Female Fitness

A couple of months ago, I ran this 8 week small group training course called 21st Century Female Fitness. My main purpose of the course was to dispel many of the fitness myths out there geared towards females. Topics like getting "bulky", "toning", flexibility, strength, and nutrition were all subjects I wanted to clarify. Go into any commercial gym and you'll find the majority of women are on the elliptical striding endlessly in the hopes of losing any sort of appreciable amount of weight. A handful might be brave enough to step into the testosterone-filled weight room to wave around a couple of light dumbbells in various directions for hundreds of repetitions.

The only tissue in the body that burns fat is muscle. Your resting metabolic rate, which accounts for more than half the calories you burn in a single day is mostly governed by how much muscle you have. So, lets say that 60% of your caloric expenditure comes from your resting metabolic rate, 25% comes from some sort of activity be it weight training or cardiovascular exercise, and 15% comes the Thermic Effect of Food (food has a thermic effect, which means it burns calories as you consume them. Protein has a high thermic effect, simple sugars like candy do not). If you do not weight train and increase your lean muscle mass; thereby, increasing your resting metabolic rate (which has the highest percentage of your metabolism), then you are completely missing the boat in regards to your fat loss!


What do you want your body weight to consist of?

Beginners to weight lifting will actually experience gains in muscle mass while burning fat. At some point, that will stop and the only way to gain muscle mass is to consume more calories than you expend. Muscle cannot be developed through a caloric deficit - so women on a diet who are afraid of becoming bulky are incredibly off base. Women, physiologically, don't have the same muscle building properties as men.

I could go on and on regarding my thoughts on different myths in the female fitness realm, but that would take quite a bit of time so I'll just go through a quick rundown of what we did in that 8-week period.

1) Foam Rolling and soft tissue work

2) Dynamic warm ups

3) Strength training protocols

4) Interval Training

5) Steady State Cardio Training

6) Static Stretching

7) Circuit Training

8) Sample total body workout

Definitely a lot to go over in just 8 sessions, but I definitely think I dispelled some myths and the participants learned quite a bit on how to program their own workouts. Here's a couple of videos we took:

Reverse Lunge From Deficit:

The step forces the glutes to work a little harder because of the extra range of motion while also causing a deeper stretch to the often tight hip flexors in the back leg.

X Pulldown - X Pulldowns combine scapular retraction as well as depression. Combine that with the "shoulder friendly" rotation of the handles and the cross body motion of the exercise and you get a much more effective movement over the standard lat pulldown machine.

Tall Kneeling Sequential Lift: Core stability while working the body in three planes of motion (diagonally).

Towel Hamstring Curls: Glute/Hamstring strength...also keeps your floors clean!

Face Pulls: An extremely underrated exercise that targets the upper back musculature as well as the rear delts and rotator cuff. It's crucial for shoulder health and also helps reinforce better posture.

Unfortunately, Joanna was away when I took these video clips but she she did an awesome job as well in the other weeks! All in all, I think everyone had a great time getting stronger, fixing any imbalances and also just being in better shape! Big thanks to Kate and Anne for allowing me to film some of the stuff we did in class!

Great job, girls!

Jason

Matt: Weeks 2 and 3

These past three weeks have been focused mostly on overall mobility as well as core and scapular stability. Since Matt sits at a desk for prob 8+ hours a day, we need to make sure to hammer on his thoracic spine and hip mobility. Also, because of his shoulder issues, scapular stability is going to be a huge component in his program.

Mobility/Flexibility work:

T-Spine:

Pec Stretch:

Pushup EQI:

EQI stands for Eccentric Quasi-Isometric. Isometric refers to holding a contraction in place. The reason it is "quasi-isometric" is because as Matt is trying to hold the position, he will at some point fatigue and will start to sink down deeper into more of an eccentric contraction. EQI offers a unique blend of stretching while strengthening in those new found ranges of motion.

Rectus Femoris Stretch:

The Rectus Femoris counts as one of your hip flexors and quadriceps - it crosses the knee and the hip joints. As a result typical hip flexor and quad stretches don't hit this muscles so we need to put the hip in extension and as well as have the knee in flexion. 

Core Stability:

Pallof Press: 10 Second holds



Split Stance Cable Push: 8/Side

Side Plank: 10 second holds

Scapular Retraction:

Inverted Rows: 8 reps

Face Pulls: 12 reps

Scapular Stability:

Plank Walk: 30 Seconds

Half Get-Up: 6 reps/side

Medicine Ball Alternating Pushups:

If Matt were to follow some cookie-cutter program from Muscle and Fitness, it would probably look like this:

Bench Press: 3x12

Incline Bench Press: 3x12

Decline Bench Press: 3x12

Flat Bench Dumbbell Flyes: 3x15

Decline Situps: 2x20

Crunches: 2x20

This would not only wreak havoc on his shoulders, but also pull him down further into his poor posture. Even if Matt was a blank slate with no injuries and perfect posture, blasting any single muscle group like this is ridiculous. These type of workouts work for bodybuilders because they're not only genetically predisposed to gain muscle mass, but also because they take tons of supplements - many of them illegal. It's no coincidence that the top muscle magazines out there are directly linked to a top supplement company. They force these brutal workouts onto unsuspecting people and when they don't work the next solution is to buy into these supplements that the magazine is so highly advocating. 

Train Hard,

Jason