Hey, what’s up everyone, coach Jared here. So we all know warming up is an important part of exercising, but sometimes we’re limited on the amount of time we have to warm up. So today I’m gonna go over one stretch. That’s one of my favorite stretches that you can do. It’s actually called “The World’s Greatest Stretch”. I didn’t actually make that name up. It’s called that because of the fact you’re hitting so many major muscles, especially those ones that if you’re sitting at a desk all day, you’re getting those muscles nice and loose.
So what you’re gonna do is you’re actually gonna start in a high plank position and you’re gonna take one foot doesn’t matter which side you’re gonna bring it all the way forward in line with your hand. And then at this point, you’re gonna take that hand closest to that foot.
You bend at the elbow. You’re gonna kind of sink into that elbow and then rotate up nice and slow as far as you can back down again, doing it one more time, rotating back up.
Then when you come back down, you’re gonna actually take that hand. That’s closest to your foot, bring it on the outside.
Now, shift your weight over. Bring this other hand a little closer in, so your foot’s right in line in the middle of your body.
And then you’re gonna push back, straighten that leg out, getting that nice stretch on that hamstring sink back into it a little forward back again, getting that nice stretch in that hamstring, a little calf as well. Once you do that, you’re gonna walk it out back in that high plank position.
Now you’re just gonna do the opposite side. So bringing that left leg up this time in line with those hands, you know, bend that left arm kind of sink that elbow in the ground. Nice, slow rotation up as far as you can go back down, sinking that elbow, getting a nice stretch. One more rotation coming back down. Then you’re taking that inner hand coming on the outside, shifting that body weight over straightening that front leg out, getting that nice stretch on that hamstring, sink back into it. One more time back, getting that stretch on that hamstring and that calf and relax.
So if you’re limited on time for your warmups, that’s one of the best stretches you can do. I recommend implementing that into your warmup. If you need any help doing that, please come see me. So that’s again, they call, the world’s greatest stretch.
Hey everybody! You have questions? Hopefully I have the answer. In today’s Q&A I’m gonna go over whether you should eat low to no fat foods or just stick with the high fat foods, let’s get right into it. So this is a very commonly asked question. I have received it several times. It goes usually something like this, “Sam, when I’m in the grocery store, I’m not sure. Should I get the low fat food or the no fat food, or should I just go and get the full fat food?” I’ve heard it from every angle, on social media. Which one should I get? So I’m gonna tell you and my favorite answer, it depends. It really depends on your goals. Your tolerance is, where your macronutrients currently lie, what causes inflammation in your body, all these things. But I’m gonna give you a simple framework, to kind of think through whenever you’re kind of making this decision. So first thing, think about what your actual physical goals are in terms of your physical appearance. If you’re somebody that’s looking to cut weight, you’re gonna want to stick with a lower calorie type food. If you’re somebody that struggles to put on weight, you’re gonna want a bit more calories.
So the first thing that you do whenever you’re making this decision is flip it around to the back, look at the label. Typically you’d be surprised a lot of times you think a full fat food would actually have more calories because yes, grams of fat are twice as much as grams of carbohydrates and protein. But a lot of times there’s so much extra sugar and other things added in there that they’re not going to really be that much low calorie, lower calorie, I should say, than the full fat version of that food.
So take that into consideration. Another thing. Think about what you struggle with in terms of getting your nutrients in? Are you somebody that really struggles with getting protein? If you are then sometimes fat free options, actually they swap out the fat for the protein. So check the back of the label again, you should see a higher protein content. When you compare it to the full fat version, you also want to look at the ingredients. Is it something that has like a hundred ingredients, the non-fat version of things that you can’t pronounce, if it is then I probably don’t put it in your body, right? So those are the kind of things you wanna first look at the label. So that would be step number one. (2) And then you want to also, after you eat it, take note of how you feel a lot of times, things that have the fat extracted from them and are replaced by things that are highly processed can cause us not to feel that well when we eat it.
So look at the back label, then take note after you eat it. And then next time you’ll have a better framework for making that decision. So I hope this provides clarity around how to go about the low fat, no fat versus full fat dilemma. Stick to what your goals are, what is best for your body. Also all it takes is flipping it over, looking at the back and then auditing yourself. How does that food actually make me feel? Is it that much better than the counterpart? A few of my favorite, low fat kinds of foods are actually protein cheese. So that would be 0% fat Kraft cheese, that’s a nice substitute because instead of all the fat in there, they swapped it out for 9g of protein.
