FFC Foothill Fit Club

5 reasons why you shouldn’t exercise just because it burns calories 1). Exercise is a small % of your total daily energy expenditure The majority of your TDEE is made up from resting energy expenditure (i.e. your RMR or BMR, the calories you burn at REST). Purposeful exercise only makes up about 5-10% of your total calorie output ... 2). Measuring calories out is extremely inaccurate Sure you can buy an Apple Watch or a whoop, but research has shown that these devices can be inaccurate with calorie accounts up to 95% on some devices! While they are good at measuring change, they aren’t trustworthy. 3). There are way more health benefits you’re not thinking of Resistance training specifically can increase bone density, lower blood pressure, increase insulin sensitivity, provide cognitive benefits, mental health benefits, body composition improvements, easier weight regulation, muscle gain, its a magic pill with a majority of side effects being positive! 4). It’s nearly impossible to create a significant enough caloric deficit through exercise Your exercise levels, specifically cardio, would need to be through the roof, to the point where they would likely be unhealthy and counterproductive. You are much better completing a reasonable amount of exercise and controlling caloric intakes 5). Mindset Endlessly trying to burn calories has been the ailment of many fitness journeys. A beautiful thing happens when you forget about your output and focus on things like performance, pumping up the muscle, gaining muscle, improvements in form and trusting the process See more

The secret to success in health and fitness for life: BE COMMITTED TO NEVER QUITTING! Reach your goals, then make more. ~MAKE IT FIT~

TOP 8 DIETING MISTAKES WRITTEN BY: ANDRES VARGAS These days, everyone and their grandma is trying to battle the bulge. Whether you’re preparing for beach season or just trying to look and feel a bit better, dieting is going to be the key. With so many diets out there, it can be difficult to figure out just how you should set up your own diet. The worst part is that many dieting strategies are contradictory to one another. The ketogenic diet severely restricts your carbohydrat...Continue reading

I've heard many personal trainers and well meaning gym goers cue a person to lift with a particular form that someone somewhere along the way told them was "proper" form. I notice this, not because they are "wrong" but because it's NOT the best form for the individual they are trying to coach. EVERY-BODY is different and as a personal trainer, it is my job to recognize those differences and coach you into the form that works best for YOU!

My favorite press and likely one you aren't doing because it sucks: The Z-PRESS! The Z-press is when you do an overhead press with a barbell or dumbbells while seated on the floor with extended legs. The purpose of sitting like this with no back support is to make the core work a lot harder to stabilize the upper body.... It also teaches you proper overhead pressing technique. If you push too far forward or lean back (the two big no no's of overhead pressing), you simply won't be able to use a lot of weight and your core will tell you that you're off-line. Proper Form Maintain an upright posture. Don't slouch. Attempt to sit on your hamstrings to make the low back stay tight. Perform the movement like a standard overhead press in terms of bar path. Press the bar over the spine. Keep the heels and backs of the knees glued to the floor. Try not to move them. Improper Form Don't attempt to sit on your butt. It'll translate to a round back and an injury prone pressing position. Don't lean back during tough reps. If you can't stay straight as an arrow, your set is done.

TRAINING THE CORE THE RIGHT WAY By Andres Vargas ARE CRUNCHES BAD FOR YOU?...Continue reading

In preparation for a night out, the holiday party, dinner and drinks with friends, etc.... we can allot extra calories so we can enjoy ourselves and not gain fat! Let me explain, say I have a 1500 calorie per day allotment. Over the course of the week, that gives me 10,500 calories for the week. I am going out to dinner and planning to drink alcohol on Friday. I want to allot at LEAST 2000 calories to this one meal. We too often underestimate how many calories we consume wh...en we dine out; add alcohol and you can bet it's even higher than you could even imagine eating in one sitting. Our bodies don't tally calories day by day, but rather over the course of a week. Because of this, we can manipulate our daily calories to allot for a night out without going over our weekly allotment and without gaining fat! Here's how it's done. Instead of eating my 1,500 calories per day, I am only going to eat 1,214 for 6 days, which will give me an EXTRA 2000 for Friday, mind you this is extra, so I'm not starving all day Friday in preparation for dinner, which would be an inevitable binging episode. After Friday's dinner comes and goes, I continue my Sat and Sun with 1,214 calories and when Monday comes around, I go right back to 1,500 calories without any setbacks.

