As a Personal Trainer in St Louis, there are certain questions that are regularly asked.  Quite often we are asked whether training with free weights is better than with machines.  The quick answer is a resounding yes.  Not only are the strength gains greater, but the functionality of movement with free weights add to an overall improved physique and performance level.  Here is a brief comparison between the two.

Free Weights

Pros- Strength gains tend to be greater.  More balance and coordination is required with free weights.  Unlike resistance machines which tend to isolate specific muscles, free weights recruit more muscle groups in single exercises.  Free weights promote more activity of the joint stabilizer muscles.

Cons- A spotter is needed.  Machines tend to have less risk of injury.

You may have heard this term thrown around the fitness industry in recent years.  The basis behind the “Muscle Confusion” theory is that in order to grow and become stronger, you must constantly change your routine and confuse your muscles.  Some think this theory is a myth, but there actually is some truth behind it.

Our bodies respond to new stimuli and use it to become stronger.  When you are placing demand on your muscles that incorporates balance, different angles, or just a varying training style, your body sees this as something new.  Varying routines can be used as a breakthrough during those plateau times as muscle groups become accustomed to a training program quite quickly.  For instance, for chest exercises, you may perform pushups with one hand on a medicine ball one day and inclined dumbbell press on a physioball later in the week.  While you’re still working the chest region, you’ve changed the angle and added a level of imbalance resulting in stimulation of new muscle growth.

Muscle confusion will also improve your motivation and keep your interest level up.  Varying your routine is an excellent way to constantly challenge your body in several dimensions.  For additional assistance in designing a program that incorporates muscle confusion, get in touch with a local personal trainer in St Louis.

The upright row is a movement that has been performed by body builders and fitness enthusiasts for years in hopes of developing shoulders and trapezius musculature.  This highly popular exercise is performed by holding a barbell or dumbbells in front of your with a close, overhand grip, you pull the weight up to your chest, keeping it close to your body, leading with your elbows.

The Upright Row is one of the most harmful exercises you can expose your shoulders to. The problem with the exercise lies in the position your arms must be in in order to perform the movement. The position, called “internal rotation,” is where your arms are bent at the elbow and then internally rotated.  This position, with the addition of weight and your arms raises places your shoulder in an impingement position.  This is where a tendon in your shoulder gets pinched by the bones of the shoulder.

Many will ignore the advice of fitness professionals or personal trainers and continue to perform the exercise seemingly pain free.  The breakdown of this tends occurs slowly over time and gradually breaks down until a severe injury could occur.  To this day, I have witnessed several places all over the Saint Louis area that has members/clients still performing this exercise.  It is important as a personal trainer to educate our clientele on some of these exercises that may be extremely dangerous.  Expect more posts like this in the near future !

The fast pace of modern life leaves us with little time for ourselves.  Exercise is often the first activity to suffer as it is placed on the back burner.  While personal trainers don’t generally like to hear the excuse- “I don’t have enough time”, it can become quite difficult to give yourself this time.  The demands of life can be extreme, but health should be positioned high on the list.

For the extremely busy sector, there are some faster paced, more time efficient methods to ensure adequate amounts of exercise.  I encourage my training clientele to employ a “combination-style” program.  Combination exercises include two or three body parts or movements into one exercise.  This can be a quick, intense way to get in and out of the gym in 30-40 minutes and use every major muscle group.  If you are searching for efficiency, this may be the best route for you.  Also, the functionality of these movements in very high.  Your body works as a complete unit with multiple body part and muscle groups, making it vital to include some exercises with this same concept in mind.

These exercises can be difficult to explain without video, but here is a list of a few:

- Push up/Dumbbell row combo

- Deadlift/Dumbbell row combo

- Lunge/Dumbbell shoulder press combo

- Push up/Pike pull in with physio ball

I thought that I would take a different direction with my first blog post of the new year and start with somewhat of a testimonial to the benefits of regular exercise and an appreciation of human performance.  I am sitting here at my computer at home, but just spent the past 5 days in Winter Park, Colorado with my family and some friends.  My wife and I snowboard, but we introduced skiing to our 4 year old son.  After 3 days of lessons, it was exhilarating to have him join us on the lift and witness him actually skiing down some green slopes!  This is the start of many family ski trips to come; something that I have dreamed about since I was very young.

Even though my wife and I spent some of the trip worried about our son in the ski program, we were able to enjoy the slopes ourselves and reap the benefits of the regular exercise that we both participate in, here in Saint Louis.  My wife even mentioned that she felt stronger than she had ever felt on the slopes; a testament to the increased training that she has had since the last time we went.  Yes, it is true folks.  Regular exercise DOES improve your performance in other activities and, in this instance,  DOES translate to stronger snowboarding, more time on the slopes, and a fuller, more complete ski trip.

