Seasonal Articles

Weight Training for Weight Loss

By Kelly Vargo, ACE contributor

As a female in the exercise science field for the past 12 years, I have learned a thing or two about the importance of weight training. When the end goal is weight loss (or pretty much any end goal), a weight-training program is a must.

Let’s get real. Sure, you can cut your calories in half, or spend your morning or evenings doing cardio to lose some pounds, but I can promise you both will not last nor will they give you a healthy looking and functioning body. 

When it comes to weight training for weight loss, it is important to put a few key points out there. First, you will not get BIG from lifting weights. You get “big” from overconsumption of energy (calories), which can be converted into fat or muscle based on the types of foods you eat and the exercise you do. Second, you can lift more than you think—and you should (with the help of a spotter, if necessary). And finally, if weight training is done properly you will likely be sore the day or two after your workouts (especially if you are new to resistance exercise). This is called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, and it is a normal response to weight training. Be sure to stretch, drink plenty of water and incorporate sound nutrition to help your body recover quickly between workouts.

Here are five key points to keep in mind while working toward your weight- or fat-loss goals. After all, weight is just a number and doesn’t say a whole lot about your body. I know a woman who is 5’2” and weighs about 135 pounds, while another is 5’2” and weighs around 113 pounds—the biggest difference is the amount of muscle they each have. Keep that in mind as you work toward your goals.

1. Lift heavy weights. I have trained a lot of individuals over the years and I cannot tell you how many have sold themselves short. You won’t get results lifting the same weights you’ve been lifting (if you’ve been lifting). You have to go up in weight. Increase weight and you’ll increase your strength and muscle mass. Increase your muscle mass and you’ll increase your metabolic rate. Increase your metabolic rate and you will burn more calories. Burn more calories than you consume and you will lose weight. If you want to lose weight and not look “skinny fat,” you need to lift HEAVY weights.

2. Intensity. You don’t have to spend more than 30 to 45 minutes on your weight workouts. In fact, you could cut this down to 20 minutes.  The key is to work hard throughout the entire workout, minimizing rest and keeping your heart rate elevated.  

3. I want you to fail. If you want your body to change, you have to push past your comfort zone. So when I say I want you to fail, I mean I want you to have to rest. I want you to not be able to finish that last rep or two, because you picked up the heavier weights. By pushing your body out of its comfort zone, you are forcing it to respond and to change. Your body has to use energy to repair and recover. Make your body work for you, and don’t be afraid to fail.

4. Do supersets and hybrids. A superset involves doing two or more exercises that target the same muscle group, back to back with minimal rest in between. For example, doing a set of 12 heavy squats followed by a set of 12 heavy lunges is a superset. A hybrid involves combining two or more movements into one movement. Combining a squat with a shoulder press or a lunge with a squat followed by a lunge are examples of hybrid exercises. Incorporating these into your weight-training workouts can increase the intensity of your training, which is ideal for losing weight.

5. Circuit Training. Circuit training is a great way to get in multiple exercises. You can focus on your upper body, lower body, or total body, all while keeping the intensity up. Of course, you still want to focus on using heavy weights. Below is a sample total-body, circuit-training workout. Move quickly from exercise to exercise and rest for a minute at the end of each round. Don’t be afraid to rest during a set, recover quickly, and then get back after it. 

Ultimately, weight-loss occurs due to a combination of factors—sleep, nutrition, mindset and physical activity all play key roles in initiating and maintaining weight-loss. Aim for three total-body, high intensity, circuit-type workouts a week. 

5 Simple Strategies to Supercharge Your Energy

Brett Klika, ACE

Early mornings, late nights, commitments, demands, responsibilities and expectations can make us feel like we're a sponge that has been squeezed dry of one of our most precious resources: ENERGY. When we walk around feeling like this day after day, it negatively affects almost every aspect of life. From our health and careers to our relationships, when we have no more energy to give, the going gets tough. 

So when the going starts to get tough, how do we get going again? 

