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5 Mistakes That Got Me INJURED (Avoid These!)

5 Mistakes That Got Me INJURED (Avoid These!)

by | Oct 22, 2023 | Blog, Exercises, Foam Rolling, Functional Fitness, Pain Relief

Injuries suck.

No one likes them. No one wants them.

And they only seem to add up more and more the older we get.

I’ve personally suffered from far too many of them because of ego and stupid mistakes.

Mistakes I want to help you avoid.

That’s why in this video I’m going to go over 5 training mistakes I made that lead to injury to help you avoid making the same mistakes and even come back stronger than ever no matter your age!

By learning from my own mistakes, I now feel stronger and move better than ever before and have helped many of my clients overcome chronic aches and pains to move and feel their best as well!

So let’s jump right in with mistake #1….

Mistake #1: Just resting an injury.

Rest can be a key component of recovery. 

But far too often we just rest it then go right back to what we were doing that lead to the injury in the first place.

We never actually correct the underlying cause or problem.

We never address the movement compensation causing overload.

And then we wonder why a few months later we are sidelined with the same issue or another injury even on that same side of our body. 

Resting it doesn’t fix the problem!

If you have an injury, you need to assess what lead to the overload of that area in the first place.

Because often the point of pain, the place that got injured, isn’t even where the problem started. 

Even previous injuries may have resulted in changes to our movement patterns leading to the issues we now have.

Like that ankle sprain you got years ago you never rehabbed may be why you have hip or lower back aches and pains now. 

So instead of just resting an area, or even if you do need to rest to recover to start, focus on taking things back to basics and doing that rehab work to improve your mind-body connection and make sure you are performing exercises correctly. 

You want to come back to training and work on improving and retraining proper movements over just going back to what you were doing.

And regress to progress. Start back slowly to make sure you’re building up using the correct muscles to power moves! 

Which brings me to Mistake #2: Focusing only on proper form.

The more advanced an exerciser you are, the more you know what proper form should be…

And the more you can also CHEAT and compensate.

So picture perfect form doesn’t always mean we’re using the correct muscles. 

And this ability to mimic proper form is also why you can get injured while saying, “I have great form with moves! I know what I’m doing!”

Too often we force a movement pattern we can’t fully control, which leads to us overusing muscles not meant to handle the load or seeking out mobility from joints that aren’t meant to help us get that range of motion and movement. 

It’s why we may feel our lower backs as we try to extend our spine to perform the bent over row with a straight back. 

If we have limited thoracic mobility, due to hunching over a computer, we may end up overarching our lower back to compensate.

This can then lead to us overusing our lower back and ending up with back pain while our row form looks good.

We also have to remember that proper form isn’t a one size fits all thing. There are variations to what is perfect.

Like with the squat….

Social media may show you this one version of a picture perfect squat with super upright torso, feet hip width and completely straight ahead as the person squats ass to grass… 

But if you have a shorter torso and longer femurs or a different hip socket shape and depth, you may need a different stance or have more of a forward lean.

We don’t want to just ignore the importance of form, but we do want to recognize that there are acceptable variations we may each need based on build or even previous injuries or even mobility restrictions. 

If we try to force our body into a form mold that doesn’t fit, if we try to do a move we can’t control using the correct muscles, we are going to end up injured.

So focus not only on the movement pattern itself, but what you actually feel working to power the move.

And don’t be afraid to use variations or tweaks to movements to fit what you need!

Next Mistake #3: Not keeping in rehab as prehab.

You can NEVER stop doing what makes you better. 

And so often future injuries are a result of PREVIOUS aches and pains we didn’t fully address or keep addressing. 

How many of us have had an injury, done some rehab, had it go away, stopped the rehab then been frustrated when it seems like the injury keeps flaring back up?

It’s because we stopped doing the rehab that improved our mobility and built up strength in underactive and weak muscles! 

And the second we stop doing what made us better, we start to fall back into old postures, movements and recruitment patterns, overusing muscles not meant to carry the load.

Often we want to default back into movement patterns we did for a long time that have become natural. 

Movement patterns and postures we constantly have to fight against to ingrain new ones that will become natural only with time.

Time we don’t often truly dedicate to the changes!

So once you finish up rehab and start feeling good, you need to turn that rehab into prehab. 

You can’t just stop it at the first sign of feeling better and go back to what you were doing!

Include that prehab as part of your warm up or on recovery days BEFORE anything adds up! 

This helps ensure you’re using the correct muscles in movements and have mobilized joints to work through a full range of motion.

And if you do feel any aches starting to slightly reappear, whether you’ve spent longer hours at your desk or have been traveling and got a bit lax on your prehab, step up that mobility and stability work and assess what other moves in your workouts you may need to modify to address what is going on! 

But don’t think just because you did some physio or rehab for a bit the issue is magically solved forever!

We get good at what we consistently do and we need to keep doing those boring basics to maintain the foundation we built!

And while prehab and mobility work is key…

We can’t out rehab our daily movements and the way we then train in our workouts… 

This is why you have to be conscious of Mistake #4: Not checking your ego at the gym door.

