What in the World is a Level Change???

Hey everyone! During this article we will have a brief discussion about what a level change is, what exercises accomplish it, who should be doing them, and why you should be doing them.  First, a level change is a general term that we attribute to any exercise in which you flex from the hips and knees to drop your weight towards the ground that is followed by an extension from the knees and hips to bring your weight back to a standing position.   This flexion and subsequent extension is done simultaneously through the two joints that being used is what make these exercises level changes.  There is a wide range of exercises that meet these criteria.

The most basic and common level change exercises are squats and lunges.  Even though these exercises are different in their execution they both meet the criteria and engage similar muscles.  Main muscles that are used during a level change exercise include glutes, quads, along with the core and postural muscles,  Other exercises that can be used to ramp up to squats and lunges are wall sits and step ups. By using the latter two exercises it will give your body a chance to get used to the level change motion before increasing the load put on your body.  With that being said let us go over who should be doing these motions.

The short answer is EVERYONE!!!!!! The level change is one of our 5 fundamental movements.  These movements are MANDATORY for anyone who wants to be healthy and have a complete training program.  This does not mean that everyone should be doing squats or lunges.  This means that everyone should find a way to accomplish level changes in their workouts.  The personal decision on what exercise to do should hinge on what you personally need the exercise to accomplish.

Level changes help build bone density, promote hip mobility, increase the connection between mind and body, and also can increase strength and endurance in the targeted muscles.  The goal of every exerciser should be to master the highest form of all fundamental movements and build the rest of your workouts from there.  Make sure that you personally do level change workouts at least twice per week and watch the results roll in!!!

If you need some help with your workouts, or want us to take a look at your form shoot us an email at joshmaness@highlycalibratedfitness.com so we can get in touch and help you out!  Until next time, find your push and never say sorry!

What Time of Day Should I Be Working Out?

        One of the great questions when it comes to building out your exercise program is what is the optimal time of day to be working out.  I am truly sorry to say that there is no straightforward, all encompassing, correct answer to this question.  Keep in mind people are different, sometimes very different, and we have to take these differences into account when programming for ourselves or others.  Luckily there are some criteria to consider that will point us in the right direction. 

First off your body will tell you if it is a good time to workout or not.  Your circadian rhythm, or sleep and wake patterns, may be the biggest consideration that we need to make.  Second we need to understand when in the day that we have the highest amount of food, or fuel, in our system available to workout.  Finally we need to look at our heart rate or rate of perceived exertion, RPE for short.  Looking at these three factors will start the process of choosing that best time in the day for us to workout.

Rhythm

Let’s talk body rhythms.  Some of us are morning people. Some of us are night owls.  Even more of us are somewhere in between.  Let me start this off by saying that in all of my experience as a personal trainer the people that I train in the mornings before they go to work are by far the most consistent exercisers that I have.  The biggest reason that I can find for this is the earlier in the day there are less distractions and less things that can come up that take you away from your workout routine.  Apart from that I suggest that you try and workout when your body is the most alert and most prepared that it can be.  If you are a night owl workout after work.  If you are an early riser use that to your advantage and knock out the workout early!

Fuel

Moving one to fuel intake.  No matter what time you decide to workout you need to have fuel in your body to get through your workout at a high enough intensity to make the work count towards your goals.  For me when I work out I make sure that I eat something that fits in the palm of my hand at least 30 minutes before the workout starts.  This helps to ensure your blood sugar is high enough to perform during the workout rather than just survive the workout.

Heart Rate and RPE

Finally your heart rate and RPE will give you the scientific data to back up your choice of workout time.  The way this works is that your RPE and heart rate should respond to the work stimulus that you give it.  In simple terms when you push during your workout your RPE and heart rate should rise and when you stop pushing it should begin to fall pretty quickly.  This concept is referred to as heart rate variability.  The quicker your heart rate increases when you begin to work and how quickly it decreases when you stop working is a great indication of heart and overall health.  It is very common that if your body is not ready to workout that your heart rate and RPE will take longer to respond to work and to rest.  When your body is ready to workout your heart rate will rise quickly but also fall quickly when you are resting.  This pattern helps to build a healthy heart, lungs, and body.

