If you make it a habit to get in a workout the recommended 5 days a week – nice work! You’re already ahead of the curve. We all have very busy schedules, which makes it that much more important to be efficient with your workout routine. Don’t make these common mistakes when you hit the gym.

1. You Don’t Track Anything

You’re working out – GREAT! But are you getting fitter? Are you increasing your lifts? Improving your mile run time? While it’s good to set a routine and habit, it’s also important to continue to improve. Exercise – in a nutshell – is Stimulus (the workout itself), Recovery (how you eat, rest, and sleep after), and Adaptation (fit becomes your new normal). If you find yourself going to the gym and running at the same speed, always grabbing the same dumbbells, and going through the same routine – you may be stuck in Adaptation. Try to vary the stimulus week-to-week to continually see results.

2. You’re Asking too Much of Exercise

Exercise is great for your health. Exercise can regulate resting blood glucose, relieve stress, increase brain function, lower blood pressure, increase bone density, increase lean muscle mass, and many, many other benefits. Exercise alone will not make you look great in a bathing suit. In short, exercise will allow you to live a long, enjoyable, functionally-fit life but you need nutrition to have the visible benefits of exercise. Regardless of what your newsfeed tells you, there is no “magic workout routine to get you jacked” or “6 Exercises for 6-pack Abs.” You get “jacked” and “abs” from eating reasonably.

3. You’re Ignoring One or More Aspects of Fitness

Your workout routine should consist of each of these elements in equal parts 2-3 times/week:

• Cardiorespiratory Endurance – Consistent, moderate breathing for at least 20 minutes
• Resistance Training – Lifting weights with a consistent increase in total volume (increasing weight lifted or increasing repetitions)
• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – Very heavy breathing in intermittent bursts followed by equal amounts of rest
• Mobility – Some type of recovery practice; foam rolling, yoga, stretching, and metered breathing

Too much “cardio” and your metabolism will slow waaay down. Too much resistance training – your heart and lungs will be neglected. Too much mobility work and your core will be weak. Too much HIIT and your cardio, strength, and mobility will suffer. Begin to think of a well-rounded fitness that includes each of these in equal doses.

4. You’re Still Weighing Yourself

We’re on a crusade against the scale. You know that the scale really doesn’t tell you anything about your health. So, why continue to use it? Well, it does provide some tangible feedback for what you’re doing – in diet or exercise. There are plenty of workouts or diets that claim you can lose “30 Pounds in 30 Days.” But, what are you actually losing? With weight loss that rapid, it is likely majority water and lean tissue loss. This will have incredibly detrimental long-term effects. Actual fat loss (this is what you want to lose) can occur at roughly 2 pounds per week if you have a lot to lose and 1/2 to 1 pound a week for others. Get body fat testing instead of simply weighing yourself.

5. Your Focus is Off

It’s really easy to get fired up about working out for a few weeks. Maybe you caught a glimpse in the mirror or had a weekend of eating too much pizza. It’s much more difficult to stick to it for 1, 5, or 20 years. Re-shape your focus to enjoy working out, realize it is a life-long pursuit, and find something that is FUN. Fun is key here. Find something that incorporates all aspects of fitness (see #3) that you enjoy. There’s nothing magical or proprietary about working out. It’s a simple, consistent pursuit that should be fun.

 

If you’ve found a routine that is delivering results that you enjoy, keep up the great work! If you’ve found you’re beginning to stall out, check yourself against this list and see if you can’t make a slight course correction. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out! 

The Hill is proud to announce that we are the first CrossFit affiliate in Kansas City MO to offer body composition and body fat testing. By using the InBody body composition test, we’re able to deliver accurate, measurable data previously only available in a clinical setting. New members, current members, and nutrition services clients have access to body fat testing using the non-invasive InBody machine.

Why you should ditch the scale

We all know that the scale falls short, but have you ever thought about what it actually measures? Simply put, measuring your weight on a scale only tells you the force of earth’s gravitational pull on your body. It doesn’t tell you if you’re healthy. It doesn’t tell you if you’re in shape. It doesn’t tell you what and how much to eat. It doesn’t tell you if you’re doing the right workouts. It doesn’t tell you if you’re actually losing fat.

What should you measure?

With InBody, we can measure better data. We can measure the amount of water, lean tissue, and fat that is in your body. We can also calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (do you actually have a “slow” or “fast” metabolism?). We can also measure your muscle symmetry from side to side.

Why it’s important

When you are trying to lose weight, it is important that we understand what type of weight you are losing. If you’re losing lean tissue, you will experience negative long-term consequences – typically gaining back MORE weight than you initially lost. If you’re losing water weight, we know that will come back as well. Most fad diets that report rapid weight loss cause adherents to lose lean tissue and water weight. When it comes to long-term weight loss, our goal is to lose fat mass. By following a responsible nutrition plan and working out regularly with resistance training, cardio, and interval training you can expect to lose up to one pound of fat per week.

Want to try it out?

Schedule a time to swing by for a Body Composition test at The Hill by going to the Get Started page and selecting “Body Composition Testing” in the drop-down. http://crossfitmemorialhill.com/get-started/

 

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”

– Viktor E. Frankl

Walk into any gym or meet with any personal trainer and the first question you’ll be asked is: “What are your goals?” Seems earnest enough, right? They care about me. They want to help me achieve what I’ve always wanted in my fitness.

