To keep your core strong and flexible so you stay away from injuries that may occur from day to day activities.
Your core is a complex series of muscles, extending far beyond your abdominals, including everything besides your arms and legs. It is incorporated in almost every movement of the human body.
The area of the body, which is commonly referred to as the core, is your midsection and it involves all your muscles in that area including the front, back and sides. The core includes the traverse abdominis, erector spinae, obliques and your lower lats.
These muscles work as stabilizers for the entire body. Core training is simply doing specific exercises to develop and strengthen these stabilizer muscles. If any of these core muscles are weakened, it could result in lower back pain or a protruding waistline. Keeping these core muscles strong can do wonders for your posture and help give you more strength in other exercises like running, walking, exercising and weight lifting.
Prolonged sitting and no exercise weakens the muscles of your midsection.
Keeping the torso strong is important because it is the body’s centre of power.
Everyone should be training their core on a regular basis.
Keeping the body’s stabilizer muscles strong will not only improve your workout performance, but will also help in life’s everyday tasks. Bending, reaching and twisting are movements we do everyday. It could be picking up something off the ground, to hanging washing, doing dishes, or reaching to fasten your seat belt.
The last thing anyone wants is to put their back out by picking something up off the floor or simply getting out of bed in the morning. If the core is kept strengthened, there’s less of chance of sustaining an injury from an everyday chore.
The added benefit of incorporating a new and challenging core workout into your routine (yes, I always like to keep my Kerrie Core workouts challenging each and every week! đ) is it can enhance your overall progress by igniting new motivation.
Incidentally, another reason for core training is a beloved side effect that comes from it. That side effect is a nice toned flat stomach.
Of course that goes hand in hand with eating healthy. We all know abs are not solely built in the studio/gym/home gym, but also in the kitchen.
I look forward to training with you in your homes with #kezfit Kerrie Core 1 through to 9. More videos coming soon!
đŞđť So excited to be working out with you in your homes!! đĄ Whoop whoop đđť
Also available to shop and download: đď¸ââď¸ #kezfit Weighted KHIIT 1, 2 & 3 đââď¸ #kezfit Aerobics KHIIT 1, 2 & 3 đđť #kezfit Martial Arts KHIIT 1, 2 & 3 đŞđť #kezfit Kerrie Core 1 – 8
Every week I film a brand new workout for each of my KHIIT (Kerrie High Intensity Interval Training) programs to keep you motivated, fit and having fun!
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Sooo, without putting too much thought into your answer, What are your fitness goals for next year, 2020. With perfect vision 20/20, pardon that obvious pun, what would the perfect you look like?
99% of peoples goals are listed below;
Lose fat.
Build muscle.
Get stronger.
Improve endurance/conditioning.
Improve athletic skills.
Improve joint flexibility.
Tone
Sculpt
Firm up
Now as great as that list sounds… it is the “Want to” section. What you need to focus on is the “How to” section. Chances are if you aren’t on your way there right now, or are putting it off until next year, you need some professional help. More commonly known as motivation. Or even more precisely a “Motivator”. That is where Kerrie Fitness steps in to help. Check out #kezfit Kerrie Core online digital classes at http://www.kerriefitness.com.au or for the ultimate experience come and train at Kerrie Fitness with Kerrie.
From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
Final part of this six part series, which has showcased 19 reasons why you should take up exercise. Even if it is something you have delayed, put on the back burner you should fire it up again now. From mind, the main reason people give up on their exercise regime is motivation. This is where KERRIE FITNESS and small group training comes into play. Leave the motivation to Kerrie, you only need to show up to reap all the benefits that have been discussed over the duration of this series.
REDUCES ABSENTEEISM. You may feel like taking time off work to go to the gym is a luxury you canât afford, but by improving your overall health, exercise can help you ward off both acute and chronic illness. Youâll get fewer colds, be less prone to the flu, and avoid the accidents or surgical interventions that can force you to take prolonged absences. In a tough economy, you need every edge you can get, and by showing up for work every day, youâll maintain that edge over your absentee-prone non-exercising co-workers.
BOOSTSÂ MEMORY. The effects of exercise on many of your bodily systems ultimately pays off in improving your cognitive functioning. There are now volumes of studies on humans as well as lab animals showing that regular physical exercise helps your neurons stay in shape particularly in the memory areas of your brain. You donât even have to exert yourself that much to experience this memory boost. Moderate walking can help your brainâs memory center, the hippocampus, maintain its health and vitality. Memory also benefits from a general lowering of cortisol, the stress hormone, associated with the improved mood and anxiety levels you experience from your regular workouts.
BUILDSÂ INTELLIGENCE. Along with memory, your intellectual skills benefit from regular physical activity. It also helps if you can build in some mental activity as well. As oxygen flows more freely to your brain, not only does your hippocampus benefit but so does the part of your brain involved in planning and reasoning (the prefrontal cortex). Mental activity, particularly involvement in exercises that require you to respond quickly, also boosts your intelligence and even your ability to carry out activities of daily living.
