Inspired Journey Fitness

A little over a year ago, a very good friend of our daughters was diagnosed with cancer. In a short 9 months, Brianna finished the race strong but ultimately lost her battle with the disease. As a father, watching a child’s life cut short was heartbreaking. It’s hard for me to even write about it.

I’ve formed a team for the Relay for Life in Bolingbrook to make a small contribution and maybe help one more child enjoy another birthday and I’m asking for your support.

In the 2 minutes it takes to make a donation to my American Cancer Society Relay For Life® team, you can help me and my team save lives – and improve the quality of life for people who have cancer.

The American Cancer Society invests much-needed funds raised through Relay For Life® to save lives from cancer. They’ll use your donation to:

• Help people stay well by educating them on ways prevent cancer or detect it early, when it’s most treatable.
• Help people get well with FREE hands-on support through every step of their cancer experience.
• Find cures by funding groundbreaking research that helps us understand cancer’s causes, determine how best to prevent it, and discover new ways to cure it.
• Fight back by working with lawmakers to pass laws to defeat cancer and rally communities worldwide to join the fight.

Every donation really does make a difference. Please visit my personal Relay for Life page to make a secure, tax-deductible online donation.

If it’s easier to spread your donation over several months, you can do that by choosing a “sustaining gift” option. Thank you for joining me in this effort. I will keep you updated on my progress.

To learn more about Relay For Life®, please visit RelayForLife.org

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Stability Ball Hamstring Curl

Here’s what it means.

When many people train with weights, they focus their efforts on the muscles in the front of the body, but forget about the muscles in back, the posterior chain. If you can’t see them in the mirror, they must not be important, right? Wrong.

It’s time to show the hammies some love and here’s a great exercise to work them. Give the Stability Ball Hamstring Curl a try and let me know what you think!

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This week’s video is an advanced exercise that will challenge your core and balance.

Stability Ball Drop and Cross Video

Click here to learn how to do the stability ball drop and cross.

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The big game is tomorrow and here’s my predicition. Check out the video below where I use my TRX Suspension Trainer to give you the prediction.

I love training with the TRX. It’s versatile and effective. You get a great total body workout and can get it quick! Drew Bress calls the TRX “the greatest piece of functional fitness equipment that exists”.

Click here now to get your own TRX and train like the pros!

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The Lifestyles Fitness Center has been doing some remodeling this week. Over the past few weeks we’ve been painting, received all new treadmills, and last week we installed new carpeting.

Rather than close the center, we kept the center open and let our members know that some of the equipment would not be available. We have another location a couple miles away and members could go there instead. Alternatively, we promoted this as an opportunity for people to try something different with their program. It’s an opportunity to change from having a “routine” to something exciting and different.

The carpeting process was scheduled to last three days. On day 1, members came in at 5 AM and a few were shell-shocked. They wandered around trying to figure out what to do, randomly pulling a cable here and doing a rep there. A few said, “I can’t do anything today”. One nearly climbed over a few cardio machines that were pushed together just to get to the one machine he uses every single day. He looked quite relieved and proud that he did the same thing as yesterday, and the day before, and the days and weeks before that.

Your body is a pretty amazing system. It adapts to the positive stress of exercise. When you place a load on the body it adapts to that load by getting stronger. Soon, the body sees that load as normal and unless you place a different stress on the body it hits a plateau.

If you do the same walk on the treadmill, at the same speed, for the same distance, over the same duration, your results will not improve. That program will work at first, but the Law of Dimishing Returns says that sooner or later the result will be zero. My point is that you need to keep the body guessing as to what’s coming next.

Take a look at your personal program.

Are you still doing the same thing you’ve been doing for weeks, months, years? If so, turn it upside down, make it tougher, and get ready to see results!

• Are you doing just cardio? Add weights
• Are you just doing weights? Add cardio
• Are you doing your cardio at the same intensity? Maybe you’re ready for interval training?
• How about trying a total body exercise like swimming?

Need help creating a new program to get the results you’re looking for? Give me a call at (630) 269-8992!

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You’re ready to take your training to a new level and buy a heart rate monitor. So, what should you look for in your new training partner? A basic bare bones heart rate monitor will cost you about $50 and will do just as the name suggests. It will monitor your heart rate. For the geek at heart (we know who we are), the monitors at the top end of the range will connect you to your computer, plot your location and route by GPS, store your data, offer comparisons against other workouts, and more. I’ve owned several Polar monitorsand have been very happy with them. Garmin and Suunto also make great products.

