Elite Fitness Solutions

Here is a fact of life – most people want to look and feel better. If you did a poll I would guess that 80-90% of Americans would agree with that statement. However, 2/3 of all Americans are overweight. Why is this? What is stopping people that want to look and feel better from accomplishing that goal?

I know from experience that “lack of time” is by far and away the number one reason given to this question. Whenever I hear this though I am reminded of this fact of life – time is just like money.

Simply put, we “spend” our time on certain things and not on others. Be it work, watching television, eating, exercising, taking a vacation, riding a bike, skydiving or one of a million other things you can spend your time on, we make a decision on what our time gets invested in.

What we choose to spend our time on impacts our life in significant ways. The focus of your time and effort will ultimately decide your fate. However, not getting sidetracked by life is easier said than done.

That leads me to something that I have been thinking about in my own life – we either choose our own path or it will be chosen for us. We don’t have to be victims of our circumstances. Letting circumstances cloud our vision that we have for our future is the wrong way to try and choose a path for ourselves.

Getting some clarity on where we want to go is needed to help us clear our vision and stay above the fog of circumstances. Pretty much every successful person I have ever come across recommend having defined goals written down for this exact reason. They recommend looking at those goals daily to help you stay focused on them as you make decisions on what you spend your time on.

Of course, you know where this is going – investing some time in your health and fitness can make a huge impact on your life. Always saying that “I don’t have time for it” or “I’ll start tomorrow” when you look in the mirror is a horrible rut to put yourself in. But where do you start when you want to take back control of the path you are on?

I suggest starting at the beginning – write down what your goals are and review them daily. Even better, write down your goals and then write down some things you need to do in order to accomplish them. Then post that goal sheet somewhere that you can review it often – the refrigerator door is my suggestion .

Once you have your goals written down and you are looking at them daily I guarantee it won’t be long before you take action on it. This initial action is the catalyst for change and the first step down a path towards the body, and ultimately the life, that you want.

We only get one shot at life and no one knows how much time we have been given to spend. Get some clarity and choose wisely where you spend it.

-James Wilson-

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Bruce Lee was a brilliant coach and his wisdom transcends martial arts and has a lot of relevance for fitness training. Here is my take on one of his most famous quotes…

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-James Wilson-

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Most of us are twisted in one way or another…and I’m not talking about anything that you might be involved in (that’s your business). What I am talking about is how your body holds itself. Whether you realize it or not your body is probably contorting itself in order to give you the illusion of being “straight”.

Here is what I want you to do. Go into a quite, darkened room and close your eyes. Keeping your eyes closed, start to march in place. Make sure that you are bringing your knees up to that the top of your thighs are parallel to the ground. Set a timer for 60 seconds and march until the timer goes off.

When you open your eyes see where you are in relation to where you started. Odds are pretty high that you will have turned significantly to one side. If this is the case, it indicates that your body is twisted.

When we take away the auditory and visual stimulus (which is achieved by the quite, darkened room) your body will start to show you how it really holds itself. We don’t even realize it but our body will contort itself in order to keep you moving straight ahead. The underlying causes of this contorting are imbalances in the body that must be address in order to avoid injuries.

When you take your eyes and ears out of the equation your body will simply “untwist” itself and as a result you will start to turn as you march. The side you twisted towards is usually tight in the hip flexors and quads and weak in the glutes. This imbalance means that you are overcompensating for this bad movement with the other leg.

All of this adds up to one thing – you are going to break down and get hurt at some point if you do not restore balance to your body. Odds are you are already dealing with some sort of chronic pain as a result of this imbalance and the bad movement it causes. Your exercise program needs to play a major role in this correcting this.

I highly suggest that if you found yourself facing a different direction when you stopped marching that you avoid much in the way of two legged exercises. Every time you use both of your legs at once your dominant leg is making up for the bad movement on the other leg which just reinforces the imbalance.

Instead, concentrate on single leg exercises, particularly the Cook Hip Lift and the Split squat. You can find video demos of both of these exercises on this blog. just type their name into the Search field and hit enter.

Both of these exercises will help to retrain the bad movement on the weaker side which will save wear and tear on the other side. Restoring balance between your limbs is essential. Some studies have shown that imbalances between limbs are one of the biggest indicators of injury potential. You ignore these imbalances at your own peril.

