You may remember the man pictured above, Covert Bailey. His best selling book, "Fit or Fat" published in 1978 was a pioneering effort extoling the virtues of weight lifting and cardio vascular exercise to aid in weight loss. In the '90's Covert was all over the airwaves singing his gospel to all that would listen. And I was one of those listeners. I enjoyed Covert's enthusiasm about health and fitness, but what I really liked about his approach was the practicality of it. Covert understood that not everyone, in fact very few people, had goals or any notion of becoming a (3 comments)
When I trained people I would emphasize "functional exercices", or exercises that best replicate real life activities that we all do. Because let's face it, most people who go the gym are not interested in becoming body builders. They want to get in better shape, lose weight, feel better, and be able to perform better in their day to day activities.
So, one of my central goals with most of my clients was to get them to be able to do at least ONE pull up. The reason I would give them? It could save your life! You never know when you (2 comments)
We've all heard the old gym phrase, "No Pain, No Gain". Well, there's some truth to that, but things have changed in the fitness world since those words were first coined. Sure, in order to encourage muscle growth and strength we do need tax the muscle. But there's a fine line between "the burn" we feel when we've really worked the muscle to its limit and injury.
In my gym, we used to say, "Stimulate, don't anihilate". We want to stimulate the muscle for further growth, not anihilate it rendering it unusable for a period of time. Unfortunately I would often see (5 comments)
When I owned my gyms in San Francisco this time of year was always the busiest. People would arrive to the gym to sign up for memberships full of pep and vigor and ready to start in on their New Year's Resolutions to get fit and healthy. I'd often hear refrains the likes of, "I'm gonna come to the gym everyday. I'm gonna go on a diet. And I'm gonna lose XX amount of weight this year. I'm gonna change EVERYTHING!" To which I would have to be the voice of reason and say, "Whoa!!!! Wait a minute".
Next week will mark the busiest time of the year in gyms across America. The New Year's Resolution crowd will be showing up. And based on past history, most will be gone by about February. But for those who stick it out, and those who are gym regulars we will inevitably hit what is fondly called a "plateau" in our fitness level. As I mentioned in last week's post about fat, the human body is a very efficient machine. It does not want to expend more calories than is absolutely necessary. So when we initially start a training regimen our body kicks (3 comments)
As a former personal trainer and gym owner I still have an avid interest in fitness and athletics. So I thought that it might be helpful to throw out a few tips every once in a while. Because truth be told, our health care system would not be in such dire straights if everyone did just the minimum recommended amount of exercise per week. But that discussion is for another day. When I owned my gyms, around the new year, I would always have people coming in and telling me how they were going to get in the gym (4 comments)