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Workouts That Help With Endurance

Workouts That Help With Endurance

Published by on March 10, 2023 | Leave a response

The workouts at ISC in Sacramento, CA, include ones for strength, balance, flexibility, and endurance. The types of endurance workouts most people immediately think of are cardiovascular endurance workouts. Those increase the ability of the lungs and heart to provide oxygen for the body. There is another type of endurance. It’s muscular endurance, that’s the ability to work the muscles for long periods without tiring them. Both types of endurance workouts are important. Some exercises focus on cardio endurance, while others focus on muscular endurance. There is a group of exercises that focus on both.

Walking can boost your cardiovascular endurance.

Exercises that increase your heart rate for a longer period, such as running, walking, swimming, and cycling, can train your body to increase the intake of oxygen. They boost the performance of the heart and lungs, improve circulation and even build strength in the muscles you use. Cardiovascular endurance training can help lower blood pressure, while increasing heart health and reducing the potential for heart disease. Continuously modifying the intensity of the activity from high intensity to a recovery pace is called high intensity interval training—HIIT—and can get faster results than steady-state workouts.

Muscular endurance allows you to contract muscles against resistance longer.

You’ll be able to do more repetitions of each strength-building exercise when you build muscle endurance. Squats and push-ups use the pull of gravity and the weight of the body as resistance. As you build muscle endurance, you can do more repetitions and, in most cases, adjust your body position to make the exercise more difficult. A bent knee push-up is easier to do than a regular push-up. As a person develops more muscular endurance, they can do more bent knee push-ups and ultimately switch to the traditional push-up that’s harder.

Many workouts build both muscle and cardiovascular endurance.

You can turn your strength-building workout into a workout that builds both muscular and cardiovascular endurance by making it a circuit training session, where you move quickly from one strength =-building exercise to another with little rest between each one. You can time circuits and challenge yourself to cut the time for each round of exercises. Making your workout a HIIT session, where you modify the intensity and speed, is another way to combine the two. Doing kettlebell workouts also builds both types of endurance.

  • You can add speed to your resistance exercises or weights to your cardio workouts to build both cardio and muscle endurance. Arm and leg weights can test muscular endurance and so can carrying dumbbells and swinging your arms vigorously as you walk or run.
  • Including explosive movements in your strength-building workouts can boost both cardio and muscle endurance. Frog squat jumps, squat thrusts, burpees and tuck jumps are a few examples.
  • Building cardiovascular endurance requires strengthening of the respiratory muscles, such as the diaphragm. Improved respiratory muscle function allows deeper breaths and increased oxygen intake.
  • Running is often used to build endurance and can help muscles improve their performance when doing other tasks. It increases PAP—post-activation potential—which increases how long you can perform exercises for endurance.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Healthy Meals For Any Time Of Day

Healthy Meals For Any Time Of Day

Published by on February 25, 2023 | Leave a response

Are you trying to lose weight, gain muscle or just become fitter? It doesn’t require a special diet, but it does mean you have to eat healthy meals and snacks. Diets don’t work because they’re too restrictive and you can’t stay on them forever. At Team ISC in Sacramento, we help you use foods that are easy to find and good for you and ways to include them in your daily meals. It’s all about making smarter decisions when choosing food, not starving yourself.

You can eat pitas filled with spinach and feta scrambled eggs any time of day.

Whether you’re eating a sit-down or on-the-go breakfast or lunch or want a filling supper, the spinach and feta scrambled egg pitas will do the trick. Thaw, drain, and squeeze dry frozen spinach. Add a pinch of salt and heat until it’s steamy and then add 8 beaten eggs. Cook until the eggs are soft curds and add 1/4 cup crumbled feta, sprinkling pepper to suit your taste. Once the eggs have become firm, scoop it into a whole wheat pita that’s cut in half. Before adding the eggs, you can spread tomato pesto inside the pita, sliced tomatoes or lettuce.

Build a burrito from the fridge.

Burritos aren’t necessarily healthy. It’s all about what you put in them and the type of burrito you use. If you want easy meals that you can adjust based on the time of day or your food preference, burritos are a go-to option. Chop up ingredients and keep them in airtight containers, ready to use. Chopped lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers—red, green, spicy hot or bell, it’s your choice—-refried beans, chicken or eggs. Use healthier options for the wrap, such as whole grain, chickpea flour or cassava flour wraps. You can add eggs, chicken, thinly sliced lean flank steak, or go vegan with black beans. It’s a meal you can adjust to your taste and the time of day.

