How to Get Results at INLINE Group Fitness

Thank you for making the opening of INLINE Group Fitness a success! Many of you have been working hard and getting wonderful results.  In fact, the report card overall is excellent! Yet, some have done better than others.  So we think now would be a good time to share their success stories with you.

Without a doubt those students who have cross trained through all the classes have shown the most improvement in weight loss, flexibility, muscle length and tone, and ability to do high level exercise with great form.

This was acutely demonstrated in our most recent INLINE Evolution class series.  The INLINE Evolution series includes the most effective training moves from our Booty Call, Barre Fit, Pilates, Yoga, Hi Intensity Interval Training, and Sculpt and Tone classes.  The New Year Evolution consisted of 3 hours of training each week for 6 weeks.  Therefore, it has been the perfect test of what you can achieve with regular attendance and variety at INLINE Group Fitness.

Here are just a few of the results from the first Evolution group:

The participants looking to lose fat mass lost an average of 9 total inches on the arms, chests, waists, hips, and thighs!  Overall the group increased their core strength measurement by an average of 60% and their back and hamstring flexibility by an average of 4 inches!

Not only did they look and function so much better on the outside, internally they dropped their systolic blood pressure by an average of 8 points, their diastolic pressure by 5 points, and their resting heart rate by 6 beats!  Now as they continue into the spring (either taking the Evolution again or by attending a variety of classes using their unlimited monthly membership) they will perform optimally and get the most from every moment at INLINE.

These are some amazing results, and demonstrate the effectiveness of using the cross method training at INLINE Group Fitness.  You must address all areas of your fitness if you hope to achieve any one of your goals.  Putting all your eggs in one basket will not realize your dreams.  We all know the areas in which we slack and avoid, and only by addressing those deficits can we hope to better ourselves.

What does this mean for you?

Even if you cannot join the Evolution series you have the recipe for success at INLINE Group Fitness.  It is as follows:

1.) At minimum come to 3 classes per week consistently.

2.) Arrange your workout schedule so that you can do a variety of classes to gain the maximum complementary benefit.  If you are unsure what would work best (and everyone’s schedule is so different) then ask us! Just email info@inlinegroupfitness.com and we will get right back to you with a recommendation.

3.) Ask to receive our weekly meal plans and recipe announcements! Without a proper dietary guidance your results will never be what they could be! This subscription is just a $10 monthly fee.  Click here for more info or to sign up: info@inlinegroupfitness.com

So how do you make sense of the class schedule and determine what is the best way to achieve your goals? First, you should understand that each class has it owns benefit but also has a complementary benefit.  For example: being better at Pilates makes you better at Barre and vice-versa.  Here is how it breaks down.

Pilates & Pilates with Props

Pilates is essential to your absolute core strength and flexibility whether laying down or standing up.  Every professional dancer that has spent endless hours at the Barre knows that Pilates is the essential conditioner for Dance and Barre.  It allows them to excel at their art.  Without the ability to truly lengthen your muscles (especially in your midsection), control your spine, pelvis, and achieve better flexibility the results from doing Barre alone will be limited.

Yoga

Yoga is the be all end all of achieving  great flexibility that will allow you to go deeper into your core during Pilates, and get the most from small motion exercises that require balance and endurance in Barre.   It will also strengthen your ability to hold plank positions used in all the classes.

INLINE Booty Call

This class is an extremely effective leg and butt toning program and is the secret to the fantastic results we get at the private studio. The key is to isolate and completely fatigue lazy butt and inner thigh muscles and stretch your upper thighs so you can maximize your benefits from Barre and Hi Intensity Interval Training.  It complements the shorter isolation movements of Barre Fit by working you in longer fluid muscle contractions and motions.  Imagine a dancer moving gracefully across the floor and with ability to leap, that’s why they look so great! Like Pilates, it lengthens and strengthens at the same time so your entire form takes on a sleeker shape. Though you maybe sore for several days after your first time, the results will settle in and you will be back for more!

Hi Intensity Interval Training

HIIT will challenge the upper limits of your cardiovascular conditioning and recovery ability.  By being more fit you will be able to push yourself deeper in all classes and never feel like you are running out of breath or having to stop early from too much muscle burn.  You will be able to hold off  fatigue and get more work done in all of your class and recreational activities.

