muscles

Exercise Myth vs Truth

Posted on June 18, 2019June 4, 2019 by LetlerFit

Myth: Men respond better to strength training because they get stronger faster when compared to women

Truth: under proper programming, women see increases in their strength at the same rate or faster. ⠀

Learn more about the best online fitness program which includes comprehensive programs focused on shifting towards healthier eating habits, staying fit, and building a better booty. You’ll also find a variety of fitness apparel to help get you that extra motivation to take your goals to another level. Contact me today to learn more about the best fitness programs available to get your body in gear.

Overtraining is REAL

Posted on December 4, 2018 by LetlerFit

Have you ever heard of overtraining? It’s very real and very shitty. It is typically caused by repetitive physical and metabolic stresses such as:⠀
-Environmental Stresses like heat⠀
-poor lifting technique⠀
-excess free radical activity and hypoxia⠀
-inefficiency at buffering byproducts⠀
-poor hydration ⠀
-poor nutrition⠀
-glycogen depletion⠀
-poor recovery⠀
-lack of sleep⠀
-high volume eccentric training⠀
-excess total volume or isolated loading⠀
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The last thing you want to do is to over do it. Proper training and rest is KEY!⠀
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Let me help you! LetlerFit@gmail.com⠀
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Biagioli, Brian Dominick. Advanced Concepts of Personal Training. National Council on Strength and Fitness, 2012.

Putting Movement First

Posted on November 15, 2018 by LetlerFit

When I talk about putting movement proficiency first, i mean being able to successfully execute the kinetic chain of an exercise. Did you know any of the following issues can put a damper on your movement execution:⠀
-excess or insufficient motor unit activation (typical offender for performing a movement incorrectly)⠀
-Inefficient fiber recruitment (typically leads to lost force output)⠀
-Lack of motor unit synchronicity (typically leads to a reduction in force output or speed)⠀
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The good news is, this is all trainable.⠀
Want to improve your firing rate? Utilize both heavy and fast exercises to activate fast-twitch fibers⠀
Want to have better recruitment? Utilize activities that make the most of time-under-tension⠀
Want to improve synchronicity? Utilize rehearsal rills that replicate patterns and speed during specific plays or for life⠀
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Let me help you move better! LetlerFit@gmail.com⠀
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Biagioli, Brian Dominick. Advanced Concepts of Personal Training. National Council on Strength and Fitness, 2012.⠀

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.⠀

Do Your Cardio!

Posted on October 23, 2018 by LetlerFit

Did you know that sedentary individuals have a 20-50% greater risk for developing hypertension compared to individuals who are fit?⠀
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Regular exercise can decrease your risk of developing hypertension by:⠀
-improving arterial vasodilation⠀
-Facilitating Baroreceptor adjustment⠀
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Overtime aerobic exercise can reduce diastolic and systolic measures of Blood Pressure by 6-7 mmHG. In order to accomplish this you want to make sure you are exercising aerobically 30-60 minutes, 3-4 days per week at a 60-70% of VO2 Max intensity.⠀

Think a personal trainer and healthy food is expensive?⠀
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-Hypertension costs the US 64 Billion dollars per year!⠀
-By simply reducing your blood pressure by 12-13 points your risk of heart attack goes down by 21% and any deaths associated with CVD go down by 25%⠀
-a 10% decrease in total blood cholesterol level may reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease by up to 30%⠀
-47% of heart attack and stroke victims die before getting emergency assistance⠀
-90% of all middle aged adults will develop hypertension at some point in their remaining life.⠀
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Moral of the story: CARDIOVASCULAR EXERCISE IS IMPORTANT…as much as I hate doing it⠀

