I’m gonna teach you guys the ins and outs of doing a McGill airplane. So why do you want to do this exercise? It is great for core stability. It’s very difficult to do one. There is a regression that I’m going to show you guys.
So first I’ll just show you the regression. So this is where most of you should be starting out. Okay. You’re going to balance on one foot here, be about a hand length away. Easy enough to where you lean forward. You can put both palms against the wall because that’s eventually what you’re going to do in this. So we want to stand on one leg here. You’re going to reach forward to the wall here, you’re going to reach back here. Now I’m just having a light, a bit of pressure here on the wall. From there, I’m going to open my hips up. I’m moving from the hips here, I’m not moving from my shoulder blades or anywhere else moving from my hips. And I’m just trying to open up to one side as far as I can. Once I can do that, I’m going to twist and go the other way. Now, when I’m doing this, I’m actually pushing my hip down. I’m pushing it down here. You’ll feel good stretch there. You want to push until it goes as far as you can go. So that’s the regression of the exercise. That’s really good for warming up and your core stability overall.
The next version of it, the more advanced version would be just doing it without any, any support with the wall. This is pretty difficult for most. So you want to grab again, just balance on one foot here, kick it back. Now again, I’m going to put my arms out by the side here, but I’m strictly moving from my hips, all my chest to come parallel to the floor here. Then I’m going to open up to one side. My arms will move, but I’m moving from the hips. Again, try not to fall over here. It’s going to challenge foot stability. And then we will go to the other side.
This is again called a McGill airplane, very difficult, phenomenal warm up exercise and one that you can incorporate into your daily life for improved stability in the core. And then some of the hips.
All right today, I’m going to go over the bird dog. It’s also known as a Quadruped. This is a phenomenal core stability exercise, one that is fantastic for long-term health as well. So starting position here, and I’m going to show you the easiest version. There’ll be three versions of I’m going to show you guys today. First will be the easiest version. Almost anybody should be able to do this one, a second will be a little bit more difficult for those that have been practicing for a little bit. And then the third will be for the most advanced, and that will be a little bit more difficult. And then I’ll throw in a bonus one as well. So we’ll actually get 4 versions today.
I’m gonna start with the easiest version here would be hands right under the shoulder blades here. We’re just going to kick one leg back and reach out with one arm. This right now… I’m reaching out with my hand and back with my leg, notice I’m not coming up with both of them. They are raising up, but I’m actually reaching out. And what we’re trying to do here is to keep the hips square to the floor is going to challenge your core. Then you would come back to the starting position and go the opposite direction. What we want to look for here is any imbalances.
If that becomes too easy for you, you can do just a little bit of variation here, reach out and then when I reach out, I come back in elbow to knee, and then I reach back out, that’s going to be a little bit more difficult there. So if I get really proficient at those and really good at those and they become easy, doing ten of them no, not dipping my hips and keeping them square to the floor. It’s relatively easy. I’m not breaking a sweat, we can go to a more advanced version, which would be from the hands and feet.
Now I do recommend starting out this advanced version against the wall. And this is my little bonus tip for today. So before you go full on bird dog or quadruped, you want to actually, you can use the wall as a support here to kind of help stabilize you. So the answer right under the shoulders here, you’re going to reach out in front of you to a wall, push it into the wall and then reach back here. And then you would hold for a few seconds and then back down.
Now, once that becomes easy for you, you could do the full bird dog version or quadruped version which would be hands around the shoulders, standing up tall. You’re going to reach out. Again, I’m reaching this way. I’m kicking back here, stabilizing, trying to keep my hips square and then back down. And then I’ve reached the other side, just like that. Again, that’s a bird dog also known as the quadruped, phenomenal exercise for your core stability, hip stability, and just overall health and longevity.
“You have questions? Hopefully I have the answers. In today’s Q and A, I want to go over a question I received from a member. They were asking, what should I do on the days that I’m not working out?… They said they typically go running or they’ll do a beach-body Shaun T style, higher intensity workout but they often feel tired or depleted afterwards, what should they do in that instance?
All right. So I’m going to get right into it. I’ve answered kind of, or hinted around this before, but I’m just going to come out and be very blunt about it today. Cardio is not going to take you to your fat loss goal if that is your goal is to lose fat. I don’t know specifically if that’s what they’re trying to achieve. So you always have to start your training, whatever program you’re going in with a clear, defined goal. And that needs to be communicated to the coach, to whoever. At EarthFIT, when somebody comes in, they sit down with me, they communicate their goal; that’s part of the process. I then tell their coaches their goals, and then we use the best scientific principles to get you to your goals. So with training specifically, I’ll just talk about fat loss because that’s typically the goal everybody’s looking to achieve.
