Right about now, you are probably thinking that you know all those things are healthy. Well, then why aren’t we all doing them? We use many excuses. We are too busy, too overcommitted, too tired, no time to cook healthy meals, etc. I challenge these excuses as follows:

Too Busy.
Do you work FULL TIME? If not, there is nobody controlling most of your day, except you. Keep a diary for a couple of days. You will probably be able to find several pockets of time in your day once you do this. If you work, this is a bit harder. You have someone controlling blocks of your time. Review your day. Could you get up earlier, perhaps even a little earlier? Do you have any “flex time” where you could sneak in a bit of cardio? Do you have a favorite TV program that you watch? Do you watch the evening news? Could you watch the news or that program from the cardio area at the gym instead?

Too over-committed.
We all commit to things we do not want to do. Review these things and see if there are things that you do not need to do as well. This is also something you should do with your kid’s schedule. Today, there are more obese kids than there have ever been. Yet, kids are also more over-committed than ever. Are there activities that they do not enjoy? Maybe they could drop those in favor of some outdoor play?

Too tired
When was the last time you saw your doctor? He can rule out any medical reason for being tired. If he has, then look at the other steps first. The body is an amazing machine. If you feed it the right fuel and exercise, you usually have abundant energy.

No time to Cook Healthy Meals
Please! This is not really an excuse. There are so many options here. Try cooking on the weekend and freezing. Try buying precut vegetables and prewashed bags of salad. Pick up a cooked, roasted chicken. Chop up veggies on the weekend and put in a Ziploc bag. They can be thrown in to a stir-fry with precooked chicken, precooked fish (or the leftovers from the roasted chicken above).

As we approach the holiday season, we rely more and more on these excuses as demands on our time get greater and greater. . I want you to be healthy and live a long life. Please find a way to be honest with yourself about your behavior. Once you do that, you can make a plan to keep these excuses at bay.

Many children participating in sports do not receive ANY fluids. They should be encouraged to drink before, during and after exercise. Thirst is not a good indicator for many children, so you should stress that they have fluids. Dizziness from dehydration is a serious symptom. You should seek medical attention if you are dehydrated to this point.

Dehydration can also be a symptom of diabetes so discuss any symptoms of dehydration with your doctor. He can determine if you need further testing. He can also give you information on preventing it again in the future.

For athletes, performance and power are lost when you are dehydrated. This is common sense. Your body is going to put its energy into protecting its vital systems. Marathon runners condition themselves on their fluid requirements because they know their performance is affected.

If there aren’t any facilities, bring along your “emergency workout kit”. This fits in any size suitcase so if you don’t think you have room, consider dropping some of your other items (you don’t need 10 shirts if you are only going away for 5 days.) People who travel regularly are very masterful at cutting down on what they bring. Take a lesson from them. If you always come back from vacation with lots of clean clothes, you are packing too much. Drop some of that weight in favor of things you will use, like workout clothes and your “emergency workout kit”.

Here is what I mean by the “emergency workout kit”. It consists of:
- a yoga mat
- one or two exercise bands
- your workout shoes
With those items, you can perform a very basic routine in any hotel room. (Japanese and European rooms can present a challenge but it is still possible)

The exercises are simple. You can do squats with a press (using your band.) You can do push-ups, walking lunges, tricep dips and all kinds of ab work. Use your imagination, you may just ENJOY IT!

A great personal training routine starts with an analysis of YOU. What are your goals, your medical conditions, your specific weaknesses and strengths.

There is nothing that bothers me more in the gym than someone paying for personal training and not getting professional training. As a consumer, you should demand the following from your personal trainer:

1 – A unique workout to you — If they don’t make one and keep notes on you – they are shortchanging you

2 – A copy of your workout if you want — You should be able to get a written copy so if you need to or decide to “fly solo” for a while, you can.

3 – An analysis of your strengths, weaknesses and goals and a benchmark. This will usually be your weight, but also measurements (if you are comfortable with that), fat analysis and posture and movement analysis. This should also be a medical history. If you have high blood pressure or other chronic condition — IT IS CRITICAL you disclose that. A trainer that does not have you fill out a medical form is not professional. Here is why:

- A person with high blood pressure needs to have their workout adapted. They have a lower maximum heart rate which requires a different measurement than cardio machines provide. They also need to not do isometric exercises.

So really — there are so many great trainers out there and a lot of really “fly by night” ones so use these as guidelines to get the most personal training, results and safety for your money.

