Q:  I have been spending a lot of time on the computer lately. I have noticed that my neck is really starting to bother me, and I am starting to get headaches as well. What exercises can I do to avoid these aches and pains?

A:  This is a very common problem and one that is usually due to poor body positioning and/or weakness of the shoulder and neck muscles. Strong shoulders and upper back muscles actually help to take pressure off of the neck and help maintain the head and neck in an anatomically ideal position.

The first step in avoiding chronic neck pain involves assessing the position that you are in while at your desk or computer. The elbows should be at a 90 degree angle with the work station so your hands can work with minimal involvement of the arm muscles.

Next, is the position of the shoulders. Anything that causes you to round your shoulders forward will put excessive strain on the neck. If you find that your shoulders are rounding forward while you sit at work, here are 2 simple exercises that will help to counteract this posture:

1)  The first exercise involves developing the latissimus dorsi muscles, which are located along the lower side ribs and mid back area. One way to strengthen these muscles is by performing an exercise that pulls weight against resistance from above your head, such as a Total Gym Lat Pull Down (see the exercise here). The idea is to train your shoulder muscles to be pulled down, away from your ears while at rest.

2)  The second exercise involves recruiting your back muscles, including the rhomboids, teres major and minor, to help keep your shoulders back and down away from your ears.  You can recruit these muscles by squeezing your shoulder blades together and holding that position for 30 seconds, or perform Pull-ups on Total Gym. Try this exercise by visiting http://www.totalgym.com/c-18-upright-prone.aspx and click on the “Pull-up” video.

If you do 3 sets of 10-12 repetitions of these exercises 3-4 days a week, that is all you need to develop healthy posture and avoid neck pain.

Find more Total Gym Back and Shoulder Exercises by visiting the NEW Exercises section of Total Gym.com at www.totalgym.com/exercises. You can search for exercises by Body Position here: http://www.totalgym.com/c-7-back.aspx.

Remember:  Avoid any exercise that requires you to push weight up and over your head, which could develop your trapezius muscles that sit high up on your shoulders and can aggravate your neck pain.

In addition, any type of stretching, range of motion or yoga exercises can help to relax your neck as well to increase your flexibility. Of course, if you are not sure of the cause of your neck pain or headaches, or if you have weakness or numbness of your hands or arms, consult your doctor as there may be more to the issue than just neck strain.

In the meantime, continue to use your Total Gym, consulting with a personal trainer or physician along the way, to ensure you are doing the exercises properly.

Keep working hard at staying well and healthy!

Until next time,

Elizabeth Salada, MD

Dr. Salada is board certified in Internal Medicine and has been in practice in San Diego since 1996. She attended medical school at Wake Forest University where she received high honors in Family Practice and Internal Medicine. Her final training was obtained from Pennsylvania State University where she completed her residency in Internal Medicine. Visit Dr. Salada’s website for more information: http://elizabethsaladamd.com/. 

Healthy posts from “Fytness Fanatik” Amanda Lynn Hare!

Total Gym Inside blog contributor Amanda Lynn Hare has been a Total Gym user since 1998. Amanda Lynn is here to share her enthusiasm for healthy, fit and fun living.

Today, Amanda Lynn demos her favorite Total Gym Shoulder & Squat Combinations for a fast, effective strength & cardio blast!

Perform 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps of the following exercises:

* Squats with Shoulder Shrugs

* Squats with Shadow Boxing

* Calf Squats with Parallel Arm Flex

* Calf Squats with Shadow Boxing

* Singe Leg Calf Squats with Parallel Arm Flex

Happy New Year Total Gym’ers! We hope you are off to a FANTASTIC 2012!

What good habits are you planning to adopt this year? Inspire us by leaving a Comment below.

Here’s your New Year Smart Start workout to get the year started right!

This is an efficient exercise sequence maximizing the inverted prone position on Total Gym. Need a Press Bar for your Total Gym Sport, GTS or PowerTower? Click here. Total Gym XLS owners, click here to purchase the Press Up Bars.

Pushup; Overhead Press; Prone Jackknife

Cheers to a Happy and Healthy New Year!

