Elite Fitness Solutions

After a few bouts with the video software, here is the Eat healthy restaurant review for The Garden of Eat’n.

 The Garden of Eat\’n

This wonderful restarurant is located at 2504 Hwy 6 & 50, ste. #700 (across from the subaru dealership). Kirk and Kathy Griffith are husband and wife owners, and are great people. Tell them you saw their restarurant review when you stop in!

You can visit them online at www.TheGardenofEatn.com If you’re on a quick lunch break, remember to take advantage of their “click n pick” service, where you can build your salad and have it ready to be picked up when you get there.

Thanks again to Kathy for taking the time to sit down and chat with us! 

I would love to hear comments on what you think of the review, as well as suggestions of other restaurants you’d like to have me review.

Enjoy!

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I didn’t think much of it until recently.

When I met my husband about 8 years ago, I was struggling with my weight and body image. I was completely lost and frustrated!

James introduced me to weight training and mountain biking. Both have made a lifechanging difference on my physical appearance.

In becoming interested in how fitness changes your body when done the “right way”, I found the nutritional side of things very interesting as well. I have become the “nutrition expert” of sorts in our business.

Now, this is where I have to confess something. I have some old habits, cravings and vices that don’t seem to want to go away! I find that every so often, (particularly at “that time” of the month) my willpower takes a backseat to these things.

It does seem to get easier the more I educate myself, but nonetheless they’re there. I know the saying goes, we are all our own worst critic, and I find that I am particularly hard on myself. I mean, how can I preach to my clients about nutrition when I have my downfalls?

Then, it dawned on me. Part of what I try to teach is to eat well most of the time. I tell each and every client to allow for set backs, and “cheat” meals. So, just recently I have found my relief.

I have also told clients that they need to be realistic. If they eat the wrong things consistently, their results will be inconsistent.

So, as the last week has been full of birthday planning, family visits and dinners, which means lots of great, indulgent food, cake and ice cream, I allowed myself indulgences, knowing that I have all the tools to get right back to where I want to be physically.

I’d say I’ve taken about 3 weeks “off” nutritionally. I don’t feel terrible because I’ve kept up the workout side, but I can feel the changes. This is a great way to re-start the motivation, rather than continue down this path! Therefore, I’ve set specific goals for myself, I’ve told people what I’m wanting to do, establishing accountablilty.

I have scheduled a photo shoot with a local photographer, further adding to my motivation!

I am going to be posting my “before” pictures, and food logs, keeping myself accountable. I hope this will encourage all of you! Enjoy life, expect setbacks, don’t beat yourself up about them. Tomorrow is always a new day!

I’ll see you in about 6 weeks, photo ready!

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A friend of mine recently e-mailed me about his lower back hurting him after mountain bike rides. He is an avid mountain biker and was particularly trying to figure out why the right side of his low back hurt him after longer (2 hour) rides. Here was my advice to him…

Here is the first thing I always think when someone tells me that something hurts as a result of exercise – bad movement causes pain. Bad movement also robs you of performance so the trick is to hunt down the bad movement and fix it.

Typically, if someone is getting pain in the erector muscles as a result of riding they will have a mobility deficit in the hips and/ or upper back and the body is coaxing excessive movement out of the lumbar spine. It sounds to me that you have upper back mobility issues as a result of your shoulder traumas.

You should be able to hold your arms straight over your head (elbows locked out and in line with your ears when viewed from the side) while keeping your head and lower back in a neutral position. If you can’t then you need to work on increasing your upper back, and specifically scapular, mobility.

Our body is designed to be a series of mobile and stable joints. In this case we want mobile hips, a stable lumbar spine and a mobile thoracic spine (upper back). You have to restore balance to the system first before you can really hope to address the real causes of the back pain.

As far as it hurting more on the right side, there are few things that could cause that. My guess would be that it is extra movement on that side. Since our left side lower body works with the right side upper body that would make sense if you are weaker with the left leg and you are compensating with the right lower back.

Here is my advice – don’t do any two legged strength training exercises for the time being. Do everything one leg at a time and get your left leg’s movement patterns cleaned up. Cue in on the lumbar movement and stop it by squeezing the glute even harder when it happens.