First thing to know, you’re not going to outwork poor nutrition. Nutrition is going to play the largest role by far hands down, for fat loss. So if you’re looking to lose fat, you have to dial in your nutrition. Doing extra workouts is going to do nothing for you. It’s actually going to hurt you because it’s going to slow down your metabolism. Now, if your goals are to put on more muscle which also helps burn fats, then your off training days would look like one or two things.
(1) Either work on mobility because that mobility is thing and transfer over when you go into the gym to better performance, better strength gains.
(2) You could focus on sending a small muscle building signal, not too large of a signal to facilitate recovery, and then more muscle building growth. So what those workouts typically look like are short 10 minute. I like to use resistance band workouts, and you just do small movements like squats, you could do curls. If you’re trying to go for more of your arms, really, whatever body part you’re specifically trying to go after, or build up would be the one that I would suggest you target in those small mini workouts. Now, with those workouts, you do not want to overdo it. You keep the moderate intensity. You do like a five out of 10 on the intensity level. You’re just trying to again, send a small muscle building signal, facilitate some recovery so those muscles can grow. You’re sending the signal that says, “Hey, we need to get stronger”.
Now I’m going to talk about why running and things like that are not beneficial if you’re trying to get fat loss. So in here, we’re already doing enough cardiovascular activity to stimulate fat oxidation, build up your aerobic capacity. So that physiological adaptation is already covered by the training you’d be doing in EarthFIT. Running outside of here really also it’s going to do is slow down your metabolism, in my opinion. If you’re consistently already training 2-3 days a week, it’s just going to slow down your metabolism. You may see good weight loss for the first, you know, month or two, but after that, your risk of injury is going to increase dramatically. And it can slow down your metabolism because what happens is you run, that’s an endurance style activity or you do like a high intensity workout – those are all telling your body “We don’t want more muscle. We want to pare that down. We need to get lighter.” So it’s going to shed both… The studies will show typically when you run, you’re losing 50% muscle, 50%, fat. So really what happens is your body fat percentage actually goes up because you weigh let’s say you drop 10 pounds. 5 of that is muscle, 5 of that is fat. Well, now you’re actually in a lighter weight, and you still have a high body fat, your body fat percentage actually goes up because you took down the muscle that you previously had with it as well.
So I hope this clarifies things basically to summarize, if you’re training here at EarthFIT, I would recommend do mobility or a small muscle building workout. There are times and places to do more endurance training, but if you’re going for fat loss, that’s not going to take you there. Instances where you’d want to do more endurance is where you’re going to actually do it in endurance style events. So if you’re training for some type of race, or if you’re training to really just build up a better aerobic base, then that’s fine. Just understand it’s not going to take you specifically to fat loss if that’s your goal.
All right. I hope this clarifies things. I know there’s a lot of little long with it as usually when I get into the cardio topic, but that is all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did, give me a thumbs up. If you love it, give me a heart and as always stay strong.”
Beaufort Health and Fitness: Exercise Prescription
“Hey everybody! I wanted to go over a topic today. It seems like whenever people are getting into fitness, they either fall on one side of the spectrum. It’s either they don’t like to work out at all. They like to sit on their couch or they like to hammer themselves into oblivion working out seven days a week. And people are always asking me, you know, what is the right amount for your body? How do you get the best results the fastest? And I just want you guys to give, take this simple image. Whenever we’re trying to solve a problem through fitness, which a lot of times can be obesity or maybe it’s chronic joint pain, or really any of the issues that you get involved in to working out for. You have to remember that it’s a lot like a prescription from a doctor.
So whenever you go to the doctor and you have some type of issue and they prescribe you some type of medication or other treatment, too little of that treatment is not going to do anything. Too much of it is going to cause an overdose, right? You can certainly die from taking too much prescription medication. The same thing goes with fitness. Now you’re not going to die typically if you work out too hard, but you’re not going to get the results. You’re going to overdose your body. You’re going to stress it out to the point where it’s not burning fat. It’s not doing the things you want it to. It’s not really reaching towards your goals, but at the same time, if you don’t, if you do too little, it’s not going to do anything either. So then the question is, well, what’s in it for me, or how long do I have to do this? What is it that I can do to hit my goals? How long do I have to go?