How I Attack This

My favorite time of day to workout is first thing in the morning.  It helps to lower my stress levels throughout the day and gets me to tackle my work day with a level and productive head.  Personally my body functions best when I am early to bed and early to rise. Before I workout in the morning I drink about 30oz of ice cold water to wake up my digestive system.  I also eat half a breakfast grain bar to get my body fueled and ready to go.  

Remember that no single factor will determine when the best time for you to workout is, but the combination of these three factors will get you very close to the right answer for yourself.  Finally that last thought that I want to leave you with is the time of day that you choose should breed more consistency over time, not diminish it.  If you try the morning workouts and you miss 4 out of 5 days, workout in the evening.  If you find your evening workouts get interrupted 3 of 5 days then push the workouts to the morning.  Play with it and see how your body responds to the different times of day and write down how your body feels.  This data will give you the confidence to keep to your routine and reach your goals.

If you need some help or want to talk about this further set your free consultation today!

What Part of Fitness Should I Use Today?

In the wide world of fitness there are so many different ways to turn.  You have mobility, strength, endurance, not to mention the mental battle just to stay on the program that you are currently doing.  Today we will take a simplified look at mobility, strength, and endurance and how you can apply these modalities to your everyday fitness routine.  

MOBILITY

Mobility refers to the consistency of the range of motion of all of your joints in your body.  Flexibility training is a way that you can gain more mobility through a given range of motion.  .  Another way we can work on our mobility is to use active range of motion training.  This is when you take a given joint slowly through its entire range in the hopes of bringing more blood flow to the joint resulting in a greater range with each repetition that is done.  According to the American Council on Exercise, or ACE, for flexibility or mobility training to be the most effective it needs to be done around 20 minutes a day for 5 days per week.  Next let's tackle strength.

STRENGTH

When we are talking about strength we are talking about our ability to move an object or load a single time.  The goal of strength training is to increase the load in which you are lifting over time through a given range of motion.  For example if you can squat 30 lbs on day 1 a good goal would be to lift 35 lbs on day 10.  The frequency of strength training depends on which muscle groups you are training.  For simplicity sake if you are doing full body strength workouts then you have to wait 24 hours before doing your next workout.  Remember strength refers to lifting an object 1 time.  Finally we have endurance.

ENDURANCE

Endurance refers to the ability to lift or move in a plane of movement repeatedly over time.  This can mean running for a set distance or lifting a weight up and down for a set of repetitions.  Endurance is training your cardiovascular system to be able to repeat the motion over and over again while efficiently regenerating energy to keep going. This type of training can be done every other day up to 5 days in a week. When thinking about which modality to use remember the definition of each.

MODALITIES AND GOALS

Correctly choosing a modality is all about knowing yourself and setting a goal that reflects the modality that you are going to be using.  If your goal is to be able to stay up later with your kids or grandkids then we need to work on your endurance so your body uses fuel more efficiently.  If you are having trouble at a new job lifting heavy boxes onto a shelf then work on your strength.  Finally if you are stiff all the time or you find yourself losing abilities like looking over your shoulder when you back up in your car then the work needs to be more on your mobility.  

A good program utilizes all three of these modalities to help you reach a specific goal.  Remember to match the modality to the goal not the goal to the modality.  The things in fitness that we like and are good at are not usually the things that we need to work on.  Get into the hard stuff! Let it help you grow!

If you need help integrating any of these modalities into a program that will help you meet your goals, set up a free consultation on our website today!

Effective Training

    EFFECTIVE TRAINING

 

Effective training should increase your breathing volume, lower your resting heart rate, and make you feel overall better.  Keep these aspects in mind as we explain overtraining and undertraining.

