1. Get to bed earlier-This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many people complain that they can’t get results from exercise in the morning without realizing that they’re still going to be far too late at night.

2. Stand up for a bit-There are some fantastic observations on spine stiffness first thing in the morning. In a nutshell, when we lay down to sleep at night, our spine is decompressed, so the intervertebral discs actually collect water.  This increased hydration status builds annular tension within the discs, and makes the spine stiffer overall.  This isn’t a good kind of stiffness, though; more stress is placed on the ligaments and discs than the soft tissue structures that typically protect them.   Simply standing upright and moving around decreases the hydration status of the discs – and, in the process, actually makes us shorter as the day goes on! While I don’t know of many people that want to get shorter, the good news is that this height reduction reduces the spine stiffness and allows us to move the spine more safely and effectively.  While disc hydration diminishes over the course of the entire day, the majority of it occurs in the first hour that we’re awake.

3. Take a hot shower before exercise in the morning-One of the biggest struggles a lot of folks encounter is getting warmed up in the morning.  Folks usually turn the heat down at night while they’re asleep, and it’s obviously colder outside at nighttime.  You might think I’m nuts, but hopping out of bed and into a hot shower is a great “body temperature transition” strategy that bridges the gap between bed and exercise.  And, since you’ll be standing in the shower, it also helps to accomplish tip #2 from above!

4. Extend the warm-up-In line with points #2 and #3, it’s a good idea to add a few more dynamic warm-up drills to your pre-exercise routine.  Typically, our clients & athletes do between eight and ten drills, but those who exercise in the morning are better off with as many as 15.  It might add five minutes to your dynamic warm-up, but that’s far better than spending far more than five minutes in physical therapy for an injury you got from insufficiently warming up!

5. Try various nutrition approaches-I’ve heard thousands of different nutritional strategies outlined for those who want to exercise in the morning, but the truth is, everyone is different.  I have known folks who will throw up anything solid that they consume prior to exercise, and others (myself included) who could eat a good breakfast and keep it down just fine.  For most, I think sipping on a shake as you start the training session is a good place to start.  If you handle that fine, you can consider having some solid food before the training session, if you find that you’re hungry in the middle of the training session.

6. Recruit a personal trainer or training partner-A training partner is almost always a good idea, but this is especially true when you’re up at the crack of dawn and not necessarily in the mindset to really push yourself.  Plus, when you’re awake for exercise before the sun rises, you’re far more likely to hit the snooze button if someone isn’t waiting for you at the gym.   While training first thing in the morning isn’t exactly ideal, it may be your only option for staying consistent with your workout routine – and consistency is the name of the game.  Implement these strategies to get the most out of your early morning training sessions.

Why do these injuries occur? The ACL is a small ligament runs diagonally inside the knee and connects the upper leg (femur) to the main shin bone (tibia). It’s job is to prevent the knee from twisting or moving side-to-side more than just a few degrees. When pushed beyond its relatively small limit, the ACL can either be partially stretched or ripped completely.

In a sports setting, the ACL almost always gets torn during a one-time event. This can occur due to contact with another athlete, or during non-contact moments where the knee may be pushed out of position from a high level of force placed on it. Non-contact situations where this normally happens are during cutting, pivoting, out-of-control stopping, and awkward landings on jumps.

Surprisingly, about 70% of ACL tears in young athletes occur during non-contact events. Female athletes are between 3 and 8 times more likely than males to tear their ACL. Although all sports have some level of ACL injuries, soccer and basketball have the most for girls playing sports. For boys, it is football and lacrosse.

With nearly 150,000 tears occurring annually in the Canada alone, more focus has not just gone into the rehabilitation process, but also in preventing these injuries from happening in the first place.

How To Prevent ACL Injuries

One big piece of preventing ACL tears is to focus on both the ankle and hip joints, strange as that may seem. Knees basically go where the ankles and hips send them, so ‘prehabilitation’ measures focus on those areas.

For the ankle, it is crucial that young athletes limit the amount of side-to-side movement that occurs in that joint. Either during one leg standing postures or when running, the more their ankles roll the better the chance it will push their knees either in or out during faster-paced athletic events. Kids who tend to roll their ankles a lot may be much more susceptible to knee injuries when they get bigger, faster and stronger in their later years.

The hip joint needs to both be flexible and strong to function correctly, making it a little harder to train. For the flexibility side, stretches that specifically target the hips may be needed for those with limited ability to do a deep squat. Very young athletes (ages 11 and younger) are almost never in need of these, but once the teenage years approach and growth spurts really kick in, more stretching may be warranted.

