Total Gym Weekly Workout – Hip and Glute Workout – Lunge Sequence

What’s your favorite Total Gym exercise?  We like them all!  And we love to hear from you about what keeps you motivated to reach your goals, or maintain your fitness.

This week we are focused on a Hip, Thigh and Glute Workout in a great Lunge Sequence.  With just a few position changes you can reach these large muscle groups for a lower body workout.  If you feel good, add in some upper body rotation to incorporate your core.  Thanks for stopping by and check back next Monday for more great exercise videos!

Total Gym Weekly Workout – Biceps Sequence

Happy Monday! Tom is out today at the Can-Fit-Pro convention and tradeshow in Toronto, Canada. He’ll be showcasing our GRAVITY workout on Total Gym – along with our Canadian distribution team – to over 10,000 attendees at the commercial fitness show.

Great arms requires hard work – sorry there’s no easy answer here! These biceps exercises on Total Gym are dynamic and challenging enough to see results … but they are also fun! Keep your elbows high and stabilize through the core to stay upright throughout every exercise. Look for progressions like static equilibrium exercises and supine bicep curls.

Total Gym Weekly Workout – Postnatal Exercise

Today’s weekly workout video speaks to the new moms who might need a little motivation to get back into a regular and safe exercise routine post-baby. Please consult your doctor and/or a certified fitness professional before getting back into exercise. There are safety concerns for new moms, especially those who had a cesarean section.

GRAVITY Master Trainer and certified fitness professional Tricia Alker is a new mom herself and she takes you through a series of beginning to advanced postnatal exercises. In this video, Tricia focuses on building strength in the upper body first considering that’s where you are constantly carrying heavy loads including baby, diaper bags and more.

For the men out there, you can do these upper body exercises as well. Just increase the resistance by going up a few levels!

Be sure to check out more GRAVITY on Total Gym exercises at www.gravityclubhouse.com. It’s free to register and access this video and more programming and online extras.
GRAVITYPick_My Postnatal Workout

Fitness Wisdom Wednesday – Metabolic Training on Total Gym

You may have heard of the phrase “metabolic training” on TV or in a fitness magazine. Maybe the most popular examples of the non-stop, high-intensity training are seen in the P90X infomercial and the latest “Insanity” workout that allegedly pushes you past your limits in the “hardest workout program ever put on DVD.” I can’t account to the truth of that statement, but here’s a quick definition of metabolic training:

A fast-paced circuit workout where you do a series of fairly simple weightlifting and cardiovascular exercises in a short amount of time working your muscles to fatigue. The idea is to create a very high-intensity workout to burn fat while adding muscle tone. A great way to break up tired fitness routines and fast track your results.

Word to the wise…you don’t need a muscle-bound meat head yelling at you through the TV in order to benefit from metabolic training. In fact, you can do your own metabolic workout at home on your Total Gym! International GRAVITYMasterTrainer Michael Steel offers the following tips for creating your own at-home Total Gym metabolic strength training workout:

• Start by picking 3-4 total body exercises that you are comfortable doing. Then set a number of repetitions for each exercise, say 10-12.
• Plan to do these exercises in a circuit, repeating each exercise 3-5 times (depending on your fitness level) without stopping.
• As you transition from one exercise to the next, utilize your squat stand by adding a set of 10-15 plyometric jump squats in between to keep your heart rate up. Click here for a video demonstration of plyometric squats on Total Gym.
• Avoid taking any breaks until you’ve completed all 3-5 sets!

Now go get your sweat on!

We’re interested in hearing about your Total Gym metabolic workout! Leave us a comment with your routine.

Cassie is the Communications Manager for efi Sports Medicine/Total Gym and a published fitness writer.

Tom's Weekly Tip – Back to the Basics on Total Gym

Sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics. Whether it’s simplifying your life with less work or social commitments, or getting back to the basics of budgeting and saving to build your nest egg for the future.

With exercise, we get so used to doing our workout routines on a regular basis that we tend to forget how we got to this point. With repetition, you can also lose proper form as you get used to doing exercises over and over again.