I encourage everyone to take advantage of your body.  Appreciate the capabilities that your body holds.  Play hard, but train even harder.

Here is a topic that is of great interest to myself and the rest of my staff at Studio Element.  The childhood obesity rates are alarmingly increasing in America and seem to be even more so in Saint Louis.  When I was young, recess and gym time was so much more prevalent and now it is almost non-existent.

According to the CDC website, in a study done from 1976-1980 and 2003-2006, for children aged 2–5 years, prevalence increased from 5.0% to 12.4%; for those aged 6–11 years, prevalence increased from 6.5% to 17.0%; and for those aged 12–19 years, prevalence increased from 5.0% to 17.6%.  As the number ONE killer in America, obesity is linked to a whole host of health complications including diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and several others.

Here is another graph from the CDC website indicating the prevalence of obesity, ages 2-19, over the last four decades.

The bottom line is that we, as parents, need to take responsibility and educate ourselves and our children how to make better choices, become involved in active activities, and to develop these life skill to use throughout a lifetime.  With the dwindling exercise opportunities at schools, it is imperative to involve your children in other activities to keep them active whether it is sports leagues, family hikes, or a fitness program specifically designed for children as offered by Studio Element Personal Training.

In the personal training industry, many facilities and fitness trainers rely on the quantity and quality of the equipment that is available to them.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent by some gyms to ensure that they have the coolest, top of the line, ground-breaking line of exercise machines.  I must admit that I fell into this trap as well.  

It takes awhile to realize that a certain amount of equipment is nice to have.  Some might argue that some sort of baseline is necessary in any fitness facility.  When it comes down to it, many exercises can be performed with little or no equipment at all.  Several studies show some of these more functional, body weight type exercises can no only lead to more muscle coordination, but to increased strength as well.  Recently it was determined that the strength gains can be more prevalent than traditional weight selected machines.

I always use body weight exercises as a benchmark for most of my clientele.  In some way or form I would like to see my training clients lift and support their bodies in various dimensions.  The TRX bodyweight strap system is a great tool to assist in accomplishing body weight lifting at various angles.  Check out pictures on our website for pictures on the TRX System.  http://www.studio-element.net

High Intensity Interval Training (H.I.I.T.) is a form of intense short exercise bouts followed by shorter rests.  They are designed to reduce training time and increase your VO2 max, which is the amount of oxygen you can uptake during exercise.  It is also proposed that you are able to maintain more muscle mass as opposed to more steady-state, cardiovascular exercise.  The reason is that slow twitch fibers are more compatible with endurance training, whereas fast twitch fibers are more compatible with short, intense bouts of exercise (weightlifting or sprinting).  

The specifics of H.I.I.T. Training are as follows:

- Warm up for 5 minutes

- Give maximum effort for 15 to 30 seconds, followed by a 2 minute recovery

- Perform 6 to 10 of these intervals 

- Cooldown

This is a great way to mix things up as a personal trainer or in one of our bootcamps.  Keep the body guessing and results will come!

One of the more common exercises, the squat, is sometimes misunderstood.  Squats are commonly used by personal trainers and physical therapists.  A high percentage of people have this assumption that squats are “bad” for your knees.  I would argue that “bad squats” could hurt your knees.

The basic squat, when performed correctly, is a natural human movement.  There is a great deal of evidence from numerous studies that shows how squats can be used in a rehabilitation sense to treat ACL issues in particular.

People with healthy knees can benefit by incorporating squats into their fitness program and by squatting down until the knees bend 90 degrees. This is known as a parallel squat because the knees bend until the thigh is parallel with the ground. This exercise technique stabilizes the knee and ankle by strengthening the hip, thigh, and calf muscles.

1. Maintain a “Balanced” training program. This includes symmetry in your training from antagonist muscle groups and from side to side of your body.
2. Warm-up. Risk of injury is increased without a proper warm-up including calisthenics, stretching, and low-intensity simulations of movements specific to the activity you intend to perform.
3. Stretch. Injury risk is reduced, performance is enhanced, muscle soreness is decreased, circulation is increased.
4. Proper Hydration. Thirst is a bad indicator of being properly hydrated. If you are thirsty, you are already past the point of needing hydration.
5. Proper Nutrition. This includes pre-meal, fuel during, and post activity refueling.
6. Join a Group. A training group can do wonders for motivation and accountability. Exercise is also just a great way to spend quality time with friends.
7. Cross Train. Includes activities that “complement” the demands of cycling including resistance training, yoga, pilates, etc.
8. Proper Progression. Make sure to slowing increase the volume of your training program- intensity level, speed, distance, etc.
9. Cool Down. Includes stretching, low intensity activity, refueling of the body via food and water
10. Ride. This may seem like a given, but performing the activity which you are aiming to get better at requires you be consistently active with it.