Pam Strand (00:00):
Welcome to the Longevity Gym. Hello, my name is Pam Strand. I'm your podcast host. The Longevity Gym Podcast is a place to come to learn how to live longer, stronger, and better. In these episodes, I share information, tools and techniques that I find helpful for becoming stronger and healthier at any age, but particularly for when we hit our middle years and beyond .My 20 year career as a personal trainer and life coach informs much of what I share in this podcast show. My curiosity is also a huge contributor. I've always been curious about how the mind and body work and how they work together. One way my curiosity has played out in my personal training career is with designing workouts for my clients. I absolutely love to anticipate how their body likes to move and how it might like to move better. I think about how we can build on their healthy movement patterns and correct ones that aren't serving them so well.
(00:58):
It's the most awesome experience to watch someone master a move or feel their strength for the first time . They absolutely light up. Learning to master physical skills is a satisfying and an empowering endeavor, and finding out that you are indeed strong builds a level of confidence that spills over into almost every aspect of your life. This process of building physical skills and fitness levels has held my awe for 20 plus years. Watching my clients progress get stronger and discover new parts of themselves on the gym floor is just pretty darn cool. It really is a fantastic career. Exercise is one of the most important things we can do to keep our bodies and our brains strong and healthy over our lifetime. In particular, strength training really is a must as we get older. I know many people struggle with consistency and sticking with it, and I think we all know that you got to show up time and time again over the long term to become and to stay strong and healthy.
(02:06):
This is what I want to explore in today's episode. I want to give you some of my core principles for designing and structuring a workout because I think that's where people get stuck so often and they just sort of give up because they don't really know what to do when they get to the gym or even get to the area in their home that they may have designated for workouts. What I am sharing is a good starting point, at least in my opinion and in my experience or from my experience over time. It's a foundation from which you can easily progress and advance your skills. Here are the four main principles I use in designing a workout. First and foremost, individual fitness levels and health considerations must be considered and factored into however the workout is designed and structured. If you're just beginning an exercise program or you have some concerns about your health, before you do so, it's recommended to consult with your doctor.
(03:05):
Even if you hire a personal trainer or work with a fitness instructor, you should make sure they understand how to work with or help you work with any limitations or conditions that you may have. From a personal trainer standpoint, we use something called a parq. It's a physical activity readiness questionnaire, which is an industry standard that helps us understand how to design a fitness program for you and how to structure your workouts. You should look for that if you think you want to hire a personal trainer and make sure they use that form. Personal trainers also typically start a fitness program for a new client with an assessment to gauge fitness skills and also levels whether or not you hire or work with a fitness professional. You must also be willing to start at this point to meet yourself where you and your body are and build from there.
(04:05):
It is the best and safest place to start. Yes, it can be pretty disappointing sometimes to see how light the weights are that you're using or maybe how few squats or pushups you're able to do before you just collapse, but I guarantee you if you stick with it, consistency will win out and you'll find yourself lifting heavier weights and performing more reps of exercises as you go. I've just seen so many people give up because they aren't where they think they should be when they start out, so I think it's an important point. Meet yourself where you are. That is the absolute best starting point, and here's the other thing. When your body gets older, it also becomes more important to learn to listen to your body and to acknowledge what it is capable of doing and what is healthy for it. The body is always able to improve its capability and its function, so don't worry about that. Just worry about what your body is telling you and what is the best thing for it. Working out can never be or should never be about what you think your body should be able to do and should be able to accomplish. It's about what your body is able to do right now and how do I grow from here. It's absolutely important to learn how to follow your body's lead.
(05:24):
If you're unsure how to begin a program or maybe you're beginning anew after taking a lot of time off. I think a really good first step is to take advantage of the fitness assessments that many local gyms have or even call a local physical therapy clinic today. Many of those clinics have fitness and exercise services and support. Whether you're using a fitness assessment at a local gym or through a physical therapy clinic, this guidance can really help you start off on the right foot. Somebody watching you exercise can also give you some really good tips and hints on how to make sure you're in correct form and how to move forward . Once you know your starting point, here are my recommendations for the next steps. One, keep it simple with exercise choice,. Many people get tripped up thinking that the more complicated the exercise, the better. And that's a pretty easy perception to get given how exercises are presented in social media, even how they're presented in fitness classes and how some personal trainers design workouts. The complicated stuff certainly gets the most visibility.
(06:35):
There is a certain bravado to it. I get it. I've been there myself. And that can be pretty compelling. But the truth is - complicated exercises are not a requirement, nor are they the panacea for building strength and for being strong in healthy over the longterm. In fact, I have come to believe that if we try to make things too complicated, we risk leaving behind the basics and end up compromising what is most important, a balanced, comprehensive, deep strength throughout the whole body. The best exercises and workouts are the ones that are safe for where your body and your psyche are in the present moment and what makes you feel great. Even though you may be a little tired and sore, you should feel really good at the end of a workout. Exercise is meant to build you up, not tear you down. Functional movements are movements that prepare you for how you move in life and your everyday tasks, so that's where we should start when we pick exercises for our workouts. And there are eight main functional movements, master these first, they are the starting point.
