Why More Exercise Isn't Always the Answer

When progress slows down, the instinctive response is often simple: do more. Add another workout. Run another mile. Add more sets. Train harder. Cut another rest day.

Sometimes additional work is appropriate. Sometimes it's exactly what you don't need.

Exercise Is Only Part of the Process

Training provides a stimulus. Your body then needs an opportunity to recover and adapt to that stimulus. That process is influenced by sleep, nutrition, hydration, stress, training volume, training intensity, training frequency, and your overall workload outside the gym. Your body doesn't experience your workout in isolation from the rest of your life. A demanding job, poor sleep, family responsibilities, inadequate nutrition, and hard training all contribute to your total workload.

A difficult workout doesn't automatically mean you're overtraining. However, persistent changes can tell you that something needs attention. You may notice declining performance, unusual fatigue, workouts consistently feeling harder, persistent soreness, reduced motivation, poor sleep, or difficulty recovering between sessions.

These signs don't automatically identify a single cause. They are information. Use that information to make better decisions.

Recovery Doesn't Mean Doing Nothing

Recovery can include complete rest, but it can also include lower-intensity activity. Walking, easy aerobic exercise, mobility work, recreational activity, or simply reducing the difficulty of a workout can all play a role depending on the situation.

The goal isn't to avoid hard work. The goal is to make hard work productive. Being exhausted at the end of every workout isn't proof that your program is effective. The real question is whether your training is moving you toward your goal. Sometimes progress requires pushing harder. Sometimes it requires backing off. Good coaching helps determine the difference.

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Mobility vs. Flexibility: What's the Difference?

Mobility and flexibility are often used interchangeably. They're related, but they aren't exactly the same thing. Understanding the difference can help you make better decisions about your warm-ups, workouts, recovery, and overall movement program.

What Is Flexibility?

Flexibility generally describes how much a muscle or group of muscles can lengthen. For example, someone who can easily reach toward their toes may have relatively good flexibility through certain muscles surrounding the hips and legs.

Stretching can help improve flexibility, but flexibility alone doesn't guarantee that you can effectively control movement through that range. That's where mobility becomes important.

What Is Mobility?

Mobility involves your ability to move through an available range of motion with adequate control. It can be influenced by several factors, including joint structure, flexibility, strength, coordination, stability, previous injuries, and movement habits.

Someone may have enough flexibility to reach a particular position but still struggle to control that position during a squat, lunge, sprint, or other movement.

Do You Need More Mobility?

Not necessarily. More range of motion isn't automatically better. The amount of mobility you need depends partly on what you're trying to do. A gymnast, baseball pitcher, recreational runner, powerlifter, and office worker may have very different movement demands. Instead of chasing maximum mobility everywhere, focus on developing the movement options necessary for your activities and goals.

Mobility work also shouldn't always mean spending more time stretching. Sometimes the missing piece is strength and control. Developing strength through an appropriate range of motion can help you become more comfortable and capable within that range.

That's one reason movement and strength development should complement each other rather than being treated as completely separate goals.

The Bottom Line

Flexibility gives you access to range of motion. Mobility helps you use it. Effective movement requires more than either one by itself. Your mobility work should ultimately help you move and perform better—not simply make you better at mobility exercises.

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Why Getting Fit Is About More Than Losing Weight

For many people, getting fit starts with a number on the scale. There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight. Improving body composition can be an important goal. The problem begins when body weight becomes the only measure of whether a fitness program is working.

Your health and physical performance are influenced by much more than your weight. Strength, cardiovascular fitness, mobility, sleep, nutrition, recovery, stress, daily activity, and consistency all contribute to how well you function and feel. That means someone can make meaningful progress even during periods when the scale barely moves.

Look Beyond the Scale

Consider two people who weigh exactly the same. One strength trains consistently, walks regularly, eats well, sleeps adequately, and has improved their cardiovascular fitness. The other is sedentary, gets little sleep, rarely exercises, and struggles with basic physical tasks.

Their body weight may be identical, but their physical condition is not. This is why a comprehensive approach to fitness looks at more than pounds lost. Instead of only asking, “How much weight have I lost?” consider some better questions:

• Am I stronger than I was three months ago?

• Can I perform everyday activities more easily?

• Has my endurance improved?

• Am I moving better?

• Do I have more energy?

• Am I recovering better from exercise?

• Are my nutrition habits improving?

• Am I becoming more consistent?

These improvements matter because fitness should improve your ability to live your life—not simply change a number on the scale.

Build a Better Definition of Progress

Body composition can absolutely be part of your goal. It just shouldn't be the entire goal. A strong fitness program should help you develop a healthier and more capable body while building habits you can continue long after the initial burst of motivation disappears. The objective isn't simply to weigh less. It's to function better, feel better, and perform better.

