Sep 05

Compound Exercise Movements: Resistance Training, Weight Lifting and Strength Training is Critical for Building Lean Muscle and Burning Fat!

The development of lean muscle is a critically important factor to maintaining strength, reducing the likelihood of injuries, and regulating the production of excess fat in the body. While working with our Personal Training clients at Napa Tenacious Fitness, we put a strong emphasis on compound exercise movements. These exercises include compound lower body movements, compound upper body pulling movements, and compound upper body pushing movements. Compound exercise movements are defined by movements that put stress on more than one muscle at a time.

An example of a compound lower-body movement would be a Deadlift. During the Deadlift exercise, force production is designated to the hamstring muscles, gluteal muscles, quadricep muscles, and shoulder blade muscles. Compound upper body pushing movements include an exercise such as the Flat Bench Press. The Flat Bench Press targets muscles of the pectoral region, deltoid region, and triceps region. An example of a compound upper body pulling movement would be the Pull Up exercise. The Pull Up exercise focuses on muscles of the shoulder blade, biceps, and forearm muscles.

Focusing on compound exercise movements is a multi-faceted method that helps promote efficiency in our training programs. Instead of targeting one muscle group at a time, it is efficient within training time to focus on movements that cover a large area of muscles. In addition, the muscles that are included in the majority of compound weight lifting exercises such as the Deadlift, Squat, Bench Press, and Pull Up crossover very effectively to the movements that we utilize in everyday life. Therefore, compound exercises are critical for strength and conditioning for the everyday life of average population individuals.

Regulating the storage of fat on your body is critically important to the success of our Personal Training clients as well. By implementing compound weight lifting exercises in our Personal Training programs, we are helping to elicit a greater growth hormone response throughout the body. By putting stress on some of the bigger muscle groups and joints of the body, a large growth hormone response is released inside the blood. Naturally occurring growth hormone encourages the production of more lean muscle mass throughout the body. More lean muscle mass in the body will lead to more synthesis of fats being used as a fuel source and muscle growth. This means that the more lean muscle that is produced in the body, the more fat that will be utilized as a fuel storage. Performing compound movements in your exercise routine will encourage more lean muscle mass on a larger scale.

It is important to include some sort of compound heavy lifting exercise at least once throughout the week. One training session per week of compound weight lifting exercises will help with the overall strength of the human body and then also the development of lean muscle. Including compound weight lifting exercises at least once a week over the span of the full year will make substantial differences in one’s training program.

If you want to learn more about compound weight lifting exercises, we specialize with this with our Personal Training clients in Napa. Feel free to reach out to us at any time at napatenacious@gmail.com.

Aug 23

Seasonal Veggies! Use the Seasons to Add Variety to your Life!

A great way to stay healthy and include variety into your healthy meal prep. is to notice the vegetables that are in season. Usually, the vegetables that are in season are on sale out at the supermarket. You can find very innovative ways to add variety into your nutritional Habits by looking at the vegetables that are in season and are on sale.  This a great way to add nutritious dishes to have throughout your day.  Some examples might include zucchini during the end of summer to throw on the grill, carrots during the fall to roast or bake in the oven, and winter squashes to make delicious and warm soups.

 

Something we utilize with our Personal Training clients here in the Napa Valley is to switch up their Life Time Fitness goals every 4 week.  Our team of Personal Trainers carefully monitor and help to manage these fitness goals every 4 weeks.  Part of our high success we share with our clients is that we are positively deceptive in our goal setting.  We ensure that our clients are constantly adapting… and no adaptation can occur without a new stimulus being introduced!  These Healthy Life Style coaching cues are along the same line as what we are saying in this article!  If you eat the same mundane things all the time… Well, your mind and habits are going to go through the same mundane processes and healthy adaptations such as weight loss, elevated morale, and exercise levels will be hindered.  Therefore, variety is ever so important.  We are fortunate enough to live in a world where seasons bring different aspects of life.  So embrace these seasons and the veggies they bring!

 

It’s always a good idea to switch up your nutritional habits so that your body can absorb nutrients from different food products. Variety is not only a great way for your body to efficiently absorb great nutrients, but this also keeps your mind adapting and progressing to become more innovative. Something that will improve your overall quality of life is implementing healthy and dynamic nutritional habits. That way you can live a healthy lifestyle and practice Life Time Fitness throughout your entire life!

