Suns out, buns out! Training the glutes the right way for the right reasons.

Who wouldn't like to have a nice and round back side for the summer or for the whole year or for the rest of your life. 

The gluteus muscles includes the gluteus maximum, medius and minimus and are one of the biggest, strongest and most functional muscle in human body.  We want them big, round and hard, boys and girls, old and young. 

The gluteus muscles does hip extension, abductions and adductions  among other things and  has many function,  from moving us around all day long to aiding in posture and helps to hold the upper body straight, stabilizing the hip. It's a mover and a stabilizer at the same time. Sitting a lot on it doesn't do much good to it, it wasn't made for that, actually makes it weak and lazy. An other thing that sitting does it gives us short hip flexors and the shorter and stronger are the hip flexors the longer and weaker are the glutes. The short and tight hip flexors are pulling us forward and the weak glutes can't  counter balance in the back and hold up straight. 

So why we need to train our back side to be nice round and strong beside aesthetics's is function, our every day mobility and posture depends on it. 

Because the lot of sitting we do on a daily bases, many people can't even contract their glute muscles, not just because of weakness in the muscles but because they don't have the neural pathway to do it, in other words their brain doesn't know how to do it. If you don't use it, you loose it!! 

First thing you have to do is to learn how to do standing body weight hip extensions, abductions and adductiones, floor bridges or ball bridges. After mastering these exercises and making sure that our brain knows what to do and how to contract the glute muscles we can progress to cable hip extensions, abductions, adductiones and maybe sg leg ball hip extensions, this is more challenging but can be done. From here we can go to squats and lunges, step ups and split squats with body weight and then adding weights to it and than progressing to hip trusts with heavy weights for strength. And that is how you get the nice and round back side with a lot of function and strength-:)))

Exercise videos:

 Strengthening the glutes and stretching the hip flexor at the same time.

Swiss ball bridge or hip extension.

Standing hip extension, adduction and abduction.

Cable hip extension, abduction and adduction.

Sg leg swiss ball hip extension.

David's hard core park core 2 work out

An other beautiful spring day, David and me headed to the Van Courtland Park for a hard core body weight work out. I only had my stick, also called the torturer  devise :-)) and an athletic band with me.
I did some soft tissue work with the stick on his calfs and IT Bands and then warmed up with some body weight lunges and torso twists and then he did bear crawl and side plank with a twist for core and then a full body body weight work out.
I want to show you that you don't need anything, not even a gym or dumbbells to have a  good work out. All you need is a pice of  green grass a bench and a bar for the pull ups and of course desire to work out in a beautiful sunny day :-))).

Warm up:

4 way lunges  3X 4

Lunge with a twist 3X 3

Core:

Bear crawl 2X 10

Side plank with a twist 2X 12

Full body:

Bench jumps 3X 8

Decline push ups 3X 30

Assisted pull ups 3X 10

Bulgarian split squats 3X12

Burpees 1X 10

Stretch 

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee

David's hard core track core work out

Sunday afternoon me and David and his girlfriend went to Van Courtland Park's Track in the Bronx to work out. It was a really nice and sunny day here in New York City, so I tough it's perfect to train in the track. The track is a good 10 min walk from our place, so we had the warm up walking there and did some more dynamic stretch and core then a full body with TRX and body weight exercises in the track.
You don't need a gym to work out, all you need is a park or track, a nice day, some fresh air and willingness to do it :-))
Here is David's hard core track core work out:-)))

I used the golfers stretch to stretch the legs, torso and shoulders a little bit. Did the duck walk to loosen up the hip joint more.


Warm up:

Golfers stretch 3X side

Duck walk 1X 20

Core:

Side plank 2X 1 min

Inch worm 2X 10

Full body:

Squat jumps 3x 12

Elevated push ups 3x 30

TRX row 3X 12

TRX sg leg squats 3x 12 

TRX prone hip flexion 3X 12 

Stretch 

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee

David's 3 months make over week 12

            FITNOX TAKES ANY CLIENTS TO ANY GOAL !

