Your exercise tip – What is your strength to weight ratio?
One of the simple tools we can use to monitor our own health, particularly our strength, is using the weight to strength ratio on the exercises you are completing at your personal training sessions. This is represented as a fraction, and is very much a personal guide to how you are going. For the person who is just keeping strong and healthy, use the amount you can lift five times (called 5 repetitions maximum) as your bench mark. For an athlete, experienced lifter or someone who has completed testing before, use the weight you can lift once (called 1 repetition maximum).
On each exercise you complete, divide the weight lifted by your own body weight. For example, a person who can leg press 200kg and is 70 kg, would have an equation as follows:
200/70 = 2.86 weight to strength ratio on the leg press. To increase the ratio, you can either build up more strength and lift heavier or lose a few kilos.
There are not set tables or guides with this formula that we should be gauging ourselves against, it is merely a simple way we can look at our own health.
Your health tip – Have you heard this phrase?
A good read from the ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-13/it’s-time-to-ban-diet-dialogue-and-the-bikini-body/7991624
Exercise of the week
This week we are covering a basic postural and shoulder strengthening exercise called the band upright row. This is a simple way of strengthening the shoulders, trapezius (muscles that support the head and neck) and other smaller muscles. The tips are:
- Have the band set underneath both arches of the feet, while the legs are hip width apart.
- Keep the shoulders back and the eyes up, aiming to look directly at a point across the room.
- Make the movement as smooth as possible, bringing the elbows up to shoulder height only, not above.
- Breathe out as you pull upwards.
Your life tip
If your friend is texting all the time while they are with you, but never returns your text messages, maybe they are not a good friend.
This week’s wise words
“Anger is one letter short of danger.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Have a great week and keep healthy in 2016. David.