Ahwatukee StrengthLab Personal Training 480-612-7726

Fitness and exercise get more important, rather than less important, as we get older.

Therefore, we should take a long-term approach to exercise, an approach that’s designed to keep us training for a life-time.  Weight training is the first priority here, not only to increase personal fitness through enhanced muscular strength and muscular endurance but to maintain a dynamic balance between opposing muscle groups; which equates to a healthy range of motion throughout the body and its joints when practiced consistently.  This is how range of motion is maintained or re-acquired as we age – stretching is NOT the answer to maintaining or increasing flexibility!

Consequently, consistent and intelligent weight training builds a robust foundation that aerobic exercise can be built upon.  Aerobic exercise persued habitually, without a strategic resistance training program, is a recipe for imbalance, future injury and burn-out.  Furthermore, as we age, imbalances occur naturally (as well as unnaturally) throughout our bodies due to work related repetitive motions, trauma from accidents and muscle tissue loss due to inactivity (which can occur as early as 25 years of age).  As we age time spent resistance training should increase!

To summarize… no health and fitness program is complete without both elements – weight training and cardiovascular training.  Unfortunately, both are typically not practiced consistently (or at all) and often when they’re executed they’re performed incorrectly by the majority of end users; the selected exercises, technique, frequency, intensity and duration are all keys to long-term progression and success.

Our appetite is more controllable after a good workout; our stress is managed more effectively after a good workout; thinking is clearer and more lucid after a good workout; decision making and judgment are greatly improved after a good workout; we feel better about ourselves and our lives after a good workout; our focus and patience is improved after a good workout. Each workout matters!

The Warrior Ethos goes well beyound soldiers and battlefields… in other words, we all fight our own personal battles, frequently far away from open and armed conflict. We work to define why we exist and what matters to us. We struggle for our position in society and for what we believe in. We fight for our families, our friends and even against the aging process. I believe in this kind of fight and what it can make of us.

One of the largest studies ever to examine the dangers of male and female abdominal fat was recently concluded – and those with the biggest waistlines have twice the risk of dying over a decade compared to those with the smallest waistlines.  A bulging midsection also leads to an increase in dementia, heart disease and breast cancer.  Carrying all your extra weight in the middle of your body comes at a big risk!  It’s time to eat better and start exercising more if this applies to you.

The majority of us devote ourselves to daily pursuits that will not and cannot make us happy long-term; when these banal pursuits and their superficial effects wear thin, we begin to question the pointlessness of our once important activities; the mid-life crisis has officially begun. Inner wisdom and outer strength is the antidote and we can work on that here.

Because supplements are primarily a waste of money, personal trainers who promote, advise or sell supplements fall into one of the following categories:

A. Don’t know or understand the basics of nutrition or human physiology.

B. Believe the subjective opinions and marketing hype in which they’re subjected.

C. Have determined that personal financial gain is more important than being honest.