(07:52):
If you build base strength with these, you are building the strength that is most important for your life and for you, and you're also preventing injuries now and in the future. These moves are one, a squat, so that's a sitting and standing move from a living perspective, being able to squat enables you to get up and down from a chair or even up and down from the floor when you're playing with your grandkids, even getting in and out of your car. The lunge is the second movement. This is where you step forward with one leg and bend both knees to lower your body. Lunging improves strength for walking, for going up and down the stairs and for being able to walk up hills if you happen to like to hike or maybe when you travel.
(08:43):
Number three is the rotation or being able to twist your torso either direction or both directions. Think of it when you're sitting in your car and you want to look behind you to make sure its coast is clear before you pull out. You twist when you open a door. There's many outdoor and household chores that require twisting. Even being able to switch directions while you're moving, you're usually twisting in some shape or form. It's an important movement to master. The fourth movement. The fourth key movement is hinging at the hips. It's what enables you to bend down and tie your shoes or even to lower your body so you can lift something up off the floor. And hinging at the hips enables you to reach forward and not topple over. The fifth movement is a push movement, so you want to be able to push things away from you with your arms. Think of pushing doors and chairs, being able to reach up and push something up onto a shelf.
(09:47):
Even getting up off the floor up from a laying position involves some sort of pushing movement. The next one that's related to the push or goes into the opposite direction is pulling, so pulling things towards you with your arms like a door, a chair, and when you combine pulling with a hip hinge, that's what enables you to pick something up and carry it, like picking up a grandchild or picking up and carrying a box, a pile of books, supplies to do your yard work. It all involves hinging and pulling. The seventh movement is grip, having the capability to grip something with your hands. So we want to have strong hands in order to grab open, twist, hold things like opening jars in the kitchen, carrying heavy things with your hands like luggage if you're traveling or grocery bags. If you're interested about grip strength or learning more, tune into episode 11. That speaks to ways to keep your brain and mind healthy as you get older, and grip strength is part of that. The eighth movement is gait. It refers to the pattern in which you walk. Next time you're walking. Notice how your arms and legs move and move together. Feel how your feet come in contact with the ground to move you forward.
(11:07):
Get a feel for how steady you are when you walk, how upright you are or aren't. All of these, and actually more, make up your gait. Walking is a fundamental human movement. It's important, particularly as we get older for our ability to explore the world around us becomes more limited if we don't have the ability to walk with strength, stability, and endurance. All of these moves involve several muscles and muscle groups, and I'm not going to cover those in this episode. If you're curious about how to use these movements within a workout, I would suggest working with a personal trainer, a fitness instructor, or even a physical therapist. The third is make it full body. For 20 years, I have always created full body workouts for my clients and the results have been extremely positive. Here's what I have found. Clients find full body workouts interesting, engaging and satisfying both mentally and physically, all of which helps them stick with it and be consistent over the long term.
(12:20):
I believe in the diversity of movement within a workout and also the sense of wholeness that comes from engaging and working the whole body. I think it really solidifies the mind body connection, which is a very compelling element for a workout and consistency. Whether a client consciously realizes or not. Life is a full body sport, so we should exercise that way. The other thing I have found is if you have limited time, a full body workout is time efficient. Do a full body workout twice a week and you have the makings of an effective strength training program. You can accomplish a full body workout in 45 minutes. With this said, the best workout is always the one that produces the results you desire and feels like the right fit with you while keeping you safe and injury free. There are many ways to structure a workout. This is just my experience of what has worked out best over time.
(13:26):
The fourth principle I use is fewer reps, more weight. The evidence from longevity science does favor performing fewer reps with more weight. This builds strength as well as muscle mass, both of which are important as we age. How do you do it? You select a weight with which you can perform the particular exercise eight to 10 times for two to three sets. At the end of your last set you should be fatigued enough to know that you can't perform any more of those reps. Another guideline is to exercise at a perceived level of effort of eight on a 10 point scale, 10 being the highest level of effort. Personal trainers have other ways to come up with this eight rep max,. And if you're interested, you can certainly work with a personal trainer and figure out what your appropriate starting weight is for each of these eight exercises.
(14:28):
My fifth principle is to do strength training a minimal of twice a week, anything less doesn't really produce consistent results. Certainly if once a week is all that you can accomplish right now, start with that, but work towards twice a week over time. And you can strength train in many different ways. In addition to lifting weights, there's heavy yard work, for example. That can be a terrific strength workout. Body weight movement like yoga, Pilates, I'm familiar with another modality called gyrotonics, which is an excellent way to build strength in the body. All of these are examples of workout types that build strength. Mixing it up not only keeps it interesting, but it puts varied demand on your body over time, which contributes to a more complete strength within the body.
