Core Daily
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Core Training, Misunderstood
What's the difference between your core and pillar? Most people think your abs and lower back comprise your core, but in fact, these muscles alone don't provide the strength and stability you need. As performance specialist Nick Winkelman explains in this video, all the muscles that support your hips, torso, and shoulders, which we refer to as the "pillar," is the foundation for movement. Understanding this important distinction will help you train your body more effectively.
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The Best Way to Plan Your Workouts
If you’ve ever found a workout you really like, chances are you’ve done it for too long. It's human nature to repeat what works, but performing the same routine over and over is highly inefficient.
It’s simple biology. The human body is amazingly adaptable to any situation, environment, or stimulus, and one area where this adaptability presents itself is in your training. Performing the same training routine repeatedly will decrease the amount of adaptation or gains your body makes in response.
You should strive to be consistent in your training over the course of a week, month, and year, but that doesn’t mean allowing your workout program to go stale.
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Squats Done Right
The classic squat builds strength, muscle, and mobility—that is, if you do it right. But as performance specialist Nick Winkelman explains, many people make one of two mistakes when performing squats. Nick will show how to correct these common errors so you can use the squat to train all the major muscle groups of your lower body. As a result, you'll build greater strength and muscle with less risk of injury.
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Build Strength with Your Feet
Many people are training with improper footwear that affects movement in the entire body. Lack of foot intrinsic (small muscles in the foot) strength can lead to inefficient movement patterns, placing excessive stress on the foot, ankle, knee, hip and low back.
To check the status of your arch, see if the inside bones of your feet touch the ground. If so, you can benefit from simple exercises to support your arch. A common exercise used in rehab is to perform toe towel crunches.
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Q & A: If I stop lifting weights, will my muscle turn to fat?
Jose Manuel Segovia on flickr.com
Q - If I stop lifting weights, will my muscle really turn to fat? - Noah C, Durham, New Hampshire
Movement
Train Movements, Not Muscles
The typical approach of targeting various muscles in your workout is inefficient and ineffective. The reason: Your brain sends signals to your muscles when you want them to contract (wake up!), but your brain won’t allow muscles to work independently of each other. They’re a team, and by training them that way, you’ll get better results. In this video, Nick Winkelman explains an easier way to condition your body—by training movements, not muscles.
Movement
No Weights? No Problem
Photo by Dave Cruz
If you know how to utilize your bodyweight, you can always get in an effective training session—at home, on the road, or at a crowded gym. No equipment is no excuse to skip a workout. Use this simple 4-step plan as a guide.
Step 1: Wake Up Sleepy Areas
Since you’re training without equipment, you’ll rely on the strength and stability of your “pillar,” which includes all the muscles that surround your hips, torso, and shoulders. Your pillar is the foundation for all movement so activating these muscles prepares you for the training ahead. Try performing these three exercises in a circuit—moving from one exercise to the next with minimal rest.
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"Hitting either slice or topspin will take the pressure off and will force your opponent to have to make decisions about how to handle heavy, high bounces or low, short shots."
—Brad Dancer, University of Illinois men's head tennis coach in "5 Tips to Win a Tiebreaker"
"The biggest determinant of calorie burning is your metabolism. And the biggest factor in that is your lean muscle mass. Build more lean muscle, increase your metabolism. "
— fat loss expert Alwyn Cosgrove in "5 Keys to Fat Loss".
Master the World's Greatest Stretch
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"While alcohol can make you sleepy initially, it should never be used as a sedative because it disrupts your sleep cycles, especially REM. This stage is particularly important to athletes because it’s when you consolidate and commit to long-term memory what you learned during the day."
— from "6 Ways Alcohol Disrupts Performance".
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