Muscle Imbalances: Which to Stretch? Which to Strengthen?

By Cary Raffle

Almost everyone has muscle imbalances. A few simple observations and movement tests tell a fitness professional which muscles are tight or overactive and need stretching and which are extended or underactive and need stretching (these are included in your fitness assessment). Below are a few of the more common observations and indicated stretches and strengthening recommendations to give you an example.

Observation	Shortened Muscles to Stretch	Extended Muscles to Strengthen
Feet turn out, shin splints, pain on bottom of foot (plantar fascitis), Achilles tendonitis*	Calves, Quadriceps, IT Band/TFL	Anterior Tibialis (shin), Gluteals, Medial Hamstrings
Shoulders round, soreness in mid/upper back, forward head	Chest, front of Shoulder, Lats, Neck, Upper Traps	Middle and Lower Traps and Rhomboids
Excessive forward lean at hip	Hip flexors and Quadriceps	Gluteals, Hamstrings, Abdominal Core

*Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasicitis are medical conditions, you should consult a doctor for diagnosis and possible treatment.

Once you understand which muscles are shortened and which are extended, be sure to adapt your program accordingly. If your calves are tight, you probably don't want to work them too hard until you complete several weeks of stretching. If your hamstrings are extended, you probably do not want to keep stretching them and extend them even more. Overstretched muscles can also be uncomfortable, they tend to have a low level or soreness that some people mistakenly believe is a call for stretching.

Should You Stretch Before You Exercise?

by Cary Raffle

You may not think that office work is physically demanding, but it takes a toll on your body!

Locked in Seated Position

Have you ever gotten up from your desk or after a long trip and felt like you were locked into seated position? Most of you spend many hours sitting. At a desk or table, hunched over a keyboard, leaning forward to see a computer screen, traveling on trains, busses and airplanes. For hours at a time, your hips are flexed, your shoulder muscles are tight, your glutes and middle/lower back muscles are all stretched out. Then, you want to come into the gym and workout or run or play ball outside. It's a setup for inefficient use of your muscles and potential injury.

A Set Up for Injury

Tight muscles can have limited range of motion and reduced blood flow, which leads to decreased work capacity

Muscle imbalances result as the wrong muscles are recruited to do the work. Here is one example: hunching over a keyboard tighten the muscles in the chest and front of the shoulders, the shoulder muscles and rotator cuff become overactive and tight, they roll forward an reduce the ability of the chest, arm and back muscles to work. It's a set you up for potential injuries such as rotator cuff problems. The same thing can happen at the neck, the hip, or any other area.

As muscles tighten they can spasm, scar tissue and adhesions form. As the muscle becomes less mobile and improperly balanced, joints don't move properly and can begin to degenerate - eventually leading to arthritis. Running with feet turned out and knees knocking, bench pressing with shoulders that are rounded in are a couple of examples of muscle imbalances that can lead to reduced performance and injury.


Before and After

It is important to get your muscles into balance before exercising to avoid risk of injury. But - and this is a big but - you have to be sure to stretch the right muscles. Just as some muscles get tight from sitting, the opposing muscles will stretch out. In some cases, they stretch to the point where they are also susceptible to injury. This often happens with some of the hamstring muscles. As the quadriceps and hip flexors tighten from sitting, some of the hamstring muscles lengthen. Yet many people who don't have tight hamstrings stretch them before exercising. After exercising, stretch the muscles that became tight during your workout, and get them back in balance again.

Does Stretching Weaken the Muscle?

One of my clients asked me to comment on an article that said not to stretch before exercise because research shows that stretching "weakens the muscle." I haven't seen that research.

Stretching sends a signal to the muscle to relax, so it might not generate as much force in the more relaxed state. However that is a very narrow view of how our bodies generate force.

Optimal force is produced by muscles working together in perfect harmony. For this to happen, we need to be in correct postural alignment, and the right muscles need to do the job. Often, a tight muscle will inhibit other muscles from doing their jobs. I have very clients at every level who - at various times - can't properly do certain exercises until their tight muscles have been released.

Counting Calories. The true secret of weight loss.

by Cary Raffle

You hear about all kinds of supplements, medications and diets, but remember that the only way to lose weight is to maintain a calorie deficit. To lose weight, you have to either decrease the calories that you take in or increase the calories that you burn. Or both.

