Functional training is all the rage (do the kids still use that expression?). It is also often misunderstood. Are squats on a Bosu functional? What about deadlifts? Bicep curls?

I have previously written my take on what functional training is, including a definition and examples of exercises that are functional for different activities like serving beer or tennis balls.

I have also stood on my isoap box on various fitness and skiing forums, sharing my theory about other training approaches that I believe are not functional (dysfunctional even).
Read more…

This article is part of my blog-series: My Favourite Training Tools (For my American readers, please excuse the ‘u’ in favourite. It’s a Canadian thing). There are probably thousands of tools out there for fitness. Some are ridiculous fly-by-night items, others have been mainstays for hundreds of years, and now and then there is a new kid on the block that is clearly here to stay. Through this blog-series, I’ll share with you the tools that I think are worth including in your home or commercial gym.

Number three on my list of favourite training tools is a band. I tend to be partial to mini-bands, but I also like therabands and superbands. The mini-bands and therabands are mainstays in the dynamic warmups for most of my clients. Basically everyone who starts training with me gets “mini-band walks” in their phase 1 program. The lateral ones (think crab walk) are a great option for getting the glute medius working, while the forward and backward ones (“monster walks”) can be a nice challenge for the glute max and hip flexors. Simple and effective. And mini-bands only cost a couple of bucks each. Read more…

I realize it’s odd for a personal trainer to suggest you look beyond the gym for fitness. It clearly suggests I don’t have a business coach at the moment, as they would probably encourage me to recommend people come and spend more time in the gym – ideally paying me to help them with their fitness goals.

Don’t get me wrong – I do think everyone should allocate part of their fitness time to the gym, even those who are very active with sports or in their work. Especially those who are very active with sports or in their work, as they expect a lot from their body, and need the gym workouts to make sure the body is up to the challenge. Those of you who are new to fitness can also find tremendous benefit from some professional guidance to make sure you move toward your fitness goals safely and effectively. The regular gym-goer already knows the benefits. Read more…

We love new beginnings. Fresh starts. Another chance to get it right. With another new year approaching, it’s resolution time! Because most of us are overweight and underactive, changes to fitness and nutrition habits are very popular resolutions to make. Unfortunately they are also very popular ones to break.

If “lose weight and get fit” is going to be your resolution this year, I have a request for you: Please reconsider. No, I haven’t gone to the dark side. I still believe exercise and healthy eating is the best gift we can each give to ourselves. But I also believe that well-intentioned promises with a very slim chance at success are a bad idea, and that’s what “lose weight and get fit” is. In fact it tops last year’s Time Magazine’s top ten list of broken resolutions. Eat healthier and diet makes it in at number 4.

For anyone who is thinking of lose weight, eat healthy or exercise more as a resolution this year: is it your first time? Or does this resolution get dusted off every year or two? If it’s not your first time, what is different this year? My goal here is not to make you feel bad about your self-improvement goals. In fact I applaud them! So much so that I want you to succeed. But an overhaul of your eating and exercise habits is a big change. The reality is that big change is hard. Little changes, however, are manageable.

Whatever you are considering as a resolution, instead of saying: “On January 1st, I will eat well and exercise regularly”; say this instead: “On January 1st, I will eat well and exercise regularly, and continue to do so for the rest of my life”. Now be honest: Can you even say the words? If not, that’s a powerful sign. Are you feeling doubt? Starting to think about foods you love that you’re not sure you’re willing to give up? That’s okay. In fact it’s quite normal. It’s very important that you be honest with yourself now, as that will pave your path to success later.

Now, let’s reconsider the “eat well and exercise” as a new year’s resolution.

If you are very confident that you can do it and sustain it, then go for it! You probably will succeed. If not, break it down! Pick something small but achievable. For some reason we have a “go big or go home” attitude about new year’s resolutions, which unfortunately lead to going big and then going home.

Here’s the thing:
- A small resolution that you do for a long time becomes a big change.
- A big resolution that you do for a short time becomes a small change.

If you resolve to, say, have dessert half as often, and you stick to it for all of 2012, it will be equivalent to having quit dessert entirely for 6 months. If you resolve to give up dessert entirely, do you think you will make it until the end of June? There are some people who can say “I’m going to stop eating junk food now” and they just stop forever without problems. Odds are, that person is not you. If this is not your first “eat well and exercise” resolution, then that person is definitely not you. Accept that and work with it.

Whatever you chose as a resolution, say it out loud and add “and I will do this for all of 2012″. If you can’t say it out loud, you definitely can’t do it. Break it down until you have a resolution that you can say with confidence that you will sustain for all of 2012.

Don’t be among the 99% who make big resolutions that are lost before March.

Be the 1% who makes a small resolution and turns it into a big change.

I was watching one of my clients doing the “World’s Greatest” stretch as part of their warmup, and I decided to do a little experiment. So I grabbed my flip video and asked him to start over without any instruction. Here is the video:

Then I asked him to take his shoes off and start again; also without any instruction. Read more…

More people these days seem to follow the adage that “abs are made in the kitchen”; yet there still seems to be hope among many that doing more crunches or planks will help cut out some of that abdominal fat.

Researchers at the University of Southern Illinois put it to the test, with a recent research study to determine the effect of abdominal exercise on reducing abdominal fat.

Survey said… Read more…

I love food. I particularly love the trifecta of food: delicious, nutritious and easy to make. I haven’t always done a lot of cooking. Or I should say, I used to be a much lesser cook. I’m not really sure what happened. It’s almost as if I used to think that really delicious meals took hours to cook and required some sort of refined skill. And so I didn’t cook really delicious meals. Instead I stuck with a few very basic meals that took very little effort. They were relatively healthy (back in the day I thought a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce was a healthy meal), and they were definitely easy to make. But they were far from delicious. They lacked…the third heat.

Maybe the relevance of that clip is a stretch…but what can I say? I’m a fan of hilarity. But back on topic…

I’m not sure when I made the discovery that truly delicious (but still nutritious) food can actually made with little effort and little time. But it’s something that can’t be unlearned. And so now I cook delicious and nutritious meals often; but I am far from a slave to the kitchen. In fact most of the meals shown in the photos scattered throughout this article took about 30 minutes to make. That’s 30 minutes fridge to fork (F2F); not 30 minutes once you’ve already cut and measured everything like you see on most cooking shows. Read more…

I’m still not sure why pullups and chinups are so awesome. But they are. I like to do them and so do my clients. Despite the high awesome factor (HAF), it’s actually quite hard to make progress with them.

So how can you improve on them? That depends on where you stand (hang?):
1. Can you do a full pullup (no shame if you can’t!)?
2. Can you do at least 1 but fewer than 5 consecutive full pullups (or chinups)?
3. Can you do at least 5 consecutive full pullups, but still want to be able to do more?
Read more…

Bret Contreras is a smart guy (and a nice one too), so I usually watch or read when he puts out new stuff. Last week, while going through Ben Bruno’s “For Your Viewing Pleasure“, a great weekly collection of fitness videos, I saw Bret’s new video showing a variation of the SL RDL (that’s single-leg Romanian Deadlift) that intrigued me.
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…you probably have anterior pelvic tilt (APT). That is, your butt probably sticks out a bit. In some cases, the upside may be that it’ll make your butt look great. Although it doesn’t always look good…

Looks aside, for many people, it can cause or contribute to low back pain, either on a regular basis, or while trying to perform ab exercises. Raise your hand if you yourself or any of your clients have complained that they feel planks in their low back more than in their abs. Read more…