The Truth About Your Health and Fitness

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As a new year begins, many people consider their health and fitness goals to be top priority.  This blog is for persons seriously considering a health and fitness lifestyle change, especially boomers (ages 53 - 72) and seniors (ages 73 and older), for 2012.

I mentioned in a previous blog, in my opinion, the first steps toward a health and fitness lifestyle change is to (1)  get over the fear and  (2) increase your flexibility.  Have you been absent from an active lifestyle for 2, 10, 20 or more years?  Step 3, take your time.

3.  Take your time.  I will use the word “lifestyle” many times.  A lifestyle change usually pertains to only the person living the life.  The lifestyles you choose should not be specific to someone else’s goals.  The idea that becoming fit is a lifestyle, is to understand that a lifestyle change happens over time.  There is no rush.  The goal is to get in shape and stay in shape.  “Get Fit Stay Fit.”

This time of year, many of you made resolutions and generally speaking did not keep the resolution through January.  Why?  You did not consider your resolution as part of a lifestyle change.   As you become more health and fitness conscious, you will begin to appreciate timing.  You will begin to understand your body speaks a language and, listening to your body speak will work in your favor.  As with any lasting relationship.

If you hire a professional to assist with this lifestyle change and your trainer takes you through a painstaking workout within the first two weeks “because you need it” fire your trainer.  Why? Your muscles are not ready to engage pain, yet, especially, if you have not been active in 2, 10, 20+ years.  The trainer does not understand you are making this a lifestyle.   You are not training for a competition, and you would like to enjoy this new lifestyle, and you would like to come back next month.

4.  Enjoy the burn.  As you decide to embrace this conscious lifestyle change, your body will go through the process.  The process will include improving your flexibility,  and building your body’s functional systems (i.e cardiovascular, muscular, circulatory).  As I mentioned, your body sends messages.  One of the first messages it will send, as you begin to workout,  is the “I am burning” message.

As you begin to exercise or workout your muscles will send this message.  The message may read different for you, but most frequently it sends the message “I am burning”.  When you find the burning sensation.  Do not fret.  It is normal.  Do not fret.  Your muscles and joints enjoy the burn.  Your muscles and joints are becoming more flexible, more strong with each burning message.  Your interpretation of this message is usually were you become confused.

The “I am burning” message means your skin is being stimulated, eliminating aches, pains, and wrinkles.  Yes I said it.  Lifting weights, stretching, feeling the burn, and enjoying the burn will get rid of wrinkles, dimples, cellulite, etc.  Why?  Your muscles and skin need stimulation.   If you do not stimulate your muscles they will deflate.  If you do not stimulate your skin it becomes weak.  “Wrinkles equates weakness not old age.”

Have you heard of the catch phrase,  “If you do not use it, you lose it”?  Two questions, is your skin wrinkled because you are old?  Is your skin wrinkled because your muscles and skin have not been stimulated in 2, 10, 20+ years?  Walking at work does not count or we would all be in shape.  “Enjoy the burn.”

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The Truth About Your Health and Fitness

Follow the Aaron Johnson Fit Club Blog Today

This week, two of my clients, a husband and wife, told me they had not run in 15 years. When I asked why not. They said they were afraid.  For the last 3 months I have worked with this couple. Their goals were weight loss.  My goal, turn them into athletes.

To all boomers and seniors, in this blog I will explain the first steps to improving flexibility, building strength, and increasing stamina, while losing weight, and getting rid of wrinkles.

Step 1. Get Over The Fear. Your biggest fears should lie in the possibility of not starting your fitness program today. Procrastination will only further the condition(s) and increase possibility for further damage in the future. You are not going to hurt yourself. Athletes hurt themselves. Why? Competing to become bigger, faster, stronger. You are not in competition. The idea of starting a fitness program should be a conversation of lifestyle. Lifestyle means to start building slowly, 1 to 3 times per week and no more, consciously increasing the intensity of your workout regimen, and getting rest.

Step 2. Increase Your Flexibility. Range of motion is the single most important part of your training program.  Why?  When you increase your muscular range of motion you become stronger in your daily movements.  Increasing your flexibility will lessen the possibility of injury, from falling, while improving lower body strength.

Click the following links for demonstrations of stretching techniques.  Dynamic stretching, static stretches, and partner stretching is how you increase your flexibility.

I will finish with this final question.  Do you have muscle or joint pain?  Is it because you lack the range of motion and strength or because you didn’t take your pain medication?

This is a lifestyle.  Stay tuned.

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The Truth About Your Health and Fitness

Follow Aaron Johnson Fit Club today.

Hello everyone.  I hope you are having a fun, fit week.  This week I want my boomers, ages 58 to 72 and my seniors 73 and up, to read up.  From the dear love for my grandparents, until now.   I have worked with these particular demographic my entire life.  I love my boomers and seniors.

As a college undergraduate, I had an opportunity to work with one of my favorite sociology professors, Dr. Staten and the Social Research Club.  Our project was the Centenarian Project.  The Centenarian Project was a team of undergraduate sociology and Psychology students who interviewed individuals whom had live 100 years or more.

During this time, we interview the oldest person in the world, at that time, Betty Davis, a native of Mississippi.  She was 113 years old at the time of our interview.  She lived to be 117 years old.

I had no idea, years later, I would have the opportunity to work with boomers and seniors to assist them in becoming centenarians.  As a kinesiologist and personal trainer, my passion to develop a lifestyles fitness program for boomers and seniors is developing.

