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Fitness Town

Posted on 02. Feb, 2009 by BCXS in BC, Burnaby, Featured, Langley, Local Businesses, North Vancouver, Port Coquitlam, Surrey, Vancouver

Fitness Town, now with 8 retail locations to serve you, specializes in supplying the home and commercial markets with mid to high end fitness equipment and accessories. Our chain has grown from a single location in Burnaby to include South Vancouver, Kitsilano, Langley, Port Coquitlam, Surrey, North Vancouver and Edmonton, Alberta.

Fitness Town is also very proud to include an extremely successful commercial division that services the British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, Saskatchewan and North West Territory markets.

Setting us apart from other specialty fitness equipment retailers is Fitness Town’s large showrooms allowing for an unparalleled selection of brand name equipment, accessories, supplements and educational materials on display at all times.

And rounding out the Fitness Town shopping experience is our unyielding customer service focus – a byproduct of our friendly, experienced and professional staff! We at Fitness Town appreciate the opportunity of assisting you with your health and fitness needs!

Dai Manuel of Fitness Town just sent us this article through the Fitness Town Facebook group:

Proper Training Technique by Shawn Vint

In fitness, few things can limit progress like a training injury. An injury will usually necessitate a significant training layoff, and can serve to dampen the motivation needed to continue functioning well in the other pillars of a wellness lifestyle.

There are a number of things that one can do to reduce the likelihood of incurring a training injury…choosing an appropriate level of resistance or weight for your fitness level, ensuring that you are giving your muscles enough rest time between sessions, and by the avoidance of performing the exact same exercise movements every training session, which can lead to repetition injuries. The most common cause of injury, however, is improper training technique.

Any individual new to resistance training (weight training) should take the time to learn proper training technique, and nothing accelerates the learning curve like commissioning the services of an experienced and qualified Personal Trainer for a few sessions. They will teach you how to perform proper exercise technique by explaining the reasons why an exercise is chosen, as well as demonstrating and working with you until you are able to perform the movements within your specific program in a manner that’s as safe as it will be effective.

There are a number of training technique consistencies that will be common to all resistance training movements, and these will be the focus of this article. These common techniques don’t specifically address the correct sphere and range of motion of the individual exercises you will be performing. Those issues are best left to a trainer ‘on the scene’ so to speak, who can advise and correct deficiencies in those areas. The common items we will discuss are proper exercise posture, exercise speed, and a few tips that may help you reach your fitness goals faster, while reducing the injuries that slow down progress.

Most of us try to maintain proper posture throughout each day…at least we should. There is a healthy and an unhealthy way to present oneself to the world. I recall in grade school how in ‘health class’ our teacher would exhort us to ‘keep stomach in and shoulders back’. The effect on a bunch of grade-schoolers was rather comical, to say the least, and in hindsight not the best way to teach proper posture. Proper posture is really quite simple, and not as difficult to learn as one might expect. Best of all, the same posture that helps to present ourselves to the world in the best light and healthiest manner is also the best way to perform almost every resistance training movement.

The sternum is commonly referred to as the ‘breast-bone’. Running vertically from the base of the front of the neck to just above our stomach, the sternum attaches to our ribs via cartilage, protecting many vital organs from all but the worst physical trauma. On the first training day I have with every client, I begin with instruction on proper posture and start the lesson with a focus on the sternum. The lesson is as simple as this: ‘Sternum to the sky’…while standing up straight, concentrate on ‘tilting’ the sternum so that the flat front portion of the bone is elevated at an angle that points toward the sky, and most other elements of posture will almost always naturally fall into place. This motion will automatically place the shoulders into proper position and align the spine properly. This is the simplest and most easily understood method that I have found for teaching correct posture positioning, and it translates well onto the gym floor.

Trying to teach 4 or 5 separate elements involving shoulder placement, back curvature and chest position while learning a new movement is just too difficult, even for those with a good grasp of body positioning. Conversely, maintaining awareness of ‘sternum to the sky’ while performing any exercise is a very easy task. During different exercises we find ourselves lying down, bending or squatting, and sometimes I change the terminology to ‘sternum to the chin’, ensuring that regardless of body positioning, proper posture is maintained.

Maintaining correct training posture is crucial for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it will ensure that the muscles you are trying to target are the muscles that in practice are being worked. A common example of the importance of proper training posture is easily recognizable in the chin-up. Watch as someone at the club is performing a set of chin-ups. As they begin, they may have the correct ‘sternum to the sky’ posture, ensuring that the muscles of the back are being worked. As they quickly begin to tire, however, witness how they begin to drop the sternum, rounding the back and pulling their legs up towards the belly as they continue.

As soon as this happens, they have unknowingly transferred most of the workload from the back muscles to the biceps muscles of the arms. It’s a common occurrence, and the reason why it is a good idea to support the feet while performing chin-ups so that you can ‘self-spot’ yourself, maintaining proper training posture and working the back muscles that you intended. That’s just one example, and for every exercise that you perform, maintain the ‘sternum to the chin’ position and you will reap better results with fewer injuries.

In our Exercise Movement Series, I continually advise viewers to ‘go slow through the transition’ in video after video. The transition is best defined as the point in any exercise movement between the negative, or stretch portion of an exercise, and the contraction portion of the movement. For example, as you perform a standard barbell curl, the transition occurs as you reach the bottom of the movement and begin to curl the bar back up to the top, contraction position. That transition moment is the most vulnerable point of the movement, and the point where an injury will most likely occur.

At the point of transition, a large part of the load or resistance is momentarily shifted to the soft tissue of the tendons, and only after the first 2 or 3 inches of motion in the contraction portion of the movement is the load entirely shifted back to the muscle. By ‘bouncing’ the weight at the transition point the tendons, which are by nature very inelastic, are very susceptible to injury.

Instead of bouncing the weight, slow the movement significantly for the last few inches of the negative movement and the first few inches of the contraction portion of the movement. Once you are through this transition stage, accelerate as much as you can, creating force. Force is defined as moving a weight through a given distance in a given time…if the weight and distance remain the same but the time is shortened, more force is generated. This is the subject for another article, but is worth mentioning here as many novice trainers are under the misimpression that one should maintain a constant slow speed throughout an entire exercise movement.

By keeping both correct posture and transition speed in mind while you train, you will enjoy many more years of injury free training, reaping the rewards of that effort.

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