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Why Crunches Are Bad for Plus-Size People, and Solutions
Crunches are worthless if you’re fat, obese or have a huge belly. (more…)
Best Exercise to Start Off To Lose 100+ Pounds
Do you know the ONE, single exercise to start off your 100-pound weight loss venture?
I do! Can you say DEADLIFT?
You can lose a hundred pounds with the help of this multi-joint, whole-body exercise.
Why Some Women Are Naturally Strong
Some reasons will surprise you why some women are just naturally very strong.
What makes a woman naturally strong? Is it size? Not always.
If the size is mostly excess fat and/or long bones (tallness), this won’t make a woman strong.
A few of the factors that make a woman naturally strong are variables that you cannot see simply by looking at her.
What makes some women naturally strong?
• Tendons that insert far from the joint that the tendon pulls on (or, to put it another way, the insertion point to the axis of rotation).
• High percentage of fast twitch muscle fiber to slow twitch muscle fiber.
These two factors cannot be readily seen when you look at an average woman, but if her muscles are developed from training, you could see if she has long or short tendon insertion points.
“Long” insertion points provide a mechanical advantage to lifting, and you’re born with the length of your insertion points; they can’t be changed with training.
Tendon Power
Here’s an analogy to help you understand how this influences strength. Suppose you’re pulling at the knob of a very stubborn door.
The door just won’t open (let’s say it’s an old house and the frame has shrunk or whatever, and the door is “stuck” in the frame). You pull and pull on that knob but the door won’t budge.
Now let’s suppose you fasten a gizmo around the knob that has a one-foot-long rod or extension made of metal or wood, and at the end of the extension is a handle.
You pull at the handle, and voila, the door opens! Imagine how much even easier this would be if the rod were 10 feet long. Man, just a tiny tug and that door would open.
Though this is a significantly scaled-up analogy, you should now understand how a longer tendon insertion creates more strength.
The door symbolizes bone. The rod or extension symbolizes a long tendon.
The gizmo around the doorknob symbolizes the insertion point. Your hand pulling on the handle symbolizes muscle.
Muscle pulls bone. When you lift weights or move a joint, muscles pull the bone.
Bend your elbow so that your arm forms a 90 degree angle: Your biceps muscle group is pulling against the bones in your forearm.
A longer tendon that connects the biceps to your forearm bones is like that one-foot rod connecting your hand to the doorknob.
Fast Twitch Power
Fast twitch muscle fiber is designed for brief, explosive movements, and these are required for displays of strength.
Shutterstock/Microgen
Slow twitch fiber is designed for endurance activities. This is why the bodies of Olympic marathon runners are skinny and waif-like, while the physiques of sprinters are impressively muscled.
Like elite sprinters, champion powerlifters and Olympic-style weightlifters have a high percentage of fast twitch muscle fiber to slow twitch.
But not all weightlifters can be great sprinters, and not all sprinters can be great weightlifters.
Other Factors that Make a Woman Naturally Strong
A champion powerlifter, blessed with a ton of fast twitch muscle fiber, may bomb at sprinting due to the wrong anthropometrics.
Let’s say we have a champion sprinter and a champion powerlifter, both 5’5” and 130 pounds, stand side by side.
You can bet they’ll have different anthropometrics: limb proportions.
• The sprinter’s torso will be shorter than the powerlifter’s torso (i.e., the sprinter will be “higher waisted”).
• The powerlifter’s knees will be higher than the sprinter’s knees (the powerlifter will have shorter femurs or thigh bones).
• The powerlifter’s arms may be longer than the sprinter’s arms (a sprinter can benefit from long arms, but a champion powerlifter of the same height whose best lift is the deadlift may have even longer arms).
So if you have 90 percent fast twitch fiber and 10 percent slow twitch, you’re designed for brief bursts of power, but if your torso is shorter than your femurs, and your arm span is two inches shorter than your overall height, you can forget powerlifting.
Arms several inches longer than overall height means a woman won’t have to bend over as far to pick a heavy object off the floor.
However, she’ll be at a disadvantage thrusting that heavy object up and over her head, with those long arms having to travel through a greater range of motion.
