“Hey everybody! Today, I’m going to go over an exercise I see done incorrectly all the time. One of the most popular exercises, one of the most beneficial exercises that you could do from anywhere. That is the Push Up. The most common error I see is people starting out in the wrong position. So I’m going to give you a quick video here, some quick tips on how to get into that perfect push up position. So you could do your perfect push ups every single time.
So you’re going to go down to your knees here. I like to make a T when I start my push ups, so I can bring my hands out to about shoulder height here, make a T (form).
So they come in line with your chest and then simply just fall forward here. My hands are right under my shoulders, though. If you’re doing push ups from the knees, you just stay here.
You could bring those knees back a little bit, kick your heels up to your butt and then go down. That would be a modified pushup. Or if you’re doing any standard push up, just go from the high plank here, hands stay around the shoulder blades. You go down and then press your way back up.
So again, you go from a T position here. So start out T hands, shoulder width apart, bring right to the chest, fall forward, make sure your hands are right under your shoulder blades. You can kick those feet back, or if you’re going from the knees, kick the heels up, go down and then press up as a quick little tip on how to get into the perfect push up position so you’re doing those push ups perfectly every time. And remember you want your hands right under those shoulder blades. I see a lot of people doing that incorrectly. That is all for today. Everybody, stay strong.”
“Good morning, everybody! Thank you for tuning in to today’s Q and A, and today’s Q and A, I’m going to go over how you can stay on track throughout the holiday season without gaining a bunch of weight and still being able to enjoy your family favorite foods.
Before we get into that though, I do have a huge, huge, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to so many of you that have been giving me support, asking me questions, showing me love. I really appreciate that. So you know who you are. Thank you to all of you. For all those questions I mean keep coming, I do have to apologize. It’s been about two weeks since I’ve gotten to the Q and A videos, The team and I were out of the office and then we’ve been working on very diligently and hard on special programs for clients in gym at EarthFIT here in South Carolina, and then across the country, the clients we coach remotely to bring them value, make sure they’re staying on track throughout the holidays as well. So if you have any questions, please make sure you’re dropping them in the comments below you’re messaging me on Facebook or shoot me an email. I’ll either answer them directly to you right then and there, or I’ll make a video if it’s more popular topic like today’s topic.
So today’s topic usually gets presented to me in a variety of ways, but more or less it’s along the lines of, “Hey Sam, between December and February, I gained about 30 pounds. How can I not do that? But also I want to be able to enjoy the holiday season. I want to be able to have some of those nice sweet treats on my favorite holidays and enjoy, actually enjoy the time that I have with my family. How can I do all of that? Is it even possible?” So I’m going to give you a few simple steps on what to do so you can have both those things. You have that health and wellness as you’d like and deserve, and you can have those treats that you like.
So step number (1), We have to build momentum rolling into the holidays. What I mean by momentum is, I mean our health and fitness momentum. We want to be in some of the best shape that we can be. Now, some of you may be thinking I haven’t done anything. Um, Thanksgiving just happened since then, I’ve been sitting on the couch. I’m just going to wait till New Years’ do not do that. Okay? A lot of people will do that and that’s where they access body fat goes on. If you can actually get up, start moving, even if you’re just starting your start from square one, you worked out in 20 years. If you start getting that momentum rolling for a couple of weeks, going into the holidays, that is going to mitigate a lot of the fat gain that you have throughout the holidays. And it’s going to keep you a little bit more focused throughout the holidays, which in turn will again, mitigate all the fattening that you have throughout the holidays and some of the damage that you’ve done through that. So step number one, Prepare yourself physically. So get up, start drinking more water, walking. If you’re not sure if you are starting from step one, you have no idea what to do. You can reach out to me and we can help you out. Or if you need to plan, we can help you out there. Okay… on how to get through those specifically with your fitness.
