Functional training is still one of the most popular fitness regimes for good reason. Such training focuses on movements used in every day life, movements that may cause injury or challenges as the body ages. Thus, creating a functioning workout is important. While we were young, working out at the gym a few times a week was sufficient. But aging bodies know all too quickly that how we keep healthy, active, and free of injuries changes once we pass middle age. Now we must worry about how installing a new microwave or picking up a grandchild might affect our bodies.

To counterbalance this, functional training can help, especially functional training specialists who focus on aging. No longer will you be hitting the gym to isolate muscles in machines where you sit or lean. Instead, functional training is about getting your muscles to work together, using your own body for balance, weight support, and movement. Keeping up cardiovascular exercise and healthy nutrition is as important as the functional workouts as well.

New York City personal trainers, who are also certified functional aging specialists, may have you practice exercises and cardio drills that will help in daily life. For example, a bent standing row requires free weights, balancing on your own two feet, and the action of picking something up. Using appropriate posture and breathing is especially important to maintain good health and prevent injuries, like throwing out your lower back. Holding bags of weights in both hands while walking around an area of varying terrain can help prepare for the unexpected while grocery shopping.

To create a workout that meets your daily functional needs, a New York City personal trainer can help. Once a routine is established, relying on a personal trainer in New York City to keep your movements and posture perfect can help extend your independent abilities and prevention of injuries.

Golf, as with many sports, is a complex game that to improve requires discipline, hard work, and specialized training. There are many options for achieving your golf goal, whether it is lowering your score, developing better training routines, or just having a better over all game. For some, taking personalized sessions from a golf coach is necessary to obtain the proper swing, but there are other training methods you can do off the course.

While practice and challenging games certainly have their benefits, strength training while not on the course can help as well. There are a plethora of golf-specific weight training options that NYC personal trainers can help you with, including use of exercise balls, kettlebells, BOSU balls, and more to help you establish a strong core, center of balance, and more power in your swing. In fact, these exercises can even help prevent some of the most common golf-related injuries.

Before jumping headlong into strength training, remember that a full fitness regime involves many aspects. First, cardio is important for overall health, but also to keep weight low. The top professional golfers now are sleek and trim. Secondly, develop a stretching routine that will provide you a full range of unrestricted motion for your swing. Your swing is also affected by your posture in your stance. This can be changed through strengthening muscles.

Strength training is the third most important way to improve your game. Focusing on working out the shoulders, middle back, core, and hips will help your swing and your game. Simultaneously, building power and balance will also help your shots on uneven terrain, minimizes poor shots, helps keep us stable in the game as we age, and puts added oomph in our varied types of swings.

To get the best out of such a workout, a New York City personal trainer can help develop and guide you through the right moves. Personal trainers in NYC are ready to help you up your golf game!

As we age, our bodies age, too. No longer is sitting on a leg press machine the ideal workout. Preventative injury workouts become more important, as do real life situational workouts. The best workouts, in this case, are functional training. This sort of training means preparing for real world functional situations like carrying heavy groceries or keeping balanced while chasing after grandchildren.

Functional training focuses on getting muscles to work together, instead of the isolated muscle strengthening of gym machines. In such training, you use your own weight, balance, and skeletal support rather than relying on a machine. This keeps you not only moving and healthy, but helps participants prevent common injuries such as throwing out the lower back or suffering from tendonitis.

Some example exercises that can be placed into a regular circuit are the Wall-Ball Dynamic Squat, Single Leg Balance, and the Weight Transfer. With the Wall-Ball, participants are using the exercise ball and the wall to help them balance. However, the movement rolling up to standing and down to a squat relies more on the body weight of the participant than the balance of the ball. This is more for posture. The Wall-Ball is excellent practice for picking up the dog when he needs to be bathed, for example.

Single Leg Balance is just as it sounds. Starting with one foot firmly rooted, lift the other foot only slightly, perhaps to ankle height. This is similar to modified Tree Pose. Try to balance for 30 seconds, then switch legs. Practicing balance is essential as we age to prevent falls. The Weight Transfer utilizes tote bags filled with roughly 20% of the body weight of the participant. Bags are held out to the side while walking, simulating heavy shopping bags.

Though these functional training exercises appear easy, it is best to have a certified Staten Island personal trainer help you devise the perfect circuit for you, as well as advising and providing feedback as you perform each exercise. Ask personal trainers in Staten Island for specialized workouts in functional training for baby boomers.

Functional training is one of the newest crazes, but not a fad without cause. Though we may be training for gym-quality situations and keeping healthy doing so, training the body for daily activities, like lifting a heavy TV or getting your child or grandchild out of his car seat, has possibly more importance than just losing weight.

Instead of the gym exercises that isolate muscles, functional training is about getting all your muscles to work together. Functional fitness training means using your own balance, instead of leaning against the pads of machines, and supporting your own weight, like standing on two feet while lifting something. This concept is not only a key in keeping all ages healthy and away from injury, it is especially important as we age.

