Resolve To Improve Your Resolve

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re having a great season, but we all know what happens at the start of each year: the New Years Resolution to lose weight. It’s an annual rite of passage. The gym fills up with new members most of whom will be gone by March. That makes me sad. I love seeing new people in the gym, but I think that many times they have their goals a little skewed. What I’d like to talk about today are some New Years Resolutions that should help you in the gym a little more then the general and somewhat meaningless “I want to lose some weight.”


1. I will lose ____ pounds in the next six months. See what I did there? Instead of a general thought, I got specific. Let’s say my number is 15 pounds in six months. What I’ll do is break it down. 15 pounds in six months is 2.5 pounds a month. That’s 1.25 pounds every two weeks, etc. Now you have smaller goals that will propel you towards your ultimate goal, and you’ve clarified what you want to achieve.

2. I will eat fruits or vegetables with every meal. There isn’t a goal, fitness oriented or otherwise, that this wouldn’t help. They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away for good reason.

3. I will center my workouts around the free weight area of my gym. If your goal is to develop an extremely slow metabolism, then you can do your 45 minutes on the elliptical each day. If it’s to develop poor movement patterns and repeated use injuries, then you can stay on the machines. If it’s doing anything actually worthwhile, I suggest you start lifting free weights.

4. I will look into what will get me results. Resolution number three is a little glib. There are some goals that would involve longer treadmill sessions or more machine work, they just don’t apply to 95% of exercisers. Do some research into what you want to achieve and you will have a better chance of achieving it.

5. I will enjoy the process. You must realize that whatever your goal may be, it’s going to take time to get there and when that initial burst of enthusiasm dwindles, and it will, you stand a much better chance of seeing your goal through if you learn to enjoy what you’re doing. Do what you must to make it fun and you’ll wind up hitting goals you never even imagined!

For most of you, there’s no reason that you can’t finish 2011 in better shape than you started it. It’s just a matter of figuring out what you want and going for it! Have a great day and I’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.

Mitch Rothbardt
http://www.mitchrothbardtfitness.com/
MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com
510-754-7113
Discover Your Strength!

Exciting Updates!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday season. We had a nice relaxing time and I'm really looking forward to the new year. I wanted to give everyone a quick update as what I've been doing and what I will be doing in the near future.
First things first, this Sunday I am doing my first powerlifting meet since last May. I'm very excited and I have big numbers in mind. I'm looking at something like a 425 Squat, a 265 Bench and a 525 Deadlift. My goal for 2011 is to do a meet at the end of the year and total 100 pounds more than I do at this one. This should set me up for a run at an elite total in 2012. I'll put a recap up early next week with some videos. If you'd like to come by and watch for a while, it's at Crossfit Pleasanton at 7075 Commerce Circle, Suite B in Pleasanton. It's around where the Club Sport and the Hilton is to give you an idea. Lifting starts at 10 and should go on for most of the day.
Next thing, I'm going to start doing some more video content. I'll put up some exercise advice and I'll be able to expand more on the "Exercises Everyone Should Do" series. I'll also be posting some things I just want to talk about concerning exercise and fitness. I'm going to try and connect this with my Forum articles to make things a little more in depth.
Lastly I am going to start my groups very soon. This is going to be a great way to get one-on-one level training for a lot less money and adding a great sense of fun and community. Stay tuned for when and where that's going to launch. Details to follow.
Well, that's about it for now. If you have any suggestions for content you'd like to see or read about, please send me an email or give me a call. I'll talk to you soon!

Mitch Rothbardt
http://www.mitchrothbardtfitness.com/
MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com
510-754-7113
Discover Your Strength!

Christmas for the Fitness Enthusiast

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. The time of year when all of my loyal readers are desperately searching for that very special something to get their favorite fitness columnist/personal trainer! Well, as much as I’d like to get presents from all of you, my humble nature won’t allow it. What I’ll do instead is present you with my second annual “What To Get The Fitness Enthusiast In Your Life For Christmas” column. Wow, that’s a mouthful!

1. Resistance bands. There are a ton of different uses for resistance bands. You can warm up, get stronger, do cardio, stretch. You can get the one’s with the handles on the ends at any sporting goods store but you have to go online to a site like EliteFTS.com to get the ones that are like big rubber bands. Both kinds are very useful.

2. Chuck Taylors. Do you wonder why your balance isn’t very good, or your knees are a bit achy or your hips are real tight? It might be the shoes! The thick, cushiony, sneakers most of us wear are actually hurting us. For one thing, the heel lift they have puts us on our toes too much and that can hurt our knees. For another, all that cushioning gives us no feel for the ground and that effects our balance. Get some good old-fashioned Chucks! They’re cheaper and still the best sneakers around.