Another one is Greek yogurt, zero fat Greek yogurt that is very high in protein, very, moderate in carbohydrates and no fat in there. So there are viable options that are gonna mess you up, but really, I think this topic is overblown, as long as you’re looking at the back, know what your goals are, you can make an informed decision. So that’s all I have for today’s video. I hope you found value in it. If you liked it, gimme a thumbs up. If you loved it, gimme a heart and as always, stay strong.
Hey EarthFIT fam, Coach Reid here. Today I wanna talk a little bit about cramping. So those muscle cramps, after you workout, they can be annoying, they can be really painful as well. But I wanna talk about a little bit about how to alleviate them and potentially just get rid of them completely.
I know I deal with them after working out sometimes, especially after a heavy leg day, at night or, you know, later that day, my muscles will start to seize up and just talk a little bit about how I like to alleviate that.
So the first thing you like to look at is water. Are you drinking enough fluids? So making sure you’re taking enough water before, during, and after your training and the rest of that day.
The second thing I like to look at is your electrolytes, like your micronutrients, potassium, and magnesium. Specifically for me, I’ve found out that magnesium is the key to really alleviate those cramps. Like I recommend taking 250 milligrams everyday, at least to really alleviate those cramps. When I do that on a consistent basis, I’ve experienced much less cramping throughout the day after a hard training.
So again, if you’re experiencing those muscle cramps at night or after that hard training, I highly suggest looking at your magnesium intake and your water intake. So if you look at those three things before you go to other alternatives for cramping, if those three things are taken care of, you should alleviate most of those cramps.
Hey! What’s up everybody? Coach Andrew here. I’m gonna go through how to strengthen your grip. Obviously, during our strength days, especially in our workouts, what first is the go A lot of times is our grip. When we’re doing deadlifts, our rows in our TRX, etcetera. So this is a routine you could do on your off days as a warmup or even a cool down after your workout to increase your grip strength.
So, first is, we’re gonna stretch out the top forearm muscles right here. That’s step number one, I’m gonna get down on the bench here, half kneeling position. My forearm is gonna be on the bench here. I’m gonna use my other hand and bend my palm, my wrist down towards the bench and hold this position in a good stretch for about 30 seconds each arm. So I want a good stretch on the top here.
Next stretch, a little more advanced coming over here to a pad or the floor. I’m gonna put the tops of my hands down on something soft, and I’m going to get a quadruped position, hands and knees, and then lean back lightly until you feel a good stretch on the top of the forearms here again, hold for 30 to 45 seconds. That’s gonna stretch those out cause these are tight for a lot of us.
Next is our strengthening routine. After that, I’m gonna grab a dumbbell or resistance. Get back on this bench here. Palms are up to the ceiling. Now with that, weight, I would start with a little bit lighter to get a feel for it first. And then you can move up in weight. I’m gonna put the edge of my wrist on the edge of the bench, and I’m going to curl just my wrist up to the ceiling, squeeze at the top. So I’m activating the top of the forearm here with my palms up again, to the ceiling right back down. And to rep it out 10 to 15 reps per arm. Get that activated there.
Little bit more advanced for some people who wanna advance this exercise. I’m gonna grab the preacher curl, put some light weight on it to start off with, to get used to it. Both hands are up to the ceiling. I’m gonna go down in my wrist extension and coming all the way up and flex all the way up, squeeze and come right back down here. That’s all the movement that you’re gonna do to strengthen those forearm muscles.
Last but not the least again, more advanced here on the strengthening front. I’m gonna grab some plates and I’m going to… with my fingertips, do my farmers’ walks, slow controlled, really getting my fingers and my wrists strong. Getting these in there. I would say 30 to 45 seconds and a few rounds on those carries that should be a good starter routine for you.
