Strickland Fitness

Congratulations!!!! You have made it half way thru the October Challenge! How are you feeling?  I have gotten some great responses from some challengers. Keep the comments coming, keep up the hard work, and look forward to a great 2 weeks towards your goals. Let’s send the end of this week into overdrive!!

When completed, put a check in the box for October 16^th. Great job!!!

The Workout:

Warm-up

Do series 1 all the way thru with no rest. Follow it with 3 minutes medium pace on any cardio apparatus. Rest to recovery and repeat series 1.

Do series 2 all the way thru with no rest. Follow it with 3 minutes medium pace on any cardio apparatus. Rest to recovery and repeat series 2.

Cool-down

Series 1

Lat Pull Down – Use a weight you can do 12-15 times. Pull the weight down to the front of your chin, not behind your head. As you are pulling the weight down, try and pull your shoulder blades into your back pocket throughout the movement. This ensures you are using your lats and not only your arms. Be sure to try and keep your back straight. Don’t lean back.

Lunges – Hold dumbbells in your hand (5-20 pounds) and step forward into a lunge (both knees bent at 90 degrees) and then step back. Step forward with the other leg. Keep your back straight. Alternate legs for 16 total repetitions, 8 on each side.

Dumbbell Press – Lay on your back on a bench.  Using dumbbells that you can press 12-15 times, start with the dumbbells at your shoulders, elbows bent at 90 degrees and your palms facing out. Press the dumbbells straight up like you are doing a bench press. Use your muscles to lower the weight and then press again.

Isolated ab crunches – 25 times

Series 2

Row – On a row machine, use a weight you can do 12-15 times. Be sure when you pull, you are squeezing your shoulder blades together to start the movement. Then continue pulling the bar towards your stomach with your arms.

Squat to Military Press – With medium weighted dumbbells (12-15 reps), start with the dumbbells at your shoulders, palms facing toward you.  Lower yourself into a squat keeping the dumbbells at your shoulders. Stand up immediately pressing the weight above your head while turning your palms away from you. Keep your back straight!! As you go back down into the squat, return the dumbbells to your shoulders, palms facing you.

Pelvic Lifts – Lying on your back with both feet on the ground and your legs bent at 45 degrees, press through your feet on the floor raising your pelvis off the ground. You should raise it until you have a straight line from your head to the tip of your bent knees. Lower your pelvis to the ground and then raise again. Concentrate on activating the gluts while going through the motion. You can add intensity to this by extending 1 leg out to straight while holding your pelvis up. The next step would be to raise and lower your pelvis with 1 leg while the other leg is in. Do 15 lifts.

Plank – Until exhaustion or up to 1 minute.

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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!!

Use of any knowledge from this website is voluntary. By reading this post, you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the disclaimer in the about section of this website. Thanks for participating!

 Ok, here is the first tool you will need for the October Challenge. For any fitness program, the biggest element is nutrition. Whether you want to gain, lose, or maintain weight, this will have to be looked at. Create a food journal that you can keep track of what you eat and drink, when you consume it, and how much specifically you consume. I will not be looking at anyone’s journal so be honest with yourself. Now starting at the beginning of the next day of reading this, start journaling. It shouldn’t take long and you should create an easy way to do it to be sure that you do it every day. Write down everything!! There are many websites and iphone apps out there that can track your intake for you for free. If you don’t know how to count calories, this might be the way to go because later you will need to know the specific amount of calories you are taking in. Again, just figure out the system that works best for you to be sure you do it every day!

Next, print a generic calendar from your computer for the second half of September and the whole month of October. Keep this calendar next to your computer. Once you have found your food journal entry procedure, put a big check mark in the box for the 16^th! Great Job!

Use of any knowledge from this website is voluntary. By reading this post, you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the disclaimer in the about section of this website. Thanks for participating!

Warming Up

The importance of warming up is undeniable. It’s a wonder why so few of us actually warm up before any type of exercise; Maybe it’s not knowing what to do or what to do it for. I will answer both of these maybes.

You should warm up before any exercise session. It does not matter if it is cardio or resistance training.  The two basic parts of a warm up are low intensity movement and active stretching.

Why warm up: To ready the body for maximum performance and prevent injury during and after exercise. The difference between working out cold and working out with a warm body is substantial. Muscles perform better when they are rich with oxygen. This oxygen gets to your muscles via blood. Warming up moves blood throughout your body saturating your muscles with oxygenated blood. Your muscles and body will then be ready for intense activity. Some examples of the first part of your warm up (low intensity movement) are: Biking, jogging, rowing, walking, and stepping. 5-10 minutes of any of these examples is plenty to get the blood flowing to your muscles. This should not be intense as to not exhaust yourself before your actual workout.

The second part of your warm up should be active stretching. Have you ever seen track athletes hopping down the track raising their knees up and down to and from their chest before a race? This is an example of active stretching. You are putting your body through the motions of the actual exercise you plan to do. This prepares the ligaments and muscles for the force that will be placed on them. Going through full range of motion before resisting the motion (with speed, weight, or force) is crucial in injury prevention. Some examples of active stretching are: walking lunges, side-to-side lunges, arms swings, and trunk rotations.

Your muscles and ligaments are like a rubber band. When warm, they are elastic and flexible. Put the rubber band in the freezer and then try to pull it apart…it snaps. That is what can happen when you exercise without warming up.

Before any workout, do 5-10 minutes of low intensity movement followed by 10 minutes of active stretching. Your workout will be that much better and your chance of injury goes down greatly. You also burn a few extra calories doing it!!