The Best Tramp Class Around!
Just Jump 4 Life! (Taking Your Workout to New Heights!)

Don’t let the term “trampoline” scare you away! Check out this class Thursday nights at 7:00 P.M. at My Health Studio.  Gain the incredible benefits mini-trampoline jumping can offer:

• The fitness trampoline provides the optimum platform for exercise
• Bouncing increases lung capacity, strengthening the entire cardiovascular system
• Helps to circulate the lymphatic system
• Improves balance with every bounce
• Lubricates the joints and reduces impact forces on bones
• Bouncing keeps you strong and balanced regardless of age.

Great music and lots of laughing! This is a whole body workout!

Purchase Your Holiday Gifts Early and Help Toys for Tots!
Saturday, November 5, 2011 ~ 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

You will find everything from jewelry, high-quality linens and comfort wear for the bed and bath, wickless candles, bags and purses to pre-made, stamped cards. We will have a licensed esthetician with the most state-of-the-art skin care solutions as well as a masseuse and fitness expert. You’ll have an opportunity to experience a no-cost body composition assessment on the InBody 230 and learn about the awesome technology of the bodybugg. All of our vendors for this boutique have made a donation to our Toys for Tots drive. We hope you will too. Please feel free to bring an unwrapped toy!

Fat Burning Strategy No. 4: Modify the Exercise
Keep Your Muscles Guessing!

When I go into the gym, I typically see folks performing the most common exercise “staples.”  The squat. The lunge. The chest press. The shoulder press. The bicep curl. You get my point…

While these reliable fitness essentials are effective, find creative ways to modify these familiar movements to provide challenge to your muscles. Try these exercise modifications:

• Squat on a Bosu ball or balance board.
• Place a weighted bar across your shoulders and do walking lunges.
• Use an exercise ball for chest presses instead of the bench.
• Do a full squat between each repetition of shoulder presses.
• Do a shoulder press between each repetition of bicep curls.

Fat Burning Strategy No. 3: Use Active Rest
How Long Should You Rest Between Exercises?

Every minute of a workout is an opportunity to increase intensity and burn more fat.  Don’t waste precious minutes sitting and taking long rest periods between exercises.  Those who train with me at My Health Studio are used to hearing my request to have them pace between exercises in a circuit.  While it is important to catch your breath if you feel winded, most of the time you would benefit more from an active rest. Perform an activity such as brisk pacing, knee lifts with punches or side-to-side ab twists for 30 seconds between exercises to turn your regular workout into High Intensity Interval Training.

Lose Body Fat: Strategy No. 2 – Focus on Negatives

I’m not talking about the negative thought but, rather, the process of lowering a weight during resistance training.  Every time that you perform a weight-lifting repetition you are using three types of strength.

1. Positive strength: lifting the weight.
2. Static strength: holding weight in a contracted position.
3. Negative strength: lowering the weight.

Many folks completely miss the benefit of the negative in each repetition by allowing the weight to drop quickly with little control.  However, the negative portion of each repetition is just as important as the positive, perhaps even more so.

Focus on the negative segment of each repetition by lowering the weight very slowly. Concentrate on the negative contraction, and make each rep count.  If you are advanced, then use a training partner to assist you in moving heavier-than-normal weight into a contracted position, then lower it very slowly.

Another way to utilize negative repetitions on a machine is to lift the weight using two limbs but then lower it with just one. For example, use both legs to lift the weight on a leg extension machine, but then lower it back down slowly using only one leg.

Lose Body Fat! Strategy Number One: Do a Drop Set

Want to enhance your resistance workout? Use a ”drop set.” This method of resistance training can be used to overcome exercise plateaus. It is useful for increasing muscle strength, endurance and boosting the cardiovascular benefit of your workout – resulting in more fat burn.

Here’s how to do a drop set: When you perform an exercise to fatigue, don’t stop there. Drop the weight by 80% and do another set. You could take it a step further by dropping the weight twice, making it a double drop. You can even drop the weight three times for a descending drop set. Use this technique only once or twice per workout, on the final set of the exercise.

Stay tuned for more hints to come!

How Can I Burn More Fat?
Mix It Up!

There is nothing more aggravating than seeing your results fizzle out.   This can happen if you spend months doing the same exercise routine.  Your body will respond at the beginning with a loss of pounds and some gained muscle tone, only to have those results come to a screeching halt.   How can you stop this from happening?

Muscles adapt quickly to repetitive routines.  If the definition of ‘insanity’ is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, this must hold true for exercise.  When results stop, it’s time to do change it up.

• The problem: Your muscles have adapted to your routine.
• The Solution: It’s time to apply the concept of muscle confusion.

Muscle confusion is a technique used to keep your body guessing by changing your routine.   In upcoming blogs, I will deliver some strategies to bring your workouts to the next level so you can break that “no results” cycle.  Stay tuned!

Just Jump 4 Life – Taking Your Workout to New Heights!

Rebounding (jumping on a mini-trampoline) is a unique exercise enabling you to achieve a weightless state at the top of each jump then land with twice the force of gravity on each bounce. This twice-gravity bounce affects every muscle and cell of the body. Researchers at the University of Kentucky, in conjunction with NASA, concluded that “the magnitude of the biomechanical stimuli is greater with jumping on a trampoline than with running.” After a great deal of research, we are using a wonderful trampoline made by “JumpSport.” No other brand can compare to JumpSport’s patent pending Stage Bounce™ technology. It provides one of the safest, forgiving impacts available on a Jogging/Rebounding trampoline.

Rebounding offers an exercise that can be adjusted to your fitness level, is easy on your joints and back, and provides a safe, gentle low-impact workout. Studies show that jogging or rebounding on a trampoline will burn more calories than traditional jogging. Exercising on a trampoline may also strengthen your heart, improve your circulation, stimulate the flow in your lymphatic system, revitalize vision, help slow the effects of aging, reduce stress and more. Keep an eye on the My Health Studio September schedule for class listings.

My Health Studio is located at 31139 Via Colinas, Suite 303 in Westlake Village. We’re dedicated to offering the finest in fitness classes and personal training!

Zumba at My Health Studio (Ditch the Workout. Join the Party!)

If you’re looking for a fun, intimate group exercise dance experience, check out Zumba at My Health Studio in Westlake Village. Besides burning calories like crazy, the Latin rhythms and easy to follow moves create a dynamic fitness program that will blow you away! Zumba participants can achieve long-term benefits while experiencing exhilarating movements that inspire and uplift. Prepare to get hooked after your first class!  Check out our class schedule (click on “Calendar”) on our website! (If you’ve never taken a class at My Health Studio, the first class is free!)

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JUST MOVE 4 LIFE (A CARDIO AND STRENGTH-BUILDING PARTY!)
Mondays from 7:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. ~ 31139 Via Colinas, Ste. #303 ~ Westlake Village

Do run-of-the-mill exercise classes bore you?  If so, get ready for some new moves and music added to this already fun class.   Burn calories and strengthen to music from the 50′s to the present.**  This is a class for beginners and beyond.  This session combines elements of “Old School Hi-Lo” (the Grapevine is back) with anything else Esta can come up with – everything from dance to throwing sand balls!  Whatever the movement, this class is always full of fun and laughs.  Instructions are given for low, medium and high impact.  Guaranteed to make you laugh and sweat!  (First-time attendees free!)
Instructor:  Esta McIntyre, NASM CPT/CES