We are just coming off of a holiday weekend and it is always hard to " get back into the swing of things". This is why it is important to create habits. You see motivation will get you started, but you must create habits to keep you going. You have to create a habit of motivating yourself every day. Or have a routine and be happy about going back to the routine after a longer then usual break. I will leave you with this and I hope it will help. Try to stay focused on your goal. For example if you want to lose weight. You should be excited about getting back to your workout routine after a holiday weekend because this means you are taking more steps towards reaching your goal. You might not enjoy the difficult workout, but you will be happy about the results. So don't focus on the pain of the workout, focus on the result :)
Don't wish to lose weight. Don't hope you can drop some pants sizes. Set a goal to lose weight and be healthier. There is a big difference between making a wish and setting a goal. Some people who take our class do so to help stay in good shape and this is great. Some people join our program with specific goals of wanting to lose weight and be healthier. To these people I ask have you set an actual goal or are you making a wish. A goal is a complex thing. You must have a plan and a deadline of when you want to achieve your goal. If you do not have that, it is not a goal. A goal with a poor plan will give you poor results. An easy example is if you are taking a trip to the beach and you don't plan at all how will that trip work out for you? Will you have enough gas to get their? Do you have clothes? Do you have a place to stay? Did you bring sun block??????? hahah. We plan great for things like this. So lets use those same skills and plan our weight loss like that. Figure out how many pants sizes you want to drop by a specific date. How are you going to do it? How will you change your diet? How many days a week will you work out? How much soda will you cut out? When you make a plan like this with a deadline, then you have set a goal. I hope this is helpful :) Have a marvelous monday.
Calories are the energy that food has in it. Our bodies run on calories. So we often hear people talking about burning calories to lose weight. This is an important part to losing weight. Its not everything, but it is a part or it. So in our kickboxing class our goal is to keep our heart rate up so we can burn as many calories as we can. What this means is you want to minimize the number of breaks you take. Now that might sound mean, but what I mean is you should be working on pacing yourself so you can stay in constant motion the entire class. So when you start to feel like you are pushing to hard you have to back off just a little so you can keep going. This is tricky tho because you do not want to take it to easy because then your heart rate doesn't get up high enough to make a big difference. Finding your pace is tricky and takes time. Its like a runner, runners work on finding their pace and keeping it and knowing when to push it and when to ease off a bit. This is just another fun part of our kickboxing class. I mean if you find this stuff fun... I know I do :)
Your core is very important. As we get older our core must stay strong to help us keep moving. Im going to jump right to muscles I think most people over look, the upper and lower back. I would like to share a personal experience. I train every day, and at one point I was getting very bad headaches and my upper back was really hurting. A physical therapist told me to think about what I was doing all the time. Everything I did was pushing forward, all my kicks, punches, punching the bag, push ups....... But I never worked on the opposite muscle groups which were my upper back. So my upper back was weak and it was trying to compete against my chest and abs and it was getting fatigued and knotting up. So I strengthened my upper back and over time my headaches went away and the pain did to. Think about sitting up straight in your chair, I don't know about you but after a while my back starts to get tired. That is because your muscles are weak. Think about this, how do you stand up straight? What muscles make you stand up straight? Your back. So for that reason I like to incorporate lower and upper back exercises into my kickboxing class. We are not lifting a ton a weight, we mainly just use resistances bands, but it is just to get the point across that this is important to focus on.
Tonights class was rockin! We had another new student tonight and she picked everything up fast ! Afterwards I explained to her that this is how every class is. She said GREAT, this is exactly what I was looking for. We do a cardio warm up, we do some exercises for your arms, legs, back, and abs, then we stretch , and then we hit the bags for the rest of class. My goal is to keep you moving for the entire 60 minutes. There is no stopping to hold pads for someone, there is no jumping spinning karate kicks... It is a super fun workout that anyone, and I mean anyone, can do. Its just punching and kicking, you get to decide how hard your punch and kick. This will determine how great your workout is. Well I encourage you a little throughout the class. haha.
I once ran on a treadmill and the person I was with was tired and I was tired also. They asked me if the kickboxing I do was more difficult then that. I responded with a immediate yes! Don't get me wrong, running was challenging, especially because it was on a incline. But I tried to explain why the kickboxing was so much more intense. The reason I came up with was because it uses many muscle groups all at once. You are working your legs, abs, obliques, lower back, upper back, chest, and arms all at the same time. And when you do a punch or a kick you are putting all of your effort into it. It is kind of like sprinting on the inline. It is a lot of fun and a killer workout.
Just the other day I saw a student that has not been in for class in a while. She told me she had been busy and time got away from her. But she told me she would be coming in for class later that night. She happened to be with a friend and I told her to bring her friend along to class so she can try it. I even reminded her she would get 5 free classes if she signed up. Her friend jokingly laughed and said yeah right, me..... do kickboxing.... I would die. I am so out of shape. Now I understand that not everyone will like our fitness kickboxing class, and that is fine. But I wanted to find out why this friend said what she said and also if she was even interested in starting an exercise routine. It turns out she was interested in losing weight and all that, but she was just afraid that she would not be able to do the class. This is a belief I want to try and change among people. Everyone has to start somewhere and my kickboxing class is great for a couple of reasons. One is that I help you through your first couple classes to help you get the punches and kicks. I know how challenging it can be to learn something new like this. Also there is no expectation that you have to do X amount of push ups and X amount of laps. You do what you can and I am there to tell you to do 1 more :) That is how progress is made. After hearing all of this her friend said that sounds great. So I am glad I helped her to understand more about my class.
You hear this work "core" a lot. Developing a strong core is important to your health and your every day activity. When we say core we are talking about all the muscles around the middle of your body: abs, obliques, and lower back. During our kickboxing classes we do exercises that target these muscle groups to help strengthen them. Then we get into the class and we are working on punching and kicking combinations. The great thing about this is our instructors teach you how to engage you core muscles with every punch and kick. So you are twisting your hips into every punch and kick. It is not the easiest thing to do at first. But once you get it you really feel the difference in your workout. Great things take time and your fitness is a great thing to make good :)
Do you know all the benefits of exercising ? Of course we know working out is good. But I wanted to remind everyone of 2 things. #1- Exercising helps improve brain function. It is proven that physically active people are more productive at work. When you exercise chemicals get released in your brain that help you focus and because of that we see increased productivity at work. #2 - It is a stress reliever. Again exercising releases certain chemicals that help alleviate stress. In the case of our fitness kickboxing classes, what better way to get get rid of stress then to hit something :) We have gloves on when we hit the bags so you can't hurt your hand. Its great! That is all for today but these are 2 very important things to remember about working out.
Now that it is getting hotter it is important to remember to drink plenty of water throughout the day. Think about how much you sweat in class. You have to replace all that fluid that you lost. And before that, you have to have that fluid in your body to sweat it out. Loading up on water right before class isn't as good as drinking water consistently throughout the day. I want to make sure all my kickboxers are super ready for classes and don't get sick from not drinking enough water.
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October 2022
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