EarthFIT Personal Training

How To Correct Valgus Knee Collapse

How To Correct Valgus Knee Collapse

Published by on June 13, 2022 | Leave a response

How To Correct Valgus Knee Collapse

Hey EarthFIT fam! Coach Sam here. Today, we’re gonna go over how to correct one of the most common imbalances that we see as trainers inside the gym without further ado, let’s get right into it. So the imbalance I’m gonna talk about today happens in the lower body. It happens when we squat primarily, and that is a knee collapse. So a lot of times what it looks like is we’ll squat down and then we have a knee come inward, or it could be the other knee or both knees sometimes.

How To Correct Valgus Knee Collapse

And then we’re really struggling to get up. You’ll see a lot of shaking with that. So if this is you, this is a perfect video. We’re gonna dissect specifically what causes those issues. Then I’m gonna tell you how we can go about correcting them with simple warmups. So let’s get right into it. 

So the knee collapse is the scientific name for that would be a valgus knee collapse. That’s where our knees kind of collapse inward as we squat. It doesn’t have to be both of ’em. Like I said, it could be one. Now what causes this? I like to look at above or below where the imbalances occuring. So in this case, it’s gonna be on our knees, right? The knee is shaky for this specific issue. It’s either an ankle issue, immobility or stability in the ankle or in the hips, glute area, specifically for the valgus knee collapse we commonly see underdeveloped, lateral glute muscles, gluteus minimus, TFL kind of… even the gluteus maximus, meaning your side butt muscles aren’t firing. So the knee collapses. These are the muscles that are used to turn it out. So we’re gonna want to definitely activate those, strengthen those. 

And we don’t wanna neglect the footer ankle because a lot of knee problems do stem from, the foot or the ankle. So for that, we’re gonna wanna make sure that we’re mobile. We have full ranges of motion. So some specific drills you could do, if you find yourself in this position, having this knee collapse, you could do these three things before you train and kind of test and see how does your squat feel? So, first thing before we do any mobility, we always want to test before we retest. So the first thing that I’d have you guys do would be do two to three squats, just body weight. Okay. See, are those knees collapsing inward? Okay. If they are, then you would want to proceed to the next kind of set of drills. So if you have that knee collapse, the first thing you can do, I can show you the advanced version and the basics. 

DRILL 1 (Basic): We’ll start with the basics. You can grab something at home. If you wanna do this, or in the gym. Just grab something that can keep you nice and stable. From there, we’re just gonna look at our toe and we’re simply going to do the alphabet with our foot. So all the way through the alphabet, and then switch, make sure you do it on the other side.

Now, if you’re noticing, “Hey, I really can’t pull it up or go to the side with my ankle..” That’s a clue. You’re definitely gonna want to put some extra emphasis on that drill then.

DRILL 1 (Advanced): Let’s say you’re an advanced client. but you still feel like your ankles or knees are giving you problems and you have good balance. You can simply balance up here. This is gonna not only work this foot. Now we’re working this one at the same time. 

So again, you just do the alphabet standing on some type of an imbalance surface, whether that’s a stability pad, or even like outside, you could do it in the grass or like on loose gravel or something like that. So that’d be the first thing that gets our ankle. Nice and fired up.

DRILL 2: Second thing. We’re gonna wanna work on those lateral glute muscles, they’re responsible. There’s tons of ways you can do this. My favorite way is 7 way hips. I’ve made videos on this. But if we’re specifically trying to target that, we can simply just lay down on the ground here, point your toe down, and then you come up, you wanna do about 10 of these and then we can do small circles either forward. And then after we get to forward, do them backwards for 10, um, that you will start to feel right here in the lateral glute a pretty deep burn, make sure you switch and do the other side. 

So after we’ve hit the ankle up, getting that nice and mobile we’ve hit the glute, lateral glute up. It’s nice to fire it up.

How To Correct Valgus Knee Collapse

DRILL 3: Then we can actually go into a squat. So in this case, I’m gonna say it was my, my right knee. That was collapsing inward. You could take this band. You don’t need a really thick band. And this is one, obviously you perform in the gym. You could put that around your knee there or above or below, don’t put it directly on there and then you just squat. So it’s actually gonna push my knee out that way. Right. But what I have to do is I have to fight that. I actually have to try to almost bring it in like what’s happening with your knee and that will activate these glute muscles. So that’s three things that you could do if you’re noticing that your knee is collapsing inward while you squat, otherwise known as the valgus knee collapse. 

