By Brad Baldwin, NYC personal trainer

“The human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one imagined vividly and in detail.”

Many New Yorkers blame genetics for the reason he/she can’t get lose weight or make progress. These same people have zero visualization as part of their training generally.

They walk into the gym for a workout and have no idea how much weight they’re going to do or how many reps/sets. They’re just going by “feel” the majority of the time.

If you read Psycho-Cybernetics you’ll learn that using visualization, self-image and corrective feedback can turn an average strength athlete into a great one. A person that wants to optimize their progress not only knows what exercises, weight, sets and reps they will perform that day but they have played “the mental video” of every rep mentally before hand; often the night before or on the walk to the gym. The more senses he/she uses, the better. Eating a certain food before training, playing specific songs or even wearing a specific deodorant/cologne on certain lifting days can help overall progress (associating certain smells with specific tasks).

When you approach an exercise, you should have so much confidence from visualizing the details prior that the lift has already been done. If you’re not practicing these things you’re really doing yourself a disservice with progress and you’ll probably continue to have “bad genetics.” If you have any questions about furthering visualization don’t hesitate to message me.

Finishing the Summer Strong
By Akeem Berry, NYC personal trainer

Summer is great time to spike up activity levels with pleasant weather and sunny days. At the same time, it can be a grand period of celebration and something I like to call “Vacation Dieting”. We spend the latter part of winter and spring chiseling away at the physique in preparation for the summer, only to repeat the process in the fall. Maintaining a stellar health and fitness regimen is hard work, but it can be made more effective with the alteration of training routines and habits. Here are a few tips to work smarter around this cycle instead of just working harder.

Drink MORE Water

If there is any one thing you could do now to help your body in a multitude of ways, it’s keeping your body hydrated. Seriously, from abundant benefits like more energy, boosted metabolism and digestion, and even better looking skin, you definitely want to keep that water bottle close! At a minimum, one should be drinking 64 ounces of H2O/daily. Also, take into account that in the warm summer months, hydration can be easily lost and/or overlooked. So get to sippin’!

Train Outdoors (While You Still Can!)

Aside from walking, running and hiking outdoors, I highly suggest resistance training outdoors. Benefits of sunny day training sessions versus indoors include increased mental stimulation, improvement in mood, strengthening of the bones and immune system with a good ol’ dose of Vitamin D. Plus, who doesn’t prefer a breath of fresh air to a gasp of gym air? You get the idea.

Creating a consistent exercise routine is often difficult and can become mundane over a short time. So here is where I challenge you to take your workouts outdoors. One of the greatest tools to train literally anywhere is the TRX Suspension Trainer. Not only can you strap this to any solid anchor point, but also the exercise selection for the whole body is virtually endless! Personally it has been a favorite and effective apparatus for almost 4 years and I use it to train clients and even myself.

No gym? No TRX? Check Out A Calisthenics Park!

Get back to your youth and make the city your jungle gym again. With simple instruction and correct form, calisthenics can be one of the best ways to increase relative strength and flexibility. Training with your own bodyweight is also a much safer alternative for beginners and even advanced exercisers. Below, you can find a list of parks that cater to this style of training. Find one near you and get started!

https://www.nycgovparks.org/facilities/fitnessequipment

By Lisa Snow, personal trainer

Building a Better Back

Maybe it started with a car accident, a sports injury, or simply too much time hunched over your keyboard. But now the back pain is too serious to ignore. The orthopedist has ruled out surgery, so what’s next?

Chiropractic can be a good starting point. A common misconception is that the only purpose of chiropractic is to get your bones back into alignment.  While adjustments do help with that, the real benefit is that once your spine is properly aligned, energy can flow freely through your nerves to your muscles.  This allows the muscles to move with more grace and strength, while reducing pain.

Although many first-time patients fear getting “cracked,” adjustments shouldn’t hurt.  Most people feel a sense of release, similar to what you feel when popping your knuckles.  Many patients are also amazed to find they can suddenly breathe more deeply, sometimes as early as a first or second appointment.  Once your joints are lined up in their proper positions, there is much less tension in the chest and upper back, allowing the diaphragm to pull in full, healing breaths.

Once you’ve found a good chiropractor (or other medical professional) to get your pain under control, 1-1 fitness training can be useful.  While trainers can’t treat anything – certainly not back pain – they can help build strength while reducing risk of future injury.  Here are key areas where an experienced trainer can help:

Core stability – while your doctor may recommend avoiding spinal flexion movements like old school crunches and sit-ups, there are plenty of other core exercises available.  Depending on your specific injury, you may be able to do things like planks, side planks, bird dogs, or the cat & cow pose from yoga.

Breathing – learning to breathe deeply can release tension that builds up in the muscles and eventually causes pain.  Once you’ve mastered proper breathing on its own, you can begin to learn to breathe correctly during exercise.

Posture – anyone can pretend to have good posture in front of a mirror, but can you maintain that tall spine while standing and waiting for the subway, sitting at your desk, or doing squats?  A personal trainer can help you make good posture a habit rather than something you only do when someone is looking.

Lisa Snow
ACE & NSCA Certified Personal Trainer
President
On the Mend Customized Fitness and Massage

By Davide Marongiu, personal trainer

 I get a lot of questions when I come across clients who are looking to build muscle mass, shape themselves or, more often than not, “tone up”.

The truth I have found during all these years as a personal trainer and a fitness model is that not one rule is true when it comes to weight lifting in terms of number of reps, sets, programs etc. You’ll be surprised, though, to notice how important the sole concept of your muscles being kept under the right amount of tension is. 

Ideally every exercise should place a certain stress, intensity and “burn” on the targeted muscle and often we forget to properly address the effort towards that particular muscle when we execute the movement. Men know how much our own ego steps in the way when we are doing, for example, bench press exercises or bicep curls. But as an experienced lifter I ask you to put your egos aside for once, do not lift an insane amount of weight and really focus on how much active contraction (“pump”) you are getting in the targeted muscle. This is usually achievable at a lower load than you were used to lift before. In a short time you will notice increased density in your muscles, which will help the sculpting and your overall proportions.

I constantly stress the importance of time under tension to my clients as an effective way to go past plateaus and train in complete safety.