Tips from a career Personal Trainer.
Some of you may know this, but others may not…. I am addicted to skiing. I have loved it since I first tried it back in Junior High in DC. I not only want to do it as much as possible, but I want to get really really…. really good at it. This was one of the convincing arguments my wife used on me to get me to move from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I purchased a ski pass this season, and I have already been 10 times! I plan to ski as much as I can now and in the future.
Someone recently on the ski lift, after finding out that I am a personal trainer and own a personal training company in Santa Fe asked if skiing was a good workout. Although, skiing is really a fantastic activity that works a lot of your body; legs, core, some cardio and a bit of the upper body, the skier is basically just controlling their fall down a mountain. Gravity is doing most of the propelling work.
This is why skiing can’t be my only form of exercise. Although it seems to cover the whole body and I feel good afterward, even if I could just ski all day, every day, skiing is just an activity and can not address everything I want and need in a complete fitness program.
Over the past 20 + years of being a personal trainer and now owning a personal training company here in Santa Fe, I have seen and see people mistake any activity as a complete workout program, and that is just not correct. Listen carefully, there is no single workout routine that will achieve all your goals. None! And any personal trainer, fitness trainer or group exercise class trainer who says that is either lying or is operating without all the info, and in that case should be careful of what they promise. Although this topic is complex, I am going to keep is simple for purposes of this blog.
Three Reasons your recreational activity shouldn’t be your whole routine:
- It is not tailored to you! This is the most obvious answer (I hope). You may have a desire (emotional) of what you want to see happen in your body. So you go searching for an answer to this and you buy an online course, join an exercise class or find a personal trainer / fitness trainer who promises this outcome. Nothing wrong so far. But then you show up and you jump into the routine with no or very little assessment of your body (logical). And now you are trying to go from a relatively novice position to doing general routines with Olympic lifts, standing on balance balls while lifting weights, doing exercises on the TRX or pushing yourself into a yoga pose that your body isn’t ready for. You see your body will do these moves because you told it to. It’s your body, it has to listen. But more than likely it is going to do this movement horribly and chances are you won’t initially notice it at all; a slight shift here and a progressive rubbing there. Nothing that you will notice in the sort term, but in a year, five maybe ten you will have some sort of pathology that can or can not be fixed and you wont even know that it started from that routine you started in the new year.
- Endorphin’s feel good! These are the positive feeling that you receive when you move around. The blood is flowing! Your muscles are working! The birds are singing! Yes! This is a great thing. It has wonderful positive effects on your psychology and to the degree of what you are doing has different physiological effects. But this should not blind you to the fact that there are imbalances within your body. If you don’t, that activity that you are doing will make that condition worse, and then you wont be able to do the activities you love and it will have a very detrimental effect on your psychology. Case in point, Patella Femoral Syndrome. One of the main causes of knee pain today. It is when the patella (knee cap) rubs over the trochlea of the femur, slowly rubbing the cartilage away on the posterior (underside) of the patella. Can’t really feel too much at the start, but after repeated rubbing of the patella over the femur and the cartilage start to wear down, pain and in some cases A LOT of pain ensues. What causes the patella to rub over the femur? Knee flexion. This is where the heal of the foot goes toward your but. What activities do this? Pretty much all of them!
- You will over use your body! The body has different planes of motion, different ways that it reacts to force, different energy systems and A LOT of muscles that have A LOT of different actions. These general programs will move you only in the way that the routine is set up. Many times this means that you only move in one or two planes of motion. When you are out in life, your body will move in all the different planes of motion regardless if you are efficient in them or not. And if you aren’t, then your body will compensate (cheat) and we all know that eventually cheating in any form catches up with you. And even if your routine moves in different planes of motion but is not respecting ALL muscles of the body and how they should be balanced, then will continue to cheat. In your body you have what’s called PIT muscles and DAM muscles. The PIT muscles are the small muscles and prepare you to move properly. If they aren’t balanced or strong enough, then they can’t “communicate” to the body. Then the DAM muscles will move you, but not well.
These three “dangers” must be taken into consideration in both what you are currently doing and what you are planning to do. When you choose an exercise class, fitness trainer or personal trainer you should know exactly what you will be getting from it. And you should always be properly assessed and what’s going to happen should be explained to you. SolCore Fitness personal training Santa Fe does just that. Whether it is best for you to join our group exercise classes, semi-private personal training or private personal training, we make sure that your know where you are starting from, what’s to come and what will be required of you.
If you are in Santa Fe, NM and this sounds appealing then we offer a free consultation.
The goal is longevity. To your health!
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