If you have that issue, we gotta address the foot. We have to address the lateral glute. And then it’s always a good idea to kind of get into the actual squat position. After with the band after you’ve done those three drills, I would have you try it again. See, are we still shaking? Has it improved? and then rinse and repeat, remember with mobility or whenever we’re trying to correct an issue, more in this case actually is better. So that is all I have for you today. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you loved it give me a heart, if you liked it, give me a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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Lunges | 3 Most Common Mistakes

Lunges | 3 Most Common Mistakes

Published by on June 11, 2022 | Leave a response

Hey, EarthFIT fam! Do you have problems with walking lunges? Today I’m gonna go over the three most common mistakes that we as trainers see here in the gym. I’m gonna go over how to correct those. So let’s get those lunges right. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

So the walking lunge, great exercise, very most people, very familiar with this great strength building, great for the glutes, great for the quads, hamstrings, all those lower extremities… Fantastic! Now there are three common mistakes that I see that often lead to knee pain while we’re performing this exercise. So today I’m gonna kind of go cover what those three most common mistakes are and how we can avoid those. Okay.

(1) First, mistake number #1, I often see when people are lunging, first of all, they’re just not going low enough. This is the easiest one. So in a lunge you wanna be able to get to your end range of motion. So my end range of motion is all the way down to the turf. Okay that’s not for everybody. Sometimes people can only, you know, go up to this if, if they have hip impingement or what not. So to correct that… how to get lower, you’re gonna really wanna work on your ankle mobility and hip mobility. If you feel like it’s blocked, like I step out, I can only go to right here. Okay. Ideally how low you should be getting, we wanna make this go nice and even here at a nice parallel level.

So you’re thigh should be parallel to the floor when you lunge. And then we press up through our heel and we go to the next step. So not going low enough would be the first one. How you correct that we really need to work on one, just performing the movement with less weight can assist in that and then really work on your ankle or hip mobility. That would be if you cannot get low enough.

(2) Second, most common mistake – Knee traveling way out past the toe. So it goes way out here. This results usually, two reasons this usually happens. The most common one is when people do have weights, we just kinda let the weights come forward as we step, as you can see, that’s gonna put extra pressure and really make my knee travel out past the toe. Another common mistake why people would do that is that we’re taking way too long of strides. And we’re getting off balance a little bit, so it’s really easy to correct both those issues. The first one, just pull your shoulder blades together. 

Remember every exercise you do can be a posture, improving exercise if you’re doing it the right way. So chest up tall, pull those shoulder blades together, and we’re gonna step. And you’ll notice these dumbbells aren’t going to move when I do that, as opposed to, if I’m really loose, kind of have ’em in front of me, they’ll easily just kind of swing out and carry me forward. So that’s a simple fix for that. A stepping out too far, a really simple fix for that is gonna be up all the way up and then down just like that. If we slow down the majority of the time, that issue will correct itself. It’s when we get in a hurry, which leads me right into my third mistake that I see most people do is simply, they’re just going way too fast that can lead to your steps being all over the place, that knee coming out past the toe. 

So sometimes we’ll just see people kind of sprinting, just like going as fast as they can banging their knees off the ground. Remember we want to control and really own the movement.

(3) So, the third mistake, the way to fix that, just like I showed you in the other one, bring the knee up a little bit higher in between reps and control it unless you’re instructed to go really fast. This is really a good, appropriate way to take your time doing lunges, because it’s not only a strength building exercise. There’s lots of stability, and control components in that, which are great for all those lower body extremities.

So to recap, three most common stakes mistakes I see people make. One, we’re not carrying good posture, right? We’re letting the knees come out in front of our toes. That comes from the posture or going too quickly. 

The last one I just covered going way, way too fast. And then the first one that we covered, and really a common one, not getting low enough. All you have to do to improve that would be to work on your ankle or, or hip mobility and lighten the load really works to deepen that range of motion, not only in walking lunges, but also in split squats, and regular squats as well will improve those. So those are three most common mistakes. That’s how to correct them. Hope you guys found value in this video. If you loved it gimme a heart, if you liked it gimme a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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How To Backward Sled Drag

How To Backward Sled Drag

Published by on June 10, 2022 | Leave a response

Hey EarthFIT fam! Today, I’m gonna cover an exercise that we frequently see done incorrectly in the gym. And that is a backward sled drag. Let’s get right into it. So whether you’re train here at EarthFIT or train in another facility where you implement a sled, a sled drag is a fantastic movement, it’s really good for strengthening the lower body, but also correcting upper body posture. Really get us kind of using a lot of these muscles we don’t activate in daily life. There are some common mistakes that we’re gonna cover those today. Okay. The first thing, whenever we go up to the sled and we’re about to perform a sled drag which would look like this, right? You come back just like that. That’s how you do a sled drag; it all starts kind of with your setup.

