Blog : InForm Fitness

Introducing The New Power of 10 Spine & Core Workout

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.

You’ve got to push yourself to create change

WILL WOMEN BULK UP FROM WEIGHT TRAINING

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.

Shoulder Strength Rehabilitation

Fifteen years ago, Richard was told by his orthopedist that both his shoulders would eventually have to be replaced. Richard had been a swimmer in high school and college, then a runner and triathlete and later played basketball at least five times a week for 35 years. The activity was brutal on his joints he says, and he knew he was eventually going to pay the price. “I used to ice a lot.”

Today Richard’s orthopedists tells him “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” because his shoulders are in better shape than they ever have been in the last fifteen years. So what’s to account for the turnaround? Richard says it’s his 20 minute, once-a-week workout at InForm Fitness in Manhattan, NY. Using the Power of 10 strength training method, under the guidance his personal trainer Mike Rogers, Richard has improved his fitness and health dramatically.

My Twist On Stretching

Studies Suggest Stretching Does Not Improve Performance, Prevent Injury or
Reduce Soreness

While at a local park with my family, I looked over toward the soccer fields and watched the athletes preparing for their match. There they were, sporting team shirts and gracefully bending, turning and bowing as they stretched to get ready.

My wife had to hold tightly onto my arm to prevent me from running out onto the field and yelling STOP.

Their coach must not be keeping up with the latest sports medicine reports nor read the recent NY Times Article reporting that stretching isn’t a good way to start off any sports activity or exercise routine.

We’ve heard a lot about stretching. Stretch to warm up before a workout; stretch to improve your flexibility; stretch to loosen your joints and muscles… And we we’ve been led to believe that stretching is a pre– (fill-in your activity) best practice that will improve performance and reduce the risk of injury. Moreover, post-exercise stretching will prevent soreness.

Well, that’s a bit of a stretch.

There are some good stretches. Watching a cat or a dog rise from a nap, they might take a luxurious and gentle stretch. Mother Nature and animal instinct know something and we humans should take note. A gentle stretch can realign the spine and wake up tight muscles. These kinds of stretches are a good thing. If you want to practice a good stretch technique upon waking, or post desk sitting marathon, I encourage you to mimic your cat or dog’s routine. If you don’t have a dog or cat, borrow a neighbor’s.

If we stick with Mother Nature and animal instinct as a common sense guide, then we wouldn’t stretch either pre or post exercise. I’ve yet to see a dog doing any warm up stretches before engaging in ball fetching or squirrel chasing – both of which require speed, strength and endurance.

However, anecdotal observations rarely quell the intellectual curiosity or the skepticism of mankind (or our clients), therefore scientific studies are required.

What these studies observed is that stretching (Studies noted at the end of this post):

does not contribute to flexibility
does not “warm-up” your muscles
reduces your strength
leaves joints and ligaments vulnerable to injury and
can actually cause injury

Stretching Does Not Improve Flexibility: Your muscles have a primary function to protect joints and ligaments, and each muscle has a limited range of motion in order to hold its protective position. Stretching the muscles actually weakens the tendons and ligaments, and that puts you at risk for injury, it doesn’t make you more flexible.

In fact, during these studies it was observed that the increased range of motion resulting from stretching might be a result of an increase in stretch tolerance. That is, stretching does not improve tissue compliance (flexibility); rather, the stretching exercises increase stretch tolerance (the ability to withstand the pain) during the stretching procedure.

Stretching Does Not “warm-up” Your Muscles: The idea of stretching to warm up is misleading. Stretching actually puts your muscles into a cold state. Stretching pulls muscles and does not contract them. Since blood is drawn in during the contraction, stretching actually denies your muscles the metabolic activity that stimulates a warm-up. Should you practice stretching to warm up you are actually engaging a ‘cold’ muscle in its weakest, most vulnerable position.

Stretching Makes You Weak: As you stretch your muscles, you are actually putting them into a weaker state and depleting the blood surge needed to both muster the power and sustain the endurance.

