Getting in Shape for Summer

If you’re looking for way to get lean and toned for the summer right now, it probably means you haven’t done anything up until this point. Now you’re going to go run on a treadmill until you puke, do a juice cleanse until you have no insides, and you’ll be set for the your beach weekend, right? Nopers.

 

Here’s the most important thing to remember: getting in shape takes time. I know that’s antithetical to every fad diet and workout article that promises “toned sculpted and sexy arms 10 days”. Getting a strong, healthy, good looking body requires dedication and changes in lifestyle to reach your goals and stay there. Sure you could eat lettuce wraps filled with nothing for a few weeks, lose a few pounds, feel awful and be a pile of loose skin- if that’s your goal. But after that you’ll be right back to where you were and probably actually fain some weight.

 

Getting in shape for summer is the same as getting in shape any other time of year- a solid diet and workout plan. It’s not like summer is a surprise. It comes at the same time every year.

 

Diet- as they say, “you can’t out exercise a bad diet”. This is true.  The foundation of your summer six pack needs to be a solid, consistent diet. Eat for your body type and needs. That means depending on your goals, weight, activity level, and needs, your diet will be specific to you. Focus on eating lean meats, vegetables, and good fats. Stay away from processed, refined foods filled with sugary carbs and empty calories. Pretty easy, right? If you stick to a good diet, you will feel and look great- permanently.

 

You also need a good program built around weighlifting and short, high intensity conditioning. No one ever went astray with some squats, deadlifts, and pressing as the base of a training regimen. You will build muscle that will lead to a hot, toned body and will actually burn fat all day long.

The key here is building good muscle and losing excess body fat. No one has ever complimented someone’s bikini body by saying “man, that loose skin and flat butt look really good on you”. Getting a summer body isn’t about a fad diet and running until you puke. It’s about eating well and sticking to a good training program. You’ll find that sticking to a solid, simple diet and training program is actually easier (and much more worth it) than going on a juice cleanse and running 10 miles a day. Unless you’re a masochist.

 

-Coach Lily

Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Workouts?

So you have a great workout routine down, you’re committed, your spending lots of time in the gym, and maybe you’re even enjoying it. But how much attention are you paying to everything that goes on outside the gym that can make or break your results? Don’t underestimate the importance of what goes on in the hours you’re not in the gym and the impact it has on reaching your goals.

Sleep

Do you train hard only to go home and sleep for 5 hours? You could be sabotaging a lot of your training and diet. Aside from not having energy and undermining your body’s ability to heal itself after working out, numerous studies have shown that too little sleep can actually lead to weight gain, even when your diet is on point.

Nutrition

Diet is an important part of reaching goals, whether they are performance or body composition based. As they like to say, “you can’t out work a bad diet” (or something along those lines). But it’s true- even if your workouts are great, if you over eat a lot of junk, it will show.  Likewise, if you’re not eating quality foods with sufficient protein, fats, and carbohydrates, it can severely affect your performance in the gym and impede your body’s ability to build muscle and heal itself after an intense workout.

Soft tissue/mobility work

Foam rolling, massages, and other forms of soft tissue work can help your body repair and feel better after a tough session. Mobility work plays an important role in your ability to move well and feel good- inside the gym and out. Yes, they take time and are kind of boring but they will pay off in the long run.

Time Spent in the Gym

You could be working out too much. Yes, that is a thing. Obviously working out too little is a problem but at a certain time, you hit a point of diminishing returns on the other end of the spectrum.  In the gym for 4 hours? Benching every day and your bench isn’t going up? If you’re not making progress, this could be an issue you need to address.

 

Make sure you pay as much attention to what you do outside of the gym to ensure you get the most return from your hard work.

-Coach Lily

 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/lost-sleep-can-lead-to-weight-gain/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951287/

 

 

They Aren’t You, You Aren’t They

It often perplexes me when somebody compares my son to another child and uses that child to mark certain milestones and “norms”. As a mom, it can be irritating, because oftentimes that person does not know either children well enough to ascertain what’s normal and/or acceptable for my son. Then comes the overused chant: “All children are different”, blah, blah...