Functional weight rows are a great example. Instead of using the gym’s weighted row, try standing up and leaning over for a bent-over row that will emulate a nurse bending over a patient, or a grandparent bending over her grandchild. Start by learning to balance your own weight. This alone may prevent the most common injury of older adults: falls. Perhaps begin with a casual Tree Pose, taking from yoga. Once solid balance is obtained on both sides, branch into a one legged squat. As this becomes less of a challenge, add a small amount of weight, either through a dumbbell or small cartons of liquid.

Other common complaints, like painful lower back or tendinitis from repeated strain, can be prevented from functional circuit training. Investing in a personal trainer in Queens is the best way to start. Ask a trainer in your area for help developing a circuit that focuses on strength, but also mobility, flexibility, balance, and cognitive function. Without consistent feedback about your form and performance, unsupervised training sessions have been shown to be less successful. Long Island City personal trainers can offer specialized help with setting up a functional exercise circuit.

In our busy lives, workouts often fall to the bottom of the time priority scale. When classes are averaging 90 minutes, but you have 30 minutes between work and picking up the kids, what does one do? Is it worth it to make it to the gym when you only have 30 minutes?

Turns out that your short time frame is no longer an excuse for skipping the gym. When time is limited, intensity is your friend. Increase intensity in shorter workouts to make your gym time burn more calories by getting your heart rate up higher. At four to five times a week, a shorter but more high intensity workout will also help release the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone holds on to fat, thus making weight loss frustrating.

To make short workouts worth it, try high intensity interval training. For a HIIT workout, go hard at 85% of your target heart rate by pushing yourself in a short, intense anaerobic exercise like high knees, butt kicks, or even mountain climbers. Follow this with a lower-intensity recovery period like slow jogging in place. Keep this circuit up for the recommended 30 minutes and you have the perfect short but intense workout. A HIIT workout can also work with circuit-training doing short bursts of exercises that focus on resistance training. A Manhattan personal trainer can help guide you through specific workouts that fight your frustration areas.

Cardiovascular workouts can be fit into the weekly half-hour schedule as well, though HIIT and strength or resistance training should take precedence. The goal is to workout about 5 days a week, but never more than two hours maximum at a time. Ask for a personal trainer in Manhattan to guide you through your first rounds of high intensity interval training sessions. Find one near you by searching for Manhattan personal trainers.

There are many different elements when it comes to losing weight. To effectively and healthily lose pounds, one needs to eat a nutritious and balanced diet, find a cardio routine to work in almost every day of the week, and most importantly, add strength training as a regular part of the weight loss regime.

Strength training just three times a week at minimum can help speed up weight loss by amping metabolism while also toning and sculpting the body. If each session consists of an hour of continuous strength training, participants will have burned an extra 100 calories after the workout within the next 24 hours, depending on how much muscle mass you have. That means even while you aren’t working out, your body still is. In fact, lifting weights might even be better at losing abdominal fat that cardio alone, which in turn helps prevent diseases like cancer or diabetes.

To really up the torching of calories, you don’t need a large number of reps in the weight room. For each set, increase your weight to nearly 85% of your maximum weight ability, but do less reps- for example, do 8 repetitions instead of the ordinary 15 with less weight. Switching back and forth between more reps with less weight and less reps with more weight might help blast fat faster, too. But one set of flies isn’t enough; for the best overall metabolism punch, do an all over workout, focusing on arms, abdominals, legs, and back.

Remember to fuel and refuel appropriately with healthy protein and other balanced nutrition. Find out more about how to strength train or replenish appropriately by hiring a personal trainer in the Bronx. To find one in your area, search for Bronx personal trainers to help you with your strength training needs.

Should I only do Cardio to Lose Weight?

Losing weight often is misconceived as a one-dimensional effort. Mostly, the misconception is that to lose weight, one must just do cardiovascular workouts. Instead, effective weight loss is a combination and balance of many things. However, developing a cardio routine that works for you is the first of at least three important steps to change the state of your health. These three steps are cardio routine, strength training, and balanced nutrition.

First, make certain that the cardio you do gets a good caloric burn on. Though gadgets and apps can help assess how many calories burned in a workout session, another great way is when your body is telling you that you have reached your target heart rate zone: you are breathing too hard to hold an easy conversation, and you are perspiring. Push yourself to go faster, add hills or obstacles, or cross-train so that the more calories you burn, the less likely it will be that you will need to cut calories. On average, to lose weight one should do cardio 5-6 days out of the week for 30-90 minute sessions.

But cardio isn’t enough on its own. Adding strength training will certainly up the caloric burn. Building muscle helps your body burn calories more efficiently, even after the weight room session is over. Start with a light cardio session prior to lifting weights. This will extend the calorie burn more than just lifting alone. Focus on a variety of muscles, exercises, and a regular schedule. It is a good idea to book training sessions with a professional personal trainer in Brooklyn while strength training is new so as to be more effective, efficient, and safe.

Nutrition is also key to weight loss. Choosing foods that will fill you up but with less calories is key, but also foods that maintain good health. Brooklyn personal trainers are certified and can help guide you toward good nutritional choices as well. Contact a Brooklyn personal trainer for help developing a workout plan to help you lose weight.