Here’s a quick list of some veggies that are great in their popular seasons:

Winter Spring Summer
Beets Avocado Bananas
Brussels Sprouts Bananas Beets
Cabbage Broccoli Bell Peppers
Carrots Cabbage Blackberries

 

Aug 11

The 50 Year Old Hunch- Neck, Shoulder and Upper Back Pain… Solutions!

While working with one of my Personal Training Clients here in the Napa Valley, he mentioned that working on posture is one of the most challenging things that he does throughout his day. His reasoning for this is that he has spent 50 years of his life working behind a desk and not worrying about having healthy posture. So now he is stuck in protraction of the shoulders.  This is where the shoulder blades are rolled forward. This causes strain on the upper back because of the separation of the shoulder blades and the shortening of the rotator cuffs on the front part of your body being closer to each other. This will also cause strain on the thoracic and cervical spine do to muscles not being properly engaged to support the structures of the spine.

 

As Personal Trainers in Lifetime Fitness coaches here at Napa tenacious Fitness, a huge priority is establishing correct posture with our clients. One way to establish healthy posture is to prioritize spinal stability and to ensure the shoulder blades are retracted back in a healthy position.  Before we do any sort of standing exercise such as a squat, deadlift, or lunges, we coach that the shoulder blades should be slightly retracted backwards.  Having the shoulder blade slightly retracted backwards opens up the chest and ensures that our clients are not hunching forward.

 

Another key coaching cue for having structurally sound posture is to ensure that the ears are in line with the armpit and the armpit is over the hip. This can be viewed from a side profile while looking the body from the side.

 

Shoulder and neck pain can be caused from neglected and poor posture. Sometimes it is caused from years of neglecting components of prioritizing the movements of the body that will stem from optimum posture of the neck and upper shoulder area. Sticking to a few principles of ensuring that the shoulder blades are back are the ears are in line with the armpits can help remedy this problem.

 

Feel free to reach out to us at any time if you are experiencing any shoulder or neck pain at napatenacious@gmail.com.  At Napa Tenacious Fitness, we specialize in improving the overall quality of life and human performance of our community!

Jul 26

If it Ain’t Broken, Don’t Fix It… and If It’s Still Workin’, Wear it Down.

Adhering to a regimented fitness program and nutritional program are key factors to maintaining a healthy level of fitness as well as a happy and strong lifestyle. It is frequently seen on social media, various magazines, and other commercialized sources of information that there is a new cutting edge style of fitness training and/or a diet that will help you lose weight, maintain lean muscle in a revolutionary amount of time. While all of these things might be a great way to help creates positive adaptations in your lifetime fitness goals, sometimes bouncing from one practice to another can halt your progress in achieving your goals.

Something that we do as personal trainers here in the Napa Valley with our clients is to promote our clients our to follow a structured program. These structured programs are checked up on every four weeks. We usually keep about 50% of some of the goals and exercises that are in the program to repeated in the next 4 week goal setting process. This way our clients can practice these exercises and nutritional guidelines so that they develop competency in mastery in these techniques and carry it on for the rest of their lives. If the program is eliciting positive results and not hindering any of the progress we are making with our clients, we will not change it. This is where the saying comes from one of my great mentors “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” and “if it’s still working, wear it down.”

So it’s a good idea is to seek out a program that is good for you and start practicing certain techniques that are somewhat challenging but you can track and manage your progress to ensure that you are developing mastery in these habits and techniques. By adhering to some of the same things that aren’t boring and mundane but still serve as somewhat of a challenge to you, you will be able to create positive adaptations with your steps toward living a healthy, strong, and happy lifestyle.

Jul 03

You Are What You Eat and Do

A very common goal for our Personal Training clients that we train here at Napa Tenacious Fitness is that people want to transform their lifestyle and body into something healthier.  A very common goal is to want to lean out and learn how to implement proper dietary habits into their life.  It seems like a very simple solution when someone says that all you need to do is work out more and eat less food.  If only life were that simple.

Being sick of where you’re at and having failed multiple times in attempting to change a body that is overweight is not an easy place to be in.  Critically important modifications such as ensuring that you are eating the correct foods that are low glycemic index and having balanced portion sizes for each meal throughout the day is going to make a big difference toward ones journey in improving the overall health of their body.

In addition to having a healthy diet,  a consistent amount of activity throughout one’s week involving consecutive days of exercise will transform a person’s body into a body that is used to performing physical activity often.  A body that performs physical activity and exercises more will look and function like a healthy body with lean muscle, decreased body fat and an efficient metabolism.  This means ensuring that you are doing resistance training at least 2 times per week and doing some sort of cardiovascular activity that gets your heart rate above 50 or 60% for a prolonged period of time of 30 minutes or more 1 to 2 times a week.

