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It’s still early in this new year and you have plenty of time to make this year different. While your health care provider plays an important role in your health, he or she is only a guide to help you get healthier. The person with the most responsibility is you. Only you can take charge of your health and do the things that are important in keeping your body healthy. What you do every day makes a big difference in your overall health.

Eating healthier should be on your list of changes.

Eating healthy isn’t dieting, but making smarter choices when selecting food. Do you always get hungry mid-afternoon, so you grab a candy bar? Why not be prepared and have a piece of fruit ready. Increasing the amount of vegetables on your plate and eliminating or reducing the amount of highly processed food and food with added sugar is important. What you drink is also important. Cut out soft drinks and opt for water instead. Iced green tea without sugar is another good option.

We were meant to eat healthy and get plenty of exercise.

Consider how man lived hundreds of years ago, long before civilization. He ate off the earth, gathering berries, nuts and greens, plus hunted for game or fished if the village was on a waterway. Early man was constantly moving, since doing otherwise meant extinction, either from starvation or at the hands of an enemy. Fast forward to today. Most people barely move once they end their work day. They go home, eat a heat and serve meal or fast food and binge watch videos or TV. If they have a sedentary job, it means they get little or no exercise the entire day. The body doesn’t wear out, instead, it rusts out. It was made to function its best when it’s active. That was the only way early man survived.

So many illnesses are caused by stress, a bad diet and lack of exercise.

You may not being able to control the stressful situation around you, but you can control how you react to it. What you eat and regular exercise can be stress busters, plus improve your overall health. An anti-inflammatory diet with whole foods and few processed foods help reduce stress. Foods high in vitamin B, omega3 fatty acids, magnesium and protein are good. These foods include lean meats, eggs, avocados, walnuts, broccoli and other healthy whole foods. Probiotics, such as yogurt, which promote gut health also help reduce stress. When you kickbox, you punch away at stress.

• If you want a go-to food for those stressful moments, eat a snack that contains higher magnesium, such as a small amount of dark chocolate or pumpkin seeds. They help you sleep better too.
• De-stress your diet by cutting out food with added sugar. Not only does sugar add to stress and affect your body, so do soft drinks or drinks that contain alcohol or caffeine.
• Get adequate sleep to reduce stress. Set a schedule for sleeping. You should get 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night. Going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, even on weekends, can help you have better sleep.
• Only you can make these things happen. Others can recommend you do them, but you have to be willing to take action. Take control of your life and good health by making positive changes this year.

For more information, contact us today at One Love Chino

If you’re constantly pounding the pavement or doing cardio that involves jumping repetitively, you could end up with plantar fasciitis. The plantar fascia attaches to the bone in the heel and goes to the base of the toes. This ligament absorbs the shock of both jumping and running. That impact can cause tiny tears and gets inflamed, which causes it to thicken with scar tissue, creating even more damage.

Take the pressure off your feet in water.

Not every cardio workout involves sudden pressure on the foot. For instance, running in water involves almost none. If you don’t want to test the potential for injury, just go for a swim both are exceptional cardio. Try doing battle ropes from a seated position or modify others that don’t cause chronic pressure, by going on the balls of the feet and suddenly turning or eliminate the potential of pounding. .

More traditional cardio workouts don’t involve the feet.

A rowing machine doesn’t require you to balance on your foot or move them. Neither does elliptical machines or step machines. These are all good forms of cardio exercise that don’t require any impact on the feet. Standing in place and doing extended jumping jacks, without the action of jumping, which means you just move your arms up and cross at the top and then bring them down to cross at the bottom, can also provide a cardio workout.

Build the strength in your plantar fascia with stretches.

While none of these should ever be used without checking with your health care professional first, these are useful for slowing the progress of plantar fasciitis. Toe curls are done sitting up straight with feet flat on the floor, as you raise your heels, keep your toes on the floor and then squeeze the heel and ball of the foot and lower. Stretching the big toe, wiggling your toes and stretching them, towel pulls, wall pushes and rolling a tennis ball on the arch of your foot can strengthen and relax the muscle.