Trust me…I want to push hard in my training sessions. 

And I know ego can push me to want to eek out an extra rep or use a heavier weight even as my form breaks down. 

There are definitely those workouts where I finish a set and know I wasn’t engaging the correct muscles as I got tired…yet I pushed through anyway.

This happens because we want to see results and we want to see them now.

But there is a fine line we have to tread when it comes to pushing hard and pushing to a point where we are ultimately creating overload and pain. 

We need to focus on being intentional with our workouts and making each rep quality.

We need to realize when our ego needs to be put in check.

We also need to embrace MODIFYING at times to get more out of moves. 

Sometimes we advance to a movement we haven’t earned, thinking if the exercise is technically harder it will help us see better results faster.

But since we haven’t earned the move, we compensate. We don’t actually work the muscles fully that we want to target. 

Not only does this not get us the full benefit of the move, so we’re wasting effort and time, but it can lead to injury.

If we instead had modified and regressed to progress, we could have made the move harder for ourselves because we were actually able to use the correct muscles. 

So as much as you may want to do that push up from your toes, check your ego. 

If your hips are sagging, your head is jutting forward or your form is just fugly, modify it to make it picture perfect.

That tweak can actually make the move HARDER because you’re able to use the correct muscles. And you’ll see better results because of it. 

Modifying doesn’t mean making a move easier. It means making a move match what you need.

And this can help you train harder without creating aches and pains!

And this final mistake is one we so often make and think we could “get away with” when we were younger…Only to now realize “getting away with it” may be why we have more aches and pains…

Mistake #5: Not doing a proper warm up.

Ever go into a workout without doing a warm up because you’re short on time and feel like it takes multiple rounds of your training session or even half your workout before you’re feeling warm and squatting as low as you’d like? 

Well not only did you end up wasting half your workout time by not “wasting time” warming up, but you also put yourself at greater risk for overload and injury.

We have to recognize that our bodies aren’t primed for the movements we are about to do because we’ve spent our day driving in a car or hunched over a computer or doing other repetitive movements and suboptimal postures. 

So that heavy overhead press you want to perform that keeps hurting your shoulder or neck or back, may be because you aren’t addressing your hunched over desk posture and first working on your thoracic extension.

You aren’t doing the mobility work to properly press overhead and engage your upper back while having proper scapular control. 

But all you need to do to fix this is include foam rolling, stretching and activation in your warm up prior! And do so CONSISTENTLY!

Your warm up is the time you address daily postures and ready your body for the movements you are going to do. 

It is the time you can address past aches and pains to make sure you’re not creating the same overload that can lead to injury.

This prehab work done just even for 5-10 minutes in your warm up CONSISTENTLY can add up more than a once a week recovery session. 

So in your warm up…

Foam roll to relax tight and overactive muscles… 

Perform dynamic stretches to warm up your body and mobilize your joints… 

Then include activation moves to engage those underactive muscles while improving your mobility and stability. 

Through this 3-part prehab process, you can ready your body to put in some quality work during your workout. 

You can help prevent your desk job posture and lack of activity during the day from impacting how you train!

If you want to avoid aches and pains from getting worse and adding up more and more over the decades, focus on truly addressing what caused the pain in the first place. 

Don’t push through it. Don’t skip your prehab.

Focus on what you feel working in movements and never stop doing what made you feel better! 

For more injury resources, CLICK HERE.

7 Big LIES About Exercise and Aging

7 Big LIES About Exercise and Aging

by | Oct 9, 2023 | Blog, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Mindset, Workouts

The best way to feel and look old really quickly is to stop doing all the things that kept you healthy.

Too often we hit an age that we deem “old” and stop pushing ourselves the way we used to in our training.

Heck I even found an article on WebMD about exercises to avoid after 50 and it said…

“Lifting weights is a great way to build muscle strength, but when you’re over 50 there is no reason to push yourself too hard.”

I’m sorry….NO.

While we can’t change our age, at any time we can make changes to move and feel our best.

And the best way NOT to see results is NOT to challenge yourself.

Use it or lose it.

Getting older doesn’t mean you now should stop pushing yourself to conquer new challenges or step outside your comfort zone.

Getting older actually makes it even more important that you do so that you stay healthy and strong till your final day on this planet!

That’s why in this video I want to refute 7 reasons I often hear people use as excuses not to push themselves outside their comfort zones when it comes to their strength training once they hit whatever age they believe to be “old.”

Myth #1: I shouldn’t push myself too hard. 

I can’t even describe the spasms my face wants to go into stating that myth even for the 100th time.

No wonder we’re seeing more injuries, more cognitive decline…

No wonder we think aging just means gaining weight and getting out of shape?! 

We’re promoting attitudes that perpetuate that!

I don’t care if you’re 20 or 90, you need to CHALLENGE yourself with your training to keep pushing your body to adapt and grow stronger and MAINTAIN your strength. 

Sarcopenia, or muscle loss, is so prevalent because we’ve too easily adopted the belief that we don’t need to push ourselves with our training. That with age we deserve to be lazy.

