Demystifying Fitness Assessments and Corrections: A Guide to Redefining Your Health Journey (Re-Run)

(Originally aired 2022) Ever felt stuck in your fitness journey? Today, we promise to illuminate your path to optimal health by demystifying the world of fitness assessments and corrections. We kick things off with a comprehensive discussion about the necessity of gauging your fitness level accurately and crafting an exercise regime to match your individual goals and body type. Through practical demonstrations of techniques such as overhead squat assessment, strength assessment, and muscular endurance exercises, we expose the secret power of regular assessments in achieving your personal fitness goals.

But that's not all! We dive deeper into the art of correcting postural and muscular imbalances, a lesser-known but equally vital aspect of any successful fitness strategy. Get ready to explore the world of overactive and underactive muscles and learn game-changing exercises to fortify the right ones. Posture woes? We've got you covered with actionable advice on rectifying common posture issues. In the final segment, we share inspiring personal stories that spotlight the transformative power of fitness and how it can redefine health, boost confidence, and infuse your life with vitality. So gear up to redefine your fitness journey, because this episode is a goldmine of health wisdom waiting to be discovered!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen. Join me today as we take a dive into the world of health and wellness. We're going to overcome adversity, to pick back for extinction and see health and fitness in a whole new light. Today, guys, we have an amazing episode for you. We're going to talk all about assessing how to figure out how to start your own exercise program or maybe you do work out for a while so how to reassess yourself to see what you're doing is actually working. They could come in pitfall with a lot of people as they're exercising. They tend to just kind of get into a routine and go without really looking to see if they're doing the optimal thing, if they're actually getting results, and if they're doing is actually helping them or, in some cases, actually making it worse. Yes, guys, in certain situations you can actually make things worse. So I'm going to talk to you guys today all about why to assess and how to assess, and then how to correct that, moving forward to help make sure you have an optimal workout. So first, why I kind of broke it down a little before you want to assess first, because you can figure out what kind of muscular imbalances you have, or maybe what kind of exercise routine you should be doing.

Speaker 1: 1:49

There's a lot of different ways to work out. There's a lot of different movements and types of exercises you could be doing. So assessing yourself will help make sure you don't get hurt or, if you do have an injury, what those limitations are. The next part would be how to assess this. One is going to be a little more lengthy. First, what are your goals? And I say this because it really depends on what you're going to test to figure out what your goal is. For A great example, if your goal is weight loss, you should be doing some kind of high-intensity interval training along with weightlifting. A combination of the both is going to be the optimal workout for you to help lose weight. If your goal is to increase your muscular endurance, well, you should be working in that 15 to 20 rep range to help work on muscular endurance. Maybe you have some kind of marathon coming up or some kind of triathlon. Muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance are going to be the important things for you to do.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Now, if you have an injury, this can lead to limitations. Limitations can lead to more muscular imbalances. So talking to someone who's qualified that can help you, or just really doing your due diligence is really going to help make sure you don't end up getting more hurt and making matters worse. So a couple of things. So we figured out of our goals. Now we need to figure out what exactly are we going to be doing.

Speaker 1: 3:40

The best one is the overhead squat assessment. How we do this, very simply, is you're going to take your hands and put them straight up in a neutral position. In that position, you're going to sit back into a squat, nice and slowly trying to keep your hands all the way back as far as you can, trying to prevent them from leaning forward. Now, this would be a little easier if you have someone watching you, but you can do it yourself. Start bottom up or top down, whatever is easier for you. We'll start bottom up Now.

Speaker 1: 4:17

So the first thing we're gonna look at is, as someone's doing this is their feet. How are their feet turned? Are their feet turned out, or are their feet turned in, or are they neutral? Your feet should be neutral. Having your feet turned in and out could be the sign of muscular imbalances in your knees and your hips. Next, the knees A very common thing I see, is knees collapse in. These are called knock knock knees Very important because yet again it leads to tight adductors, which is the inner thigh muscles and really underactive AB ductors. So really working those hip muscles is gonna help prevent injury.