            Most exercisers have experienced both overtraining and undertraining.  Many less exercisers have ever truly experienced effective training.  Overtraining means that you are doing more movement, more volume (weight multiplied by repetitions), or more flexibility in your training than would elicit the highest amount of adaptation from your body.  Conversely undertraining is when you are not doing enough movement, volume, or flexibility to elicit any adaptation from your body.  The consequences of both under and overtraining are very similar.  Both categories will decrease your breathing volume, heighten your resting heart rate, and make you feel overall worse than you did before you started the exercise program.  Both overtraining and undertraining can lead to injury.  After understanding the effects of this type of training now consider training intensity and duration or exercise.

 

TRAINING INTENSITY

            When thinking about how to adapt these principles to your exercise program you can use two approaches to gauge exercise intensity.  RPE or Rate of Perceived Exertion, refers to how you would rate how hard you are working on a scale of 1 to 10.  Any training in the 1-4 range would be considered undertraining, while training in the 9-10 range to be overtraining.  Effective training in the range of 4-9 can be used for various desired goals or outcomes from exercise.  The second approach to intensity of exercise is to use heart rate data. 

You can get this heart rate data by using a wearable such as a garmin or fitbit, or by estimating your heart rate at set points during your exercise bout.  First you need to get your max heart rate.  This is found by 220-age.  For example I am 29 so my max heart rate is 191.  This number represents the absolute 100% of my heart rate capacity before my heart does not beat in an effective manner.  In simpler terms, you do not want to be consistently training at this level.  From there we can say that 90-100% of max heart rate would be considered over training, while 0-40% would be considered undertraining.  The exercise that stays within that 40-90% range can be used for various desired goals or outcomes from exercise, which can be tolerated for different durations or length of time.

 

DURATION

As a rule of thumb the lower you are in the effective training ranges of RPE and Heart rate range the longer your body can sustain that exercise bout.  Now with that being said the difference between how long you can sustain 60% of your max heart rate or a RPE 6 and how long you can sustain 80% of your heart rate max or a RPE 8 is a large gap.  For a seasoned marathon runner 60% can mean 4 hours or more while 90% can only be held for about 3-4 minutes.

 

HOW IT WORKS

For the average exerciser sustaining 60% of a max heart rate for 20-30 minutes is a great goal.  Also for the average exerciser sustaining 80% of a max heart rate for 20-30 seconds is a good goal as well. 

When we are talking about the average exerciser we mean someone who has at least worked out 1 time per week at least for the last 3 months or 3 days per week for the past month.  No matter who you are, feel free to use this template to scale how far into your program you are! Have fun and remember to stay safe!!!!!!!!

Manufacturing Motivation

The Basics of Meal Prepping

There are many ways to approach and meet your nutritional goals.   A great way to put yourself in the best position to succeed is to meal prep all or part of your meals for the week.  This works for you in a number of ways, but one of the biggest positive effects is on your decision making process.  The common question that we ask ourselves before we eat is, what do we WANT to eat, rather than what do we NEED to eat.  The latter question is much simpler and usually a lot easier to answer.  Eating in itself is a behavior and when it is approached as a behavior it begins to simplify the world of nutrition.  Just like other behavior changes that we try to make in order to have a positive personal or social outcome, eating should be approached in that same fashion.    Make the series of decisions for meal prepping based on how you actually behave and you will fill in the gaps in your nutrition that you may have had for a long time.Think about where you want to go and what has held you back in the past and that will lead you to better food choices.

I speak with a ton of people about their diets and their views on nutrition and when I ask them reasons that they choose less nutritious foods time and time again many of them tell me they eat what is easy or convenient at the time.  This means that when they are making a decision on what to eat for a meal they tend to go with what is right in front of them or something they can get very easily.  This can take the form of fast food, sugary drinks, or could even be comfort food.  A big question I pose to these same people is what if the easiest decision for food in a given meal WAS the healthiest decision.  Many of them tell me it would be much easier to eat the healthy option if this was the case.  ENTER MEAL PREPPING! That meal that you have already put the work in to cook and sitting right in the fridge is healthier for you too! An effective meal prep is a way to bring the healthy decision closer to the easy or convenient decision in a given situation. 