Really, it’s going to depend on each situation. And that is why the value of having a coach is so important.
So that’s kind of what I wanted to leave you guys with today is it’s really individualized. However, remember it’s like a prescription just because more, you’re doing more does it mean you’re going to get more results? When you do very little, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get any results either. So keep those thoughts in mind whenever you’re thinking about your fitness, your goals… that is all for today as always stay strong.”
“Hey everybody! Today, I’m going to go over an excellent stretch you could do before training or before really any of your daily life, especially this is really great. If you have knee pain or if you have shin splints, anything like that. Before we get into it, I want to describe two things for you so we can really get the most benefit out of this stretch.
(1) First, whenever we’re thinking about stretching out, dealing with knee pain, shin splints, anything below the foot, we really want to think about the foundation that we’re standing at. Sometimes even hip pain can be a result of immobility in the ankle or the foot. So this stretch is really going to stretch out that ankle and help anything up your kinetic chain. A lot of times injuries even to the shoulder can be simply caused by immobility in the foot. So if you’re dealing with any of those issues, this may also be a great stretch for you.
(2) Second thing I want to discuss is the intent. So the intent, in which you do this stretch, how hard you push yourself is going to determine the results you’re going to get. You can passively go through this, or you can listen to the little cues and really push yourself. If you do that, you’ll get a great benefit.
So before I get into the actual stretch, it’s always important to test and then retest yourself to see if anything has actually changed whenever we’re trying to stretch out or mobilize a joint. So the first thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to test the ankle here. We’re going to take a thumb, stick out your thumb here. You’re going to find a wall here, and you’re going to put your big toe at the back of your hand. So your thumbs against the wall like that (please see the video), this should be about four inches or so away from the wall. Now, what you want to do is you want to drive your knee into the wall without lifting your heel. If you have very stiff ankles, like my left ankle here is relatively stiff, it’s going to be very difficult to get it there without lifting the heel up. So if you can’t get it there, that’s okay. Just go as far as you can, you can see, I can’t quite get it there right now. So that’s what you would do initially to test your flexibility. If you can’t hit it against the wall, that means you have tight ankles. So then what do you do?
I’m gonna show you a very simple stretch here. You can find a box where or you could do this on a step at your house, really anything. Um, you’re gonna elevate your foot here., kind of take a split stance position. I like having something that I can grab in front of me to kind of pull me forward. But what you’re going to do is you’re going to put a lot of pressure here with your left hand, push the knee forward here from this position you want to push, really push your knee forward. And then when you get to the very end, you’ll start to feel a little pinching or tightness when you feel that push forward and then lift your toes, trying to lift your toes up. Like you’re trying to touch your shin here. So you’re going to push forward, lift your toes here, and you’re going to hold for five seconds. Then you relax a second. When you do that, you should feel some cramping kind of up through here, even in the front of the shin a little bit.
After you do those 5 sets, then you’re going to again, want to retest. We’ll see how that just doing that brief one did for me. So we’re going to take our thumb again for the retest, put your hands against the wall here, that was against the big toe. I’m going to drive my foot forward. See if I can get it.
It was barely able to touch it there, but you could see just even from doing that a little bit there, I was able to get a far greater range of motion. So the main points of that stretch is you’re really gonna want to push it forward to that end of range and then lift the toes up. This is great for people who are running, dealing with shin splints. Do you have any knee pain? Definitely want to do this one, or if you find really that you have trouble getting low on your squats, this is another great remedy for them. All right. That’s all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up, if you loved it, give me a heart.”
“Hey everybody! You have questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q and A. I’m going to go over how to get better at pushups. If you haven’t seen my previous video, I have done one on how to get in a proper push-up position every single time, that is a great one to fix any alignment. We’ll briefly cover that today as well, but that videos can be a bit more in depth on that topic. So how do you get better at pushups? Common question we get all the time… You know, people either can’t do a full push up or they can do one, but they really struggle. And they’ve been working out for awhile. How do they get stronger at pushups? Really… There’s two real remedies here. There’s several, but two main ones that I found worked the best.
(1) First thing you want to do is increase the volume at which you do those pushups.
