The Fit Stop
St Kilda's Fitness, Fat Loss & Health Resource

So the other day I was in a spot of bother as to where I was going to do my regular weight training workout…

I try to do some sort of weight training ideally 4 days per week but sometimes this doesn’t go according to plan with a newborn around (who doesn’t sleep!).

On this particlar day I hadn’t done any exercise in about 10 days or so coz I had the stupid flu, (real flu, not man flu) which really knocked me about. I was dying to do some training as it was starting to get to me and I felt lazy.

Even though I’ve got a whole gym at my disposal ive got a little gym setup in my garage at home that I also use, but on this particular day my 4 month old son was in the car, in the garage -  sleeping… It turns out he fell asleep in the car when Ella took him to the supermarket!

So there I was all ready to go, with about an hour of spare time up my sleeve with nowhere to train because Cooper was asleep in my gym!

So instead of skipping my workout, I decided to make the most of an inconvenient situation and… wake up Cooper – ONLY JOKING!

(I would never do that, especially after all the trouble we go through to actually get him to sleep in the first place, we’ll take whatever we can get. Plus it would be a complete waste of the new childrens book we just purchased)

Anyway, instead I went to the back yard, and did a body weight workout, without much equipment at all. I did jump squats (holding a weight plate), push ups, single leg squats, and ring rows on Jacksons swing set. It was actually quite a good workout in the end.

Not the most exciting story I know… but it did give me the idea for a blog post on DIY @ home workouts. Hopefully this will help YOU out for exercise options at home when you miss a session, or allow you to add in an extra session to your weekly routine.

So, as a general rule, I think it’s a good idea to shoot for a minimum of exercising 3 days per week doing total body workouts incorporating some strength training and interval training. This is enough to give you a good training stimulus and metabolic boost every couple of days, as well as giving you some rest and recovery days off.

But for those of you who might only be able to get in to the gym for a session 1-2 times per week, remember if you don’t do any other training on top of this you’re basically not doing any exercise 5-6 days out of the week! Sounds scary when you look at it like that! If this is the case it’s a good idea to find some time to do a quick, high intensity training session on your own to get that 3rd session in and that metabolism fired up.

and if you ever have to miss a session or you go away on holidays, you’ll also want to make sure you’re getting in some training on your own if possible.

So here are some ideas of what you can do on your own, often just at home, to get in 1 more training session per week or to make up a missed session – little things like this can make a big difference in your results over time.

Body weight strength training

Now this will depend on how strong you are, how hard you find lifting your own body weight and your access to heavy objects you can hold on to for extra weight as to the degree to which you can give yourself a good workout.

You can hit every muscle on your body with a basic strength circuit like this:

- Squats (or jump squats)
- Push ups (and push up variations)
- Lunges and variations of
- Band pullaparts (we’ve got lots of spare bands at the gym if anyone wants one)
- Plank hold

3 x 10-20 reps. 3 times through.

If you can do more than 15-20 body weight squats or lunges in a row with no problem, then you’ll need to add some weight. There’s really no rules as to what you can use, just pick up something appropriate, something that you can hold safely, and squat or lunge away. (for example sometimes I’ll even use my kids! – I’ve got a 4 year old or a 4 month old depending on how energetic I’m feeling!) 

Body Weight Circuits

 

If you’re a regular here at the gym, you’ve most likely done these before. Using bodyweight exercises is an easy way to add in some strength training to your workouts without the need for a gym or any equipment. You’re training nearly every muscle in your body to do these movements AND they’re also a great ‘cardio’ workout too, they’ll really get the heart rate up making them an awesome bang for you buck way to train. If fact I would pick a bodyweight circuit over ANY cardio machine in terms of effectiveness if you had to choose only 1 way to quickly train and get the most out of it. 

We’re not too concerned with weight here, its more just high intensity, fast paced repetitions.

Perform each exercise back to back without a break in between. Do as many reps as possible with good form.

- Squats – 30 sec
- Mountain Climbers – 30 sec
- Star Jumps – 30secs
- Burpees – 30 seconds
- 
Rest 60 seconds in between. Repeat 3 times
If you don’t have a timer you can do it for reps instead. E.g.

- Squats – 30 reps
- Mountain climbers – 50 shuffles
- Star Jumps 50 reps
- Burpees 10-15 reps
- 
Rest 60 seconds in between. Repeat 3 times.