Nothing beats a squat. Welcome back to coach Jeffrey squat series. This is gonna be video number five. Today. We are gonna be learning how to wall squat. I’m sure a few of you have either done these already in group training, or you’ve probably seen a few people doing these, do these wall squats, take a little bit of pressure off the knees and make sure that we have correct form here, especially for beginners who are just learning how to squat, or maybe we had an injury in the past. Now we’re gonna lineup here with our ball here on our lower back. Make sure our chest is up. We’re still gonna be going down here for 90 degrees. I want you to keep your legs in line and that weight over your ankles. Drive back up. We’re gonna be focusing on our quads here, and we’re gonna be focusing on our glutes.
Now that ball you see, it’s gonna be rolling behind me here. You’re gonna push your weight against it the entire time. No matter how deep you go with that ball, once you push your weight against it, it’s gonna be able to bring you back up. Now we can still stop. Or the goal here is gonna be to get down to 90 degrees. You can go a little bit lower if you’re a little bit more advanced. And another way that we do advance these squats is we grab a little bit of weight here. We can even do a goblet squat there with our weight, and then we can also do our kettlebells on the side.
Now this is probably the most common way that you’ve seen ’em done in our gym. We’ll go ahead and hold ’em by our side here, make sure our chest is up. Shoulders are back still keeping all of our weight in line over our ankles coming right down all the way through, down to the bottom to 90 degrees. And then you’re gonna squeeze those glutes. Come right back up to the top.
Now, once again, y’all this is gonna be our fifth squat series videos for wall squats. This is gonna be one that you see in training. One that we can try out, if you train in one of our group trainings and you wanna try these out just to see how they work. We can definitely do that. Just let me know, but we can always go up and wait there. We won’t have to stop at body weight and we don’t have to stop at just thirties. We can always go up higher now. Thank y’all for tuning in again for squat series, video, number five, be on the lookout for squat series number six.
Nothing beats the squat. Welcome back to my squat series. This is Jeffrey. Again, your coach here at EarthFIT. We’ll be going over another squat variation for y’all today. Today, we’ve got our dumbbell here on the floor. We’re just gonna be showing off a little bit of a Goblet Squat today. Most of you should be used to these from our training. We do implement them probably about once a week, fairly easy to do so you should know exactly what we’re talking about here. If not, I’ll break down everything for you so that way you know, by the end of this video. Now with our goblet squat, it’s gonna be a little bit different here. So we’re gonna have our weight up at our chest. It’s just gonna be holding one weight instead of multiple we’re having weights on our back. Now we’re gonna keep that weight up high at our chest level.
The entire time, our feet are still gonna be about shoulder width apart. We’re gonna make sure that when we’re driving down, we’re driving down off of those heels and we’re gonna be pushing those hips back as we go down the entire time.
Now, some things that we’re gonna be looking at as far as mistakes here, common mistakes with our goblet squats. We want to make sure that our knees aren’t caving in to overcompensate for the weight.
Wanna make sure that our back isn’t rounding as we go down.
And we wanna make sure that we’re keeping our chest up to make sure that we are balanced the entire time.
The higher you go up in this weight here, the harder it is gonna be balanced at the chest level and be making sure that we’re going down at a good depth here as well. Same thing with our normal squats, we’re gonna make sure that we get our depth down all the way parallel to the floor.
So go ahead and pull this up again. Make sure that when we pick it up too, we have our chest up and then we’ll drop all the way down to 90 degrees. Now these are a little bit easier to implement wherever you are. So the cool thing about goblet squats. Even if you’re at a hotel, you’re at your house, you have weights that maybe aren’t as high as you normally go. You can always hold that weight at your chest, unless it’s a crazy amount, maybe 150 pounds, you should be able to hold that weight at your chest to go down here. Now this is gonna make our core stronger. We’re still gonna have increased mobility, increase stability, make sure our joints are getting stronger. So the benefits of these go without being said, so still make sure that we’re implementingour squats y’all. Make sure that we’re avoiding our common mistakes here with our squats. And I wanna make sure y’all tune back in for another squat series video here soon. We appreciate y’all for tuning in for the Goblet squat today. Thank you again. Nothing beats a squat.
Hey EarthFIT fam! Coach Sam here. Today, we’re gonna go over how to correct one of the most common imbalances that we see as trainers inside the gym without further ado, let’s get right into it. So the imbalance I’m gonna talk about today happens in the lower body. It happens when we squat primarily, and that is a knee collapse. So a lot of times what it looks like is we’ll squat down and then we have a knee come inward, or it could be the other knee or both knees sometimes.