Step number (2), Know that there’s going to be stress, okay. There should be a lot of stress. And what stress will do to people is causing them to act, overeat. So going into the holidays, where there is going to be lots of stress, let’s focus on doing activities that de-stress us, that are healthy for us. So for some people that may be reading, it could be going fishing, things like that. We also want to make sure we’re focusing on our sleep during this time, because we don’t want that tip to compound and make us more stressed out, right? Because there’s gonna be things, family situations, loss of loved ones, things are gonna come up around the holidays that you know, really can bother us and can stress us out. Prepare for that, know that it’s coming and plan accordingly. Okay. If you prepare a little bit, you’re going to be a lot less stressed. So step number one was to prepare your body physically. Step number two is you need to kind of prepare our mind as well for the stress that’s coming.
Step number (3), When the holidays actually approached that big day comes, how should you eat? What should you do? Just follow this simple framework. Okay? Eat your protein sources. So your meats, things like that in the morning with your fats, lower fat though, you don’t want to overdo it still in the morning and at lunch. And then in the evening after dinner, that’s when you can break out the sweets. So that’s when you break up the pies, things like that. A lot of times you’ll have this false belief that if they eat higher sugar foods or higher carbohydrate foods in the morning that they’re going to get up and they’re going to run around, they’re going to burn it off all day. That’s not what happens. We all have that Uncle that eats a pie for lunch and then passes out on the couch, right? That’s more or less what happens when people eat a lot of sugar. And then also what it does is it spikes their hunger. So they’re eating more throughout the day. So the best strategy I can give you on those days as big holiday days that you know you’re new through your family, save the carbohydrates for the evening. And then the next day they’re right back on through whatever nutrition plan you’re on and just keep hammering it out there. So just to kind of recap… and a bonus I almost forgot, hydrate, hydrate that day more than anything. So drink training, drink at least a gallon of water if you’re a male, three quarters of a gallon, three quarters of a gallon of water if you’re a female, okay, you can drink more than that. Females, you could drink a gallon isn’t going to hurt you… You can get by on half it’s not gonna hurt you on those holiday days. If you do that, you will eat less, you will feel better physically as well.
So to recap, go into the holidays with the momentum. You’re just starting out. Start today. Don’t wait until after the new year’s okay. Start right now. Step number two, prepare yourself mentally for the stress that’s coming. Okay. Start enjoying those activities that you find relaxing. We want to keep those up going into the holidays because there’s going to be stress. There is for the majority of Americans right around the holiday. So you de-stress yourself. Step number three, make sure when the holiday approaches, that big day approaches, we’re saving the sweet treats for the evening. Okay. We’re cutting out the carbohydrates throughout the day. You want to save them for after dinner or with dinner later in the evening. Okay. And then make sure you’re hydrated. You’re properly hydrated. If you follow those steps, you will stay on track. I promise you. You’re not going to gain 30 pounds when you simply follow those steps. So let’s get that momentum rolling. Let’s start today. Everybody, stay strong. If there’s any way I can help you, please reach out.”
“Hey everybody! It’s coach Sam. Today I’m going to go over probably the most asked question I get from the moms out there and they say, Sam, “how do I get rid of my lower belly pooch? I had all these babies and now I can’t seem to get rid of this pooch.” Before I get into the correct exercises, they will actually tighten the waistline up. I do want to make mention that if you are over, if you have a very high percentage of body fat, doing these correctional exercises is not really something that you need to be focusing on right away. It will help in terms of functionality during your movements in life, and you can do them, but if you’re really wanting to have a flatter stomach, what you need to do is start resistance training and taking proper nutrition, okay?
Weightlifting, eating healthier, drinking more water. Those are the things that you really should be focusing on first but with that being said, this can help people, especially those mothers that have had children, because what happens is this muscle, the transversus abdominis, which goes around our waist right here and attaches in the back, it can get turned off when mothers are pregnant, because it expands to accommodate the baby that’s in front of their belly and then it will atrophy. And sometimes that muscle can get completely turned off. The mind muscle connection is no longer there. So it’s not really firing the transversus abdominis like I said, it goes all the way around. It’s like, think about like a belt. It’s not the rectus abdominis, which is those bulky six pack muscles. So training this is not going to get you that look in your abdominals. It’s going to give you a tighter waistline, a little tighter belly or on the pooch and it can help out with that lower belly pooch. I’m going to show you two ways that you could easily start to activate your transversus abdominis at home for all those moms out there looking to kind of tighten it up or really for anybody, if you haven’t even a male clients that has never done that. Something that I, when I started doing, I noticed my waistline sort of getting smaller as well.