A 36 year old man who is 5 foot 9 inches, weighs 190 pounds and exercises 3-5 times a week needs about 2926 calories per day. A 36 year old woman who is 5 foot 5 inches, weighs 140 pounds and exercises 3-5 time a week needs about 2171 calories per day. (Those of you who completed a fitness assessment with me already have your own personally calculated estimate of daily calories).

If you take in more calories, you gain weight, if you take in less, you lose weight. And this is important - it doesn't matter whether the calories are from fat, protein or carbohydrates - a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Most diets recommend a 500 calorie a day deficit which translates to a loss of about 1 pound per week. You will need to adjust this target as you continue to lose weight.

HOW DO YOU COUNT CALORIES?

One of my clients recommends The Daily Plate, click here to try it. This is an excellent free resource where you can input all of the foods that you eat and all of your activities, calculate your calorie consumption and expenditures, and maintain a dairy. The library of foods in its calorie database is amazing.

If you aren't looking to get obsessive-compulsive about it and maintain an ongoing diary, just try it for 3-7 days and identify your problem areas. In his case, we reduced red meat from two days to one day per week, eliminated a few beers, and maintained his activity level. Results: dropped 6 pounds from January 6-31.

Periodization of Strength Training: Phase 2 Unstable Exercises

by Cary Raffle

Most readers fall into one of two groups - let's say you've spent the past few weeks doing one of the following:

GROUP 1
You worked out on XpressLine or other machines- 1 or 2 sets of 12-15 repetitions. This workout familiarized your body with movement patterns, built a base of strength for muscles and connective tissue and you got into a good routine.

GROUP 2
You used free weights on bench or seated, or free weights combined with some machines - 1 to 3 sets of 8 to 15. These workouts should have improved your endurance strength and/or increased muscle mass, and improved neuromuscular control.

The Adaptation Principle
In both cases, after 4-6 weeks your body has adapted to the demands of your exercise program, and as you continue, you will experience a decreasing return on the time that you invest in exercising. You've probably increased the weights, but will still find your program plateauing.

How to beat the plateau?
There are a number of different ways to progress the program other than simply increasing the weight. This month, the recommended progression is to perform similar exercises in a less stable position. In the past, you've had a bench or chair supporting you while you worked out. Starting now, you are going to begin training your core muscles to do this work - especially your deep inner abdominal muscles and your gluteals. Yes...your glutes are very important parts of your core!

Why is this important?
Think of an overhead shoulder press and the way that you do this exercise if you use benches and chairs and machines. Think of the way that you use your strength and conditioning in every day life. You are very rarely able to stop, take a seat and then lift an item over your head, are you? By integrating some unstable or core training into your routine, you can enhance your ability to perform these movements in every day life. You'll also reduce the risk of low back pain and develop the inner stability that can take your strength beyond its current plateau.

Click here to access your unstable exercise program.

It begins with a balance and a drawing in maneuver, which trains your body to activate the deepest abdominal muscle. The program includes one representative exercise for each body part. In this phase of training, you'll generally be working with 2 or 3 sets of 12-15 repetitions. We also want to pay some attention to the 4-2-1 tempo, which will emphasize the "negative phase." Each exercise should be perromed so that the concentric phase (when you push, pull or lift) is 2 seconds, the isometric phase (fully pulled or extended) is 1 second, and the eccentric or return phase is 4 seconds.

Feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions about the exercises or program.

Thinking Ahead: Periodization

by Cary Raffle

Whether you're new to exercise or you've been hitting the gym for years, a few weeks from now you might feel that your routine is getting stale, or that you aren't seeing the results that you saw earlier in your program. Periodization, which involves changing the design of your workout at regular planned intervals, can help you stay on track and reach your goals.

Around Valentine's Day, you'll be ready for a change. That's because your body adapts to the particular type of stress (exercise) that you put on it within 4-8 weeks. When this happens, you are likely to see diminishing results over time if you stick with the same exact program. Some people also start feeling aches and pains from doing the same exact movements over and over again. Effective periodization involves more than just taking the weights up every couple of weeks or using a different brand of machine that works the same muscles in pretty much the same way.