Energy has physiological, neurological and even psychological components. It is also a carefully regulated economy within our lives. If we're constantly spending energy, we need to have some strategies to earn and replenish it as well. All spending and no earning is a failing formula in any arena. 

With a few simple daily steps in our demand-laden, busy, stressed-out life, however, we can replenish our energy bank account and actually earn more energy to spend on the things that are most important to us. 

What would you do with more energy? 

Here are five simple steps you can take every day to ensure that your energy economy ends up in the positive column, so you can do more of the things that feed your soul. 

1. Go to Bed and Get Up at the Same Times Every Day

From a physiological standpoint, sleep is the ultimate energy recuperator. The relationship between going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning used to be simple—when the sun went down, the darkness would trigger the brain to release sleep hormones and neurotransmitters. When the sun came up, the light would trigger wake-up hormones and neurotransmitters. 

With this natural, consistent balance of sleeping and awaking, our ancestors had the energy they needed to hunt, gather, build and do anything else they needed to do. Today, our sleep cycle is more dependent on evening television programming than the sun. Artificial light convinces our brain that it is daytime whenever we want it to be. Instead of the sun deciding when we go to sleep and wake up, we have to regulate this ourselves. 

As mentioned, falling asleep and waking up are largely affected by hormones and neurotransmitters in the brain. When the sun was our sleep regulator, these chemicals "learned" when to be released. With this learned consistency, we would get sleepy at bedtime and feel alert after waking up in the morning. 

We no longer rely on the predictable sun, so it's up to each individual to go to bed and wake up at consistent times so the sleep and waking hormonal and neural processes learn when to do their thing. The more consistent we are, the more efficient the process works. The better we sleep, the more we recuperate our energy. 

2. Move More 

Humans are perpetual motion machines. The process of getting enough of the good stuff in and the bad stuff out of our brain, muscles and other cells relies heavily on frequent movement throughout the day. Research suggests most Americans are completely sedentary for up to 15 hours per day, independent of sleep. It appears this level of inactivity may be as risky to our health as smoking cigarettes. 

When you move, you aid in driving blood circulation, which gets more oxygen and glucose to the brain and energy-producing “engines” of the cells (the mitochondria). You also stimulate areas of your brain in charge of coordination, which can also help keep you out of the midday fog. Go ahead and stand up right now and lift your arms above your head. Stay standing for about 10 seconds. You will actually notice a change in your energy even in that short amount of time. 

Try to create a work/home environment where you are able to stand up and move frequently. Try parking farther away from destinations, taking the stairs instead of the elevator and standing up for at least a few minutes every 30 to 45 minutes. 

Even something as simple as standing up can drive more oxygen and glucose to create energy, so imagine what exercise can do for your energy levels. Every day, do 20 minutes of something that elevates your heart rate—dancing, running, swimming, hiking, jogging, or anything else you enjoy doing. 

3. Eat Smaller Meals Frequently

While eating frequent small meals does not appear to play as large a role in weight loss as once believed, this simple daily habit can create a drastic change in your energy levels. 

The brain uses glucose (blood sugar) as its food. When it doesn’t have enough, or when there is too much, we get tired, foggy, lazy and unfocused. Think about your level of energy when you’re really hungry, then consider how your energy levels are after a large meal. 

Unfortunately, many American’s have developed the habit of not eating breakfast and then consuming a large, high-calorie lunch, a few high-sugar, high-fat snacks, and a large dinner. With this “feast or famine” level of blood sugar supplied to the brain, it makes it difficult to create consistent energy levels. 

Start each day with a balanced breakfast that includes protein, fat, carbohydrates, and plenty of fruits and vegetables. About three hours later, have a small snack with a similar nutrient profile. You’ll be less hungry for lunch and more apt to make better choices when you’re not voraciously hungry. Another balanced snack after lunch and before dinner curbs the pre-dinner and even post-dinner snacking, while decreasing the likelihood you’ll overeat at dinner. 

Fruit, nuts, shakes and other snacks are easy to prepare and carry with you. 