It would be extremely easy for the woman pictured above to lift 100 pounds a few inches off the floor if her arms were really that long, but she’d have one heck of a time lifting a bowling ball over her head and straightening her arms (weak!)
That’s why in Olympic-style lifting, where heavy weight must be quickly thrust overhead, the athlete’s arms are notably short—relative to body height.
With a smaller range of motion, courtesy of short arms, it’s easier for the athlete to move a heavy barbell from the floor to overhead.
Overall height is not the issue; it’s whether or not arm span is shorter or longer than the overall height.
Long arms relative to height create more torque, which means such a woman has great potential in sports requiring throwing such as discus, hammer throw, javelin and softball pitching.
But relatively short arms (forget discus or pitching) are also a big advantage in the bench press and any pressing motion such as dumbbell incline press, overhead press, and also the pull-up.
What else makes a woman naturally strong?
Naturally higher levels of testosterone will help; this will go towards muscle development from training.
There are many other factors that make a woman strong, but they are acquired, such as the rage that surges through a woman’s body as she’s lifting a car off her pinned child.
But let’s get one thing straight: Size does not make a woman naturally strong.
A “skinny” woman with long tendon insertions and lots of fast twitch muscle fiber will likely do better at hoisting heavy crates into a truck than will the 200 pound (excess fat) taller woman who has short tendon insertions and mostly slow twitch muscle fiber!
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Lyashenko Egor
How to Beat the Depression over Your Flabby Arms
What you need is a sure-fire way to conquer “Flabby Arm Depression.”
You don’t have to have flabby arms. Why should other women have tight, toned arms while YOU get stuck with flabby arms?
It’s time to take action and change your mindset. As a former personal trainer, one of the most striking phenomena I’ve ever noticed is that women with flabby arms almost always—more like universally—did two things at the gym:
• Used much lighter weight than they were capable of
• Did not push hard
The formula for getting rid of flabby arms, and the depression that comes with them, is as follows:
• Embrace the idea of getting STRONG. Have you ever seen a woman with strong but flabby arms? I know I haven’t.
I don’t mean overweight arms that have hidden muscle. I mean truly flabby, mushy and shapeless arms.
Compare the big arms of a typical overweight shopper at Walmart with those of someone who does powerlifting at a gym. BIG DIFFERENCE.
• Understand that getting strong doesn’t necessarily mean getting huge muscles. The woman below is deadlifting an impressive amount of weight but has lean toned arms without an ounce of flab.
Deadlift. Shutterstock/sportpoint
• Welcome the idea of pushing very hard in your workouts, learning to love the burning of fatigued muscles.
• Focus on compound exercises rather than isolation exercises.
• Stop underestimating how much you can lift. Are you still folding up like an accordion for bench dips despite having been doing these for six months?
• The amount of weight should allow you to complete at least eight reps but not more than 12. If you can do more than 12, the weight is too light.
Best Chest Exercise for Beating Arm Flab and Depression.
Shutterstock/Depositphotos.com
• Bench press. I rarely see women doing the bench press. I’m guessing this is because they’re afraid of getting big muscles.
Why is this? Is it because the bench press is considered the king of upper body exercises and is used by men to compare their strength?
• Start benching, ladies. Of the small number of women I’ve ever seen bench pressing, quite a few had a tentative approach to it, almost as though they were intimidated.
• I’ve seen young women requiring a man to hover over them and spot them for bench pressing JUST the Olympic bar (which is only 45 pounds).
Shutterstock/nazarovsergey
They ended up pressing it like 15 times, so obviously, the bar wasn’t too heavy, so what was with the tentativeness and the hovering man? See the next point!
• Do not fear bench pressing. Make this exercise your best friend. It will obliterate arm flab. I have yet to see a woman who’s bench pressing 95 pounds with flabby arms.
Best Back Exercise for Flabby Arms
• I rarely see women using an Olympic bar for the deadlift. Many women who deadlift use the pre-weighted, shorter barbells.
• Sticking to the pre-weighted, short barbells encourages women NOT to increase the weight, because if they want to use a heavier, pre-weighted barbell, they must remove it from the rack where they are usually kept.
If it’s high up on the rack, they won’t want to struggle with the removal.