You wanna make sure that your hands aren’t way down here and we gotta lean forward to get ’em.

They also shouldn’t be way up here. It’s more with a sled drag, It’s more towards the top, but it’s not all the way resting at the top. Okay. Like this. So make sure we grab that nice and firm here. Grab this too. Actually, squeeze that handle there. From there, drop the hips. Okay. Drop the hips. Like you’re being a squat.

And now actually, when I’m in this position, I’m squeezing my glutes forward just a little bit engaging my core. So from right here, this is a good starting position. Also squeeze the shoulder blade together. I’m not when I’m performing the movement, I’m not just kind of grabbing onto it. Only focusing on my grip. I’m actually trying to pull my shoulder blades together the entire time. Just like similar to a row. We wanna imagine there’s somebody with their hand behind their back or like a pencil. 

And I’m really squeezing back there. So we grab it right here, squeeze right here. And then we might keep a tall chest, like not stress. The importance of keeping a tall chest. As you do this, you do that by pulling back the entire time. Okay. We want this to correct. Often what we’ll see is we will kind of come up to it. Their hands will be on top. They’ll be hunched over and then they’ll start like a drag like this and get hunched forward. Remember, grab firmly here, squat down, chest up.

How To Backward Sled Drag

We’re going back short quick steps. In most instances, if you have something like a TRX handle, this can actually make this movement a little bit easier. Same concept. I squeeze this. I sit down, I lift my chest, pull my shoulder blade back together and then walk backwards. So if you just take away anything from this video, grab this firmly, pull those shoulder blades back. That’s gonna fix most people’s issues with this movement. So those two things grab the handles firmly, squeeze the shoulder blades together, lift up the chest. All right, that’s all I have for you guys today in this video, hope that you guys found value in the sled drag. if you liked it, you wanna see more of these. Shoot me a message. And gimme a thumbs up. If you loved it, shoot me a message and gimme a heart that is all for today as always, stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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The Sauna: 3 Great Benefits

The Sauna: 3 Great Benefits

Published by on June 9, 2022 | Leave a response

I wanted to make a quick video for you guys and highlight some of the benefits of the infrared sauna. So before we get into that, I kinda want to explain the difference between a traditional sauna, a steam sauna and the infrared sauna.

So if we were at a steam sauna, that’s usually a lower degree. So that’s like a steam room. That’s gonna be around a hundred degrees with a hundred percent humidity. So it can feel very, very warm.

The Sauna: 3 Great Benefits | Beaufort Health and Fitness

A traditional sauna, like the ones you put coals on, or you’ve probably seen, um, those usually go up to 195 degrees and those heat up by heating all the air in the entire sauna circulating around you. And then obviously you get some of the impact.

The Sauna: 3 Great Benefits | Beaufort Health and Fitness

We have here is an infrared sauna, which actually heats you up directly. The panels are meant to heat the person up inside. So you’re getting direct heat. This sauna actually only goes up to 156 degrees, but I promise you, if you go in there, it’s gonna feel a lot warmer. So let’s talk about three of my favorite benefits. Some that I’m not gonna mention today are also of things like it’ll help you burn calories. It will give you de-stress, it does a lot of different things, especially if we start talking about the things light therapy can do, which ours does have all kinds of different lighting therapies.

But my three favorite things that this does is first:

(1) it detoxifies us. So a lot of times, um, just throughout life, we can get metals built up in our body, and this is great at reducing some of those heavy metals, sweating those things out.

(2) So it’s gonna detoxify you and that’s gonna make your skin feel better, which is my second favorite thing. It’ll give you that glowing skin, it can really smooth those of you that have had problems with acne. Even if it was a long time ago, you have that scarring. It can help a lot of this. It’s going to break up a lot of those things and gonna be sweating out all those toxins. It gives you nice, cleaner looking skin.