Speaker 1: 4:55

Next we move up to the hips. How are the hips aligned? Are your hips tilted forward? Are they tilted back? This is what we call lower cross syndrome. So getting a good idea at neutral spine is gonna be important and move up again. Go to your arms. Are your arms forward? If your arms are too forward, this is also very common. It's a sign that you should really be working on your posture. Really tight chest, really weak lats, really understanding. You need to do more chest stretches and really work your back muscles a little more. Same thing with the head tilted forward, tilted back something you should be looking at Working, not in posterior alignment. Over time you're gonna start putting unnecessary strain on certain ligaments. This is gonna cause issues down the road where you could end up with forms of tendonitis or you could give yourself a bursar in your knee. There's a lot of different types of injuries you could do. You could easily tear a muscle if it's not going the correct way.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Another great exercise Figuring out where you stand as far as strength. So we do an overall assessment at redefine fitness. Our strength assessment is lap pull downs. Lap pull downs instead of squats or benching, which a lot of people go to, are way safer, and I mean that because you don't need a spot. If I'm going for a five rep max to figure out my maximal strength, I'm gonna stay away from something that's really unsafe, especially the beginners. So doing something like a lap pull down can still give you that maximal strength assessment and avoid injuring yourself or your client. Then muscular endurance exercise, such as planks are great we do. You can do bicep curl. Muscular endurance Gives you a baseline of how long your muscles can go before they get tired. You need to do both. There needs to be strength and there needs to be endurance, because there's different muscle twitches type one and type two which could be based upon how you train and what you're looking to do. So make sure you're testing for both.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Another great one that we do is step ups, right? So I'm gonna break this one down a little bit more. We put a step in front of somebody and we're gonna have the right foot come up. Left foot's gonna go straight up to the air and then come all the way back behind them. We're gonna do a set of eight on the right side, set of eight on the left side. Then we're gonna go laterally, so left foot's gonna be on coming up laterally and the right foot's gonna come up and then vice versa.

Speaker 1: 7:32

What I'm really looking for here is balance, which is gonna either be an issue through your hips, your knees, your ankles or your core. I'm looking for how you move up, seeing if there's any muscular and balance. So I'm looking for your cardiovascular endurance, because doing them back to back to back to back to back, and I'm looking for which muscles are under overactive, depending how you step up, if you can even step up, and if you have any issues in your knees or hips. For example, if you see somebody doing a forward step up and they have really poor balance and then they go ahead and they do a plank, and a plank is really good, this is actually a sign to me. It's not coming from the core, it's coming from something like your feet sorry, ankles or your knees or your hips, and it helps really me pin down where exactly I need to work as a trainer or where you need to work yourself.

Speaker 1: 8:25

All right, guys, now the we know the importance and how. Let's talk about how to fix and I'm only gonna hit with this one, the overhead squad assessment, because it does so much. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, but really, really, really gonna break down the overhead squad assessment. If you have any questions, you can always look it up.

Speaker 1: 8:52

First and foremost, let's get on here. So those watching Video? Awesome. So we have a lovely little chart here, guys, and I'm gonna blow this up. Viewpoints mean how you're looking. Look at some of the interior, looking someone from laterally, so meaning up front or From the side. That's what that means. For those that do not know, checkpoint. We're gonna start with those feet. Your feet turn out. I'm gonna make put this in a little more simplistic terms, but what you're seeing here is this could be from a Just alignment, from the knees to the feet or from your hip. It's most likely coming from your hip, meaning the whole leg is turned out and not just the feet. So that's the case and you're fully turned out. Your overactive muscles are really your lateral.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Gastronomious Is gonna be a big one here, and this is something you're gonna need to stretch your soleus as well, that's your calf muscle, and Then your biceps femoris, which is on your quadricep or front, are things and you're not the stretch. Now the underactive muscles are probably a little more important. Here I some great exercises you can do is you could take a band tied around your foot, tired of on something, and kind of turn your foot this way, pushing it in. That's another good. You can also do some internal, external rotation. So lay on your side, come up like this with your knees and then come down the other way. So that would work.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Your medial gastronomious, your medial hamstring complex and now, for those that don't know, those were all located up in the hip. So really working those extra muscles that you normally wouldn't hit in a squat or a deadlift. It's gonna be super important if your feet do turn out. Knees, your knees move inward, as we call this, knock, knock knees. As I said before, overactive muscles are adductors. That's your inner thighs, butterfly stretch. Stretch those babies out. We're going to move right over to the underactive muscles, which is the gluteus medius and the gluteus maximus. For those that don't know, that's your butt. I think that's the most important one. Doing things like glup ridges are really going to help this. Another favorite is taking a band, wrapping it around your legs just slightly above the knees and doing squats and forcing those knees to push out. That's really going to hit the gluteus medius and help you learn how to align your knees while doing a squat. Definitely a fan of that one.