INLINE Sculpt & Tone

This class teaches you the methods of resistance exercise used in Barre Fit, Pilates with props, and Booty Call.  Being able to obtain proper form and isolate muscles is essential to success in all the classes and truly getting tone in all the right places without bulking up!

Barre Fit

Barre draws from the benefits of dance, Pilates, and muscle sculpting combined into one class.  The small motion and isometric dancer exercises done at the barre are great for isolating muscles in the legs, hips, and thighs.  The mat work complements and draws from Pilates and provides an active rest from the Barre as you proceed.  Each instructor also adds in upper body resistance exercises making for a well rounded class.

The INLINE Evolution

This series fuses elements from all of the classes and adds recreational athletic conditioning and team building.  Taught by two highly knowledgeable instructors the intensity and variety remains high while you receive individual corrections and modifications from the free instructor.  Attending one of these 4 or 6 week series will give you a huge jump start on your goals and accelerate your results from future classes.

The INLINE Difference: Avoiding the Far Right & Left

Lengthened Resistance Training at INLINE with Josh Kirk

For 18 years I have pursued individual truth and success in exercise for thousands of clients. Whether you are searching for the perfect shape, recovering from orthopedic injury, or just beginning in fitness I will help you establish a personal relationship with exercise that will transform your body shape and function. I began my career with a B.S. in Kinesiology, a C.S.C.S, and a specialty certification in post rehabilitation exercise. Well before graduation, and for years afterwards, I worked thousands of hours in prestigious sports medicine clinics side by side with surgeons, physical therapists, and athletic trainers on a population that ranged from acute post-surgical cases to pre-Olympic games conditioning.

After intense study of myofascial line and alignment theory, Pilates, Yoga, body building, and athletic conditioning I developed a unique training method called the INLINE Art of Exercise. Since 2004 this technique has been used at INLINE Private Training to create amazing outcomes for clients.  In fact, the INLINE method has now reached a point of popularity that it is being copied!  Thus, I feel it important that I distinguish INLINE from its imitators, and demonstrate the method’s continual positive evolution.

My position on the “far right” of personal training programs has been well established.  By “far right” I mean authoritarian training regimes that steam roll clients with formless and repetitive boot camp style training.  These programs can often create short and long-term orthopedic damage through excessive compaction.  See my posts entitled “Before Choosing a Trainer Consider This” and “How Thighs Get Bigger : Run, Squat, Jump, & Don’t Stretch” for my thoughts on these unbalanced, high intensity, and low grace programs.

However, there are also “far left” trainers that are equally culpable in creating problems for clients.  They trend towards overly lengthening and destabilizing joints, tendons, and muscles, thus predisposing clients to injury.  The effects can be quite dangerous when trainers meddle too deeply in a client’s support structure in search of a magical release.  The “physical leftist” also dampens physical load capability and their client’s confidence that they can perform exercise with intensity, speed, strength, and resultant power.  Impact becomes a thing to be feared and shunned instead of negated through practiced grace, strength, and length. Lost inside a pure alignment labyrinth they turn their clients into puppets on a string with no hope of  a true fitness evolution.

Results are extremely short-lived when you reduce everyone to set of problems that can only be treated by fatiguing them with limited, isometric, or constantly halted motion. The human body was meant for more than slow motion isolation training and stretching (especially passive).  This is simply adapting “sedentary training” into your “sedentary lifestyle”.  Even challenged clients should strive for more than just a mythical absolution of their pain, and trainers should not placate and coddle them unnecessarily.  Less is more only until the point of adequate balance and redirection from bad habits.  Then you must dig deep, increase your work ethic, pain tolerance, and proceed towards truly enhancing your work load and recovery capacity.  The methods of Powerlifters, Olympic lifters, bodybuilders, strength and conditioning coaches, (and yes) drill sergeants all have relevance in the physical enhancement of the human form.  But only when applied appropriately, with grace, at the right time in a client’s development.

A truly great trainer has the ability to be a chameleon that can quickly change methods and intensity to meet a client’s needs. They must safely allow for error in form that makes room for learning and adaptation.  It is often the hard-fought mistakes that create results, not a final act propped up with training wheels. If  you’re caught in a perfectionist alignment conundrum then you will continually spend your time chasing down pain, stress, and the illusion of its absolution.  Meanwhile you will become weaker and lose sight of your original goals.  The INLINE art of exercise allows you to achieve appropriate orthopedic balance quickly, and then move forward with the positive evolution of your fitness.

