health - The Fit Ethos

If You Had to Pick One Muscle to Train… The Glutes

Physical therapists often have trouble getting their patients and clients to perform all of the exercises that they prescribe. Whatever the excuse, this is a good reason to keep any exercise program as short and concise as possible. If you can keep it to less than 3-5 exercises per day, this is plenty. To keep it concise, you need to know what is important and which exercises will give you the most bang for the buck.

Also, if you’re a therapist and your home exercise programs are 20 exercises on average, then you don’t know how to efficiently prescribe exercises.

A Simple Workout For Anyone To Try That Doesn’t Require Equipment

A common topic that my dad brings up are the physical problems that his friends are having.

“Bill is having some trouble standing up from a chair. Is there anything he can do?”

“Jack is having some shoulder problems. It’s bad. Can you take a look at him?”

“My friend fell. This is the second time he fell. Are there any exercises you can show him?”

“You were easily the most popular kid in high school. Way more popular than that one captain of the baseball team.”

This is the REAL Foundation of Your Health and Fitness…

Look at any fitness magazine, blog, Instagram influencer, and you will be inundated with dozens of new “discoveries” that claim to be the next best thing, promising to bolster your health and “optimizing” your wellness with gimmicks and hacks.

It might be a new diet trend, soft tissue gun, apparel, supplement, or god forbid, another shake weight.

Remember that the old cliche is true: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There is no way to replace a foundation of good habits and behaviors with gimmicks.

If you don’t do this ONE thing, you can say goodbye to a majority of the gains from all of your efforts…

That one thing… is…

How to Quickly Fix For Your Knee Pain (And The Long Term Solution)

Bothersome knees are the worst. They affect almost every activity imaginable from running, going up stairs, and even sitting! For a joint that seemingly only does one thing (hinge back and forth), it seems like a lot can go wrong with it. Of course, there is a component of rotation, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

In my experience, most knee pain (barring any acute mechanism of injury) is relatively simple to address. Outside of acute injury, creaky and bothersome knees really come down to poor strength and mechanics of the hips (particularly the glutes), hamstrings, and quadriceps.

So the long term solution is exercise and strength training (big deal. That tends to be the solution to every problem). But what can we do to get some short term relief?

The Basics of Mindfulness Meditation to Reboot Your Brain

In my last post, I outlined seven benefits of meditation but I realize that I didn’t mention how to actually meditate.

I failed as a writer and educator… so I’m here to redeem myself and explain how to actually meditate.

7 Reasons You Should Meditate – Evidence-Based Brain Rewiring

Meditation and mindfulness is a practice that has been around for thousands of years, but it has recently seen a surge in popularity in the self-help, improvement, and mental health spaces, and for good reason. Meditation has extensive benefits and is one of the few “brain rewiring” practices that actually has evidence to back it up.

Here are seven benefits to meditation.

3 Ways to Achieve Progressive Overload Without Adding Weight

We have all heard the basic tenant of strength: progressive overload. But, when we talk about progressive overload, we only ever think of adding more weight to the bar (or dumbbells).

Even going through graduate school, this was the main form (and often the only one taught) of overloading and increasing the challenge for patients and clients. Somehow, adding weight was the real bee’s knees to being a great trainer or clinician.

It definitely made me question if I got my money’s worth from my doctorate.

Should You Even Bench Press? The Truth (and 5 alternatives)

There are two constant truths of life. The first is death.

The second is that all bros will bench press and curl on Mondays.

This act of suspending heavy weight over our supine body, lowering it and lifting (or bouncing) it back up seems to be a constant ritual in the iron world. Go to any gym, and the bench press (along with squat racks and deadlifting platforms) will be a revered piece of equipment that is analogous to an altar in a church.

The 3 Elements Your Program Needs To Get Jacked – Part 1

Human beings are relatively predictable beings, so in general they will have a number of needs in order to achieve something. It is no different in strength training or getting jacked. There are general needs that everyone has, and if they are not addressing it, they are shortchanging their results. Give me any program and I can tell right away what it will do for most people.

There are many elements of training that need to be addressed. For the benefit of your jackedness, let’s go over the big three.

3 Exercises To Bulletproof Your Legs

Lower extremity injuries are all too common from the average person to the elite athlete. Often, these injuries are predictable and thus preventable through proper training and maintenance.

Before we run through the exercises, we need to establish a few principles to work with.