David Hansey
NASM Certified Performance Enhancement Specialist
NASM Certified Sports Fitness Specialist
NASM Certified Personal Trainer

Do you enjoy watching professional sports? Who doesn’t! They make it look so easy. Whether it is wondering how someone can even hit a baseball going that fast, never mind make it an accurate hit or whether it is hitting a golf ball with such grace that it just sails in the air and goes 300+ yards. Have you ever noticed how EASY it looks for professionals? How do they do that? Is it their raw talent? Their professional training? Well, those both help but there is something much simpler that they all have too. It is something that improves your game and prevents you from getting hurt. It is something called perfect alignment.
Perfect alignment is what allows professional golfers to be so graceful. Their alignment is transferring the power from their legs through their torso to their arms to the club head. Professional golfers are not necessarily stronger than you. They are just conditioned to use alignment to ensure the maximum amount of force is transferred through their body. And that force transfer is not limited to golf. You see it in any sport that involves hitting, throwing, kicking, etc. So that would be almost all sports. Do you play soccer? That force transfer is how you get the power from your hip to your foot (without destroying your knee). Do you play tennis? Force transfer is what gets the power from your hips and torso to your racquet.
Is there a way to check your alignment? You bet! A board certified personal trainer has the skills to do what is called a posture and movement assessment. This assessment will show all of the tight or weak muscles that are throwing your body out of alignment. There are a few indicators that you have alignment issues. Have you ever experienced tennis elbow, golf elbow, knee pain, lower back pain when golfing or any joint pain during or after sports? Then, it is almost guaranteed that your alignment is off. Still not sure? Well try this part of the movement assessment yourself and see. Stand with both feet on the floor facing forward. Bend at the knees into a simple squat. Do your knees turn out, turn in? Do you lift your heels, bend at your waist? Do your feet turn out or in? These are all signs of imperfect alignment. Basically your body is making an adjustment for a weak or tight muscle somewhere and by doing so it is affecting your alignment.
So maybe by this point you say who cares. Poor alignment leads to not only poor performance but a dramatic increase in the chance of injury. So if you don’t care about getting better at your game and you don’t mind getting hurt, then don’t worry about it. For everyone else, there are ways to correct it. Focus your strength training and stretching routine on correcting the items that are affecting you. This means an individualized training program specific for you. So if your feet turn out and put pressure on your knee, you do stretches to lengthen the tight muscles that make you do that and you strengthen the weak muscles that support your knee that are allowing you to fall out of alignment.
Once you focus your strength and stretching program to correct your imbalances, you will see improvement in your game. You will also be preventing injuries from overuse and poor mechanics. I have seen golfers who find the “key” by improving their alignment and not only add 50+ yards to their drive, but improve their accuracy. And they end up leaving the golf course without the achy lower back and sore knees that they used to have.

David Hansey
NASM Certified Performance Enhancement Specialist
NASM Certified Sports Fitness Specialist
NASM Certified Personal Trainer

I see many people at the gym on a daily basis that consider their abs solely as a visual item if they consider training them at all. And while that may be nice, the muscles that make up your abs, your core, are a whole lot more important than just as a source of beauty. Your core consists of 29 muscles that surround your middle like a girdle. Its function is not cosmetic. Its primary function is to provide support and protection for your spine and to hold your body upright and to protect many of your internal organs.

In everyday life, a strong core protects you from those injuries where you can’t believe you just got injured. Like the pinching pain in your back when you got out of the car. Or that constant ache from helping your friend move a sofa. It also protects you from much more serious pain such as a herniated disc or a hernia. And as you age, it also helps you prevent slips and falls which are major causes of life changing injuries for seniors.

In sports, a strong core is critical regardless of your sport. It offers basic protection for sudden move changes such as in tennis and soccer. It also offers stability protection from sudden stops such as a football tackle. It also protects you from twisting and forced twisting movements such as hard tennis serves and golf drives.

But it is not just for protection that you should consider core training for your sport. The body is a finely tuned machine and the core functions in almost every movement. Athletic performance with a weak core is like an automobile with a powerful engine and plugged fuel injectors. You don’t get the most efficient amount of power delivered to perform accurately and quickly. Speed is decreased in many sports when the core is weak. Swimming and sprinting are two examples where there is a significant speed difference when core training is done as part of a regular training routine.

Play a game where throwing is important? Like basketball, baseball, football? Well, a strong core with make you throw farther and more accurately. Play tennis? Have trouble going corner to corner and making sudden changes? Guess what, you can run and run and run for training and never make as much difference on those missed balls as you can make by adding core strength training to your routine. Play golf? Want a longer, more accurate drive? Well training your core is scientifically proven to add dozens of yards to the average golfer’s drive.

The examples of how core training can help your sport are endless and there are dramatic scientific studies regardless of sport. If you are training for a sport and ignore your core, you are setting yourself up for injury. So whether you want to prevent injury or increase performance, core training is really a no-brainer to add to your routine.

One of the things that always works is exercise. Exercising gives you more flexibility and more strength. And stronger muscles, especially in your core, support your spine and prevent pain — that simple.

Now, if you are not sure where to start, it is critical like with ALL PAIN, that you visit your doctor. I cannot stress that enough. And I stress it because I have people ask me on a daily basis in the Douglasville gym where I am a personal trainer about this pain and that pain. And well, only your doctor should be diagnosing pain. So really, go there first and then look at the exercise and training options that are good for your back.

And if you are still unsure how to perform the exercises, then a few personal training sessions are a good place to start!!