There have been several experiments and studies measuring strength variations in pre stretch versus no pre stretching before a physical activity. Earlier this year, one such study produced findings that stretching before weight lifting actually left test subjects weaker during their workout. A recent compilation and analysis of data from previous stretching studies revealed:

an average reduction of strength in stretched muscles by 5.5%
muscle power falls by about 2% after stretching
explosive muscle performance drops by as much as 2.8% after stretching

Regardless of your status – professional athlete, weekend sports warrior, avid tennis player or golfer – the facts indicate that stretching will negatively affect your performance by reducing your strength and muscle power.

Stretching Leaves Joints and Ligaments Vulnerable to Injury: Another concept presented in recent studies is the observation that sarcomere (the most basic contractile units of muscle) length in an active muscle is heterogeneous (meaning that they aren’t all the same length). This is significant because when some of the shorter sarcomeres are stretched to the point that the actin and myosin filaments do not overlap, the force being absorbed is transmitted to the muscle fiber cytoskeleton, resulting in fiber damage. The loss of energy-absorbing capacity of overstretched sarcomeres is of importance indicating a higher risk of joint injury.

Over Stretching Can Cause Injury: Stretching isn’t for novices. Stretching should be guided by a trained physical therapist. The basic science literature has shown that stretching a muscle as little as 20% of its resting length, which can occur during correct stretching techniques, can produce damage in isolated preparations. These findings indicate that it may be difficult to define the correct stretching techniques to reduce injury risk.

Another study presented at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in 2006 revealed the results of measuring strength before and after stretching, to conclude that post stretch muscles were actually weaker, not stronger.

So why would you stretch your muscles out to its weakest point before swinging your tennis racket, golf club or lifting weights? You would be better served warming up with some light shadow boxing, or jogging in place.

And for our golfers: A study on stretching before professional golf tournaments revealed, “The results of this inquiry strongly suggest that a total-body passive static stretching routine should be avoided before practice or competition. Results of paired t-tests revealed significant decreases in club head speed and distance.”

REFERENCES

Journal of Athletic Training, National Athletic Trainers Association. Stretching Before and After Exercise: Effect on Muscle Soreness and Injury Risk – J. C Andersen

Bischoff C, Perrin DH. Injury prevention. In: Schenck RC, ed. Athletic Training and Sports Medicine. 3rd ed. Rosemont, IL: American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons; 1999:50–53.

Irvin R, Iversen D, Roy S. Sports Medicine: Prevention, Assessment, Management, and Rehabilitation of Athletic Injuries. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon; 1998: 26–29.

Cheung K, Hume PA, Maxwell L. Delayed onset muscle soreness: treatment strategies and performance factors. Sports Med. 2003;33:145–164.

Fahey TD, Insel PM, Roth WT. Fit and Well. 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill; 2003.

Pope RP, Herbert RD, Kirwan JD, Graham BJ. A randomized trial of pre-exercise stretching for prevention of lower limb injury. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2000;32:271–277.

Sackett DL, Straus SE, Richardson WS, Rosenberg W, Haynes RB. Evidence-Based Medicine. New York, NY: Churchill Livingstone; 2000:133–138.

Shrier I. Stretching before exercise does not reduce the risk of local muscle injury: a critical review of the clinical and basic science literature. Clin J Sport Med. 1999;9:221–227.

InForm Fitness Personal Training Testimonial

InForm Fitness is a unique gym in Midtown East Manhattan offering personal training in the Power of 10 Workout – a once-a-week, slow motion, strength training system that is so deep and effective it offers an entire week’s worth of total body exercise in a single 20 minute session. Here Denise Cumming, owner of Pip’s Place, the Gluten Free Cakery, offers her testimonial of what the Power of 10 system has done for her “I lift 50lb bags of flour daily so I needed to have a strong back and upper body strength and I have very little time.” Finding that doing squats, pushups and crunches 3 times a week was not helping her truly stay in shape and also difficult to sustain due to limited time Denise came to InForm on the recommendation of a friend. “I would say it was about 3-4 weeks before the definition started to come back and the lower back pain stopped… I felt strong again.”

The Unrefrigerated Egg

While working to set up our new studio in Santiago, Chile recently – I took time out to visit the city and to go grocery shopping. Visiting a large and well-stocked super market, I became fascinated as I walked down the ‘egg aisle’ that resembled any bread aisle in a U.S. super market. There they were – neatly stacked cartons of varying size and color eggs, sitting on shelves and completely unrefrigerated. This is a sight that you see most places around the world but never in the U.S. or Canada where eggs must be refrigerated to be labeled as “Grade A.”