Also, get super aggressive with your body work. Get a tennis ball and put it between your back and the wall and dig in. The main areas to concentrate on are the right trap and lat but you should dig in all over the place and get the tension levels back there under control. It will hurt like hell but it has to be done.

Long, repetitive efforts like cycling and running will expose small “chinks” in your movement patterns and cause pain. That is why strength training and mobility work is so important – they are the only chance you get to fix those “chinks”.

Bad movement causes pain – find the bad movement and fix the pain. Pretty simple theory but one I have found to work pretty well.

Hope this helps, let me know if I can answer any more questions for you…

-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…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_annotate?v=gRBIcTZWUwk]

-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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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4I9F9rIqwM]

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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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Researchers from the University of Minnesota recently published their findings of a study that looked at the helpfulness of diet advice from magazines. Over a 5 year period they studied 2516 middle and high school students and the impact of frequent exposure to diet/ weight loss advice in magazines.They found that while there was little difference in male students over the 5 year study, female students showed some disturbing trends.

Female students who had frequent exposure to magazines with weight loss advice were 2 times as likely to engage in “unhealthy weight loss behaviors (smoking, skipping meals)”.

Even more disturbing was that they were 3 times more likely to engage in “extreme weight control behaviors (vomiting, using laxatives).

They concluded that “frequent reading of magazine articles about dieting/weight loss strongly predicted unhealthy weight-control behaviors in adolescent girls, but not boys, 5 years later.”

In my opinion this study is an indictment on the fitness industry. There is so much confusing, conflicting and outright wrong information being passed off on the unsuspecting public that it is no wonder that people who try to follow it get frustrated, give up and resort to unhealthy and dangerous weight loss practices.

Remember that magazine editors want a lot of “sizzle” to help sell their magazines and few of them know or care enough to make sure that the information is relevant and useful. Readership numbers drive what you read, not the results those readers get.

-James Wilson-

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Q: What is the best way to determine your body fat percentage?

A: First, let me congratulate you on looking at more than the scale. As you know there is much more to the picture than just what the scale tells you. For example, my wife Kiele is 5′4″ and 140. To many this sounds like she may be a little “plump” – that is until they see her. At a body fat percentage of 15 % she looks great no matter what the scale tells her.

Now, onto your question. If you are looking for the “best” method then getting dunked into a water tank at a university or being put into a “BodPod” will give you the most accurate readings. However, both of these methods require specialized equipment that may not be available and they cost a lot to use. Both of these factors preclude these methods from the top of my list no matter how “accurate” they are.

Another popular method is through the use of a scale or hand held device that sends an electrical current through your body. By measuring how much of the current passes through your body these devices give you a estimate of your body fat percentage. This method is quick and easy but not amazingly accurate.

Since how well you are hydrated can impact the readings, you can get a different reading by simply drinking more water. If you are not being careful to take your readings at the same time of day then you can get wildly different readings. All in all this is not a method that I recommend as “the best”.

So, that leaves us with the old standard – calipers and pinching. There are lots of different formulas out there, some requiring only 1 measurement and some requiring 8 or more. I recommend one that requires at least 4 or 5 measurements, particularly using areas of the body that you want to see shrink (like the thighs, waist, upper back and triceps).

This method is the “best” in my book for several reasons. It is readily available, cost effective and gives you an accurate look at how your training program is affecting different areas of your body. By looking at the measurements for each area you can see if your target areas are shrinking or not. In fact, some experts recommend foregoing calculating a body fat percentage and simply making sure that your numbers are coming down each month.

No matter what method you choose just stick with it each time. Don’t do calipers one month, BodPod the next and electrical feedback the next. Consistency with your method is the key to getting an accurate look at your long term progress.

Personally, we just take circumference measurements of our clients at the thigh, waist, hips, chest, shoulders and arm and skip the “body fat” percentage. Seriously, who cares? If your clothes are fitting better, you like what you see in the mirror and your circumference measurements are coming down each month then you are on the right track. It is much easier to screw up a body fat calculation than it is a circumference measurement so we just avoid that scenario.

-James Wilson-

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