• Thus, I advise you to abandon the pre-weighted barbell rack and head to the squat rack and work with the Olympic bar, where you can load it with ease while it rests on a platform.
• And what’s with the 45 pound deadlifts anyways? I’ll see women doing scads of reps using light barbells.
• To tighten and tone and shape the arms, you must work heavy. There’s no way around it.
• I have never seen a woman with flabby arms deadlifting 135 pounds. Every woman I’ve ever seen deadlifting 135 pounds (like four in the past two years) had tight, toned arms.
Some of these arms may have been “overweight” or “heavy,” BUT … they had that firm, trained look, not that doughy, shapeless Walmart look.
• Though the deadlift is considered a back exercise, you can’t work your middle back without using your arms.
More Top Exercises that Will Get Rid of Arm Flab
• Dumbbell press
• Seated row
• Overhead barbell press
• Seated dip (please, work on getting your feet up on a second bench, legs straight)
Seated dip. Shutterstock/RomarioIen
Advanced Exercises
Shutterstock/Dirima
• Pushup
• Chin-up and pull-up
• Bar dip
Going through the motions won’t cut it. You must use a weight heavy enough for eight to 12 reps.
It is extremely and exceedingly difficult for a woman to convert flabby arms to manly over-muscled arms without intentionally trying to do so.
And nothing beats depression like knowing you’re stronger than you’ve ever imagined possible!
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Freepik.com/jcomp
Can You Be Too Fat to Jump Rope for Exercise?
You’re not too fat for ANYTHING if you can do it, including jump rope for exercise.
Just about anything, of course. As a fitness expert, I wouldn’t recommend that an obese person take up skateboarding or surfing, but certainly, you can stop thinking that you’re “too fat” to jump rope.
If you can do it, then just do it. The dangers of jumping rope are minimal; it’s not in the same league as box jumping, or inline skating, where if a very heavy person falls — injuries can result, possibly serious.
Jumping for Seconds Counts As Exercise
If you can jump rope for only 20 or even 10 seconds before you must rest, then you’ve succeeded…no matter how “fat” you think you are.
It’s a myth that in order for this under-rated activity to count as exercise, you must do it for 15 minutes nonstop, like a boxer might do.
Jump Rope Instructions for Overweight Men and Women
Try one revolution and stop.
• Did you complete it, clear the rope with your feet? Great.
• Now do two in an row.
• Now three.
• Now count 10 in a row.
• Take rests as needed.
Make sure the rope is the right length. If it’s too short, it will be more difficult to clear it with each jump.
But a long one that drags on the ground will also prove to be a nuisance.
As for the swinging, you can conserve energy by keeping your arms as close to your body as possible and having your lower forearms and wrists do most of the work.
You need not try anything fancy. Just jump — keeping your feet together or slightly apart.
Work on coordination first — being able to complete successive revolutions for 15 seconds nonstop, even if they are slow.
Again, do not be discouraged if you become very fatigued after only 15 seconds. After all, you are hopping up and down and also moving your arms.
You are not too fat to jump rope as a form of exercise if you can do it without any pain or feelings of knee instability.
As for getting quickly winded, this is normal and expected.
What about knee pain?
Knee pain isn’t uncommon in very overweight people. If you have knee pain, then stop.
You may want to instead do mini squats, going only a quarter or even less down (a half squat is when your thighs are parallel to the floor).
Go up and down with the squats at the same tempo as you would with jumping rope.
This will help strengthen weak tweaky knees. If your knee hurts when doing this, though, then stop.
If your knee gives you trouble going up and down stairs, and especially if it hurts just from regular walking, it’s time to see a doctor.
Water Hopping for Obese Wanna-Jumpers
Try prolonged hopping in water, but don’t rely on this as your primary form of exercise.
It would just be a transitional phase until your knee is healed enough to jump rope.
Weight Machines
You should also do leg presses and leg extensions. In fact, leg extensions especially will strengthen the surrounding tissue of the knee joint, because this is an isolation exercise.
Freepik.com/master1305
It isolates the quadriceps muscles, which attach to the kneecap (patella) via a tendon.
Thus, leg extensions will strengthen the tendon and create an overall stronger knee joint.