And then my favorite, actually my favorite, my number one reason I like to do this is for (3) recovery. What this is gonna do is it’s gonna keep your entire body up. It’s gonna relax some of those overly tight muscles. So they’ll be more pliable. You can stretch them out afterwards and increase your flexibility and mobility. So those are my three kinds of favorite things. The sauna does a whole lot more. I highly recommend you guys get in and try it if you have not, just like everything else, consistency of use is gonna enhance the benefits here. If you use it one time, you’re probably not gonna get the best benefits. You’ll get a good swipe on, and you’ll feel pretty good the day after a feeling of de-stress. But to get maximum benefits out of this, you wanna do this about two to three times a week and we don’t need to do it long. You could do it just for up to 30 minutes. And that is plenty. So that is all for today. I hope you guys learn something about the sauna. If you have any more questions specifically about the sauna, feel free to reach out to myself or the staff here at EarthFIT Lady’s Island. We’d love to answer those questions for you. That is all I have today for you guys and as always stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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Posture: How To Check, Assess And Fix

Posture: How To Check, Assess And Fix

Published by on May 19, 2022 | Leave a response

Hey EarthFIT fam! In this video, I’m gonna show you guys how to check your posture very simply upper body. So if you’re having a lot of neck pain, you’re feeling like you’re crunched forward. How can we check, assess, and actually better our posture? So I’m gonna walk you guys through a simple test that I put most new clients through, and this is called the wall test. So the first thing you need is a nice wall. It doesn’t have anything spectacular. All you gotta do is put your back against it. So first thing you go against the wall. Now you want to take your feet, make sure you’re about six inches to a foot away. Easiest thing you can do is just put your foot against the wall, do that right there and you’ll be in the right spot. So after that, we wanna go completely flat against the wall. 

You’ll notice that your back, it naturally curves in the lower back. You’re gonna want to pull that in. So your entire back is flat against the wall. What I actually have people do this, I’ll have something like a stick and I’ll slide it behind their back. So they have to keep that flat as they’re performing. So if you have a broomstick at home, you could do this as well. Or you could just simply even put like a towel behind your back, to perform the test.

So after we’re about six inches to a foot away, we have the rod, our back is nice and flat. What we’re gonna do is put the back of our head against the wall and then we’re gonna tuck our chin down. So this is gonna be challenging for many of you just to keep the stick flat or your back flat against the wall. You’ll notice it may rest against your glutes drop like I just let it drop. We do not want that to happen. Okay? But let’s say there’s no way Sam, that I can do it. Just drop the stick. Don’t force yourself out about it, but definitely continue to try to pull that core as you do this one, then we’re gonna look forward.

We’re going to pull our elbows into the wall and we’re gonna lift our wrists.

So what we’re checking for here is this area here, can we keep our core tight? And then is this area nice and mobile? A lot of times, life nowadays is set up to pull us forward, we’re on our cell phones a lot, watching this video. We’re on our computers… just life in general, when we’re driving the car is really pulling us forward. All that gravity’s pulling us forward and down. 

So we want things that are gonna.. daily practices that are gonna open this up. And this is one of them. So again, to recap, I’m gonna recap the test really quick, some points we’re gonna stand six inches to a foot away. We’re gonna have some type of stick – broom stick, whatever it is, towel against the wall. After we do that, we’re going to pull our core in flat. We’re gonna tuck our chin down. We’re gonna look straight forward, arms come up, chest level, a common error I see here is people raise their hands up here. It should be at chest level, right in line with the nipple or breast line and then you’re gonna pull your elbows into the wall and slowly rotate up. Now, how do you know if you have adequate posture or a pass or a fail on this test? 

If you can’t keep the stick flat, that would be considered a fail. If you can’t get your wrists all the way back to the wall that’d be considered a fail. Now, remember, I don’t even like using the term fail. It’s just a temporary position you’re in, continue to do this daily and you will see better results. Remember mobility is about frequency. The more you could do that, the more it’s gonna correct those imbalances we have. So that’s a quick fix for upper body posture. Do you have any questions on that, reach out to me specifically, or we’ll make more ‘how to’ videos on posture. If you like this video, give a thumbs up. If you loved it, gimme a heart and as always, stay strong.