So I’m gonna show you really quick here. The first exercise you can do is you’re going to stand up just like this. You’re going to breathe all the air out of your lungs. So you just breathe out and you can follow along with me if you’re watching this video. So we breathe all the air out of our lungs, and then tighten your lips up here, it’s going to be hard for me to talk to you and do it, but just tighten your lips up here and then let your belly hang, breathe in all there, still letting your belly hang, big breath in and then as you exhale, so blow, start to blow the air, take your belly button and try to pull it through your spine here. So pull up in and up and you want to tighten it up. And you’re still going to breathe through those tight lips. And you’re going to do this for about 10 seconds. So I’ll hold in and up, breathing through tight lips for about 10 seconds. You’ll start to feel and get a little bit tighter in there. So after you do that for 10 seconds, you can relax and you can rest for a few seconds and then go right back into it. You want to aim to hit that 10 times. So 10 seconds, 10 times through, once you get proficient at that, you’re pretty good at that you could take either a broomstick if you have one at home, or I have a dowel rod here I’ll show you with.
You’ll actually drop down to your knees and we could train it. Same breathing pattern, basically the same thing we did standing up, you’re just down on all force. The reason being this will be more difficult is because your organs kind of create a resistance against there. So doing this bullet, it’s almost like resistance training for this muscle. And then we’re going to use the dowel rod to kind of make sure our spine is staying in alignment. So with the dowel rod, I want it against the back of my head, the middle of my back and my lower back here. Okay. There might still be a little arch you could be able to figure hand through right there, not a problem. As long as it’s against those three points of contact, you’re going to go down on all force and then we’re going to do that breathing pattern again.
So we go down all force, make sure it’s staying against those patterns. We’re going to do the same thing. So let all the air out of my lungs, breathe in with close lips, letting the belly hang. And then as I exhale, pull in and up tightening up that core. Again, you would go for 10 seconds for 10 rounds. Once you get proficient at that, and you’re able to do that pretty consistently, you should be ready to start incorporating actually using your TVA, your transversus abdominis in regular core exercises, which I can explain if you have more questions on that, that’s more advanced and I could go through that in this video. You could start to do that as well.
So just to recap really quick, if you have a high body fat percentage, start with the basics, don’t… you could do that breathing the standing one, but don’t really put as much emphasis on it as you should with eating properly exercising regularly, getting plenty of water in and proper sleep. Things like that are going to give you more benefit than that. If you have been training and got those things down then you’re still noticing their belly pooch, try out that standing vacuum hold, and then you can go down once you get good at that, with the stick on your back, broomstick, whatever you have at home to those holds right there, that will actually tighten up your waist to get us not gonna make you blocky. They’ll tighten up your waist, working your transversus abdominis. Thank you to everybody that’s asking me questions as always. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below. I love to do a video and answer them for you. Thank you all for tuning in this Saturday. Everybody stay strong.”
Beaufort Fitness: How do I make that booty bigger?
“I am going to address a topic today that I get asked by a lot of the moms I train, they say, Sam, how do I make that booty bigger? What do I do for that? I’m at home a lot with my kids, I don’t have a lot of time to get to the gym. So here are 3 exercises and a quick little exercise routine you could do to get that booty a little bit more shaped up the way you want it.
So you’re going to go squat first. You’re going to squat. You do 20 squats. Okay. After squats we’ll go down to the ground. We’ll do a glute bridge. So we’ll just go straight up, hips up. I’m squeezing my glutes here the whole time. If that’s too easy for you, raise one leg up. As you come up, bring that leg down, squeeze. You’ll do 10 then on each side, just like that, squeezing the glutes. And then we will lunge, nice simple lunge here. You can either step forward and back like that. You could step backwards or… go forward and back without stepping in between, you will do 20 on each leg of that. Go for 3 times. And those booty should be on fire. They should be built up.
That is today’s question that I answered. Leave a comment below. If you want to see any of your questions answered or message me on Facebook.”
Beaufort Fitness: How do I get off all this weight?
Physical fitness is a state of health and well-being and, more specifically, the ability to perform aspects of sports, occupations and daily activities. It is generally achieved through proper nutrition, moderate-vigorous physical exercise, and sufficient rest.
