Gym Fundamentals: Do You Have A Plan? At Ascent Chiropractic, we’re serious about the belief that everyone can — and must — work out. Seriously, I’ll often literally give my patients a prescription for it and help them develop a lifting program specifically for what’s going on in their...
What’s Better For Your Back: Barbell or Hex Bar Deadlifts? The deadlift is one of the gold standard lifts in the gym. It’s pretty simple, really: You load a barbell up with weight, grab it with a shoulder-width grip, plant your feet on the floor and pull until the weights come off the...
Cheat Your Way to More Muscle? I get this question from my athletes often: When it comes to weightlifting, are ‘cheat’ repetitions worth it? You’re probably not surprised to know my short answer is ‘no.’ The long answer, however, is that not all cheating is created...
What Actually Is Muscle Memory? Muscle memory is a fascinating topic that’s essential to understanding what’s going on with your musculoskeletal system. And it’s for more reasons than simply making your muscles look good now that summer’s finally arrived (although...
There’s no excuse for not exercising – your life depends on it! Sure, some of us live for the “workout high” — that intoxicating feeling derived from getting your heart rate up and pushing your body’s limits, while for others exercise is a chore, an item to be checked off their...
Should you ditch your running shoes? Spring is in the air and everyone is itching to get outside and back in running shape. And with the subculture of barefoot runners and the products catering to them growing daily, I’m frequently asked about my opinion regarding barefoot running. The...
Feeling especially sore after a workout? Whether it’s a nagging sore shoulder or a stiff and painful lower back, there are a couple warning signs to look out for to determine if it’s a normal post-exercise ache or something you should seek medical attention for. Before you test a...
Workout Harder and Smarter! Rounding up the most important health and fitness studies of Q1 2019 that you can put to use right now! 1. Effectiveness of Exercise vs. Medication For Reducing Blood Pressure A third of adults ages 40 to 59 have high blood pressure, or hypertension. So do nearly...
The Best Core Strengthening Exercises that Won’t Harm Your Back! THE CORE. We hear about the core and the importance of strengthening the core all the time, and if you’re a patient at Ascent Chiropractic, you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about why you need to be working on...
Need some gym motivation for this week? I get it – temperatures are dropping, days are getting shorter and it’s getting tougher and tougher to drag yourself to the gym to lift weights. But there’s good reason to keep with it, and it’s more than for just the muscle-building and...
Protect Your Shoulders & Back In The Gym! When it comes to proper lifting form, trainers and fitness gurus tend to harp on making sure your lower body lifts are performed properly. A lot of people end up underestimating how technical upper body exercises actually are, and reserve all that...
Fix your pushup mistakes! Most of us (including me!) learned how to do pushups in grade school. Ever seen a grade schooler try to do a pushup? It’s not pretty, and unfortunately, few people ever get better. Doing pushups incorrectly can lead to back pain and shoulder bursitis, and prevent...
Why Are We Still Doing Sit-ups and Crunches? Myths (especially myths concerned with health and fitness) take a long time to die. As a sports chiropractor, over the past ten years I’ve seen many ridiculous fitness trends come and go, and it’s finally time for sit-ups and crunches –...
Squats have long been a staple of lifting programs. It’s easy to see why: it’s hands-down the most effective exercise for building strength, speed, and size, and has a remarkable carryover to everything from the vertical jump to Olympic lifts. When you squat you use pretty much every muscle...
The 8 Best Arm-Sculpting Exercises. We all love doing compound exercises with heavy weights at the gym. But bench presses, squats and deadlifts alone aren’t going to get you sculpted arms because they aren’t sufficiently targeting and isolating the muscles of the triceps, biceps,...
Our Brains Were Wired To Move. For millions of years, our ancestors moved – walking, running, climbing – as an integral part of daily life. Today, most of the modern world doesn’t move nearly as much as we were designed to, and new research suggests that it’s one of the major...
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one of the biggest buzzwords in the fitness industry because of its potential to torch maximum calories in a minimum amount of time. The basic idea to do short periods of all-out work followed by short periods of active rest to make the body work...
Starting A New Exercise Plan: Sound Familiar? You splurge on new workout clothes and equipment, sign up for the most exciting fitness classes, and hit the gym like an addict for two weeks. But it starts with just one missed workout, progresses to a couple absences per week, and then...
Preparing Your Body For Golfing In any sport getting your warm up right is vital to preventing injury and enjoying your fitness program. A key part of any warm-up routine is dynamic stretching, something a lot of people forget to do before they exercise. Dynamic stretching before a game of golf...