I would like to make it clear from my start.  Boomers and seniors have as great an opportunity to become more strong, more flexible, with more endurance than they ever felt in life.  I will show boomers and seniors how to prevent early deaths from falling, by building their entire body’s muscular strength.

I will show boomers and seniors how to improve balance by strengthening core muscles through weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise.  There are few surgeries you want to prevent with medication.  You prevent surgery through building your muscular strength, by lifting weights. Yes,  I am advocating weight lifting and flexibility exercises for boomers and seniors.  Stay tuned I will show you how.

For some boomers and some seniors have sat comfortably and done little to nothing, in terms of improving flexibility or muscular strength.  For example, I will say people generally stop working out extensively by the age 35.  You can put your own age there if you’d like.  By age 50, life has slowed to walking at work, to sit for hours.  Walking to your car after work, sitting down to drive, getting out the car, going home and sitting down in your comfortable couch or chair.

You get up to go sit down in the restroom.  Get up to lay down in the bed.  Wake up and do it all again.  By the time you are 60 your muscles are comfortably cramp.  Your range of motion in areas like your back and knees is so limited you think you need surgery.  What you need is a good stretch.

If you want to address the aches and pains, stretch and strengthen those muscles through proper exercise, weight lifting, and flexibility improvement exercises.  Magic will begin to happen.

Your lifestyle is why you hurt.  It’s why your balance is off, why your skin is wrinkled.  Its your lack of muscular strength.  Learn to lift weights properly.  I will show you how.  Stay tuned.

I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal this week.  There are doctors looking to come up with an anti-aging solution.  They did suggest exercise.  The moderate type, “So you won’t hurt yourself.”  The ultimate solution would be “muscle-building medication”  for deterorating muscles.

I want to explain something.  Deteriorated muscles are muscles that have not been engaged over an extended period of time.  The only way to build a muscle and any other part of your existence is through engagement over an extended period of time, not steroids.  But you knew that, right?

I will expand on this thought more in the future.  I will leave you with this.  Building is a process.  Losing is a process.  Take your time.  Feel the burn.  Enjoy the burn.  To my boomers and seniors, we celebrate your health, fitness, and your future.  “Get Fit Stay Fit”

Follow the Aaron Johnson Fit Club Blog today.

The Truth About Your Health and Fitness

Follow the Aaron Johnson Fit Club Blog today.

Stop overeating, but it matters less and less what you eat when you workout.

The truth behind what lies underneath those fat rolls is this.  Your skin needs to be stimulated, and your muscles have to be stretched, regularly. When your mind needs stimulation, you read a book.  Try eating fewer carbohydrates and more protein to become smart, it want work.  Wrinkled skin, dimples in your thighs, and ” love handles” are muscle which have not been stretched and skin which has not been stimulated, over an extended period of time.

My clients range from ages 5 to 85.  One of the first things my clients or potential clients want to know, what should I be eating?  I’m a kinesiology, but I ask a series of questions to determine their eating habits.  Nine out ten clients have been heavily educated on what they should be eating.  Fruits, vegetables, lean meats, carbs, fats, and sugars.  They know exactly what to say. One out of ten have an idea of how their muscles work or how to use them.

What surprises me is when a 130 pound senior adult, age 60 plus, asks “How do I lose weight?”  They really want to ask, “How do I get rid of these wrinkles.”  Wrinkled skin is skin which has not been stimulated, over an extended period of time, then old age.  Eating healthy does not stimulate your skin, thus it does nothing to get rid of wrinkles.  If you do not think wrinkles or fat can be removed from your arms, legs, and mid-section, without surgery, you are wrong.

When a younger client with no wrinkles asks, “How do I lose weight”,  I give them minutes of conversation about their caloric intake and I ask.  “When was the last time you did a 30 minute ab circuit.  The overwhelming reply, never.  That is the way to get a six-pack, get rid of ”love handles” or the excess weight around your mid-section.

As I work with my clients, young and old, it surprises them how fast they begin to see results.  Chances are great, after our first workout my clients will begin to see results.  Weight loss, increased strength, and flexibility.  Why?  Because I stimulate every part of their bodies, the first workout.  Instead of putting my clients through a pain staking first workout because they need it.  I take them through a muscle stretching, skin stimulating workout and their bodies respond almost instantly.  I’ve seen weight loss and muscles strengthened after a 30 minute workout, and the client didn’t even break a sweat.  Why?  Because I stretched their muscles and stimulated their skin, over each body part.  Sometimes for the first time in their lives.

Its amazing, people go back and forth about their diet but spend a few seconds considering the reason for the excess weight or never-ending pain is because they never developed a muscle structure, especially in their mid-section or core.  Aliments  (i.e. back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain) sidelining people for years from living an active lifestyle, can sometimes be fixed with simple stretching and skin stimulating or strengthening exercises.

You tell me.  Which part(s) of your body hurt?  My answer, “That part of your body needs to be stretched and strengthened”.  You tell me.  Which part(s) of your body are most out of shape?  My answer, “It is the weakest part of your body.   Not how many carbs did you intake with last night’s meal.  Women are you tired of those extremely loose triceps?  That’s the muscle in the back part of your arm.  Don’t stop eating carbs, your main source of energy.  Do some tricep extensions, push-ups, arm dips to stimulate the skin.  Strengthen your core muscle and love handles disappear.  “You can eat as healthy as you want.  If you do not stretch and strengthen your abs, your abs will be flab.”#AaronJohnsonFitClub