Though I am instinctively defensive of my son, I was never really the same way about myself until recently. I’d continuously compare other people’s achievements and lifestyles to my own and that would somehow affect how I set goals. But now, I really don’t believe that comparing oneself to another is useful at all. Of course, there are always exceptions and one example right off the bat is competitive athletes. Sorry, but kids who play sports will usually fall into this habit and compare themselves to others, whether they are trying to defend a first-string position or take a spot in an individual sport such as track or wrestling. But for things that aren’t competitive, why waste precious energy comparing yourself to someone else?

Successful people don’t compare themselves to other people, they focus on getting better. Once you’ve started chasing someone else’s achievements, you’ve already set a ceiling for yourself. Sure, I look to others for inspiration. I steal ideas and I think about what other people have been able to accomplish in the face of adversity. But I don’t compare myself to other people because it’s a toxic mentality that I’ve known all too well. Even in competitive sports, doing this can set you up for failure in the long run because if you are the “best” at your sport it won’t matter because the world in a huge, huge place. If you haven’t prepared your mind to set goals independently, when someone sets out to squash you, and DOES squash you, it will be difficult to recover.

Set quantifiable goals, so you can track who you were and who you want to be. Every day should be about getting better against who you were yesterday, not someone else. Look to those who are better than you as role models, not as competitors, because one day they might be able to help you out. And even though other people might compare you to someone else, don’t ever do it to yourself.

Savannah Steamer

Spot Athletics Intern

Getting Back On Track After the Holidays

Many people are still escaping the holiday hangover with thoughts of returning to their normal diet, their normal schedule and they’re regaining a sense of order as real life starts up again, so, in order to help you “bounce back” after the eggnog, the drinking, and your aunt’s famous pie, we are sharing a few ways to help you feel like yourself again after the holidays.

First off: can you prevent the Holiday Hangover? Sure you can. But almost everybody who celebrates the holidays ends up eating their fair share of calorie dense foods and swerving off their normal training schedule, so the question isn’t really how to completely prevent indulgence and laziness, but how to make “bouncing back” a lot easier.

If you are mindful of how you spend your holiday, you can avoid the misery of having a food baby and focus more on actually communing with family and friends. That doesn’t mean you should avoid the “bad foods” at all costs and complain that the gym isn’t open on Christmas Eve (because do you really want to be that person?), it just means that you should recognize that there’s a difference between a cheat meal and an “Oh-my-god, I-haven’t-had-my-grandma’s-mashed-potatoes-in-ten-years” kind of meal. Five meals in a row of the latter sort and most people won’t feel like themselves.

You probably don’t feel like yourself because you are reading this article, just admit it, you ate not one, not two, but three plates of food! It’s okay, so did I and I felt like four months of hard work had flown out the window. Not so. Here’s a list of things you can do to get back on track as soon as possible:

1) Drink Water. Yes, I said it, and yes I am chastising you. I know you had that cappuccino in the morning and those Mojitos at night. You need to grab a glass of water right now and chug that thing, because you probably came out of the holidays less hydrated. Think about it: caffeine is a stimulant and alcohol is a depressant, but they both have a diuretic effect. This constant energy and hydration imbalance is very taxing on the body.

2) If you didn’t miss a single training session, good for you! Keep doing what you are doing. But if you haven’t stepped foot in a gym for over two weeks it would not make any sense to try to train harder or heavier than you did before. For the first week, see if you maintained and then adjust accordingly.

3) Foam-Rolling, stretching, mobility work, these are all great tools not only for your regular training, but for those days when you know things are a bit rusty.

4) Getting enough sleep should already be high on your priority list because your muscles need sleep as much as your mind does, but oftentimes, it’s hard to do this right after a holiday because there are errands, chores, family duties, etc. Though there is a large range of what doctors believe to be the “ideal” amount of sleep, listen to your body and adjust based on your performance.

5) Relax. Nobody loses their progress, gains, or strength within the short window of a few weeks. Don’t harbor guilt about the holidays, they’re supposed to be a time of joy. If you spend too much time thinking about the past, you lose sight of your goals and cannot plan for the future.

Training Through the Pain - An Intern's Blog

If you are anything like me, then you know what it's like to roll out of bed feeling like you just got hit by a Mac truck. Knees creaking, elbows and shoulders aching, lower back cramping up...some people just have bad luck when it comes to accumulating injuries, and I am most definitely one of those people. Simple things like walking down the stairs can be a difficult task if my knees decide to act up on me, so how would that correlate to being able to train my legs with the intensity needed to make progress? Well it is at this point that your ego needs to take a backseat, and you either need to 1) completely stop overloading that joint or muscle until the injury has healed or 2) find exercises that don't aggravate it.