A body that is consuming 5 to 7 evenly sized meals with equal amounts of carbohydrate, protein, and healthy fats five out of seven days a week will turn into a body that looks like someone who is consuming evenly portion meals throughout their week on a consistent basis.  In other words you will look like the choices that your eating habits consist of.

This also holds true with the amount of exercise you are doing throughout your week.  An individual who consistently does resistance training of compound techniques such as squats, push-ups, and pulling movements throughout their week is going to look like a person who has a body that can perform those exercises efficiently.  More often than not, these individuals have more lean muscle, less excess fat storages and increased metabolisms.  An individual who does not participate in physical activity 3 days a week and sits down in a sedentary lifestyle five or more days out of the week is not going to look like a person who participates in strenuous physical activity and exercise three times or more a week.  Once again the image that you put out there will portray the amount of exercise that you are inducing upon your body.

These points are critically important factors that will contribute toward someone wanting to transform the health of their life.  So if you want to change your image and achieve some of your goals toward living a healthier, stronger, and happier life, perhaps it would be a good idea to create a checklist that gives you weekly tactics to ensure that you are achieving some of these goals.  It’s not how Intense or how unique your exercise program is that will give you the results that you’re looking for.   Adhering to a program and ingraining this into your life will create results that will positively influence the achievement to your goals and making Life Time Fitness an everlasting component to your world.

 

Jun 15

“Healthy Desserts” are still Desserts

Dessert are something that many of us really enjoy.  It could be something sweet, savory, or alcoholic.  We all know that dessert is not the best option when looking to lose weight and develop lean muscle due to excessive consumption of unneeded calories from carbohydrates in the form of sugar and unnecessary fat.  Indulging in an extra meal at the end of the day to “satisfy your sweet tooth” will slow down your progress when looking to lose weight.  The most vulnerable time to do this is after dinner and before bed, which is the most sedentary time of the day when are not utilizing many calories as a fuel source other than the function of breathing and maintaining the function of the organs of your body.  When consuming these excess calories at “dessert time,” your body will take these extra calories and put them right into fat storage.  That’s right… your muffin top, love handles and/or spare tire.

An issue that is increasingly prevalent when working with our clients as Personal Trainers and Life Time Fitness Coaches here in Napa is when we hear a story about one of our participants consuming something like fruit instead of cheese cake or ice cream.  In addition, Napa offers some of the most enticing alcoholic beverages available anywhere in the world… wine!  It is a very common occurrence that we hear about our clients drinking a glass of wine at the end of the night instead of dessert as a justification that this will be better than eating some ice cream or a cookie.  Well, here’s the truth:

When you treat something like dessert, it’s still a dessert.

Let’s first look at some of the commonly misconceived alternatives, like eating some fruit after dinner instead of a decadent dessert.  Consuming something like strawberries or some peaches at the end of the night is not going to be as bad as woofing down a bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and a brownie.  However, the truth is that you are still going to get a spike in insulin from the fruit and you are going to be consuming excess carbohydrates that are not going to be metabolized as energy.  This insulin will be produced and will now put your body into an absorptive state.  If your body is absorbing sugars during the period at the end of the day after dinner when you do not move much and expend much energy, the fat cells are going to understand this message as a go ahead to absorb the excess sugar in your blood and store it… making the fat cells happier and bigger.  So, the truth is if you eat something that is putting itself in the dessert category, “healthy” or not, your body is still going to treat it like dessert and have the same response you would get from consuming a standard sweet and tantalizing dessert.

Now let’s look at another story we commonly hear that we commonly hear and is massively misunderstood.  This is the story that people will not eat dessert, but will have 2-3 glasses of wine, some beers, or a glass of whiskey.  This scenario is commonly justified because the serving of booze will not have as many calories as one of our favorite sundaes.  Well, that’s wrong too.  Any alcoholic beverage is full of calories and can spike your insulin too, giving the physiological response of telling your fat cells to have a giant party with all of the sugars invited to make them nice and big.  In addition, 2-3 glasses of wine will equate to about 500 extra calories.  What are those calories?  Well those are sugars… and we all know where sugar goes if we do not use it.  Another key component of alcohol consumption and how it hampers our weight loss goals is that the chemical break down of alcohol into sugars we can use for energy takes longer, which means that if we do not use the sugars that are in the booze we drink… you guessed it, they get a one way ticket to the adipose island.  Smack dab in the middle of the places you don’t want your calories to go, which are the midsection, hips and thighs.