LOWERS DEMENTIA RISK. Exercise lowers your chances for developing dementia based on cardiovascular illness because youâre improving the flow of blood throughout your body, including your brain. Because dementia due to cardiovascular disease is hard to distinguish from other forms of dementia, itâs hard to say that exercise could actually slow or prevent the neuron death responsible for Alzheimerâs disease. However, by preserving the neurons in your brain, exercise can give you an added advantage should you develop this otherwise untreatable disease. Itâs even possible that exercise can help slow or prevent Alzheimerâs disease by improving your glucose and fat metabolism because some of the brain alterations found in Alzheimerâs disease may be due to abnormalities in these processes. For example, researchers have found recently that lowering a personâs risk for diabetes can lower the risk of Alzheimerâs disease. Itâs possible that lack of a healthy lifestyle may have led the illness to develop in many older adult sufferers today. To the extent that middle-agers are now more likely to exercise than were their parents, we may actually see fewer people developing dementia in the coming years.
I hope that before youâve made it through all 19 of these reasons, youâve put on your sneakers and decided to go to your local fitness studio to find out about classes. No matter what your age, exercise can help you achieve greater physical and mental fulfillment. See if you can add to this list of 19 reasons by finding your own personal formula for exercise success!
From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
Part 5
IMPROVES MOOD. Itâs a well-kept secret that people who exercise regularly also have lower risk of depression. Our pill-popping culture tends to emphasize medical interventions for psychological disorders over behavioural treatments. Exercise is one of these behavioural treatments. Aerobic exercise improves your mood by causing your bodyâs endorphins to kick in. These are the natural âfeel goodâ neurotransmitters that start to exert their effects after about 20 minutes of training. These regular exercise-related boosts eventually improve your overall mental health over the long term.
LOWERS ANXIETY. Related to exerciseâs effects on mood are its effects on your levels of anxiety. As your levels of endorphins increase, your feelings of worry also start to diminish. When you exercise, you also refocus your attention from your daily problems to the workout itself. You can gain a fresh perspective on even the most preoccupying concerns in your life by taking an exercise break. When you return to these daily problems, you approach them with renewed energy and even some new ways to figure out solutions.
FEELS LIKE FUN. If you find the kind of exercise that fits your personality and motivational needs, you can actually have a good time while your body does the work. Some people need to exercise in a group class because they enjoy the social opportunities it provides. Others prefer to have time to themselves away from the stress of work and family. Whatever your exercise style, once you get into a routine, youâll find that the activity itself becomes rewarding. Perhaps itâs those endorphins or the benefits of social support from your gym-mates. Whatever the cause, long-term exercisers love this natural âhighâ and wouldnât give it up for anything. Once you get to that point, exercise enriches the quality of life.
From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
Part four of
REDUCES THE RISK OF ARTHRITIS. The most commonly experienced chronic illness in middle-aged and older adults, arthritis occurs due to abnormalities in the cartilage and outgrowth of bones in the joints. Unlike the other physical benefits of exercise, reducing the chances of arthritis doesnât depend on heavy duty activity or even weight training. In fact, you may actually heighten your risk of arthritis if you do too much of the wrong kind of exercise. Running on the pavement, particularly in shoes that arenât appropriately cushioned, can cause you to be more likely to get arthritis. Instead, you need to engage in stretching and flexibility training to increase the range of movement of your joints. This will lower your risk of injury through muscle tears or torn ligaments, and in the process protect your joints from damage caused by overuse.
IMPROVES SEX LIFE. Keeping your muscles active through use helps promote the demands placed on your endocrine glands to produce more hormones. With more muscle mass comes greater stimulation to produce androgens which help both men and women maintain their sexual functioning. You are also likely to feel more fit and be more fit, which in turn will benefit your interest in and ability to carry out sexual activity. Your emotional resilience will also be greater if you exercise, which also benefits your relationship health.
BRINGS ABOUT BETTER SLEEP. Although sleep experts recommend that you not exercise right before you go to bed, exercise during the day benefits your sleep at night. The physical exertion you engage in during the day helps your bodyâs circadian rhythm keep in tune. Sleeping better at night also improves, in turn, your immune functioning and even lowers your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cognitive impairment. A win-win for sure!
From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
Part three of
Further to the previous article here are some more reasons why you should immerse yourself in SGT (Small Group Training).
BUILDS MUSCLE MASS. Resistance training also builds your muscles. In fact, the tension of your muscles against your bones is what also helps your bones get the maximum benefit of weight lifting. If you donât engage in regular weight-lifting, youâll lose muscle strength at the rate of â guess whatâ1 percent per year. If you do, you can cut this â guess againâin half. In fact, the process of âsarcopenia,â which refers to normal loss of muscle strength with age, is best reversed by this type of exercise. Keeping your muscles strong also helps you stay more aerobically fit and helps you maintain a healthy lean (or fat-free) body mass.
