Think of your body as a composition of symmetry and synergy. It moves as a single unit, not single parts isolated. That said, focusing on certain movements and muscle groups while excluding others can and will cause muscular imbalances. This in turn can lead to reduced balance and weaknesses in certain areas, such as your back, for example. You could say your body is only as strong as its weakest link. Youve heard that before right? But its true! Fact is, a muscle imbalance can lead to overuse injuries, such as PCL tears or hamstring tears from quad dominance, which will keep you out of the gym for a minimum of nine months, or shoulder injuries from too many benches and not enough rows! Yeah, talking to you! High intensity, functional exercise can make a dramatic difference here, because these exercises automatically help create muscle definition and activation all over your body, while simultaneously improving your cardiovascular fitness. While I don’t recommend doing just one form of exercise, IF that’s all you have time for, then doing short but high intensity Peak Fitness exercises will give you the greatest all-around benefits, and this form of exercise differs from others in that it benefits your entire body. That means that you need to stop using equipment that ISOLATES motion and preferentially migrate to movement patterns that utilize the body in its natural state of motion (whole body motion). High intensity exercises sequentially recruit all types of muscle fibers, starting with the smaller motor units made up of slow-twitch fibers—which are primarily aerobic in metabolism, have a lot of endurance, and recover quickly—to the intermediate fibers; followed by the fast-twitch fibers. The key to activating your fast-twitch muscle fibers is intensity (resistance), or speed under load. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. At the same time, it enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle, which in turn enhances your insulin sensitivity. Ive often stated that normalizing your insulin is one of the primary health benefits of exercise, and this is particularly true in the case of high-intensity exercise. Conventional aerobics/group exercise does not do this as efficiently. Activating your fast-twitch fibers also prompts your body to create human growth hormone (HGH), also known as “the fitness hormone,” which plays an important role in slowing down the aging process, recovery and energy levels. Another common mistake relates to range of motion, which is also important for overall functioning, balance and movement in everyday life. When performing strength exercises using weights, it’s important to employ a full range of motion. When someone tears a knee ligament simply by stepping off a curb for instance, this could be the result of not doing full-depth squats. Basically, your body is unaccustomed to stabilizing your knee during motion outside the limited range of a partial-depth squat. The other side of the coin here is avoiding using heavy weights beyond your normal range of motion. Doing so will place you at risk of injury as well. So, when you start out, use a weight that allows you to perform the exercise through a full range of motion, without overstraining, or preferentially choose whole body vibration training that utilizes your body weight under a g-force..
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:03:53 +0000
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