I love eggs! We go through several cartons of fresh farm raised eggs every month at our house. Eggs are a super food full of Omega 3 and protein. I admit that I pay dearly for our eggs because they are direct from an organic farm where the chickens are raised on healthy diets, which makes these eggs richer in nutrients and less likely to contain dangerous bacteria. These eggs are only a few days old, unlike the ones at the grocery store and yes, you will sometimes find them sitting beautifully in a bowl on our kitchen counter – unrefrigerated.

So what’s the deal with refrigerated eggs versus non-refrigerated eggs? And does ‘organic’ really matter when you buy from a super market versus fresh from your local farmer?

It all starts with our government regulations requiring all USDA-graded eggs to be washed and sanitized to remove bacteria from the shell. The eggshell is naturally covered with a waxy cuticle (called the bloom) that seals the egg and helps to prevent bacteria from entering the egg. However, the eggshell contains approximately 7,500 pores making it a breathable membrane much like our own skin. This ‘washing’ process or chemical bath (often lye or chlorine), strips the bloom and exposes the egg’s pores. To re-protect the eggs for their long journey to your grocery store refrigerator, farmers then recoat the eggs, often using mineral oil. Mineral oil is a petroleum-based product, hardly organic and certainly never meant to be ingested by humans. But your store bought eggs are more than likely coated in mineral oil – and likely the egg’s open pores have allowed the oil to seep into the inner egg.

Truth be told, what your eggs are washed and then coated with is not government regulated and so you are getting with your eggs a mix of chlorine and mineral oil – yummy. Kind of takes the ‘organic’ out of the organic labeling on store eggs don’t you think? Not to mention that these chemicals can be carcinogenic and mutagenic.

Europe, Asia, South America – and almost anywhere around the world, you find the eggs unrefrigerated because they use water or dry brushing to clean the eggs before sending them to market. These techniques leave the bloom intact and so don’t require refrigeration. Small local organic farmers here in the U.S. do the same.

Eggs are only dangerous if the chicken that laid the egg was sick with an illness that would be passed on inside the egg itself. Healthy chickens do not produce unhealthy eggs – but since we seldom have access to the medical records of our eggs’ chicken-mama, I prefer buying my eggs from a local farmer who keeps a clean farm and raises healthy chickens.

The cleaning and coating process of commercial eggs is the main reason that I prefer the local organic farmer’s eggs rather than store bought eggs. But to answer the ‘refrigerate versus non-refrigerate’ question, let’s look at the time span from hen to table.

I get my eggs locally so they are less than a week out of the hen when they show up at my local farmer’s market. Where the eggs on the shelf at the grocery store went through an elaborate collection, cleaning and coating process – about a week, then traveled some distance shuttling between warehouses and transfer stations – another week – to finally reach your grocery store and get placed on a refrigerated shelf – potentially a third week. The eggs you buy at the grocery store are potentially 3 weeks old before you purchase them.

Supporting refrigeration for the commercial egg – salmonella will grow far less quickly in refrigerated eggs than it will in eggs that are left at room temperature. Eggs will also last much longer when refrigerated than they will when stored at room temperature. Given the distribution time involved, refrigeration is necessary to protect the general public from outbreaks of salmonella.

If you purchased eggs from the super market – it is not recommended that you decorate your kitchen with that French-country style bowl filled with eggs. A cold egg left out at room temperature can sweat, facilitating the growth of bacteria that could contaminate the egg. This is why it is recommended that refrigerated eggs should not be left out more than two hours.

So . . . if your kitchen décor calls for a bowl of eggs, buy from your local organic farmer. If your dietary preference is organic foods then leave the organic store eggs on the shelf and visit your local green market to find your eggs.

The InForm Fitness Mobile Gym

Lifting Weights at 90 Years Old

I Drink Coffee

I’m a regular coffee drinker, and now that reports claim that coffee is actually a good thing, I no longer feel the need to be discreet about my caffeine addiction…um…attraction.

Join me in coming out of the java closet; let’s talk about coffee.

