Personal Training
Best Birthday & Exercise Info…
Hi guys! How was everyones Aprils fools? Any fun pranks that got played on you or vice versa? None for me, but I do love watching others get pranked. I had a GREAT birthday yesterday! thank you all so so so much for the birthday comments and facebook posts. It made me smile from ear to ear.
I went to Jason’s before we went to dinner. He had some ‘things’ for me. I started opening…
And was SO happy!!!!
Tory Burch Flats!! I <3 these!!! I also got lots of goodies from my parents, that they had given to Jason before they left for their trip. They are so sneaky!! I will post those after Friday. I am going to my parents house for dinner and just waiting to see if anything else comes along. After opening my amazing present, we headed to the restaurant we were going to for dinner. Lexx is a contemporary american restaurant in Lexington, MA. We tried going here once before, but ended up going somewhere else. I was so excited to try it!
We started with an arugula salad. It was topped with roasted portabello mushrooms, caramelized shallot and herb vinaigrette with cheese. Jason and I have a newfound love for fresh romano cheese. It is so salty and sharp and delicious paired with spicy arugula. I loved the mushrooms too, I just wish there were more! romano
For dinner, I got the grilled salmon. It was maple-honey glazed served with roasted asparagus and winter root vegetable salad. WOW. So delicious!! I loved the root vegetables and the salmon was cooked perfectly! This restaurant is a keeper.
No cake because its Passover, and I am sure my mom will have some sort of ice cream or yogurt cake tomorrow night. The only thing I wanted was FRO-YO! we stopped at TCBY and I got a small vanilla and chocolate twist. It was perfect!
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Today, I got to sleep in a bit because I had work at 11:30. As many of you know, I am an exercise specialist/personal trainer at a corporate fitness center. Well we started a running club! Every Thursday my manager or I lead a 3.5 mile run outside. This week was my week and it was AWESOME! The weather was perfect today and I had perfectly digested my breakfast so I was ready to go! I clocked in at 3.6 miles in 34:30. Not too bad! And the best part was it FLEW by because I was running the whole time with one of our members and we were chatting. I definitely could have kept going!
I had some banana when I came back in.
and a protein cake! I made this at home this morning. 1 scoop BSN cinnamon roll protein powder, 1 TBSP unsweetened applesauce, 3 TBSP egg whites, dash of baking powder. Cook in a mug in the microwave for about 1 min.
Lunch was a delicious and colorful salad! Romaine, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, edamame, red pepper (I also had a veggie burger on the side)
1/2 of an apple pie Larabar
The star of my snack at around 4:30. Chemical filled Smuckers SF jam. I love this stuff! (everything in moderation, right?)
In a Brown Cow Yog.
Yesterday, I roasted up some broccoli, brussels sprouts and 1 sweet potato. All went into the over at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes
My dinner was a tupperware of the roasted deliciousness and a Lou’s aged provolone chicken sausage
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The video below, is one of my best friends. She ALWAYS was interested in stand up comedy and gettin g on stage to make people laugh. She is 23 and started taking some stand up comedian classes with a friend in New York City. Here is her first show!! It’s funny, just watch!
And lastly I wanted to post some exercise info for you all about busting through Plateaus
If you have been exercising or weight-lifting for an extended period of time will eventually hit one. It’s never an issue of will I plateau, but when.
Training plateaus can be particularly frustrating because they will typically occur when you feel the strongest or following a period of rapid progress. Psychologically, they can really bring down your motivation because it takes the spotlight away from all of the progress you’ve made over the past few weeks or months. You can begin to feel like you don’t even want to workout anymore because your body stops adapting to the changes to you are putting upon it
The good news is that there are a number of proven techniques that you can use to break through a weight training plateau
Why do Plateaus happen?
Training plateaus happen because our bodies are constantly adapting to the stresses that we place on it. When it becomes too familiar with a routine, the body adapts and stops working as hard as it potentially could. The body doesn’t like much change, so when we place stresses on it that cause it to change (lift heavier weights, include a new routine or exercise) it responds. To get stronger and develop muscle growth and tone, you have to continually overload your muscles, so in their effort to adapt, they grow and get stronger.
Techniques to try to avoid plateaus.
Take a break:
If you’ve truly hit a plateau and know it because stalled in strength or endurance gains, then it’s time to give yourself a rest. Yes, I’m actually recommending that you workout less, instead of more, to break a training plateau.
You can do this one of two ways:
1. Active Rest: Active rest is when you continue your exercise routine for a week, but lighten the resistance to between 30-50% of your One Rep Max (1RM). This will feel very light, and you will probably want to do many reps, but this is the point. You want to give your body a break, but to still remain active during that rest period. This high-rep, low-intensity workout keeps your usual workout patterns and habits intact, but allows a recovery period.
2. In-Active Rest: This means taking a break for seven days from any weight or resistance training. You can continue to perform cardio if you like or just give yourself a break from all exercise for a week. Many people find that when they return to the gym the following week, they feel stronger and actually can lift more weight or perform more reps than before the rest.
Change your rep ranges and specificity
Take a look at your workouts (log if you have) and see if you are consistently training with the same rep and set scheme and change it.
For example, if most of your workouts are in the 8-10 rep range, it’s time to change it up. You can do that by either adjusting your resistance up to force you to train in a lower-rep band (4-6 reps) or decreasing your resistance and training in a higher-rep range (15-20 reps.)
In simple terms you should try to do the opposite of what you’ve been doing in terms of weight and reps.
If you lower your reps with more weight, you’ll be emphasizing muscular strength. If you increase reps and decrease load, you’ll be training for muscular endurance. Both of these can help bust through a weight training plateau.
Change the Order of Your Exercises
By Changing the order of exercises within your routine, you may see an increase in strength, endurance and size.
For example, if you are always performing chest before shoulders, your triceps may be pre-fatigued before your triceps exercises. This can make you lift less weight during your shoulder exercises, with your triceps as he limiting factor.
You can perform shoulder work first, this way your triceps haven’t been touched and no longer the weakest muscle. You may find that you can lift more weight with your shoulders than you could before which can help balance things out and make those muscles grow!
Try Drop Sets
Drop sets involve performing a set of repetitions at your normal weight and rep range for a given exercise until you begin to fatigue, then you reduce the weight and continuing to perform the exercise with reduced poundage until fatigued, dropping the weight again and continuing for additional back-to-back sets. Drop sets are continued a pretty high intensity form of weight training. It encourages mucle growth due to the deep fatigue of the muscle fibers. They can be performed on machines or free weights. Example Below
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Tricep kickbacks
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10lb
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15 reps (3 sets)
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8lb
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15 reps
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5lb
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15 reps
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- Do you have any guilty pleasures or chemical filled foods that you enjoy once in a while? I love sugar free jam and also sugar free Jell-o!!
- If your birthday was right around the corner what would you ask for?
