In response to committed yet frustrated gym go-ers who do not see the results they want to see, I find myself asking this question a lot. Say, for example, you go to the gym 4-5 times per week for an hour. First, ask yourself how efficient you are being in that hour. Are you getting as much out of your time as you can? Second, and more importantly, what are you doing the other 163 hours during the week? Typically, therein lies the issue. How are your eating habits? How often do you drink durin...

Having trouble distinguishing between these three common exercises? I’m here to help. First, we need to identify the difference between a squat and a hip hinge. In a squat, you are sitting back in your heels with your chest up and bending at the knees and the hips. The goal is to end up mimicking what you would look like seated in a chair (with good posture)…just without the chair. Ideally, the hips are in line with the knees (parallel with the ground) and the shoulders should be ...

How we move in the gym vs. how we move in real life “We tend to only think about our health until after we are already unhealthy.” For many people (80% of the adult population), this health issue is episodic and/or chronic lower back pain. Episodes of low back pain are often times a “straw that breaks the camels back” (no pun intended) kind of situation; we sit, stand, and move with poor posture/positioning all day and then, all of a sudden, it goes. We harmlessly bend...

Supersetting 101 There are many layers to program design. One approach that has become more and more popular over the last few years has been supersetting; in its true form, a superset is a pair of antagonist exercises (opposite muscle groups) coupled together to be performed for a given amount of sets. The overall idea is to give one set of muscle groups their proper rest while working a whole other set of muscle groups, but there are surprisingly many ways to screw this up. Many people think...

I fell victim to this a few months back. Day in and day out I would spend my hours programming for and training my clients; I always made sure they were in order and I was giving them the best service I could offer. In the midst of that, however, I forgot about my own training. I constantly preach taking time for yourself to my clients, so I decided to finally take my own advise. Sure, I would workout. I typically (and still do) lift full-body three times per week, run or play pick-up basketba...