Looking for quick bits of health and wellness advice? We are continually building our library of videos to supplement the education you receive in our health education programs. Bookmark this page and check back often for new content.
Exercise
Exercises You Can Do at the Office
With busy work, home and social lives, it can be difficult to find time for a workout. However, there are several exercises you can do with limited space, time and equipment that are perfect for the office or work site. Perform any or all of these moves throughout the day to burn extra calories, build and tone muscle.
Setting SMART Goals
Set yourself up for success by setting goals the S.M.A.R.T. way.
Exercise Selection and Order
Having a structured plan in terms of exercise selection and order will help you have more effective workouts.
Guidelines for Resistance and Cardio Exercise
The frequency, duration and intensity of your workouts depend on your specific goals. Use these guidelines to help you put together an effective exercise program of your own.
Demonstration: Squats
Squats are a great example of a lower-body, multi-joint exercise. They help with mobility, stability, balance and coordination. This video goes over basic technique and some modifications to help you get started.
Warming Up and Cooling Down
Two essential components of any exercise routine are the warm-up and cool-down. Follow these guidelines to help prevent injury and get the most from your workout.
Staying Hydrated
Consuming enough water is critical to overall health and well-being. Staying properly hydrated improves cognitive function, prevents muscle cramps and promotes better performance during exercise, which leads to better fitness results. Inadequate water intake can lead to headaches and other major problems such as heat stroke. Make sure to stay diligent about hydration by consuming enough water before, during and after your workouts.
Rest and Recovery
An essential, yet often overlooked, variable in all exercise routines is rest. It’s important to rest between exercises and between workouts to give your body enough time to recover. Adequate rest optimizes performance in the gym and helps you maintains proper exercise form. This video goes over rest intervals based on the type and intensity of your training, whether you’re working on muscular endurance, hypertrophy or strength.
How to Train Your Abdominal Muscles
Your abdomen contains several different muscles that all contribute to the movement of your trunk and help support your spine. This video goes over the basic anatomy and function of your abdominal muscles and lists a few moves you can do to train each of them.
How to Burn More Calories without Exercising
While exercise is the best way to burn a large amount of calories, incorporating other small activities into your day quickly add up to burn even more calories. For example, did you know that eating food actually burns calories?
Exercise Frequency
When creating a workout plan, it’s important to determine how frequently you will train during the week. Oftentimes, this will depend on how much experience you have in resistance training, as well as your schedule. Once you’ve figured out how many days per week you will train, you can ultimately determine which parts of your body to train on each day.
Four Principles of a Good Workout Program
There are four basic principles that every training program needs in order to be successful: specificity, overload, variation and progression. Incorporating these principles into your training will help you adhere to your workout plan and keep you from plateauing.
Demonstration: Push-Ups
Pushups can be performed just about anywhere and are a perfect example of an upper body, multi-joint exercise. They help develop muscular strength and endurance of the chest, shoulders and triceps while also engaging the core in order to stabilize the spine throughout the movement. In this video, we go over the basic mechanics you need know before getting started, and also show a few modified versions for beginners, intermediate and advanced fitness levels.
How to Keep Progressing Your Fitness Level
One of the most important factors to incorporate into your workout plan is progression. Without periodically increasing the intensity of your exercise sessions, your body will adapt to the stimulus you’re providing and eventually stop responding. This is often called a “plateau” as all signs of progress have stalled. To combat this, we use a strategy known as progressive overload, which modifies the intensity of an exercise in order to help you adapt further and keep improving.
