This is the single leg toe touch, very simple exercise here, very effective though. Okay. So what we want to do is we either want to find a box or a step up that you can step up onto, or whether it’s a step. Now let’s say you don’t have anything, any of those… I’m going to show you what to do first, and then I’ll show you what to do if you do have a box. Okay. So Single Leg Step Up to Toe Touch. It’s going to look like this if we don’t have anything, okay. You’ll actually drop down into a, like a reverse lunge here. So you drop one leg back and then you’re going to come up out of that and raise that knee up, keep that knee raised, and then you want to slightly bend and just reach down for your toes. Just like this.
Now let’s say that’s too advanced. You’re falling all over the place, doing that. To regress that, you can find a wall or anything like a countertop that you can grab a hold of, right like this. And you can practice both movements. You can practice going down here, coming up, kind of balancing like that. You can also then practice leaning down just like this kind of walking down the wall there.
Remember when you’re lowering yourself in that movement, it’s actually the hips that are lowering you. So that’s kind of how you could regress that if you didn’t have a step or a step or something like that available to you, or maybe it’s just too difficult for you to do on a step, start out utilizing the ground. And if the ground is still too tough for you, utilize a wall.
Now, how you do it. If you had a box or a step up, or I’ll just use this stability pad here, I would just step up on it. Raise my leg up, try to hold for 3 seconds or so, come down, reaching down here. Again, the same movement come up and do about 3-5 on each side, and then you would switch legs there on that step up. So again, you would step up, raise the leg, come down, just like that, just holding each position there. So that’s a single leg step up to a toe touch. It’s a great exercise for your stability and long-term health.
I’m gonna teach you guys the ins and outs of doing a McGill airplane. So why do you want to do this exercise? It is great for core stability. It’s very difficult to do one. There is a regression that I’m going to show you guys.
So first I’ll just show you the regression. So this is where most of you should be starting out. Okay. You’re going to balance on one foot here, be about a hand length away. Easy enough to where you lean forward. You can put both palms against the wall because that’s eventually what you’re going to do in this. So we want to stand on one leg here. You’re going to reach forward to the wall here, you’re going to reach back here. Now I’m just having a light, a bit of pressure here on the wall. From there, I’m going to open my hips up. I’m moving from the hips here, I’m not moving from my shoulder blades or anywhere else moving from my hips. And I’m just trying to open up to one side as far as I can. Once I can do that, I’m going to twist and go the other way. Now, when I’m doing this, I’m actually pushing my hip down. I’m pushing it down here. You’ll feel good stretch there. You want to push until it goes as far as you can go. So that’s the regression of the exercise. That’s really good for warming up and your core stability overall.
The next version of it, the more advanced version would be just doing it without any, any support with the wall. This is pretty difficult for most. So you want to grab again, just balance on one foot here, kick it back. Now again, I’m going to put my arms out by the side here, but I’m strictly moving from my hips, all my chest to come parallel to the floor here. Then I’m going to open up to one side. My arms will move, but I’m moving from the hips. Again, try not to fall over here. It’s going to challenge foot stability. And then we will go to the other side.
This is again called a McGill airplane, very difficult, phenomenal warm up exercise and one that you can incorporate into your daily life for improved stability in the core. And then some of the hips.
All right today, I’m going to go over the bird dog. It’s also known as a Quadruped. This is a phenomenal core stability exercise, one that is fantastic for long-term health as well. So starting position here, and I’m going to show you the easiest version. There’ll be three versions of I’m going to show you guys today. First will be the easiest version. Almost anybody should be able to do this one, a second will be a little bit more difficult for those that have been practicing for a little bit. And then the third will be for the most advanced, and that will be a little bit more difficult. And then I’ll throw in a bonus one as well. So we’ll actually get 4 versions today.
I’m gonna start with the easiest version here would be hands right under the shoulder blades here. We’re just going to kick one leg back and reach out with one arm. This right now… I’m reaching out with my hand and back with my leg, notice I’m not coming up with both of them. They are raising up, but I’m actually reaching out. And what we’re trying to do here is to keep the hips square to the floor is going to challenge your core. Then you would come back to the starting position and go the opposite direction. What we want to look for here is any imbalances.
If that becomes too easy for you, you can do just a little bit of variation here, reach out and then when I reach out, I come back in elbow to knee, and then I reach back out, that’s going to be a little bit more difficult there. So if I get really proficient at those and really good at those and they become easy, doing ten of them no, not dipping my hips and keeping them square to the floor. It’s relatively easy. I’m not breaking a sweat, we can go to a more advanced version, which would be from the hands and feet.
Now I do recommend starting out this advanced version against the wall. And this is my little bonus tip for today. So before you go full on bird dog or quadruped, you want to actually, you can use the wall as a support here to kind of help stabilize you. So the answer right under the shoulders here, you’re going to reach out in front of you to a wall, push it into the wall and then reach back here. And then you would hold for a few seconds and then back down.
Now, once that becomes easy for you, you could do the full bird dog version or quadruped version which would be hands around the shoulders, standing up tall. You’re going to reach out. Again, I’m reaching this way. I’m kicking back here, stabilizing, trying to keep my hips square and then back down. And then I’ve reached the other side, just like that. Again, that’s a bird dog also known as the quadruped, phenomenal exercise for your core stability, hip stability, and just overall health and longevity.