Other body weight exercises you can use to make up a circuit (depending on your level of fitness) are:

- Squat Jumps
- Push ups (and variations)
- Burpees with a push up
- Reverse lunges
- Forward lunges
- Step ups (if you have something appropriate to do them on)
- Glute Bridges
- High Knee Sprinting on the spot
- Lying to standing (lying flat on your back then standing up)

And to adjust for your fitness levels you can

- Add or remove exercises to the circuit
- Increase or decrease interval periods or number of reps
- Increase / decrease or add in extra rest periods
- Use harder or easier exercises

 

Skipping

Ropes are cheap, easy to get and easy to store. They are very portable, making them a great option for @ home workouts. Depending on your fitness levels you can work up to a specific ‘time’ (like 5 mins or 10 mins without stopping), or you can mix up the intensity and do intervals (30 sec hard, 30 sec easy) Spending a good 20 minutes working hard with a rope can be a very good workout! 

 

Other Interval Training

If you live near a park, footy oval or beach, this is a good place to do some interval sprints.

If you’re at an oval you could run 1 lap around the oval as fast as possible, then rest for 60-120 seconds. Do this 5-10 times and you’ll be nicely done.

Or set up two points about 70-100 metres apart – sprint up & walk back. Repeat 5-10 times

Or… you could set up 3 points spread about 7 metres apart and do some shuttle runs (suicides) just like we do at the gym. You should be able to get through 1 of these in about 1 minute (give or take), and again, repeat 5-10 times.

Hill Sprints – find a big hill, run up it as fast as possible, walk down – repeat 5-10 times. This can be gruelling but is such a great workout, you’ll feel your lungs, your legs and your butt burn!

If you have bike, you can do some high intensity intervals for time. So you could sprint hard for 30 or 60 seconds, then rest for 30 or 60 seconds. Best part about the bike is you can go for a nice relaxing ride straight after!
So there you go, hope this has given you a few ideas of how you can incorporate some hard training in to your week on your own. Whether it’s getting in that extra session per week, or making up a missed session – now you have no excuses!

Here’s a simple print out for you to download – just so you’ve got a quick reference on hand when you need it!

Right Click Here  and ‘Save As’ —->  DIY Workouts – Print Out Sheet

Posture basically refers to the body’s alignment and positioning, and the demands it places on our joints, muscles and other connective tissues.

When you have good posture, it allows you to distribute the force of gravity, (and other external forces) throughout your body so no one particular joint or muscle is overstressed.

It’s like an architect has to take the laws of gravity and weight distribution into account when designing a building, or a car that needs to be in proper alignment to drive properly in a straight line. So much like a building with a badly designed or worn structure, when you have poor posture you are less resistant to the strains and stresses you face from day to day

In fact it’s what you do on a daily basis that has the biggest impact on your posture.

For a lot of you, the majority of your day to day time is spent time sitting at a desk or driving in a car which typically leads to the same common postural issues, and niggling aches and pains as a result.

So in this post I’m going to go over a few of these common issues with some action steps you can take to address them.

Now when was writing this post, I thought that adding some photos to help with my explanations would be great. But my wife Ella wasn’t home and it’s actually quite hard to take action photos of yourself from an iphone.

So I kidnapped my little boy Jackson from his room and got him to be my model for the action shots…those of you who train with me in the evenings at the gym would have met Jackson a few times running around like a crazy person.

He’s only just turned 4, and I think he does a very good job…maybe he’ll be a personal trainer one day…

Ok so back to common postural issues – here goes…

Tight Hip Flexors

 

Your hip flexors are a group of muscle that quite literally, produce flexion of your leg at the hip joint. So if you’re standing upright, lift one leg so your thigh is parallel to the floor. You’re using your hip flexors to do this.

When sitting down, your hip flexors are in a constantly shortened state, and in this day and age where sitting down for a lot of the day is common, our hip flexors will tend to become constantly tight, which can lead to inhibition and weakness too.

Often tight hip flexors will also pull down and cause a forward tilt in your pelvis, which leads to an excessive curve in your lower back. It can also make you look like your bum and belly stick out too!

(tight hip flexors will ‘pull down’ the front of the pelvis causing a pelvic tilt)

Unfortunately wearing high heels all day at work will exacerbate this pelvic tilt due to the way you have to stand, and it is a common double whammy for women.