(15:23):
I want to tell you a little bit about how I structure my workouts. Again, I think without a structure, it's easy just to kind of give up. If we have a predetermined structure to a workout, it's really easy to then just focus your efforts and focus your mental energy on picking and selecting the exercises you're going to do. I think it really does pave the way towards greater consistency. So having a planned structure is like having a standard outline. It answers two things, what are the main components of my workout, and then puts those components in a predefined order. I have found it a great tool for working with my clients, but also for my own workouts. It's streamlines the design of a workout and enables me to maximize my focus on the selection of specific exercises. That's where creativity can flourish and progress is made when we can think about and spend more time thinking about how we progress certain exercises.
(16:26):
Here are the five parts to my workout structure. One, I always warm up with some sort of joint mobility where I have my clients go through slow, gentle articulated movements in each joint, tracking to the range of motion that they have in that joint and taking care to work within a pain-free range of motion. Pushing into pain does absolutely no good. It only ends up sending signals to the brain that there's a threat and the brain responds by limiting your range of motion with pain. There is no gain when it comes to mobility. I take clients through a series of movements in the neck, shoulder, elbows, wrists, fingers, the spine, hips, knees, ankle, feet, even the toes, and certainly if you have orthopedic issues in your joints or in your spine, really take care with any type of joint mobility and do what you know is safe for your body.
(17:23):
The next thing I have my clients do and then I do my own workouts is to complete the warmup with two to three minutes of movements that moderately elevate the heart rate and breathing rate. Movements that have your arms and legs moving at the same time do the trick here. So movement like jumping jacks or if you don't like to jump, there's what I call jump less jacks where you do the movement minus the jump. You can march, lifting the knees high and swinging the arms. You could skip or squat and then raise your arms of your head. All these things moving the arms and the legs together is a great way to warm up your heart rate and your respiratory system. Then I get to the third part of the workout, which is the main part, which is the strength work, and I typically design four sets of two different exercises performed one right after the other, and then for each set of exercises, I have a client perform two to three rounds.
(18:24):
Two rounds is pretty sufficient over time and certainly at first, but you may find if you want to advance your strength a little bit more, you can add a third round. The fourth part or the fourth component of my workouts is heart rate training for four to five minutes. The goal here is to present a cardio challenge that raises your heart rate and is performed on an interval. A popular interval is 20 seconds of exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. These can be body weight. In fact, I really actually prefer body weight movements for this part of the workout, so there's 20 seconds of exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. I have clients do that for eight rounds. Some of you may recognize this as a Tabata interval. I also design a circuit sometimes of six exercises that I know will raise the heart rate, and then I have the client perform each exercise for 30 seconds before moving right into the next with as little rest as possible.
(19:30):
We do that two times through. That's a great cardio workout. And then the fifth component, which is the final component, I end all workouts with some sort of long slow movements to cool the body down and to get the kinks out if you will. And so we use stretching or maybe more mobility work. I think full body here, just like in the strength portion of the workout. So I select stretches which stretch the front of the body, the back of the body, the sides of the body, and then we do some twists. These should be slow. Hold them for five to six breaths. That's an easy way to count and just relax. Let the exhale be the part that you just release anything that you're gripping, any stress or strain that you're holding in your body.
(20:23):
When it comes to workout design, the sky is the limit. I think that's what makes it so challenging, but it doesn't have to be very complicated. There are so many creative ways to design a workout, but I think we all do best if we just find one or maybe two main structures or main designs. One maybe for when we do strength training. Another, if you're more involved in a cardiovascular exercise like swimming or running, I think it's just find your standard, find your go-to, and what I have presented here is just my go-to structure and design. I have found this the best well-rounded approach for developing overall strength and fitness in an efficient, effective way. It's my starting point for virtually all workouts that I designed for my clients and for myself,. And then I personalize for each of my clients based upon what their goals are, what their skills are, where they are from a fitness level standpoint, and certainly I personalize it for any medical or orthopedic conditions that need to be addressed.
(21:28):
As I mentioned earlier, the best workout structure and the best exercise selection are those that are a best fit for you, your goals and your body, and keep you safe, injury free, and progressing towards a greater strength and health. If you incorporate any of these ideas into your workouts, I'd love to hear how it goes for you. Please email me. My email address is pam@strandfitnessonline.com, and if you have found this episode helpful and want to know where and when new episodes are posted, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter. There's a signup form below, or you can go to my website, which is strand fitness online.com. There's a signup form at the bottom of the homepage. I thank you for tuning in and listening. I hope you've learned something very helpful and I will see you soon. Take care, bye.