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Why Fitness Motivation Is A Myth

Why Fitness Motivation Is A Myth

Published by on April 14, 2022 | Leave a response

Hey EarthFIT fam! In today’s video. I’m gonna tell you why fitness motivation is nothing but a big old myth. Let’s get right into it. So fitness, right? Whenever a lot of people think about fitness. They think about motivation. We have Motivation Mondays, we have all this hype, you gotta do this to get motivated, to really get in sweat, push hard and all this, but I’m gonna tell you that’s a bunch of garbage. It is a bunch of garbage.

Fitness motivation… Yes, you can be motivated and that can get you going, but it’s not the end-all be-all and there’s way too much emphasis on this. Getting motivated to work on. I need to get motivated to do this. There’s two things I want you guys to think about. First is kind of the source of our oomph, right? People think about it as motivation and that is temporary. And that is fleeting.

What I want you guys to focus on is instead of being motivated, think about being inspiring or inspired. What is that? So being inspired as opposed to motivated would look like this being motivated is, ‘Hey, I want to fit into this bikini for this event’.

Being inspired would be, ‘Hey, I want to just be able to bend over and play with my kids for the rest of my life. I want to live long enough to see my grandchildren.’ Which one of those do you think is gonna keep you going longer? That bikini or the thought of I wanna be around for my future grandchildren. One is inspiration. One is motivation.

So really think about digging down deep. Why do we work out in the first place? That’s gonna lead you to your inspiration, find something, hold onto it. Be able to call on that on the days where you don’t wanna work out. 

Which brings me to my second point. Why motivation is such a myth. You’re not gonna wanna work out every day. You’re not gonna wanna do things every day, but guess what? If you force yourself to do it, you’re gonna adapt and you’re gonna change for the better, not every day is all sunshine and rainbows. Just like in life, sometimes we have to push ourselves to do things. Not everyday you’re gonna feel like coming in and training. Not everyday, you’re gonna feel like eating. There’s gonna be times where you’re gonna be upset because you give things up and in turn for better, healthier lifestyle. And that’s part of it. Once we can accept that and move past it and know that we’re not always gonna feel like doing everything we need to do and just embrace that, your fitness journey’s gonna become a lot easier. 

So kind of to recap, remember, we wanna look for sources of inspiration, those things deep down, which really get us up and going rather than just some temporary motivation, which is usually a superficial thing or a number that we’re chasing on the scale, get inspired. And number two, remember you’re not always gonna feel like doing it day after day after day. I’m sure there’s plenty of professional athletes that don’t wanna wake up everyday, there’s astronauts that don’t wanna wake up and train to go to the moon, but guess what? We still have to do it day after day. And that’s gonna lead you to the long term results that everybody’s looking for. So that’s all I have for today’s rants. Remember motivation is a myth. I want you guys getting inspired. That’s all I have for you guys today as always. I appreciate each and every one of you and stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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Squat Series with Jeff Episode 3 | Beaufort Fitness

Squat Series with Jeff Episode 3 | Beaufort Fitness

Published by on April 1, 2022 | Leave a response

Nothing beats the squat. Welcome back to these squat series y’all! This is Jeffrey. Your coach here at EarthFIT we’ll be going over another squat variation for y’all today. We got a Kettlebell Squat. I’m sure most of y’all have done these in our trainings. This is where we keep our kettlebells to the side here while we’re doing our squats, and implement these about once a week here. Now, the difference in these, we’re still gonna be hitting this along with our back squats, our entire posterior chain, all those muscles that are gonna be worked when we’re doing our Kettlebell Squats, we’re gonna be doing those glutes, hamstrings, calves, even our quads here on the front side and including our lower back. Now, along with those normal back squats, these benefits include increased mobility, increased stability. We’re gonna have stronger joints, and we’re gonna make sure that our core is even stronger so that way makes us even more stable at the end of the day.

Now for our kettlebell squats here, just gonna line up feet are gonna be about shorter width apart right here in front of our kettlebells. We’re gonna make sure that our chest is up and our back is flat here. So when we go down out and grab those kettlebells, we come up into a power position. Now we’re gonna have our kettlebells by the side. Still gonna have our chest up high here in front of us, gonna have a proud chest. Now the shoulders are gonna be back. When we come down, those shoulders are still gonna stay back here. So that way we can have that weight going back on our hips, drive down through our heels and coming up here. Now there’s a few things that can go wrong here. 

When we’re doing a kettlebell squat. We wanna make sure that those knees aren’t caving in to try to overcompensate ourselves.