This twisting is also one of the biggest reasons that people seek chiropractic, massage, yoga, Pilates and a whole variety of other means of lengthening, loosening and restoring balance to the body. All of these methods can be helpful, if they are being applied in a way specific to your condition. Taking responsibility to know what you need and how to best address it is the best way for ensure the results you are looking for.

So try the march in a dark and quite room…you may be surprised by what you find out. If you are twisting take some time to build your single leg strength and quality of movement. Using your training program to help restore balance is the best way to make sure that it is helping you do more than just burn some calories and not setting you up for a future injury.

-James Wilson-

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This is one of those exercises that gets little attention but can deliver powerful results. Unilateral leg strength is vital for most human movement and this exercise is the first step in gaining it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfbdugbcL8]

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Lunges rank up there as one of the most common yet poorly executed exercises out there. In order to get the best results from this great exercise, and save your knees, you should follow these tips and progressions…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6H-VijOBB8]

-James Wilson-

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There are a lot of exercises that look too simple to be any good but the reality is a lot of them are essential to the long term progression of your exercise program. For example, most people simply do not know how to recruit their glutes to help power lower body movement and this results in a lot of bad things. This makes mastering the single leg hip lift a priority early on in a program.

For those who want to look better, getting your back side toned up is usually a priority. However, if you do not know how to recruit your glutes then you will never use them enough with other lower body exercises to notice a difference. This is why you have people with nice, toned legs but a saggy butt. Taking the time to get strong with this exercise and learning how to apply the lessons from it to all of your lower body exercises will help eliminate this problem.

If you are an athlete then this exercise is indispensable. Strong hips are the key to running faster, cutting quicker, jumping higher, hitting further and basically dominating your competition. Without having strong, functional hips you are not only cutting down your performance potential but also opening yourself up to hamstring and groin strains/ injuries. In fact, one of the most common sources of injuries in athletes is an inability to powerfully contract the hips like they are supposed to be used.

In other words, if you have not taken the time to learn and master this exercise then you are leaving a lot of results on the table, no matter what you training goals are. Watch this video to learn how to use and progress this great exercise.

-James Wilson-

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJPxZ1foIQ]

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Q: I have been told that fasting before a workout will help you burn more fat. Is that true?

A: The idea of fasting before a workout has a couple of variations. Besides not eating for a few hours before hand I have also heard people advised to work out first thing upon waking without eating anything. This advice comes from the idea that if you have low blood sugar levels your body will start to break down it’s fat stores quicker and ultimately burn more over the course of the workout.

Here is the problem with this advice – if you have low blood sugar before you start to workout then you will start to run out of steam quicker and not be able to have as intense of a workout as you would with some fuel in your system. Since we are starting to see that intensity of effort is one of the most important things for fat loss, not eating will actually make it harder for you to achieve your ultimate goal.

Remember that intense strength training will help build muscle, which raises your metabolism. If you are dragging because of low blood sugar levels then you will not build muscle and you will not raise your metabolism.

Interval training has also been shown to raise your metabolism for 24-36 hours afterwards. If you are dragging on your intervals then you won’t get the metabolic boost you are looking for.

The advice to not eat before working out comes from a rather narrow view of exercise – how many fat calories are you burning during the workout. The idea is to use your workouts to not only burn calories during the workout but to also maximize your caloric expenditure outside of the gym. To accomplish this you need to be able to work out with proper intensity and this simply can not be done if you have not eaten for several hours before hand.

Just for the record, we strongly suggest that our clients eat within an hour of training. We recommend a good pre-workout drink like ProGrade Workout. Even though it is billed as a post-workout drink, we have found it to be far more effective if taken about 15 minutes before your workout. This really helps you keep the pace and intensity level high which leads to the best results.

-James Wilson-

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One thing that I see a lot of is people who are at odds with themselves and their fitness program. What I mean by that is that they usually set the bar extremely high for themselves and get upset when they inevitably mess up somewhere. I see a lot of this with new clients at our facility since they are usually very motivated when they sign up and want to do everything perfect so that they can see the fastest results possible.

While I certainly encourage people to set goals, I also encourage them to be realistic with them. Odds are that if you have been eating poorly and not exercising for several years (or decades) then you have some bad habits that you will need to identify and correct. For most, this process will take more than a week to go through.