Fitness Fads Driving Me Crazy

Posted on September 19, 2018 by LetlerFit

Right now if you ask me, Keto and high protein/low carb diet are on my list as number one most annoying trend about my industry, but coming into a close second might just be waist trainers…if you maybe want to tie my hatred for waist trainers with keto, wear it while you exercise.⠀
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If your trainer lets you workout with one or recommends you get one…RUN, GET YOUR MONEY BACK, AND DON’T LOOK BACK. THEYRE DUMB. #SorryNotSorry I truly blame marketers for this bullshit, but shame on you if you’re a trainer and let your clients bring harm to themselves. As a trainer you should do your research, and I mean beyond google.⠀
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Reasons Why Waist Trainers are DUMB AF:⠀
1. They just relocate your organs and squeeze them together⠀
2. They mess with your breathing by pressing too tightly on your rib cage⠀
3. That “skinny” feeling when you take it off, goes away after you drink water because the change isn’t real.⠀
4. Have you ever thought to yourself your waist is shrinking because you’re choosing to eat right AND exercise? (Hint Hint)⠀
5. If you are working out with them you are basically screwing up your posture by making those muscles weaker! The waist trainer takes the job of the stabilizers by turning those muscles off. YOU WANT TO STRENGTHEN THOSE MUSCLES NOT WEAKEN THEM⠀
6. Your brain is smarter than you and you unknowingly alters the kinetic chain of an exercise to adjust for the lack of range of motion⠀
7. Did I mention they mess with your organs?⠀
8. If you lose weight, while only doing that and not changing anything else…more the likely it’s due to increased sweat which can lead to dehydration⠀
9. They don’t make you lose fat⠀
10. THEY’RE DUMB⠀
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Should I keep going? If you have one burn it. Just eat right and exercise correctly. There are no short cuts in this lifestyle…if it seems to good to be true it probably is…

My Fitness Journey Part 2

Posted on August 14, 2018 by LetlerFit

4 Years of my journey, each year my goals, training, and diet changed causing my body to adapt accordingly in order to achieve those goals. ⠀
2014 and 145lbs: Compared to now I really had no idea what I was doing exercise wise, but I did know about food, hence my lack of muscle tone, but slender body. ⠀
2015 and 150 pounds: I was eating the same, but started crossfit, which started the beginning of my weight training. You can see that the weights started to pack on a small amount of mass especially in my quads, although that particular picture does no justice. Still was focused more on how i looked vs what my body could do. ⠀
April 2016 and 153 pounds: I had shifted over to powerlifting and had recently cut weight for a meet, but you can see that training specifically for strength added a substantial amount of mass, but because It wasn’t your hypertrophy/body building training I didn’t have that shredded physique the whole world is after for whatever reason.⠀
November 2016 and 165 pounds: I was dealing with an injury and hand surgery and had gone from lifting weights 5-6 times a week to nothing, but with the same appetite so there came the fluff. However I was still considered healthy and that was important to me! ⠀
2017 and 158 pounds: I came back from 2016 100% geared towards functional fitness, stopped caring about looks and started focusing on being able to go up the stairs, fixing my anterior displacement of my gleno-humeral joint, and balancing out my quad:hamstring strength. When your quads are too strong relative to your hamstrings as you age (80s) you become more susceptible to falling forward.⠀
2018: Completely focused on movement proficiency and a healthy diet, while living a little on the weekend.⠀
If you want to talk aesthetics, my favorite is 2018 because I no longer am dealing with back pain, I have substantially corrected my shoulder imbalance, and I can go up the stairs without huffing and puffing.⠀
Moral: Aesthetics will follow training modality. When you start to focus on movement and being functional, you’ll not only start to FEEL better, but look better. MOVEMENT FIRST, aesthetics after.⠀

What is EBP? Why is it important?

Posted on April 10, 2018 by LetlerFit

Let’s talk about Evidence Based Practice (EBP). What is it? EBP “is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual client. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.”⠀
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How does this pertain to fitness? Somewhere a long the line genetically gifted people who have no issues putting aside their moral beliefs for a nice pay check decided to say fuck EBP and go with whatever is going to make larger sums of money despite the harm it could potentially cause the people who fall for the gimmicks. I get it, business is business, but there really ought to be a line people are willing to not cross, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the human body. Whether you realize it or not exercise greatly affects our body, not just in our external physical appearance, but internally as well. You go to a doctor because they have a medical degree, you see a physical therapist because they have their DPT, so why do you go to a “personal trainer” who just has genetics going for them and doesn’t even have a CPT. Just because something works for that person does NOT mean it’s going to work for you. We are all DIFFERENT in our own ways, those differences should be tackled in a way that REAL science (fuck bro science) supports, in a way that’s not going to have you pulling muscles left and right, constantly feeling beat up, creating hormonal imbalances, and the list goes on. Next time you seek fitness advice, I challenge you to find out about their level of education about the human body and how it responds to exercise.⠀

