In this so called scientific age, the 40-year old debate still rages: is it free weights or exercise machines that deliver the best results?

Proponents in the free-weight camp often contend, ‘Machines are inefficient —targeting only one or two muscle groups at a time’ or ‘Only free weights can improve coordination by working stabilizer muscles.’

Machine advocates aren’t without their sweeping generalizations either. They contend ‘Machines allow you to focus your mind on the effort, as opposed to the mechanics of the movement.’ How about this doozy from the  internet marketer, Dr. Mercola who claims, “One advantage of machines is they allow you to lift heavier weights.” Huh? That’s like saying you like the Celsius scale better than Fahrenheit because it rarely goes over 30 degrees in the summer. What Dr. Mercola failed to point out is that the body perceives a 150-pound barbell bench press the same as a 300-pound MedX machine chest Press. Although the weights are clearly different, the resistance measured in foot-pounds is the same. But I digress.Continue reading “Free Weights Vs Machines”

Just recently I lost several days of my active life to back spasms.

Back spasms are sudden involuntary contractions of any muscle in your back. Spasms are caused by either a weakness or injury to the muscles, tendons or ligaments. Not everyone experiences back spasms, but almost everyone’s back gets more vulnerable with age. My sincere hope is that yours never does. Breathtakingly painful and often debilitating, muscle spasms can knock you out of the game.

We Baby Boomers now find ourselves in a Catch 22 situation. We know we need to exercise to gain muscle mass and improve our body composition as we age. Yet, as we get older we nurse those nagging injuries and physical problems that accumulate over time, such as bad knees, stiff shoulders, and tricky backs. We walk around with life wounds while we continue to lose muscle at an alarming rate. Baby Boomers face two equally undesirable alternatives:

• Either workout out to prevent muscle loss and get hurt, or
• Don’t work out and suffer the dismal effects of age-related muscle loss and atrophy.

Even though we know the key to optimal health as we age is to gain muscle mass and improve our body composition, the fear of exacerbating our war wounds keeps many of us sedentary.

My own experience is a good example. I have back problems and have spent my life strengthening my back while trying to avoid reinjuring it. I suffered a back injury when I was barely a teenager, which required back surgery. I had made my condition worse by improperly lifting weights, overtraining, horseplay, and competitive sports leaving me vulnerable ever since.

I use the InForm Fitness model of slow and intense. Exercise has to be intense in order to strengthen, and that can be challenging. Intense exercise can exacerbate old wounds. As the Founder of InForm Fitness’ Power-of-10 Workout, I make the claim every day that we offer the safest, most efficient strength training program. Yet, I suffered an injury while exercising that resulted in acute, knock-you-on-your-ass, back muscle spasms. You can imagine my dilemma as to whether or not I should fess up or cover up my recent injury.

The truth is, accidents happen, even to pros.

My mistake was simple – I lost focus as I was self-training. My mind was racing in several directions during my workout. So, there I was, half way through my leg press routine and my mind took a hike into the “what-if” future. As my hips lifted slightly, SNAP – I tweaked something in my lower back. I reassessed, put my hips back down, checked my posture and position, and carried on.

I knew that I would be sore for a few days, but if I don’t challenge myself, nothing changes.

A few days later, while at home, and after having spent hours at my desk and even longer behind the wheel of my car, I reached to open the refrigerator door when I felt a sudden and severe jolt of pain. I went down on the kitchen floor and felt as if I were being tortured with jolts of electric shocks as though some evil antagonist was attempting to extract a confession.

I promise…I am not exaggerating.

As I lay on the kitchen floor with the breath knocked out of me from painful contractions, I wondered about my life’s mission: to create the safest and most efficient workout possible. Were these muscle spasms a wake-up call that something is wrong with the workout?

No, nothing is wrong with the InForm Fitness workout. While I have never claimed that this is the Perfect Workout, I remain steadfast that we offer the best workout available. Our Strength Training Instructors undergo rigorous preparation, our equipment is customized to meet exacting standards, and the protocol has been developed over years of research and trials, and has been successful for countless clients.

I got hurt because I lost focus. That’s one of the reasons workouts at InForm Fitness are one-on-one. Our instructors make sure you are working out with good form and they keep you in the moment, concentrating on what you are doing. There is nothing wrong with in the InForm protocol or our equipment.

I hate to think of what condition I could have been in if my seconds-long lapse of concentration from perfect form and control occurred during a workout like CrossFit, which is already fraught with potential injury. That ‘tweak’ could have been my last!

So the moral of this story is to not to give up. Continue to exercise with intensity, stay focused and be safe! Here’s to your good health, safe and efficient workouts and all the benefits they reap!

Many of you have asked for a little something extra, so we have come up with a program that fits the  bill. At InForm Fitness, we strive to serve your needs, while honoring our ‘once‐a‐week is all you need’  workout. We want to focus on strengthening the spine and core without sacrificing the compound  movements you are familiar with, or risking over‐training and injury. Our solution is

• a comprehensive spine and core routine
• that can be done the same week as your regular workout
• or every other week.

Spine and core movements are not as metabolically demanding as compound movements.  If the routine is done on its own, a second workout would not lead to over‐training. The second workout  remains in harmony with our core values of: safety, time efficiency, and simplicity.

Our standard intense, once‐a‐week workout is comprised of six or seven compound movement exercises, which target multiple muscle groups simultaneously. This routine works your entire body efficiently. In twenty minutes, your workout is complete – ‘see ya next week!” Working those large muscle groups to muscular failure is all your body needs to trigger the metabolic response to grow lean muscle.