And then we’re really struggling to get up. You’ll see a lot of shaking with that. So if this is you, this is a perfect video. We’re gonna dissect specifically what causes those issues. Then I’m gonna tell you how we can go about correcting them with simple warmups. So let’s get right into it.
So the knee collapse is the scientific name for that would be a valgus knee collapse. That’s where our knees kind of collapse inward as we squat. It doesn’t have to be both of ’em. Like I said, it could be one. Now what causes this? I like to look at above or below where the imbalances occuring. So in this case, it’s gonna be on our knees, right? The knee is shaky for this specific issue. It’s either an ankle issue, immobility or stability in the ankle or in the hips, glute area, specifically for the valgus knee collapse we commonly see underdeveloped, lateral glute muscles, gluteus minimus, TFL kind of… even the gluteus maximus, meaning your side butt muscles aren’t firing. So the knee collapses. These are the muscles that are used to turn it out. So we’re gonna want to definitely activate those, strengthen those.
And we don’t wanna neglect the footer ankle because a lot of knee problems do stem from, the foot or the ankle. So for that, we’re gonna wanna make sure that we’re mobile. We have full ranges of motion. So some specific drills you could do, if you find yourself in this position, having this knee collapse, you could do these three things before you train and kind of test and see how does your squat feel? So, first thing before we do any mobility, we always want to test before we retest. So the first thing that I’d have you guys do would be do two to three squats, just body weight. Okay. See, are those knees collapsing inward? Okay. If they are, then you would want to proceed to the next kind of set of drills. So if you have that knee collapse, the first thing you can do, I can show you the advanced version and the basics.
DRILL 1 (Basic): We’ll start with the basics. You can grab something at home. If you wanna do this, or in the gym. Just grab something that can keep you nice and stable. From there, we’re just gonna look at our toe and we’re simply going to do the alphabet with our foot. So all the way through the alphabet, and then switch, make sure you do it on the other side.
Now, if you’re noticing, “Hey, I really can’t pull it up or go to the side with my ankle..” That’s a clue. You’re definitely gonna want to put some extra emphasis on that drill then.
DRILL 1 (Advanced): Let’s say you’re an advanced client. but you still feel like your ankles or knees are giving you problems and you have good balance. You can simply balance up here. This is gonna not only work this foot. Now we’re working this one at the same time.
So again, you just do the alphabet standing on some type of an imbalance surface, whether that’s a stability pad, or even like outside, you could do it in the grass or like on loose gravel or something like that. So that’d be the first thing that gets our ankle. Nice and fired up.
DRILL 2: Second thing. We’re gonna wanna work on those lateral glute muscles, they’re responsible. There’s tons of ways you can do this. My favorite way is 7 way hips. I’ve made videos on this. But if we’re specifically trying to target that, we can simply just lay down on the ground here, point your toe down, and then you come up, you wanna do about 10 of these and then we can do small circles either forward. And then after we get to forward, do them backwards for 10, um, that you will start to feel right here in the lateral glute a pretty deep burn, make sure you switch and do the other side.
So after we’ve hit the ankle up, getting that nice and mobile we’ve hit the glute, lateral glute up. It’s nice to fire it up.
DRILL 3: Then we can actually go into a squat. So in this case, I’m gonna say it was my, my right knee. That was collapsing inward. You could take this band. You don’t need a really thick band. And this is one, obviously you perform in the gym. You could put that around your knee there or above or below, don’t put it directly on there and then you just squat. So it’s actually gonna push my knee out that way. Right. But what I have to do is I have to fight that. I actually have to try to almost bring it in like what’s happening with your knee and that will activate these glute muscles. So that’s three things that you could do if you’re noticing that your knee is collapsing inward while you squat, otherwise known as the valgus knee collapse.
If you have that issue, we gotta address the foot. We have to address the lateral glute. And then it’s always a good idea to kind of get into the actual squat position. After with the band after you’ve done those three drills, I would have you try it again. See, are we still shaking? Has it improved? and then rinse and repeat, remember with mobility or whenever we’re trying to correct an issue, more in this case actually is better. So that is all I have for you today. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you loved it give me a heart, if you liked it, give me a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.
