Beach'n It!

Even with the crazy and random weather we've been getting here on long island that past couple of weeks this weekend was bright and sunny; so a couple of other trainers and I hit up the beach. While we were there we were challenged to a game of football by some other dudes and after about an hour and a half to no surprise we emerged victorious! The reason why I bring this up though is for the past 2-3 days my entire lower body has been so sore it's pretty much crippling sometimes! Everything from my quads, hammys, glutes, hips, and calves are all fried! You have to understand though that these are all regular body parts that I train in the gym, and I train them hard for that matter and I never get this sore. The reason being why I'm so sore is due to the running and jumping around on the sand. Beach sand is a great proprioceptive (unstable yet controllable) environment, that helps engage and utilize muscles that you rarely ever use just doing regular cardio on the treadmill for instance. By running around on the sand you're working on your stability muscles, which gives you better balance, reaction time, and of course stability. You'll burn a lot more calories doing exercise on the sand because your body uses up more energy always trying to balance and stabilize itself out.

Some simple and easy exercised you can do when you go to the beach are... Sprints, jogging, jumping jacks, lunges, squats, pushups, plyometric pushups, burpees, 1-leg and 2-leg side hops, or even play a little game of volleyball, soccer, or football and work on your juking skills; you'll really feel it the next day! So get out there and enjoy mother nature, and workout those dormant muscles!

Trying to lose weight... what should I do, Cardio or weights?

I get this question a lot and the answer simply is both are great for burning calories and losing weight - to a certain degree that is... Just remember one important thing, the benefits and results you'll get from each form of exercise is greatly dependent on how hard you're working! You can't just expect to find something that's easy to do and yet it burns calories like crazy it doesn't work that way; remember nothing comes easy in any aspect of life so neither is a healthier, better looking you!

Now resistance training of any form (bands, cables, weights, calisthenics) is said to burn up to 2 times the amount of calories as just regular steady state cardio. Now this can be true, but it's not going to be true if you're taking your sweet time in between sets, not using enough weight, not doing enough reps, and most importantly not pushing yourself to your limits. In that case the person doing cardio on the treadmill lets say will be burning more calories than you. As for cardio though you can easily burn 100's of calories in short amount of time, but you're not going to do it walking 3.5 mph with a 4 incline, if you're going to do that you're wasting your time in my opinion. In order to burn a ton of calories doing cardio you need to do HIIT, or high intensity interval training, which calls for short bursts of very high intensity actions followed by a longer rest period and then repeated over and over again. For example you walk on the treadmill at 3.5mph for 2 minutes, then once the 2 minutes is up you bump up the speed to as fast as you can go 8, 9, 10 mph for only 30 seconds. Once the 30 seconds is up drop it back down to a 3.5mph speed for another 2 min and repeat! HIIT is one of the best things for burning calories, and getting you in shape fast!

Both resistance training cardio have their unique benefits, but as for which one is better for getting skinnier, that's all dependent on you and how hard you push yourself! You should try and incorporate both types of training into your regimen though!