Fitness can be FUN and Effective at any Stage of Life

A lot of people from CrossFit or maybe from a group program at a local gym keep getting injured and maybe they're a little frustrated. They've been going for six months or nine months or a year and they don't notice changes. Let's take a look at some exercise science basics that might help them.

Define Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload is the most basic training principle in exercise science. Without fancy words, all it means is in order to improve, you have to do a little bit more than you can currently do but you need to do it in a very gradual logical manner.

Exercise Expectation Vs Reality

How many of us know someone who started a couch to 5k program? or started a nutritional cleanse, or started a new program at a gym? And within two weeks they quit for so many reasons. Maybe it was just too much all at once. Maybe they're sore all the time and it doesn't feel good. Maybe their expectations weren't quite realistic and they haven't lost the 30 pounds in one week that they expected.

Common Exercise Mistakes:

• Assess to Progress
• Intensity too low
• Lack of Progression
• Overtraining / Injury

If you want to help someone with their finances, you have to know where they are, don’t you?  Don't you have them bring in bank statements? The same thing goes for the health and fitness industry. How do we know where to start and how do we even determine if people are reaching their goals? If we don't do some form of assessment. A lot of people just continue to do what they have always done. This means they continue to get the exact same results that they've always gotten and that's not what they want.

 Proper Exercise Assessment

• Cardio
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Body Composition

 

Pro Tip # 1: You Can't Improve What You don't Measure

If we assess our cardiovascular fitness, strength, flexibility, and body composition (not weight on the scale, because if that's all you have, then that's all you have), it’s a much better way to determine people's health outcomes because we want to see the amount of muscle we have increasing. We want to see the body fat that they have decreased.

Measuring Exercise Intensity

Anyone who walks into a gym is making a good decision. They are trying to do something for their health. But have you walked in there and see the same person on the same reclining bike and they are reading a magazine for an hour? They have been doing this every day for five years and they are not progressing. They are just doing that same thing over and over again. It would help them if they increase their intensity and put down the magazine. They would only have to stay half an hour instead of an hour. They could get better results by looking at where people are with the intensity of their workouts.

For example, a lot of us might walk our dogs. Is that exercise? Not really. A little bit of activity and some social time. Usually, It's awesome good health behavior, not exercise.

Some of the ladies who come into the gym and have been working with those same three-pound pink dumbbells for 10 years. That’s a good decision, but if you want your body to change or you want to get stronger, you need to change what you do.

Exercise Injury

On the flip side, there are these crazy warrior-type gym members or exercisers. Also, there’s Peloton, the equipment is really great but they have these streaks, contests, and badges. People ride every day and they make everybody else feel guilty if they don't do the same. However, no one needs to ride a bike seven days a week. 

It's not good for our body and not good for our posture. We're gonna work the same muscles in the same plane of motion over and over and over again. We need to mix it up a little bit. We don't need to do high-intensity interval training five days a week. That basically tears down all of your muscles. You never get to rest and recover. You never get to rebuild, which is what we want. 

Pro Tip #2: Avoid overtraining and injury... Rest and Recovery are as important as exercise

We need to have some time to chill, stretch, roll, to get sleep. All of those things are very important just as important as doing the exercise.

FITT acronym stands for:

• Frequency
• Intensity
• Time
• Type

So given that, what do we do to tweak our programs so that it works for us? We have all of these variables to play with. So for example frequency like seven days a week for the peloton. Are seven days good? Not so much. Three to five is what's recommended for cardio.

What intensity is right for us? It goes from walking the dog to Tabata where you're working so hard, you feel like you're going to fall over and throw up. There's a wide range of intensity that is appropriate for you or for a client.

We also note the time that we use doing exercises. Make sure it’s not too much and observe the duration of time we spend every time.

What type of exercise is appropriate?

About CrossFit, the group dynamic is amazing but does everybody really need to be doing Olympic lifts? Do we need to be holding something very very heavy and powering it up over our head when we’re 50 or 60 years old? Does that serve my goals?

The same thing with burpees, everybody loves burpees. Do you know that it's possible to be a fit person and never do a burpee? It's possible. Remember, if it doesn't serve your body you don't have to do it. There are other ways to get to your goals.

 

Q&A with Denel

Q: How many days a week should you rest? Should it be one day, two days without work without exercise?

A: That's a really great question and the answer is "it depends".

It completely depends on what you did. What was the intensity? How do you feel? What are you eating? How are you sleeping? Personally, one day is enough for me, one of no exercise. Some people do something seven days a week but they rotate what that is.

Q: When you're in pain like muscle pain should you rest those muscles or is it okay to keep going?

A: That's a really good question and I'd have to say it depends on that one too. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're a little tired or you overworked it a little or whether it's an injury. 

If it were an injury I'd go see someone like Rachele. If for example I broke my ankle a while ago, and I still did my upper body stuff I still lifted weights with my upper body.

Q: How about just muscle pain from you working that group of muscles harder than you usually do?

A: In that case, I would move. I would do something to keep moving but I would not work those muscles again until they're not sore. Also, drink a lot and sleep a lot.

 More About DENEL BINGEL

I also help people with their nutrition. The things that I'm really focused on right now are individual training sessions.

Services Offered:

• Individual training Sessions - Most popular right now is 30-minute Zoom sessions
• Accountability Group - encompassing Nutrition and Fitness

I'm booking a lot of 30-minute zoom sessions with individuals and the other thing that I started this fall is an accountability group. It's called “Best Body in 52”. It's a 52-day program that helps with accountability. Every day you get an email with your goals.  Every day you check in with the group and with your accountability partner.

I'm Denel Bingel, and I make fitness fun and accessible for people who may not think that that is possible.  In my other life, I teach exercise science at a local college. So I spend a lot of time teaching my students how to create exercise programs for clients. Specific exercise programs for specific people. When I work with my clients I find a lot of times that they're missing some real basics of exercise science so I thought I would share some of those with you. 

I have a master's degree in this. I've been doing it for 30 years. I try to stick with the science and watch all the fads go on by me and pick the good things out. I love the peloton, I use it two or three times a week. I think it's a great tool.

Contact Denel Bingel today! 

Recommended Readings: 

• The Secrets To A Happy and Graceful Aging
• Continuous Learning During the Pandemic
• Learn About Functional Health Coaching

 

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