Hey, EarthFIT fam! Do you have problems with walking lunges? Today I’m gonna go over the three most common mistakes that we as trainers see here in the gym. I’m gonna go over how to correct those. So let’s get those lunges right. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
So the walking lunge, great exercise, very most people, very familiar with this great strength building, great for the glutes, great for the quads, hamstrings, all those lower extremities… Fantastic! Now there are three common mistakes that I see that often lead to knee pain while we’re performing this exercise. So today I’m gonna kind of go cover what those three most common mistakes are and how we can avoid those. Okay.
(1) First, mistake number #1, I often see when people are lunging, first of all, they’re just not going low enough. This is the easiest one. So in a lunge you wanna be able to get to your end range of motion. So my end range of motion is all the way down to the turf. Okay that’s not for everybody. Sometimes people can only, you know, go up to this if, if they have hip impingement or what not. So to correct that… how to get lower, you’re gonna really wanna work on your ankle mobility and hip mobility. If you feel like it’s blocked, like I step out, I can only go to right here. Okay. Ideally how low you should be getting, we wanna make this go nice and even here at a nice parallel level.
So you’re thigh should be parallel to the floor when you lunge. And then we press up through our heel and we go to the next step. So not going low enough would be the first one. How you correct that we really need to work on one, just performing the movement with less weight can assist in that and then really work on your ankle or hip mobility. That would be if you cannot get low enough.
(2) Second, most common mistake – Knee traveling way out past the toe. So it goes way out here. This results usually, two reasons this usually happens. The most common one is when people do have weights, we just kinda let the weights come forward as we step, as you can see, that’s gonna put extra pressure and really make my knee travel out past the toe. Another common mistake why people would do that is that we’re taking way too long of strides. And we’re getting off balance a little bit, so it’s really easy to correct both those issues. The first one, just pull your shoulder blades together.
Remember every exercise you do can be a posture, improving exercise if you’re doing it the right way. So chest up tall, pull those shoulder blades together, and we’re gonna step. And you’ll notice these dumbbells aren’t going to move when I do that, as opposed to, if I’m really loose, kind of have ’em in front of me, they’ll easily just kind of swing out and carry me forward. So that’s a simple fix for that. A stepping out too far, a really simple fix for that is gonna be up all the way up and then down just like that. If we slow down the majority of the time, that issue will correct itself. It’s when we get in a hurry, which leads me right into my third mistake that I see most people do is simply, they’re just going way too fast that can lead to your steps being all over the place, that knee coming out past the toe.
So sometimes we’ll just see people kind of sprinting, just like going as fast as they can banging their knees off the ground. Remember we want to control and really own the movement.
(3) So, the third mistake, the way to fix that, just like I showed you in the other one, bring the knee up a little bit higher in between reps and control it unless you’re instructed to go really fast. This is really a good, appropriate way to take your time doing lunges, because it’s not only a strength building exercise. There’s lots of stability, and control components in that, which are great for all those lower body extremities.
So to recap, three most common stakes mistakes I see people make. One, we’re not carrying good posture, right? We’re letting the knees come out in front of our toes. That comes from the posture or going too quickly.
The last one I just covered going way, way too fast. And then the first one that we covered, and really a common one, not getting low enough. All you have to do to improve that would be to work on your ankle or, or hip mobility and lighten the load really works to deepen that range of motion, not only in walking lunges, but also in split squats, and regular squats as well will improve those. So those are three most common mistakes. That’s how to correct them. Hope you guys found value in this video. If you loved it gimme a heart, if you liked it gimme a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.
Hey EarthFIT fam! Today, I’m gonna cover an exercise that we frequently see done incorrectly in the gym. And that is a backward sled drag. Let’s get right into it. So whether you’re train here at EarthFIT or train in another facility where you implement a sled, a sled drag is a fantastic movement, it’s really good for strengthening the lower body, but also correcting upper body posture. Really get us kind of using a lot of these muscles we don’t activate in daily life. There are some common mistakes that we’re gonna cover those today. Okay. The first thing, whenever we go up to the sled and we’re about to perform a sled drag which would look like this, right? You come back just like that. That’s how you do a sled drag; it all starts kind of with your setup.
You wanna make sure that your hands aren’t way down here and we gotta lean forward to get ’em.