Modified Rope Jumping
Knee pain aside, if you’re particularly heavy or deconditioned and are still drawn to jumping rope, you can swing it and step over the rope as it comes towards you.
This isn’t jumping, but it’s kind of like a pre-jumping, where you’re priming your body for actual jumping.
You can make the stepping faster as your body acclimates.
You can also stand still and swing the rope forward, then back, forward, then back, to condition your arms for the activity.
Another option is to march in place while mimicking the swinging with your arms—minus the actual rope.
Don’t let anybody convince you that you are “too fat” to jump rope. If you can do it without joint pain (hip, knee, ankle), or any other kind of pain, you are not “too anything” to do it! Just make sure you have solid balance.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Depositphotos.com
Why Women Think Domestic Violence Can Happen to Any Woman
Why is it that most women think that ANY woman can be a victim of domestic violence? (more…)
Low Back Pain Relief: Ice Pack vs. Heat Pad or Does It Matter?
Low back pain is no picnic.
If you don’t want to be on narcotics to relieve the pain, you’ll want to try a cold pack or maybe a hot water bottle.
But which one works better for your hurting low back: cold or heat?
The first rule is not to mindlessly apply cold OR heat to your low back. There must be a plan in place.
I asked Kaixuan Liu, MD, PhD, about what to do. Dr. Liu is a nationally distinguished leader in endoscopic spine surgery and chief surgeon at Atlantic Spinal Care in Edison, N.J.
First find out what the source of the pain is, says Dr. Liu. You could have messed up your low back doing yard work or falling or even lifting a child.
“With a mechanical injury, you might feel anything from dull aching to a shooting or stabbing pain,” notes Dr. Liu.
“You might also experience stiffness or loss of flexibility that prevents you from standing or sitting normally.”
Sudden pain may be short-lived but may also recur over and over.
Chronic low back pain just keeps on going and going — beyond 90 days. Like sudden or acute back pain it can be caused by a sudden wrong move or poor positioning when lifting something.
But it can also be caused by degeneration in the spine.
Hot vs. Cold for Low Back Pain
“It’s all about inflammation,” points out Dr. Liu. Inflammation is the typical result of sudden injuries, with a blood influx to the affected area, with response of immune cells and other agents whose job is to eliminate invaders to the body (if any).
“In the case of acute muscle or joint injury,” says Dr. Liu, the inflammatory response “creates swelling that is the beginning of a healing process.”
And this natural process can hurt.
For acute (sudden) inflammation, use ice, advises Dr. Liu. “The cold shrinks the small blood vessels in the area which keeps blood and other fluids from flooding to the injury site, decreasing swelling.”
He adds, “It also will slow nerve impulses in the area, which interrupts transmission of pain messages, and numbs the area much like a local anesthetic does.”
Acute inflammation can damage tissue. Cold helps reduce this damage.
Heat treatment promotes blood circulation and this will hinder pain. However, Dr. Liu says that heat application to an acute inflammatory site can worsen the swelling: more pain.
If you do not have chronic inflammation use heat to open up blood vessels and increase blood flow and nutrients. This will promote healing.
For low back pain heat will also help relax muscles and hinder spasms and stiffness, plus stimulate nerves.
If you wrench your back with a sudden wrong movement, Dr. Liu says to apply ice. This is an acute injury.
Keep the cold on for 15 to 20 minutes, three times a day, for one to two weeks.
After that apply heat for 15 to 20 minutes three times a day. Make sure at least two hours pass between either heat or cold/ice.
Dr. Liu says, “There’s a popular myth that heat and cold are interchangeable in treating back pain. It’s true they both relieve pain, but the mechanisms that produce the pain relief are completely different, and that means each has its time and place.”
Dr. Liu specializes in disc herniations, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, and mitigating failed neck and back surgery, among many other conditions that affect the neck, mid and lower back.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Monkey Business Images
Can Childless People Know More About Raising Kids than Parents?
If you were dying & had to choose between a childless woman to raise your children and a mother of four, the mom would get them even if she was Mama June?
After you read this, you’ll certainly be convinced that sometimes, childless people are quite qualified to give out parenting advice! (more…)
