Fitness & Wellness

If you’re like many people, you go to the gym three times a week, but is that all you really need to be fit? It all depends on your goals. Do you want to lose weight? Is building more muscle your goal? There’s a lot to be said for home cardio workouts as a supplement to regular training. In fact, a personal trainer can help you develop a workout plan that addresses your goals for those days you don’t come to the gym.

Are you working out hard with weights to build muscle tissue?

You need all types of training, strength, cardio, flexibility and balance. You can use the gym for strength training, flexibility training and sometimes cardio workouts, but on your days off, give those muscles a rest. That doesn’t mean you have to sit in a chair and do nothing. In fact, some mild cardio workouts will make you feel better and heal your muscles faster by boosting circulation. Just walking is a great exercise if you’re sore. Riding a bike is another option that works. Always have one day when you completely rest to recover.

Is melting away fat a goal.

To melt fat, you need both strength training and cardio. Both can burn tons of calories, but strength training helps build and maintain muscle tissue. The more muscle tissue you have the higher your metabolism. Dancing, jumping jacks, jumping rope and running in up and down stairs are just a few at home moves that can help boost the calorie burning process.

Any type of workout is good, no matter where you get it.

Whether you workout at the gym or at home, just getting exercise is important. One of the benefits of the gym is that you get the combination of exercises to ensure you get a full body workout and meet your goals faster. Consider taking a small group session or boot camps to get started. Both are quite affordable and can give you a wealth of experience and workouts, so if you need, you have the resources and knowledge to workout at home. Group sessions can also be a lot of fun.

• Boost the effectiveness of your workout by varying your intensity. Alternate between top intensity for a few minutes or seconds, depending on your fitness level and recovery or moderate pace for the same amount of time. It’s called high intensity interval training and can be used with any exercise.
• You don’t have to do thirty minutes or more straight through when you do cardio at home. Studies show that three ten minute sessions throughout the day are as effective as a 30-minute session.
• Take a break from the computer or even TV watching and get up and jog in place for a few minutes. See if you can do it through two commercial breaks if you’re watching TV. Studies show that getting up and moving for five minutes every hour or so can help lock in the health benefits of working out.
• If you want to opt for a more rigorous home workout, consider burpees, mountain climbers, jumping jacks and squat jumps.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

The body uses various types of fatty acids to run smoothly. There are two types of essential fatty acids that the body can’t make. They come from diet. Those two are omega-6 and omega-3. The healthiest blend of the two is 4 to 1, or four times as much omega6 as omega3. Throughout the US, our diet has changed significantly and today people are consuming far more omega-6 fatty acids than they should, consuming a 50 to 1 ratio. To create a healthier balance, you need to raise the amount of omega-3 fatty acids and reduce the amount of omega-6. At Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, we can help you make smarter decisions to make the ratio better.

Why should you boost your omega3s?

Inflammation is the cause of many serious conditions. Omega3 reduces inflammation, while also keeping your heart rhythm regular. It also reduces the formation of blood clots and lowers triglycerides in the body. Omega6 also provides a lot of benefits. They lower bad cholesterol levels and the potential for cancer. However, your body needs a balance of the two. Too much omega6 compared to the amount omega3 you eat can result in problems with joints, the pancreas, the heart, your skin and even how stable your mood is.

Boost your omega3 with these foods.

You probably already have heard how healthy fatty fish, such as salmon, herring, sardines or mackeral are. Oysters, walnuts, flaxseed and soybeans are also high in omega3. You can do little things to make sure you improve your omega3 intake, such as adding walnuts or raw Brussels sprouts to salads or sprinkling ground flax seed on top of your cereal. Just a half cup of Brussels sprouts has 12% of the daily required amount. One tablespoon of ground flaxseed provides the daily required amount, if you’re eating the right amount of omega6.

What food should you cut back on to get your omega6/omega3 in balance?

Sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil and cottonseed oil are all high in omega6. Eggs are quite controversial. If you eat eggs from factory farms that are fed corn and soy, they’re high in omega6 fatty acids. However, if you eat eggs from free range chickens, which eat insects and greens they forage, they’re high in omega3. Many scientists believe that the higher consumption of vegetable oil that’s high in omega6 and cheaper than those higher in omega3 or with low omega6 content, may be the cause for the high rise of metabolic disease, diabetes and heart disease since the 1950s. Before that date, butter from family farms with grass fed cows and lard was often used.