So think about it as practice throughout your day. Instead of just going into the gym and thinking, I need to do all these pushups for a great workout. If you could take the mindset, “Hey, I’m going to practice these pushups very regularly.” You’re going to get a lot better at them. So it could be as simple thing as you put something up in your house and every time you pass that, you know, to drop down, do a couple pushups. So that’d be the first step. Really, if you start to increase your volume, you’re going to more than likely see a great change.
2) Second thing. If that’s still not working, we’re going to want to check our alignment when we’re doing pushups and making sure we’re doing proper form. So a very quick example of this would be, you want to make sure I come in and see people put their hands way out in front of them. So they’re putting a lot of strain on their shoulders and they’re not loading up their triceps and the other supporting musculature that can really help you do a pushup. So very simple way to get into a good pushup is make a T here you fall forward and you kick your feet back. Okay?
Let’s say you’re somebody that can’t do a full push-up. How can you go about progressing those? So instead of the standard knee push-up, just going down from your knees and pushing up and repeating that daily. I want you to try this variation because you can really load what’s known as the eccentric portion of the exercise, which will really load the muscles. So again, we’ll get into a good pushup position going out. You want to keep your hips up, nice core engaged here, and then you go down just like you would go down for a regular full pushup. And then from there, we’ll press up from the knees right there. So that’s going to really help load those muscles. I found great value in clients that do that as well.
So the two main things are, you’re going to want to increase your volume first and foremost, second, check your form, make sure you’re in the proper push-up position. And 3rd thing, make sure that when you’re doing the push ups, you’re changing it up. You’re not just always going from the knees. It could be the way you are actually performing the exercise and the 4th a little bonus one here. If you strengthen other muscles around it that oppose those, especially the back muscles, you strengthen your shoulder muscles, which support you in a pushup, really work on that stability in your joints. You have a far greater chance of getting better at pushups.
All right. That’s all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up, if you loved it, give me a heart. As always, stay strong.”
“Hey EarthFIT fam! You have questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q and A I’m going to go over. “What are some things you can focus on that are not the scale when it comes to your health and fitness?”
A lot of people will frequently get caught up in the scale. Why isn’t it going down? And that’s just because your weight isn’t going on down on the scale doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not improving. So I’m going to give you 10 things today that you can focus on that are not scale related that show you still are progressing and are still huge wins in your health journey.
First one (1) clothing. This is usually the first one when people start training, how is it fitting? Is it fitting a little bit looser? Are you able to fit into clothes that you weren’t previously able to? That is a good indication that your health and fitness is improving.
(2) Are you able to do more of the activities that you love running around with your kids, walking the dog, not getting as tired while you’re doing those things kind of ties into the third one…
(3) Do you have more energy? You noticing throughout the day, you’re not having those 2:00 PM crashes falling asleep at your desk at work. That’s a great sign.
(4) Fourth one. Are you sleeping better in the evening? Activity, obviously it allows us to get more restful and beneficial sleep. So if you’re sleeping better, chances are you’re on the right track.
(5) Your performance in the gym. This is one that I usually recommend to all my clients – your performance, that can be anything related. Are you able to do exercises that you weren’t able to do before? Are you able to make it longer, exercising? Are you feeling better while you exercise? Those are all performance related goals that I strongly encourage whenever you’re starting a fitness journey or you’ve been at one for a long time, you set those performance goals to continue to motivate yourself.
(6) Sixth one, sharper mind. You’ve noticed a cognitive benefit when you start exercising and eating healthy, you should be able to recall words quicker, speak more fluently.
(7) 7th thing, skin you’ll notice your skin clear up. Acne should go away. You should notice some less blemishes and it’s much nicer, especially when you’re hydrating and eating properly. You’re going to have better skin.
(8) Coping skills. When you get stressed out instead of turning to food or other destructive, unhealthy behaviors, are you turning to a healthier alternative? Or are you finding yourself, “Hey, I don’t need that cheeseburger every time someone stresses me out” or instead are you going for a walk or are you doing something that is beneficial to your body?
(9) The 9th one, decrease aches and pains. You’ll notice your joints should not be hurting nearly as much as you get up and move your body the way it was intended to be.
(10) And the 10th and final one, one of my personal favorites, is blood markers. So if you get your blood work done regularly, you’ll notice your blood markers improving. And that kind of goes along with a decrease in medication. Those are super valuable things. When I hear stories of clients that are able to decrease their, or have improved blood markers, that is a total win.
So you don’t have to focus on all 10 of those. Those were just some general ideas. I recommend picking out two to three of those to focus on for about 6-8 weeks. Really focus on those. See if those are getting better, those are going to be a good indication because it is not all about the scale. All right, I hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up. If you love it, give me a heart that is all as always, stay strong.”