Now that we know dessert time and/or drink time is a time that will cause an increase in fat storage no matter what, what can we do rectify this problem?  Here’s a few suggestions:

  1. Have only 3 nights a week of dessert/drink time.
  2. Don’t justify having fruit or “something light” (like one of those “healthy dessert ice cream bars”)
  3. If you like to drink, try having at least one night a week where you don’t drink.

We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t drink and have a treat every now and then.  I mean come on, we live in Napa.  It’s one the best places in the world to indulge in delicious food and wine.  However, let’s take some time to enlighten ourselves on how to make revolutions in our Life Time Fitness Goals and be more aware of what goes in our body and how justifying a treat to not be a treat… is still a treat!

Jun 08

The Medicine Cabinet… Clear It Out and Start Exercising!

Health issues caused by becoming overweight are becoming increasingly prevalent.  Conditions such as hypertension, sleep apnea and arthritis are just a few conditions whose names are on this list.  A common solution to resolving these problems are referring to the services of a general physician.  The physician will more than likely offer a prescription of medicine to help alleviate these symptoms of stress such as high blood pressure medications, diuretics, and sleep assisting prescriptions.  For people suffering from sleep apnea due to an increase in fat mass around their throat, a CPAP machine is sometimes prescribed.  While all of these are solutions to curing detrimental health conditions can be caused by living a sedentary life style, they are just a band aid to the overall problem.  This problem is your life. and if we want to live longer, we should act appropriately.

One other critically important piece of information that not every doctor will recommend to treat this conditions, is exercise.

The health conditions that were listed above (overweight, sleep apnea and arthritis) are more often than not linked to a lack of physical activity and poor food choices.  While prescription drugs can help treat these conditions, they can also be harmful in the fact that they will promote the very thing that created the problem in the first place.  The genesis of these conditions will generally be due failing to adhere to a healthy lifestyle.  As you know from reading my website, we promote Life Time Fitness in Napa by adhering to exercise, having a positive outlook on life and ensuring that our diet is healthy and balanced.

Implementing an exercise routine on a weekly basis will help battle the effects of becoming overweight.  Performing some sort of physical activity will put positive stress on the heart as well as the muscles and the bones of the body.  By increasing the heart rate in a controlled environment, such as a structured resistance training routine, will help level out the effects of high blood pressure in the arteries of the body.

Compound resistance training techniques that target the muscles of the lower body, upper body pulling movement, and upper body pushing movements will elicit a stress response on the muscles surrounding the larger bones of the body.  Once the larger bones of the body receive that stress, anabolic hormones responsible for the reconstruction of muscles and bone tissue will be released into the blood stream triggering the resynthesis of the bones and joints.  By performing resistance training, the body will strengthen the bones that are deteriorating from the effects of arthritis.  While arthritis medication is helpful, the human body will be able to last longer if we can reduce the amount of arthritis medications that seem unnecessary and increase the amount of exercise to improve our journey to live a healthy and strong life.  As a Personal Trainer and Life Time Fitness Advocate in Napa, one of my jobs of myself and my team is to prescribe exercises to individuals suffering from issues such as the joint disease and arthritis.  No matter where you are in the world and you are reading this article, seeking out the advice of Personal Trainer would significantly help fight the detrimental effects of arthritis.

CPAP machines help overweight individuals sleep by assisting the breathing cycle while sleeping.  Sleep apnea is a condition that is linked to restricted breathing due to increased fat tissue around the throat causing a restriction of air going through the trachea.  The CPAP machine is meant to be a temporary solution for the conditions Sleep Apnea linked to being overweight.  Ideally, an individual with Sleep Apnea that is tied to being overweight should not be on this device forever.  Why?  Because by decreasing the amount of weight a person has, fat mass will be reduced in the body AND an increased exercise will lead to a healthier sleep wake cycle.

So, are medications bad?  Absolutely not.  They can be very useful.  However, depending on these medications, an overabundance might lead to overuse and can seriously impede an individual’s human potential in their lives.  The more prescription medication bottles in the medicine cabinet that fall out when you open it is an indicator that an intervention should occur.  This intervention is our pride and joy as Personal Trainers.  So why not try to reduce the amount of medication bottles you have in your cabinet and increase your over quality of life by staying physically active, exercising, and eating healthy?

I don’t know about you, but living a happy and strong life sounds like a good way to kick ass in life.