This pelvic tilt will often mean your glutes (your bum) which are the opposing muscle group on the opposite side of the pelvis will find it hard to ‘switch on’ and activate during squats and lunges, which means you’ll have weak glutes and you won’t really be using them during training when your squatting & lunging. Because of this your body will compensate and overuse your quads (on the front of your thighs), which will tighten the hip flexors even more! It’s a vicious cycle…

This pelvic tilt and inactive glute situation is a really common cause of lower back pain too,

A) because your spine is in a constantly hyper extended position placing stress on your discs, and the supporting muscles in your lower back and

B) because your glutes don’t work your lower back muscles will have to compensate and work overtime for a lot of movements you do.

Which is why it’s such a good idea to do lots of glute bridges whenever you can to get those glutes activating and fired up. If we can first get the glutes working, then strengthen them – it will help to even out this imbalance!

Glute bridge – Start position

 

Glute bridge – end position. If Glutes aren’t working -  do as often as possible.

This needs to be attacked from both angles so you also want to work on loosening up those tight hip flexors, and the best way you can start addressing this is… foam rolling.

Foam rolling your hip flexors will do wonders in terms of immediately loosening them up, think of it like a massage for your legs. Once you’ve done a good stint with foam rolling, frequent stretching of the hip flexors will really help. Keep in mind the foam rolling may be quite painful initially if you are very tight, but if anything this indicates even more the need to fix them.

Position yourself so the front of your leg is on the roller, supporting yourself on your forearms and ‘brace’ your core. Roll all the way from the knee to the hip, focusing on any particularly tender spots.

And after a good stint on the roller, you’ll feel a lot looser and you’ll get a lot more out of your hip flexor stretches.

You want to feel this stretch on the front of your back leg, right near where your leg joins the torso. You can also lift up your back foot towards your bum for a better stretch.

 

 

Internally Rotated Shoulders

Again this is just a result of your body’s tissues adapting and shortening due to the position they are in for hours on end every day sitting at a desk or from bad programming in a your weight training. I’ve had to counteract internally rotated shoulders from doing way too much bench press, and not enough rowing exercises when I was in my teenage years.

Internally rotated shoulders look like you’re always hunching your shoulders and they are being pulled in front of you. This is mainly due to tight pectoral muscles (your chest), and often weak upper back muscles, so stretching the chest on a regular basis to counteract the posture you are in is a great idea as well as appropriate strength training exercises.

To stretch your chest, anchor your hand on a wall or anything solid, rotate your body away till you feel a stretch on one side of your chest. Stretch both sides.

‘Rounded shoulders’ often cause pain, tightness and trigger points in your neck and upper back muscles, as they are constantly lengthened and working overtime to counteract the pull from the opposing tight muscle groups in your chest.

A ball in sock to massage out those tight muscles in the chest and the upper back will do wonders here. Or you could get a professional massage from someone.

Any rowing or ‘pulling’ exercises like dumbell rows, ring rows, band rows will help out here, and exercises like face pulls, band pullaparts, and Cubans are great corrective exercises which will strengthen your shoulder external rotators to help counteract this imbalance. If you’re an active member here at the gym you should be getting in plenty of these movements on a regular basis.

If anyone wants a band to do more band pullaparts intermittently at home or at work for their posture, we have some spares at the gym you’re welcome to take.

 

 

 

 

Head Pokes Forward

Again, this often comes from constantly poking your head forward trying to read your computer screen (are you doing it now?). So every cm further from the midline of your body your head protrudes, the heavier it’s going to get for your neck muscles to support your head, especially your trapezius and levator scapulae muscles

A ball in sock will again do wonders for tightness in these muscles, and will really help in managing pain and stiffness. Or alternatively you could just pay to get a massage.

(personally I think I get a better massage with my ball in sock)

And stretching regularly will also help.

 

To stretch your traps and levator scapulae – pull your head down and to the side (like you’re sniffing an armpit), and reach your other hand around your back to rotate your scapula (shoulder blade) away to get more of a stretch.

  

 

Hunchback

This stems from adaption of you thoracic spine (upper back) to the hunched position usually adopted when sitting, or just getting around with poor posture. So we’ll tend to lose mobility in the thoracic spine (upper back) when this is the case, specifically ‘extension’ of the spine (the movement you make when you stand up tall).

