STRENGTH TRAINING
Everyone, no matter how young or old, should be doing some kind of regular strength training. This could be in a gym, or at home using very little equipment. Resistance bands and balls, small hand weights, water and even your own body weight can be used as resistance when designing a strength training program. Why start Strength training?? • Improves your ability to do everyday activities: The stronger your muscles, the easier it is to get groceries out of the car, get a package off of the top cabinet shelf, push the lawnmower…..the list goes on and on!
- Improves balance and stability: The stronger and more resilient your muscles, the more balance is sturdier. This will help keep you safe in your daily activities and decreases the risk of falls or accidents.
- Builds muscle strength: Adults lose between five and seven pounds of muscle every decade after age 20. Strength training will help prevent this muscle loss, and rebuild what you may have lost.
- Decreases your risk of osteoporosis: Inactivity and aging can lead to a decrease in bone density, leading to brittleness. Studies have shown that consistent strength training can increase bone density and prevent osteoporosis.
- Reduces blood pressure: Strength training can be beneficial for the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure by strengthening the heart, allowing it to beat more efficiently.
- Increases calorie burn: Strength training increases the body's metabolic rate, causing the body to burn more calories throughout the day. This aids significantly in long term weight loss.
- Reduces low back pain: Research has shown that strength training can increase low back strength and alleviate low back pain.
And these are just a few benefits!
HIIT and Cardio Training
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great way to bump up your cardio and strength workouts to add intensity and variety to your workouts. So, what exactly is HIIT training? It's a type of interval training in which you alternate short, very high intensity intervals with longer, slower intervals to recover. The idea is to work in the upper percentage of your target heart rate zone, around a 9 on this Perceived Exertion Scale, meaning you go all out, as hard as you can during the work intervals. Why HIIT? This type of training has been used by athletes to improve performance, but it's also been shown to benefit the average exerciser. Here are just some of the benefits of HIIT training: It improves performance ,It helps you burn more fat, It helps you burn more calories all day long, Your workouts are shorter.
Weight Loss
Skip the Scale!! Your body is composed of three main components: fat, lean body mass (muscle, bone, and organs), and water. The percentages of each vary from person to person, and by gender (men have more muscle; women more fat) and age (in general, as we age we have less muscle mass). Obviously, as you lose weight, you want to lose fat and not lean body mass! A regular scale can't tell you this, but a body composition scale can. Most body composition scales will give you the percentage of fat your body weight is made up of—and this is very helpful as you lose weight. My programs will focus on losing body FAT not just weight. I will teach you to stop looking at the scale and how to tell if your losing in a healthy manner. Personally, I don’t promote “weight loss” because I don’t think it sends the right message about health goals. Ultimately, if you want to lose weight, what you really want to do is improve your body composition – to increase your muscle mass and decrease your fat mass.
Speed, Agility & Power for Athletes
Take your athletic abilities to the next level. Increase your speed and endurance. Customized Strength & Explosive Power training. Learn proper techniques to get the results you desire. Using both strength and plyometric training principals. Most people hear "agility training" and think it's just for professional athletes. That couldn't be further from the truth. Agility work is a fun way to shake up your workout. What are we talking about exactly? One definition of agility is "the ability to move, change direction, and position the body effectively while under control." While that certainly pertains to just about every sport, this description covers much of daily living, too. Here's a brief list of what agility workouts can do:
- Aid in injury prevention
- Improve multi-planar coordination
- Increase heart rate and blood flow throughout the body
- Increase mind-body connection and help get us focused
1 on 1 Boxing Contitioning
Boxing as a sport requires a high level of athletic prowess: strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, endurance, nerve, and power, just to name several required attributes. Boxing as a fitness activity enables the average person to hone those same athletic skills, all without having to take a punch. If you’re hoping to get in great shape and improve your health, you just might want to start a boxing regime.
Benefits include:
- Enhanced Cardiovascular Health: The whole point of cardio is to place a moderate amount of stress on your heart and lungs so that they’re challenged enough to make beneficial physiologic adaptations to support the higher level of physical activity. But how you choose to place stress on your heart and lungs is up to you. As long as you keep your heart rate up during your workout, there’s no reason you can’t punch, kick, and jump your way to a healthy heart!
- Improved Total-Body Strength: All that punching, kicking, and jumping requires a surprising amount of strength. Think about it – most professional heavy bags weigh at least 100 pounds. During a boxing workout, you may punch or kick a bag hundreds of times, requiring your upper body, lower body, and core to engage as you make contact with the bag. Plus, I incorporate other strength training moves into a boxing workout. For instance squats, pushups, planks, and weighted medicine ball exercises all within the context of my fast-paced 30-minute circuit workout.
- Better Hand-Eye Coordination: You may not think about the importance of hand-eye coordination and its affect on total health, but hand-eye coordination plays an important role in a person’s gross and fine motor skills. Individuals with good hand-eye coordination tend to have faster reflexes and reaction times, and tend to have better physical coordination as a whole. This is particularly important during aging, as coordination and balance become compromised, increasing the risk of falls. Boxing can help hone hand-eye coordination. When you’re tasked with punching a speed bag you’re paired up to spar with a partner (practice punching your partner’s padded mitts), you must be able to see the target, react to the target, and hit the target, all while the target is moving and changing position. It’s tough, but with practice, your hand-eye coordination improves substantially.
- Decreased Stress: Boxing is a great outlet for stress for two reasons: First, during a boxing workout you typically transition between high intensity bouts of exercise and moderate intensity recovery periods. When you’re pushing yourself through a couple minutes of high-intensity punching or kicking, you don’t have much mental power left to worry about how awful your job is, or how dirty your house is. And even during rest periods, you’ll be focused on sucking wind and mentally preparing for the next round, not stressing over your packed schedule. Second, there’s an incredibly cathartic release when you get to take some of your stress out on a punching bag or training mitts. It’s an empowering feeling to punch your stress to smithereens.
- Improved Body Composition: Boxing is great for improving body composition – and some might say it’s great for weight loss. Boxing is an incredible mechanism for improved body composition because it perfectly combines muscle-building strength training moves and calorie-torching bouts of cardio. By regularly participating in a boxing program and following a nutritious eating plan, there’s no reason you won’t see changes in your shape and improvements to your fat mass percentage.