Jun 05
“All I did was bend over to pick up a bag of dog food,” Wolfgang explained as he eased himself onto the bench at the beginning of his training session, clearly wincing in pain as he put his hand on his lower back. “I hear about people throwing their backs out moving couches or refrigerators. …
May 31
“I almost went down stepping off the curb at the grocery store last week,” Frieren mentioned as she laced up her shoes for her morning training session. “I caught myself, but for a second I really thought I was going over.” She laughed it off, but the look in her eyes told the rest of …
May 02
Injuries, joint conditions, and pain-producing areas among our personal training clients commonly occur in the lower back, knees, and shoulders. In terms of which area of the body is most affected by pain, the lower back seems to be public enemy number one, followed by the knees as the second most compromised area, and in …
Apr 24
“Who’s that handsome guy?” My grandpa remarked after looking at his reflection in the mirror after I gave him a fresh haircut. It was nothing fancy. I simply used his clippers, stashed in his bathroom drawer, to trim the back and sides of the scraggly, unevenly grown hair sprouting from his scalp in random places. …
Apr 17
As members of the general population, we engage in a wide variety of physical activities. Some of us participate in a broad range of hobbies and chores that keep us active, such as walking our pets, gardening, or completing home improvement projects. For those of us who have children or grandchildren, our physical activities become …
Apr 16
What if getting stronger and preventing injuries wasn’t about doing more exercises, but about moving better? That’s the idea behind functional movement training. Functional movement training grew out of physical therapy, rehabilitation science, and strength and conditioning. Instead of isolating single muscles, it focuses on training fundamental movement patterns your body uses every day (e.g. …
Apr 16
There are two primary forms of stretching we use with our personal training clients: dynamic and static. Dynamic stretching is performed before exercise. Dynamic stretching can be defined as the act of moving through full ranges of motion to create short, repeated stretches that prepare the body for exercise. A few examples include arm circles, …
Apr 08
“That’s just bad math,” my physics professor told me, clearly unimpressed, as I struggled through a long equation involving solving for potential energy involving force production in overhead throwing athletes in the lab. “Use PEMDAS.” She had a way of delivering that line with just enough irritation to make sure it stuck. At the time, …
Mar 30
Commonly seen Lower-body exercises at the gym might include squats, lunges, and leg presses. However, one overlooked movement that is critical not only for refining lower-body strength but also for reinforcing the structural integrity of the stabilizing muscles of the hips, knees, and ankles is side-to-side movement. The lateral split squat targets lower-extremity muscles involved …
Mar 27
“Make sure you look forward,” I cued Tina, one of our personal training clients, as she was performing a set of “zombie squats” during one of her training sessions. Her eyes darted toward me momentarily to receive the instruction and then returned to looking straight ahead. She immediately rotated her head upward, with her chin …