When you lose mobility in your upper back, you body will compensate with extra movement in your lower back to perform certain movements during exercise or day to day activities. This is not good as we want to promote stability as much as possible through the lower back, not mobility.

This will affect nearly every movement you make from a push up to a squat. A great way to counteract this and keep healthy and mobile is to do back extension mobility drills on a foam roller.

 

Repeat this moving up and down – start up high near the base of the neck work your way down to about midway down the back. It almost looks like you’re doing sit ups (but your not) you want to be focusing on being loose and increasing mobility through your upper back.

And last but not least, the best exercise for your posture is to keep good posture throughout the day! So watch you’re not sitting down for longer than 30 mins without either changing position, or getting up to walk around. Watch your shoulders from rounding forward, your back from hunching over and your head from poking forward

Do the opposite of this…

So hope this helps you understand things a little better, remember just because bad posture doesn’t necessarily have immediate consequences, it will affect you sooner or later if you adopt bad postural habits. On top of that, no one wants to look like a hunchback when they’re older!

It is a lot easier to prevent than to fix so try remember to maintain good posture and you will be grateful down the line when you have a healthy, pain free, and strong body.

In fact if you’re at your computer now, set a reminder in your Outlook (or your phone) to remind you every 30 mins to adjust your posture, or to get up and walk around, or to have a quick stretch. Little things like this can make a big difference!

Ok, today’s post is just a quick one about a super simple, but really effective way to manage neck, back and shoulder pain. (Or pain anywhere else for that matter)

All you need to do is get a small ball, I find the bouncy balls you get from vending machines or little novelty discount shops are great, but you could also use a baseball/softball.
 

And a sock, just make sure its clean, and reasonably long. Don’t use ankle socks as this won’t work.

  
Yes…. I use a pink sock…

 

So just place the ball inside the sock like this…

 
And drape the sock over your shoulder, find a nice hard wall to lean up against and use the ball to massage out any trigger points or knots which are giving you grief.

What Are Trigger points You Ask?

A trigger point is basically a little knot or nodule in a muscle which is very irritable and tender. So if you touch it, you’ll know about it. They come about from muscle fibers which stay in a constant state of contraction, so this can hinder proper use of the muscle, limit full range of motion, and cause pain, discomfort and ‘tightness’. They can also refer pain to other areas of the body, its common for trigger points in your neck to lead to headaches or migraines for example.

So if you’re feeling pain, discomfort or tightness somewhere on your body, there will most certainly be trigger points involved. They’re generally about the size of a pea or slightly smaller in small muscles like in your neck, and upper back, but in larger muscle groups like your legs they can almost feel like hard stringy bits of spaghetti under your skin!

Some of the most common places to develop these tight, tender trigger points are in your upper back and neck muscles shown in the diagrams below.

Generally from less than ideal posture from sitting at a desk a lot of the day

Some common trigger points and areas of pain

 
But you can use the ball to literally get in to any tight spot on your body like lower back, glutes, chest etc. A foam roller can hit a lot of tender spots in your legs as well, depending on your pain tolerance you can use the ball to get in a little bit deeper and more specific. Odds are if you are in pain anywhere, you feel very tight somewhere, or get frequent headaches, then relieving trigger points will solve the problem, or at least help you manage the problem a lot better. 

Other common areas for trigger points

You’ll find you get used to using the ‘ball in sock’ and manipulating yourself and your body weight around on it to give yourself a great massage, for FREE.

Seriously this will be the best $2 you’ve every spent, I’ve never had a massage that’s as effective as a 5-10 minute roll on my ball in sock, and the best part is you can do it a few times per day for even just a couple of minutes to really get stuck in to a tight area thats giving you grief.

To conpletely get rid of some trigger points that have been around a while, they need to be ‘massaged out’ a few times per day for a few minutes each time, and in a few days you’ll feel brand new. It’s just not feasible to have a massage every day, let alone a few times per day if need be.

Just be sure to do it around people your comfortable with or in the privacy of your own home, as you may look like a bit of a weirdo to others who aren’t privy to such awesome information.

If you’d like to learn more about managing your pain or headaches, below is a link to an awesome book which will really help. You can basically use it to troubleshoot areas on your body you are feeling pain, or tightness and find the corresponding trigger points, how to locate them and how to treat them.

Click Here To Check Out –  ’The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook’

One of the most useful books I’ve ever bought.

Enjoy!