There are so many capabilities and uses for your Total Gym that we thought you’d like to take a trip down memory lane to the first time you put your “booty on the board” and started movin’. You may even remember exercises that you forgot you could do!

Here’s GRAVITYMasterTrainer Rob Glick to take you back to the basics on Total Gym. This video has received over 30,000 views on our Total Gym YouTube Channel!

What are your favorite “back to the basics” exercises on Total Gym? Share your comments below.

Tom’s Weekly Tip – Back to the Basics on Total Gym

Sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics. Whether it’s simplifying your life with less work or social commitments, or getting back to the basics of budgeting and saving to build your nest egg for the future.

With exercise, we get so used to doing our workout routines on a regular basis that we tend to forget how we got to this point. With repetition, you can also lose proper form as you get used to doing exercises over and over again.

There are so many capabilities and uses for your Total Gym that we thought you’d like to take a trip down memory lane to the first time you put your “booty on the board” and started movin’. You may even remember exercises that you forgot you could do!

Here’s GRAVITYMasterTrainer Rob Glick to take you back to the basics on Total Gym. This video has received over 30,000 views on our Total Gym YouTube Channel!

What are your favorite “back to the basics” exercises on Total Gym? Share your comments below.

Fitness Wisdom Wednesday – Core Golf Fitness

JayDee Cutting III, MBA, is a GRAVITYMasterTrainer

My passion in life is fitness, but golf is a close second. I picked up the game at the ripe old age of two!  I started lifting weights for sports performance at age 12, but it took the last 17 years living my passion as a fitness professional to figure out the most important component to improve my golf mechanics – flexibility!

For a lot of us fitness fanatics who love to put our bodies through energizing, blood pumping, heart pounding workouts, stretching is like flossing: we know it is good for us and we should do it consistently, but it’s often forgotten. My opinion about why we don’t stretch enough is the lack of instant gratification, which our society can’t seem to live without. With resistance training, we feel the pump, the effort exerted and we have that sadistic soreness the next day, which tells us we actually worked something. With cardio, we feel the heart instantly pump harder, our breathing picks up and we start sweating within minutes. With stretching, well – it’s just not sexy! But maybe if you and your clients are armed with reasons why it will improve your golf swing, you’ll give it a shot and make it a regular part of your workouts.

Look at the pros. Some are strong and it’s apparent they work out; but the majority is of normal strength. And then there are plenty of guys and gals who can hit the ball 300+ yards who, if not for their golf spikes, might be blown away by a heavy gust of wind! However, they ALL are extremely flexible and have good timing – two components that are highly correlated and essential for solid golf swing mechanics.

Case in point:  Tiger Woods. He has put on 30 pounds of muscles since he left Stanford; however, his previous swing coach, Butch Harmon, stated, “… [Tiger Woods] hit it farther when he was wiry…” In addition, Tiger’s physical therapist, Keith Kleven divulged that Tiger’s golf and workout sessions begin with 40 minutes of stretching and core work. Kleven has also been recommending Pilates to golfers since 1975, before the mind/body practice became mainstream in the fitness world. Good Pilates repertoire usually consists of an equal amount of lengthening and strengthening the muscles, and of course, core work.

So, if you love golf but still like to strength train like I do, just remember the flexibility component. Be sure to use a lengthy rest time between sets to stretch the muscle you just worked. I like to use Total Gym GTS for this purpose. Here are a few stretches I like to do:

As soon as I complete a chest exercise, I stand up and use my own bodyweight to passively open up the chest, breathe and relax.

Or after a pull-up set, I use the Total Gym and the weight of my body to open up the lats.

And finally, I LOVE the leg pulleys for opening up the hamstrings and hips (and as you can see, I can slip in some abs while stretching!). If you don’t own leg pulleys, buy them! It’s an investment your hamstrings, hips AND your golf swing will LOVE.

And for best results on the course, make sure you take some time to stretch your hips, shoulders and spine. You’ll get more distance, improve your accuracy and prevent injury.

Hit em’ straight!

Feel free to contact JayDee at CuttingEdgeWellness@san.rr.com or check out www.NiceDogYoga.com. JayDee’s CoreGolf Fitness DVD, produced by Total Gym’s own Brian Rose, is due out this August.