27
Jun 13
I’m all about a challenge…but to everyone that means something a little different.
Are you carrying a little extra weight? I wanted to get a feel for what YOUR challenge would be like so I’ve been working out with a weight vest. I feel for anyone that has a bit of weight to lose. This was a 20 lb vest and did I ever feel it.
I want to encourage you keep at your workouts, even if you have a bit of weight to lose. Adding exercise is the BEST way to drop the weight. Of course you’ll need to maintain solid nutrition as well since you can never out train a bad diet.
Here are some ways to modify exercises so that you train safely:
Swap out impact exercises for non-impact ones to protect the feet, knees, hips and lower back. I tried jumping rope and my knees told me to go jump in the lake. I opted out of the jump rope right away. You can do a phantom skip: pretend to jump rope but always have one foot on the ground. Full body extensions are a great option to anything impact as well.
Drop to the knees for push ups and planks. My lower back was ready to have a stern talk with me, so to protect it when I got tired, the modified position was really helpful.
Step up on a box that’s lower, avoid box jumps.
Abdominal moves – I prefer to do more planking exercises for the core versus doing any kind of crunches.
Dizziness – I didn’t feel light-headed or dizzy, but many of my clients feel this way. Part of the reason for this is the circulatory system is working extra hard and needs to get fit too. Your blood vessels will adapt and improve to pump blood back from your muscles to your heart and brain. In the meantime, if you’re light-headed or nauseous try to keep your head up, stay in upright positions as much as possible. Avoid head down positions, do incline push ups, avoid burpees and do a full body extension, do jumping or step jacks instead of mountain climbers.
Here are some reminders in a video I did for you:
I have you covered in my program so that you’ll feel successful no matter if you have 2 lbs, 20 lbs or 50 lbs to lose. My video follow along programs will cheer you on and provide appropriate choices along the way.
Check it out here: Female Fat Loss Over 40
My passion is teaching people how to work fitness into their daily lifestyle in order to improve their quality of life. Let’s work together to help you reach your fitness goals!
Found the video had some good tips especially for those with not real stable spine joints
and evidenced based as research has shown that high impact can produce high cost in injuries unintended. Regarding the weight vest I was not sure if this was good to use in myself with a less stable L5 S1 area at this time. My chiropractor has given me stretching and stabilizing exercises to do twice a day and walking has helped my back a lot while allowing low profile aerobic tolerance build-up. Also I have heard gradually increasing one’s carbs over the week affects increase in metabolism. Of course its back on Monday to more protein and high fiber carbs in veggies and fruits. Are push ups ok on the knees till upper body strength is ready. What amount of what bearing in the upper arms and body can handle push ups w/o use of knees?
The weight vest was a good experiment for me to help demonstrate what exercises needed more modification if one was carrying more weight. Do your push ups from your knees as long as you need to in order to keep the body in a plank like position. Rotating calories is helpful to keep the metabolism fired up. There’s nothing worse for the metabolism than continually dropping calories.