If you have 40 pounds to loose follow this formula.
“Good Monday morning, everybody. I’m gonna do my first Q & A, one of the most common questions I get is from beginners weighing 40, 30, 20 pounds to lose… You haven’t exercised much before in your entire life. You didn’t play sports, you’re an average person. A lot of those people ask me, Sam, where do I even begin? How do I get off all this weight?
I give them the three simple W’s. They are walk, water, and weights.
If you just stick to those three things initially in your weight loss journey, you’re going to have tremendous success, you want to hydrate yourself, drinking that water. You want to get out, walk a little bit, but that’s not going to be all you could do. Eventually you will plateau in walking. So you need to add in some weight training, preferably full body weight training three days a week at least. I highly recommend if you’ve never done it, hire a fitness professional.
So again, for those that are starting out, stick to the three W’s again that’s walk, water, weights. Just remember those and they’ll be set on your fitness journey as always. If anybody has any questions, comments, anything, drop it below, or send me a message personally. Everybody have a great week. Everybody crush it.”
“Stress. The last one we’re talking about is reprogramming. But guess what? Stress is a way to reprogram the immune system. And it’s super important. So if you didn’t know, this exercise is actually stress, but it’s the healthy stress, right? This type of stress actually boosts your immune system when done correctly. If you overtrain, you can actually decrease your immune system to a point where you put yourself at risk. So this is why the science of training is so important.
So this is why when you come in, we adapt your body. Slowly. Adaptation is key to keeping a healthy immune system. As you train, you actually dip the immune system down. When you go home, you eat, sleep and drink water, and you replenish with the good food, the good substance. You’re actually now building your immune system at a higher level when it recovers, opposed to what it was previously.
So let me state that again. When you train you stress the body, the immune system goes down, you lose energy, glycogen, nutrients, et cetera. You go home, you take in good nutrients, and then you build yourself at a higher base level of immune system. The same thing happens when you use something like ice baths or cold showers. It does the same thing.
There’s what’s called hormesis. Hormesis is basically the stress response. It’s an exposure to an environmental toxin, which could be a little bit. So just a little bit of toxins can be beneficial. For example, they found that a little bit of radiation actually is good. And this guy named Schultz, a scientist found out that if he sprayed pesticide on yeast, that the yeast would die. If you spray just a little bit of it, the yeast actually grew, which got him to understand hormesis that a little bit of stress actually helps the body grow.
A little bit of stress of exercise helps the body grow. And as you continue, you actually build your stress response. So that’s why people can get ice baths for longer because they’re building their stress response. That’s why people can exercise for longer. So they’re building their stress response. They’re also building their immune response and immunity. So exercising will reprogram the immune system, cold showers, ice baths, help reprogram the immune system. We also already talked about removing and replenishing. So those simple things will make a big and massive impact on your body. I hope this helps. Let’s start with the challenge by just taking 22nd 32nd cold showers. You’re already exercising. If you can do that and increase, you’ll make a dramatic difference on your health and overall immune system.”
“Alright replenish. We went through remove. So if you remove the stuff that lowers the immunity, now we want to put the stuff in that builds it. And you may have heard me talk about vitamin C. Vitamin C is essential for the body’s process of healing, fighting off infection. We have to get our vitamin C from foods, and that’s also very challenging to do because you have to eat a ton of fruits and vegetables and greens, and most people just aren’t getting them today. So that’s why I recommend supplementing with Lypo-Spheric Liposomal Vitamin C that’s high quality because you don’t want to get the GMO corn. That’s actually bad, that’s one of the toxins that we’d want to remove that I was talking about in the previous video.
So replenish, we want high vitamin C. We want selenium, zinc, magnesium. These are vitamins and minerals that are going to boost immunity, help fight off infection, keep the body in a stable environment. And this is essential, essential for the body. There’s a guy who believes that most people are walking around with subclinical scurvy, meaning their vitamin C levels are super low. We do not create our own vitamin C. When sickness comes in, we need to increase the doses massively. And it’s very hard to get it through nutrition. So get vitamin C, goats… dramatically create more vitamin C in their body when they’re sick and this helps them fight off infection. So again, I can’t stress this enough, always have vitamin C available, take it daily, especially the more you exert yourself, the more you’re going to need. It helps with the formation of collagen, right? That’s what your skin is made of, your joints are made of.
