Justin G. Walls, Certified Personal Athletic Trainer

Round one, using light weights and a step Lateral shoulder raises Alternating overhead press and same-side knee raise Alternating step ups (keep heel off of floor) Back flys Three rounds, each exercise should be forty seconds long :20 break between rounds Round Two, using medium weights and a mat Kneeling in lunge position, single arm bicep curl (one set per arm)  Mountain Climbers In bridge position, dual arm tricep extensions Bent knee crunches (pause at top of crunch) Three rounds, each exercise should be forty seconds long Round Three, using heavy weights, step, and mat Static Lunge w/back leg on step (one set per leg) one weight Dead lift with both weights Half plank bent over single arm row on mat Air Squats Three rounds, each exercise should be forty seconds long This class meets Tuesday at 8:15 am and Friday at 8:30 am Bender JCC 6125 Montrose Rd Rockville MD 20852  Group Ex room B New workouts each week

What's Trending This Week In Fitness? Because another Polar Vortex is crushing the east coast again! Testosterone Warnings Becoming A Reality Public Advocacy Group Asks FDA For Warning About Heart Attacks here  and  here Other Hormonal Factors Could Contribute To Low Energy and Low Libido  here Concern's Raised About Testosterone Replacement Therapy  here Workout Motivations In Bad Weather Simple, At-Home Workouts In Bad Weather  here Music Is a Great Workout Buddy  here Fast Five Minute Workout!  here 15 Minute Arm Crushing Workout  here Some Winter Meal Suggestions, Get Ready For Spring 10 Winter Comfort Food Meals, Fast And Easy  here Simple Quinoa Recipes  here Mix It Up With Some Great Lentil Recipes (lots of Protein!) here

ACSM's Most Popular Fitness Trends For 2014 Which one are you going to try? One of the biggest problems with fitness is workout boredom. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that in the "vine" generation, we are seeing a resurgence of interval training, specifically high intensity interval training ( HIIT ). You can read the ACSM press release  for their top ten trends, which seem to follow a specific pattern: Get the workout done fast Get the best possible results for your investment Use as little or as simplistic (perhaps inexpensive) equipment as possible Have a certified professional guide your workout Workout in groups Put the "fun" in functional It shouldn't be a surprise that two of the most popular fitness trends are CrossFit and P90X, with their emphasis on basic exercises with minimal equipment. It should be noted that the "basic" exercises in CrossFit are actually quite challenging, including many Olympic style l...

There was a blog post recently that has sparked some heated debate over the past five days since it was posted. The original blog post was trying to point out that certain types of hip and femur structures will affect the squat position of each client, basically concluding that each person will feel comfortable in one foot position may not be the same as another. Apparently, his post got around to a bunch of people, including a DC Area Crossfit Coach who had nothing nice to say about poster (including saying "When you come at the king, you best not miss" a quote from the show The Wire ). The original poster responded with a short video explaining that he was not trying to disprove mobility training, but was instead trying to enlighten trainers to some potential structural differences that may affect their client's ability to go.... ahem.... where they have never gone before. I can tell you that studies have been conducted and written about in expert textbooks. One su...

Over the years, we have thrown around words like 'VO2 Max', Resting Heart Rate, Oxygen Intake, and so on. I actually blogged about this about a year ago  How to ACTUALLY go from Couch to 5k , and I had some funny pictures of Homer Simpson running and a cool chart showing oxygen intake and deficit relationship. Today, I am going to give you some tools on how to calculate VO2 Max, make it meaningful to you, and have you start making any necessary changes to your lifestyle to get you feeling your 'fitness' age. What's your fitness age? Let's start with VO2: this is the volume of oxygen your body will use in one minute. It's the ratio between the amount of oxygen in the air you inhale divided by the amount of oxygen in the air you exhale, all during the course of one minute. To save you the thousands of dollars it would cost to measure this with specialized equipment, some fantastic sport scientists have developed some simple formulas that you can use to...

Last week, there was yet another article  in the WaPo Health section about the benefits of going gluten-free. Sports Illustrated had an article about gluten-free athletes  a couple of years ago, touting the benefits of freeing up your body's metabolism from the breakdown of gluten in the intestine to more athletic performance work (reallocating scarce resources in the body makes sense right?). I shoulda eaten more carbs... To be fair, nobody is advocating carb-free diets for athletic performance. In "Endurance Sports Nutrition", Dr. Eberle points out that the science is pretty straight forward on this: you need carbs to perform and keep you going for the long haul until the body can access glycogen stores, but carbohydrates are the main thing that will keep you in the long races. You can read more about this  from the publisher's website What we are discussing is whether gluten, being a difficult protein to break down, can slow you down just a little. In...

5 Minute Core Workout! Try one, two, or three rounds 1:00 Push-Up With Opposite arm and leg Raise   Start with both arms and legs on the floor, perform one push-up, and finish the push-up by lifting opposite arm and leg (pictured).  :30 Single Leg Squat Right   :30 Single Leg Squat Left              Use a bench, couch, or whatever you find stable.              Shift your weight to your toes as you stand up. To modify, place your straight leg's heel on the floor to assist you as you stand up   1:00 Alternating Side Planks     Start with arms straight as pictured, transition to side plank on right arm, return to straight arm plank, switch to side plank on left arm 1:00 Jump Squats     I think the picture says it all. :30 Side Plank Toe Touch     You can go into the side plank either on your hand or on your forearm. Raise your upper le...