I wanna make sure that our back doesn’t start to round as we come up using the appropriate weight can help with that. Make sure that we’re going down correctly here for our squats. Now these Kettlebell squats can give us all of our awesome benefits for our normal squats. We implement these in our ratings. It’s a little bit easier to use a lower weight, and they’re a little bit more stable for you on the sides. So it’s a lot more natural for your body instead of having that weight on our backs. I just wanna thank you all for tuning in again. Y’all wanna look out for another video for our squat series. Thank y’all for tuning in.

-EarthFIT Coach Jeff

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Visual Cues and Health | Beaufort Nutrition

Visual Cues and Health | Beaufort Nutrition

Published by on March 31, 2022

What’s up EarthFIT fam! This is Eli here. Today we are talking more nutritional tips and tricks, today we’re talking about a really unique and simple topic. The one that is very crucial to your success and that is visual cues and how they can help you push closer to your nutritional goals and your physical goals. So these visual cues they’re everywhere. We see them in grocery stores, we see them in superstores. Oftentimes, we see them on end caps in grocery stores, big yellow sale signs that say for sale, you know, buy two, get one free.

These visual cues are meant to redirect our attention from something onto something else. So how can we use these marketing strategies and things that you know, these corporate offices use in order to catch your attention in order to promote a healthier lifestyle, it starts at home. What does your environment look like?

Most importantly, if you’re going to the grocery store and you’re buying these healthy snacks and you are trying to change around your nutrition, make sure that you are putting these healthy snacks somewhere where they’re easily accessible. I know I’m very guilty of buying fresh strawberries, fresh berries, whatever, and then sliding them to the back of the fridge. They get lost two or three weeks later… Totally forgot that I even have ’em. So use those visual cues, set that food out somewhere where, you know, it’s gonna be, if it’s gonna be in the pantry, make sure that it’s eye level, if it’s a healthy food that you reach for often, make sure that it’s something that you can see regularly. Another cool trick, put it on a counter space. Okay. Put fresh fruit on the counter instead of chips, put cheese and crackers on the counter instead of candy… just little visual cues. 

So when you come home from a long day of work, those healthy snacks are the first things that you see and redirect your attention and remind you of your goals and your focus, how this works for physical activity also after a long day of work, you come home. You’re groggy. You might not have been very physically active that day, but what you can do – set your workout shoes next to the couch, lay your workout clothes over the couch. What will happen is you will find that you come home from work. You see that visual cue and you might think, well, I need, I haven’t gotten very many steps today. Maybe I should pick it up and get some extra steps in. Those are just some very simple tips and tricks, start incorporating them. Find where you put your food, find where you put your workout clothes, pay attention to those visual cues around you guys. And remember, stay healthy, stay strong. Y’all have a great rest of your day.

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One Simple Trick To Stay in Phenomenal Shape

One Simple Trick To Stay in Phenomenal Shape

Published by on March 19, 2022

Hey EarthFIT fam! In this video, I’m gonna give you one simple trick that you could take with you the rest of your life to stay a phenomenal shape year round at any time, no matter what the circumstance. Let’s get right into it. So my one simple trick to stay in your best shape year round for the rest of your life is to keep it simple.

Yes, it’s simplicity. Make your routine simple. So I’m gonna give you some examples of fitness. We’re gonna talk about fitness and nutrition and why is keeping it simple the best. Okay. Let’s start with the why. The number one thing that is gonna impact your physical stature, your overall health, how healthy you are is gonna be consistency, in either direction. If you’re consistently sitting on the couch and eating potato chips, your body’s gonna be a reflection of that. 

If you’re consistently eating the right way, working out and exercising, your body’s gonna be a reflection of that and your health will be an overall reflection of that. We know that it comes down to consistency and especially long term. That’s why a lot of times you’ll see things like fad diets, people starting and then falling off and then gaining of extra weight back or fad exercise routines or programs. People starting getting some decent results at first and then usually falling off getting injured or whatever the case may be. So we want to keep it simple because if you can make it just something that you do as a regular part of your life, then you’re gonna take it with you the rest of your life. So let’s get into some examples. We’ll start with fitness specifically.

