RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Single Leg Swiss Ball leg Curl

Once you've mastered the bi-lateral version of this exercise, give the single leg version a shot. You'll find it much more difficult.

Random Thoughts....

• Happy Belated Thanksgiving to everyone. I hope everyone had their share of food and drink. Now go get rid of the leftovers. One cheat day is enough.
  
• It's funny to me when people talk about how much damage they did to their waistline on Thanksgiving. They get so concerned about one day of pigging out. It's not one day that's sabotaging your weight loss plans. How about the other 364 days of the year? Those are the days you should be worrying about.
• Last Thanksgiving thought: The Detroit Lions should have lost the right to play on Thanksgiving day after their woeful performance yesterday. Thanksgiving is about two things: food and football. All I want is a decent game and to sit down and watch as I load up on turkey. And I don't think the Lions have played a decent game in about five years. God bless those Lions fans.
• I hate the hip abduction machine. Actually, the only thing I hate worse is watching a guy use the abduction machine.
• There are more commercial gyms and training studios in every city or town than ever before. Yet, we keep getting fatter as a country. So it's not the ability to exercise that is a problem. It's the exercise programming that is the problem.
  
• Single leg training is a key factor in keeping your knees healthy. So wouldn't it make sense that single arm training would be beneficial for your shoulders? I would like to see more people doing dumbbell or single arm work as part of their upper body training. Some great unilateral upper body exercises are: single arm dumbbell presses, dumbbell rows, single arm cable rows and side lying dumbbell external rotations.
• A stretch that I picked up about a year go that I've been using more frequently as part of my own training and that of my clients is the sleeper stretch. It's a great stretch for anyone with ailing shoulders, overhead throwing athletes or if you're doing your best to stay away from injury. Be careful not to force that forearm to the floor. All you're trying to do is get a light stretch through the posterior shoulder capsule.

Have a great weekend everyone.

What Not to Eat

Before you go and stuff your face with mashed potatoes and apple pie, take a look at this quick Thanksgiving dinner guide:

Eat This, Not That

It may save you from being airlifted from the dinner table.

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Val Slide Push Up/Pull In Combo

This week's exercise is a combination exercising using the Val Slides. With this exercise you're working two important movement patterns, horizontal pushing and hip flexion. Killing two birds with one stone. I also love the Val Slides as a training tool. They can be used for different push up variations, lunge variations, leg curls and what ever else you can think of. To get yourself a pair visit PerformBetter.com.

A Simple Fix

Bad posture can wreak havoc on you. Not only do you look horrible, but you're also setting yourself up for injury. Most neck, shoulder and lower back injuries are posture related. The further you get away from ideal posture, the greater the chance of injury. As a trainer, I find myself trying to undo some clients poor posture with all types of exercises and verbal cues as they're working out. But what good does 20 minutes of posture related work a couple of times per week do, if you go right back to that that caveman posture as soon as you leave the gym It does you no good. But I heard a pretty good tip from another trainer/strength coach the other day. And it's so simple it never even occurred to me.

Sometimes we get so caught uip in elaborate programs or exercises that we forget about the simple stuff. His solution for correcting his clients poor posture was....having them go for a 30 minute walk each day. Doesn't sound brilliant, right? But think about. Why do most people have lousy posture. It's because we've become very sedentary. We went from being upright human beings to human beings who can't get their butts out of the chair. Take a look at the average persons day. They drive or take the train to work. They get to work and sit at their desk. They go to lunch and sit down and stuff their face with Big Macs and French fries (that's another issue) They go back to work and sit behind their desk again with their head down or forward. They get back in their car or sit on the train for the ride home. They get home and sit at the table for dinner. Then they go to the computer and sit down and check their Facebook page (It used to be email, but that's changed also). Then they sit in front of the TV watching "Dancing with the Stars". After dozing off, they get up out of their chair and crawl into bed.

How much of that day was spent in the upright position? Not much. So go get out for a walk. Get upright. Get tall. Pick your head up. Pull your shoulders down and back. And fix those nagging shoulder and back injuries.