For the majority of people, using the excuse of "oh my knees hurt" to throw leg training out of their weekly split is like a blessing because 99% of gym goers hate the pain of heavy squats, lunges and deadlifts. Same with elbows..."you mean I don't have to bench heavy now?" No that's not what I mean. There are a few ways to ease the joint pain we all experience without completely voiding all exercises utilizing those joints:

1. Don't do exercises that hurt

This should seem like it's self explanatory, but for stubborn individuals like myself, this is much harder than it sounds. I've been dealing with nagging knee pain off-and-on for almost two years now, and through utter stupidity and the desire to train hard, I kept doing heavy squats and leg presses despite my knees hurting more than my muscles full of lactic acid. It wasn't until my knees started swelling from all the inflammation that I finally realized that doing it my way wasn't going to cut it. Now when I perform exercises that stress my knee joints, I know when to stop and when it is safe to continue based on if there is ANY pain during the sets. The key is to not let your joint pain advance to the point that mine has. Catch it early and adjust your program around your weaknesses: in this case, your weak joints.

2. Get your diet right

This is a very underestimated factor when people discuss inflammation of joints and overuse injuries. The typical Western diet consists of breakfast at McDonald's, lunch at Taco Bell, and dinner at Pizza Hut, or in other words, high levels of unhealthy fats. Poor diets like this can greatly increase inflammation inside your body due to poor ratios of Omega-6 fats to Omega-3 fats leading to painful joints. On the other side, healthy fats such as fish oils and other polyunsaturated fats can reduce the body's inflammation response and decrease swelling and pain in joints. So in short, less crappy food and more oils, nuts, and fish (fish oil supplementation works well too.)

3. Get your warm-up down

Warming-up is an often overlooked aspect of training for 100% healthy individuals who deal with no chronic pain, but for the majority of us who have experienced injuries that hinder our performance, we know that a proper warm-up cannot be overlooked for the health of joints. Whether it is foam rolling tight muscles, stretching, doing more light sets to get blood into the joints, riding the bike, or any of the million things people like to do to prepare for training, find what works best for you and your affliction. For example, my warm-up before a lower body workout would be foam rolling my IT band, quads, adductors, and hip flexors to loosen the muscles pulling on my knees. I would then move to stretches, possible the bike for a few minutes, then a ton of sets of light leg extensions and leg curls to allow my knees to get used to a load on them. I've found that this warm-up really helps to allow me to train mostly pain free. I'm still not going to be able to put a ton of weight on my back and rep out heavy squats without a good amount of pain just because I thoroughly warmed up, but it at least allows my to do SOMETHING to stimulate the muscles so they don't wither away. And while you're battling joint pain, sometimes that's what your goal has to be.

So for the people who know what it is like to be held back by nagging and weak joints, try the things I've found to help me and who knows? It could help you too. Be creative with your exercises that you do, so if your knees are bothering you that day, don't do heavy squats. Clean up your diet and remember that not all fats are bad. And nothing can take the place of a proper warm-up to not only recover from injuries but to prevent future ones.

 

Bryce Calvin - Strength and Conditioning Intern

Supporting other people's goals

There are a lot of articles, tips, and tricks on accomplishing your own goals, but what about when someone you care about has a goal to set?  It should be important to you, if they're important to you, but regardless of how much you care about someone, you may be trying to sabotage them and not even know it!  Here is a quick guide for you to take a step back, assess the steps they're taking to reach a goal, and figure out how you can make that goal attainable.

1. DO NOT feel like they should make an exception for you! If they are taking care of business, and they are not neglecting you, stop trying to make them feel like you're the exception to the rule.  If they're dieting, don't tell them they should eat your cake because YOU made it.  Don't even offer it to them.  If they have a goal of sticking to a schedule, be it for training, school, or work, do not expect them to drop everything for you.   Make time elsewhere.