• If you’re including flaxseed in your diet, get a small coffee grinder and grind the seeds right before adding them to your food to maximize the health benefits. Don’t eat the seeds without grinding. Your body can’t digest them, so you get no benefit.
• While inflammation can create serious problems, you do need it to protect the body from disease. You need both types of fat, just in a better ratio. Too much inflammation may lead to Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, metabolic disease and some types of cancer.
• An imbalance of omega6 to omega3 can exacerbate mental health. Increasing omega3 has shown to help depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. One study showed increasing omega3 lowered the amount of violence in a prison.
• A small study showed that even when eating a healthy diet, one that was higher in omega6 tended to increase fat around the belly area and waistline, even when no weight was gained.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

Why do you use cool down exercises? They help get your body back to normal and prevent pooling of blood in the extremities, while getting your heart rate down. It doesn’t matter what type of exercise you do, whether it’s just slowing down to a walk to reduce the stress on the heart and muscles or doing stretches to increase range of motion while the muscles are warm, they all help to provide a safe way to end your workout. You’ll get your blood pressure back to normal, lower your potential for injury and prevent blood pooling that can cause dizziness.

You don’t have to make it fancy, sometimes just slowing down is all that’s necessary.

If you’re running, just changing your pace to a light jog or walking the last three to five minutes is all it takes. You can also do that after any tough workout, walk around the gym, stretching as you do. It’s all about getting the body back to normal. In fact, you can combine an upper body stretch with a walk. Just interlace your hands, pushing your arms upward with palms pointed up to the ceiling. Stretch back as far as you can go. Cross the right arm over the left arm, put palms together, interlace fingers and stretch as you raise your hands.

Stretch out your body and get more range of motion.

Before you worked out, you may not have been able to sit with legs straight ahead and lean forward and touch your toes. That warming of the muscles now allow you to do that, so take advantage of it as you cool down. With your legs at a right angle to the body, lift your arms. At the hips, bend your body to fold forward. Put your hands on your legs, reaching toward the feet or even grabbing the feel and pull your body forward, holding the position for a minute.

Whether you’re standing up or laying down, pulling your knees to your chest can be a cool down.

If you’re running, slow down to a walk, pulling one knee to your chest by clasping your fingers around the shin. Hold for a few seconds and then pull the other knee close. You can do this laying down on your back. Lift one leg toward your chest, grasping it with the your hand at the shin and pulling it close. The other leg can be bent or held straight, based on your flexibility. Hold the knee to the chest for a minute, then lower it and do the other side.

• Runners will recognize the standing quadriceps stretch if they use cool down exercises. Bring your right leg up behind your body, touching your body as you’re bending at the knee. Grab it with your hands and pull until that knee lines up with the other one. Hold and reverse sides.
• Something as simple as touching your toes can be a cool down. Lead forward at the hips, and let your head move toward the floor. If you have to bend your knees slightly, it’s not a problem. Try to touch the floor.
• Get a good shoulder stretch after a tough workout. Put your left hand behind your neck on your spine. Take the right hand and gently press on the left elbow to push it further down the spine or reach around with the right hand to pull it further down the spine. Then reverse sides.
• Just shake it off. Shake your right arm first, then the left, then both at the same time. Then do the same thing with the legs. Shake your head, booty and entire body. Do each part for at least 15 seconds. It can be a fun way to end a workout.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness

In our gym in Irvine, CA we offer high intensity interval training—HIIT to transform your body. It’s not a specific workout, but a technique you can use with any type of workout. It’s an exercise method where you vary the intensity from 100% effort where the heart rate is high, for a short time, then alternating to a recovery rate that’s less intense for the same amount of time or more. You then switch back to high intensity and repeat the cycle, continuing to bounce between the two until you complete all sets. The recovery phase increases the oxygen you burn, creating a situation known as afterburn.

How afterburn works for weight loss.

Afterburn is another name for EPOC—Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. When you’re in the high intensity portion of the workout, you burn a huge amount of calories, far more than you would with a steady state workout. During the recovery period you also burn additional calories to recover. By switching between high and moderate intensity, it maximizes the calories burned.

You’ll increase your metabolism when you use HIIT to workout.