IMPROVES BREATHING. Aging affects the tissues of the lung in some ways that canât be changed by exercise. However, exercise can improve your breathing by strengthening the muscles that help your lungs open up to bring in oxygen and compress to push out carbon dioxide. Exercise also improves the efficiency with which oxygen permeates the cells of your body through its effects on aerobic capacity. While the non-exercisers will have to stop their workout to catch a breath, youâll be able to push on past them due to this greater efficiency of your breathing capacity.
BOOSTS YOUR ENERGY. Because your body is functioning more efficiently, youâve got more oxygen to fuel your bodyâs cells. You also feel fewer aches and pains and have greater strength. As a result, you can go about your daily activities feeling less fatigued, stressed, and weary. Although going to the gym early in the morning or late in the afternoon may feel like the last thing you have energy to do, once you build exercise into your daily routines, these workout bouts will actually seem less tiresome because youâll feel more mentally and physically capable of carrying them out.
From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
SONY DSC
SONY DSC
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
Following on from last week the next three reasons to exercise are:
MAINTAINS IMMUNE FUNCTIONING. Your immune system is what protects you from infection and other chemical toxins. The immune system also plays a role in maintaining a healthy response to stress (more on this later). Although for many years, researchers talked about âimmune senescenceâ as an inevitable result of aging, we now know that the studies showing these inevitable declines were conducted on people who didnât exercise. Even short-term exercise programs can reverse some of the deleterious effects of aging on this sensitive, complex, and crucial regulatory system which controls so much of your everyday health.
REDUCES BODY FAT. Your BMI, or body mass index, provides an approximate measure of your overall metabolic status. To calculate yours, go to the Centers for Disease Control website. If youâre in the overweight to obese categories now, a regular program of aerobic exercise can bring your BMI down to normal levels mainly by swapping the fat for the fat-free tissues in your body. The good news is that the more you exercise, the more you are able to work off your body fat because muscle âburns offâ more calories, effectively speeding up your metabolism.
KEEPS BONES STRONG. Another normal age-related change is the loss of bone mineral strength. Here again, the magic number of a 1 percent loss per year seems to be the considered wisdom of how fast our bodyâs bones get thinner and weaker. Once again, though, exercise is the key to maintaining your boneâs health. The specific form of exercise required for bone strength involves resistance training in which you lift weights. The amount of resistance training varies according to your age and physical strength, but itâs got to be more than just picking up a gallon of milk and moving it from the grocery bag to the fridge. You need to spend no less than an hour a week of increasingly strenuous weight-lifting until you reach your maximum potential.
 From neurons to hormones: Why your body needs a workout.
Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.
FULFILLMENT AT ANY AGE
Every day brings with it a new scientific report on the benefits of exercise. Unfortunately, the reports donât always coincide with each other. Some studies show hugely positive effects, others show hugely negative effects, and some donât permit any conclusions at all. Although the path of least resistance may lead you to prefer those reports that show no, or harmful, effects of exercise, the truth is that the best way to keep your body and mind in top shape is to be physically active. Almost everyone, no matter what his or her physical condition, can engage in at least some form of bodily exercise. To be most efficient, your exercise regime should follow the guidelines for your age and overall health status. However, each and every one of us can certainly exercise our minds even if our bodies donât always cooperate.
Iâve culled through the wealth of data on exercise and health to come up with this list of 19 solid reasons to work that body and/or mind of yours. Hereâs the short and sweet on these impressive ways that exercise can keep you in the best possible shape.
BUILDS AEROBIC POWER. Your aerobic capacity is your bodyâs ability to work at maximum capacity by getting oxygen from the air to your bodyâs tissues. Ordinarily, people lose about 1 percent a year of their aerobic power or, if youâd like to do the math, 10 percent per decade. If you start calculating at the age of 40, this means that people can lose 30 percent of their maximum aerobic capacity by the time they reach age 70. Thatâs a lot of unnecessary huffing and puffing. Both long-term and short-term exercise training studies show that you can cut this loss in half so that youâre losing 15 precent rather than 30 percent in that 30-year period. Many of the other benefits of exercise stem from this basic fact, so if you remember nothing else from this list, building aerobic power is your most important reason to exercise.
REDUCES BLOOD PRESSURE. Chronic hypertension is the number one form of heart disease. The causes of hypertension include the increased plaque in the arteries that builds up from consuming a high-fat diet. Exercise helps reduce your blood pressure, in part, by attacking the plaque in your arteries. As the arteries widen, the blood flows through more freely, and your blood pressure eventually starts to drop. Hypertension also decreases as the result of exercise because your heart, a muscle, is getting a workout. The stronger your heart muscle gets, the greater its ability to pump blood through the arteries, which also helps to reduce your blood pressure.
LOWERS TYPE 2 DIABETES RISK. Youâve probably heard that an increase in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is becoming a world-wide public health crisis. Even if you donât care about the health of the world, you should care about your own risk of diabetes. The complications of adult-onset Type 2 diabetes pose a serious risk to your physical well-being. By engaging in regular physical exercise, you improve your bodyâs ability to metabolize glucose, the key to staving off this disease.