“Hey everybody! You have questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q and A. I’m going to talk about eggs and egg whites. So let’s get right into it. Deb was asking in the group, if egg whites from the carton or if you separate them yourself are healthier, which one is healthier? So I’m going to address that and then we’ll also talk about eggs versus egg whites, the differences, what to look for. All right, so I’m going to get right into it.
So the answer to Deb’s question, separating egg whites yourself is typically going to be the healthier option because you know where that’s coming from, but it’s only going to be a healthier option if you’re getting eggs from an organic source where you know that it’s coming from. A lot of times, if you’re getting eggs from a corporate farm, you’re just getting standard, regular eggs. So you go to the grocery store and get, those are mass produce.
Those aren’t the healthiest things for you because there’s lots, those chickens are stacked on top of each other, just producing eggs. It’s all they’re bred for, lots of stress will go from that chicken into that egg and then you consume it. It goes into your body, not the healthiest thing for you.
By comparison, an organic free range egg… If you know a farmer, I strongly recommend either trying to seek out a local farmer to you or going to a farmer’s market, picking up those eggs. You’ll notice the first thing you’ll notice when you crack that open, is the yolk is a completely different color, it’s almost orange-ish. So to kind of answer your question Deb is.. You’re going to want to separate them yourself if you know where the eggs are coming from.
Now if you’re picking it up from the store, the egg whites from the carton, from the store, you’re going to want to look for one thing in particular, you’re gonna want to flip it over on the back, it is the only ingredient – egg whites, then it’s good to go. Again, it’s not the most preferable thing. You would want to get it from an organic egg, but if you did get it from the carton, make sure the only ingredients, it says egg whites. A lot of times they will put artificial gums and sweeteners in those and you don’t want that added on top.
Now I want to talk about the kind of eggs versus egg whites. What the difference is, what to look for for both. So people always ask like what’s healthier, should I eat the yolk? Should I not eat yolk? Here’s the deal.
The yolk is extremely healthy for you. Again, if you’re getting it from an organic source that has things like choline, vitamin D, it does have a little bit of cholesterol, but actually after you work out that cholesterol will produce muscle building benefits. So if you are on a lower fat diet, you need fat in your diet. You’re not overly concerned about your caloric intake you haven’t managed. I would always say, go with a whole egg.
Now, if you’re looking for fat loss, you’re trying to cut down. You’re going for some leaner, really lean look, you’re pushing hard on that then I would say, go with egg whites because egg whites are about half the calories of an egg, and it’s going to be pure protein. So it really depends on kind of where you’re at. Maybe you have a lot of fat that day, then the better options, probably going with an egg white. If you haven’t had any fat or you need fat in your diet, then a whole egg is going to be the appropriate source for that day.
So I hope this clarifies things and gives you guys some clarity on when to have eggs versus egg whites. Also kind of what to look for. Again, I cannot stress it enough, go for an organic source of eggs. That’s one food in particular that is mass produced, that can be very unhealthy if you’re getting it from a mass production. So that is all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up. If you loved it, give me a heart. That is all. Please stay strong.”
“Hey everybody! In today’s Q and A I’m going to talk about training. Yes! Training at EarthFIT. The three different types we do, let’s get right into it. So Crystal asked in the group, “what are the differences between the three training styles we do at EarthFIT?” The 3 trainings we do are Meta Strength training, Strength training, and Hurricane training. “Why do we rotate them, et cetera?” So let’s get right into it.
All right. First thing, we do have three different styles of training at EarthFIT. They’re all designed to kind of do something different. And I’m going to talk about that right now. First one, Meta Strength training, fun fact about Meta Strength training. It’s actually trademarked by EarthFIT, LLC. So Meta Strength training. What that is is it’s a combination of compound resistance movements. So that is full body, multi-joint, multi muscle movements, like a barbell squat, shoulder press, things like that. Those are the strength aspect of it. And then there’s an anaerobic exercise component to it as well. Anaerobic means without oxygen. So that’s more of your high intensity cardiovascular type movements. So you’re getting on the battle ropes, you’re sprinting the sled, things like that. That is what Meta Strength training is based around.