Use Breathing to Relieve Stress Ever notice how athletes will take a breath or two before going for the big play? Breathing is one of the easiest ways to relieve stress. You can read up on stress and the different forms of relief at this great article on Bodybuilding.com . I want to focus on a simple technique to reduce stress and light anxiety. Firstly, breathing is a stress response as part of our natural "fight or flight" response. However, we are able to access this response and slow our own breathing to reduce the hormone secretion during a stress response. Controlling breathing will also regulate heart rate and blood pressure. Combining breathing techniques with exercise is an added effective technique at changing our overall pathology of stress relief which usually manifests itself as neck and shoulder pain, which can be relieved through good old fashioned "talking about your stress". Research has shown that punching a bag, for example, my actually reli...

New Five minute Workout! For a longer workout, do this multiple times! Warm- up with :20 Jumping Jacks, :20 High Knees, and :20 Jump Squats Find a couch and let's do tricep dips for :30 Drop to the floor, and do some mountain climbers for :30 Move those legs fast! Let's do some pause push-ups for 1:00 At the bottom of your push-up, keep your chest a few inches from the floor, arms bent, count to 5 SLOWLY, then press up We're half way there! Let's stand up and do some walking lunges, prisoner style for 1:00 Find a box somewhere in your house, or just stack a bunch of books and get ready to do deadlifts for :30 It is important to maintain proper form. Keep you back straight and push your hips back for full leverage.  Stand up straight to complete the movement.                                     ...

Parkour for the rest of us: a gym in Alexandria, VA challenges regular people to attempt some forms of the street gymnastics called parkour to help awaken parts of the body rarely used in daily life Is there such a thing as "the least amount of exercise"? ACSM struggles with the issue of how little exercise can people get away with if they won't meet their standards for regular exercise. "Really doc, how much exercise do I have to do?" Stay AWAY from DMAA:  The FDA has seized a large number of GNC products containing DMAA, as its side effects have caused serious illness and death in people found to have taken the dietary supplement Best tasting Fitness Shake  I have switched to this shake because it not only has great vitamin, mineral, fiber, and protein content- it also tastes FANTASTIC mixed just with water. Contact me to get the best pricing Some Very Earthy Extracts Some are claiming that certain extracts taken from rocks have some amazing positiv...

Simple, five minute workout when you can't get to the gym I actually use this workout as part of the warm up to my kickboxing class It hits pretty much every major muscle group, and gets your body loose for hours afterwards 5 Exercises, 5 minutes 1. 15 push-ups When  I say push-ups , I mean solid ones. Like the ones in this video. Body is straight. You go down straight. You come up straight. 2. 45 seconds Mountain Climbers Quick transition from push-ups, because it is in the same plank position Increase your speed for more intensity 3. Alternating Side Planks   Great Way to fire up your core for rotation. Engage, and then switch sides You can either time this for 30 seconds, or do ten on each side 4. 15 Squats   These need to be squats that bring your thighs parallel with the floor     5. 15 Lunges, left leg and right leg   Legs should be set at right angles, pelvis at a neutral position, moving fixed up and down in a strai...

You have to ask yourself: "Am I getting enough protein in my diet?" Here's the issue: you should feel satisfied when you eat a meal, but too many carbs can equal extra fat I'm not going to talk about going on a no or low carb diet. I am just going to help enlighten you to what you should aim to eat in terms of protein. Within the past couple of years, the USDA recommended diet reduced and balanced their meal suggestions (check out ChooseMYPlate.gov for more info) with about 35-40% of the meal containing protein and much less grains or starches. Proteins help provide the body with necessary amino acids. Meats and fish are more protein dense compared to milk, legumes, or whole grains. The recommended amount of protein for women is around 46 grams per day, and men about 56. The best way to stay healthy is to eat leaner meats and fish, and fill in the rest of the servings with beans, rice, and the like to reduce the amount of fat and sugar taken into your diet...

Normally, people think of exercisers as those who work hard, train hard, and eat like there won't be food tomorrow. Take for example, the Michael Phelps breakfast of champions: So that's what gold medal swimmers eat The NY Times Health Blog referenced a recent study from some University of Wyoming professors that demonstrates the opposite. Apparently, running would cause both men and women to reduce the calorie intake of their next meal by almost 100 more than someone who had just exercised by walking, and way more than someone who was totally sedentary. You can read the full study here . The study looked at some of the hormone and peptide production resulting after the two types of workouts. The result of running left the volunteers consuming fewer overall calories and making their calorie consumption much better regulated. The article quotes Prof. Catia Martins as saying: Exercise “improves the body’s ability to judge the amount of calories consumed and to adjust fo...

Today I am going to give you instructions on strengthening some of the upper back muscles that get hyper extended from our overly hunched daily routine. A friend of mine did some aid work in Haiti after their recent earthquake. Something he noticed was the excellent muscle tone of the back muscles amongst every age group, especially the elderly. He mentioned that they were quite adept at carrying things without much difficulty, even though he was there to treat the many other ailments they were suffering after the quake. The point is that they had excellent tone in their upper back from shoulder to shoulder, and as a result were not suffering from some of the common ailments of American society, where 10-15% of adults experience neck pain.. One exercise effective at improving tone is the overhead shoulder raise. The overhead shoulder raise involves holding a medicine ball or other weight in front of your body and then simply raising it overhead. Front Shoulder Raise Here are the...