Stroke & Exercise

The 3rd leading cause of death in America is stroke (caused by vascular blockage that impedes blood flow or arterial blockage). Your risk factors for having a stroke go up when you smoke or have high blood pressure.⠀
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aerobic exercise improves arterial function and reduces blood pressure which may contribute to lowering your risk of having a stroke.⠀

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.

Health vs Fitness

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.”

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.

Exercise and Mental Health

Statistics are beginning to suggest that 10% of adults are affected by depression and 15% are affective by anxiety disorders. Research has demonstrated that exercise allows us to improve our moods, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, which all contributes to reduced risk of depression/anxiety. Exercise frequency having the greatest impact on reducing that risk because the greater the frequency the more time spent in the altered mental state.⠀

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.

What the heck is Metabolic Syndrome?

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

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.

Exercise & Atherosclerosis

What is atherosclerosis and how does exercise help manage it?⠀
Put simply, atherosclerosis happens when too much plaque builds up in the walls of your arteries. This leads to heart attacks, which I doubt anyone wants to ever experience.⠀
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While exercise does not directly reverse atherosclerosis, properly prescribed programming does manage this disease. How? ⠀
-Aerobic exercise results in the reduction of blood pressure and circulating LDL⠀
-Consistent exercise lowers the effect of platelet adhesion and positively influences cytokine dynamics (helps protects your cells)⠀

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.

Putting Movement First

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.⠀

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.

Obesity Beyond “Looks”

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.⠀

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.

Breaking Down Your Muscle Fibers

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.⠀

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.

Do Your Cardio!

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⠀

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.

Fitness Terms Commonly Misused

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

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.