If you are walking away from your workout without feeling like you had one, if you are not sore, if you do not sweat, if you are not losing weight, if your time and money is being wasted with excessive instruction then key components of your fitness are being “left” out.  You need change just as badly as the person being thoughtlessly pounded into the ground by their trainer.

Using the INLINE art of exercise it is possible to work at high intensity, feel strong, lengthen and tone, lose weight, heal injury, and better your posture with rapid efficiency.   But only the right combination of exercise that is neither “right” nor “left” will allow you to achieve this.  INLINE is this perfect balance and will advance your true physical evolution.

Fitness Industry Letdown

Who is going to take responsibility for the failure of the fitness industry to keep Americans fit?  Do we face too grand a foe, is that the excuse?  Is the power of food engineering, television, video games, and the internet too strong a force to be counterbalanced?  Something is completely wrong because the fitness industry is scoring less than 40% for keeping anyone in just basic shape, never mind healthy.  Things have needed to change for a long time but we just keep repeating the mistakes of the past, allowing “insanity” to replace good judgment.

Why do fitness professionals follow industry trends so that they fit the celebrity trainer mold, swallow dogma, and regurgitate failing approaches?  Why are people’s personal relationships to exercise and their bodies hijacked and supplanted with the latest images, tips, tricks and ridiculous high intensity “kick your ass” programs from the fitness media empire?  Because the voices of those who buck the system threaten its profits even as it fails to deliver the goods.  Thus, originators are silenced under the flood of propaganda from the powerful and wealthy fitness establishment.

Think about it…the more we are kept in the dark about what it really means to have a knowledgeable positive relationship with exercise; the riper we are for the picking.  The myth of “spot fat reduction” alone is responsible for billions of dollars of fitness sales.  The promise of athleticism as the key to your personal fitness rakes in even more!  Who can deny that the current fad of linking personal fitness with Cross Fit games and MMA fighting is just the another attempt to cash in on ego driven competition and lack of knowledge about our bodies?

Certainly some of these models produce results, but look at the numbers, is less than 40% acceptable?  I would argue that many more people are turned off, alienated, and feel weak and worthless when they cannot “just do it”, wind up injured, or get funny looking results.  With over 60% of Americans over-weight or obese the numbers support my argument.  Yet, the fitness industry continues to make an enormous fortune, even as it loses the war.

I would like to think I have at least some part of the solution.  The INLINE Art of Exercise steers people away from unbridled consumerism, teaching them that due to our absolute individuality in bodily structure, emotional balance, and motor coordination, each of us must define our own unique and sustainable relationship with exercise.  Before you begin or advance a fitness program, think about these things:

Body Structure: We all have singular shaped bodies that react differently to the same exercises.  What works for one person may not work for another.

Emotional Balance: Our emotions allow words, images, and people to motivate or de-motivate us.  They create desire for change and our internal discipline or lack thereof.  We all have a different emotional balance.

Motor Coordination: Some people are born jugglers and tight rope walkers, others are not.  Some also have excellent form, balance, and muscular tension that allows them to get better results and guard themselves from injury.

Sustainability: It is difficult to work out or maintain motivation when you are injured. Training through deep joint and connective tissue pain creates negative results. Pounding your body needlessly shortens your exercise life-span.  Because of our unique body structure some people are more prone to injury and have shorter exercise life-spans.

Most importantly, it is the health of your joints and surrounding tissues that brings to balance all the disparate notions of fitness and working out.  As soon as it is compromised your body machine begins to weaken, ache, and become susceptible to more damage. The entire point of “lifetime fitness” is to strengthen your machine and keep it running optimally for all the days of your life. Burning out your engine early with unbalanced approaches will defeat this purpose.

Taking the time to educate yourself and form a personal relationship with exercise will keep you healthy, balanced, and free of subliminal fitness industry control.  Otherwise your attempts at fitness will only last as long as the fad does, until you get injured, lose the big game, or get your butt kicked by someone better than you.  Then you will be searching for a new relationship to exercise, only to find yourself sucked into the next fad instead.

Getting Off the Fitness & Fat Roller Coaster

Why do You Stop Exercising?

Here are a few common experiences that can put a halt to it. Jane poured her heart into a routine with good intentions, but never found just the right thing and gave up. Susan found the exact wrong thing for her body shape and alignment. Lacking results, nursing aches and pains, and feeling bulky rather than fit she got turned off and stopped!