Strengthening the hips can be tricky, because most athletes with weak hip muscles have learned to move in a way that shifts the stress to their stronger leg and back muscles. You’d think a basic exercise like a squat would work the hips very well, but not for those who are leg-muscle dominant already. Isolated strength for the hip muscles plus relearning other exercise patterns, such as squatting, must both be done to stabilize and protect the knees.

Just as important in this equation is for young athletes to learn how to move properly. Being able to efficiently absorb the force of gravity when landing on a jump can lower your ACL tear risk substantially, and is relatively easy to learn for most focused and dedicated athletes. In addition, controlling momentum during stopping and cutting movements will further decrease your risk. These skills tend to take much more repetition to improve on, but it certainly can be done.

Although it is true that the younger someone starts improving these skills the better chance it will lower their future injury risk, it is never too late to build the strength, flexibility and movement skill required to keep your knees stable and safe.

Women tend to focus on weight loss and not sports nutrition. Pretend for a minute that gravity doesn’t exist. Everything is weightless, yet it all manages to stay on the ground. You don’t know how much you weigh because scales have never been invented. How would you define your state of health?  What would be your benchmark? You might still not like how you look. You might be tired of being tired all the time. You might need to trim down and take care of that blood pressure. In a gravity-free world, those are all still good reasons to create healthy diet and fitness habits. Who knows, you might decide “Hey, I feel all right, I look all right, and I’m healthy. If I can just maintain the habits I have, I should be okay.”

The point is, you can decide for yourself what shape you’re in. You don’t need the scale to tell you and “Nutrition” should be your main concern, especially when conditioning for sports. Unfortunately, many times we get down on ourselves simply because something as trivial as gravity tells us we’re out of shape. Some people feel and look fantastic in every respect, but if the number on the scale doesn’t match expectations, they’re miserable. This doesn’t make sense. Gravity should not be able to wield that kind of power.

While it’s good for giving you a general idea of your health, this can be the most discouraging and frustrating part of a diet. Your weight can fluctuate all the time and reasons why are never completely known. At Integrated Health Solutions by Tanya Morrell, we are aware that time of day, temperature, the day’s activities, and water level – all can skew the numbers one way or the other. In reality, you could be getting discouraged over something that’s not really accurate.

So, our aim is to help you focus on performance nutrition, what to eat before, during and after a training session or sports event to help you maximize training intensity and enhance sports performance with an added weight loss goal or maintenance if needed. Diet principles are based on the demands of training and competition. Dietary recommendations (hydration too) vary for endurance athletes and strength athletes and for different sports within these categories. Consideration of nutrients vital to athletic performance-carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and water employs an integrated approach focusing on how nutrients function together. Each nutrient supports training and how dietary intake can improve performance. Without overconsumption, all of your nutritional needs can be met, while increasing sports performance and maintaining a healthy figure too!

1. Muscular Strength is when you work on getting stronger.
2. Muscular Hypertrophy is when you work to build bigger muscles.
3. Muscular Power is when you aim to gain speed and explosiveness while working at becoming stronger.
4. Local Muscular Endurance is when you work on being able to last longer while you are getting stronger.

Before starting out, you should consider the primary performance muscle groups. These are the muscles that are used to assist you with things such as side stepping, turning, twisting, sprinting, running or setting up for a tackle. The chain of muscles used to aid in these movements is called the anterior and posterior chain. This includes the lower back, the butt, the hip flexors, quadriceps, hamstrings, and front of the thighs, muscles of the back as well as the abdominals.

The best types of exercises for developing these muscles are the squat and dead lift, core lifts, with variations and extensions for each group. If you are looking to build up shoulder muscles, arms and back muscles, you may want to think of getting into a swimming program.

If you are looking to develop power, one of the essential things to look out for is the speed of the training lift or exercise you choose. Power is needed for football players, a batter’s swing in baseball, or even a golfer’s swing or batsman’s stroke in cricket.

You need to consider the aspects of injury prevention when going about your weight training for your specific sport. While these techniques may not assist in the overall increase in the primary performance of your sport, they will ensure that you will be more resilient and resistant to injury when being active in your sport.

If you are participating in sports such as endurance running, swimming or cycling, being sure that your joint muscles, lower back and hamstrings, shoulder rotator cuffs and quadriceps muscles are all flexible and lean will enable you to work best at your peak performance. These sports rely more on exercises that do not include building and maintaining primary strength but more so on the endurance aspects of strength training.

When you get started setting up sport specific weight training routines, you need to keep in mind the muscles that you will be using every time you play. Some muscles will require more strength than others while you may want to concentrate on power or endurance for others. The exercises you select must be relevant to your sport. They must be performed at the same pace as you would be using them in the sport itself. And they must be able to mimic the time it takes to complete any such action.