• Do you do standing butt kicks and find they cause some pain? Switch them out. Replace them with donkey kicks done on the hands and knees.
• Not only can stretching help keep your feet safer, so does wearing good shoes. Wearing ill fitting shoes or ones that aren’t supportive can cause more damage.
• You can change strength training to a combo strength and cardio. Use lighter weights and more reps or create a circuit training workout with little rest between exercises.
• Getting cardio doesn’t have to be hard. While running and jumping may be out, eliminating jogging and things like basketball. You may have to modify your workout to avoid any potential pounding, but it’s worth it and not really difficult.

For more information, contact us today at One Love Chino

Each person is unique. That’s the guiding force at One Love Fit Club in Chino Hills, CA. When people come for personal training, each person gets an individualized program. Some people who are desk bound all day want a workout they can do while seated. It’s also true of people who are just recovering from surgery. Sitting too long is a problem, even if you workout regularly, so I created some exercises you can do at your desk for a few minutes every hour. It helps boost circulation and makes weight loss even easier.

Your chair can be an effective workout tool.

Don’t worry about these exercises, you won’t have to get down on the floor to do them. You can sit in your chair and do many of them. One is to lift yourself off the chair. Grasping the sides of your chair, either on the cushion or top of the arms, lift your whole body off the chair, keeping your knees bent and thighs at a 90 degree angle to your calves and parallel to the floor. You can also grasp the cushion, scooting yourself to the front edge and pushing your legs out straight with heels on the floor. Lower your body, doing a dip and lift it back up again. Make sure your chair isn’t on rollers.

Do leg extensions.

Your core muscles will benefit from leg extensions. You can do them seated anywhere without anyone knowing. Sit forward on the chair with your arms by your side. Have one leg extended straight with heal on the floor, while the other is bent in normal position, foot flat on the floor and knee bent at a 90 degree angle. Lift the extended leg as high as you can and hold for a count of ten. Repeat it several times and switch legs, extending and lifting the other leg.

Keep tension away with upper body stretches.

You’ll boost your productivity, circulation and feel better throughout the day if you take time to stretch and move a bit every hour. Rolling your shoulders, turning your head side to side—attempting to touch your ear to your shoulders—or extending your arms and rotating them in circles can certainly get the circulation going and help relieve or prevent upper body tension and headaches. Stretching throughout the day is important.

• Work on your posture while you’re sitting. Stay seated, putting your arms out and bending them at a 90 degree angle at the elbows, so you look a bit like a goal post. Push your arms back, making your shoulder blades as close together as possible.
• Do isometrics, tightening your muscles to stay into shape. As you work on your posture, pull your stomach in and tighten it. Hold for as long as you can. Squeeze your glutes, holding them for a count of ten.
• If you don’t have an audience, doing a windmill or jumping jack can benefit you. You can also benefit from doing the jumping jack without the jumping, doing squats, overhead presses and arm raises. When put together, they’re known as the nitric oxide dump that can help lower blood pressure.
• While doing exercises when seated can help keep you in shape throughout the day, it doesn’t replace full body workouts at the gym. It’s an addition to that workout.

For more information, contact us today at One Love Fit Club

I’ve worked with a lot of people through the years at One Love Fit Club in Chino Hills, CA. The people that get the best results also focus on eating a healthy diet. Diet is important for building strong muscles and losing weight. One question I’m frequently asked is about the use of supplements. Supplements can include everything from protein supplements to the multivitamin you take in the morning. There are pros and cons to using supplements and people that need them and those that don’t.

You may need to supplement at different times of the year.

While it’s not as much of a problem in Chino Hills because of its latitude, getting adequate vitamin D can still be hard to do. Exposure to sunshine is the best way to get vitamin D, but overcast and rainy days, clothing that covers most of the body and sunscreen can make it hard. To add to that, people with darker complexions and older people naturally don’t get enough. Many foods are vitmin D fortified and other foods that contain vitamin D include fatty fish, such as salmon, eggs and mushrooms. However, studies show that there’s a vitamin D deficiency in 50% of the population. Supplementing with vitamin D may be prudent, since it’s important for immunity, heart health and bones.

