You did it! Can you believe we’re at Week 12?! But remember with fitness, you can’t start and stop. In order to maintain results and health and fitness benefits, it’s a forever thing!
Change Things Up:
This week, change around the sequence or order that you are performing your exercises. For example, if you always do your cardio first, this week, do it after your muscle conditioning. Or if you do cardio and muscle conditioning on alternate days, this week try doing both cardio and muscle on the same day. If you have been doing your resistance exercises in the following order; Legs, Upper Body, Core – this week, try doing all your leg exercises first, then your upper body exercises next and finish with your core. By altering your workout sequence, the stimulus to your muscles will be very different and it will feel like a completely different workout.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Twelve…
“People often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.” Mohandas Gandhi
We have two weeks left to our Spring Into Shape For Summer Program. But there is NO finish line with fitness so this is just a beginning to your Best Life!
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Eleven…
“W
hat you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals”.- Zig Ziglar
We’re honing in on the finish line of our Spring into Shape for Summer Program. But remember with fitness there is NEVER a finish line. Two weeks left to take everything to the next level. And just as the quote says above – taking the time to do the things necessary to be your best, says a lot about you as a person! So stick with it no matter what!
Cardio
This week, try hill training. It will develop your strength, power and overall fitness. If part of your program includes walking, running, or cycling, find a short hill (about 100 meters long) and perform 5-10 hill repeats once this week.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Ten…
We’ve been at this for 2 months now and you should be in better shape and experiencing improved fitness, strength and energy! If you haven’t started yet, go back through prior weeks and start today. You deserve to look and feel your best!
Cardio
Continue what we’ve been focusing on and this week, add 1-2 really long, low intensity workouts. This type of training will really develop your aerobic fitness. For example, go for an hour plus walk, hike or bike ride.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Nine…
“Personal success is never static. It usually comes in small steps leading to other small steps that lead to broader achievement” W. Roberts
Past blogs in this series
Cardiovascular Conditioning
This week incorporate a cardio-split workout once or twice. This means that you workout twice in one day. So you could, say, get up and go for a power-walk and then later in the evening, go for a bike ride or take a fitness class. This will rev your metabolism and really stimulate great results.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Eight…
We’ve been getting some nice signs that summer is on the way! It’s a good time to reassess your goals, monitor your progress and determine if you’re on track. If you are, great job. If not, don’t stress about it – just recommit today.
Previous Blogs in This Series
Cardiovascular Conditioning
This week we incorporate cross-training into your workout. If you’ve been walking to get fit, this week we’d like you to see if you can also include another form of cardio training such as cycling or swimming or fitness classes. Make sure your weekly cardio training includes 2-3 different types of exercise instead on only one form.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Six…
Lack of time is the number one reason people report they don’t exercise. Well, have you ever heard the saying “People who can’t find the time to exercise will one day be forced to find the time for illness and disease!” So start today and make the commitment to yourself! You can go online to access the first 4 weeks of the program so it’s not too late to commit to getting in great shape for summer!
Continue with what you’ve learned so far and add on today’s tips:
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Five…
There is plenty of time to take your fitness to a whole new level by summer. Continue implementing everything you’ve learned over the last 3 weeks and add on today’s tips to be in top shape by summer!
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Four…
Have you implemented some or all of the tips from last week’s column and started to develop some good healthy habits? Continue doing everything you learned last week and add on today’s tips. The goal is to get you into incredible shape just in time for summer and we’ve got a few months to make that happen. Give us three months and I’ll give you the best summer of your life!
Cardiovascular Conditioning
Add up the total minutes of cardio activity you did last week. If you want to continue improving, implement the overload principle which means this week you increase your total minutes by 10%. So if you did 100 minutes last week, this week you do 110 minutes.
Read more on Spring Into Shape For Summer – Week Two…
We are celebrating our 18th Anniversary at Northwest Personal Training and Drew Carney from the KGW Early Morning Show recently did a segment with us to discuss what has changed over the last 18 years since we opened our doors. Here’s the highlights from that segment:
Dynamic Warm-up
It used to be common practice to perform static stretching before all exercise. Now we have learned it’s not a great idea to stretch prior to working out when the tissue is not properly warmed up. Instead we have learned the importance of a dynamic warmup – the body doesn’t go well from 0-60 so you need to warm the muscles and connective tissue, lubricate the joints and prepare the energy systems for the intense activity. So instead of holding a stretch for a sustained period of time, instead we will mimic the movements we will perform during the activity but at a lower intensity, low impact, low load, low speed before we gradually increase the intensity, load, impact and speed. Read more on Changes in Fitness Over The Last 18 Years…
