5 Tips For Strength Training

When I was in my late teens and early twenties it was relatively easy to stay in shape. I was always athletic in high school, and remained active throughout college. As the years crept by, however, I began to gain unexplainable weight. I was still running everyday, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I could not control my weight! Over a five year period, I put on thirty pounds. I felt powerless and didn't understand why my body was no longer responding to my methods. At age 28, I employed my first personal trainer, Michael McKinney, and it was money well spent. He taught me that weight training is truly the key to staying lean. Muscle tone from sports kept me in shape through my younger years, but it had slowly deteriorated while working 40 hours a week sitting at a desk. Here are 5 tips Michael taught me to improve the effectiveness of my weight training workouts:

1) Get Leaner by Being Longer - While doing squats, lunges or sit-ups, raise your hands above your head. It will improve balance, increase intensity, and elongate your spine.

2) Take the Bounce out of your Step - Pause for at least four seconds at the bottom of lunges and squats. This eliminates momentum and forces your body to use more muscle to recover.

3) Go the Distance - When doing push-ups, plank, or other exercises which facilitate your body weight as resistance, try putting feet or hands on a block or a stair to position you further from the floor. This will increase the distance you must overcome for each rep.

4) Add a Twist - We do lots of exercises bending our bodies up and down, but not many twisting from side to side. Add a twist to anything to increase the burn and engage your obliques.

5) Get off the Floor - Hold one foot or arm in the air while performing various strength and conditioning drills. This will make push-ups, planks, sit-ups and any other floor related drills a challenge in balance, and increase calories burned.

After many sessions with a Personal Trainer, I realized that all of these little steps can make a huge difference. If you would like to learn more about personal trainer certificates please visit us at Allied Health World.com! I have lost the extra thirty pounds, and lowered my body fat to 19% by just employing these methods.