But if you want to stay strong and fit and even mentally with it till your final day on this planet, you NEED to push yourself to feel worked in your workouts. 

This doesn’t mean every session should slaughter you. But it shouldn’t be that way at any age. 

But every single workout you do want to create that progressive overload and do something hard.

We build and retain lean muscle through pushing our bodies to do more than they could the previous session!

Myth #2: X Move Is Bad And Dangerous. 

You can get hurt training at any age.

And as someone who has learned a lot since their early meathead days, I would say we actually end up being smarter in our training as we get older as we often appreciate the value of just moving well over letting ego dictate what we do. 

BUT no matter our age we have to stop just demonizing exercises. Or blaming exercises for aches and pains.

Squats don’t hurt your knees.

Bad squats or recruitment patterns with loads you haven’t earned do. 

And unless you don’t ever plan to sit down to a toilet again, it would be in your best interest to learn to really control and retrain that squat movement pattern as much as you can!

If you want to be able to do a movement or maintain your mobility, you need to train that movement pattern in the gym!

Regress to progress.

Training only leads to injury when we haven’t earned a move or misuse a move. 

By doing a move that doesn’t match your needs and goals, you can get injured at ANY age. 

Often the fact that we even did moves with ego when we were younger, is what has now led to the aches and pains we even have.

But training isn’t dangerous.

We need to even see the gym as an opportunity to PRACTICE proper movements so that we are at less risk for injury in everyday life. 

The gym is a perfect place to learn to move well. 

Just don’t be afraid to regress to progress and focus on intentionality with your movement to earn those advancements! 

Because if you train smarter and not just harder, you put yourself at less risk for injury getting up and down of the ground or lifting that box!

Myth #3: I shouldn’t lift too heavy.

First off, what is too heavy?

A weight you can’t lift?

Something you can’t lift with proper form?

If that’s the case, you shouldn’t EVER lift too heavy.

But if you don’t challenge your muscles, you won’t create that stimulus for muscle growth. 

And we want to do everything we can to promote that environment for growth as we will find it gets harder and harder to build muscle the older we get!

But especially as we get older we need to focus on maintaining maximal strength. 

That means NOT shying away from lower rep, heavy weight work in our training.

Maximal strength work means we are better able to prevent falls and fractures and are not only stronger, but have more lean muscle mass which keeps our bones healthy and helps us look leaner. 

So lift heavy for strong bones and a lean physique! 

Stop defaulting to only doing 15-20 rep work with lighter loads.

Push those heavy weights as you earn them and build up to keep yourself strong and your metabolic rate higher! 

Myth #4: I have (insert health concerns here). 

We always want to address injuries and health concerns with our training routines.

But this should be the case at any age.

However, too often, as we get older and more health concerns may pop up, we see this as a reason to stop pushing hard in our workouts or train at all. 

When often training will help us improve our health and can even combat many of our symptoms!

Strength work can help reduce chronic inflammation. It can reduce our risk for osteoporosis. It can improve our cognitive functioning.

It can help us sleep better to recover from illness faster.

It can help us maintain our bone health. 

It can even help us retrain movements and strengthen muscles to overcome injuries. 

It can help us move and feel a whole heck of a lot younger. 

Overall, strength training is linked with a 10%–17% lower risk of heart disease, total cancer, diabetes, lung cancer and death from any cause. (According to a review study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (2022; 56 [13])) 

Yet so often we let health concerns stop us instead of finding a way to strengthen around them. And THAT is what makes us feel older so much faster!

Find ways to regress moves and address what you need to focus on feeling the correct muscles work.

Design workouts around your schedule based on the intensity you need. And start back slow. 

But the key is to START and to focus on building, meeting yourself where you are at!

Myth #5: I shouldn’t do awkward moves. 

As we get older, we are less willing to make ourselves feel uncomfortable or awkward or even bad at something.

When we’re young, we embrace it more as we encounter new things on almost a daily basis even. 

But as we get older, we don’t like to push to do new things that feel awkward and uncomfortable. 

The thing is…we need to.

Those awkward moves improve our mental health.

They also keep our mind-body connection strong which allows us to react more quickly in everyday life. 

Many even improve our balance and core strength, especially if they are single sided moves! 

And these moves help us even build muscle, creating progression in different ways, changing the range of motion, stability and even tempos.

They challenge not only our body but even our mind to keep us younger and healthy!

And ladies, studies have shown even greater benefits from physical activity in terms of our thinking speed as we get older! 

Myth #6: I can’t build muscle. 

Yup. It does get harder to build and retain lean muscle as we get older.

But trying to use this as an excuse to not even try?

NOPE!

It is even more reason to push hard and lift heavier! 

It’s also a reason to cut back on the chronic cardio, which can not only cause more inflammation and joint issues, but lead to us struggling even more to build and retain lean muscle. 

Instead we need to do everything we can to combat the fact that we don’t have the optimal hormone levels for muscle growth Any exercise we once did and we don’t utilize protein as efficiently. 

