Exercise of the week. Cable Supine Curl

Sit on the floor with your feet against a pulley machine. Grab low pulley cable bar with shoulder width underhand grip, then lie back on the floor with arms at your sides. Now with keeping your elbows at your sides, lift the bar so your elbows are flexed, then lower until elbows are straight. Repeat.

     When elbows are fully flexed, they can travel upward slightly allowing forearms to be no more than horizontal, in this lying posture. This additional movement allows for relative release of tension in muscles between repetitions

Exercise of the week! Monday November 11th 2011

Seated shoulder barbell press.
As in the name, this exercise focuses primarily on the shoulders (anterior deltoid). Although there are more muscles involved. here's the list:

Muscles

Target

• Deltoid, Anterior

Synergists

• Deltoid, Lateral
• Supraspinatus
• Triceps Brachii
• Trapezius, Middle
• Trapezius, Lower
• Serratus Anterior, Inferior Digitations

Dynamic Stabilizers

• Triceps, Long Head

Stabilizers

• Trapezius, Upper
• Levator Scapulae

     While seated, grab the barbell slightly wider than shoulder width overhand grip from the rack. Position bar near the upper part of your chest. To execute, Press bar upwards until arms are extended overhead. Then return the bar to the upper part of your chest, and repeat.

Exercise of the week!

OK well here goes everything. I've decided to try to post once a week on an exercise. I'll try to cover exercises for every body part. Although I do realize i will eventually run out of exercises, I still find it very important for people to learn the proper way to execute an exercise. Most, if not all exercises can be found on www.exrx.net

     This weeks exercise is a "Plyometric" exercise called the "Medicine Ball Split Jump".
Preparation: Stand with one foot slightly in front of the other, knees slightly bent. Hold medicine ball close to your chest. Slightly dip your body.

Execution: Jump up while extending ball upward. Quickly reposition legs, and land with feet in opposite positions. Immediately pull ball back to chest whole dipping body down by bending legs just short of rear knee making contact with floor. Keep torso upright and hip of rear leg straight. Repeat sequence with opposite leg movement. Continue jumps by while alternating leg positions.

     This exercise brings a lot of muscle groups into play. Also affects a large amount of different body parts for extension and flexion.

Dynamic

• Hip
  • Extension
  • Flexion
• Knee
  • Extension
• Ankle
  • Plantar Flexion
• Shoulder
  • Abduction
  • Flexion
• Scapula & Clavicle
  • Upward Rotation
• Elbow
  • Extension

Sarcomere and Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy

     I recently did an oral presentation for my class on Sarcomere and Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Just the thought of hypertrophy makes me curious. I did a lot of research on it and found a lot of very useful information. Some of which I am actually including in the design of my work out routines.

     Instead of talking about both forms of hypertrophy on here, I will only make a brief comment on Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. As most of my attention is focused on Sarcomere Hypertrophy.

     Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy is non-functional hypertrophy. Sure it can make your muscles bigger. Who doesn't want to be bigger? I wouldn't mind being a little bigger myself. Within reason though. I want to add lean muscle mass, but still be able to do most common daily activities without having to hire an assistant to help me, simply cause i can't reach, or bend that way any more.

     So, that brings us to Sarcomere Hypertrophy. Sarcomere is the smallest functioning unit of the muscle, and is also the part of the muscle that does the "contracting" or moving. Increasing the size of the sarcomere, and not only do you increase muscle size (of course not as much as in Sarcoplasmic), but you also increase muscle strength for more forceful contractions. Which is functional since your strength increase is relative to muscle size. Simply put, Sarcomere builds a more dense, stronger muscle. Sarcoplasmic builds bulk, but not as much strength.

     An easy way of picturing the difference would be to picture two well known people. Just as an example, lets use Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When thinking of sarcomere hypertrophy, think of Bruce Lee. He was very strong, but he also had small but very dense muscles. Very functional. Which leaves Arnold Schwarzenegger to be sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Arnold is strong and has large muscles. If Bruce Lee was still alive today, and we could compare, I'm sure we would find out that they are both pretty close in strength. The only difference would be somewhere between 80 to 150 pounds of body weight.