3. Quinoa. It’s pronounced Keen-Wa and it’s delicious. It can be found near the rice in your grocery store and you cook it the exact same way. It’s a grain, like rice, but it has more fiber and protein and a little lighter flavor. Bon appetit!

4. Patience. I know you can’t exactly buy someone patience for Christmas, but I’d like to. Too many people are way too anxious for the quick fix. The body just doesn’t work like that. Have some patience and do things right and two things will happen: 1. The change has a better chance to stick and 2. You have a better chance to enjoy the process, which will then lead to other fitness goals and an enhanced, physical life. There’s no point in losing a bunch of weight if you’re just going to gain it back after the “special diet” is over.

5. Any piece of “Lift Strong” clothing from EliteFTS.com. This was on the list last year and the reason holds up. The clothes look good, are comfortable and inexpensive, and the proceeds go to cancer research. And just wearing a LiftStrong t-shirt is said to instantly add 25 pounds to your bench press!

Well, there are a few ideas for you, but don’t forget to take care of yourself, as well. One of the best gifts you can give your family and loved ones is the commitment to get yourself in shape. Believe me, seeing you taking care of yourself makes everyone happy and right now is a great time to start!

Happy holidays and I’ll talk to you in a few weeks.

Mitch Rothbardt
http://www.mitchrothbardtfitness.com/
MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com
510-754-7113
Discover Your Strength!

Don’t Resist Good Exercise

I talk to a lot of people that either aren’t experienced exercisers or spend their time in the gym doing “cardio” or “machines”. When I talk to them, I always try to see things as they see them. This is never more evident then when I use the term “resistance training”. About this time in the conversation I usually see a bit of fear in their eyes as they picture a long barbell with a bunch of weight on each side getting thrown around by a massive, screaming bodybuilder. What I then explain to them is that resistance training can always be made easier or harder depending on the person’s physical condition. Actually, many times we use no external weight at all. We just do simple bodyweight exercises.

While I could talk about how to program resistance training for different people, what I really want to talk about today is it’s importance and how it fits in with everyone’s goals and situation.

Resistance training for fat loss: For long-term fat loss what we are really looking to do is speed up the body’s metabolism permanently. Since lean body burns more calories then fat we must increase it to raise our metabolism, therefore raising the amount of calories we burn each day. Doing the 30-45 minutes of cardio that most people do actually has the long-term effect of lowering metabolism, making it progressively harder and harder to lose the weight we want to lose.

Resistance training for endurance athletes: Every time a runner’s foot hits the ground they need to produce a certain amount of force to propel themselves forward. Doesn’t it make sense that if they get stronger they could produce more force, thereby making themselves a faster and more efficient athlete?

Resistance training for older people: After the age of 40 we lose about 10% of our muscle mass each decade. With this comes an decrease in bone density, particularly in women, an increase in fat and a general decline in health and well-being. This doesn’t have to be the case and this process can be slowed, stopped or even reversed by resistance training. Don’t we all know someone who experienced what seemed to be a minor fall and yet suffered major injuries? A lack of bone density and general strength is the culprit.

Resistance training for injury prevention: Our muscles and bones aren’t the only recipients of resistance training’s benefits. As our muscles get stronger our ligaments and tendons do as well. This means that whether we suffer an accident, run a marathon or just want to pick up your grandchild, every part of our body is better equipped to handle the stress of the event.

If you have any questions about how to properly incorporate resistance training into your life, please drop me a line.

Mitchell Rothbardt, CPT ACE

Mitch Rothbardt Fitness
510-754-7113
http://MitchRothbardtFitness.com/
Discover Your Strength!

This Saturday!

Hello everyone! I just wanted to drop a quick note to remind everyone that my Free seminar, "The Truth About Fat Loss" is this Saturday! It's at the Inner Athlete, 377 Macarthur in San Leandro at 1pm. I hope to see you all there!

Mitch Rothbardt, CPT
http://www.mitchrothbardtfitness.com/
MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com
510-754-7113
Discover Your Strength!

They're All Lying To You

They’re lying to you, you know. That’s right. They’re all lying to you. A quick search on Google turned up 162,000,000 hits for the term “weight loss”. That’s not an exaggeration. With that amount of information out there it’s not hard to understand why people have so difficult a time knowing what to do.