Typically we’ll do a strength.. strength movement followed by anaerobic movement. That way we’re getting muscle-building benefits, but we’re also spiking the heart rate. What you can expect on a Meta Strength training day is typically if those of you that have your MyZone will notice that is going to be the day where your caloric burn has the highest inside the gym. So that’s kind of what you’re looking for for a Meta-Strength day.
Now, Strength [training] day, we’ll go to our regular strength day. Regular Strength day is lifting again, heavy compound movements, and that’s all the exercises for that day. Typically, the reason that we’re doing that is we’re trying to send a loud muscle building signal to your body. This is the day where the weights are going to be the heaviest, the reps are going to be on the lower side. Again, the whole purpose and intent of that day is to build muscle and strength. That’s the primary focus. The reason why you’re going to notice you’ll burn less calories that day if you have a Myzone. However, it’s not about the calories you’re burning in the workout that day, there’s also an afterburn effect that’s going on and you’re getting additional calorie burn through your body trying to support muscle growth. So you’re getting it throughout the day and then obviously the more muscle you have on you, it speeds up your metabolism, it gives you all those health benefits.
And the third training we do is Hurricane training. Hurricane training, it’s going to be three compound resistance movements followed by a sprint. So this was made popular by warrior trainings, basically for fighters, people in mixed martial arts, things like that. Really the core design of this is to build muscle and then we’re going to spike the heart rate up for a short sprint. You’ll notice your heart rate should be getting up very high there for that sprint. And then it’ll come back down as you’re doing those compound resistance movements. And then we’re going to sprint again. This one, typically your heart rate will be elevated the majority of the time, but you should see it come down in the workout and then spike back up again while you’re doing that sprint.
What we’re looking for there is really building muscle and then EPOC which is exercise, Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. That’s the afterburn effect. So after you’re leaving here, your body has to cool itself down from the sprinting you’ve done, and it’s going to burn calories as you leave, kind of same thing with Meta Strength training. You’re going to get an EPOC effect as well. So I hope that clarifies things.
Those are the three training styles we do at EarthFIT. I do challenge you to start to think about this. When you go into those workouts or maybe you don’t go to EarthFIT, maybe you go somewhere else. Really think about the intent that that day of training has around it. That’s something that’s often lost in training. A lot of times we’ll think we need to go super fast on days, maybe like a strength day. We need to slow ourselves down a little bit, not worry about what our heart rate is doing and just push for maximum weights. So remember the intent that is very important. That’s how you’re gonna get results a bit quicker there. All right. That is all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did give me a thumbs up. If you loved it, give me a heart. That is all. Please stay strong.”
“All right. How’s it going? It’s Stephen again from EarthFIT and today we’re going to talk about either a bench supported row or a self-supported row. This can go either one of them.
So the biggest thing that I see when we’re going through a training that we see with the row is it’s not keeping the shoulder staying all the way back. And what that’s going to do is to not keep the neutral spine here. So the biggest thing we want to make sure we do when we get set up in the row is, once you pick that dumbbell up, you want to lock the shoulder back. So we don’t want the shoulder to hang down. (Please see the video) What that’s going to do is not only is it going to pull down with the AC joint, as we put pressure on your shoulder, it’s actually going to make the spine round to where you may be feeling this in your lower back. So you want to lock it up. And now here, I got maximum tension on the back, even though I haven’t even moved this dumbbell, I can feel that my back is actually activated here. So as I pull the dumbbell up to my chest, now my back is squeezing even harder. When I come back down again, I don’t want it to come all the way down. What we see a lot of time is let it come all the way down. And then when people pull back up again, what that’s going to kind of do is instead of keeping a nice flat back, the spine starts to twist.
And then also we don’t want the dumbbell to come all the way down and take a break. The dumbbell touches the ground backs disengaged. We want the back to stay engaged that entire time.
So it’s up to the chest. Nice, slow in control. My head is looking straight down. You don’t want to look up there cause that’s going to put tension on the cervical spine. So nice flat back, pull up to the chest and then slowly in control back down. And also you want to make sure when you pull up, you don’t want to twist the back as well. And that’s going to put pressure to your lower back. So the shoulder has to stay locked back again the entire time control up and the control back down
Again, that can go to the self-supported row as well. You got your elbow on your thigh, exact same thing there. You want to make sure coming down, don’t want that dumbbell or kettlebell to touch the ground. Back’s not engaged. Lock it back, pull up. And then right back down again, that will help you target the upper back muscles just a little bit better. So next time we’re doing the self-supported row or bench supported row. Use that tip, get your back stronger.”
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