While you begin to de-Christmas your diet, check out ALL the ways you can work your core with Total Gym Plank exercises. GRAVITY Master Trainer Michael Steel demos how to add an extra upper body challenge while you’re at it!

Plank

The holidays can put a time crunch on everything, including our workouts. So here’s a little combo I love to do and teach.  I call it “Roly-Poly!”

Benefits you ask?

*Multi-tasking/time management at it’s best

*Easy to remember

*Hits all the major muscles quickly and effectively

*It’s FUN!

For instance, if I’m in a time crunch, I’ll do three 5-minute Cardio Blasts to torch some calories interspersed with 3 Roly-Polys. A full body workout in less than 22 minutes! Then I’m ready to hit the holiday goodies with a clear conscience.

I also threw in a new Plyometric move that I love … man, did it get my calves nice and sore!

Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

I hope Santa is good to you all!

JayDee

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and creator of the “Core Golf Fitness” program. JayDee’s Core Golf Fitness DVD offers on-course and warm-up exercises proven to help advance your golf game and is available for purchase at http://coregolffitness.com.

To help counteract the calorie-laden Thanksgiving meal, we’ve put together a full-body Total Gym “Fit Before Feasting” workout! Warning:  Feeling this good may cause you to make healthier food choices come turkey time!

Try to complete 10-15 reps of each exercise demonstrated below in 2-3 sets.

Cardio Pull - A great compound exercise to warm up the upper and lower body.
Cardio Pull

[Unhook cable pulleys from glideboard]

Squat Progressions - From single to double leg, to plyometric squats. You’ll feel the burn! Squat Progressions

[Attach cable pulleys to glideboard]

Flys and Curls - Sit laterally to perform single art chest flys and bicep curls.
Seated Lateral_Single Arm Chest Fly-Lateral Biceps CurlsAdvanced Cable Work – High-level progressions for shoulders, arms, chest and back, with recruitment of core stabilizers. Advanced Upper Body Cable Sequence

[Detach cable pulleys from glideboard and add/engage foot holder]

Hamstrings and Abdominals - Get an optimal stretch and flexion for hamstrings, while maximizing abdominal involvement
Upper Extremity Progressions

[Remove/disengage foot holder]

Sprinter Start – Explosive leg exercises that mimic a sprinter’s start to torch calories!
Sprinter Start

Plyometrics. I love em’ …  my clients love em’ … and you should integrate them into your training as well.

This month’s blog is a follow up to my “Fun & Fit with Plyometrics” post in September. Try adding these upper body Plyo moves to your Total Gym routine to increase the challenge, intensity and body-shaping results of your workouts:

Your challenge is to try these exercises unilaterally!

Stay tuned as I will play more with Plyos in upcoming blog posts. Don’t worry golfers, I will be back with more golf-specific Total Gym tips in January when the tour kicks off it’s 2012 season in Hawaii.

Enjoy and hit em’ straight!

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and creator of the “Core Golf Fitness” program. JayDee’s Core Golf Fitness DVD offers on-course and warm-up exercises proven to help advance your golf game and is available for purchase at http://coregolffitness.com.

Healthy New Posts From “Fytness Fanatik” Amanda Lynn Hare!

New Total Gym Inside blog contributor Amanda Lynn Hare is a true “Fytness Fanatik” (as you’ll see on her website) and a Total Gym user since 1998. Amanda Lynn is here to share her enthusiasm for healthy, fit and fun living.

This month, Amanda Lynn demos the creative and fun ways she’s spicing up her upper body training routine. Watch this “Fun with Fitness – Upper Body Blast” video to see Amanda’s favorite arm, chest and back exercises on the NEW Total Gym Sport to improve posture, prevent injury and develop lean muscle to burn more calories!

These people aren’t your grandparents. No, these are actively aging, healthy folks pushing off any age-related disability as late into life as they –ok, WE—can … if not forever.

This generation is looking at every anti-aging solution available, from specific nutritional recommendations to support mitochondrial energy production, to therapeutic levels of vitamin and mineral supplements, to smart drugs for preserving and enhancing oxygen supply and neural function in the brain, adding therapeutic doses of hormones, decreasing cortisol and enzymes like MAO, and heavy doses of “clean living.” This is the generation that is avoiding toxins, pesticides, pollution, using chelation to remove heavy metals from their bodies and avoiding radiation (good luck!).

