Fitness & Wellness

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.

I know that I’m constantly focused on eating whole foods and avoiding prepacked, highly processed ones, but there are some exceptions. Salads premade in the grocery may be healthy, just as prepackaged sports bars can be good or bad. How do you tell the difference? One way is to read the labels. Everyone is rushed for time, so finding a pre-workout or post workout snack that’s quick can be a big benefit. Here are some ways to identify healthy and unhealthy ones.

Read the ingredients and check for added sugar.

You may find several different names for sugar, which range from corn syrup, maltose, to glucose, fructose and dextrose, just to name a few. Learn the variety of names for sugar and when you find more than one on a label, you know they’re trying to hide the sugar content, by breaking it up to several types, so all are lower on the ingredients label and it doesn’t look as bad.

Identify unhealthy fat and poor protein sources.

If the protein bar lists partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, and any other partially hydrogenated oils it is probably a source of trans fats. Always check the label to see if it has any trans fats. The government recently required the labels show how much, but if the amount is under 0.5 grams per serving, the company can show 0 grams. Again, check to see how many servings per sports bar. If it’s more than one serving, they may be hiding something.

Look for sports bars with few ingredients and ones you can recognize.

So many of the “healthy” protein bars have a list of ingredients an arm long, many of which you can’t pronounce. Opt for ones where the ingredients are recognized, like organic flax seed, organic dates or organic oats. The healthiest ones have whole foods with the sweetness coming from dried fruit. You’ll recognize them immediately when you can visualize every ingredient. Most don’t contain added protein in the form of casein, which can cause stomach upset, but get the protein from nuts, seeds or collagen from grass-fed animal sources.

• Some of the healthiest sports bars or energy bars may also be more expensive. It’s worth the investment. Often the cheaper options are more like eating a candy bar after a workout or a run.
• The sports bar is used for refueling, not for a complete meal. The ratio of carbs to protein should be approximately 4 to 1. Don’t go for energy bars that are high in fiber and fat, as they can affect your digestion and cause GI problems if you eat them before a tough workout.
• Avoid all sports bars that contain artificial sweetener. They may be lower in calories, but there are several studies that show they aren’t healthy and can actually cause you to gain weight around your middle, while messing with your metabolism.
• Companies often make several types of sports bars, some are healthier than others. Just because one bar in their line is super healthy, it doesn’t mean all of them are. Read the labels for each bar.

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