The Best Glute Exercise

While at the gym recently I had two guys stop me and ask what I was doing.  The reason was is because I was performing a glute exercise you typically don't see most people doing.  This is a shame for two reasons.  First off, most people have weak glutes which leads to a number of other problems including back and knee pain.  Secondly, this exercise is just about of the best for targeting the glutes.  If you think your backside needs some extra attention try the barbell hip thrust.

To perform this exercise place a padding on a barbell.  You can start from the floor or have your shoulders on the bench as seen above.  Place the barbell on your hips in a comfortable position.  Brace your abdominals so you have no movement in the lumbar spine.  The key to this exercise is to make sure all movement is from the hips.  Bend the hips to reach your butt to the floor.  Contract your glutes as you raise as high as you can so your torso is level with the bench and repeat.  Try perform 3 sets of 12-15 reps.

If this exercise scares you, here is another option that is less intimidating, but still great for activating the glutes:

You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS

San Diego Premier Training

Read This Before You Try Interval Training

If you read my last blog post or have followed our postings in the past, you know how big of a fan we are of high intensity workouts like interval training.  These are the best workouts for fat loss and for performance (usually), so we recommend them often.  But after making my last post which I got a great response from I almost wish I made this post first.

Interval training trumps slower, lower intensity training for fat burning, hands down.  It just isn't close.  I can list tons of research on the topic, which I have done on many blog post already.  I think most people are starting to realize how important an interval workout is for your weight management program.  But is it necessarily right for you?  You can make a ton of money investing in certain stocks.  If you don't know the right things to invest in you can lose everything.  Interval training when you aren't ready or aren't performing it properly can have a similar effect.

First, let's see if you should even be attempting interval training.  One drawback of interval training is it increases the risk of injury and it increases the risk of dropout.  As good as this type of workout is you can get hurt doing it which will most likely cause you to quit, or you will not like it because it is too hard, and quit.  Interval training is hard.  That is why it works so well.  The higher the intensity the higher the fat burning ability of the workout.  Therefore this is not a workout for beginners.  Here is a checklist to run through to see if you are ready for interval training:

1. You have no current injuries.
2. You have been consistently training for 3-6 months.
3. You have no previous medical condition that would be contraindicated for intense exercise.
4. You are properly recovering from workouts and do not constantly feel sore.
5. You have the drive and motivation to push yourself harder than you feel comfortable with.
6. You can perform cardio exercise at an intensity at or above your lactate threshold for around 5-10 minutes.

Most of this points are fairly simple to evaluate.  Just answer with an honest yes or no.  The last point may not make sense to you.  Lactate threshold is a term where lactate is accumulating in the blood.  It means you are at a high intensity and you cannot clear lactate from the blood quick enough.  You really do not need to understand this point to perform interval training but you do need to know how intense this is.  There is a simple test you can perform.  You first need to determine where you threshold is.  To do so pick a form a exercise and start at a slow pace to warm up.  We will use the talk test to determine when you have reach your approximate threshold.  Gradually increase the resistance or speed every 2 minutes.  Each time you increase try recited the alphabet, sing a song you know, or just talk to someone.  Continue to do so until you notice it is uncomfortable to talk and you cannot do so without stopping every few seconds to breath.  When you have reach this uncomfortable level of talking you are at an intensity around your threshold.  See if you can maintain this for around 5 minutes.  If you can you are conditioned enough for intervals and you are prepared to hit the intensity necessary for this type of training.  

This intensity you have found should be remembered.  Mark down what you heart rate was so you know approximately how high you have to get it for interval training.  This level must be reached and exceeded in order to successfully perform high intensity interval training.  You will notice that as you improve you will have to work harder to reach the same heart rate level first when you first started.  This means you will continue to progress and make the exercise more challenge to continue to receive benefit.  

If you ever need help finding your threshold or seeing if you are ready for interval training, just make an appointment with one of our trainers to help you out.  

You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS

San Diego Premier Training

Why Cheetahs Can Eat So Much.

I know this title might seem somewhat off, but a recent trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park further solidified my thoughts on the best way to burn off fat.  While taking the tram ride, I have to say we had one of the best tour guides I have ever had experienced there.  He was remarking on all sorts of random facts on the different animal and plant life at the park.  For example did you know that the Ruppells Vulture is the highest flying bird at 37,000ft and has never been diagnosed with cancer?  Pretty cool.

But I thought even more relevant to readers of this blog is the fact that cheetahs can eat just as much food as lions do.  Even though lions greatly outsize the cheetah, they still eat about the same amount of food per day, yet the cheetah is very lean.  Why is this?  The cheetah has a very fast metabolism.

Now it is important to recognize that a cheetah and human's physiology will be different, but still an interesting point.  The reason the cheetah's metabolism is so high is because they run at such great speeds.  After hearing this I immediately thought of my clients. This is exactly what I try and tell individuals trying to lose weight.  Look for ways to speed up your metabolism, which is most likely slowed due to poor dieting over the years.  Cheetahs run incredibly fast to catch their foods.  This is such a shock to their bodies that the response is increased metabolism to keep up.  We can do that too.

On a side note, when you drop your calories for long periods of time, such as in most diet programs, the metabolism will react by slowing down to attempt to match the calories coming in.  If this is maintained the metabolism will continue to slow.  Then once off the diet and you start eating more again, your metabolism will gradually increase but not at the rate it slowed.  This means that you now start gaining weight faster than you previously had.

So back to boosting your metabolism.  Even though cheetahs and humans are different they both can have a similar result to moving fast.  When humans exercise at high intensities, over time it will increase your metabolism.  This can be done with cardio training, resistance training, or some combination of each.  This is the program that we try to reinforce at SDPT.  Burn significant calories during the workout and increase metabolism to fight the effects of a decrease in daily calories.  Without doing this you will lose weight initially but find it harder to lose weight down the road.

Now that you hopefully see the importance of higher intensity exercise let's put it into practice.  So what is high intensity training mean?  If we are looking at cardio training the goal is to reach 85% of your max heart rate.  You can use a heart rate monitor for this or you can estimate.  If you scale your intensity based a 1-10 you would want to be around an 8.  This is much harder than most people want to workout.  By hitting these intensities you will significantly burn more calories and boost your metabolism.

I recently came across a study on resistance training and metabolism.  Researchers compared traditional weight training vs. high intensity weight training.  Traditional training is perform an exercise, resting, and repeating.  High intensity training referred to performing a heavy lift for 6 reps, resting 20 seconds, repeat as many reps as possible, rest 20 seconds, repeat as many reps as possible.  This was performed with fewer exercises and fewer reps than the traditional training group.  They found that the high intensity group increase their post workout metabolism by 22.6% which was 4 times as much as the traditional group.  This equalled an extra 432 calories burned the following 22 hours after the workout.  Not bad!

When you are putting together your workout program try high intensities when appropriate.  You should not be a beginner attempting this however.  Work on general conditioning and endurance first and then try high intensities.  To change it up this week try one H.I.I.T cardio workout and one strength training workout.  For your cardio warm up for 5-10 minutes with your favorite type of cardio.  Then perform 10 sixty second bursts with 2-3 minutes of light recovery.  For your strength training try performing a circuit of 6-10 exercises using weights that you can only perform 6-8 reps of.  I promise you will notice a huge difference if you have not been working out this way.

You Stay Healthy San Diego!

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS
San Diego Premier Training