Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise or aerobic exercise is activity that involves or improves oxygen consumption by the body. Some benefits of cardiovascular exercise are:

• Strengthens muscles involved in breathing.
• Strengthens and enlarges the heart muscle, improves its pumping efficiency and reduces the resting heart rate.
• Improves circulation efficiency and lowers blood pressure.
• Increases the total number of red blood cells in the body, facilitating the transport of oxygen.
• Reduces risk of diabetes.
• Improves mental health and lowers stress

Cardiovascular exercise is essential to any fitness program. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to lose weight, improve fitness, or tone up you need to incorporate it in your program.

Depending on your fitness goals we create an appropriate cardiovascular program. Our purpose is to challenge you and keep your body guessing with changes to speed, time, and resistance.

We also monitor your intensity to make sure you are optimizing your time and effort. We created a simple chart which explains how to track your intensity (provided when you sign up). We want to make sure you are not over-training your body and vary your workouts accordingly.

Resistance Training

Resistance training or anaerobic exercise is exercise that builds muscle through tension. Some of the benefits of resistance training are:

• Building muscle, which in return burns more fat
• Making it easier to keep fat off
• Burning more calories at rest
• Strengthening bones and hardens joints
• Reducing risk of osteoporosis
• Increasing energy and lowers blood sugar
• Optimizing sports performance

Characteristics of resistance training at Four Pillar Fitness:

• Resistance training is part of every successful training program, no matter the fitness goals.
• Resistance training sessions are scheduled 2 to 6 times per week, depending on specific results desired.
• Resistance training routines are changed continuously in order to keep bodies challenged, since many exercisers reach a plateau in their progress due to the lack of change.
• Resistance training exercises will be executed correctly in order to prevent injury and to maximize results. We will help you achieve your goals in a safe and effective manner.

Nutrition

There are different ways to approach eating. You may have already found a plan that works for you and are only looking for the exercise component from us, which isn’t a bad thing. We approach eating from two different aspects.

First off, if you are someone who enjoys using the computer and seeing a report card you will LOVE our online meal plan program. It allows you to see if you are consuming all of your vitamins, minerals, calories, etc. It will also give you suggestions how to get all A’s on that report card if you are struggling to do so. We will get you set up to use our program via our website at http://www.fourpillarfitness.com/ under the meal planning section.

Second, if you aren’t a computer person, we have a written out meal plan based on calorie intake. It’s extremely easy to follow and gives you choices for every meal. We have a list of foods from 1 to 3 different columns and all you have to do is choose 1 food item from each column and the appropriate serving size is already figured out for you. We want you to be able to control your eating without too much thought.

We have a plan for you and will hold you accountable to that plan. The day you eat to live as opposed to live to eat is the day you will feel free from the bondage of food.

Flexibility

Flexibility is a key element in maintaining healthy muscles. As you develop lean muscle mass your muscles shorten and need to be stretched to maintain range of motion and to avoid injury. Even though the muscles are stronger, the range of motion decreases and increases your chances of injury if you happen to overextend the muscle. Think of a bodybuilder and how stiff they walk and move. Even though they can lift a lot of weight and are “chiseled” they cannot perform a lot of athletic movements. They want their muscles to shorten so they look bigger and more defined. If they were to compete athletically it would take one wrong move outside of their range of motion to pull a muscle.

A very popular question is when do I need to stretch? Stretching needs to be done after your workout on cardiovascular training days. During resistance training you are stretching your muscles and breaking down the muscle fiber. During recovery is when the muscle fiber repairs and shortens. Stretching is best done after cardio workouts because your muscles are warm, have recovered from resistance training, and have not stretched due to the shortened range of motion.

The duration of the stretch is also very important. Holding a stretch for 20 seconds is not going to get the job done. The muscle usually fights the stretch for at least 1 min and a true stretch cannot be accomplished until the muscle stops fighting. Once the muscle relaxes it is important to hold the stretch for another minute: the total stretch taking roughly 2 minutes. Everyone is a little bit different and it may take your muscles longer to relax and it may take less time to relax.

To reach optimal muscle health we have a list of stretches you can do on your cardio days. Remember, your stretching needs to take place after the muscle is already warmed up. Think of it as a rubber band. The rubber band is more likely to break when it is cold. When it is warmed up it has the ability to stretch farther with less risk of it snapping.