2. DO ask them about their goals and what you can do to help!  Accomplishing large tasks, regardless of how much determination a person has, can be extremely difficult, especially if they feel like they are alone.  Get involved.  Ask them what you can do.  A lot of the extremely high level athletes I know usually have something in common... a strong support system (ie, significant other, parents, siblings) that will help them with cooking meals, making sure they have the right equipment packed, and making sure they are staying on schedule.

3. DO NOT tell them you told them so when they fail, but also, do not sugar coat things. The one constant in trying to be great is failure.  It happens to everybody.  Be encouraging.  Help them evaluate their situation, and then help them draw a plan to overcome obstacles.  Sometimes, the biggest push a person needs to reach a goal is someone that they can trust honestly telling them they can do it.

4. DO remind them that there is life outside of their goals.  People can get engulfed in their work, regardless of what it is, believe me, I know. It's nice to have someone remind you that you're doing something because you love it, and not because it defines you.

Follow these steps, and you will definitely help that special someone be the best person they can be.

ATHLETES: this has to be a reciprocal relationship.  Your goals are YOUR goals, not everybody else's.  If someone is supporting you, support them back, and let them know you appreciate everything they do.

Coach Z

Don't make resolutions, make good

It's that time of year when people start to look back at what has happened the year before and what they want to happen in the year ahead.  Most people make the mistake of putting forth a new years resolution that is unrealistic.  Let's face it, if you haven't worked out in 10 years, the odds of you training 7 days/week in about the same as you winning the lottery.  So don't make some crazy resolution like this, instead make a resolution that you are going to make one attainable "resolution" per week.  Week One could be to join a gym.  Week two could be to go to that gym 2x/wk.  Week Three could be to clean up your awful diet a little bit.   After 52 weeks of these little victories, you will be surprised at just how much you have been able to change your life.

These little weekly victories not only help you feel like a success but they also lead you to your ultimate goal of a better looking and healthier you.  People can handle small tasks that are defined in front of them, but a large task with no direction seems overwhelming and will most likely never happen.  If you just focus on one small task per week then over the course of the next year you will make more changes than you have over the last 10 years of your grandiose resolutions that never quite happened.  I know that something like going to the gym 2x/wk seems like it wouldn't make a huge difference but honestly for someone who isn't working out, just going for a walk 2x/wk can make a big change.

This year don't just make a resolution, make good by setting one small goal per week and attaining it.   If you aren't sure where to begin when it comes to your fitness or your eating then come see one of the great personal trainers at The Spot and they will not only get you on the right path, but keep you there so you make long lasting changes.

The fastest way to get fit & look great

This is a secret that many of the fitness magazines never tell you because they don't want you to know the truth.  The fastest way to get fit and look good is to lift weights, do cardio and follow a diet free from processed foods on a long term consistent basis.  Wait a minute you are saying, that doesn't sound easy or fast, and it isn't.  There are no shortcuts to fitness or looking good.  If there were then everyone would look great and be fit.  These commercials for this new miracle product or that are really miracles, as in it's a miracle that people are stupid enough to actually buy it.

The fact is that consistency in your training and your eating will over a long time yield great results.  I always look at loosing 1/2% of body fat per week as a good goal.  This means that if you are 25% body fat then you will lose 10% body fat and be at a very respectable 15% in 20 weeks.  Although this seems like a long time, think about it in terms of how much fat you have put on in the last 6 months.  In this age of instant text messaging and instant everything else, the one thing that has no instant solution is your health.

I know what I am saying doesn't sound sexy and appealing and that is why you never hear anyone in popular media talk about it.  They just show pictures of ripped people smiling and capture it with "look how easy it is".  Fact is that it is not easy and those people in the magazine pictures only look like that for a few weeks out of the year for the photo shoot.  What they don't show is the hours upon hours that they spend in the gym and the eating they do, the food prep and the years of dedication.  They want you to believe that if you just take their product then you can look like the model in the picture.  This is false advertising and you should be aware of it.

Although we don't promise instant results and the newest fitness craze, what we do promise is that you will get fit and looking great by following our tried and true means of getting you to your goals.  We won't promise it will be easy or that you won't mess up on your diet but we will promise to motivate you the whole way and pick you up when you stumble.  These are the things that we do that separate us and by being up front and explaining what it takes to get to your individual goals, you are at aware of what is to come.  This approach has made some people not want to train with us because we tell them it is not going to be easy and what it really takes to reach their goals instead of the standard "it's so easy, just join our gym" crap that is peddled at other facilities.  I guess this doesn't make us the best sales people but we pride ourselves on being the best trainers, not the best sales people.  We just know that in the long run the people who are serious about reaching their goals will seek us out because they want the best trainers, not sales people who sell the "get fit quick" fantasy.