We need to do everything we can to focus on lifting heavy, challenging ourselves and pushing hard in our training while including adequate recovery. 

This is the only way we can build muscle and at least make sure we maintain what we already have as the more we lose through inactivity, the more we will struggle to get it back the older we get!

Myth #7: I can’t recover as quickly so I shouldn’t do as much. 

We may find that our recovery does change as we get older, especially even during menopause when our sleep may be impacted more.

But this is all the more reason to train with purpose and design intentional workouts that we can be CONSISTENT with. 

Because the more inconsistent we are, the harder we make it on ourselves to recover.

We don’t often realize that, as we’ve gotten older, we actually are less consistent in having that set gym training routine.

And that inconsistency can make every workout feel new to our body, so we are constantly getting sore.

Make sure to set a schedule you can be consistent with. 

Then don’t randomly string together moves or workouts without a plan.

Create a set schedule you repeat for a few weeks so you can slowly progress and build each week.

This will help improve your recovery over always feeling beat down.

Plus, including mobility work and not feeling pressure to do wasted volume may not only help you recover faster but even build strength more efficiently from your training. 

Often less is more and too often, when we’re younger, we do more just because we can or because we’re trying to out exercise our diet.

So see this as an opportunity to make some changes that lead to even better gains!

Define aging on your own terms.

Stay strong till your final day on this planet by never stopping to push yourself and challenge yourself. 

Include those strength workouts that make you uncomfortable but that meet you where you are at to see fabulous muscle and strength gains at any and every age! 

For an amazing community of women building their leanest, strongest bodies at any and EVERY age, join my Free Facebook Group! 

The Best Push Up Exercise (You Aren’t Doing)

The Best Push Up Exercise (You Aren’t Doing)

by | Aug 13, 2023 | Blog, Bodyweight, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Push Ups

No matter how much equipment I have available, I still love including a push up variation in my upper body workouts.

They are an amazing move to target your chest, shoulders, triceps and core.

And not only are they an amazing way to build strength and muscle, but there are so many push up variations you can include to target different muscles more or less based on your needs and goals.

Want to work on shoulder stability or anti-rotational core strength?

Try the push up with shoulder tap.

Want to target your triceps more?

Include a close grip variation.

Want to work your upper pecs extra?

Try a decline variation.

But in thinking through all the different options out there, there was one variation that came to mind as often being underutilized…

The push up plus!

In this video, I want to go over how to do this essential push up variation and ways to modify the move if you can’t do a push up from your toes on the ground. 

But first I want to explain why I think this variation is so important to include….

This push up isn’t the fanciest variation out there, but it is one of the most essential to include if you want to be a push up rockstar, improve your overhead press or bench press weights or even avoid neck, shoulder or upper back aches and pains.

It is so important to include because of that simple rounding and scapular protraction at the top of the push up.

This seemingly simple extra movement added on to the basic push up works an often overlooked muscle – the serratus anterior.

The serratus anterior is an essential muscle when it comes to keeping your shoulder blades, shoulders, neck and upper back healthy and happy and functioning correctly! 

And the push up plus is an amazing move to work this muscle as it is easier often to target this muscle without letting your upper traps compensate.

Too often our upper traps take over in movements meant to work our serratus anterior, which only perpetuates the aches and pains we have.

This scapular control, and serratus anterior strength, will also translate to better movement of your shoulder blades during overhead pressing and even a better ability to support your shoulders during bench press. 

This push up variation is a great way to keep everything healthy and strong as you include more pressing!

So how do you do the push up plus? 

While you will be performing almost just a basic push up, you want to give extra attention to the movement of your shoulder blades and even your hands pressure down into the ground.

Our hands are our foundation and better tension through them into the ground can increase muscle activation of our upper body. And by also being conscious of fully gripping the ground with our entire hand we can help avoid wrist, elbow and even shoulder aches and pains.

To do this push up, set up with your feet together and hands just outside your chest. Spread your fingers and flex your quads as you drive back through your heels.

You may even find it helpful to ever so slightly turn your hands out. This can even further help you engage your serratus anterior.

Then pull your shoulders down feeling them unshrug as you engage your back.

With your body in a nice straight line, lower down keeping tension.

Feel your shoulder blades draw toward your spine.

Then at the bottom, push the ground away and feel your shoulder blades move away from your spine.

As you reach the top of the push up, push the ground away a bit extra as if pulling your shoulders forward.

Feel your thoracic spine round up as you try to pull your shoulder blades around your ribs.

You may tuck your chin as you round up to go with the natural spinal flexion.

But do not let your butt go up in the air. You may slightly tilt your pelvis under instead to engage your abs more with the posterior pelvic tilt.

But you really want to focus on pulling your shoulder blades around your rib cage as you push that ground away.

This action really works that serratus anterior.

You’ll then move back into that full plank position and perform the push up again.

Working your press with the freedom to move your shoulder blades and be able to control that full range of motion is what makes this move so amazing for your upper body.

Not to mention you get that little extra core work with the pelvic tilt on top of the fact that the push up is a moving plank!