So it’s, it’s super important. So now vitamin C zinc, selenium, magnesium at EarthFIT, we have a ReMag, which is a magnesium, but we also have ReMyte, which is loaded with minerals. And it’s something I highly recommend that every client, especially as you age, as your body, doesn’t absorb more of the minerals that you take advantage of. So that’s one of the ways you can do that. So vitamin C core minerals, clean fruits and vegetables. That’s what I recommend. This is what’s gonna replenish bioavailable.
When I say clean, I’m talking about no pesticides, preferably organic fruits and vegetables. In my book, I go into a little bit more depth on this stuff. So if you’re part of this, you have a chance to get in on the advanced copy. But this is just a simple breakdown of what you can do now to replenish. Juicing daily is a great way to get all the vitamins and minerals that you need. So vitamin C, ReMyte minerals or any core minerals supplement that you can take and then things like eating more fruits, vegetables that are clean juicing can be a simple and easy way to do it. All right, so that’s how we’re going to replenish the body and get the vitamins and minerals we need to boost the immune system.”
“Alright. So the first topic is remove. So this is the simplest. All you have to do is remove things that lower immunity, like for example, sugar, sugar lowers your immunity for hours sometimes days afterwards. So if you’re taking in processed sugar, your immune system is going to go down, so get rid of the sugar. Alcohol, alcohol is a toxin. When you metabolize it, it creates a toxin. It doesn’t get metabolized like other foods. It lowers your immunity. The first line of defense is going to be, removing the alcohol from the body. So no sugar, no alcohol. That’s the first thing. Then you can start to move on processed foods, things with additives, right? All these things are going to cause the immune system to have a response and not in a way that is good, meaning fighting off infection. It’s going to lower the immune system.
And so anytime we lower the immune system, we’re opening ourselves to infection. There’s about 1200 toxins that are put in our toothpaste, our shampoos that are banned in, for example, Europe, okay. These toxins are constantly being put on our skin, makeup, all that stuff. If you can remove as much of this stuff as possible, this is a much more in depth, longer thing, but you can start by researching, just look at the labels and then look at the labels. If you can’t read them, or they’re very hard to pronounce most likely they’re toxic chemicals. That’s a simple way of looking at it. So using as much natural products, removing the toxins that you’re exposed to daily, and we can start off with sugar and alcohol, right? Those two things right away. If you wanted to go more into the advanced method, start removing the processed foods, the junk foods and the chemicals that are in products that you’re putting on your body.
If you can’t put it in your mouth, putting it on your body is the same exact thing. Just think of all of your pores as this might be disgusting for some people, but there’s a guy I heard say this, that all your pores are like little butt holes and mouths. All right. So they’re excreting toxins and they’re taking toxins in. So that’s one of the benefits of exercising, which we’ll get into is that you’re sweating toxins out. So think of the body, the cleaner, it is the less mucus, the less acid is in the body, the more healthy you are and the better your immune system is. So that’s one step is remove. So remove the toxins, remove the sugar and alcohol specifically.”
“Peace EarthFIT family! Lev here, just wanted to take a moment to discuss the habit that will be… that we’ll be focusing on this week. And that is recovery. Recovery is so important and often understated and underestimated. If you don’t take time to recover, you’re not going to see the gains in the gym, you will not be able to replenish your energy levels. And over time, it’s really easy to deplete yourself and, for longevity, but also in the short term for your gains is super, super crucial that you take time to recover every day. And, um, so for those of you who are training, for those of you coming to EarthFIT, you have the blessing of having the BioCharger, the sauna, you got massage, you got breath-work and trainers, awesome trainers that are coaching you on how to recover and you know, breathe deeply. And for those of you who are staying at home, I wanted to share three different practices that I use for my own recovery. And they’re very simple. I challenge you to try one for at least 10 minutes every day for your recovery and doing awesome. Keep it up. Hope you enjoy this.”