If you know someone who is serious about reaching their New Years resolutions then send them this blog and tell them to get ahold of us.  They may not like the truth of what it takes, but they will love the results we get.

Know Your Goal (and know how to train for it)

Between Facebook, Instagram, and every terrible/legitimate website dedicated to getting stronger, faster, jacked, yoked, shredded, explosive, aesthetic, hyooge, etc. there is a plethora of individuals and sources to follow on your path to greatness. The vast amount of resources and information at our fingertips is great but, at the same time, it’s easy to get caught up following people and programs that may not be right for your goals. For the seasoned iron pumper this is probably not an issue but for the pencil neck n00b (or the vast majority of people), this can be a real issue. Before you follow some random program because the dude who wrote it is really vascular or has a monster squat, it’s important to know your goal then figure out what you need to do to get there. I think a flow chart might be nice for this but given that my technology skills are on par with an ornery old person, I’ll stick with this.

Are you an athlete? Then don’t follow a bodybuilding program. Don’t follow a powerlifting program. Yes, powerlifting will make you strong but powerlifting is a sport. As a soccer, volleyball, football, lacrosse, etc player you need to be strong but your goal isn’t (and shouldn’t be) to have a bar bending bench. You shouldn’t even be hitting heavy singles on your lifts. Because that’s not the point of your weight room training. Likewise, you shouldn’t do crossfit. Crossfit is a sport. It’s not programmed to make you better at your sport.

Do you want to get strong? You probably shouldn't be following a cutting bodybuilding program. Doing volume based and isolation work will not be the most beneficial when it comes to improving your patterns and overall strength. Furthermore, for the most part, it’s good to be a little chubs for powerlifting. Good for your joints and good for bouncing your stomach off your thighs when you squat. Granted, there are a lot of great, super cut powerliters. But, the point of the sport is not to be vascular and have the biggest bicep peak. Some powerlifters do great with high volume training but don’t get caught up in trying to do too much with the wrong program or your strength will suffer.

Before I started powerlifting, I did random bodybuilding stuff that I found on the internet. I wanted to be strong but didn’t have a concrete goal or any concept of training for said goals. Needless to say, I didn’t make very good progress for a number of years until I dialed into my goal and figured out the training that was most effective to get there.  Make sure you have a concrete goal and are following a program that’s in line with those goals or else you’ll be spinning your wheels wondering why you’re not making progress.

Coach Lily

Simple ways to reach your goals pt. 1

There are a few basic rules you need to follow if you want to be successful in the gym. No matter your goals, the same basic rules apply. If you follow them, you will be successful. If you don’t, you won’t. Simple as that.

 

1) Be consistent! If you have a killer routine but do it a few times a month, you won’t get anywhere. If you have a solid routine and do it 3+ times a week, you will get results. Period. Getting stronger, faster, leaner, and more badass means that you’re giving your body a stimulus to respond to and it adapts to that stimulus. If you don’t consistently give your body that stimulus, you won’t get any better. On another note, stop doing random stuff all the time. It might be exciting to do whatever workout you read in every new Muscle & Fitness but if you keep doing random things, don’t be surprised if you never get stronger or more jacked.  Be consistent not only means hitting the gym consistently but sticking with something for enough time to see it yield results.

2)   Keep it simple! Especially if you’re new to training, it can be easy to follow a routine that looks cool in a magazine or website only to find it hard to stick to and not have it yield results. There’s a reason why people have been squatting, deadlifting, and pushing weights around for a long time. It works. If you get better at deadlifting and squatting you will definitely see better results than making sure you isolate your triceps every time on the triple overhead extension assault of death exercise that I can guarantee some asshole made up to fill up space in magazine. If you can consistently progress on the most basic exercises, you will see results. It’s as simple as that.

3)   Make it a priority. One of the hardest parts of starting to workout is making it a habit in your life. Just like everything else you do on a regular basis, working out needs to be one of them too.  In order to make it a priority, have a goal (see #5).  Find a way to make what you want in the long run (your goals) more important than what you want right now (beer and nachos and netflix). Setting goals, having a trainer, and training buddies will ensure that you stay accountable.