Salmon fits into any meal plan.

You can’t go wrong by adding salmon as your source of protein. It is loaded with nutrients and high in omega-3 fatty acids. You can even use canned salmon to speed up the preparation. Salmon stuffed avocados combine canned salmon with celery and parsley, then topped with a dressing of Greek yogurt, lime juice, mayo, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Before stuffing the halved avocados, scoop a tablespoon out of it, mash it and add it to the salmon mixture, then stuff the halves. Simple recipes for any meal can be salmon and eggs, or salmon and asparagus with a side salad.

  • Oatmeal may not seem like an “any meal” type of dish, but you can make this heart-healthy food for any meal. Try mixing in Parmesan cheese and topping with spinach and poached eggs for a quick lunch.
  • Keep essentials on hand and ready to use in combinations for any meal. Don’t limit any ingredient based on the time of day. Mushrooms, eggs, Greek yogurt, avocado, sweet potatoes, kale, kiwi and black beans are a few of those.
  • Don’t forget healthy snacks. While you want meals to be easy, you want snacks to be even easier. Have individual serving-size packs of nuts, fresh fruit and vegetables already cut and ready, dip, cheese and hard-boiled eggs ready to eat.
  • If you want more guidance, At Team ISC, we can help you learn the foods that are best to help you reach your goal or provide you with a meal plan that has recipes and even a shopping list.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Is Being Addicted To The Gym A Bad Thing?

Is Being Addicted To The Gym A Bad Thing?

Published by on February 10, 2023 | Leave a response

Being addicted to the gym can be good or bad, depending on how you act on that addiction. If you love going and don’t miss a session, then it’s good. However, if you love going so much that you workout intensely for long hours every day, it might not be to your benefit. You can work out too much. What happens then? You actually lose ground, make exercising more exhausting and lose muscle mass in the process.

Doing too intense of strength-building workouts can deplete your body and muscle tissue.

One area of exercise that requires close attention to intensity is strength-building. When you workout, you cause microtears in the muscle tissue. As those tears heal, they build bigger and stronger muscles. However, it takes a couple of days for the healing process, which is why you should only do strength-building on the same muscle groups every 48 to 72 hours. Not only will your muscle tissue not heal, but those microtears also cause stress on your body. Stress can affect the proper functioning of the immune system.

Stress fractures can also occur when you do repetitive exercises.

Runners often face the problem of stress fractures, especially if they’re doing too much running, too soon. Stress fractures are tiny cracks in the bone. The repetitive pounding of the foot on the pavement puts them at high risk. Repeated jumping also can cause the same problem. Stress fractures are the most common in the foot and the lower leg, so if you’re into cardio, switch up to different types of workouts and include low-impact ones in the mix.

True exercise addiction is real.

If you go to the gym and ignore other important areas of your life, focus all your energy and thoughts on getting ready for, going, or recovering from exercise, and are unable to limit your time at the gym, you may be suffering from exercise addiction. Like any addiction, it can take over your life to the point where you don’t feel like you have control. Exercise releases neurotransmitters that make you feel good. They’re the same as drug addiction. If you feel like you have to workout, it may be the desire to trigger that reaction.

  • Identify whether you simply love your day at the gym or have a real addiction. The number of days you go, the amount of time you spend and your intensity level will tell a lot.
  • Skip working out for a short time if you feel you have an exercise addiction until you can take control again. When you go back, limit the number of days and time you spend.
  • Studies show that people with other types of addictions, such as tobacco, alcohol or drugs, and people with anorexia, bulimia, or body image disorder can lead to exercise addiction.
  • Signs that you’re working out too much include exhaustion, anxiety, depression, frequent illness, difficulty falling asleep, and a dramatic increase in resting heart rate.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Why You Should Use Gloves When Lifting Weights?

Why You Should Use Gloves When Lifting Weights?

Published by on January 25, 2023 | Leave a response

Part of building muscles is lifting something heavy. For most people, that means lifting weights. You see it in almost every gym in Sacramento, CA. Some of those people use gloves, while others use their bare hands and chalk up heavily. There are good reasons for either choice. Your hands get sweaty and gloves hold that moisture. They require frequent washing, so the fibers break down faster. Some people have a skin reaction to the moisture holding gloves, and they can make skin conditions already occurring worse.

