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How to Prevent Injuries This Summer

Post author By admin
Post date May 13, 2013
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I have always found that the best way to get started on something is to do it for consecutive days. Exercise is no different than anything else but in the past I have been terrible for this as I used to never do enough to prevent injuries

What I have always done is set a goal, lets say to run a 10k. Well I go in gung ho and run hard everyday for a week, not getting started and moving up in distance but just moving up too quick and I end up with lots of aches and pains and injuries that just end up stopping me. This is bad.

What happens when we start and exercise program is that we need to strengthen a few things. We need to strengthen our will, our tenacity, our strength, our joints, and our form. Lets looks at each of these.

Prevent Injuries By Working Up

Strengthen our Will – The very first day that you go for a walk or run, or even a weight workout you will be excited and carve out a piece of your day to squeeze it in. We are all busy and fill everyday so something falls off that day. What falls off? TV, or Facebook, or just some quiet time, even sleep sometimes. Well after that first day, especially after the first week life invades again.

For me my internet surfing and quiet time have to be sacrificed to get a workout in unless I workout at lunch. The trouble is that after a few days of this for most people, me included means that life is not the same as it once was. I miss idle time, I miss just “catching up”. But these priorities are not as important as a daily workout. In my household workouts are a top priority but in most households they are not. So what do you do? Strengthen your will, get serious about your exercise priority and realize that there are no shortcuts. You can workout at lunch (like I tend to do) but if that is not convenient then maybe getting up an hour earlier to workout will help. Whatever it is this is a painful change in your schedule.

Strengthen our Tenacity – I call it this because I am not much of a runner. If I start running then a few minutes in I will think about walking for a few minutes. After about 20 minutes of running I want to just be on the couch. Again this is tough at the beginning but exercise in the beginning is always tough. After a few workouts, and I really mean a few like 5 or 6 workouts your brain gets less lazy, and your body is able to get these workouts done and you don’t have the lazy brain telling you to stop because your body knows it can handle more.

Our Strength – Leg strength and arm strength, even core strength takes time to increase. The trouble is that we get sore. After a weight or cardio workout you feel invigorated but in the morning it is hard to get out of bed. I feel this most in my legs and lower back but truth is that your body will get the hang of it and strengthen pretty quick unless you take a week or more off of your training. This is another reason to not be dumb like me but to progressively up your output as you get your workouts, or new style workouts going.

Our Joints – This is a tough one for me. Whenever I start running I know that my legs and back will get sore later but what really has always stopped me is my joints. I have trouble with my hips and my knees and always have. One of the problems with me is that I have a pretty big frame with a fair amount of muscle on it and I don’t think that 200 pound guys are really built to run.

What I have always found is that there are alternatives to hit joints and the internal ligaments better. I find that bike riding has always strengthened my knee joints since there is a lower amount of force but a huge number of reps when you ride a bike. Try to find these high rep ways to strengthen your joints and you will be in much better shape to make them work better.

Our Form – This is critical. Have you ever seen a good long distance runner in training? These guys are awesome. They have short strides, float between strides, and seem to make the action more effortless. This is good form and this makes all the difference to all of the points above. If you learn proper form then the mechanics of the exercise will make things much easier for you and lead to less injuries and a much more enjoyable time training.

Another opposite example of this is a new weight lifter. Have you ever seen a guy on his first time doing lat pulldowns or bench presses? It is all about jerking the weight up and down, once you learn the biomechanics of the exercise you will see people with really smooth reps up and down and there is a much more even and steady force on the muscles.

Safest Way to Move Up Our Training

Really there are no excuses for bad form. The easiest way if you are running is to join a running club, if weightlifting get a few workouts from a personal trainer, and otherwise with most sports you can have someone record you on an iphone or video camera and then after watching this you can go to youtube and watch how a pro moves and see what you are missing.

All this leads to progressive exercise. I know that just for my wife and I starting to do distance walking for our Kidney March we have to eventually get to 100 kilometers in 3 days. The forst week is just a 3 kilometer walk for three days which is easy, but after 8 weeks there are a couple of 20 kilometer walks. Finding time for a 40 minute walk is ok now and our muscles and joints can take it but finding 4 or 5 hours a day in a few weeks will be tougher on our time, muscles, and joints. Having a chance to progressivley move up from 3 kilometers in 40 minutes, to 5 kilometes in and hour and 10 kilometers in 2 hours over a few weeks will allow everything from our style of walking to our joints, our will, and our muscles to get stronger

Follow these steps to prevent injuries and you should have a much more safe and enjoyable summer

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Tags Consecutive Days, Exercise, Exercise Program, Facebook, Few Days, Fitness, Household, Households, Internet Surfing, Joints, Lunch, Priorities, Quiet Time, Sleep, Tenacity, There Are No Shortcuts, Top Priority, Workout, Workouts

Weight Loss Exercise

Joining a Gym

I have written a few articles in the past about joining a gym. To me a gym is just a place that you need to have as a place to help you get in shape. I know that many people can work at home and I myself have done that on and off for a long time but for me, a gym just feels like a great place to look forward to and build myself up.

As I have written before I do have a work gym that I use but just like anyone I can come up with excuses and I probably make it to the gym at work at lunch 3 times a week and then get some kind of exercise one day a week outside of that.

I want more.

I am trialing a 14 day $14 membership at Goodlife Fitness in Airdrie and this afternoon I went to the gym for the orientation and to find out more. I filled out the standard disclaimer and met with Ella, who showed me around and then brought me into a closing room. The thing to remember about a gym at this time of year is that there is a lot of pressure to sell memberships. People don’t join gyms in July, people join gyms in January with the new year.