They also shouldn’t be way up here. It’s more with a sled drag, It’s more towards the top, but it’s not all the way resting at the top. Okay. Like this. So make sure we grab that nice and firm here. Grab this too. Actually, squeeze that handle there. From there, drop the hips. Okay. Drop the hips. Like you’re being a squat.
And now actually, when I’m in this position, I’m squeezing my glutes forward just a little bit engaging my core. So from right here, this is a good starting position. Also squeeze the shoulder blade together. I’m not when I’m performing the movement, I’m not just kind of grabbing onto it. Only focusing on my grip. I’m actually trying to pull my shoulder blades together the entire time. Just like similar to a row. We wanna imagine there’s somebody with their hand behind their back or like a pencil.
And I’m really squeezing back there. So we grab it right here, squeeze right here. And then we might keep a tall chest, like not stress. The importance of keeping a tall chest. As you do this, you do that by pulling back the entire time. Okay. We want this to correct. Often what we’ll see is we will kind of come up to it. Their hands will be on top. They’ll be hunched over and then they’ll start like a drag like this and get hunched forward. Remember, grab firmly here, squat down, chest up.
We’re going back short quick steps. In most instances, if you have something like a TRX handle, this can actually make this movement a little bit easier. Same concept. I squeeze this. I sit down, I lift my chest, pull my shoulder blade back together and then walk backwards. So if you just take away anything from this video, grab this firmly, pull those shoulder blades back. That’s gonna fix most people’s issues with this movement. So those two things grab the handles firmly, squeeze the shoulder blades together, lift up the chest. All right, that’s all I have for you guys today in this video, hope that you guys found value in the sled drag. if you liked it, you wanna see more of these. Shoot me a message. And gimme a thumbs up. If you loved it, shoot me a message and gimme a heart that is all for today as always, stay strong.
I wanted to make a quick video for you guys and highlight some of the benefits of the infrared sauna. So before we get into that, I kinda want to explain the difference between a traditional sauna, a steam sauna and the infrared sauna.
So if we were at a steam sauna, that’s usually a lower degree. So that’s like a steam room. That’s gonna be around a hundred degrees with a hundred percent humidity. So it can feel very, very warm.
A traditional sauna, like the ones you put coals on, or you’ve probably seen, um, those usually go up to 195 degrees and those heat up by heating all the air in the entire sauna circulating around you. And then obviously you get some of the impact.
We have here is an infrared sauna, which actually heats you up directly. The panels are meant to heat the person up inside. So you’re getting direct heat. This sauna actually only goes up to 156 degrees, but I promise you, if you go in there, it’s gonna feel a lot warmer. So let’s talk about three of my favorite benefits. Some that I’m not gonna mention today are also of things like it’ll help you burn calories. It will give you de-stress, it does a lot of different things, especially if we start talking about the things light therapy can do, which ours does have all kinds of different lighting therapies.
But my three favorite things that this does is first:
(1) it detoxifies us. So a lot of times, um, just throughout life, we can get metals built up in our body, and this is great at reducing some of those heavy metals, sweating those things out.
(2) So it’s gonna detoxify you and that’s gonna make your skin feel better, which is my second favorite thing. It’ll give you that glowing skin, it can really smooth those of you that have had problems with acne. Even if it was a long time ago, you have that scarring. It can help a lot of this. It’s going to break up a lot of those things and gonna be sweating out all those toxins. It gives you nice, cleaner looking skin.
And then my favorite, actually my favorite, my number one reason I like to do this is for (3) recovery. What this is gonna do is it’s gonna keep your entire body up. It’s gonna relax some of those overly tight muscles. So they’ll be more pliable. You can stretch them out afterwards and increase your flexibility and mobility. So those are my three kinds of favorite things. The sauna does a whole lot more. I highly recommend you guys get in and try it if you have not, just like everything else, consistency of use is gonna enhance the benefits here. If you use it one time, you’re probably not gonna get the best benefits. You’ll get a good swipe on, and you’ll feel pretty good the day after a feeling of de-stress. But to get maximum benefits out of this, you wanna do this about two to three times a week and we don’t need to do it long. You could do it just for up to 30 minutes. And that is plenty. So that is all for today. I hope you guys learn something about the sauna. If you have any more questions specifically about the sauna, feel free to reach out to myself or the staff here at EarthFIT Lady’s Island. We’d love to answer those questions for you. That is all I have today for you guys and as always stay strong.