For example, if you are in a triathlon, you would have twenty minutes of swimming, twenty minutes of biking and twenty minutes of running. You would want to make sure that for the swimming, you do exercises that would help you increase your strokes and speed for movements such as the butterfly stroke or the breast stroke as those are usually the most successful and speedy strokes to take when competing. You would then want to make sure you practiced exercises that would help you increase your speed and maintain your heart rate and overall endurance levels for biking.

You may decide to time yourself to see how fast you can go 20 miles, or you may want to find some open space that is known for its hills and valleys so you can work those leg muscles to gain strength for distance and resistance when needed. Just as in running, you may choose to run out around the city or town you live in, going over hills and up stairs, or you may just choose to run on one of the new fancy treadmills that allow you to simulate going over hills and changing various speeds to monitor your heart rate.

As sports such as running often rely more on endurance and speed rather than ultimate strength, running with small weights strapped around your wrists or ankles allow you to build your muscles while not forcing them to bulk up with excess muscle that is not needed as it would be for a body builder or football player.

Recommendations for Resistance Training Exercises

Exercises and routines work on specific muscles

Resistance training exercises are the perfect choice to incorporate into your personal training. You begin by choosing 8 to 10 exercises that train the major muscle groups.

Workouts should be no longer than an hour at a time to avoid straining or injury.

You can also choose more compound or multi-joint exercises which involve more muscle groups with fewer exercises.

The best option is to do one set of 8 to 12 repetitions. While you could do more for greater strength, the gain is too small to invest in and may cause excess fatigue.

Always include your warm up sets before getting started with your repetitions

Most of these exercises should be performed at least 2 days per week. Always remember that progress is made during the recuperation times in between workouts so be sure to give yourself adequate healing time in the interim.

To gain the best results, follow the steps within your workout program to the letter.

Apply each exercise technique in the method being called for so each group of muscles will be strengthened without injury or strain. If you have any concerns find a fitness instructor and hire their expertise to get you on the right path.

Performance exercises are geared to put you through a whole range of motions. If you are an elderly person, you should try to remain in your comfort zone. If you stretch or feel pressure or pain in any way, you need to stop or ease up on the distance you are trying to reach.

You need to complete your exercises in a controlled way which is smooth motions that glide with the body. Do not make any jerking movements or stretch in unnatural poses as this will only increase your chances of hurting yourself.

Always remember to breath deep and even as to keep your heart rate steady and oxygen flowing to your brain to avoid any passing out.

It has been proven that exercising with a partner or fitness instructor or in a classroom environment has a much better rate of success than those who chose to go it alone. Partners are there to give feedback, a trainer can provide assistance and a group environment can lend to your motivation.

When you decide to get into personal training exercises whether on your own or designed by a fitness expert you will want ones that incorporate all of the essential muscle groups.

There are exercises like the Leg Extension or Leg Curl that provide general muscular endurance while exercises such as the Chest Fly and Chest Press will challenge local muscular endurance. The exercises are best done when performing an isolated exercise technique followed by a more compound exercise routine.

When you have built up your endurance and strength, you will be ready to get into performing more exercise sets in succession with less rest in between. This is not to be done though until you have managed to successfully work through the less strenuous routines and have built up a healthy heart rate without feeling any nausea or fainting. This usually takes about six to eight months of consistent work outs.

To gain momentum and build towards a more vigorous workout routine, you can start with resistance training. This is a good practice for those who are older and need to perform an exercise through limited motion while avoiding pain or discomfort. These easier range of motion challenges are calisthenics such as push ups, a pull up, or a single leg split squat. You start out slowly and work to increase your range of motion as your flexibility and strength grows. Partial range of motion activities is often the recommended exercise routine for those who have been injured and are working through rehabilitation which allows them to strengthen those specific muscles and use various range of motion as needed.

The only way to lose weight effectively and permanently is to have a holistic or natural approach to your problem. Women have been designed to gain weight for the ability to give birth to new life. There are several core imbalances in a women’s body that encourages the body to hold onto the weight instead of just letting it go. In order to lose weight, your hormonal balance and health must be restored. If you do not find a way to do this, you will continue to be stuck in the Yo-Yo diet trap or remain stuck in a weight that is either dangerous to your health or unattractive to you. The key is to get healthy starting from the inside and working out. Once your body has found a balance, you will be able to effectively lose weight and keep it off for years to come.

