Workouts Your Knees Need!

Knee pain affects millions of people in the United States a year. Unfortunately, there is a myriad of things that can cause knee pain: arthritis, trauma, improper footwear, and overcompensations due to other ailing joints.

One thing is for certain: Knee pain can cause a downward spiral of issues if you don’t keep the muscles around the knee joint strong and mobile. Most often muscles will atrophy or lose flexibility causing the mechanics in the knee as well as joint above and below it to be adversely effected.

It Is Essential To Stay Mobile

The simplest way to avoid severe knee pain is to stay moving. For example, if you “tweak” your knee in some way that feels like an injury, you are better off keeping it gently mobile than staying sedentary. Low impact exercise like water aerobics, yoga, bike riding, or walking would be great examples to help appropriately heal the “tweak”.

When you have a knee injury, the goal is to not let scar tissue develop during the healing process. Also, by promoting blood flow to the area with low impact exercise you will have much faster recovery time with significantly less pain.

Exercise Tips For Healthy Knees

When it comes to knee pain, keep your workouts very basic and non-strenuous; you don’t want to risk causing more pain. Single joint exercises are good to do when you are first coming back into a regular routine but you will need to start incorporating functional, multi-joint closed chain exercises too.

To prevent overcompensations in movements, it is essential tomaintain a full lower body flexibility program. The following movements for these muscles can all be done on the TRUE Stretch:

  • Hamstring
  • Glute
  • Quad
  • Hip Flexor
  • Calf
  • Trunk rotation
  • Tensor Fascia Latae
  • Adductors

To help preserve tone and function in the muscles around the knee, the following movements are recommended:

Avoid exercises like deep squats, lunges, step-ups and high impact activities such as plyometric or running, knee extension machine.

Above all, listen to your body.  If a movement or exercise hurts, don’t do it! You will be saving yourself not only a lot of pain, but possible injury.

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Burn Those Calories With This Intense Bike Workout

Cardio workouts are an essential part of any workout. It’s an excellent way to burn off extra calories and strengthen your cardiovascular system. It also helps make your strength workouts more effective and keeps your workouts from becoming boring by switching things up. Continue reading “Burn Those Calories With This Intense Bike Workout”

Quick! Get Low Workout With The QuickFit

Some of your largest muscles are in your lower body. The lower body is also the base of support for your body as you walk, run and jump which are all activities you will do in day-to-day activities or in sports-specific training. Lower body workouts can help increases bone strength, improve balance and stamina and decrease injury to knees and hips.

Exercise Goals

This workout will focus mainly on the lower body and will incorporate movements that will help you gain strength and endurance. By fatiguing the entire lower body complex, this workout will assist in getting you the lean lower body look you desire.

For this workout, you will be using the QuickFit strength.

Tips Before the Workout

Complete a proper warm-up before diving into this workout. With each movement on the QuickFit you may want to perform a few reps in your warmup, so you can be sure you have a proper weight selection in mind for the actual workout.

To adjust this workout for your skill level there are a few things to consider:

  • For a Beginner user: Use a weight that is moderately challenging but enables you to keep perfect form with every rep.
  • For an Intermediate user: Use a weight that is challenging to complete all your sets and reps.
  • For an Advanced user: Use a weight that is very challenging to complete all your sets andreps. Try not rest between rounds.

Proper Forms To Remember For This Workout

Before doing this workout, remember these proper forms to help prevent injury and get the most efficient workout possible:

  • Squat: Adjust your weight selection to match your comfort. Grab the low handles and bring them up to your shoulders, your hands should be touching the outside of your shoulders. Straddle the bench and start with your feet about shoulder width apart with your toes pointing outward about 30 degrees. Keep even pressure from heel to toe, with the weight being felt mid foot. Bend at your knees and hips at the same time, while pushing your knees out. Keep lowering yourself down until you are below the height of a chair (lower than your body naturally wants to go). Then, when standing back up try to push your hips to the ceiling, then stand up straight to finish.
  • Row: Adjust the weight stack to the desired resistance. Be sure to adjust the back of the seat down and attach the rowing handle to the middle pulleys. Put your feet on the foot platform facing the QuickFit, reach forward and grab the rowing handle with a shoulder width grip and have your elbows inside your knees. Keeping your back tight, push away from the platform; once your knees are extended begin to row the handle to your mid chest. Return the handle forward and bend your legs again, mimicking your starting position. Try not to let the weight stack slam back down and do these reps at a fairly fast pace with no pausing.
  • Leg Press: During the less press, make your weight heavier than it was with the row. Keep your feet on the same foot platform, and point your toes outward about 15 to 30 degrees. Keep your knees bent slightly past 90 degrees and once you are in proper form, keep even pressure from heel to toe. Grab the handle about shoulder width apart and keep your back flat and chest up. Your knees should be pushed out and push into the platform until your legs reach almost full extension. Be careful to not lock out and hyperextend your knees. Return back to the starting position slowly until the weight stack is just above resting position and press again.
  • Straight Leg Deadlift: Adjust the weight stack to the desired resistance. Face the QuickFit and grab the low handles, taking a couple steps backward until your feet are just behind the end of the bench. Stand up straight with your arms slightly in front of you and put your feet hip width apart. Keeping your legs fairly straight bend at your waist, being sure to keep your back flat. Allow the handles to pull you forward until your torso is parallel to the floor. At this point, attempt to squeeze your hamstrings and glutes to bring your torso back to the upright standing position. Do these reps slowly and under control.