Why? Are we just trying to live forever? No. We want to increase our “healthy life-years.” But there is a simpler, well-proven and ultimately healthier and frankly more enjoyable way to add life to our years and years to our lives. It involves movement, activity, exercise.

Inactivity doubles the risk of mobility limitations and propels cognitive decline. The amount of data demonstrating the effect of exercise in slowing the aging process is simply staggering.

We are looking for gentler, kinder “fitness” workouts like low-impact, comfort and diminished risk of injury, but that still leave us feeling like we got vigorous exercise. We know we need to incorporate training in posture, strength, endurance, flexibility and balance to promote the kind of activity-related benefits that favorably impact our hearts, weight, blood pressure, sexuality, blood chemistry, state of mind, physique and social abilities.

That’s where I believe the Total Gym comes in. At home or at the gym, the Top 5 Total Gym Exercises for boomers today are all a central part of the hundreds of exercises available on this fitness marvel.

1. Cardio – easy enough to use your full-body to get your heart pumping to the max in five minutes, kicking and pushing off the glideboard at an intensity level that you can increase as your fitness level improves.
2. Strength training – we lose 30% of our muscle strength between the ages of 50 and 70 years. Normally, adults who are sedentary beyond age 50 can expect muscle loss of up to 0.4 pounds a year. This reduction in muscle strength leads to impairment in carrying out the ADLs, “activities of daily living.” Resistance training for each of the muscle groups, head to toe, is straightforward on the Total Gym. Bicep curls, chin-ups, chest presses, chest fly (incline, decline and lateral), shoulder presses, upright rows, front and lateral deltoid raises, pull-ups, kneeling rows, leg curls, squats, and many more are easy and efficient on the Total Gym.
3. Flexibility training—here’s where stretching and range of motion exercises become important to connective tissue, so regular stretching is an important part of the Total Gym ROM workout.
4. Balance training – musculoskeletal injuries are the number one reason people seek medical help and are among the leading causes of death for the 65+ population.  Balance training as you work your core muscles on the Total Gym, is built into nearly every exercise.
5. Core training – boomers can easily forget they have abs. The abdominal exercises available on the Total Gym, including crunches, reverse curls, sit-ups and side planks, will quickly reintroduce you to your six pack.

Find these and more Total Gym exercises at www.TotalGym.com/exercises.

Michael R. Mantell earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania after completing his M.S. degree in clinical psychology at the Hahnemann Medical College, where he wrote his thesis on the psychology of obesity. He has served as Chief Psychologist of Children’s Hospital and Health Center of San Diego, and created and led the nationally recognized Psychological Services and Employee Assistance/Wellness program for the San Diego Police Department. He is a member of the Sports Medicine Team at The Sporting Club in La Jolla, California, maintains a private clinical practice in La Mesa, California, and writes and speaks for the American Council on Exercise.

To me, the best feature about Total Gym is the ability to do plyometric strength training. What other piece of equipment allows you to do plyometric pull-ups or tricep dips?

The Latin roots of the word “plyometric” are plio meaning “more” and metric meaning “measure.” So think of this as measurable increases in strength, power, bone density, body awareness and control, and much more! Most importantly, it’s a different and FUN way to train your body!

Here are some great plyometric exercises to try on your Total Gym and catch my Golf Fitness tip at the end:

One thing I forgot to mention in the video, you can try almost all of these plyometric exercises uni-laterally – or one arm or leg at a time. Fun for the whole family!

Enjoy and stay tuned for future Total Gym Training Tips!

Don’t have the accessories that JayDee used in his video? Check out the NEW TotalGym.com and click on the Product Accessories page to accessorize your Total Gym!

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and creator of the “Core Golf Fitness” program. JayDee’s Core Golf Fitness DVD offers on-course and warm-up exercises proven to help advance your golf game and is available for purchase at http://coregolffitness.com.

Total Gym congratulates JayDee and his wife, Elba, on 10 blissful years of marriage! They recently renewed their wedding vows and JayDee says, “Thanks to Total Gym, we still fit in the same clothes we wore 10 years ago! ”