A couple of months ago Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore made headlines when they twittered that they were going on a maple syrup, lemon water and cayenne pepper diet “for health reasons”. Gwyneth Paltrow’s personal trainer Tracy Anderson appears on multiple TV shows exclaiming that women should never lift more than three pounds. “The Biggest Loser” tells everyone that losing two pounds a week is a low number. Turn on your TV on a Saturday afternoon and you don’t have to go far to find an infomercial telling you that the new ab-roller/coaster/rocker can help you lose 25 pounds in two months if you use it for only 15 minutes three times a week. They’re all lying to you.

The weight loss industry is multi-billion dollar-a-year business. That’s billion with a “b”. There are diets that tell you to eat no carbs. Diets that tell you to eat no fat. Diets that tell you to eat whatever you want as long as you have this special pill first. There are exercise books that tell you to do hours of cardio and abs. Think about it. Does any of this really make sense?

Have you noticed that on every weight loss pill bottle the label says something like, “Our studies have shown that if you take two of these pills a day along with proper diet and exercise you will lose weight.” Really? You mean that proper diet and exercise don’t do anything without your magic pill that costs $79.95?

They’re all lying to you.

We know that obesity rates are skyrocketing. We know that this stuff is now being passed on to our kids. How can this be when a quick search can give me 162,000,000 pieces of advice? It’s because so much of this information is just out there to promote someone’s book or someone’s TV show or sell a pill.

How do you know what to listen to? You’re in luck. On Saturday September 18th at the Inner Athlete in San Leandro I am going to be giving a free fat loss seminar at 1:00 pm. I am going to talk about these lies and tell you what the real truths are behind fat loss and how you can figure out the difference. The Inner Athlete is located at 377 Macarthur in San Leandro. Please call me at 510-754-7113 or email me at MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com if you have any questions, or just show up. It’s free and I hope we can help help a lot of people. Have a great week and I hope to see you there!

Mitchell Rothbardt, CPT ACE

Mitch Rothbardt Fitness
510-754-7113
http://MitchRothbardtFitness.com/
Discover Your Strength!

Area Fitness Professionals: Paul Southern

Hello, everyone. For my next few articles I’m going to introduce you to a few people in the area and talk about their approaches to exercise and general well being.

Today we’ll talk to Paul Southern. Paul owns Re-Active/CrossFit Pleasanton. He started as a coach 12 years ago after leaving the Marine Corps where he was a Fleet Marine Force Corpsman. He started coaching people in his garage and has since expanded to a 5,000 square foot coaching facility in Pleasanton.

Mitch: Talk about your fitness philosophy.

Paul: Someone that works out and strives to eat nutrient dense food has made a decision that the good life is something that we create for ourselves. Fitness leads to a healthier body and most importantly a healthy mind. If there is turmoil and dysfunction there, a person will be unhappy. I encourage people to start going in the right direction. Eat well and workout to make the mind and body healthy. It’s a decision about how you want to live.

Mitch: Talk about your gym, your coaches and the different things you offer.

Paul: I have always believed in the power to change my circumstances. In order to do this, everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves. Re-Active gym is about creating a place and a community that is trying to move in the right direction.

CrossFit is a group training program that aims to develop every aspect of an athlete, and we are all athletes: from our 8 year olds to our 73 year olds. We also work with athletic teams. Their coaches will work on their sport’s specific techniques but we want to make sure they can move right and are strong and conditioned. Our private training is for people that have specific goals or special needs that require them to work with a private trainer.

I am constantly bombarded with applications for coaches. There are plenty of mediocre “trainers”. I’m looking for the best of the committed coaches. The first requirements are integrity and attitude and then we look at a coach’s skills. Just like the clients they work with, a coach in my facility is always growing and improving their skill level. For example, Jesse Burdick was presenting at a conference in L.A. and I asked if he would like to come work for me. Harry Selkow is a coach and writer for EliteFTS (a top website on strength and conditioning). He moved to Pleasanton to be part of the team. Dan King was a coach at Bally’s that had outgrown the Globo Gym approach to fitness.

Mitch: Anything else?

Paul: Fitness is a way of life. We are designed for it. To ignore this simple fact is to live a less than optimal life. Live a full life and be fit. Also, don’t eat yellow snow.

You can see more about Re-Active at their website www.ReactiveGym.com. Call him at 925-353-4894 to talk about the CrossFit training or if you’d like to talk about personal or small group training at Re-Active you can call me at 510-754-7113.

Mitchell Rothbardt, CPT ACE

Mitch Rothbardt Fitness

510-754-7113

http://MitchRothbardtFitness.com/

MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com

Discover Your Strength!