We tried integrating specialized spine and core exercises into the standard weekly workout but found that most of our clients were too fatigued to execute the exercises in good form after completing the  fundamental full‐body routine of compound movement exercises.

We are confident you will share our excitement for this new program, designed to give you the edge you have been looking for. Talk to your Strength Training Instructor about incorporating the spine and core  workout into your weekly schedule. The InForm Fitness Team, at your Service.

The number of women clients who express their fear of “bulking up” from doing strength training with me grows every day. I rarely come across a woman who wants to build a lot of muscle, almost all the people who train with me want to ‘tone up’ and create “long and lean” muscles- you’ve undoubtedly heard the same claims. The fact is most women won’t “bulk up” from weight lifting. You can’t change the length of your muscles, and certain exercises will not “tone” more than others.

All you’ve heard to the contrary in countless fitness magazines, on social media pages, and on every daytime talk show on air is wrong. Marketers in the fitness world know how to use buzz words to their advantage. That’s right, ‘toned, long, and lean’ muscles are just the same as those scary, “big, bulky, and manly” muscles that most women shy away from.

Debunking the Myths

Let’s start with the word “toned.” The dictionary tells us that the term toned “implies leanness in the body, noticeable muscle definition and shape, but not significant muscle size.”

By popular definition, muscle tone equals defined musculature, but not significant muscle size. We want our muscles to show, but we don’t want them to be big. We achieve that by removing the substance that covers our muscles; body fat. The only way to allow your muscles to show without increasing their size is to reduce our body fat level.

Tone is the fitness buzz word that refuses to leave the vocabulary of millions of Lulu Lemon wearers everywhere. There is not one type of exercise that will “tone” your muscles. Lifting light weights at high repetitions is not a proven method of specifically lowering body fat, nor is lifting heavy weights. The amount of weight you use does not matter.

“But what about cardio?” you might ask. That is a whole other topic on its own. In short one pound of fat is made up of 3,500 calories. According to myriad fitness websites, here are a few ways to burn 500 calories per day, which will amount to a one pound loss after 7 days:

You can jog for one hour every day.
You can swim for one hour every day.
You can mow the lawn for 2 hours every day (side business?).
You can cycle for 75 minutes every day.
You can climb stairs for 50 minutes every day.

You get the point. Losing a pound of fat with any of those methods is a lot of work. And then you’re really hungry, which is even worse.

To circle back around, toning really means a loss in body fat. How do you achieve this? Take a careful look at your diet. What you do in the gym to promote fat loss does not even come close to what you can do in the kitchen to achieve the same results. Try cutting out sugar, processed carbohydrates, and pre-made/packaged foods for a few weeks. You’ll be amazed at the amount of ‘toning that occurs.

LENGTH

I often hear of Pilates and yoga enthusiasts aiming for a “longer” look. Women deserve to know how to weed through false claims that certain exercise methods lengthen muscles.

The bad news is that you cannot change the length of your muscles. Every muscle in your body has a point of origin and a point of insertion. They start and they stop at very fixed points. This is something that cannot change unless you surgically detach your tendons and reset them a little differently.

The good news is that you can sort of look longer if you stop slouching and stand up straighter. Trust me, being mindful of your posture does wonders to your overall appearance. Try it for a day. I bet people will notice the difference.

My advice is to stop slouching.

BULK

Ah, yes. My favorite. I have never met a female client who has not made it clear that she does not want to “bulk up.” Most actually spend the first few months of their strength training fearing the bulk before they realize that it’s just not going to happen. There are a few main reasons why.

First and foremost, women do not have nearly enough testosterone in their bodies to ‘bulk up’. In fact, the average female has about 15-20 times less testosterone than men do. Testosterone aids in muscle building. Since men have more of this hormone, they build muscle at a quicker and easier rate than women do. Just as women do not have the same amount of body hair or the same Adam’s apple as men, they do not have the same amount of musculature.

Many women also tell tales of other female friends who have lifted weights before and “gotten bigger.” My initial response is to ask if they looked like female body builders, or did they simply look bigger? If the latter is more accurate, I advised them to ask about their friend’s diet? Did she start lifting weights and use it as an excuse to eat more? That would put on additional body fat. This is probably more likely. To produce aesthetic results weight lifting and healthy eating go hand in hand. One without the other is not likely to give you the results you’re looking for.

Women with aesthetically large muscles do exist. Let me reassure you that this does not happen by accident. Female body builders or aesthetic competitors have the rare genetic profiles that predispose them for large bulky muscles regardless of the type of workout they use. It’s also typical for an athlete like this to weigh every bite of food that she eats and dehydrate herself to the point of visible muscle striation right before a competition or photo shoot. The fitness models you see on the cover of Shape did not stumble out of bed and onto set. They spent months preparing, measuring, and calculating every minute aspect of their lives for it.

Since you are not about to turn weight lifting into your job, I strongly suggest that you push those “I might become a female body-builder” fears out of your mind. It absolutely will not happen unless you are among the .001 percent of the world’s female population that possesses the body-builder genes.

Proper, high-intensity strength training, safely applied, is one of the most important things that a woman can do to ensure an overall better quality of life. You will absolutely reap the benefits of increased lean muscle mass, improved bone density and cardiovascular health, better insulin control, fat loss, and better athletic performance. Rest assured, the notorious bulk will not happen, and remember – anyone touting claims of being able to “tone and lengthen” are simply misleading you.