Now what if you can’t do a full push up from your toes? How can you modify this move?

An incline variation is always a great way to modify while allowing you to train that full push up plank position. 

Too often we do turn to knee push ups but this doesn’t teach us to properly engage our legs and drive back through our heels. It can keep us stuck getting stronger at only a modified variation.

It’s why that incline and working down in reps as you lower the incline is so key. 

You can use a rack, adjusting the barbell height or even boxes, lowering them down as you progress. 

If you are limited on incline options, you can select one that is a bit too high and slow down the tempo.

If you only have one that is too low, consider just the eccentric portion of the movement and start with the “plus” BEFORE you lower down for the rep. 

A final tip to modify if you need to work around wrist pain, is to put a mat folded up under the heel of your palm. This reduces the wrist extension demands to make it easier on your wrist. 

Bonus Tip:

And one bonus tip if you’re ready for a bit more of a challenge with this move and to test your core strength and stability, try including a dead stop or even hand release at the bottom.

This forces you to really engage prior to pressing back up and even makes sure you work through the fullest range of motion possible without using any momentum! 

That press back up from a dead stop is harder than we give it credit for, especially if we are super conscious that everything moves together as if our body were a solid board.

But even as you add in this dead stop or hand lift, don’t rush through the protraction at the top of the push up. Really focus on feeling around your rib cage even working!

So whether you’re looking to mix up your push up work, improve your upper body strength and stability to lift more while avoiding injury or just want to build up to that first full push up from your toes, this is an amazing push up variation to include in your workout routine!

And for more tips to improve your push ups, here are two videos to help!

10 Tips to Increase Your Push Ups (in 7 Minutes) 

Things No One Tells You About Push Ups 

3 Workout Tips To Lose Fat Faster

3 Workout Tips To Lose Fat Faster

by | Jul 17, 2023 | Blog, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Workouts

You want to lose fat and actually keep it off?

Stop thinking of your training as a chance to burn more calories.

The benefits of working out for fat loss aren’t in the calories burned during our training sessions.

Training helps us see better results faster through building muscle, improving our movements and increasing our resting metabolic rate.

Because the calories burned from our training sessions are minimal compared to the calories we burn over the course of the day.

That’s why I wanted to share 3 tips to help you get better results from your workouts and see those fat loss results build faster!

To start off – Don’t Repeat Movements Over The Week.

Your workouts don’t need to be boring to get results.

While there are some fundamental movement patterns you want to include in your training, you shouldn’t be so married to only one form of a movement that you only use the same exercise over and over again.

You should include a diversity of movements over the course of your weekly progression but repeat those same workouts for 2-4 weeks at least.

That repetition of the same workouts allows you to see growth in the movements.

But it’s key you include a diversity of movements during the week to create progression through the same but different and avoid your ego getting in the way.

Like including not only the barbell hip thruster but also the single leg foot raised variation as well.

This diversity in the exact form of a movement pattern you include allows you to target and work all aspects of a muscle and in different ways.

It also allows you to use the same movement pattern both as a primary heavy lift and even an accessory move.

You can even change up the types of resistances you use or the exact range of motion and tempos on a movement to drive muscle growth more efficiently over the week.

And this will allow you to see progression each week in these different ways and address any weak links you may have.

If you instead repeated the same barbell back row twice in a week, you may find your ego pushes you to try to lift more each workout, when you can’t. 

That second time using the row, your back may be fatigued from previous workouts. So you need to use less weight. But it can be hard to go lighter on the same move you did earlier with more.

By simply even using a single arm dumbbell row as that second row variation in the week, you now won’t force out more weight than you can control AND you’ll get the benefits of a unilateral move.

You’ll allow yourself to use more ways of creating progression to drive muscle growth while keeping your workouts fun and challenging.

You’ll see quicker gains in strength and even feel functionally more fit from your workouts! 

The second tip is – Start Global. Go Local.

In other words go big to small.

When you’re looking to include a variety of movement variations over the course of the week, you don’t want to just think about different tools or tempos or postures. 

You also want to think about how many muscles and joints are involved in the movement.

Include heavy compound lifts, like the deadlift, but also more isolated movements, especially to target those more stubborn areas, like the bicep curl. 

This combination of both types of movements leads to the best muscle gains.

While compound movements are more time-efficient and should be our focus when we have less time to train, isolation exercises help us work a muscle closer to failure to promote optimal growth. 

You want to be strategic in how you combine these movements over the course of your workout to get the best results from each type.

Generally, you want to start with big, heavy compound lifts, more global movements before you progress on to smaller, more isolation exercises to work local muscles. 

This way you are fresher to maximize those big lifts and lift heavier weights before you push a muscle to full fatigue and create a bigger volume of work with the isolation focus. 

Movements like the bench press are a great option to start your training.

Because you are fresh for this lift by including it at the start of your workout, you’ll be able to work more at your true 100% intensity and lift heavier for quality reps. 

Exercises that allow you to lift heavier weights build strength which allows you to move more weight not only over the single session but also the weeks and months.