Jun 01

The 3-to-1 Principle: 3 nights healthy… 1 night to treat yourself!

Weight loss is one of the top subjects that drive people to improve their fitness.  Increases in overall weight can lead to metabolic diseases, joint pain and other psychological factors that are detrimental to human health.  As Personal Trainers who promote Life Time Fitness here in the Napa Valley, we are posed with many challenges on how to guide the people we engage with to lose weight and achieve a healthier lifestyle.

Napa is a beautiful city that has many decadent items for lovers of food and wine.  The appreciation for food and wine is apparent in the tourist community and plays a huge roll in employing people who live in Napa.  Wine makers, event managers and restaurant workers are all surrounded by the bliss of drinking the world’s best wine and eating some of the world’s best food.  Therefore, the temptations to consume copious amounts of alcohol and eat rich and delicious food is right in front of our eyes, both literally and figuratively.  When temptations are so close for eyes to see, it makes overeating and overdrinking a very easy thing to do.  We all know what happens when too much food is consumed at one time… the food will not have anywhere to be absorbed and it will be stored as fat (especially the delicious Napa cuisine).  In addition, some of the social events that the professionals in the wine industry are obligated to go to always have alcohol… tons of it.  The omnipresence of wine and catered food is another trigger that can convince a person to over consume and influence the gain of extra weight.

So, is delicious food from Napa Valley’s fine dining restaurants and the best wine in the world a bad thing?  HELL NO!  As the writer of this article, I think it’s a great thing!  We should take time out to enjoy amazing things in life… and food and fun wine experiences are definitely a part of that!  However, the key concept to many things in life… is balance.  With that being said, what is a good way to balance a life in which one wants to maintain a healthy weight and is surrounded by things that might negatively influence their weight?

In reality, no one person is unique when it comes to being surrounded by tantalizingly devious decisions in food.  We are all surrounded by vices that might convince us to go down a path that is not the most beneficial for our wellbeing.  In this subject, we are talking about decisions involving the overconsumption of food and alcohol.

But why is it that some certain people in the food and wine industry are able to maintain their weight and live a healthy and active lifestyle?

Balance is key to this.  Ensuring to decide on more things that will influence health for tomorrow over choices that will negatively impact ones health is a great example of how to balance a life that is surrounded by decadence and gluttony.

A great technique that we teach our clients at Napa Tenacious Fitness is the 3-to-1 principle.  The 3-to-1 principle refers to the amount days in which someone will make healthy choices for 3 days in a row and then allow 1 day in which the person can allow themselves a treat.  For example, a good technique would be to abstain from carbohydrate consumption at dinner and dessert for 3 nights throughout the week.  After 3 days, you can allow yourself a meal that includes carbohydrates… or even dessert!

I know that as a Personal Trainer and Life Time Fitness Coach in Napa people might be saying… dessert, really?  You’re damn right that’s what I’m saying!  This is a technique that takes an extreme amount of control and concentration.  It so challenging to break cycles that have imbalances to them.  Any little technique we can utilize to positive influence a shift in the healthier direction and away from overeating is a huge success and will positively impact the loss of weight.  This will lead to a healthier lifestyle overall.

So give it a shot!  Pick one thing that you think is kicking your ass and causing you to not be as fit as you would like to be… eliminate that aspect for 3 nights in a row, and then allow it for the third night.  Then repeat it…again and again… and again

May 25

Take Deep Breaths to Reduce Work Stress and Improve Concentration, Productivity, and Mental Health

Do you ever find yourself stressed out, stuck in a rut, or just too busy that you don’t know what to do next?

Sometimes stress puts us in a confined state of mind in which we feel like we have nowhere to go and we stay stuck in a stressful state of something like anger, depression, or spite towards someone else.  We can also find ourselves feeling stagnant on certain work days where we sit at our work desk for so long.  States of melancholy which we get in a state of mind that basically makes us feel like we’re a shoe in a dryer and we don’t know what to do next except have our thoughts go in the same mundane circle.   Similar to the way our bodies adapt to become stronger after weeks of regular exercise, part of progressing forward in life and maintaining a good quality of life is making sure that your mind is constantly percolating and striving for adaptation.

So how do we keep our mind percolating and striving for the next best thing that’s in front of us?  One technique that I use is a little bit of meditation that I learned in a psychology class in college.  When being taught to be an elite performing human being in our everyday lives, we always talked about what an elite performer in an athletic event has to go through to achieve their task.

Something that is commonly taught to athletes before they execute an event is to take deep breaths.

