Anything worth having in life requires dedication, motivation and a plan. If you are not required to work hard at it, is it really worth having? For those who have had babies, was it easy? Probably not! But it was something you really wanted so you were dedicated, motivated and had a plan in place to prepare for your baby. After all the hard work being pregnant, think about how great it felt when the baby was finally delivered. All the long nights of no sleep, throwing up, cravings, etc, you felt pure joy and happiness. If being pregnant was easy, do you think you would have learned to enjoy the little things in life and not take things for granted?? This is the same when you are trying to reach your fitness goal. It is a challenge, but the end result will end in pure joy and happiness. Let now be the day you challenge yourself and fill the happiness of living a long healthy life!

Eat a healthy snack 1-2 hours before dinner. You will not spoil your dinner, you will just not overeat, keeping you on track to reach your goal.

Don't have time to exercise because you want to watch your favorite shows: vampire diaries, pretty little liars, Greys anatomy, the lying games, etc. During the commercials breaks get up and do jumping jacks until the show starts again. You get to watch your shows and find time to stay on track to reach your goal.

Like my "Leavitt Fitness Consulting" facebook page for a chance to win some multivitamins from Dotfit.

Win 1 month free training and 50 percent of all supplements. I create the program based on your goals and individual preferences and provide supplement recommendations to get you to your goal safely and in a timely manner. Just post on my facebook fan page between now and tomorrow at midnight and tell me why you want to win. I will pick a winner Tuesday (11/27/2012). There will be 2 winners!

Doing the same exercise and routine over and over will create altered-length tension relationships (length and tension a muscle produces at a resting length., altered force couple relationships (muscle groups working together), altered arthrokinematics (joint motion), altered sensorimotor(muscle and nervous system works together to gather, interpret and execute movements), altered neuromuscular efficiency (muscles working together in all planes of motion) and finally tissue fatique and breakdown. This will lead to the cumulative injury cycle.

Your body moves in different planes of motion so training primarily in the sagittal plane (bench press) you will risk injury continuing to train that way. Training through different planes of motion (frontal, sagittal and transverse) will help prevent injury and will increase force couple relationships (muscles working together) so you can continue to lift more during the bench press (or any exercise) and maximize your potential.

S.A.I.D

Specific adaptions to imposed demands.

You have to continue to change your exercises and routine; otherwise, your body will not change. If you continue to lift 140 pounds on the bench press, overtime you will not see any progression. You have to continue to manipulate the variables (reps, sets, intensity, rest periods, etc) to keep making progress for the specific goal you have.

Here are the rep and set acute variables for the 5 phases of training.

Stabilizaton endurance: 

reps: 12-20

sets: 1-3

The reps will be done at a slow pace for this goal. The exercises will be performed in a controlled, unstable environment.

Strength endurance:

reps: 8-12

sets: 2-4

A stabilization exercise is performed immediatley after a stregth endurance exercise

Hypertrophy:

reps: 6-12

sets: 3-5

This will be done at the same pace as the strength endurance phase.

Max strength: 

reps: 1-5

sets: 4-6

This will be done at a much faster pace than the hypertrophy phase.

Power:

reps: 8-10

sets: 3-5

You will superset a max strength exercise followed by a power exercise in this phase.

I work in cardiology doing pharmacological stress tests and other heart related tests at a local hospital. It is sad that I see so many people come in with heart disease that can be prevented through healthier lifestyle choices. The scary thing is it is not only the elderly that I see come through the doors. I am seeing more people between the ages of 20-40 years of age. There are many risk factors that you can modify to decrease your risk. Check out this link through American Heart Association to see what risk factors you can modify: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4726