What you, Jane, and Susan may have in common is the lack of a personal connection to exercise that is grounded in your personal body image. Into this void has flowed a torrent of quick tips, non-specific information, bogus claims, and sales images. Feeding off of your insecurities and competiveness, your rational mind has turned into a consumer mind. You may have forgotten to connect the dots back to you. The INLINE Art of Exercise will provide you those dots.

Fat Can Make You Irrational

Do your anxious attempts to rid fat from your body like an alien parasite make you act irrationally? During the thousands of hours I have spent with clients, fat has revealed itself as the greatest unbalancing obsession.

The story very often goes like this:

Despite the reasons Jane at first allows fat into her life, its mere existence drives her to extreme emotional lows and calorie highs. It compels drastic self punishing solutions that reprimand her over indulgent inner child. Sometimes it sends her to an authoritarian figure for boot camp workouts.

Even if she gets results, the fat disguises them and she can’t enjoy exercise because she feels she has to flog herself over her lack of perfection. Each and every time she looks in the mirror and sees that fat and her imperfect body, she changes her exercise plans in search of a faster solution. How can any rational decision be made while this cycle is occurring? So I provide Jane a revolutionary way of seeing herself that stops the insanity. I will do the same for you.

Fat vs. Girth

Much of the girth of your body under the thinner top layers of fat can be overly enlarged muscle and tissue called fascia. Fascia combines with muscle in response to overuse and creates regions of thick and immobile tissue. It also tends to make muscles look bumpy and bulky. Amongst other areas, it is extremely common on the tops and side of the hips. Once you understand where and how your body naturally bulks up and why, you will be able to make exercise choices that give you total sculpting control.

Momentary Suspension

So let’s suspend the fat issue for the moment. Just long enough for you to become motivated by the amazing changes you can make to your true body shape, if you focus and have some patience. Once you are on the right path, we will then decide the best combination of resistance training, aerobic exercise, and nutritional habits that will keep you trim, INLINE, and in the game.

How Thighs Get Bigger: Run, Jump, Squat, Lunge, Don’t Stretch

The female hip flexor and upper quad muscles have an amazing ability to produce power and (to many women’s dismay) girth.  In the majority of modern weightlifting programs and classes, and on the well pounded sidewalks of every major city the upper thigh dominates in motion.  It becomes thick and knotted, and shuts down effective use of the lower stabilizers of the knee, the hamstrings, inner thigh, and butt muscles.  One of your friends may possess the notorious thick thigh flat butt outcome.

As the quad/hip flexor group becomes stiff and glued on its lateral edges to the IT Band it exerts terrific pressure on the knee, changes the knee cap tracking angle and contributes to “crepitus” – otherwise known as “crunchy-poppies”.  Every day I release another woman from the “grip” of her upper thighs, flatten her front, and retrain her how to use her other leg and butt muscles without bulking her thighs.

The correction techniques are many but first you should learn how to PREVENT the problem.

Disclaimer:  This program is a facetious example of what NOT TO DO. It is an amalgam of the many crazy behaviors I see every day and often rescue people from.  Take these 10 steps to blow up your upper hips and quads like a power lifter, tighten up your IT bands so bad your knees buckle in, and if you’re lucky give you “cankles” in the process!

1.) Begin by waking up tight from yesterday’s run and workout, skip a stretch, and drive to work during rush hour with short hamstrings and tensing your quads in response to the stress.

2.) Sit at your desk all day with shortened hip flexors and hamstrings and in slumped over posture.

3.) Drive home from work in rush hour traffic, squeeze your quads some more, and pump that brake foot extra hard.

4.) Change into your running clothes, skip a stretch, and run to your gym with the same muscles you have been shortening all day.  (Ignore the pain creeping up your shins into your knees and back)

5.) Get to the gym and start with some weighted squats, followed immediately by power box jumps, and then weighted medicine ball squat tosses. (Or just do Cross Fit)

6.) Grab the dumbbells and start walking lunges being sure not to use your butt or hamstrings in the movement, focus on the searing pain in the middle of your hip and quad.

7.) Lay on the floor (or use the hanging leg raise chair) and do straight leg raises with minimal abdominal activation and pulling mainly with your hip flexors.

8.) Convince yourself more is better and skip any kind of stretch in favor a few more walking lunges so that you can have dessert later.