4)   Recovery. This is an important one. Don’t let your training go to waste.  Proper nutrition, sleep, mobility, and soft tissue work will make sure you get the optimal results and keep you healthy and injury free. Don’t overlook the things that happen outside of lifting as it could completely derail your efforts.

5) Have a goal. It doesn’t matter whether you want to lose weight, get strong like a bull, compete, or just workout on a consistent basis. Find your goal and use it to motivate you. In the end, no one can motivate you except yourself. No amount of inspirational pictures on Facebook or quotes you wrote on a post-it can get you to do what you need to do.

 

-Coach Lily

Push Yourself Harder

When you get to the gym, are you thinking about your training or is your mind elsewhere?

For most people, your jobs are something other than lifting weights, so there is always going to be a level of stress that follows your wherever you go, even to the gym. It takes time and practice to really allow the weights to take you to a peaceful place where stress doesn't exist. However, there will still be days where energy levels are low, motivation just isn't there, and you could really use a 24 hour nap. The thing with excuses though is...nobody wants to hear them! You know the guy that is always training quietly, keeping to himself while pushing the heaviest weight in the gym? Well he's probably got excuses to why he can't train hard too, but the difference is he sucks it up and keeps on pushing.

Progress is not a straight and smooth road. To get to your goals, you have to suffer some. You will hurt and you will be sore. There will be days where you will want to give up. It's always easier to say no than yes, and trust me, the gym is no place for the mentally weak. It's easier to do a comfortable set and convince yourself that your working hard, but who are you fooling? Absolutely nobody and your only holding yourself back. Load up the bar and strain! Training shouldn't be easy and you shouldn't be able to walk out of the gym with energy left in the tank.

Progress isn't easy and anyone who says it is is just blowing smoke. Remember, this is a marathon not a sprint. Things take time to culminate themselves into where you want to be. All those heavy sets of squats may have you feeling beat up and sore now and questioning why you're doing this to yourself, but stay focused. The best driving force and motivation is to actually experiencing and seeing improvements. Push yourself every time you're in the gym and good things will come.

Don't be normal, be you

While we focus a lot on nutrition and strength here at The Spot. One aspect that is commonly overlooked is the mental aspect of life. How do you deal with negativity in life? Negative people and negative situations. People that don’t believe in you or your dreams. Situations that conflict with morals and beliefs. Those that want to bring you down. How do you handle it? How do you deal with the day to day grind? Most people are common. Most people don’t even have goals. They wake up they go to work they collect a pay check they pay bills and they sleep. They take this equation and simply repeat it. They call this life. But that’s what makes you and I different. That’s what sets us apart. We are uncommon. There is negativity everywhere. All you have to do is turn on the news or read the paper. When you try to move forward and do something with your life you will have doubters. You will have those that will want to drag you down. Those that will laugh at you for going after what you want. What you’re trying to do isn’t practical. Well who cares. Be uncommon. Don’t be practical. Don’t be normal. Being normal is like being everybody else. BE YOU.

You need to believe in yourself. Believe in what you’re doing even when nobody else doesn’t. Set goals and go after them. Don’t let anything stop you until you reach those goals. You will have negativity in your life. That negativity is to push you to see how bad you actually want it. It weeds out the talkers. It weeds the people out who talk about their goals but don’t actually go after them. Be an action taker. You need to believe in yourself and your vision. Some days, that will be all you have. You can achieve anything you want but you have to be willing to give up the belief that you can’t have it. You have one life to do everything you’ll ever do so please act accordingly. If you are content being normal and common just like everybody else then by all means continue to live you’re normal life going to your 9-5 that you dread going to. Everything you’re about to say as to why you can’t go after what you want is an excuse. It’s preventing you from getting what you want and what you deserve. And that’s fine. If you want to make excuses as to why you can’t achieve what it is you are looking to achieve then that is on you. Nobody else. You create your circumstances. Life is over quickly. So, While you’re here do some awesome things. Leave your mark. Forget the naysayers, the doubters and the negativity. Go after what you want and don’t let anything stop you until you get it. It’s not over until you win.

 

Coach B