“You have questions? Hopefully I have the answers. In today’s Q and A, I want to go over a question I received from a member. They were asking, what should I do on the days that I’m not working out?… They said they typically go running or they’ll do a beach-body Shaun T style, higher intensity workout but they often feel tired or depleted afterwards, what should they do in that instance?
All right. So I’m going to get right into it. I’ve answered kind of, or hinted around this before, but I’m just going to come out and be very blunt about it today. Cardio is not going to take you to your fat loss goal if that is your goal is to lose fat. I don’t know specifically if that’s what they’re trying to achieve. So you always have to start your training, whatever program you’re going in with a clear, defined goal. And that needs to be communicated to the coach, to whoever. At EarthFIT, when somebody comes in, they sit down with me, they communicate their goal; that’s part of the process. I then tell their coaches their goals, and then we use the best scientific principles to get you to your goals. So with training specifically, I’ll just talk about fat loss because that’s typically the goal everybody’s looking to achieve.
First thing to know, you’re not going to outwork poor nutrition. Nutrition is going to play the largest role by far hands down, for fat loss. So if you’re looking to lose fat, you have to dial in your nutrition. Doing extra workouts is going to do nothing for you. It’s actually going to hurt you because it’s going to slow down your metabolism. Now, if your goals are to put on more muscle which also helps burn fats, then your off training days would look like one or two things.
(1) Either work on mobility because that mobility is thing and transfer over when you go into the gym to better performance, better strength gains.
(2) You could focus on sending a small muscle building signal, not too large of a signal to facilitate recovery, and then more muscle building growth. So what those workouts typically look like are short 10 minute. I like to use resistance band workouts, and you just do small movements like squats, you could do curls. If you’re trying to go for more of your arms, really, whatever body part you’re specifically trying to go after, or build up would be the one that I would suggest you target in those small mini workouts. Now, with those workouts, you do not want to overdo it. You keep the moderate intensity. You do like a five out of 10 on the intensity level. You’re just trying to again, send a small muscle building signal, facilitate some recovery so those muscles can grow. You’re sending the signal that says, “Hey, we need to get stronger”.
Now I’m going to talk about why running and things like that are not beneficial if you’re trying to get fat loss. So in here, we’re already doing enough cardiovascular activity to stimulate fat oxidation, build up your aerobic capacity. So that physiological adaptation is already covered by the training you’d be doing in EarthFIT. Running outside of here really also it’s going to do is slow down your metabolism, in my opinion. If you’re consistently already training 2-3 days a week, it’s just going to slow down your metabolism. You may see good weight loss for the first, you know, month or two, but after that, your risk of injury is going to increase dramatically. And it can slow down your metabolism because what happens is you run, that’s an endurance style activity or you do like a high intensity workout – those are all telling your body “We don’t want more muscle. We want to pare that down. We need to get lighter.” So it’s going to shed both… The studies will show typically when you run, you’re losing 50% muscle, 50%, fat. So really what happens is your body fat percentage actually goes up because you weigh let’s say you drop 10 pounds. 5 of that is muscle, 5 of that is fat. Well, now you’re actually in a lighter weight, and you still have a high body fat, your body fat percentage actually goes up because you took down the muscle that you previously had with it as well.
So I hope this clarifies things basically to summarize, if you’re training here at EarthFIT, I would recommend do mobility or a small muscle building workout. There are times and places to do more endurance training, but if you’re going for fat loss, that’s not going to take you there. Instances where you’d want to do more endurance is where you’re going to actually do it in endurance style events. So if you’re training for some type of race, or if you’re training to really just build up a better aerobic base, then that’s fine. Just understand it’s not going to take you specifically to fat loss if that’s your goal.
All right. I hope this clarifies things. I know there’s a lot of little long with it as usually when I get into the cardio topic, but that is all for today. Hope you found value in this video. If you did, give me a thumbs up. If you love it, give me a heart and as always stay strong.”
“I would highly highly highly recommend this program to anyone. Like I said, I’ve tried so many programs in a lot of different cities, most recently Boston, and I don’t think anybody has achieved what they have achieved here and what EarthFIT has achieved here in Beaufort, South Carolina so I feel like we’re really fortunate to have this kind of program here and I highly recommend you try it.
It’s quick, it’s efficient, it’s safe, and you’ll feel so incredibly good at the end of it. You feel amazing and you see the results and you… it’s not only physically seeing the results, but definitely mentally as well. You just feel better all over and again I highly recommend it.
Before I came to EarthFIT, I had tried a number of different gyms over the past 30 years, a lot of different programs and I’d love to mix it up. I did the crossfit thing, I felt strong but ended up hurting myself pretty significantly and knew I couldn’t go back to that but I had trouble finding a program that had great intensity that I could have fun with and still see a lot of results. You see results immediately to your body. I love to come here, you’re walking into a friendly environment, everybody knows your name, you get a nice greeting. It’s clean, it’s organized, it’s almost personal training and an environment where you can work of one another’s energy and push one another in the class. It’s personal training, because the trainers they know what you’re capable of as an individual, when to push you, when not to push you, they’re constantly on you for your form and you know, keeping you motivated.
I haven’t experienced a program that’s so quick, efficient, fun and you felt like you weren’t going to get hurt because that’s always a fear I think with anybody doing intense workouts and trying to change the body that you know fear of injury and here I really believe the trainers are so knowledgeable and they clearly have the great deal of experience and have gone through an intense training program themselves to understand exactly how to make this program as amazing as it is.”
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