By working from heavier compound lifts toward more accessory moves and isolation exercises, you can fully fatigue the muscles worked during that primary exercise and use all 3 drivers of muscle growth. 

With isolation moves, you aren’t focused on low reps and maxing out on loads, but instead of creating more of a pump or burn in the muscles through higher reps with loads that make you want to stop 5 short of where you do. 

These weights shouldn’t feel light for the reps you perform even though the loads will be lighter than you may use for a compound exercise.

Moves like the leg extension done later in your workout should fully fatigue your quads after you’ve done other exercises like squats and front lunges earlier on. 

Even if you’re short on time or only training 3 times a week, consider adding in a finisher to your workout with an isolation exercise or two to target your stubborn muscle groups! 

The third tip is – Don’t Turn Your Strength Workouts Into Cardio

Stop trying just to feel tired and out of breath from your workouts. Don’t just seek to feel the burn every training session. 

Too often to burn more calories and feel more worked, we end up turning our strength workouts into cardio sessions. 

We cut out all rest. We rush through movements. We add more volume or more reps and sets.

And I know this makes us feel like we’re working harder, which makes us believe we’re going to see better results faster, but ultimately this is what holds us back.

By turning our strength sessions into cardio workouts, we aren’t going to see the muscle growth we want to improve our metabolic health and lose fat faster. 

We can even end up losing muscle by doing this and find it harder to keep our nutrition dialed in and our calories in check.

Muscle growth is dependent on a stimulus that challenges the muscle and forces it to grow and adapt. 

These sessions may feel hard but they aren’t tearing down your muscle so that it has to regrow stronger. 

As you rest less, rush through moves and add more and more volume, your intensity drops.

What “feels” like you giving 100% isn’t a true 100% for very long.

This means you aren’t able to lift as heavy or do the quality repetitions you need to create that progression in your training to create those muscle gains. 

And often in making our sessions more cardio, we deplete our glycogen stores more and simply make ourselves hungrier. This can then make it more of a mental battle to keep our nutrition in check!

Don’t cut out rest. Don’t just add in more reps. Slow down your movements even. 

But stop seeking to just feel out of breath from your training and like you’re exhausted each and every session.

Realize that resting between rounds so you feel ready to go to work at a true 100% intensity for longer, and even like you’ve EARNED the rest from lifting heavy the round before, is what you need to build that lean muscle!

Be strategic in how you design your workouts to build muscle and help you burn more calories even at rest. This will help you see better fat loss results and maintain them long term.

We have to remember that systems work together to produce results which is why we can’t just randomly string “good moves” that “feel hard” together without a purpose!

 For workouts to help you reach your goals, check out my Dynamic Strength program!

The Most Underrated Plank Exercise

The Most Underrated Plank Exercise

by | Jul 2, 2023 | Blog, Core, Exercises, Functional Fitness, Pain Relief

The plank is an amazing core move and a fundamental we need to include. 

But holding longer only helps us build strength to a point.

And just because a move is a must-do basic, doesn’t mean we can’t have fun using other variations especially to target specific muscles of our core more. 

Because the basic plank doesn’t help us work on that rotational core strength nor does it include any lateral flexion.

And learning to power and control both of these movements is key if we want not only a toned, strong core but also to improve our shoulder, hip, knee and even ankle stability.

So if you want to work those obliques and glutes even more with both a rotational and lateral flexion movement, while improve your shoulder stability try this amazing plank variation – the Plank with Oblique Knee Tuck! 

In this video, I’ll show you how to perform this move and modify it to fit your current fitness level so you can build a strong core!

And I’ll share my “secret” to finding a way to modify ANY exercise to fit someone’s needs and goals. 

How To Do The Plank With Oblique Knee Tuck:

This plank variation actually combines the basic front plank with the side plank as you transition from side to side with this rotational exercise.

And then it advances the basic side plank by adding in that oblique knee tuck.

Because you are stabilizing on just one arm and one leg, this move needs to be built up to slowly so that you aren’t overloading your shoulder or knee.

It is a challenging plank variation to work on your shoulder, hip and knee stability and will really work those obliques and glutes!

To do the Plank with Oblique Knee Tucks, set up in a forearm front plank from your elbows and toes.

Stack your elbows under your shoulders but outside your chest and focus on engaging your back to really lock your shoulders in place. Your hands will be in toward each other as your elbows are wider. This will feel more comfortable as you rotate.

You can even start with your arms fully perpendicular to your body under your shoulders.

Flex your quads as you drive back slightly through your heels and perform a small posterior pelvic tilt to feel your abs light up.

Maintain a nice straight line from your head to toes.

Then rotate to one side. Make sure your elbow stays stacked under your shoulder and your hips don’t drop as you twist.

As you move into that side plank, also make sure your foot that stays on the ground is flexed. This protects your knee and ankle to create better tension up your leg to engage your glute.

Squeeze your butt forward as you lift your top leg up and reach your top hand overhead.

Then tuck your elbow and knee together. You will crunch them together slightly in front of you, but do not allow your bottom hip to sag.