There are many things to consider when beginning to meal prep.  Make sure that what you are cooking and eating matches your goals and will be pushing you to actually be a healthier person.  We have all seen the meme where there are 7 Tupperware containers with one slice of pizza in each one.  This approach will not help you and will lead to you getting frustrated with the process of meal prepping all together.  However this does not mean that cannot outsource the cooking part of your meal prepping.  Next, make your food choices based on where you want to go not where you currently are.  Remember the principle of inertia in grade school? It applies here too.  Change only comes from change.  Make positive changes to what you put into your body and your body WILL make positive changes to how you output energy into the world.  Finally, make sure your food choices reflect your personal food taste.  This one is simple to explain.  If you don’t like the food you will not eat it.  No matter how much you tell yourself to eat something because it is healthy, if you do not like it you will be cleaning out uneaten food from Tupperware containers at the end of every week. A great way to avoid this is to find out what you like currently is healthy or will fit into your meal plan or you can even check out the series of my posts on social media with fun recipes that you can use in your meal prep by following the link below.  After carefully developing your meal plan you now have to take another look at yourself and decide how many days in a week you are ok with eating reheated meals from the fridge and how much time you can spend cooking during each week. 

There are three ways people try to meal prep. You will have the person who wants to cook everything for every meal they are going to eat for the entire week.  The next type of person will take that same mentality for a few days at a time.  This person will cook all of the food for every meal for the first 3 days of the week and then meal prep a second time for the remaining 4 days of each week.  Finally you can also meal prep by preparing the food for a single meal for the whole week.  This person might choose to prep lunch to help them eat during the day or they may prep breakfast to make sure they eat first thing in the morning.  There are pros and cons to each approach so you really need to figure out what will suit you and your needs best.  If you choose to prep your entire week of meals you may not want to eat seven day old salmon microwaved for the 7th time in a week.  If you prep only your lunches for the week you still need to account for breakfast, dinner and snacks during the rest of the day.  This is where exploring what really does and does not work for you individually in this process is really important.  This is a process that can be frustrating, trust me it will be worth it when you figure it out. 

Let us first tackle the person who wants to take care of all of the cooking in one day for every meal for the entire week.  This approach will be great for a person that always feels that they are rushed into their food choices due to a lack of time or high stress jobs.  My initial bit of advice for this person is to keep things incredibly simple. Only pick 1 dish for each meal for the week.  By this I mean that to only choose 1 breakfast, 1 lunch, 1 dinner and so on to make sure that you are not cooking way too many different things.  This will help you keep your cooking and distribution time to a minimum because you are cooking all on one day.  A secondary consideration is what types of foods keep better throughout the week than others.  If you food goes bad that will be wasted time on your part and we want to maximize our time not minimize it.  Maybe you are a person that knows they need to meal prep but knows they cannot eat the same things for an entire week.

It is ok to be a picky eater.  I REPEAT IT IS OK TO BE A PICKY EATER.  You can find healthy things that you enjoy eating. You are just going to have to look for them.  Taking the time to search out healthy dishes that fall into your taste is absolutely crucial to a healthy lifestyle and effective meal prep.  If you do not like what you are preparing you will not eat it.  If you are a picky eater and still want to meal prep take the middle approach.  Choose two days where you are going to cook for half of each week.  This approach will allow you to cook different things for different days of the week.  Instead of eating something for 7 days you will be eating them for 3 or 4 days at most.  Also you are not losing anytime on cooking different meals because you have already made the decision to cook twice during the week.  During your prep still keep things simple.  Common ingredients in meals cut down time in the store and during the cooking process. This approach also leads to a greater variety of options since you are not trying to keep things fresh for the whole week.  The next approach to meal prepping is by far the most common.  