Speaker 1: 11:33

All right, your lumbar hip complex. That means you're excessively leaning forward. When you're excessively leaning forward into it, common sign of having some issues with your calf. I know that's what you're hipping your calf. Yeah, it's pretty crazy how related everything is. Your soleus and gastronomius those are your calf muscles. Really learning how to stretch those, your hip flexor so the front part up near your hip complex is going to be super tight and then your abdominal complex.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Learning to stretch your abs is important. A lot of people when they do core exercises, they think of core just as your abs oh, core is my abs. And then back is only your upper back. They totally avoid your rectus pina. Your rectus pina is that lower back. That's the one that pretty much surrounds your lumbar spine. Super important guys. So doing exercises like supermans or bird dogs are great ones to really help strengthen out your rectus pina and it's going to help get rid of that successive forward lean, also commonly seen with people with yeah, you probably guessed it poor posture.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Next, low back arches, meaning your low back all the way tilts in. This is the exact opposite of the other ones. So the excessive lean forward, switch it back for your low back arching in. So your rectus pina is going to be super tight. Stretching that out your lats, which are connected because they all come straight down your back, and then making sure you work out your hamstring complex. Really get that. So pose your rectus pina down. You got to think of it as it's trying to relieve the tension by pulling down and then working on your core stabilizers, which is everything in your abs Just say ab muscles is just easier to remember.

Speaker 1: 13:25

We're going to work our way up to the upper body. Arms fold forward. Oh, anthony, arms are falling forward. What's that a sign of? It's a sign kind of like I was saying, your pecs is usually the issue. It could be your teres major and your lat dorsi, but it's usually from your chest to doing what I like to call the door stretch, where you put your hands in the door and lean forward. It's going to really help stretch out that chest Shoulders rolling forward also very common thing.

Speaker 1: 13:56

You guys really need to work on your posture. Something to help fix that is going to be your rhomboids. So doing things like reverse flies will also work your rhomboids and your trapezius muscle. And then your rotator cuff, which we love using the acronym SITS. It stands for super spinatus, infraspinatus teres, minor and subscapularis. So doing a little rotator cuff in and out, up and down, internal, external rotation is really going to help get rid of that and maybe help your posture a little bit.

Speaker 1: 14:26

When, when I'm going to kind of skim through these last two, but your shoulders elevating where they come all the way up, like this Obviously your traps can be very tight stretching those out a little bit and just working the mid-lower traps to kind of force it down Not a very common one and then your head, put your hand forward. Same thing, really tight neck Also coming from text neck I love it when people love that term I'm texting forward and I'm leaning all the way forward like this and that's going to cause a lot of pain here. So really working those deep cervical flexors, which is this way put them in little head, push backs and they're going to help alleviate some of that pain through there. So that's how you would work in an extra muscles from an overhead squat assessment. I know this is a lot of information and I know this can get overbearing for some people. You kind of look at it and go. You know I'm going to assess something like this and why would I do it? It's really important because over time you really could end up hurting yourself, making matters worse. So understanding where you are or even just seeing how you're progressing you would hate to waste three months doing something and not seeing any results. So constantly reassessing, constantly evaluating, even with foods that you're eating, are going to help you be better. Bring this up next time to maybe one of your trainers, bring it up to the friend you work out with, or just do this at home.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Look up exercise assessments. There's some really, really great tools out there to help break down even more of what I went over and how it can help you guys do better going forward with your workouts. So remember you need success because it helps you figure out what you're doing is right. How to assess is pretty simple. Love the overhead squat assessment when doing different types of tests like cardiovascular, muscular endurance, maximal strength, are different ways to assess how your muscles work, whether they're fast, which, or slow twitch. I'm not going to bore you with that. If you want to look it up, go for it and then kind of taking that assessment and figuring out how to fix it going forward, so going over what we did with the overhead squat are your knees caving in? Are your feet going out? Check, maybe, your gait pattern.

Speaker 1: 16:53

Another favorite thing I do is a lot of clients I'll have them jog on a treadmill and I'll slow-mo video them running on a treadmill and you see some crazy things where maybe they have flappy here. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Big common sign we need to work on some dorsiflexion. A lot of people don't work their arterial fibulaeus, which is the shin. The muscle comes right up front of the shin. That's going to lead to that slamming on the treadmill Another time. You see a lot of people run their leg out like this when they're running. Could also lead to some IT band issues and piriformis issues down the line. Trust me, it hurts. You don't want it.

Speaker 1: 17:31

But anyway, guys, thank you for joining me on this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is a journey, not a destination. Until next time. For us, we know what it's like to feel unhealthy, depressed and downright defeated. We want to show others there is a right way and through fitness you can do anything you set your mind to. Fitness can give you that motivation, confidence, energy you need to bridge that mental gap and prevent you from missing important life events. We understand it's about feeling better, living longer and being good examples for our kids. We understand this because we live it, and for us, that's the redefined difference.