HIIT

Lifting Weights with Hypertension

Posted on June 11, 2019June 4, 2019 by LetlerFit

Do you have hypertension and lift weights? Then this post is VERY important. ⠀
If you have high blood pressure you should avoid heavy resistance training (try and keep it no higher than 80-85% of your 1RM) as heavy resistance training on its own increases your blood pressure. So pairing your own high blood pressure with the effects of heavy weight training could lead to negative vascular events such as stroke or heart attack. You also want to avoid the valsalva maneuver as holding your breath while lifting can also increase your blood pressure. One exercise you should consider throwing out of your programming completely if you’re hypertensive is the leg press because it utilizes the activity of a lot of large muscles (lower body) under heavy loading and yields no functional purpose. Therefore risk outweighs benefits. ⠀

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Health vs Fitness

Posted on January 18, 2019 by LetlerFit

Todays blog post literally copy and pasting off an old lecture so y’all don’t think I’m nuts when I tell you that health and fitness are NOT the same thing.⠀

-“Health and wellness are factors of disease free living with positive controls over physiological measures.”⠀
-“Fitness is defined by quantifiable measures of physical components broken down into health and performance related components.”⠀
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“A person can be healthy, but not fit in the same way a person can score well in fitness testing and not be as healthy as a person with lower scores in the same test.”

Exercise and Disease Management

Posted on January 8, 2019January 8, 2019 by LetlerFit

Ever wonder what risk factors are actually connected to diseases? Well let’s take a look at obesity, physical inactivity, and low cardiovascular efficiency as they are 3 risk factors that can be avoided through exercise.⠀
-Obesity is linked to heart disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis, stroke, and diabetes⠀
-Physical inactivity is linked to all of the above except for stroke.⠀
-Low cardiovascular efficiency is linked to heart disease, hypertension, and stroke⠀

Get Moving in 2019!

What the heck is Metabolic Syndrome?

Posted on December 26, 2018 by LetlerFit

Have you ever heard the doctor tell you that you have metabolic syndrome or you are at risk to developing it, but you have no idea what is means? Well, you get classified as having metabolic syndrome if you meet one or more of the following criteria⠀
1. Males with body fat greater than 25% and Females with body fat greater than 32%⠀
2. a Waist circumference greater than 102CM (men) and greater than 88CM (women)⠀
3. LDL cholesterol greater than 135 mg/dl⠀
4. HDL cholesterol lower than 40 mg/dl (men) and 50 mg/dl (women)⠀
5. A blood glucose level greater than 100 mg/dl⠀
6. Blood Pressure greater than 130/85 mmHG⠀
7. Triglycerides greater than 150 mg/dl⠀
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So if any of those sound like your recent trip to the doctors office, you should have been trying to take control of your health. BUT the good news is, it is NOT too late!⠀

Let me help you improve your health in 2019! LetlerFit@gmail.com

The Basics of Exercise Order

Posted on November 8, 2018 by LetlerFit

Do you find yourself slapping together different exercises and hoping it works out or even thinking it gave you the best workout ever? I know i’ve been there. Believe it or not there’s a science to exercise order and sadly enough I have yet to see any of the famous fitspos with 1M+ following use correct order.⠀
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Exercise order depends on recruitment goals and is a direct reflection of the energy system-tension relationship. ⠀
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Exercise your major muscles (primary) groups using your compound lifts first, move into unilateral exercises (secondary), and end with exercises that target your stabilizers (ancillary). You need your stabilizers for your compound lifts so avoid fatiguing them first. ⠀
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If you feel like you need help in every which way, I’ve got you! DM me or Email LetlerFit@gmail.com let me help you exercise correctly and effectively.⠀
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If you like creating your own workouts, but are curious to see how they can be tweaked or improved, I help with that as well!⠀
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Biagioli, Brian Dominick. Advanced Concepts of Personal Training. National Council on Strength and Fitness, 2012.

