Strickland Fitness

Today’s prep tool for the Strictly Fit October Challenge is a bit of some fitness education. We have challengers from all over the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe, the United States and beyond. However, for the purpose of this challenge, I will be using pounds and inches (and it’s what I know best). If you need help with the conversions, here is a good place http://www.lenntech.com/calculators/mass-weight/mass-weight.htm.

Ok, so the fact for today is that you have to burn 3500 calories in order to burn 1 pound of fat. If your goal is to lose weight, you will have to burn 3500 calories more than your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) in order to lose 1 pound. Your BMR is the number of calories you’d burn if you stayed in bed all day. What does this mean exactly? If your BMR is 2000 calories (kcal), you burn 2000 kcal just doing nothing. So if you ate 2000 kcal and your BMR is 2000 and you did nothing all day, your weight would stay the same. If your BMR is 2000 kcal and you consume 2500 kcal and do nothing all day, you would slowly gain weight. If you did this everyday for 1 week, you would gain 1 pound. That’s 500 kcal over your BMR for 7 days. 500 x 7 =3500. So far so good? Great! If your goal is to lose weight, you want to make sure you burn more calories than your BMR. You can do this by lowering your daily caloric intake, exercise, and cardio. If your goal is to gain weight and/or muscle, then you have to burn less than your BMR.

How do you find out what your BMR is? There are a couple things that have to be factored into the equation. Your height, age, weight, activity level, and gender are the major factors. You can go this website and it will compute it for you automatically. http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php. Just click the BMR and RMR calculator button. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s pretty accurate. Once it’s calculated, write it down. I also want you to email it to me so I can send you specific instructions throughout the challenge based on your BMR. Now that you have it, you have a great starting point towards your goal.

Now is the time to go to your food journal that you have been keeping. Remember Prep Tool #1. Have you counted the calories that you take in every day? Compare your daily caloric intake with your BMR. How do they compare? I will go over with you what to do with this information just before the challenge starts.

Once you have calculated your BMI, compared it to how many calories you have been taking in, and emailed it to me, put a check in the box for Sept. 23^rd. GREAT JOB!!!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! The excitement level is growing with the October Challenge just 10 days away. This is going to be a great way to gain new knowledge on fitness and nutrition while expanding your tool box with new exercises and cardio workouts. And it’s all for free!

Well, hopefully everyone has started or continued to be active with their workouts and not just waiting for the challenge to begin. The next prep tool will be to know your resting heart rate and maximum heart rate. You will need this for the cardio workouts in the Challenge. Now that you know how to get your heart rate (with a heart monitor, the machines at the gym, or manually), take your resting heart rate. It’s best to do it right when you wake, but you can do it at any time you are at full rest. For your maximum heart rate, it’s best to get it by using the form of cardio (running, biking, swimming, etc.) you plan on doing. If you don’t have access to your mode of cardio, you can run in place at home or outside to get it. We will use running in place for the purpose of talking about how to get your maximum heart rate. After a couple minutes of warming up and stretching (see pre workout post in fitness tips category), start running in place. Slowly increase your speed to maximum intensity. As you are hitting maximum intensity, start singing your favorite song out loud. Stop running the instant you need to gasp for air between words. Check your heart rate. This is your maximum heart rate. Be sure to write down your resting and maximum rate. You will need this when the challenge starts. If you need a refresher on how to get your heart rate, see http://stricklandfitness.com/2009/09/17/prep-tool-2-for-october-challenge/.

Once you have done this, put a check mark in the box for Sept. 21^st. Great Job!!

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Cardiovascular training or otherwise known as cardio is very important to overall fitness. It is one of the key factors in weight loss and helps in the prevention of high blood pressure and heart related illnesses such as heart disease. Anything that raises your heart rate can be considered cardio training.

Some popular cardio exercises are swimming, running, and biking. Gyms offer a wide variety of cardio machines such as elliptical, treadmills, rowing, biking, and stair steppers. All of these can be good cardiovascular training machines. The key is knowing what to do on them. I don’t mean how to use them, but how your heart and breathing should react. There are many factors involved in doing the right cardio for you. I could write many articles on this (which I will), but I will start with this tip: Cardio training should be done 3-5 times a week. 30 minutes to an hour is plenty depending on your fitness level. For some, riding a stationary bike is boring so they stop doing it and cardio all together. Find an exercise you enjoy. You should look forward to going to the gym, outside, or in the pool to train your heart.

I will write more entries about the specifics of cardio training and knowing exactly what to do to get the most out of your exercise session. A healthy heart is the most important part of a healthy body!

Volleyball Spike

How’s your vertical jump? Are you looking to add a few inches to your leap? As a former professional volleyball player, I can tell you that it is possible to improve your vertical with a few simple exercises.

The best way to improve your vertical jump is to jump!

The muscles in the legs contain two types of fibers: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers are responsible for slow and powerful movements. A squat would be an example of a slow twitch muscle exercise. Fast twitch fibers are responsible for quick explosive movements such as jumping. In order to train these fast twitch muscles effectively, you have to do quick explosive exercises.

High vertical leap = powerful, yet explosive legs.

I used the combination of a powerful exercise followed by an explosive exercise to train my 42” vertical jump.

So don’t get rid of the squats; Add the jumps to it!

My favorite combination is to do a set of 10 squats at 50% of my 1 rep max followed by 10 jump squats.

With no weight, lower yourself into a squat and then jump up as high as you can. Land softly and immediately lower yourself into the next one.

3 sets 2-3 times a week is great jump training.

If touching the basketball rim is your goal and you just can’t seem to make it, try practicing trying to touch it. You will be surprised after a few weeks how just trying already increased your vert!

Looking for a great chest exercise without any weights? Try the push-up pyramid.

I learned this chest blaster from a fellow trainer at my gym. This exercise is best done with a partner. Begin by doing one push-up. When you stop, your partner does one push-up. You then do 2 push-ups. Your partner will do 2 push-ups when you finish. Continue this alternating push-up sequence to 10 push-ups. If you can make it to 10 push-ups, continue back down to one.

Form is very important!! If your form begins to fail as the push-ups get harder, drop to your knees and do knee push-ups to complete the pyramid.

Good luck!