Holistic weight loss is not a new concept although many are unaware of its benefits due to the mass advertising and marketing of all of the other fad diets around today. Much like a successful workout routine, you need to create a menu and approach that is specific to your body and psychological needs. You need to understand what works for you and what does not. The basic elements of a maintaining a healthy body revolve around your
metabolism’s ability to lose weight and keep it off. This is specific to systems such as your central nervous system, musculoskeletal, endocrine, immune, digestive and detoxification systems. While some of your metabolic blueprint was determined while you were growing in your mother’s womb, others are influenced by things like your emotional history, your nutrition, lifestyle, environment and stress levels. If you are not on a healthy level within these factors, you will never lose those undesirable pounds.

One of the first steps you need to take before embarking on your holistic weight loss journey is to rid yourself of all of the toxins that are clogging your systems. Allergens, bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides, and more have a direct bearing on how everything else in our body is able to function efficiently. One of the main ways our body tells us that it is full and needs to undergo detoxification is by the inability to lose weight or even by the gaining of more weight. In order to allow your body to function properly, taking care of your liver and kidneys is vital to any effective weight loss plan.

It doesn’t matter how many fad diets you try or exercise gyms you run to, if you have not taken the steps to cleanse you system, purify your mind, and adjust your attitude, you will find yourself on the continuous wheel of frustration with no success.

It does not take a lot of money invested in this type of weight loss success. Eating healthy natural food is often much cheaper than any fad diet plan you could start, drinking plenty of water to keep the body hydrated, can be done for free. You cannot buy weight loss success. Success comes from within. It comes from a commitment to do what it takes to make your body as healthy and happy as you can. Following the guidelines of a holistic weight loss plan will put you on the road to a naturally healthier you.

Functional training first started out in rehabilitation. Physical therapists thought to incorporate normal activities done by a patient at home and work them into an exercise routine that would help them get back to living life the way they did before. For example, if a patient used to run a day care from home and was used to lifting, carrying and moving children around, the workout designed would concentrate on strengthening those muscles needed with moderate lifting and endurance in mind. If someone was a construction worker or shipper receiver who was lifting heavy loads all day, the workout would then have to be modified to be more targeted to getting the patient back on track for lifting those heavy loads without risking more harm or re-lapse.

The main goal for functional training is to target the core muscles in the abdomen and lower back by utilizing weight bearing exercises, optional bands, and medicine balls. While you can join a gym and work out on the various weight training machines that they have available for each group of muscles, this will not allow you to train full range of motion and target the smaller underlying muscles, and your mind and to benefit from participating in the regular activities and sports you would normally do in your day to day living.

To truly get the most out of your workouts, you must be able to increase your muscular balance and stability of your joints. This will enable you to lower the number of injuries you may acquire when participating in sports or rigorous activities. Proper functional training techniques allow your body to work with its natural ability to move in what is known as the “six degrees of freedom”. By using the workout machines at a local gym, you are only working in a single level of motion which often times is in an unnatural form for the body to move freely. This could in turn lead to building up faulty movement patterns resulting in injury.

In 2009 a researcher named Spennewyn conducted a study to prove how patients would benefit more by using functional training techniques over those using fixed training exercises. The results showed that those who participated in the functional training received a 58% increase in strength with a 196% improvement in the overall balance. They also reported a 30% decrease in joint pain.

What type of equipment is the best to use with functional training techniques?

There are several types of products you can use to incorporate into a daily routine. Working with a coach will enable you to set up a system using various techniques that will target all areas you need to strengthen.

Some of the best equipment to work with is:

cable machines/pulley machines
dumbbells
medicine balls
kettle balls
physioballs or otherwise known as Swiss balls or exercise balls
resistance tubes
Acceleration Training equipment
suspension system
rocker and wobble boards
balance disks

Proper exercise routines that incorporate functional training techniques

If you are an athlete that is working to recover from an accident, you will need to set up a training regime that will allow you to work with those muscles and gain strength doing exercises specific to your sport. For all programs, you want to add a variety of activities that will work on flexibility, strength, balance, core and power. Core stability is important for any activity or sport. To maintain correct athletic posture over long periods of time, you will need to increase your body’s ability to transfer its power from the lower to upper body through the use of a stable core. Start out slow and steady. By consistently adding a little more strength training exercises to your routine, you will increase your body’s ability to endure more without incurring pain. By doing a quick movement cycle followed by a slower momentum activity, you will allow your body to relax and adapt to the routine.

As not everyone works or lives the same way, it is best to consult with a fitness professional to see how you can set up a program that is designed with your needs and requirements in mind. You can discuss the areas of concern, and work together to come up with a routine that will be easily managed and most beneficial for your body whether you choose to work out alone or with other people. Having your own individual work out routine will enable you to adjust to more vigorous exercises when your body is ready for it and to work within the boundaries of your own capabilities.