You want that bottom oblique and glute working!

After performing the tuck and reaching back out move back to face the ground and rotate into a side plank on the other side to perform the oblique knee tuck.

Do not rush this move. Take it slow to really stabilize and feel those obliques and glutes working!

So How Can You Modify This Move?

Adding movement to a plank exercise creates a new stability challenge. And side planks themselves are already very challenging.

You do not want ego to get in the way. So just because you can do a full plank from the ground, doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily earned this variation. 

The rotation into the side plank and then supporting yourself with only your bottom leg as you tuck the top leg, requires more strength and stability than we realize. 

If you find yourself losing balance or rushing, try first modifying with your elbow up on a bench, stair or incline. 

By lifting up your elbow, you reduce the resistance on your upper body and put less strength demands on your entire core. 

I prefer the incline to modify because it allows you to learn to engage everything down to your feet. 

When you do a knee plank variation, you don’t learn how to create tension into your lower leg.

As you build up and get comfortable with the movement pattern, you can move back to the ground. 

We have to remember it isn’t just strength sometimes but that mind-body connection we first need to work on with movements. We need to build that smooth coordination and get muscles engaged efficiently and correctly to progress.

So slow things down and use that incline.

However, if you find that you can do the full plank off the ground but that you lose balance as you alternate sides, you can even modify by doing one side at a time. 

Just rotate from that front plank to the same time to help you maintain that balance. Then after all reps are complete, switch to the side plank on the other side.

Now what if due to injury, an incline variation still isn’t right for you?

Because I know that not every move is right for every person, I wanted to share some tips to help you learn how to adjust any moves you ever need… 

So my secret to modifying moves?

Not being married to an exercise and instead always prioritizing the muscles I need to train and movement patterns I want to work on.

With this plank with oblique knee tuck, I always want to first see how I can simply regress the exact movement. 

But when this isn’t possible, I go back to why the move was being used in the first place.

Was it that I wanted rotational core work? That extra oblique and glute medius work? That lateral flexion?

When you have a goal for every move you include, you can easily swap in another move or moves that achieve those same goals whenever you need. 

If you did still want a balance and stability component while working on that lateral crunch, but that didn’t require strain on the shoulders, maybe you include a standing oblique knee tuck where you stay balanced on one side. 

Or maybe you wanted more of the rotational element to target your obliques and glutes unilaterally but can’t get down on the ground so you include a cable hip rotation. 

The point is, when modifying, you aren’t as much concerned with the exact exercise as the GOAL for the movement.

And whenever possible, you keep the exercise as close as possible to train that exact movement, build the mind-body connection and build up. 

But when that isn’t possible, you simply stay focused on the goal for including the move so you can see the same benefits!

There is always a way to find a movement variation to match our needs and goals. 

That’s why I love this amazing plank with oblique knee tuck when you want to work your glutes and obliques even more. 

And the rotational movement and lateral flexion are a great way to target your core in multiple planes of motion.

But if you can’t get down on the ground to enjoy this amazing plank move, give these non-floor core moves a try.

–> Non Floor Core Moves

Can’t Build Muscle? Try These 5 Strength Training Techniques

Can’t Build Muscle? Try These 5 Strength Training Techniques

by | Jun 25, 2023 | Blog, Exercises, Functional Fitness

So often we focus on progression only through adding loads or doing another rep with a weight.

But at some point, you can’t just keep adding 5lbs every week.

You can’t do another rep.

That’s why creating progression through the same but different is so key.

You don’t need a crazy fancy new device or some new secret exercise.

You can make small tweaks to the moves you’re doing to see those strength and muscle improvements.

So stop getting caught up in only lifting more.

Here are 5 training techniques to help you create that progression through the same but different and see those better muscle gains!

The first way to use the same moves you love and create a new stimulus for growth is to…

Mix Up Equipment

Barbells vs. dumbbells vs. cables vs. bands can all be used to apply tension and create instability and resistance in different ways.

They often even require you to use a different loading placement which can help you change which muscles get more emphasis during a move.

While dumbbells are a great way to load down a step up and challenge your legs, you can emphasize your glutes more during this move by using cables instead.

The cable being anchored down low and the consistent tension as you drive up and then control the lower back down, can help you really feel those glutes more than even your quads.

It can help you keep progressing that step up if you feel yourself starting to cheat with the dumbbells while allowing you to shift how you use the move in your progression because of the shift in muscle emphasis.

You may even find you combine two types of resistances to get the different benefits each provide when you feel you aren’t able to just add more weight.

If you find you can’t really keep progressing loads with a dumbbell chest fly, try lowering the dumbbell weight you’re using while adding in a band for the movement.

The band applies resistance in a new way and even applies more resistance throughout the arc of the movement while forcing you to really control the fly open.

Just by adding in the band, you may be surprised how much lighter your dumbbell weights have to get, allowing you new room for progression.

Not to mention you can even increase the band tension over time as well.

The second tweak you can make to the exercises you’re already including to create progression is to Adjust Your Posture.