Final Thoughts

During this workout, always focus on the form with each movement and rep. Form is important on lower body movements because lack of proper form could lead to knee or back injuries, especially on the squat and straight leg deadlift. Challenge yourself, but not to the point where your form begins to suffer as a consequence.

Log your weights used and repeat this workout in about week to see how much better you have improved. Make sure you stay active, eat enough food, and rest enough in between workouts. All these factors will help you recover faster.

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Get Stronger With The Heart Racing Cardio Workout

Cardio workouts can help your body become stronger but also provide relief from day-to-day life. Incorporating more cardiovascular exercises into your workout routine can help strengthen your heart and lungs, encourage weight loss and also reduce stress and provide you with a better night’s sleep. Continue reading “Get Stronger With The Heart Racing Cardio Workout”

Healthy Aging: Taking Charge Of Your Life & Wellbeing

In honor of Healthy Aging Month, let’s discuss a few fitness-related factors that can help you age a bit more gracefully. Some factors that we should take into consideration are your:

  • Strength
  • Nutrition cognitive function
  • Bone density
  • Balance
  • Sleep

When ignored, all of these factors can speed up the aging process and exacerbate many problems as you get older. Continue reading “Healthy Aging: Taking Charge Of Your Life & Wellbeing”

TRUE Residential Workout: Hill Heart Racer

Staying conditioned is an important part of your exercise regimen. Not only does it keep your body healthy and up-to-speed, but able to complete difficult physical tasks.

Exercise Goals

This is a great treadmill workout that will work all areas of your conditioning in a short period of time. By using HIIT methods you will fatigue your anaerobic as well as aerobic pathways of fuel. Ending the workout with burpees will ensure a difficult finish and by doing so, you will be sure to burn the most amount of calories in the shortest amount of time.

Tips Before The Workout

Be sure to get some foam rolling or stretching in before you hop on the treadmill for this workout, especially if you will be sprinting during the high-intensity portions. This will help prevent injury during exercise.

Proper Forms to Remember For This Exercise

When completing this exercise, remember the following forms:

  • Running: When you are jogging or sprinting, be sure to try to land midfoot to forefoot. Do not heavy heel strike, as this can lead to long term injuries.
  • Burpee: This movement is about efficiency and not as much about form. Many people will perform this movement safely with vast differences. With a burpee, you want to go from a standing position to a prone position (lying on your chest), and then back to a standing position. To do this efficiently you will “flop” yourself to the floor using the least necessary control as to not hurt yourself or smash your face. Once your chest touches the floor, immediately push yourself up and jump your feet underneath you and stand back up with your feet leaving the floor at the standing position. That is one rep.

Final Thoughts

Focus on your running form and really put forth maximum effort on the high-intensity portions to reap the greatest rewards. Stay in control at all points in time on the treadmill to limit your risk of injury. Log your speeds used on the runs/sprints and simply repeat this workout in a week or so to see how much better you have gotten.

The 4-minute burpee challenge in this workout is a great measure of your conditioning and strength gains combined. When doing burpees for 4 minutes straight, try to keep a pace of X number of burpees for a minute, this will help you push hard the whole 4 minutes. Stay active, eat enough food, and rest enough. All these factors will help you recover faster.

Up Next: 3 Treadmill Workouts To Maximize Your Cardio Routine

Stop Comparing Yourself To Others & Just Do You

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the hype whenever we start our fitness journeys.  We research what other people have done to get results and see that this person saw results doing one diet and workout, while someone else recommends trying another method, like supplements. It can become overwhelming and you start to feel like you need to keep up with everyone else or you’re going to be left behind.

On the other hand, you may feel like you’re as fit as everyone else or doing the same things, so you should already be at their level. At this point, you start comparing your own routine to what someone else is doing or how your body looks compared to theirs. This can be a dangerous place if overdone or an exciting and motivating one if you think about it in the right way. Continue reading “Stop Comparing Yourself To Others & Just Do You”

How to Show Your Support for Bike MS All Winter Long

RES Show MS SupportEven though cycling season has come to an end and the Bike MS events have finished for the season, there are still ways that you can show your support and help raise awareness for this great cause. Bike MS is a ride sponsored by the National MS Society to raise awareness and funds for multiple sclerosis research. TRUE Fitness is a proud sponsor of Bike MS and we encourage you to show your support for MS in the following ways: Continue reading “How to Show Your Support for Bike MS All Winter Long”