4. Stop Multitasking and Instead Create Time Chunks

The more tasks we split our energy between in a given period of time, the poorer our performance on each of the tasks will become. In addition, we use our energy inefficiently when we try to do many things at once, so we end up spending quite a bit of energy with a very limited return on our investment. 

Instead of attempting to do multiple tasks at once, create a clear time frame to focus on one thing. This could be as short as a few minutes or it could be hours. Most people will find a “sweet spot,” during which they can apply maximal focus without going off course. If you have to keep up with multiple demands, you may need to create short time chunks. This way, you can use your energy effectively and efficiently on one task, do it well, then move to another task and repeat. 

Many successful people have learned to use time chunks for meetings, email, projects, hobbies and other work or leisure tasks so they can get the largest return for their investments of time and energy. 

5. Gratitude

When we’re flying through each day, trying to keep up with the constant demands being thrown at us, it’s easy to slip into “the sky is falling, whoa is me” mode. When we’re stressed, our brains work differently. We tend to only see what’s in front of us and we lose scope of a bigger picture. 

While it’s true that things can go very wrong, there are always things that are going very right,  but this can be tough to remember when the going gets tough. 

When you let your fight-or-flight brain completely take over for long periods of time, you squander your energy levels and drain them quickly. Something as simple as taking five minutes a day to write down a short (or long) list of things you are thankful for can help turn off, or at least turn down, the fight-or-flight brain. This realization that there are positive things in your life despite negative events can help boost your mood, energy and even performance.

Random Acts of Kindness…

The True Spirit of the Season

I recently went to an NCL meeting with my daughter where $2 bills were scattered randomly on chairs. The mom who put them there talked to the girls about random acts of kindness and encouraged them to “pay it forward” by passing their $2 bill on to someone they didn’t know. Then this morning, I turned on my favorite show, CBS Sunday Morning and they featured a Secret Santa in Pittsburg who goes out into the public this time every year and randomly finds people who look like they need some “kindness” and hands them a $100 bill.  The segment left me a little teary eyed I have to admit. If you would like to see it, you can find it here: http://beta.www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-santa-proves-kindness-is-the-best-gift-to-give/

So this week, let’s use our wonderful Forever Fit Community to make the world a little “sweeter”.  Find an opportunity to do a random act of kindness for a complete stranger, and tell us about it on our blog: http://www.foreverfitsandiego.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html Kindness really is the best gift of all!

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” 

― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Holiday Workout Challenge

Forever Fit 12 Days of Fitness

Perform this workout just like you would sing the song “12 Days of Christmas”. On the first day of fitness my trainer gave to me: 1 squat jump.  On the second day of fitness my trainer gave to me 2 push-ups, 1 squat jump and a strong body as you can see.  On the 3^rd day of fitness my trainer gave to me 3 jumping jacks, 2 push-ups, 1 squat jump and a strong body as you can see. You get the idea.

Day 1: 1 squat jump

Day 2: 2 push-ups

Day 3: 3 jumping jacks

Day 4: 4 side skates

Day 5: 5 elbow plank hip hikes

Day 6: 6 high knees

Day 7: plank jacks

Day 8: 8 plyo lunges

Day 9: butt kicks

Day 10: 10 crab toe touches

Day 11: 11 bridges

Day 12: 12 burpees

Home Tabata Workout

We recommend downloading the free app called Interval Timer. Set your timer to 20 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest with multiple rounds for this workout.

Warm-up: 20 seconds of the following: squats, high knee lifts, lunges, inchworms, windmills, jumping jacks, knee push-ups, repeat for a total of 4x

Complete each Tabata by going at an intensity level of 9-10. Take a 1 minute recovery break in between Tabatas.

Tabata #1: (remember tabata means 8 rounds 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off)

High Knee jogs

Side skates

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #2:

Squats

Squat hold with towel rows

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #3:

3 jumping jacks and one star jack

Running Man

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #4:

Right leg side lunge hop when coming back to center

Left leg side lunge

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #5:

Push-ups

Superplanks

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #6:

Burpees

Repeat 7 more times

Tabata #7:

Right Leg Bridge

Left Leg Bridge

Repeat 3 more times

Tabata #8:

V sit ups

Russian twist elbow touching the ground on each side

Repeat 3 more times

Week #1

Move #1:

The Matrix – Donkey kick, plank thrust, bear crawl kick-through

Move #2:

Side lunge, jump the middle, side lunge

Move #3:

Cross body mountain climber 3x, jump one foot toward the center and back out, repeat on the other side

Try This!