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Squat Jump, Squat, Squat Hold Finisher

The is a series of squat based movements that I've borrowed from fat loss expert, Alwyn Cosgrove. I'll use this series as a metabolic finisher at the end of a workout with clients from time to time. In fact, I used this series today with a client. I think she's going to be cursing me tomorrow. So what is it?

1. 20 seconds of squat jumps , done rapidly
2. 20 seconds of squats, done rapidly
3. 20 second squat hold, hold the bottom position of a squat

Transistion from the squat jumps to the squats to the squat holds with no rest in between. After the squat holds, rest for one minute. Repeat the sequence 3-4 times. In order make this series increasingly difficult, cut the rest period down 10-15 seconds each week until you can get to the point where you can repeat the sequence 3-4 times without any rest period.

Random Thoughts....

• Funny thing I witnessed today. I saw a guy hop on an upright bike and pedal just hard enough for the bike to start up. So he pedaled casually for about 10 minutes or so, hopped off the bike and then went an grabbed a cup of coffee while his wife (or maybe it was girlfriend) finished up her workout. A couple of minutes later, I saw this guy standing outside the gym door smoking a cigarette!! I guess he thought he deserved a butt after barely braking a sweat.
• I don't want to hear "a calorie is a calorie" again. All calories are not created equal. Are 800 calories of lean meat and vegetables the same as 800 calories of apple pie and chocolate chip cookies? I think not.
• People who need corrective exercise are not doing enough of it and people who don't need corrective exercises anymore are doing too much of it.
• It was great to get out and play 18holes of golf the other day, considering we are in the second week of November. It wasn't so great to post a snowman on my first hole.
• I think most people still don't know what good nutrition is. Good nutrition is not a low fat or low calorie diet. Good nutrition is eating every 2-3 hours, having a protein source with every feeding and consuming 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day amongst other other good nutritional habits.
• Big game Thursday night, Pats vs. Jets. I'd never thought the Patriots would be playing the Jets for sole possession of first place in the 11th week of the season. But I also never thought the Patriots could be 6-3 after losing their Pro Bowl quarterback, starting running back, starting strong safety and their most versatile linebacker.
• Every year around this time, you start to hear that the average person gains 5-10lbs between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And every year I find this hard to believe. I don't call this average. I call this gluttony.
  

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Barbell Split Squat

What's On My List?

The question comes up all the time when I'm talking to clients about nutrition, "Well, what do you eat?". So, I thought I'd give you a little insight to what I do eat. Let me start by saying that I don't eat exactly like I should. I don't get 3-5 servings of fruits or vegetables per day. I don't drink enough water. I probably do not have enough variety in my diet, with my breakfast of oatmeal and a couple scoops of peanut butter for the last 3-4 years and least five mornings out of the week being evidence. But I think I do alright. So here's what you've all been waiting for, my list of what I got from my trip to the grocery store this past Sunday:

• 2 green peppers
• Strawberries, 16 oz.
• Salad, pre-mixed
• Watermelon chunks
• Chicken Sausage
• 6 boneless chicken breasts
• Turkey burger patties
• Boneless top loin steak
• Swiss Miss diet cocoa mix (this is a first, but it has only 25 calories per pouch)
• Grill Mate marinades
  
• Quaker quick oats (whole rolled oats, not that flavored junk)
• Almonds (used to love cashews until I realized how calorically dense they are)
• Frozen blueberries
• Frozen broccoli
• Frosty Paws (yeah it's ice cram, but it's ice cream for my dog)
• 1 pound of American cheese
• Fage plain Greek yogurt (again, not flavored....plain)
• Egg whites
• Dozen cage free eggs
• Teddy smooth natural peanut butter (I live off this stuff)

Boring. I know. But it's all I feel I need, until Wednesday when my refrigerator is empty again. I don't need cookies, chips and breads. And neither do you!!

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Medicine Ball Circuit

Who said all interval training has to be done on a piece of cardio equipment? Actually, who said all interval training has to be done with the lower body? In this video, you'll see my client performing an upper body throwing circuit with a 12 pound medicine ball. He'll do:

• 10 forward facing side throws from each side
• 15 chest passes
• 10 side facing side throws from each side
• 15 scoop throws

This circuit took my client a little over 60 seconds. I'd have him rest for about 120 seconds and then repeat the circuit another 2-4 times. Take a look:




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