Taking time off in any aspect of life is a necessary relief to a person’s wellbeing. This is why time off in a job contract is so important and why sometimes time off from exercise is just as important as well. Reasons for taking time away from work or even exercise can be for physical rest, mental health, or a personal reset. 
 
When in a sabbatical of exercise, feelings of guilt can be common and distract the person from their reason for taking a break. A person may think they are ‘going backwards’ in their training, feel like a ‘blob’ or even start to lose sight in their training. When these disruptive thoughts come into play, it is important to remember that exercise is a lifelong practice to continue to come back to, not a short term fad.
 
To quote Forrest Gump: shit happens.
 
Things happen all the time in life that get in the way. It could be anything, and is personal to each person. Common barriers to exercise are when an unplanned event or situation comes in the way, a lack of time is created, or pain or boredom begins during training.
 
            When ‘life’ seems to get in the way of training, it is important to keep your routine or schedule as consistent as possible. Even if your brain or heart isn’t in the individual workout, a routine can be the persuasion to keep moving forward. Different incentives towards consistency in exercise can look like a set schedule to hold you accountable, reassessing frequency of the workouts, or even a system to treat yourself once you have completed a certain number of workouts in a period of time. Another motivating factor to exercise is for the stress relief it provides. While fighting stress with a different type of stress may seem like an oxymoron, training provides an outlet for any pent up energy and provides endorphins, physically and mentally making you feel better after a session.
 
            If you struggle with a lack of accountability in a hectic schedule-- causing you hesitation returning to exercise-- finding a way to hold yourself to your session will be the solution. Many people work out with their significant other or “gym bae” to have a person that will specifically demand that they be there to work out. Other than that, a personal trainer is the way to professionally have accountability--without annoying friends and family. Personally, if I need to hold myself accountable to a specific training session, I put my session into my personal calendar and treat it as a doctor's appointment. In my head, I will not miss a doctor's appointment, therefore I won’t miss the session.
 
Making decisions in a workout when you’re new or have pain or an injury can be the biggest physical barrier to exercise and one of the hardest to overcome. From chronic pain to a short term injury, pushing through pain during exercise is a non-starter and takes skill to work around. It is always important to listen to your body and medical professional; so hiring that professional to help you could be the support you need when starting physical activity. Along with this, training is sometimes monotonous (How many squats can a person do in their life? It remains to be seen..). Boredom within a program can be the breaking point for a person to completely stop the program and walk away from their exercise regime. This is where a personal trainer comes into play to mix up a workout for the day or create enough variety in the workouts to keep you interested. 
 
Life is hard. Life is unpredictable. It’s a universal truth that everyone can empathize with. Whatever the reason for an exercise hiatus; it is valid and the important part is the return to physical activity. Taking an extended break from a training routine can mean taking a step back from previous intensity, moving towards a new style or mode of training, or reassessing goals for new targets.
 
 
Leina is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer and coach at Freedom Fit Gym. She can be reached at [email protected]

Do you cross your legs when you sneeze or cough? Do you have difficulty keeping dry during workouts? While fairly common, it's not "normal"!

Women are affected twice as much as men with urinary incontinence. Specifically, 4 in 10 women have urinary incontinence from pregnancy and over the age of 65. In recent years, this problem has been de-stigmatized by health care professionals being more educated on urinary incontinence and what to do about it along with more affected people speaking out about.

The Pelvic Floor:

The pelvic floor is the hammock-like muscle that supports the bladder, bowel, and uterus (in women-- you can see it referenced in the above diagram.) This is also the muscle that helps control the downward pressure in the abdomen when lifting or straining. Contraction of this muscle lifts the internal organs of the pelvis and tightens the openings of those organs while relaxing the pelvic floor allows the passage of wastes from the bowels. 

What goes wrong?

The pelvic floor muscles can either be too weak, resulting in incontinence, or too tight, resulting in the inability to properly empty the bowels. In this blog post, we are going to be focusing on the former.

Common causes of pelvic floor muscle weakness can include pregnancy (this is a huge one!), menopause, straining on the toilet, ongoing cough, pelvic surgery, a fall, heavy lifting, high impact exercise, age, and weight. With this many causes; it seems less surprising how common urinary incontinence can be. While urinary incontinence may be a widespread condition, it is a problem that can and should be addressed.

The two most common types of urinary incontinence include stress incontinence and urge incontinence. Stress incontinence describes incontinence that involves everyday stress on the bladder from actions that put stress on the pelvic floor such as coughing, sneezing, laughing and even physical activity. Urge incontinence describes a leakage after a strong sudden urge to urinate and before the person can get to a restroom—often called an overactive bladder. This usually happens more than 8 times a day and often the person does not urinate much once in the restroom. Many women suffer from a mix of these two, especially with age and after childbirth.