Not only will you get exceptional calorie burning, HIIT increases your metabolism for as long as 58 hours. The body burns extra calories when it’s repairing muscle tissue, get the body back to normal oxygen levels and removing the lactic acid that’s built up from a strenuous workout. You’ll keep a higher metabolism after the workout for up to two days, even if you’re not exercising that day.

HIIT saves time and you can use it with any type of workout.

Whether you’re walking or lifting weights, you can maximize the benefits by adjusting your intensity. Speed walk for a few minutes and then go back to a comfortable pace for the same amount of time. Repeat throughout your walk. You’ll build your endurance faster while burning more calories. Do the same with other workouts, such as lifting weights or doing calisthenics. You’ll get the results you want faster with this simple technique.

One big benefit of HIIT is that it’s easy to adjust to your fitness level. If you need to extend the recovery period, you can. There’s no rule about the amount of time at high intensity or how much at recovery. It can be longer or shorter at high intensity and the same time or longer for recovery.

If you’re building up strength to help relieve joint problems, use low impact exercises, such as swimming. You can still modify the intensity levels.

Because of the high amount of calories burned and benefits derived, a HIIT workout doesn’t require that you workout as long as you would a steady-state workout.

At Next Level Fitness we can help you design a HIIT workout that gets you to your goal faster. In fact, we make it even easier with a special of two private sessions for only $20 to help you get expert advice on a customized workout.

Most people start a diet when they want to lose weight, but a diet isn’t necessary. All you have to do is start a program of clean eating and at Next Level Fitness in Irvine, CA, we can help you do it. What is clean eating? Clean eating is a way to tailor your diet with whole food, before it became a processed package of chemicals. Many of the foods you find on the shelves of groceries today have had all the nutrients processed out of them and remain nothing more than empty calories filled with preservatives and other chemicals. Clean eating focuses on minimal processing and food that is nutritious.

Opt for food without added sugar.

It’s tough to do, since some form of added sugar seems to be in about everything. Don’t fall for that hype about natural sugar. Fat took the hit for sugar when it came to clogging arteries due to a study in the 1960s. Salt may part of the problem for high blood pressure, but sugar definitely plays a role, too. Whether it’s table sugar, fructose, honey or maple syrup, added sugar has no place in clean living and can lead to diabetes, cancer, accelerating aging, high blood pressure and a slew of other health issues.

Limit the amount of processed food and eat organic when possible.

Whether the food is GMO or filled with pesticides, it isn’t organic. If you can afford it, opt for whole food that is organic, whether frozen or fresh. You can’t eliminate all processing. Potatoes and meat aren’t necessarily healthy or tasty without some processing, such as cooking. Steaming vegetables and grilling or roasting meat isn’t the problem. It’s the processed meat and high carb processed food that isn’t. Stick with whole grains if you choose bread. Skip desert and luncheon meat.

Use healthier oils and the ones right for each situation.

Avoid margarine and most vegetable oils, choosing to get the fat you require from healthier options, such as avocados, fatty fish and nuts. Olive oil is great in many situations, but not when used for high heat. Olive oil has a low smoking point and that smoke is toxic. Avocado oil has a higher smoke point than olive oil, but for high heat, opt for peanut or sesame oil with the highest smoke point. Trans fats are banned in the US, since 2018, yet some food still contains it. Non-dairy coffee creamer, some peanut butter, frozen pizza, cookies and granola bars are a few, but as long as they contain less than a gram, which could mean as much as a half gram, they get a pass. Consider using butter from grass fed cows for a healthy spread.

• Include more vegetables in your diet. Even some canned fruit and vegetables can be added. If you choose beans that aren’t low sodium, rinse them before cooking. Opt for fruit in their own sugar.
• Say no to refined grains. Skip that white bread and read the label carefully when buying to ensure it doesn’t contain processed flour. Opt for sprouted, sour dough, 100% whole wheat, oat, flax or 100% sprouted rye.
• What you drink is also important. Snub those soft drinks and opt for water instead. It not only is good for your body, it can be helpful to your budget, too, especially if your home drinking water is delicious. Create infused water if you want more flavor.
• Stick with free range and pasture fed meat, eggs and milk products. Select hormone and antibiotic-free animal products.

For more information, contact us today at Next Level Fitness!