At a certain point you need to make peace with yourself and your fitness program. The truth is that you do not need to be perfect to get great results. It is called the “Rule of 90%” and it basically states that the results you will get from 100% adherence to every aspect of your program will not be significantly greater than the results you see from 90% adherence.

Taking on this mindset will help you out in many ways. First, trying to be perfect is a daunting task and if you think that is what you have to accomplish then it can be hard to even get started. Second, once you do get started this mindset will help you keep things in perspective. If you do miss a cardio workout or mess up on your diet you haven’t “blown it” – you simply messed up once and you move on.

Take things 4 weeks at a time. We use an accountability journal at our facility where we set weekly goals for each aspect of a program. As clients do them they mark them off on the days they did them and after 4 weeks we look back and see how they did. This gives us an objective look at how things are going and helps us identify areas we can improve on over the next 4 week period.

Trying to make the next 4 weeks a little better than the previous 4 weeks will systematically help you build up to and achieve the goal of 90% program adherence. Trying to overcome years of bad habits in just a few weeks will usually just lead to frustration, negative self talk and, eventually, quitting. Small steps in the right direction over a period of a few months will help keep you sane, happy and, eventually, help you surpass your goals.

-James Wilson-

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True strength is not a result of just lifting some weights and simply working out. The truth is that strength is a skill that must be learned in a systematic way in order to get the most out of your efforts. Unfortunately though few people truly appreciate this fact and instead just go through a bunch of random exercises that do nothing to teach them the true skills of strength.

Remember that your brain controls your muscles and ultimately “learns” strength just like it does anything else. To illustrate my point think about how children are taught academic skills in school. Let’s take math for example. Do children start out in kindergarten learning advanced algebra? No, they are first taught their basic numbers and nothing else. Once they have mastered that they then move on to counting, then addition and subtraction and then division and so on.

Each grade they are taught slightly more advanced skills that build on the skills they learned in the previous grade. In addition, there are benchmarks that must be met in order for a child to be allowed to advance. If they do not demonstrate adequate mastery of the skills taught in their current grade level they are held back until they do. This ensures that they do not get overwhelmed and fail to learn what they need to at the next level and retard their long term development.

In addition, if a child shows exceptional skill and advancement they are allowed to move ahead faster and start to learn more advanced skills before most of their peers. They are not arbitrarily thrown into the next grade level because they are a certain age and should be at a certain level, regardless of where their skill level is truly at.

Now, compare that learning model against how most people learn the skills of strength. Almost no one approaches strength training from this same perspective. Instead, they simply jump into whatever program they picked up out of a magazine or their friend is following. There is no thought as to establishing basic skills first and then advancing to the next level after adequate mastery is established.

Let’s look at one of the most common and seemingly simple exercises in the gym – the bench press. Ask any high level power lifter and they will tell you that the bench press is most certainly a skill that they spent years and years practicing and mastering. However, ask anyone in your local gym how they learned the bench press and they will most likely tell you that they simply laid down, took the bar and pressed it up – what more is there to it?

If you truly want to get the most out of this exercise there is much more to it. First, mastery of bodyweight should be established. Until someone can perform 2-3 sets of 8-12 push ups they have no business adding external resistance through a barbell. Second, unilateral strength must be established. Most of us have a dominant side and when doing a bilateral exercise such as the bench press that dominant side will take over and do most of the work. This just re-enforces that imbalance, holds back our strength levels and increases our injury potential. In order to avoid this scenario time must be spent doing single arm dumbbell bench presses in order to force the body to balance itself out.

Once bodyweight has been mastered and balance has been established the bench press can be introduced into a program and the real learning begins. Even at this point there is far more to it than simply lying down and pressing the bar. Something as seemingly simple as learning how to get set up takes time. For example, you must know how to get the upper back set up tight and strong, pulling the shoulder blades back and down in order to restrict scapular movement during the exercise.

This will help you create a strong and stable platform to press from that will not only make you stronger but also decrease your risk of shoulder injuries, a common problem among those that do a lot of bench pressing incorrectly. And this is one of just a few dozen things that you must learn in order to safely make the most out of this “simple” exercise.

Hopefully I have demonstrated my point – strength is a skill that must be systematically taught and learned. Failure to realize this will not only lead to sub-par results but also increase the risk of injury. Far too often we are tempted to rush into more advanced exercises and techniques for no other reason than to entertain ourselves or to try and realize some short term gains at the expense of our long term development.

-James Wilson-

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