The best exercise!

Hi folks,

As a trainer people always ask me what types of exercises are best? If you’re slaving away down the gym & putting 100% in to that class then you want to make sure it's blood, sweat, & tears well spent right?

If you’re training for a certain goal such as increasing sport specific performance or training a particular part of the body then yes there are strict guidelines to follow. But if you want to stay healthy, fit, & get the whole range of benefits associated with fitness then there is one answer……holistic training! This means training the whole body, not splitting it up & working through the muscle groups, but performing movements that involve all muscle groups.

Your body is made up of fascia, muscles, tendons, nerves, & ligaments that act over your different joints. These have grown to perform best working in sequence with each other, each supporting the next. In fact is when body parts are isolated & worked intensely that you change their movement patterns, likely exposing them to injury!

So which exercise machine will burn lots of calories, increase muscular fitness, increase heart & lung health, flexibility & motor skills? Well non on any gym floor I’ve seen. Use your own body weight or grab a medicine ball and pull off a move that involves as many joints as possible across all three planes (forwards & back, up & down, rotation). Chances are it will look pretty funky so just get a trainer to make sure its safe, but there you have it – your own beautifully efficient exercise!

Of course, examples of these already exist such as a ‘squat-press’ or a ‘lunge-twist’ which are often known as functional exercises. Make exercise interesting & try them for yourself. It is precisely these exercises that I include in Occupational Fitness’s 'Workforce Workouts' to benefit your employee’s tasks. Please contact me for a FREE taster session!

Have a great weekend

James