What are the Top Benefits of Resistance Training? By Joe Talarico We are a very sedentary population these days. Between sitting at work, stuck in quarantine, or sitting in your car, we spend most of our day sitting. This can cause us to end up gaining weight, tight and/or weak muscles, and a higher risk for injury and comorbidities. We don’t mean to do this. Everyone knows they should work out, but it is easier to justify not taking extra time out of your already busy day to...Continue reading

Why is it important to track your workouts? Muscle is built through adaptation against stress. If you want your muscle to be STRONGER/BIGGER than the week before, than you need to be DOING more than the week before. The weight or volume NEEDS to go up.

Ready to lose fat, but not ready to get serious about your diet? Here are 5 easy steps to help you lose some body fat. 1. Hit your protein targets. Aim for 1g per lb of LBM. Eating more protein will help you feel more satiated and keep you feeling fuller longer, as well as inadvertently causing you to eat less carbs and fats, which mean you end up eating less calories overall. Protein also promotes muscle growth if you are strength training, and muscle increases metabolism.... 2. Cut down on YOUR bad habits. You know what they are. Be realistic with yourself and if you have more than 1 bad habit, cut down on all of them, or even cut out the ones you can live without. For me, going out to eat and having holiday treats in the house are weaknesses. If I am tryin to lose fat, first I will eliminate tempting treats from being in my home. If I am going out to eat at restaurants one time a week, I will cut it down to once every other week; you get the idea. It's not an all or nothing. 3. Start tracking ALL your food, even that piece of candy you snagged as you walked past the kitchen counter. You don't need to aim for specific calorie goals to make progress initially; simply seeing everything you are eating makes you conscious of your choices. To track your food, you can use an app like MyFitnessPal. 4. Add movement. This is as simple as walking briskly for 30min per day, or even better, aim to get in a 10min walk after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Doing this will speed digestion and increase insulin sensitivity. 5. Aim to drink .5 to 1 gal of water per day. A dehydrated body sends and receives confused signals. Dehydration can cause feelings of hunger, even just after a meal. Or, a lack of adequate fluids can lead to cravings for sugar. When the body is receiving enough fluids, then those hunger pangs subside, and so does the desire for sweets. Additionally, people who drink a gallon of water a day typically experience fewer cravings and hunger pangs overall. ~Make it Fit~

You don't need extreme diets and workout programs to get changes; what you need is extreme consistency! STOP QUITTING AND RESTARTING!

If you are ready to reward your body, I am here to guide you on your journey.

PRIORITIZING WEIGHT LIFTING OVER CARDIO By Darisse Kennedy There is a place for both cardio and weight lifting in your life. There is a level of cardio that is important for heart health and overall wellness. When it comes to getting and maintaining the physique you want, however, lifting weights is far superior to cardio. Lifting weights can help you get the body you want by helping you lose weight and grow muscle. You can avoid two of the main pitfalls that come with a car...Continue reading

I'll often hear people say they don't feel like they got a good workout because they didn't break a sweat. I am here to tell you, breaking a sweat, while not a bad thing, does not directly correlate to a good workout or fat loss! Sweat is simply the body's response to an elevated core temperature; hence why we sweat on a hot day while doing nothing at all. I won't dive into the science on that. You can workout and effectively stimulate the muscles for growth without producing a single drop of sweat! This is especially true if you are an experienced lifter. Fat loss is achieved primarily by a sufficient reduction of your daily caloric needs, and secondarily by exercise; most importantly, strength training, to build lean mass, which will effectively allow you to maintain your fat loss for life! ~Make it FIT~

Trying to maintain a low calorie diet as a long-term diet strategy can be really challenging! The primary use of a reverse diet is for people who want to minimize weight regain while recovering from a long diet & raising their calories back to a more sustainable level.... This involves a process of slow & controlled calorie increases in order to minimize fat regain, while at the same time, increase your energy expenditure & metabolic rate. This is especially important since at the end of a diet where people have achieved their weight loss goal, or at least have decided that they are satisfied enough with their results to stop targeting further weight loss, many people go back to their ‘pre diet’ eating behaviors & regain a lot of the weight. Even people who are very mindful of tracking their calories will often return back to their ‘pre diet’ maintenance calories in a relatively short period of time. What many people do not realize however is that your maintenance calorie levels after a long diet will be FAR lower than what can be predicted by equations, even when based off your current measurements (i.e.weight, body fat, lean body mass, age, etc). Some people may be able to add a significant amount of calories & not regain any body fat whatsoever. So why would someone want to do this? Most people would probably love to be able to enjoy the flexibility of eating more food & not gain any weight, especially those who have lost weight from dieting. To put it simply, reverse dieting may help some people maintain their weight loss by allowing them to consume an increasingly greater amount of food over time, while not adding more body fat than they would like. Reverse dieting can also be beneficial for those who: Have spent long periods of their life yo-yo dieting. Have ‘slow’ metabolisms or a relatively ‘low’ total daily energy expenditure. Want to consume more food & gain lean mass. ~Make it FIT~