     Although there is a lot of ways I could explain how Bruce Lees muscle structure is more functional, I would rather just make one observation and leave it at that. Bruce Lee being as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger, could still buy his clothes right off the rack. 

My Time in Class is Almost Over!

     It's been a while since I was last on here to talk about myself. I figure now is a good time for an update.

     We just finished the Anatomy and Physiology portion of our program. It has been a very interesting year, and only a few month's left to go. We have covered a lot of information in the past year. Information that I can honestly say, would have been very boring if it wasn't for our exceptionally great teacher. Someone I honestly classify as an "Elite Instructor". Mr. Tranter brings so much energy and enthusiasm to the class. You can't help but to absorb some of his energy and enthusiasm for the class. I couldn't imagine sitting through so much information with anyone else.

     In the last few months, we've seen 3 of our classmates, the first 3 to attend the class; leave us to continue their lives in the new field of work that we all are striving for. We have 3 more classmates leaving us to strike out on their own soon as well. Over the next few months, the class I started in will be completely different. Including myself, as I go out to perform my hours of work at a local gym. During that time, I have to go to Las Vegas, Nevada. While in Las Vegas, I'll be going through a boot camp to get my NSCA, First Aid, CPR and AED certifications.

     As for now, over the next couple months I have a lot of exams to write. I have every confidence in my self, that I am more than prepared for everything that will take place in the next few months. I owe my confidence to Mr. Tranter. With his energy, his life stories and the way he helps us all to learn. He has helped all of us that have been lucky enough to study with him, to see how valuable we are, and how to strive to reach our goals.

     So now I would like to take the time to say "Thank You" to Medix school, and Mr. Tranter for all the help, and for getting me going on the right path for a job I can see myself very happy doing.

Next client please!

     As we travel along in our program to become the most up to date and knowledgeable Professional Fitness Consultants, We have a lot of interesting challenges. My first client was a challenge for me, as it was the first time in a client/trainer relationship. That was a fun yet challenging time for us.

     Now we have moved into another session of client/trainers. As before, it has already proven to be challenging, yet fun. The first time, both my classmate and I really didn't know exactly what we were doing, so we were always erring on the side of caution. The classmate I have now as a partner, has a great deal of knowledge about exercises and workout routines.

     I spent the first few weeks of the new relationship, trying to be creative enough to come up with routines that she would enjoy, and would surprise her. That didn't go over to well. Took me 3 attempts at designing a routine, and her looking at it 3 times. The first 2 times she of course explained to me both the pros and cons of my design. 3rd times the charm! She checked it over (strictly as a classmate offering help) and gave me the thumbs up. WOOHOOO!
 
     I think, even with as much knowledge as my new client/trainer has; she is still going to prove to be a challenge. She is very light weight, but wants to add some size. Simple enough, use heavy weights and increase your dietary intake. Not so simple. She has such a busy life, she often doesn't have time to eat. She runs her own business, and has spent the past few month's renovating her house. Renovations are almost complete, but now to make ends meet, she has taken on a second job. Throw into the mix, the football practices and games her kids have. Yes she is busy.

     So I designed a 3 day work out. The first 2 days, are workouts we perform together at the gym. The 3rd day i reserved for her to do on her own when she finds time. Should be interesting in seeing how this works out.

UPDATE

     OK! It has been a few weeks since we started training. I'm very pleased to say that i've noticed some changes in myself, and my client. For her, we did a core routine a little bit ago. A couple days later, her abs suffered DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). She still felt it a few days later, but she can't wait to continue on and see how cut we can actually get her abs. I'm very interested in seeing for myself as well. I have a whole list of ideas to run her through. I will do my best to keep you updated on how things work out for us.

     More to come.