Enhance Personal Training and Athletic Performance, Inc. © 2009
Muscle Confusion Principle – the best way to exercise.
What is Muscle Confusion?
When exercising, try to constantly change up the routine as much as possible not just to prevent boredom in your workouts, but to break plateaus. To put it simply, sticking to the same old routine doesn’t work! There are so many buzz words that the fitness industry has created to try to put a mix into exercise. “Muscle confusion” is the big one right now. Muscle confusion is just another way of saying variety. No matter what your fitness goal is, in order to reach your goal, you need some type of variety in your exercise.
So what is Variety aka Muscle Confusion?
To add variety in your exercise, you have to constantly change the acute variables within your daily workout (make each set different):
- Constantly changing the amount of sets, reps, and resistance in each exercise
- Rest periods should be very minimal
- Aerobic and anaerobic activity
- Multi-joint movements and isolated single joint exercises
- Involve power, strength, and agility exercises
- Involve exercises/activity that stimulate both the sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous system
Variety aka Muscle Confusion helps:
- Increase lean muscle
- Decrease body fat and circumference
- Increase strength and power faster than any periodization program
- Speed up metabolism
- Increase body awareness and athletic awareness
- Make workouts challenging, but motivating
Need help setting up a Muscle Confusion Program?
Contact Mike Padua B.S. ISSA NESTA
Exercise of the Month
Rope Undulation
One definition of undulation is the rising and falling in waves or a wavelike pattern.
Add a rope to it and you get this…WATCH DEMO:
Rope Undulation is a great way to add variety to your workout and it’s fun!
Who knew a 40 foot rope could burn more calories in 15 minutes than any cardio machine!
Rope Undulation is:
- Great shoulder exercise
- Excellent core stabilizer
- Offers tons of variety
- Increases speed, quickness, and awareness
- Improves strength, strength endurance and power
- Great cardiovascular activity
Research shows that the best way to gear up for the flu season is to get moderate exercise in daily, eat healthy, and stay hydrated by drinking a lot of water and electrolytes. To get a boost of immunity and protect yourself from the flu and the common cold while getting 12 to16 oz of water, try Immunity Twist Tube. It has the B’s and C’s that you need to defend you from flu season.
Obesity Starts Most Often in Childhood
When we make that decision to change our lifestyle by eating better and exercising more, we often want the change to occur immediately. However, if we take a minute and reflect on our past lifestyle behaviors, we may see that we are fighting a lifetime of bad habits.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the past three decades the childhood obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children aged two to five years and adolescents aged 12 to 19 years, and it has more than tripled for children aged six to 11 years. ("Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 1999-2002" Oct. 6, 2004).
Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults. This increases to 80 percent if at least one parent is overweight or obese.
What causes children to be overweight?
Just like adults, children are overweight when they eat more calories than they burn through physical activity (in play and exercise). This is easy to explain, but hard to change because there are so many factors involved. Foods like fruits and vegetables may be more expensive or unavailable in certain communities. Safe spaces for children to play outside the home may be hard to find due to traffic or crime. Some communities have few affordable healthy lifestyle programs for families and children.
What can we do about it?
Teaching children about healthy eating and physical activity is necessary and we need to do it right away. We also need to make changes in schools and daycare settings, places where children spend a lot of time and where there is a great opportunity to promote a healthy diet and offer plenty of activity. By planting the seed of positive lifestyle behaviors at an early age, children will benefit with a lifetime of health and wellness. If children develop sound movement skills early, they improve their self-esteem and are more likely to practice healthful activities as adults.
This is where KID-FIT can help!
KID-FIT is a licensed curriculum that teaches children ages two through five the basics of healthy lifestyle habits. Through an age-appropriate physical fitness class, KID-FIT teaches sports skills, gymnastics, dance, rhythm and creative movement while enhancing muscular strength, endurance, heart health and flexibility.
Children use fun equipment like scarves, bean bags, hoops and balls while learning about different parts of their bodies. At the end of one year, children will have learned a clear set of goals for each body system in addition to the importance of daily exercise eating healthy.
More importantly, KID-FIT kids associate exercise with fun. This is an exciting first step to helping children enjoy long and healthy lives while decreasing their risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
For more information about KID-FIT, please contact Lannette Wolford at Lannette@kidfitchicago.com or visit our website at www.kidfitchicago.com
November 2009 Enhance Fitness Newsletter