There are any number of variables that you can change or progress:

Number of sets and repetitions

Tempo or time and type of muscle action, ie, emphasizing the isometric, eccentric (negative) or concentric phase to hit different muscle fibers

Frequency of training and organization of routines, change the exercise order and reorganize your split routinesl Even better, progress to a totally different mode of training

Unstable exercises to build core strength, if you're usually on fixed machines or benches

Plyometrics to build explosive power and deceleration

Consider a phase of muscle building, ie, heavy weights if you usually train light
Try incorporating different activities like yoga or an alternate form of cardio training. Often, these changes can reenergize your routine, keep you interested and on track, and serve as a springboard for getting to the next level with your fitness program - no matter if your goal is losing weight, gaining muscle, sports performance, or anything else for that matter.

When you think of it, Spring is just around the corner, so start thinking of Periodization now, and feel free to let me know if you need any help. I'll include some specific ideas in the next newsletter that comes out just before Valentines Day.

Is your workout wasting your time?

By Paul Scott, Best Life
According to this author, it's likely that most of what you're doing at the gym is nearly useless - and might be ruining your chances of getting fit. With all the fancy equipment and with all the desire out there to look good, why can't we keep the weight off? Why can't we stick to our gym workouts? Is it our fault? Or does the fault lie elsewhere?

"The health-club culture tries to create a dependency on machines," says Vern Gambetta, a trainer with 38 years of experience training professional and recreational athletes, and the author of Athletic Development: The Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning. "If you have a limited amount of time to work out, you're better off ditching the machine to do different kinds of body-weight and whole-body exercises. You'll get more caloric burn for your time spent." Critics also charge that a traditional machine-centric regimen has other downsides.

There is potential for pain in any workout. The key to preventing injury is to find your weak links and then modify your exercise to fortify your weak links, while also not putting stress on them, says Nicholas DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine and author of FrameWork: Your 7-Step Program for Healthy Muscles, Bones, and Joints. The most common strength-training-related injuries Dr. DiNubile sees are rotator-cuff problems, knee issues, and lower-back pain. While these are not exclusive to machine-based training, the nonfunctional movements that some machines require, coupled with heavy loads and less-than-perfect form, can cause problems - especially in men over 40 whose joints are getting creaky.

Research from the University of Kentucky studied 23 patients with knee pain to see what made them stronger: a step-up test or doing leg extensions. They found that both became stronger at doing leg extensions, but only those doing the step-ups became stronger at stepping up and functional activities. Chris Powers, a biokinesiology researcher at the University of Southern California, determined that the mechanics of the leg-extension machine doesn't simulate functional activity (e.g., walking, running, or going down steps). "The leg-extension machine puts a lot of strain on the knee ligaments and the patella," says Tim Hewett, PhD, a professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati. "I would never consider letting our athletes use a leg-extension machine."

Bottom Line: Machines are a great way to get your exercise routine started and can be incorporated into any routine ... but a risk in any exercise program comes from repeating the same motion over and over again. The fixed path of the machines can exacerbate the problem, and machine workouts don't burn as many calories as total body exercises.


To read the full story, click here for MSN Health and Fitness.

Get Ready to Hit the Slopes

from the American Council on Exercise

There are several ways to begin a sports-specific training program. The simplest way is to include several new exercises in your regular workout schedule.
For example, performing wall sits that require you to ''sit'' against a wall will help build up the isometric strength needed for the tuck position in skiing. Squats and lunges will build lower body strength for skiing tough terrain like moguls.

Exercises to work your abdominals are essential in creating a solid ''core'' for balance and agility.

It is important to train your body to withstand and absorb the impact associated with skiing. Plyometric movements, such as hopping from side to side, develop muscle power and strength as well as improve agility.

A great way to integrate these elements into your existing routine is to create a circuit training program, which involves rapidly moving from one exercise to the next. You can set up a circuit in any large room, or at your club's aerobic studio.

Try these stations to help you gear up for the slopes: use the slide for lateral training, perform one-legged squats to develop balance and strength, and use a step-bench platform to improve power.

To improve agility, create your own slalom by running between cones.

Click here to read and download the whole article at the American Council on Exercise.

Fit Facts are reprinted from ACE FitnessMatters magazine. Permission granted.