Good form isn’t a simply good or bad as we often act like it is.

There are slight changes in our form we can make to emphasize muscles involved in the movement to different extents while also even hitting different aspects of the same muscle.

You could take the same walking lungeand make it more glute intensive by adding in a more vertical shin angle and slightly angled out wide stride or more quad intensive by keeping it more narrow and allowing your knee to travel further forward over the ball of your foot.

Just like you can change your hand placement on push ups to make them more tricep intensive while requiring less scapular control with a narrow grip or slightly less tricep intensive while requiring more scapular control with a standard grip.

Even super small adjustments like slightly different degrees of hip flexion during seated abduction can help you better establish that mind-body connection and engage different aspects of the glute medius.

So often it isn’t even that we need a crazy new move to work an area, we just need to adjust our form slightly to change how it is working!

The third technique is one most of us often avoid because it can really force us to lighten loads and it can be a bit frustrating since it can make moves awkward…

It’s To Change Our Base Of Support.

If you’ve maxed out on a bilateral or two-limbed move, make it a unilateral or one-sided move.

This can create instability, challenge your core more and requires you to even change how you recruit muscles to improve your mind-body connection.

It can also help you address weak links or a weaker side, which may then allow you to lift more when you thought you’d hit your cap with the bilateral variation.

And even when you’re doing a unilateral variation, you can easily mix things up, because many unilateral moves are more challenging than we give them credit for even with lighter loads.

With something like the single leg deadlift, you may find that starting out you don’t have the balance to do the fully unilateral variation. Or you don’t like how much you really have to drop down in weight.

So instead, maybe you try an 80/20 option, or a bench supported option.

This can help you target each side independently while still going a bit heavier than you may be able to with the fully single leg variation.

And changing your base of support doesn’t always have to mean just creating instability or a new challenge for the exact muscle you want to target.

It doesn’t even always mean making that base of support one sided…

It can even be something as simple as doing a chest supported row over a bent over row so that you can’t bounce the weights or use any momentum.

This can be key if you are finding yourself starting to cheat as you’re getting up in weights to try to eek out more.

Sometimes we want to limit what other muscles can be used to get up more weight to help us better hone in on the areas worked.

This can force us often to even go down in loads to start.

With the chest supported row, you may find that having your core locked into the bench allows you to even better focus on that scapular movement!

The 4th way to create progression and even improve your mobility and flexibility in the process is to…Adjust The Range Of Motion

The best way to make sure your flexibility and mobility work sticks is to then strengthen in your workouts through that full range of motion you’ve worked hard to build.

It’s why progressing from a split squat to a deficit split squat may help you improve your hip range of motion while also giving you a new challenge.

That bigger range of motion will make the move more challenging and create extra stretch on muscles under load to help you drive muscle growth.

However, changing the range of motion to drive muscle growth or hypertrophy doesn’t always mean increasing it.

Because metabolic stress is another driver of muscle growth, shrinking the range of motion at times to keep a muscle under tension can also be helpful.

So instead of just doing dumbbell bicep curls, you can combine that move with a resistance band top only curl where you never release tension and only go halfway down in the movement.

This will create fatigue and push you to failure in a new way and help you get more out of your original basic curl without having to progress the weights past the point you’re able to!

With this curl option you’re also using a new tool to help drive growth as well!

Another way to adjust the range of motion to create a new challenge is to actually change the direction or plane of motion you are moving in.

If you’ve been including a single arm suspension trainer row, you may try a rotational row instead.

This changes the range of motion and plane of motion you are working in to not only target the same muscles in different ways but even get new muscles involved to make sure you’re building functional strength in every direction.

The 5th and final technique that can help you drive that muscle growth even using the same moves and weights you are currently is to….

Emphasize the Eccentric.

Small tweaks to what we are currently doing can really add up! Too often we make massive changes over seeing the 1% opportunities.

And emphasizing the eccentric portion of an exercise is a great way to even use your current workouts while pushing growth.

To emphasize the eccentric, you’re going to focus on the portion of the move that is stretching the prime mover or main muscle driving the exercise.

With a pull up, you will want to focus on slowing down the lower down from the bar.

On the squat, you want to slow down the lower down to the bottom of the squat.

This focus on slowing down the stretch of the muscle to spend more time under tension has been shown to be a great way to drive muscle growth.

And it can be used with so many moves.

Just realize you may find that this can make you VERY sore, especially starting out.

Focusing on the eccentric can also help you tackle movements or weights you can’t yet fully use, especially if you change the move to eccentric only with a reset at the start.

With the push up, if you’re including those to build muscle, but can only currently do them off an incline, you may find you can do an eccentric only version from your toes off the ground.

We are often stronger in that eccentric portion of the move.

And that progression to that full version, plus the time under tension, could help you progress a move you are stuck on to build muscle!

We have to remember there are so many ways to create progression that aren’t just about adding more weight or doing another rep.

And the more advanced we are, the more we need to see opportunity in creating progression through the same but different.

So even using your current workout progression, see how you can use these techniques to make small tweaks and see those muscle gains improve!

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