WRITTEN BY: PETER BAKER Four Tactics to Avoid Holiday-Related Food Stress I used to have some serious problems with binge eating. I later realized I needed to take control of that part of my life. And thanks to Avatar Nutrition, I finally have. Gone are the days of hanging with my friends and eating just to eat. Now, I can eat pizza, or a burger, and not analyze how much I am crippling myself when it comes to my gains. And since I am not eating to hate myself, a lot of the gu...Continue reading

I have availability to take on 3 new clients in my 8am class. I can only take 3 and space does not come available often, so message me if you are interested and would like more info about joining.

Among all the obvious reasons to exercise, here is another ever relevant reason.

When it comes to progression, it’s not variety that begets results but rather consistency. Find a program that you like doing and stick to it 6-8 weeks and aim to add weight or reps or decrease time over the course of the program. Variety is fun, but not the key to positive change. ~Make it FIT~

Vegan proteins found to be inferior to whey for increasing amino acid levels even when leucine & essential amino acid levels are equated and both proteins are 'high quality' according to PDCAAs. Further, the vegan proteins contained 30% more total protein but had a ~30% lower blood amino acid response! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov//P/pdf/nutrients-11-02987.pdf

The cold hard truth stings a little bit

WOMEN GOING NOWHERE: They're usually the first thing I see when I walk into a gym, any gym: A line of women, usually a little soft, often a little plump, always a little sad, marching along furiously on a string of treadmills in the hopes of burning off some fat. I desperately want to point out to them that what they're doing is the perfect metaphor for their attempts at fat loss because they're not... going... anywhere, distance wise or fat-loss wise, but I fear being pelted...Continue reading

HEAVY LIFTING, HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING & AGE: Many of the aging population’s concerns is the fear of tearing a muscle, getting a sprain or strain, or developing a stress fracture or other injury from heavy lifting or intense interval work like HIIT. There are a few reasons why you can't move as powerfully past your 40s as you did in your 20s:... 1-Your metabolism drops by about 10% from your thirties into your sixties. 2-Your maximum oxygen consumption decreases each decade from age 25 to 65, and actually decreases faster from 65 on which can make intense cardio efforts more challenging. 3-Your max heart rate decreases, primarily because you grow less responsive to energy stimulating hormones (catecholamines) such as epinephrine. 4-Muscle strength peaks at around age 25, levels out when you're 35 and then drops pretty quickly..... with 25% peak loss by the time you hit 65. 5-Cardiovascular capacity is impacted by the decrease in the amount of blood your heart can pump per beat. The ability of your muscles to pull oxygen from the blood also decreases. 6-Tendon, ligament and joint elasticity decreases. Therefore you aren't as mobile, agile or flexible as you maybe once were. 7-Your bone density decreases. But all of this can actually be improved upon by HIIT and heavy lifting. For example hard intervals which require heavy breathing and burning muscles can help boost a slowing metabolism, can help maintain weight and body composition, can reduce the rate of vo2 max decline, and can enhance flexibility and mobility. Heavy weight training also has a proven bone building effect. In fact, to stave off the bone and muscle loss that naturally occurs with aging it HELPS to load the bones, joints, and muscles with taxing weights. And both high intensity intervals and weight training can cause catecholamine and hormonal responses that keep the body in an anabolic stage and help keep max heart rate high compared to low impact, low intensity work. In other words the hormone rush, mental stimulation and thrill of lifting heavy stuff and pushing yourself intensely can help keep you young. ~MakeitFit

"A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out." Theodore Roosevelt

We have a few openings for the new year! Space in these classes rarely become available so don’t hesitate if you are ready to make a change! Only able to take in 3 people for my MWF 8:30am class and 3 people in my TWTH 6:30pm class. ... Please message me with questions or to join!

I am opening up the evening FFC class to new members!! Pm me if you would like to try a class! TWTH @ 7pm.