What do I do?

Always see your primary care doctor or OBGYN to diagnose and start the treatment of potential urinary incontinence. This includes medication, referral out to a urologist or pelvic floor specialist. From home, there are exercises that can help.

• Kegel exercises: Kegel exercises are exercises for the pelvic floor muscles that help prevent or reduce stress urinary incontinence. To do these, start laying down or seated (even on a toilet if needed!) and relax the muscles in your pelvis like you are letting go of wind then squeeze and lift those same muscles as you are trying to stop passing wind or stopping peeing. Be sure not to squeeze any other muscles such as your quads or glutes and do not hold your breath. Do this often, as it is a lifelong practice.
• Training your bladder: This can be done by only going to the bathroom at set times. Start by tracking when and how often you go to the bathroom each day. From there, add 15min between each visit, therefore slowly increasing the amount of time between visits and training the bladder to hold more urine before signaling the need to go again.
• Pelvic floor exercises: Core exercise that are pelvic floor friendly are: modified plank with a slight bend at the hips, ball bridge, bird dogs, standing balance work, and various exercise ball movements. Avoid doing strong abdominal exercises and work core exercises that protect the pelvic floor. Exercises to avoid can include sit ups, crunches, v-sits, leg lifts, abdominal machine exercises, and other exercises that put excess stress on the pelvic floor. To help, avoid breath-holding on lefts and breathe out with exertion. Like any other muscle, the pelvic floor exhausts after so much use and more rest may be needed between sets and repetitions on certain exercises until your pelvic floor fitness improves.

Leina Greenwalt coaches at Freedom Fit Gym. She's an ACE Certified CPT with a BS in Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at [email protected]

By: Vincent Belviso CSAC,  SCS

Jump training can serve as the foundational element of power training before any type of external loading is applied. Maybe you haven’t started lifting weights yet or you have a younger child that you want to be more explosive on the field/court but are not sure their bodies are ready for the weights just yet. Jump training can serve as that introductory to force development.
 
Similar to almost every exercise out there, plyometrics have progressions and regressions. The important thing is to identify the base level, what we may refer to as an “assessment” in the fitness industry.
 
If someone wants to learn how to squat with the barbell, they should not just start throwing plates on the bar to see where they might collapse. Personally, we have every client perform a bodyweight squat initially. If someone is not efficient at controlling their own body in space, demonstrating the proper skills required in a squat (knees out, back flat, reaching proper depth), how can they be efficient in the movement once a load is applied? 
 
In the same light, one should not just start stacking bumper plates on top of a box until they can no longer jump that high without mastering the fundamentals first. We want to train to perform better; not to fail. This requires being able to train on a consistent basis without having to take extended time off due to being so sore you can’t even walk for days or, even worse, injury.
 
Take care of one aspect (perfecting the basics) before trying to move on to the next level (progression)!
 
The following phases will detail lower intensity plyo work, feel free to use as THE workout in the beginning and gradually turn it into a warm-up as you become ready to progress:
 

1. Know how to HINGE. I can’t tell you the number of clients and young athletes I have encountered that simply have no idea how to sit back in their hips and prime their glutes and hamstrings. If you do not know how to do this on cue, without having to think about it, there can be no Stretch Shortening Cycle (SSC) and your knees will not be able to tolerate even the lowest intensity plyo work.
2. If you’ve mastered the hinge, you are ready for Snap Downs. This is the process of quickly and forcefully sitting back into that hinge, almost a quarter squat position. This movement is priming phase one, the eccentric pre-stretch. Reach for the ceiling, long and tall, then forcefully throw your hands down and sit back into a hinge, and hold. After you have done a few and are ready to progress, you can make snap downs reactive by reaching for the ceiling on your tip-toes and repeating the steps listed above.
3. Can you feel your hamstrings stretch as you sit back into your hinge? Congratulations, you are ready to leave the floor. I prefer to work ankle extension first and Pogo Jumps are a terrific choice. Just imagine you are jumping rope in place, you can pick a set number (5 jumps) and stick the landing into a snap down on the last one. Then progress to timed rounds (10-15 seconds is all that is needed). Do a few rounds to get the body prepared for rapid deceleration and rebounding back to acceleration. 
4. Now we are ready for explosiveness from the floor. Knee Tucks are a great option, one rep at a time. Keep sets short and focus on driving your feet through the floor and landing in an advantageous position that absorbs the shock properly, leading you into the next rep. Each time you go to explode from the floor, try to get as much air as you can, tuck your knees into your abdomen, say to yourself (or scream out loud like Impractical Jokers) “SICK TRICK,” then land as soft as you can. You should immediately come back to the bottom of a snap down position, arms back, and come to a complete stop before rebounding into the next jump.
5. Finally, let’s put everything together with a few short rounds of Squat Jumps, sets of five jumps are all that is needed. Squat to full depth (don’t cut yourself short!), hit the bottom of your squat hard and immediately drive your feet through the floor, get as much air as you can (reaching for the ceiling as you come off the floor, arm action plays an integral role), “SICK TRICK,” land soft and immediately sink into your modified squat/snap down position to go into the next rep.