A healthy diet should provide most other nutrients, unless you have a health condition or are aging.

Older people and those with health conditions such as IBS or other digestive issues, may require vitamin and mineral supplements. Besides vitamin D deficiency in many seniors, a large portion of older women also have magnesium deficiencies. Soaking your feet in Epsom salt is one solution, Women who are about to become pregnant or are pregnant may need vitamin B12. Always consult your health care professional first.

It’s more than just vitamins and minerals.

Supplements can include protein supplements. In most cases, people eat adequate protein. You can increase your protein if you are older and have problems absorbing the protein or are trying to build muscles, but don’t go overboard. You can get too much. While you can get too much vitamin A from supplements, you can’t overdo it when you eat carrots. Phytonutrients and phytochemicals are not vitamins, but chemicals that also help you stay your healthiest and not often found in supplements. Many of these nutrients increase the effectiveness of other nutrition found in plants, so eating the actual plant is far better since they act in synergy with each other.

• You can get too much of a good thing. Fat soluble vitamins are stored in your body. Too much vitamin A, E, D or K can cause dangerous health issues. Water soluble vitamins flush out in your urine, but some water soluble vitamins can have dangerous side effects if too many are taken at once.
• If you want to improve your recovery after a tough workout, add a scoop or two of protein supplement to your diet and increase vitamin D and Omega-3 fatty acids.
• Some supplements may help avoid sickness from viruses. Vitamin D and zinc are said to be helpful, as well as vitamin C. Be aware that some people experience stomach cramping and diarrhea from vitamin C supplements.
• A healthy diet is always the best way to boost your nutrition, as long as you have no other issues. Always check with your health care professional first, since some interact with other medications or may not be right for you.

For more information, contact us today at One Love Fit Club

There’s a lot of ways to build muscles and strength. Battle ropes, bodyweight workouts, resistance bands and weights are a few. Some people focus primarily on free weights, since they’re a time tested technique, but you can exercise muscles on a variety of planes when you use resistance bands. Unlike weights, you don’t simply use gravity as the resistance. It’s all about the stretch. At One Love Fit Club in Chino Hills, CA, we help you with a variety of ways to boost your fitness and help you with ways to do it when you can’t come to the gym.

Let’s start with some of the benefits of resistance bands compared to free weights.

Free weights are good, they’re time tested. As noted before, you use the stretch as the resistance, so you can pull and push in all directions or at any angle on both horizontal and vertical planes. Resistance bands come in a wide range of resistance, levels. Each band has a different color, which indicates a different amount of resistance. Unlike a collection of free weights that require at least a corner of a room, storage is very easy. A whole range of options can be folded and put in a drawer, with room left over for other items.

Do you want to build large muscles?

Some people love the strength-building options, but aren’t necessarily looking for bulk. Resistance bands are perfect. If you want to build large muscles, it’s doable with resistance bands, but requires a little more thought that it would be with free weights. You need to focus on progressive overload, increasing the intensity, while also increasing sets and reps as you improve.

It’s all about working your muscles to failure or close to failure.

Whether you use dumbbells, barbells, sandbags, resistance bands or weighted medicine balls, the theory is the same. Use your muscles to move something that provides resistance. That resistance can come from the rubbery stretch of resistance bands or the weight of the object against gravity. Focus on pushing your muscles to failure or close to that level, which is progressive overload. How you get your muscle to that point isn’t as important as getting it there and making it work.

When you workout with weights or kettlebells, your muscles are being worked the minute you lift them. That doesn’t occur with resistance bands, you only get a workout when they’re stretched to the max.

You’ll train differently with resistance bands. Resistance bands provide a more well-rounded workout, since they include stabilizing muscles. They’re versatile and can be even added to bodyweight workouts.

You can use resistance bands for flexibility training, too. There’s extremely versatile. They’re also good to use when traveling, since they take little room in your suitcase.

People who are more seasoned at fitness may want to add resistance bands to their workout for variety. I’m always finding new ways to challenge my muscles with this tool. They can provide variety.