(1) Body Scan
“Peace EarthFIT family! So in this video, I want to share with you the art of body scan. This is a very ancient practice. You’ll see it in Qigong, in yoga, in ancient Kemetic or ancient Egyptian meditative practices. And the goal of body scanning is to bring your awareness into your body. And, one thing that we understand as holistic practitioners and as health practitioners is that our mind and our body are not disconnected. That our mind extends into all the different areas in our body. They have different intelligences that are stored in different areas in the body. And so this helps to integrate all the different aspects of ourselves. It’s very simple. You can take just 10 minutes or as long as you’d like, there’s no time limit to how long you can do it. And, but you wanna really take at least 10 minutes. So we’re gonna start by just getting in a comfortable position, laying down on the floor, palms facing up towards the ceiling.
And we’re going to breathe, feeling abdomen and feeling your body as low as you can. You know, as deep as you can bring your breath, you want to bring it there. And as you breathe, you want to bring your, your mind and your awareness beginning with your, with your toes. You’re going to bring your awareness to your toes without wiggling your toe, without moving at all. You want it to be as still as possible, any impulse that your body has to move. You want to just observe it and you want to take note of it, but don’t move. Just try to use the power of restraint and just, just observe your body. So you’re going to start from your toes. Then you’re going to go to the knuckles. When your feet, then your ankle, then you’re going to go up through your legs, into your knee.
Then you’re going to bring your awareness into your hip. And then you’re going to bring your awareness up through your back, and then your awareness into your shoulders, your awareness into your elbows. Awareness into your wrist, into your hands, to your fingertips. Now back to your pelvic region, bring your awareness up to each organ, your intestines, your stomach, your pancreas, your spleen, your liver, gallbladder, your rib cage, using your breath. All you’re doing is breathing into those places and bringing your mind to those places, bringing it to your heart and your lungs, bringing it up into your face and into your head. And as you go to each area, we just want to relax that area and breathe into that area. And by the end of it, you will find yourself in such a deep state of relaxation and connection in your body. I wish you all success with this.”
(2) Self Massage “Beat The Body”
“Peace EarthFIT family! So in this video, I want to talk to you all about self massage and share with you all the techniques that I use to help relax my body. In my day to day, I do this daily and it’s very simple and it’s a concept called, beating the body. And no, we are not beating the body in a way that hurts the body and causes pain or bruising or anything like that. But we do want to stimulate the tissues in the body by just, you know, with a nice pressure – tapping, in massage you call this tapotement and with this tapping, you know, you can start real gentle and start to the more you can relax, the harder you can actually hit. And every time you hit the body, you breathe and you exhale. So we start off just… (Please watch the video) It’s really good to do on your organs, lower back, the kidneys. You can do it to your arms and you want to really just relax into the strikes and, you know find ways… Once you relaxed, you can actually hit with some force and it’s gonna feel really good, but you want to make sure you’re relaxing fully. So try and be able to touch every part of your body or every needy part of your body, and in case with this a lot of muscle tissue. You want to be able to reach as high as you can on your back. You can try different hand positions, some of you would like to do cupping. Some people use the fist. I like the fist as well as just the flat, flat hand also works depending on the area and the neck you know, you may want to try the fingertips, and just find ways to help your body relax along with this. So that’s one technique for self massage.
Another technique is I like to use glass jars and what you can do, you can wrap the jar in a towel, even better. Fill the jar up with some hot water and seal the jar, and then wrap it in a towel. And now here, you can gently do some, some self massage. They sell, they sell rollers, you know, and a lot of (workout source) That you can buy and basically you find the muscle that you’re tensing and you can just roll immediately out. It’s a great form of self massage. You can do this with tennis balls or lacrosse balls. Some people do even golf balls. That’s really intense, but, you can stick them in a sock and just you know, place them wherever, wherever it feels like it’s helpful. You can place it in your neck, roll on to it in different ways.
Yeah, real details or you can broaden the strokes. It’s a lot of different places. Just explore, get to know your body. Find those places that your body needs to release the tension, find the places where you hold the tension and relax into it. Anyway, try to spend 10 minutes and just go through your whole body and let me know how you feel.”
