Why is strength training important for men and women of all ages?
What are the benefits of strength training?

In a nutshell, strength training helps people to:
  • Build muscle
  • Burn fat and lose weight
  • Balance hormone levels
  • Improve cardiovascular capacity
  • Increase overall energy level
  • Help avoid injuries 
  • Improve overall health

Did You Know?
Each person begins to lose strength, at a gradual pace, starting in his or her mid-twenties or early thirties. This is why strength training is so important for people of all ages. However, doing strength training in the right way is critical. With proper technique and form and using your core stabilizer muscles correctly you can avoid injuries and you don’t need to use a ton of weight. In fact, heavy weight training can overstress your body, jar your joints and even be harmful to your immune system by releasing excess cortisol, a stress hormone.

Generally speaking, it is recommended that weight training be done with moderate weight, slower repetitions and limited rest periods between sets. This approach helps you to build muscle and strength more quickly. In addition, it provides a more effective cardiovascular workout that enables you to burn fat faster than other traditional cardiovascular exercises (e.g. treadmills, elliptical machines and riding recumbent bikes).

Is It Safe?
Strength training using weights has been shown to be both safe and effective and with proper instruction, you should never get injured from this form of exercise. However, many people do incur injuries from weightlifting, mostly because they are using improper form. Often, individuals who suffer these injuries may not even realize that they have poor form. It is this lack of awareness or understanding that can be an ongoing contributor to their various pains and injuries if left uncorrected.

General Health Benefits
Science has shown that having more muscle mass helps to stoke your metabolism. Additionally, having more muscle acts to lower insulin resistance, meaning that you will need less of this sugar-controlling, fat-storing hormone. The significance of this is that when you have a healthy insulin sensitivity, your body is better equipped to fight off diabetes and other inflammatory illnesses.

Strength training also helps to enhance your cardiovascular system (believe it or not, more than standard cardiovascular exercises!) It all starts with strengthening your core. Once you have proper functional core strength, you are positioned to strengthen your larger muscles more safely. This is key because having strengthened larger muscles increases blood flow to the joints and surrounding muscles. Not only does this have cardiovascular benefits, it also helps increase stabilization and decrease general joint pain, slowing the progression of arthritis.

Anti-Aging Effects
Currently, there is no solid evidence indicating that strength training can prolong your life. However, there is a growing body of scientific evidence strongly indicating that we can change the trajectory of decline with strength training.

Recent studies have found evidence suggesting the combination of strength training and proper nutrition trigger a signal within our bodies that calls for an anabolic environment. When an anabolic environment is present, there are increased growth factors that suppress fundamental aging indicators. One method to achieve an anabolic environment is through the use of hormone supplementation. Typically this is not an ideal course as there potentially adverse side effects, especially with long-term use. A healthier and more sustainable course for achieving elevated growth factors, such as IGF-I and other growth hormones, is through strength training.

Furthermore, there is strong evidence showing how strength training helps boost testosterone input, both for men and women. In recent years, we have seen a higher incidence of people with erratic hormonal levels and men with low testosterone. A natural approach to normalizing these hormone levels through the use of strength training makes the most sense since there are no potential negative side effects.

Beyond the physiological effects of aging, as people become less active, the aging process accelerates greater than the “normal” rate of aging. Studies have shown people benefit by adopting an active lifestyle and focusing on building muscle, especially since strength training is a macroscopic growth factor that counters the signaling of the aging process.

Reference: Barbell Training is Big Medicine by Jonathan Sullivan MD, PhD.

Weight Loss Effects
Strength training has been proven time and time again to be one of the best ways to burn fat. Following muscle-taxing exercises, a wave of repair and regeneration takes place within your body for several hours. In addition, your body runs on high gear during this phase, burning extra fat to replenish the energy in your muscles and to rebuild your glucose stores and tissue. It is this cycle that enables your body to burn far more fat from strength training than you would ever burn from a workout on a treadmill or bike. With strength training, you are still running your metabolism hard for the rest of the day, even after you leave the gym.

To maximize effects, a combination of strength training with interval cardio workouts is optimal. This combination works well at burning fat because it creates a glycogen defect. The sugar you get from carbs after you workout goes to muscle tissue instead of fat cells thereby ramping up your metabolism after-the-fact, during the recovery. Strength training with a weight that is just heavy enough to inflict a bit of trauma on the muscle fibers (myofibrils) is key, as your body fixes the slight damage over the next couple of days. During this process, your metabolism is still burning more calories, even at rest. While we recommend cardiovascular exercise in addition to strength training, do it on your off strength training days or after your strength training is finished. Moreover, for added benefit, take your cardio workout outside if possible.
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Very Personal Training

4/12/2016

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At Staszak Physical Therapy & Wellness Center, we're focused on making sure you not only heal, but also learn how to prevent reinjury. Check out this sneak peek into our personal training services.
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