Here’s a summary of the most popular features that you’ll find and what they mean. The more features, the higher the price.

• ECG accurate – The monitor is considered to be as accurate as an electrocardiogram. A monitor from a good quality company will have this as a basic feature. The monitor does this by taking constant readings through the use of a chest strap.

• Large easy to read display – A bright and easy to read display is a joy when you’re trying to see your monitor while on the bike, running, pool, or whatever your favorite exercise. No stopping or squiting needed.
• Target zone alarm – Tells you when your heart is below or above a particular zone.
• Multiple customizable zones – Allows you to determine several zones
• Recording time in zones – Allows you to review the time you’ve spent in certain training zones so you can make sure you’re working hard enough, or that you’re not working too hard.
• Fitness test – Will take you through a fitness test and determine max heart rate, VO2 max, or other tests.
• Calorie measurement – Tracks your caloric expenditure based on your workload, your weight, height, and age.
• Water resistant – This one’s really important. You might not plan to use your monitor when swimming, but you might get caught in the rain or the condensation from your body will exposure the unit to moisture. Make sure your chest transmitter is also water resistant. Once again, if you’re buying from a quality company you won’t have a problem here.
• Lap counting – Allows you to compare your times over laps during your workout.
• Interval programs – Allows you to program the monitor to vary your intensity and alerts you when you increase or decrease the intensity.
• User serviceable – It’s great to be able to change the batteris by yourself rather than having to send the watch or transmitter to a service center. If your monitor is water resistant, this may be a pie-in-the-sky dream as the company will not support a warranty if you change the battery yourself. Water resistant monitors usually have a seal inside that they want to make sure is properly replaced and they’ll only guarantee it if they do it themselves.
• Bike functions – Tracks your bike speed, distance, cadence, and more. Since bike wheels are different sizes and provide different readings, you’ll want your monitor to allow you to switch between multiple bikes (road and mountain bike, for example)
• Computer interface – Connect to your computer to download data. Allows you to compare your workouts and see what progress you’re making. Some will even allow you to create workout profiles on your computer and upload them to the monitor. This is much better than trying to push tiny buttons on the monitor and create a workout.
• Large buttons – Speaking of buttons, I want mine to be a good size so I can activate them easily.
• GPS – The high end monitors from Garmin will give you a color screen that plots your location on a map. If you use the same route regularly, you can store the route and compare your progress today against previous exercise sessions and see how you’re doing.

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I came across a 2007 study from McMaster University in Canada regarding milk and fat loss.

Mom was right. Drink your milk!

In the study, they recruited 56 males aged 18-30 and put them through a 5 day a week weighlifting program. Following the workout sessions, they gave the participants one of three drinks:

• Two cups of skim milk
• A soy beverage
• A carbohydrate beverage

The group that drank milk lost almost twice as much fat as the group drinking the carb beverage. They also gained 40 percent more lean mass than the soy drinkers and 63 percent more than the carb drinkers.

Need more evidence? A study published in Medicine in Sports and Science, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, studied a group of competitive soccer players and determined that post-exercise consumption of chocolate milk had equal or better benefits than a commercial workout recovery drink after intensified training.

Mom was right. Drink your milk! Make mine chocolate please!

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Mountain Climber Exercise Video

My latest video highlights a great exercise that you probably remember from your high school days.  At the time, you probably thought it was torture.  But it was really a great cardio and functional strength building exercise. 

Click here to see a video of the Mountain Climber!

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Ten years ago, the world was in a panic thinking that everything was coming to an end.  Y2K was here and it was all people could talk about.  What was going to happen?  Would the world be plunged into chaos because computers would melt down, going haywire because they couldn’t handle four digit years? 

I still remember watching TV on New Year’s Day 2000 and seeing this commercial.   Y2K didn’t stop this guy from living his life.  He didn’t let the imminent end of the world ruin his fitness.  What will you be doing to make 2010 your best year ever?

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Strengthen your core with the Stability Ball Pass

You’re either going to love or hate this exercise, but there’s no doubt that it will help you develop a strong core.

Click here to build the core you’ve wanted with the Stability Ball Pass

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