Taking deep breaths will slow down the heart rate a few beats and decrease the amount of stress hormones that are telling the heart to beat so fast.  There is a physiological correlation to taking deep breaths and triggering the body and it’s nervous system how to relax.

For instance, Marksmanship performers who participate in biathlons, a sport in which an athlete will ski downhill and then aim for a target and shoot at a long distance target with a rifle.  The challenge of this is performing a complicated task of downhill skiing and immediately aiming and shooting at a target that is very long distance away while their heart is racing and stress hormones are making the body over stimulated.  Baseball athletes will are also taught to take a few deep breaths before going up to bat.  Taking deep breaths helps these athletes to become a better performer because they can focus on the task at hand that takes a high amount of dexterity, like aiming for a target or hitting a small baseball that’s being thrown at you very hard from a pitcher.

Even though most days at work and  life  in the general population does not involve the above mentioned extent of physically athletic activity, stress can hit us the same way just as it does an athlete performing an athletic activity correctly.  For example, if someone were to have a bad day at work and get reprimanded by their boss because they didn’t do something the right way, their mood could be affected in a negative way in which the individual may not want to exercise, eat healthy or go to sleep in a timely manner because they are over stressed.  The stimulus of getting yelled at by the boss will increase the amount of stress hormones, blood pressure, and heart rate responses to an individual.  This stress stimulus is very similar to what we have talked about with athletes and their activities they want to execute correctly.  the solution to this type of stress response is identical to how an athlete will center themselves.  By taking deep breaths, one can apply similar heart rate recovery, concentration, and an overall decrease in the amount of stress hormones being produced.  This is a method in which we can become Elite performers and adhere to a healthier lifestyle.

So when stress from everyday life gets in the way and keeps us from adhering to Life Time Fitness, try taking a few deep breaths.  This is one technique that I was taught by one of my favorite psychology teachers in my college career:

  1. Find an inanimate object outside (like a tree, the horizon or some clouds)
  2. Look at that object… then close your eyes. Take one long, deep breath.  Feel your longs all the way to it’s fullest capactity and take your time.
  3. Let that breath out.
  4. With your eyes closed, take another long and steady deep breath. On the exhale, open your eyes and slowly let out your breath.
  5. Take One more deep breath with your eyes open, still looking at the object you initially picked out. Exhale one more time and think about something that makes you happy (I think about my son, my friends, my family… and burritos!)

Feel free to try this technique when things get rough.  Not only will taking deep breaths bring in a better state of focus when in the middle of an athletic event, but this technique can help reduce stress in our everyday lives!  This is a technique we teach to some of our Personal Training clients in the Napa Valley because there are so many beautiful things to look at here … Trees… Vineyards… Hills.  Sounds like some great things to look at and take it all in, right?

So take some time out of the stressful part of your day and look at something pretty.

It will be alright, if we just take deep breaths.

May 07

Advancements in Plank Exercises: Elbow Plank Reach

Plank exercises are a great way to start to develop core strength in any beginner to intermediate exercise routine.  As Personal Trainers in Napa catering to our clients, we like to use advancements in different techniques to progress to different stages of strength. After a client at Napa Tenacious Fitness demonstrates mastery and competency in both the Straight Arm Plank and Elbow Plank exercise, we will progress them to more advance isometric exercises that require core engagement paired with another movement.  One of the techniques we progress to is the Elbow Plank Reach.

In the Elbow Plank Reach exercise, you will be starting out in the standard elbow plank position with the arms bent at a ninety-degree angle and feet will be sprawled out slightly wider than the normal elbow plank position.  The big toe should be even with the outside border of the hips.  Your hips should be steady and square to the ground.   Abs, shoulder blade muscles, pecs and abdominal muscles should be tight.  Ensure that your back is flat while pressing your elbow into the ground wind up the shoulder joint to flex the muscles surrounding the shoulder blades and arm pit maintaining rigidity in the torso extend one arm in front until the arm is completely straight.  Return your extended arm underneath the armpit and rinse and repeat with the same movement on the other side.  Repeat this movement for reps!

We usually have our client perform anywhere from 3-10 repetitions depending on how challenging the exercise is.  In addition, to modify this exercise, you can place your elbows on an incline surface such as an exercise bench or even an even higher surface (at home, you can use something like a kitchen counter or sturdy table… this will make it easier!)

This is great exercise to add to any routine.  It is an abdominal exercise that utilizes both spinal, abdominal and hip stability while utilizing the core musculature to put positive stress on the a wide variety of core muscle groups!

 

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