Rise and Shine Flow

5 minutes of Yoga to start the day feeling grounded

by Kassie Pagaling

Half Moon Pose

Standing Backward Bend

Mountain Pose

Ragdoll

Half-way Lift

High Plank

Cat and Cow stretches

Downward Facing Dog

Gorilla Pose

Equal Standing Pose

Now you’re ready to start your day!

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #9 Exercise Challenge

 Century Challenge!

100 Reps of each:

100 squats
100 jump ropes
100 second plank
100 lunges (50 each leg)
100 crunches
100 stairs (any count)
100 bridges
100 bicycles 

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #8 Exercise Challenge

  

 1,800 Stairs

or

2,200 Jumps via Jump rope

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #7 Exercise Challenge

  

 Lunges

500 this week

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #6 Exercise Challenge

  

 Push-ups

150 this week

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #5 Exercise Challenge

  

 Burpees!

250 this week
(Yes, you knew this was coming!)

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week #4 Exercise Challenge

  

 Planks!

15 - 1 minute planks 

over the course of this week! 

Spring Buddy Challenge

Week 3 Exercise Challenge

  

 Climb those stairs!  

Look for any set out outside stairs 

(it’s okay to count hotel and office stairs 

in buildings with multiple floors). 

Over the course of a week, try to climb 1,000 steps. 

You can count any stairs we do at bootcamp.

Week #10 Workout Finisher

  

Perform each exercise below for 45-seconds, then rest for 10-seconds

Star Jumps

Squat Pulses

Inchworm or Bear Crawl Walkout Push-up & Walk Back

Repeat for 3 more times

Week #9 Workout Finisher

  

Perform each exercise below for 1 minute

Burpee with Push-up

Alternating Leg Bridges

Jack Knives

Bicycles

Then rest for 1 minute and repeat one more time

Week #8 Workout Finisher

  

Perform each exercise below 4 times for 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest

Lateral Hops with Jump - 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off 4x

Crab Toe Touches - 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off 4x

Plank Jacks - 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off 4x

Week #7 Workout Finisher

Perform each exercise below 4 times for 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest

After the 4th set, move to the next exercise 

Total Body Extensions

Spiderman Planks

Skater Hops

Jumping Jacks

Week #6 Workout Finisher

Perform this exercise for 1 minute , then rest for 1 minute

Repeat 2x 

Side Shuffle

with Burpee at each end

Week #5 Workout Finisher

Alternate between each exercise (then 10-seconds off)

Repeat 3x 

Side Skates (30-sec.'s)
Wind Sprints (1 minute)

Week #4 Workout Finisher

Alternate between each exercise for 30-seconds on (then 10-seconds off)

Repeat 3x 

Up-downs
Jack Knives

Week #3 Workout Finisher

Alternate between each exercise for 30-seconds on (then 10-seconds off)

Repeat 3x 

Surfer Jumps
Crab position toe touches

Week #2 Workout Finisher

Alternate between each exercise for 30-seconds on (then 10-seconds off)

Repeat 3x 

• High Knees
• Burpee with Squat Jack

Week #1 Workout Finisher

Perform each exercise for 30-seconds with NO rest in between 

Squat Jumps
Plyo Lunges
Superplank
Running Man


High Kick to Spiderman (11/4/2013)

Charleston (D style!) 10/28/2013

Clock Plank (Rockin' it:) 10/21/2013

Side Plank With Inner thigh raise
10/14/2013

After the one side...flip around and do the other:)


Back Stroke Crunch 10/7/2013

Body Roll to Push Up (9/30/2013)

Toe Touch (9/23/2013) 

Hip Drop (9/16/2013)

Burpee (9/9/2013)

Turkish Getup (9/2/2013)