On a Mission to Empower Women into Fitness

Posted on February 27, 2018 by LetlerFit

Yesterday, I received a DM from a man on instagram who was offended that my bio stated on a mission to because he thinks my mission should be to empower both men and women. This inspired today’s post.

I was a little take back after I read the DM mostly because usually I get X rated unsolicited DM’s from thirsty, desperate men. This is definitely the first time I ever “offended” a male follower.

My mission is and always will be to empower women into fitness. Why? I am a woman, I enjoy working with women, and I am so over being sexualized (when my IG Feed is PG) by men. Why would I want to empower the gender that for the most part leaves my in disgust on IG by what gets sent to me, said to me, etc. In the past I have had several issues with men wanting to get coached by me and in the end, decide to do whatever they want because why take coaching from a woman (this is not a generalization because it does not happen all of the time) and that just pisses me off.

I believe women should be sticking together instead of tearing each other down. I see far too many women criticizing other women online, but why? What do you accomplish from that? I also believe women are under far greater pressure to fit a certain look in order to be considered attractive. By empowering other women into fitness, my goal is to also feel empowered by the body they were given, and to focus on becoming the best version of themselves without wanting to look like someone else.

I am always looking for women who are on the same mission to join my team of LetlerFit ambassadors. If you vibe with female empowerment and fitness I would LOVE to have you join the team!

Email me! LetlerFit@gmail.com subject line: Empowered Ambassador

7 Pieces of Common Fitness Advice that are Completely Wrong

Posted on November 28, 2017 by LetlerFit

I did another one of these posts a while back, but today I wanted to bring you a different set of Fitness Myths:

Fasted Cardio is Highly Effective: Numerous studies on this matter are inconclusive on whether or not the benefits to fasted cardio outweigh the risk of glycogen depletion, light headedness, catabolism etc. Eating the correct nutrients before your workout is what give you energy, contributes to fat loss, and makes for a more effective workout. Fasted cardio makes you think you’re working harder but its because your rate of perceived exertion is increased due to your body running on fumes.
Anyone can excel at whatever sport they want: Actually we are all born with specific muscle fibers. Elite sprinters probably won’t be seen winning a marathon…different fiber type composition. Baseball pitchers probably won’t be seen winning gold as an olympic lifter. Get your feet wet in a variety of sports and your body can tell you, which sports it was best meant to play, but not everyone is physically capable of becoming an olympian and don’t beat yourself up over it!
Push through injuries: The common walk it off mentality is AWFUL. Sharp shooting pain is how our body signals us something is not right and unless you’re fighting in a career altering match or running in the finals at the olympics, injuries are not something you should just “walk off.”
Avoid Cardio to Make Gains: While excessive cardio is not good for the gains, we should all be doing some form of cardiovascular as the immunological, improved performance, increased recovery, and sooo many other benefits.
Go 100% Every Single Day: Our body NEEDS rest, for some it’s in the form of active rest, but it is considered rest nonetheless….if we expect our body to perform at 100 everyday there is no time for your muscles to repair and grow. Not allowing for proper recovery also increases stress levels in our body which can lead to gut inflammation and illness.
Squats Are Bad For your Knees: Bad form is bad for your knees. Squats are an incredibly effective compound exercise, I use them often for even my elderly clients.
Ab Exercises are What Give you Abs: Did you know some people with 6 packs don’t do a single crunch, russian twist, or sit up? Shocking I know. While those exercises may contribute to enhancing a reduced waistline brought on by clean diet…they are not necessary. A heavy squat, properly lunge paired with a medicine ball rotation, even a bent over row are highly effective exercises for your abs. Genetics and diet go a longer way in improving the appearance of your abdomen.