So like I said, a lot of times you’ll see new fitness routines coming out or do this, and this is gonna give you the miracle abs you’ve always desired. Really fitness comes down to basic scientific principles that are in fact actually pretty simple… your exercise routine. If you can keep it simple with enough variety that change, that’s gonna get you the best long term results. It’s when we really start to change things up, get really crazy with it. I’m gonna come 7 days this week, I’m gonna try this new run, a marathon everyday program, all these crazy things. We often find ourselves in to get a quick short term results and long term they do nothing, but throw us way out of whack because we start that program. We don’t get the results we want. We get discouraged. And then we find ourself in a rut  sitting on the couch thinking, “oh, I really should be back to exercising.” But in fact, if we just keep it simple the entire time you’re gonna have all that time you missed going towards your long term health and wellness. 

So an example of a simple routine would be simply hiring a coach, having them tell you what to do and setting appointments. That’s probably the easiest. If you’re somebody that likes to do it on your own, stick to simple exercises, squats, deadlifts, rows, bench press, shoulder press, things like that. These simple complex movements are the best ones. Now let’s talk about nutrition a little bit. So you’ll often see fat diets pop up here and there. I’ll just talk about like the low carb lifestyle, which is really popular now – ketogenic diet, right? So with that, you’ll see good short term results and short term. I mean, anywhere from, you know, three months to you can do it for three months all the way up to a year, and you’re probably gonna get some decent results, but why does it have such a high failure rate?

Why are so many people rebounding after this? It’s because we know that the diet’s not simple enough when you have to actively cut out one thing and all you’re thinking about is cutting out that one thing, the chances of you adhering to it long term are not that great. So a simple nutrition strategy, I would dare you guys to implore would be just eat whole foods, right?

Just eat whole foods and judge how your body feels off of that. That’s really simple. And that’s gonna be a long term strategy that gets you the best results. So my message today is very simple. It’s to keep your exercise and nutrition simple. And if you cannot have somebody do it for you, that’s simple enough. All right. I hope you guys found value in this video. If you did gimme a thumbs up, if you loved it, gimme a heart and as always stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam

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Squat Series with Jeff Episode 2 | Beaufort Fitness

Squat Series with Jeff Episode 2 | Beaufort Fitness

Published by on March 18, 2022

Nothing beats a squat. Welcome to episode 2 of Jeffrey Squat Series. Today, we’re gonna be doing back squats. I’m sure you’ve seen this rack and I’m sure you’ve done a squat here at the gym before. Well, just gonna go over some basics here, just to show you how important and how awesome back squatting is. Not just back squatting. We’re all squatting in general here. So with back squats, we’re gonna be targeting our entire posterior chain here. It’s gonna start from our lower back all the way down the bottom of our legs, but we’re still hitting our main leg muscles here. Still gonna be hitting our hammies, still gonna be hitting our quads, still gonna be hitting our glutes, calves and hip flexors here as well. Now, starting off, we’re gonna essentially do what we did with our bodyweight squat that we did in the first episode.

So what we’re gonna start off with is feet are gonna be shoulder width apart, you’re gonna drop underneath here. Go ahead and gently have the barbell right here on our back. Your toes are gonna be aligned, straightforward, just like they were with our body weight squat. And we’ll go ahead and stand up here. You’ll take a step back. So that way we’re not hitting our hooks here on our squat rack. And then once again, we’re gonna get our hips back and drop that load down the back of our legs here all the way back up. And we wanna make sure that we’re going all the way down to our 90 degrees here. Gonna have that 90 degree with our legs parallel to the ground and you’re gonna come back up. Now. We’ve got a common few common mistakes here. First one is gonna be that lack of depth, not going down all the way. (please see the video)

We wanna make sure we get a full range of motion with that 90 degrees, butt all the way down to the floor, full range of motion. And then the next one would be maybe our knees caving in a little bit here. We wanna make sure that we’re driving all the way up here instead of having our knees come in to assist, that’s gonna increase the risk of injury and just not gonna be doing it correctly to make sure that we target the correct muscle groups. Now, of course, the last common mistake would be your chest dropping a little bit. It’s gonna be dropping in putting that weight, unnecessary weight on your back as you go down. So you got three different, common mistakes that we can make, but we’re gonna eliminate here. So that way we can include a back squat into our repertoire. 

And I’m sure that you’ve probably seen this set up in the gym already. If you see these set up for our workouts during the days, you can always come over here and maybe do a few different, few different sets before the workout starts. That way we activate our glutes. We activate our leg muscles, because nothing beats the squat and all the benefits that it can do. So once again, y’all, this is our back squat here. This is episode 2 of Jeffrey Squat Series, just make sure that we’re applying our knowledge here into our next workouts and trainings.

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