There are also good reasons to wear gloves while lifting.

One of the main reasons to wear gloves is to protect the skin. If you lift weights regularly, it can cause blisters and over time, the build up of calluses. Gloves help protect the hands. It can prevent the small blisters that can occur when lifting weights and reduce the pressure on the hands that occurs when lifting. It puts the work back onto the chest and back muscles, as it increases the capacity for pressure on the hands.

You’ll have a better grip when you wear gloves.

Hands sweat and that sweaty grip means they can lose their grip. Whether you’re lifting barbells or dumbbells, the problem with losing grip can range from annoying to downright dangerous. You’ll have a more consistent strong grip without the need to constantly chalk up during your workout when you wear gloves. It makes the workout go smoother and keeps you safer in the process.

Gloves add hand support.

Just like a lifting belt adds more support to protect the back, gloves provide support around your wrist. That helps protect the hands and the wrist, improving your lifting movements. It keeps the hands stable and acts like having an extra tendon or ligament in the wrist might behave. Since it makes it more stable, it also means you can hold the lift longer, improving the strength of the grip and the strength movements.

  • Chalk is messy. It sticks to the hands, but the rest of your body is sweaty, too, so it gets a good dose of chalk. It also lingers in the air, making breathing more difficult.
  • Make sure your gloves have wrist straps if you want to be stronger. Wrist straps distribute weight not just to the fingers, but forearms as well. They let you lift more than bare hands alone would allow.
  • Be prepared to replace gloves frequently. Most will get worn away after a few months. Shop carefully for the quality you want and look for ones that are breathable, comfortable and supportive. Fit is also important.
  • Use different gloves for different purposes. Each type of glove provides a different level of support. Know your reason for buying the glove. Is it callus protection, padding, wrist support or just sweaty palms?

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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Is Your BMI Really A Good Measure Of Your Health?

Is Your BMI Really A Good Measure Of Your Health?

Published by on January 10, 2023 | Leave a response

You’ve probably heard the term BMI at the doctor’s office or being discussed on health oriented shows. BMI is an acronym for body mass index. It uses the relationship between your height, gender and weight to draw a conclusion about how healthy you are or aren’t, based on whether you fall into a healthy category, extremely thin, overweight or obese. It’s a quick way to measure your health, but not always accurate. While doctors often use it, they get to see the patient and don’t rely strictly on the index. Insurance companies and others often use it and do rely heavily on it.

If you have a lot of muscle mass, you might be labeled overweight or even obese.

If you’re extremely muscular, such as a competitive body builder, you might be labeled as overweight or obese based on the BMI index. That can cause life and health insurance rates to increase, since the underwriters don’t have the option of meeting you in person. It often requires a picture to show your build. Why is the BMI so inaccurate in this case? The answer is simple. Muscle mass weighs more than fat does per cubic inch. So, if two people were the same height and weight, the one with more muscle mass would look thinner. Or, if two people wore the same size clothing and were the same height, but one had a higher ratio of muscle mass to fat, the muscular person would weigh more because of the extra muscle tissue.

Some people have a larger frame than others do.

You’ve probably heard the term, “big-boned.” While most people use it inaccurately, there are differences in bone structure. Some people have larger, denser bone structures. However, it only makes a difference of a few pounds, but those few pounds can push you from a healthy BMI category to one that’s overweight. It won’t add 20 to 30 pounds, so it doesn’t make much difference for most people.

It’s not the ultimate word on your overall health.

If you depend on the internet or the blood pressure machine at your local pharmacy to be your doctor, you need to switch physicians and go to a real health care professional. Identifying your state of health requires more than just your BMI number. Physicians use it as a quick way to alert them to look further into potential problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea and other weight related problems.

  • If your BMI went from healthy to overweight or to extremely thin, it’s an alert to health care professionals that you may have an issue. It’s another way BMI usage can be beneficial.
  • One measure of health that’s more accurate than BMI is measuring waist circumference. People with a higher waist circumference, even though their BMI shows healthy, are more at risk for a serious condition.
  • RFM is almost as simple as BMI, and far more accurate. RFM is a ratio of height to waist measurement. It’s 64-(20x height/waist circumference) for men and for women it’s 76-(20x height/waist circumference).
  • In approximately 80% of the cases, BMI does identify weight issues. That still makes it a good tool for doctors, where they can see the patient and have access to other information.

For more information, contact us today at Team-ISC

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