Say you are the type of person that makes great eating decisions all day everyday, but you just forget to eat breakfast, or maybe you can not take a lunch break.  Meal prepping can help here.  Pick something that is easy to cook and you can eat on the go or quickly to make sure you get all the nutrients you need in your day.  The most common meal that people miss is breakfast.  There are many easy options for this ranging from something cold like overnight oats or a hot meal like an omelette in a mug.  If you are making a single meal you can also choose to break your week up and cook twice or you can just prepare your weeks worth of your meal at once.  Just like the first couple of approaches make sure you like your food and you are choosing things that will last until you are going to eat it.  

Now all of these approaches are assuming that you have time in your week to cook.  Now if you do not have time to cook that is OK, just be honest with yourself.  There are many services that will do all or part of your meal prep for you.  Find what your time commitment is going to be like and stick to it.  The more honest you are in your planning the more successful you will be in meeting your nutritional goals.

The meal prep process comes down to figuring out how you are going to function best throughout your week.  As humans we are better at making informed decisions when we make the decisions in advance when we are not hungry and are clear headed.  If you bring that view into nutrition it will point you directly towards planning and prepping your meals.  This approach will free up your mind for other decisions in your week rather than stressing about what you are going to eat, which will help you be more productive overall. Lastly I would like to echo the need to be completely honest with yourself during this process because that will lead to you having the most success with it.  If you need to focus on school or work and need to pass off the prep do it. You will be grateful for it in the end. 

By utilizing meal prepping and making other decisions in your daily life in advance is a simple trick to lowering overall stress.  By reducing stress and actually eating better meal prepping helps with all kinds of goals from weight loss all the way up to Olympic athletic performance.  Please shoot me a message or leave a comment if you have any recipes that you would like me to feature on my social media sites for all of us to try.  Finally subscribe on this page for updates on this blog and take a look at the links below for some ideas for your meal prep!  Good luck and keep striving to live that Highly Calibrated Lifestyle!

Ability Appropriate Exercise

    The subject of ability appropriate exercise refers to taking an ability centered approach to fitness exercise choices. This differs from the traditional approach of first taking a look at the individual goals of the exerciser then taking the evaluation information into account as secondary information. In the ability centered approach we first take into account what the individual is able to do now and calls for the individual to meet certain ability benchmarks before moving into more goal centered exercises. This approach will not only yield the highest level of results for every person who uses it, but it also minimizes any risk of injury that the individual will come across in their fitness journey. Please understand the appropriate exercise choices for your ability level now does not mean you cannot progress to more advanced levels of exercise, this approach just gives you a roadmap of how to effectively get there without getting hurt or wasting time. Choosing the correct intensity, duration, and modality for the level of fitness each individual is currently at will be the fastest and more effective way for individuals to reach their goals. Good exercise choices are a key piece of effective programming. It is close adherence to these effective programs that will give you results time and time again.

    You will want to use this approach to either evaluate what you are currently doing in your exercise program or as a starting point and template for building your first effective exercise program. The approach can be used at the beginning of the exercise choice process to guide you to the correct exercise choices or at the end of a cycle on any exercise program to evaluate the effectiveness of the program that you have just completed. By taking the later approach, the easier the sample program in this article is for you the better fit the program you are currently doing is for your current fitness level. This approach will benefit people from all fitness levels. It gives advanced individuals a chance to see if the foundation they have built will be effective enough for continued progress, while also giving beginners an idea of where to start and how it will influence their future progress.

    Beginners should be focused on 2 things, Isometric holds and the 5 fundamental movements. Isometric holds are commonly known as planks, glute bridges, wall sits, or any exercise where you are tightening muscle groups without any net motion occurring. In other words you are tightening without moving in any direction. These types of contractions serve to develop posture and balance in the musculature of your body. This helps to support proper movement of your joints and alignment of your body. The second focus is the 5 fundamental movements. These are Level Changes, Hip Hinges, Push, Pull, and Core is broken up into Isometric holds and rotational movements. Level Changes are squats and step-ups, or exercises where your hips are going up and down. Hip Hinges are commonly known as deadlifts. Pushes are traditionally bench press or pushups. Pulls are Rows and Pulldowns. Isometric contractions are the planks that are mentioned above. Finally rotational movements could be medicine ball twists or any movement where your torso is rotating over your hips from right to left. For a more in depth look at the 5 Fundamental Movements refer to the links below. The key to this focus is the variety of these movements.