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Core Conditioning 101

You rely on your body to get get out of bed, to lift your children, to perform your job and to take you places everyday. If you appreciate what your body does for you, you will provide it with nutritious food, hydrate with water and be sure to add some activity into your day.

While our limbs provide mobility, reach and strength it is our body core that provides the basis of each movement. Sedentary lives can cause our body core muscles to weaken and become subject to strain or injury. Even if you workout or participate in sports you may not be working the body’s core muscles you rely on to perform.

What is your body’s “Core”?

Your body’s core is the midsection of your body, from your groin to your shoulders. The core includes the pelvis, abs, back and chest muscles. It is this core that offers stability, balance and flexibility. Every movement you make originates in the core – whether you are reaching for your toothbrush or running a marathon. If the core is not properly conditioned it will limit your physical abilities.

Working the muscles in your body core will improve the effectiveness of movements in your limbs. Most exercise routines focus on building muscle. By creating a stable, strong base for those muscles you can optimize the strength and flexibility of each limb.

How do you strengthen your core?

There are many exercise routines and products that work the muscles of the body core. Professional trainers create customized routines to enhance an athlete’s abilities by developing the proper core muscles. However, there are also many programs developed for individuals who wish to incorporate it into their fitness routine or to begin one.

The exercises and products developed to strengthen your body’s core do so by creating resistance or instability so that the core muscles must respond to maintain balance. The exercises are gentle on the body but are intense and beginners will quickly ‘feel’ the muscles being used. Proper alignment is key so having a trainer to check your position will help identify the safest and most effective way to perform an exercise.

Core exercises often imitate moves that we employ in daily life or sports and thus train the body to rely on the core and reduce the strain we put on our limbs. Two popular forms of exercise that develop core body strength are pilates and the swiss ball. Pilates uses the body as its own form of resistance. Learning to breath properly and perform slow, controlled movements allows a person to isolate and strengthen core muscles. The swiss ball (also known as a fitness ball) is an easy and fun way to strengthen the body core. While there are many exercises that can be performed with the swiss ball, simply sitting on it will create the instability needed to engage the core muscles to maintain balance.

Good core strength is important at every age and fitness level. Whatever your goals, find a way to incorporate body core conditioning into your routine to reduce fatigue, avoid muscle strain and improve your strength and mobility.

30 Minutes Of Exercise A Day Keeps The Doctor Away

Exercise is good for you! If you had a dollar for every time you heard this statement uttered, you’d be rich by now, right? Well, proponents of everyday physical activity aren’t just blowing smoke when they repeat this mantra. Medical research has uncovered resounding evidence to back up this good for you claim. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and the National Centers for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion all recommend the same thing when it comes to regular exercise: American adults should aim for 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, and preferably all, days of the week.

Inquiring minds want to know, so how exactly will daily exercise impact your health and well-being? Regular physical activity positively affects not only your body but also your mind. That’s right: Exercise simultaneously improves your physical, your emotional, and your psychological health. In fact, it’s a triple-threat combatant against the physical and mental disorders Americans most often face: heart disease, diabetes, stroke, stress, anxiety, and depression, just to name a few.

When industry experts stand in staunch agreement, you know it’s time to focus your attention on their advice and take their concurring counsel to heart. To that end, consider daily exercise’s benefits as purported by three of the leading medical sources: the American Heart Association, the Surgeon General’s Report on Exercise, and Fitness Management magazine.

The American Heart Association (AHA) lists a reduction in the risk of heart disease at the top of its daily physical activity benefit list. Exercise improves circulation throughout the body and lowers cholesterol, thereby decreasing the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke. The AHA also touts exercise’s ability to counteract the health problems plaguing today’s young people: obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and poor lifestyle habits. In so doing, it prevents the conditions that lead to heart attacks and strokes later in life.

The U.S. Surgeon General, while echoing the AHA’s claims, narrows down physical activity’s benefits into specific categories. Overall, he maintains that exercise reduces one’s risk of dying prematurely, but explicitly mentions a reduction in heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, colon cancer, depression and anxiety and obesity among its lifesaving advantages. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, healthier bones muscles and joints as well as improved psychological well-being are some of the other benefits regular exercisers enjoy.

In an article entitled The Psychological Benefits of Your Exercise Program, Fitness Management magazine further details physical activity’s favorable effects on emotional and mental health. In particular, the article cites the following psychological advantages of exercise:

1) It reduces feelings of anxiety, worry, self-doubt and uncertainty about the future.

2) It lower stress levels and the accompanying physical complaints, such as headaches and muscle tension.

3) It energizes, thereby enhancing one’s mood.

4) It improves sleep quality.

5) It improves one’s self-image and confidence by keeping weight down and elevating mood.

So, while an apple a day is still sound advice, it seems exercising every day is the new and improved ticket to keeping the doctor away.