3 months ago David come to me and said I want to lose weight, get fit and be healthy, I do anything you say :-)). So this is how we started at 219 lb and 25% body fat and low back pain ( had disc surgery about 4 years ago).
David's goal was to lose weight, get fit, be healthy and get rid of the low back pain, what he had even after the surgery. My goal was to make sure he reaches his goal :-)) and help him develop heathy eating habits, love and passion for regular exercise and make lasting changes in his lifestyle that he can stick for the rest of his life.
3 months after let's see how much we accomplished: he is 25.5 lb lighter and his body fat is down to 19%, if you remember we started with 12 push ups, now he can do 30 and wasn't able to do any assisted pull ups 3 months ago, now he can do 8, a full hour of hard core work out and only have back pain when the weather is going to change :-))). He already got a membership to a gym and promised that he is going to work out 3 times a week and keep up the work that we started.
My other goal with David's make over was to show anybody how easy it is to lose weight in a healthy way without any magic pills or surgery. All you have to do is decide it and put the work in it, go on a diet that you can keep for the rest of your life, eat food not junk, lots of fresh veggies and fruits, good, healthy fats, lean and clean protein and drink a lot of water. Make regular exercise a part of your weekly routine, have a good night sleep and lough a lot :-))).
Thats all it takes, I did it 6 years ago, David did it now and a lots of other people, YOU can do it,too.

If you had  start it 3 months ago, this could be YOU :-)))



Before                                                                                             After 

                                                                 

 Good job and Great success David !!!!!!

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee

David's Make Over week 11

David's last week was an other great success, lost 2.5 lb, so he is 193.5 lb, 25.5 lb lighter then 11 weeks ago. He might not be able to hit the 30 lb in 3 months, but come pretty close to it, which I think deserves a big Congratulations, he did a really good job with the diet and exercise, too. He has no sugar carvings any more, if he is hungry between meals snacks on raw, unsalted nuts, moves a lot easier, less stress on his lower back and knees and developed a lot of  good habits, like buying only foods that is good for him, planing and preparing the meals for himself, regular exercise on a weekly basis and drinking a lot of water.
Here are this weeks workouts:
Foam roll and dynamic stretch to warm up, core and full body.

Core: 

Ball roll outs 2X 15

Plank on the foam roll with leg lifts 2X20/alternating

Full Body:

Modified deep squats with upright rows 3X15

Decline push ups 3X15

Assisted pull ups 3X7

Sg leg squats 3X15/side

Standing tube biceps curl 3X15

Stretch 

Stay tuned for next weeks workouts!!!

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee

David's make over week 10

Last week David lost 1 pound, so he is down to 196 lb, 23 lb in 10 weeks.

This week we are doing again a  high intensity interval training with kettle bells and body weight . Only 5 exercises -beside the 2 core exercise and the warm up- but 6 set and between 10-20 repetitions.

We  started with the regular foam rolling and warm up, back lying torso twist and modified leg raise, then we did the core exercises, ball roll outs and plank, then 6 sets from the following 5  exercises: double arm swings, double arm snatches, deep squats with over head press, assisted pull ups and ball hamstring curls. He started with 10 reps from each exercises then did 12,14,16,18 and 20.

 Right after the work out David has a vegan protein shake for dinner, to help his body to recover and  build muscle.

Core:

Ball roll outs 2X 12

Plank 2X1 min

Full body circuit: 6X 10-20 

Double arm swings /Double arm snatches/Front deep squats

Assisted pull ups

Ball hamstring curls

30 Push ups 

Stretch 

Stay tuned for next weeks workouts!!!

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee

Csilla's make over week 7

You can't always measure progress on the scale and even if you don't see any results for a while you just have to keep doing the work and believe in it. Losing weight is not only diet and exercise but a mental thing, too. Being over weight and eating empty calories for a long period of time it makes the body hold on to the body fat and every calories that we put in our body because it goes on starving mode. We have to give the body real food filed with nutrient to be able to go off from starving mode. Sometimes people hold on to their weight mentally, it's not easy to let it go, especially if you don't know why are you holding to it. It helps a lot to find out the real reason behind your weight.
The weight is coming of from Csilla slowly but she has great progress on the tread-mill and exercising. She is getting a lot fitter, stronger, healthier even though it's still hard to stick to regular breakfasts and drinking water, and moves a lot easier.
She is running on 8.5 mile/hour on the tread-mill for 30 sec and only needs 1 min recovery time and back to 8.5 for another 4-5 intervals, compared to 5 mile/hour less then 2 months ago when we started.
This weeks exercises were a little bit more dynamic, we did a proper warm up and then did the core and full body exercises in on set without any breaks between reps and had only 1 min break between sets and did 3 sets.

Warm up:
Back lunge with a twist

Mini band side walk

Full body circuit:

Corkscrews  3X 12/side
Plank 3x 30 sec hold
Band swings 3X 15
Band snatches 3X 15
Band squats with over head press 3X12
Jumping jacks with bar 3x15

Stretch

Stay tuned for next weeks workouts!!!

www.fitnoxnyc.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/FitNox?feature=mhee