    A good workout of a beginner is to pick 2 of each of these movements and set a timer for 90 seconds and just focus on getting more efficient with the movements during this time. This type of individual should stay with an RPE, Rate of Perceived Exertion, of 4-6 in order to keep risk of injury low. More information about RPE can be found in the links below. If something like this feels easy or you are looking for a bit more of a challenge go for the intermediate focus.

    Intermediate fitness level individuals should be focused on increasing the load through the 5 fundamental movements and doing the 5 fundamental movements in a variety of directions, while maintaining the progress made in the beginning phase of exercise. Increasing the load the body undergoes during each of the fundamental movements will begin the process of increasing strength and stamina in the muscular system while maintaining the muscular balance gained during the beginning phase. By doing the fundamental movements in a variety of directions you will continue to build joint integrity and lower your risk of injury before moving onto more aggressive forms of exercise in the advanced phase.

    A good workout template for an individual in the intermediate phase is to pick 2 of each fundamental movement and during your first set through the exercises set a timer for 90 seconds and grab a weight to increase your load during each exercise. During the second set through the exercises set the same timer for 90 seconds and without any added weight go through the movement in different planes. Forward, backwards, side to side, up and down are all good options and once again variety is key to a healthy body. The RPE for this level should be around 5-7 to make sure that you are pushing yourself to make changes to your fitness and strength levels while keeping risk low. Finally let me show you how the advanced phase of exercise works.

    Advanced fitness level individuals need to both focus on 3 things to keep their progress moving forward. First focus is continuing to increase their loads through the fundamental movements while staying in place. This ensures the continued increase of strength and endurance of the muscular system. The second focus needs to be to increase the load of the body with the fundamental movements in the different directions. This will begin to develop the strength and endurance of the muscles that complement our major muscle groups. Another way to think about this benefit is to think of it as mobilizing the muscle that you have developed and are developing to allow you to efficiently move in every direction. Finally the third focus of this advanced phase is to integrate speed and acceleration into your bodyweight movements. This is also known as plyometric training. The reason this focus is important is first because it is the next level of efficiency in bodyweight training and second because during plyometric training you are exerting a maximal amount of force during a very short amount of time which helps to increase your strength to speed ratio.

    A good workout in the advanced level is to once again pick 2 of each fundamental movements and in the first set the timer is set to 90 seconds and increase your load for the movement while staying in place. During Set two do the same movements with some weight in a variety of directions for the 90 second duration. Finally for set three set the timer once again for 90 seconds and put the weights down. Do each of the fundamental movements that you choose in a quick manner while leaving the ground when appropriate for the given exercise. The RPE for this type of exercise should be between 6-8 to make sure the workout is hard enough to make changes to your body but not so hard as to break your body down.

    Always remember that there are tons of approaches to fitness and exercise and please look to find the approach that works best for you. This approach is one very effective way to evaluate what you are currently doing in your exercise or just start to build your program from scratch. By choosing exercises that are geared towards your ability level regardless of age or other factors you will be spending your time on the exercises that will give you the biggest changes with the least of injury. Think of this as your sweet spot to train in. Your largest amount of positive for your least amount of possible negative. Secondly if you are doing exercises that are outside your ability level you are either at a high risk of injury not a high amount of return to your fitness level or you are not putting your muscles through enough stress to make any changes to that fitness level.

    Remember if you would like more information about either the 5 Fundamental Movements or RPE scales please refer to the links below. I look forward to continuing to engage with you all for all topics Movement, Nutrition, Modalities and Mindset! See you next week!


Links: 5 Fundamentals Intro Talk , RPE Scale Post



Tags: Movement, Selection, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Workout, Builder