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Balance and Exercise

Health Clubs and Fitness Centres

Balance and ExerciseBy Kareem Samhouri, DPT

If you don't have control over your center of mass, you'll never have control over movement. This means that every time you lift weights, you are lifting in a different pattern, or at least you might be. In order to improve balance with exercise, it's imperative that you work on balance through exercise.

Over time, lacking awareness of your center of mass leads to joint breakdown, decreased results, and increased bad habits. It's very difficult to set up a system of movement without gaining proper control of your center of mass.

Your center of mass is located just in front of your vertebrae in the low back, at the levels L1-L2. This means that in order to perform any standing exercise, it's important to be aware of the position of your low back. Having control over your center of mass is increasingly important when you raise your arms overhead with weights. Naturally, your body will shift its center of mass to balance out the new demand place on your body in this position. It's your choice:

Do you want to havea predictable system of movement, where you know you're safe every time, or would you rather 'chance' it every time you do a military press?

I'd rather have the system. Systems are formed through strategic implementation of previously determined plans. Lifting weights to increase balance involves planning your workouts to offer you a mutual benefit for balance, as well as fitness. Through a carefully designed fitness program, you will be able permanently affect your level of balance with dynamic and complex activities, thereby reducing risk of injury, increasing coordination, and decreasing demand on your body during daily activity.

If you'd like to see a free video on a fat or adipose tissue loss program that enhances balance, please visit: http://LiftHardPlayHard.com/video

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Core Training Tip - Include Balance Exercises in Your Workout

Health Clubs and Fitness Centres

Core Training Tip - Include Balance Exercises in Your WorkoutBy Charles Inniss

Balance exercises are often neglected in fitness routines, however having good balance is an important part of overall joint health and injury prevention. One of the reasons that balance training is left out of fitness programs is that it has small impact on how your body looks. Instead, balance training is all about how well your body moves. There are a lot of good looking people whose bodies do work well.

Core Training and functional training is all about getting your body to move more efficiently. When your body moves more efficiently, you are less likely to get injured and you will perform regular activities and athletic activities at a higher level.

A balance exercise is an exercise or workout that is done standing on 1 leg. Your center of gravity shifts when you stand on one leg, so your core muscles must work harder to stabilize your entire body over the standing leg. Running is a 1 legged exercise, so any sport or activity that involves running requires good balance.

Another hidden benefit of doing exercises while standing on one leg is ankle, knee and hip stability and strengthening. The small muscles around the foot and ankle really get challenged during balance exercises, and standing on one foot can strengthen the arch muscles. In addition, the small hip stabilizer muscles are strengthened when you stand on one leg, and strong hip stabilisers help to control and protect the knee from excessive stress.

When you have injuries to your legs, your coordination and balance on the injured side generally diminishes unless you work on restoring it. If you have twisted your ankle in the past, chances are that your balance on the side you injured is worse than theside that was never injured. The same holds true for knee and hip injuries. Generally speaking when you have a leg injury, you avoid putting pressure on the injured side, and this leads to decreased coordination, decreased strength, and decreased balance. It is important to practice balance exercises if you have had leg injuries in the past.

Some simple balance exercises include, just standing on 1 leg for 30-60 seconds. In addition, you can stand on one leg while moving your opposite leg to constantly change your center of gravity. 1 leg squats and 1 leg hip hinges are also good balancing exercises.

Once you've mastered standing on 1 leg and basic exercises such as the 1 legged squat, you can further challenge your balance by using a wobble board, core board, bosu ball, foam pad, or any other unstable surface. Begin by just practicing standing on an unstable surface with 1 leg, and then progress to doing other exercises while standing on some type of core exercise equipment. If you want to have a complete core training routine, include balance exercises into your workout.

Charles Inniss is a Physical Therapist and Personal Trainer. Visit his website to get free core workout tips, and also learn tons of core exercises and abdominal (ab) exercises.

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Lose Belly Fat Through Exercise

Health Clubs and Fitness Centres

Lose Belly Fat Through ExerciseBy Kareem Samhouri, DPT

Losing belly fat or adipose tissue through exercise is not as easy as people make it out to be. The truth is, your body will lose fat or adipose tissue from every place you do not want, first. It is very difficult to loose body fat or adipose tissue in the 'hard to reach areas,' such as love handles, hips, buttocks, and the belly.

Through the proper fat or adipose tissue loss program, featuring high intensity exercise, it is possible to reduce your body fat or adipose tissue to the point that you will see trouble areas melt away. A properly guided exercise program that asks your body to utilize compound movement schemes and the proper length:tension (length tension ratio) will dramatically increase your results in the gym.

Many people wonder whether or not body weight resistance exercise serves adequately to reduce belly fat or adipose tissue through exercise. In truth, body weight resistance exercise is always enough to help almost ninety-percent of all the clients I see reach their weight loss and fitness goals.

Heavy weight lifting, several times per week, is not necessaryfor most people's goals. Most people come to personal trainers with the intention of losing fat, decreasing body weight, and improving stamina. In order to this effectively, I cannot think of a better way than forcing the body to be able to resist its own weight through dynamic and challenging movements. Some of my favourite body weight exercises include the burpee, squat thrust, pull up, plank, push up superset, and reverse lunge.

For the most part, each one of these exercises targets the entire body, rather than isolated segments of the body, thereby dramatically increasing metabolic demand, and improving fat or adipose tissue loss results.

If you'd like to see a free video related to losing belly fat or adipose tissue through exercise, please visit: http://lifthardplayhard.com/howtolosebellyfatvideo.html