Napa’s local gyms offer benefits to many of the town’s inhabitants. Synergy, Health Quest, and INSHAPE offer small group fitness classes at various times throughout the day. These classes are led by certified fitness professionals that guide participants through a unique array of exercises including high intensity interval training (HIIT), Yoga, and step aerobics. These planned out sessions give the participants something to look forward to when they make their way to the gym. The chemistry alone with a specific fitness instructor can be enough to motivate people to get some much-needed exercise. Additionally, attending scheduled classes have a great social aspect to them. It’s a blast to be able to listen to upbeat music and workout next to someone you relate to. The weekly schedule of classes also gives exercise participant the ability to plan when they are going to exercise. These local gyms also have a variety of equipment available for participants to utilize. Access to the state-of-the-art weight machines and cardio equipment are a great way to support the community in improving their strength and cardiovascular health. Pools and hot tubs that are properly maintained and can be utilized for exercise. Aquatic fitness is beneficial for individuals suffering from previous injuries or conditions that might limit them from going to a class or the weight room. Unfortunately, not everyone in Napa has a pool to perform an aquatic fitness routine. With a pool readily available at one of these local Napa gyms, aquatic fitness is accessible.
The features a local gym offers is beneficial to participants frequently attending the gym. However, what happens when you can’t get to the gym? A long 9 to 10-hour day at work makes that drive across town and the masses of people at the busy hour of the gym a daunting task. Perhaps the idea of interacting with people just isn’t in the cards. These circumstances create an aversion toward attending the gym. When we can’t go to the gym, exercise can hit the back burner. How can we fit exercise in when attending the local gym is out of the question?
We hear this issue quite often with our Napa personal training clients. A solution we teach our clients is the ability to create at home workouts that can done in their house. After a few sessions of learning proper form and how to properly perform exercises in the correct order, our personal training clients can create a DIY fitness homework routine.
In order to create an efficient and effective DIY fitness homework routine, we ensure that our personal training clients include 3 critically important components into their fitness homework routine: flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular modes of exercise. Here are some examples of techniques that can be done at home with little to no equipment within the 3 main categories:
- Flexibility Incorporating a dynamic stretching routine is a great way to start any workout. Movements such as crossing the arms across the chest, hoopla hoop hip movements, and leg swings to accentuate a stretch in the shoulders and hips are a great way to get blood flow to working muscles, improve maximum range of motion and produce synovial fluid to lubricate joints. This a great injury prevention technique that not only helps improve flexibility, but also improves balance. Include active stretching, balancing techniques, and coordination exercises in this section.
- Strength: Some of the easiest body weight exercises to do at home are squat, push up, and plank movements. For the squat, you can use a chair to settle your weight on and then squat up. Or you can perform the traditional squat with out a chair to spot you. Any push up or plank movement can be applied to various fitness levels. If you’re just starting out, perform your pushups and planks from the wall. When you have developed mastery and competency of the push up from the wall, perhaps you can move to a counter top, or even the ground with your legs extended for a real challenge.
- Cardiovascular: Anything form performing a jumping jack to hiking up and down a set of stairs for 5-10 minutes is a deceptively effective way to achieve a heart rate response. Simple techniques such as these can create beneficial adaptations to anyone’s cardiovascular system and assist in preventing cardiovascular diseases.
To promote DIY fitness homework programs, we ensure that our personal training clients have body weight exercise knowledge in their back pocket. Being able to perform fitness homework on the fly is an invaluable technique to aid people in maintaining their life time fitness. We never want to miss a workout. With the ability to create a DIY fitness homework routine, we can ensure that we adhere to our much need 3 days of exercise per week.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