But what happens when you achieve that goal? Are you happy? How long does that happiness last?

“Happiness is not on the other side of success. Success does not create happiness. Happiness creates success.”

-Shawn Achor

When you first graduate college your goal is to get that first job. After a year in that first job, you want a promotion. After that promotion you want a raise. After that raise you want a bonus. And so on…

Happiness is not on the other side of success.

Let’s say you finally lose that 20 pounds you’ve told every trainer you want to lose. What then? If you weren’t happy with yourself 20 pounds heavier, you won’t be happy with yourself 20 pounds lighter.

I don’t care about your goals because achieving your goals will not make you happy. What will make you happy?

Gratitude

Being thankful for what you can do and are doing today will make you happy. Seriously. Being thankful for your present circumstances will actually make you happier.

Relationships

Many neurobiologists believe that humans don’t actually possess the capacity for consciousness independent of other people. That our emotional landscape is actually developed through an interpersonal context. Meaning, your feelings of “happiness” exist (or don’t exist) solely in the context of relationship.

Service

Here’s a challenge: next time you’re feeling “unhappy,” go to the grocery store and buy everything in someone’s cart. Volunteer for a day with Habitat for Humanity. Hell, just sit and listen to someone for an hour. We’re wired for service and self-sacrifice. Our brain craves it so much that it has built-in feel good juice it uses each time we’re of service to others.

If I don’t care about your goals, what do I care about?

We never ask a new member: “What are your goals?” Instead, we ask questions that actually matter:

• What are three things that are going great in your life right now? (Gratitude)
• What will success feel like to you?

See the difference? You’ll never be happy with your weight if you’re not thankful for things today. You may say you want to lose 20 pounds, but you’ve never thought about how that will make you feel. Confident? Empowered? Beautiful? Our goal is to identify all of the things that will make you feel the feelings of success before you’ve “reached your goal.”

Our tagline is: Community. Commitment. Results. Without the community of relationships and service to others, you’ll never be happy with your results. Through gratitude, relationships, and community you will have happiness before success. Success is the byproduct of happiness.

There are no shortage of fitness blogs that purport to have the “secret formula” or “superfood” to finally help you achieve the body composition you want. There are, however, very few people in the fitness industry that will shoot you straight with information on what it actually takes to achieve your fitness and body composition goals.

Here is a pyramid of the hierarchy of fitness. This is adapted from Greg Glassman’s original article “What is Fitness” from 2002. I don’t like to leave behavior change to chance, so I’ve added a new base of the pyramid: Consistency. Let’s explore each one.

 

Sport

Whether competing in football or CrossFit, sport is the competitive application of fitness. With some risks and, potential, detriments to fitness. Injury is more prevalent toward the top of the pyramid – especially when the other aspects are neglected. Sport doesn’t require that you compete, however. Training as though you compete (“I want to get better, therefore I must do more”) when you’ve failed to master previous parts of the pyramid will result in poor body composition, high propensity to injury, and overall decreased fitness.

Weightlifting

We’re talking Olympic-stlyle weightlifting here. The Snatch and the Clean and Jerk. Weightlifting is a wildly efficient way to improve fast-twitch muscle fibers, increase coordination, improve body composition, and increase strength. When pursued at the ignorance of the previous disciplines, the benefits of weightlifting for general physical fitness will not be realized.

Gymnastics

The term “gymnastics” here is used to refer to moving one’s body through space; body awareness that originates in the “core” or trunk, and it expressed in the outer extremities. Picture a push-up where the athlete’s body is rigid as a board (core strength), lowers to touch the chest and thighs simultaneously, and finishes with the hips and chest rising simultaneously. This requires a great deal of spacial awareness and core stability.

Metabolic Conditioning

Metabolic Conditioning (MetCon) can refer to both aerobic capacity (think: 5k run) as well as anaerobic pursuits (think: 200m sprint). The former is beneficial for the cardiorespiratory system while the latter is incredibly effective at promoting fat loss. MetCon is prioritized over the other pursuits for many reasons, two of which are most important for generalized fitness. First, MetCon has the greatest benefit for the greatest number of biomarkers of health – body fat reduction, cardiorespiratory benefits, and increased metabolism. Secondly, MetCon will assist the athlete in achieving a more ideal body composition – a necessary precursor to Gymnastics.

Nutrition

You’ve probably heard the expression “you can’t out-exercise a bad diet.” Seems like a no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how common it is for people to use exercise to “buy” calories and wonder why the results won’t come. There’s a reason Nutrition is so close to the base of the pyramid – it literally influenced each part of your fitness. If you’ve been trying to out-exercise your nutrition or you see your results stalling, you’re not alone. We’d love to have a chat and get you headed on the right track: http://crossfitmemorialhill.com/nutrition/

Consistency

There’s a reason this is the base. Every year millions of Americans make New Year’s Resolution and hit it hard for 4 weeks. Then what? How many of you have done a diet challenge only to gain all the weight – plus some – back? Do you get really fired up to come to the gym then bail at the first sight of a minor scheduling conflict? Consistency is where it all comes together. And, I’m not talking 8 weeks. I’m talking years of consistency.