Always on the lookout for interesting and new facts about health, food, and exercise, to share on our “Fact of the Week” I regularly come across information about coffee while researching and writing our posts. If you follow us on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some of my caffeine related posts, along with a lot of other quirky, scientific facts.

Reading the latest research findings that stream across my screen helped me to realize that coffee is actually as complex a topic as wine. Being a fairly laid back guy, the last thing I need is to ingest a depressant that’s going to slow down the functions of my central nervous system – I decided to choose coffee over wine for my research.

The biochemist in me is driven to explore caffeine. Coffee is a $70 billion industry worldwide and the second most tradable commodity after oil. I simply can’t ignore this fascinating molecule. Caffeine is the most widely used (or abused) psychoactive addictive drug in the world – and it’s not regulated like alcohol or drugs – a fact supporting my claim that it’s a worldwide addiction.

I want to explore:

The origins of coffee. Did you know that the word coffee comes from the Arabic word kaweh meaning strength or vigor?
Growing methods and environmental impact.
Are you really helping the farmers in third world countries by buying fair trade coffee?
Various types of coffee beans.
How brewing methods affect taste and strength.
Studies and findings on the health benefits and risks of caffeine.
The café culture.

I’m fascinated by my original research findings. I never thought of drinking coffee as an ancient ritual, or about the fact that it’s one of the most consumed foods in the world. Many of you are as curious as I am about coffee, so let me do the research and share my discoveries with you in periodic blog posts and in some “Facts of the Week.”

Until recently, I was not much of a coffee drinker. I grew up in a home enjoying the delicious aroma of my parents’ daily morning brew, but I didn’t have the desire to drink it. Coffee simply smelled much better than it tasted. I will admit that there were times during college when coffee was an absolute necessity to get me to my morning classes. Later, I became a social coffee drinker, occasionally having a cup of coffee after dinner while out with friends, or as a needed energy boost when balancing entrepreneurship with husbanding and fatherhood. Even so, I hadn’t become a regular coffee drinker. Invested in good health, I believed what I had always read and heard about the evil that brews from coffee.

A decade or two later, studies started revealing that drinking coffee in moderation is actually beneficial. While this was an interesting discovery, I still wasn’t hooked on the deliciously aromatic beverage.

To kick off my first “Coffee Chat” post, I’ll share with you the story of how coffee became a part of my daily routine.

It’s my oldest son’s fault – he got me started on coffee when he was three.

While my wife was pregnant with our second child, she was restricted to bed rest. We decided it would be best if she stayed with my parents in Long Island while I worked in the city. I would take Fridays off to spend the weekend visiting and to spend time with my son.

Early one morning, on our way to a nearby park, my son and I stopped at a local cafe to get a cup of coffee for me, and a soda water for him. When we arrived at the park, we sat on a bench like two regular guys, drinking our morning brews. It was a bonding moment. I didn’t realize just how much that moment meant to him until the following Friday.

The very next Friday, we headed to the park once again. This time I didn’t need a java jolt, so I planned to forego the café that morning. I got another kind of jolt instead. When my son realized that we were skipping the coffee and soda water, he threw a fit. I explained to him that I didn’t want coffee that morning, yet he was determined to recreate the previous Friday morning experience exactly as it had happened before. Anyone who has spent time with a three year old won’t blame me for having immediately rerouted back to the coffee house.

By the time my second child was born, I was trained into a habitual morning java drinker.

Here I am today, a serial coffee drinker, and a health and fitness expert whose entire business is based on making safe choices. So yes, I want to make sure that my new habit is not harmful, motivating me to explore the scientific, cultural, and environmental aspects of caffeine. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of discovery. If you haven’t subscribed to this blog yet, just click on the link to the right at the top of the page, and let’s get started.

Introducing The New Power of 10 Spine & Core Workout

You’ve got to push yourself to create change

WILL WOMEN BULK UP FROM WEIGHT TRAINING

Debunking the Myths

LENGTH

BULK

Shoulder Strength Rehabilitation

My Twist On Stretching

InForm Fitness Personal Training Testimonial

The Unrefrigerated Egg

The InForm Fitness Mobile Gym

Lifting Weights at 90 Years Old

I Drink Coffee

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