Obesity Beyond “Looks”

Posted on October 30, 2018October 30, 2018 by LetlerFit

Obesity leads to ⠀
-Systemic inflammation⠀
-Insulin Resistance⠀
-Disturbances in the secretion and function of adipokines⠀
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Not only does it create the aforementioned issues, but it puts you at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (when your body struggles to utilize glucose and produce insulin, and/or it’s inability to act in response to insulin production). Did you know that 90% of all diabetes cases are type 2? Did you also know that this is potentially avoidable with lifestyle modifications?⠀
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Risk factors for developing diabetes include:⠀
-Certain Medication⠀
-Race⠀
-Hypertension⠀
-Stress⠀
-Age⠀
-Pregnancy⠀
-Family history (genetics) ⠀
-High Cholesterol⠀
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For every 500 kcal of energy expenditure per week that comes from exercise, the risk for type 2 diabetes is reduced by 6%.⠀
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Exercise also helps increase ones insulin sensitivity by improving carbohydrate metabolism and glucose tolerance from enhanced cellular uptake.

I challenge you to stop looking at obesity as someone who is “fat” and needs to lose weight to be “skinny” because that’s NOT the issue. The issue is HEALTH.⠀

Breaking Down Your Muscle Fibers

Posted on October 25, 2018 by LetlerFit

Every time I hear someone say an exercise targets fast or slow twitch fibers and have zero idea what they’re talking about, drives me crazy. While science is currently investigating I believe the last number I was told was 16 fiber types, the general teaching consensus is 3. Type 1, Type 2a, and type 2x. Fast and slow twitch in the science community btw is slowly starting to fade away because they realized thats not the best way of describing our muscle fibers. But for now, I put them into the blog explanation below:⠀
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Your type 1 fibers are known as the slow twitch muscle fibers because they have the slowest firing rate, least amount of force production, and smallest circumference. They are however most resistant to fatigue and have the greatest aerobic efficiency of the other fibers.⠀
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Your type 2a fibers are known as your fast twitch oxidative fibers because they have a fast firing rate, produce moderate force, and have a moderate circumference. As opposed to the type 1 fibers, your type 2 fibers fatigue rapidly because of the high force production and they aid in extended work at lower force output.⠀
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Lastly, your type 2x fibers are known as the fast twitch glycolytic fibers and have the fastest firing rate of the 3 muscle fibers, the greatest force production, and largest circumference. They fatigue the fastest, but have the greatest creatine phosphate efficiency.⠀
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Biagioli, Brian Dominick. Advanced Concepts of Personal Training. National Council on Strength and Fitness, 2012.⠀

Fitness Terms Commonly Misused

Posted on September 7, 2018 by LetlerFit

Let’s define some words that I see getting misused far too often:⠀
Coordination: Being able to harmoniously perform a movement or how well your body parts interact in order to accomplish a movement.⠀
Speed: Ability to move the body OVER A DISTANCE in a given time⠀
Agility: Your ability to change directions quickly or generate a rapid movement⠀
Balance: How well you disrupt the forces that can disrupt stability⠀

This is important because i see people confuse speed with agility or agility with coordination all of the time. Even other personal trainers. When we understand what words mean we can then gain better understanding of the exercises and their purpose

Aerobic Exercise and Cardiovascular Disease

Posted on August 30, 2018 by LetlerFit

Aerobic Exercise reduces your risk of developing Cardiovascular Disease by⠀
-Reducing Body Fat
-Lowering Blood Pressure⠀
-Improving your Blood Lipid Profile⠀
-Lowering the risk for myocardial ischemia⠀
-Lowering Risk for Blood Clotting⠀

So even though you might see me joking about how much I hate cardio and try to avoid it on instagram (@letler), it really is important for our health!

Practice Delayed Gratification

Posted on August 21, 2018 by LetlerFit

We live in a world that is so obsessed with getting things NOW! We want to lose weight NOW, we want to build a booty NOW, and this causes us to get desperate and do stupid and dangerous things to our bodies (i.e. waist trainers, keto, crash diets, ridiculous hours of cardio etc.), but have you ever thought about what greater reward is waiting for you if you just say no the more immediate “reward”? That my friends is having the power to say no to instant gratification and yes to delayed gratification.⠀
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I know recently, I had to struggle with this in my Masters. I originally wanted to finished in a year, but it, and be done with it. I eventually made the decision to finish in a year and a half and I regret NOTHING! An extra 6 months of learning and an extra 6 months to pick the brains of my professors.⠀
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Think of an area in your life you may be denying a greater reward because you’re so obsessed with getting a reward now that you don’t realize the reward you’re getting doesn’t pale in comparison. Take the extra time to rest, to eat right, and not go for extremes in your diet and exercise. I promise you that your body will thank you long term.⠀