(3) Stretching
“Peace EarthFIT family! Just want to take the time here to share with you all 2 stretches that you can do in your day to day, to help with recovery, to restore your energy levels, to increase your vitality and to enhance your immunity in your body. So, the first stretch is a hip opener and a lower back release and it builds energy in the low back and in the kidneys specifically. We’re gonna find a nice, comfortable position with our sit bones on the ground spine, nice and long. Your feet do not have to be squeezed up close to you. They can be in just a comfortable position in front of you. We’re going to take our elbows and press our knees into the ground, and we’re going to initiate a movement of resistance. Wherein applying our own resistance onto our knees and the knees are pressing in towards each other. So it’s going to go like this. We’re going to inhale fully on the exhale, squeezing the knees in towards each other, resisting with the arm. When you come to the top, you’re going to inhale again, keeping that tension and on the exhale, pressing the knees back to the ground as the knees, continue to press up towards each other resisting and just really press those knees down as they’re pressing up. Let’s do it again. (Please watch the video)
All right. So the next stretch we’re going to come and we’re going to be working on our balance on the two sides of the body. And we’re working on lengthening the muscles all along the backside of the body. So we’re going to start by forward bending at the hips, leaning with the heart. We’re going to come down and if you can place your hands flat on the ground, you can bend your knees a little bit and just find a nice, solid position where your feet, your heels, your weight is in your heels and your hands distributed equally. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to walk a little forward and lift one leg up off the ground. In this position, we’re going to inhale, extending our leg and our head and exhale, straightening this knee, and lifting that leg towards the sky… and back. Let me try it again, inhale one more time inhale. Switch leg. Now, after you do both legs, we’re going to come and we’re going to lift up, opening our chest and then bending again from the hips here, sinking into our heels, lifting our toes off the ground.
For those who can’t put their hands on the ground, work with the chair. So you can do the same, the same stretches modified with the chair. So extending, standing the head and the foot, making it long working on your balance, breathing in on the exhale, extending that leg. I hope you enjoy these stretches. You will feel the effects immediately. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me personally, remember to spend at least 10 minutes going back and forth between the stretches in that order, starting with the butterfly stretch, and then going to the lengthening of the backside of the body stretch.”
“Hi everybody. This is Sam from EarthFIT you may notice when lunging or doing squats that your foot, you have a difficulty keeping your foot straight, no matter how hard you try. It could be your foot goes out to the side of pronates or it goes in. This could be a sign that you have limited ankle mobility. Now I’m going to give you a quick test, how to test for if you have sufficient ankle mobility. So what you want to do is grab a wall. I’m going to use the ramp right here. You just basically need something that’s flat all the way down. You’d be about 4-5 inches away. A good way to do this is you can take your fist, stick out your thumb. That’s usually generally about four to five inches. You want to take your shoes off so you’re either barefoot or in your socks and you just want to try and push your knee to either that wall or in this case, this rack. As you can see, I have some limited ankle mobility, due to ankle sprains that I’ve had previously.
So a good way to fix this is you get a band. If you’re at home, you could wrap it around a couch. Right here we’re just changing the rack right up a little bit…put it around your ankle. Just on or right above the bony part, those two bones that stick out in your ankle and you want to get a good amount of tension band so it’s really pulling back. You want the band to pull back and down. And then arch you’re back in this position, you’re just gonna push down on your ankle and try to really, really stretch out there and you should feel it right away. And then back, typically you do this about, for 20 repetitions, 5 sets throughout the day. If you’re preparing for a squat warmup, you know, you could do it 3-4.
So if that doesn’t, that doesn’t seem to help, you may have some tightness in your calves or around your Achilles. So you can get a foam roller and you really want to work these areas here and you want to take your time. A lot of people when they foam roll goes too fast. You just want to kind of work in there, find a tender spot, and you could flex your foot up and down or side to side. And roll in that out there.
Another thing you could do is get in a good stretch. I prefer the Combat Stretch. So you just keep this foot straight here. Take this knee brand behind and what you’re gonna do is you’re going to grab your toes and push your knee forward while I’m grabbing my toes. This is something you could do again, probably five sets, about 20 seconds. You really want to pull up on those toes and drive that knee forward. After you do these things. I would retest. See how my ankle mobility is improved. Like I said, this is something you could do daily or specifically before you squat or lunge.”
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