Ella told me about the great deals that Goodlife Fitness is offering this time of year and then got me all signed up for the 14 day trial. Then I got the chance to get a cardio workout in.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle
is an exercise and diet program. My review of Burn the Fat shows that it is designed and written by an ex-pro natural bodybuilder but is a system that was written for regular guys and gals. Teaching you how to workout and eat to lose weight.

Even though I do have a work gym in Calgary, I don’t have the opportunity to go on the weekends when it would be easier to find an hour, it is 30 minutes or so from my home in Airdrie (a suburb north of Calgary) each way and for me it just isn’t very convenient to go that far. Second reason I am looking at another gym is to give me that evening opportunity to workout if I can’t make it during the day. Third reason is different equipment and a change of scenery to keep me excited and motivated.

When you do go to a gym to check it out you need to know how it all works. Here is an article I wrote a while back about how the process of joining works.

Have you joined a gym? Are you interested in joining a gym? I know that after belonging to many gyms over the years I have seen and been in all the different types of gyms including lightweight social gyms, cardio style gyms, and even a few hardcore loud gyms with lots of weights and steroids. Now I am looking for something in between. I hope that this Goodlife Fitness gym is the way to go for me

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Weight Loss Exercise

Visalus – Body by Vi

Visalus has become a very popular meal replacement program that is also marketed as a lifestyle choice. Very popular is an understatement with people becoming passionate about the product and the sellers of the product bringing in lots of celebrity sponsors to help promote.

So what is Visalus exactly?

Visalus at it’s core is a powder that is used as a meal replacement that is used to replace your breakfast and lunch or on maintenance just one meal. There are several different plans depending on your goals including a Visalus Balance Kit, Visalus Shape Kit, Visalus Core Kit, Visalus Transformation Kit, and Visalus Fit Kit.

All of these kits have the core 2 lbs bags of the shake mix and flavorings but as you go up in price and program you get more bags of the mix plus more vitamins, minerals, and even energy drinks.

I want to just focus on the Visalus Shape Kit as this was the one that my wife has tried out.

Visalus Shape Kit info

Visalus Shape Kit

Here is where the real info starts. My wife heard about the Visalus program a few times and finally took the plunge buying the Shape kit which is basically two 2 pound bags of the shake mix along with some flavoring packets. This package costs $99 for about a months supply of breakfast and lunch replacement (actually it last longer than a month which is kinda nice) so the cost per serving is about $1.50 each.

The drink itself tasted pretty good, I tried sips of my wifes drinks a couple of times and yes it does taste good depending on what you add to it. The flavoring at the core of the shakes is just vanilla and you mix it with milk or almond milk as well as whatever you would want (everything you add is a calorie though, remember). There is a great support system that gives lots of people lots of ideas as well.

The Protein to Carbohydrate to Fat mix is high on the protein side which I personally like at a ratio of 12-9-2.5 grams per serving and since you will be likely adding fruit to it you will have a higher amount of carbs as fruit is mostly water and carbs.

Visalus 90 Day Challenge

To be really clear this Visalus system is not just about the shake, there is a 90 Day Challenge where you take a before picture, an after picture, and chart your weight loss and body size changes and your goal is to make great changes in 90 days. I really love this as everyone may want to lose weight but they really don’t have any clear goals or timelines 90 days is a nice long enough time to change your habits and life and see results with any changes that you make.

The company tends to be a bit heavy handed with this and I can imagine that since people lose and change at different rates that it can be very discouraging if you are not losing weight as quickly as other people are, again the weight loss industry is full of the “look at me, I won” kind of mentality that a lot of people will just cringe at.

Along the same lines as this there is a few support forums where people will help each other out and share their favorite shake recipes (My wife was addicted to finding new ones all the time) and that support system really helps anyone that gets involved and interacts.

The Dark Side of Visalus

Nutritionally Visalus is always pushing the fact that the nutrition in their drinks is ridiculously high in nutrients but really the a couple of great posts seem to tell us a different story. Sheleana at Young and Raw who I really like does not like the obviously processed and not natural part of this product. On the nutritional side Graeme from Graeme Thomas Online did not at all like the nutrients in comparison even to cheap multivitamins.

Anyone that has seen or been involved with Amway or any other multilevel marketing system will recognize the business side of Visalus. I am not a bit fan of multilevel marketing but it is highly ingrained as part of the Visalus system. As a user of the product you can opt into being a promoter and the more that you sell and the more product that people you recruit sell the more money you make. The rewards can be very very high and because of this you will always find people that are really aggressive in promoting and selling the dram of the product sales.

This is just a marketing system where the money that would go into marketing the product on TV or other media is replaced by putting that money into the hands of the distributors. Trouble is this always comes across to me as greedy and opportunistic even if this is not the way the person selling the product to you is really like.

One other problem that we have found with Visalus is that if you do not make it very very clear that you want to cancel you will be charged every month and get a new months stock sent to you. We accidently didn’t cancel and after trying and trying the company finally found room on our credit card and charged and shipped another months supply, guess it is our own fault but it had been a few months since my wife had tried the product the first time. She doesn’t mind doing another month though anyway.

Should You Try Visalus?

I am not sure if this is the product for everyone but there are a few things that I really like about this product.

First the idea of serving sizes is foreign to almost everyone, we all end to eat too much per meal unless we are careful. The other great thing about this product is the fact that it seems to be filling, tastes good, and will boost your energy and cut sugar cravings, at least that is what my wife found.

On the bad side is that nutrition. I have found at least a couple of reports that show the nutrition may not be all that great but please don’t look for yourself as Google seems to be ranking only the pro-visalus side in the rankings lately and it took me pages of results before I could find not biased info.

So balance this as you would like. I think if you are looking to jump start a weight loss plan then this may be a great start but in the end I always like to make sure that people are eating as many whole foods as they can to stay in shape or get in shape and more importantly stay healthy.

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