Flexibility & Stretching

Hamilton Personal  Trainers at Phoenix Fitness Hamilton believe that flexibility refers to the range of motion of a joint or a set of joints.  Despite the importance of flexibility, many active people neglect to stretch.  Flexibility is joint dependent.  It is different for each joint in your body.  The range of motion around any joint is limited or controlled by a number of anatomical factors, including structure, pliability of the connective tissue, and the tension of the muscles which surround the joint.  Hamilton Personal Trainers will tell you that the muscular limit to flexibility accounts for approximately two fifths, or 40%; of the flexibility of the joint.  Obviously, it is this 40% that we are trying to improve by stretching.

Flexibility usually decreases with age and lack of physical exercise.  But this doesn’t have to happen!  Through a regular stretching program of about 10 to 20 minutes three time a week, you can maintain soft tissue (i.e. muscle, tendon and ligament) elasticity.  Women tend to be more flexible than men, which is partially because men generally develop more muscle strength and bulk.  This means that those who develop stronger and larger muscles should work hard to develop and retain their flexibility.

Stretching may enhance physical performance by increasing the range of motion of the joints.  Depending on your goals, stretching can vastly improve athletic performance.  But stretching is not just for track athletes, gymnasts and dancers.  As much as anyone, moderately active people need the relief from muscle tension and stiffness that stretching provides.  In addition, when done correctly, stretching feels good.  Hamilton Personal Trainers will also tell you that improper or excessive stretching may actually increase the potential for injury.  Obviously, then the idea is to stretch correctly and in moderation.

Hamilton Personal Trainers at Phoenix Fitness West Hamilton recommend,  NEVER STRETCH A COLD MUSCLE!!  One should stretch after a short cardiovascular activity such as jogging, walking, cycling or stair climbing.   At the very least stretching should be preceded by a less vigorous rehearsal of the sport or activity you’re about to do. The warm up gradually increases your heart rate, and raises the temperature in your muscles while increasing their blood supply, which helps prepare them for exercise and/or stretching to follow.  Stretching a muscle before it is properly warmed up may strain or tear it.

The greatest gains in flexibility are achieved when stretching is done after a workout.  This is because the muscles are very warm and are at their most pliable  state.  Ideally, stretching should be done both before and after your workout, but if you only have time to do it once, stretching after your workout is most beneficial (but make sure you do include a warmup of moderately intense cardiovascular exercise before engaging in strenuous physical exercise).

Principles of Weight Control – Part Three

Weight Gain and Weight Loss

The important point to realize about weight gain is that it occurs gradually.  It is physiologically impossible for someone to put on 2 (let alone 20) pounds of fat over night.  It takes months and years of “slightly too much food” and “not quite enough physical exercise” for the weight gain to occur.  Therefore you should realize that losing the weight (fat) can’t happen overnight either.  The only healthy way for your body to lose weight is gradually, no more than 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs) per week.  If you lose  more than one kilogram per week, it will be easier for you to gain the weight back later.  In addition, any excess weight that is lost (greater than one kilogram per week) will likely be lean tissue/muscle, which is not the type of weight you want to lose.

The body mass of most adults fluctuates only slightly during the year, even though a normal person’s annual food intake averages close to 900kg (1980 lbs.)  This fact is impressive considering that a slight but consistent increase in food intake can cause body mass to increase substantially if there is no accompanying increase in daily energy expenditure.  For example, if a person who originally weighed 75 kilograms ate only an extra 100 calories per day for 10 years (with no increase in energy expenditure through exercise), he or she would gain 47 kilograms, or 105 pounds in that decade (since each pound of body fat contains about 3500 calories).  On the other hand, if daily caloric intake was reduced by 100 calories per day by walking or jogging one mile every day, then the caloric deficit would be equivalent to a reduction of about 9.5 kilograms or 21 pounds of fat in one year.

Metabolic Rate

Unfortunately, though, it is not always this easy. First, a person’s metabolic rate can influence the  efficiency with which they store calories.  Metabolic rate in influenced by a number of factors, including genetics, hormone levels, climate or temperature, stress level, presence of disease or illness, and the proportion of adipose (fat) to muscle tissue.  Muscle is much more metabolically active than fat, which means that even when a person is resting, muscle tissue is burning more calories that fat (adipose)  tissue.

Thus, part of the reason people who are lean and have more muscle are able to eat more and stay slim is because their muscle burns off the extra calories they eat before the calories can be stored as fat.

It is clear that weight training is the best way to increase muscle mass, which makes it an effective means of increasing your metabolism to burn extra calories all day long.  Each additional kilogram of muscle tissue can raise your metabolic rate by approximately 100 calories per day.  Thus, an increase in muscle mass of 2 kilograms through weight training will result in an increase in metabolic rate of about 200 calories per day, which is equivalent to 73000 calories per year, or 9.5 kilograms of fat!