 
I highly encourage you to begin here and perform this as your entire ‘plyo routine’ until you are comfortable and efficient at each movement, and to learn how to control your body so you do not feel like you are “crashing down” on every jump. As Tony Gentilcore would say, “land like a ninja.” The ability to control one’s own bodyweight in space needs to be the foundation of any plyo program. Do not rush through these steps- they are the building blocks for more advanced training.
 
Use this as a warm-up if you are interested in increasing your vertical, want to become better at jumping, or to feel better force production from your legs on heavier squats, deadlifts, or olympic lifting sessions. If you do, let me know how it goes. If you have any questions on how to implement plyometrics into your routine, let’s chat.
 
Vinnie can be reached at [email protected]

By: Vincent Belviso, CSAC, SCS
 
What are the two most common goals I hear most often from a great deal of people referencing their fitness goals?
 
“I want to lose weight and gain muscle.”
 
Usually at the same time.
 
While not impossible, it is incredibly difficult to accomplish both tasks simultaneously and takes a level of dedication (and quite a toll on the ‘quality of life’ scale) that would make daily life rather unenjoyable.
On the positive side, if you are a beginner, looking to start exercise for the first time, or get back into it for the first time in a while, you should be able to see decent progress in both directions as you form an initial routine. 
The increased activity level should help you start to shed off some of that unwanted weight and, as your body starts to become accustomed to some of the exercises you are doing, you should be able to increase the weight in a majority of your lifts rather quickly. 
 
When you start to progress past the newbie stage, the scale and/or the weight might begin to stall. Time for an adjustment!
 
The people that are most successful in achieving their fitness goals, assuming you haven’t resorted to taking locker room “advice” from the bro with the fanny pack in the gym bathroom (yes, drugs), are the ones that can prioritize losing weight or gaining muscle into separate cycles and stick to it. 
 
The million dollar fitness secret… losing weight requires the body to be in a caloric deficit; gaining muscle requires the body to be in a caloric surplus. 
 
We circle back to the initial point: if you had just one goal to accomplish, what is it?
 
It is important to define what your goal is because it should completely dictate your training approach and your nutrition. The same principle can be applied to various forms of exercise, especially plyometric and top speed training. If you have been following along with this series you now know what plyometrics is and how to warm-up/ prepare for jump training.
 
If you were training to increase your strength in the deadlift, you would want a metric to be able to track your progress. This is most commonly accomplished by testing a 1 or 2 rep max. After establishing a trackable metric, the first step would be to deadlift every week for the next several weeks. You also would not just perform multiple sets of 10 at the same weight every week; or, if you do, it is doubtful that your 1 or 2 rep max is going to change much. Instead, you would work in progression from week to week, adding on weight and performing less reps as the intensity increases. 
 
Conditioning is not training for maximum performance! If you are new to jump training or top speed training, or just getting back into it for the first time in a while, initially just the acts of jumping or sprinting will help you improve. However, at some point you will stall and without a progressive approach, you may hit the wall. 
 
Performing box jumps until you are blue in the face or running fatigued sprints out on the track can help your conditioning, but will poorly translate over to force development. In order to get faster or jump higher, each rep must be performed with high intensity (MAXIMUM EFFORT!). This means treating this form of training in the same manner you would train to improve your 1 or 2 rep max for deadlift: low, challenging rep schemes and enough rest time between sets so you are as close to 100% fresh as you can be before the beginning of the next set.
 
Sessions need to revolve around performance and execution, not exhaustion. 
 
Generally speaking, if the goal is to simply increase your aerobic conditioning, by all means set up that low box and unleash your inner-bunny at any point in your workout. However, if you are prioritizing jumping higher, being able to run faster or using plyo training to help increase one of your major compound lifts, plyo training needs to be prioritized towards the beginning of your workout when you are fresh, keep your sets short so that you can attack every rep with intent and purpose, take as long of rest times between sets as needed, and there should be a 48-72 hour recovery period between sessions. 
 
Intent is key, define your goal.
 


Vinnie can be reached at [email protected]