Workout Wednesday: Resistance Training

Strength and resistance training can do a lot for your body and overall health in both work and life. It can help with balancing hormones and improve your blood test results (like helping with diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.). Strength training is also great for people trying to lose or maintain their weight. Not only that, but strength training often helps with several ailments as well: cancer, PMS, colds and other viruses, bad posture, and even stress and anxiety.

To learn more about the ways that strength and resistance training are universally beneficial, CLICK HERE, or check out this information from the American Heart Association

However, for any athlete, the benefits of strength training increase. It can increase stamina, explosiveness/speed, and believe it or not, flexibility. Resistance/Strength training also improves areas of pain, prevents injury, and more.

One of the best places to learn more and get started with strength training in the Treasure Valley is Jack City Fitness.

The best thing about Jack City is that they offer partnerships. What that means is that when you join, you are partnered with a trainer, and everything you do is based on an individual approach.

First, you’re matched with a trainer based on your goals. They have something for everyone in that all their trainers have a good base for general resistance training, but each also has a specialty- from endurance sports, to crossfit, to olympic lifting, there is someone at Jack City who can meet your needs. They even have a yoga instructor come in and do classes. So from beginners to elite athletes, they’ve got you covered. Plus, Jack City’s trainers are all professionals. All their trainers have degrees and certifications that give clients confidence that their trainers know what they are talking about, and they have to take continuing education classes to keep their certification, so their training is up to date.

After getting matched with a trainer, you get to buy into whichever package you’d like, and they are happy to recommend programs based on what meets your needs and goals the best, with no pressure. Regardless of what package you buy into, your trainer will make sure that you have a program that works for you, and that your needs are being met. They meet with you at least once a month (more depending on your program), and can provide nutritional training as well as a workout regimen, with adjustments and changes that grow with you as your body and goals change.

Jack City uses several different means of measuring initial fitness and progress. They measure biometrics using the InBody machine, which measures things like weight, skeletal mass, muscle mass, and body fat, as well as analyzing the symmetry of the body’s muscular systems, and they use simple body movements to conduct a biomechanical analysis, which is a good way of assessing strength, balance, and other facets of body movement and efficiency.

Sam Winston, the trainer that I met with at Jack City, knows that I am a runner, that I have completed a half marathon, and he knows that I will start training for a sprint triathlon soon. He had me do things like push-ups, a row-like movement with a TRX system (he told me that one leads into pull ups, which is cool because I have never been able to do a pull up!), leg lifts, squats, overhead bar press, hinges, and more basic body movements to assess my overall fitness and the way that my body moved. Those moves also served as a warm-up; it took about 10 minutes, and I was starting to break a sweat by the end of it. After that, we got into the specific things that I could do to strengthen my body for running. Sam specifically mentioned my hamstrings- and my posterior chain in general (information he got from watching me do hinges), and my core.

After our warm-up, we worked on alleviating some areas of tightness, and then got into some muscle specific exercises: loaded carries and throwing a medicine ball sideways (to help the core be more upright when running) and one-legged Russian dead lifts (to strengthen the hamstrings and posterior chain- also, balance), he also mentioned step-ups and lunges and a few other exercises that would work specifically for me- none of which were crunches or other exercises that come to mind when we think of building strength. The focus was on functional training- using the same movements that I do (walking, turning, running, bending, twisting, pulling, etc.) to build strength that would allow me to do them more efficiently.

Add to that the fact that Jack City has state-of-the-art equipment, is clean (yes, even the locker rooms), and the music is just loud enough to be motivating (but not so loud that you have to shout to be heard), and Jack City really has it all in terms of a personalized strength and resistance training experience.

And when it comes to being a better athlete, or life in general, resistance is anything but futile.