9.) Go home and eat your dinner and your dessert.  Then convince yourself that the pain of the walking lunges has to be worth two servings and have a second!

10.) Go to bed without stretching and feeling guilty about your second dessert serving.  Set your alarm early for a morning run to try and burn it off!  Go Back to 1.

For a great alternative example of what TO DO for long lean balanced legs see the video INLINE Slider Exercises for Butt, Hamstrings, & Inner Thighs http://youtu.be/4zcMhINX-3Q

Before Choosing a Trainer Consider This

The mainstream fitness icons that many trainers emulate are utterly useless and damaging to most potential clients.  Especially in vogue are boot camps and want-to-be athlete training programs and trainers, each containing more “Insanity” , “X’s, “Bells”, or “Pump” than the next.

Hasty, haphazard, and high intensity exercise without regard to form or purpose becomes simply a test of pain tolerance.  Exercise does involve muscular breakdown, recovery, and adaptation.  Yet, you must ask yourself, what should you break down and why?  Will you break down the right muscles to reach your goals or are you injuring joints? Can you recover positively without undo side effect?  Do your muscles adapt to the stresses in the manner you intend? Or do you create imbalances that make you look unattractive?

In an effort to simply lose a few pounds you may lift way too many weights with poor form and beat yourself  into the ground. Ending up tight, bulky, lumpy, and shortened is probably not the “result”  you were looking for.  If you want to be “tough” then train with America’s toughest trainer.  If  you want a beautiful body then seek out a body artist.

Alas, even the more “gentle” forms of exercise can create injury when the trainee gets wrapped up in “doing” the exercise rather than adapting it to the needs of their body.   This issue was recently addressed in the New York Times Magazine   | January 08, 2012 How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body  ,By WILLIAM J. BROAD  The author proposes, “Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?”

However, it is not Yoga, Pilates, weightlifting, or athletic conditioning that is “bad”.  Exercise only becomes “bad” when it is poorly applied to one’s body alignment.  An ego that strives for prideful short-term achievement while sacrificing the integrity of the body’s tissue creates “bad” exercise.

Without knowledge of one’s unique shape and how it should look when enhanced by exercise, people blindly plod forward into number goals and mimicry.  Too often people imitate the workouts of others and think they will get the same result.  Then when it doesn’t work they just do more!  What is missed entirely in most programs is the ART of applying exercise to any given shape or form.

Simply stated, your body alignment creates your shape.  If you try to force your hourglass shape through a square shape exercise program you may wind up looking and feeling very unhappy.  You may also get injured in the process.  Unfortunately, most people don’t know what shape they are, what shape they could be, and what exercises will get them there.  Most trainers don’t either.  Most only see the surface.  They can see the paint but not the painting.

The ability to undo compensations and create a specific shape through exercise is a process that involves study, experience, talent, and honed intuition.   Your trainer should possess these qualities.   They should also be able to motivate you by involving you in the vision.  Both of you must believe that your body is a work of art in process!

The world’s gyms are filled with under experienced part-time trainers who will be doing something else in few years.  Most of them have achieved a novice level, knowing mainly how to train themselves with fair to even great result.  But they may be light years away from knowing how to analyze the postural shape of a new client and develop a vision for them.

To find out if your trainer has moved beyond the novice/ apprentice level of training and is perhaps a a true body artist ask a few questions.

1.)    How will you help me lose weight?  If they plan on trying to “beat” the weight off you using resistance exercise and pounding cardio this is a red flag.  Weight lifting is to become stronger or sculpt your muscles. Cardio is to train your cardiovascular system.  Any fat loss benefit is strictly secondary to these purposes.  Your trainer may bankrupt your body trying to cash the checks your mouth can write.  Address fat loss at the point of intake!  Discover your daily metabolism and make the dietary changes necessary.  Check out bodymedia.com

2.)    When I train my legs with too many squats and lunges my pants fit tighter in the front, how can I avoid that but still create tone?  They may suggest that you just don’t do them and do other exercises.  The best answer is to modify them so that you work the weaker muscles (hamstrings and glutes) and not the stronger ones (quads and hip flexors).

3.)    I sit at a desk all day do you think that affects my upper body tone?  The obvious answer is yes because you are not exercising.  But more importantly, fixing your posture is the key to getting muscle control and the tone.  They should speak about opening your chest, lowering your shoulders, raising your head and rib cage, and stabilizing your scapula.

4.)    Even though I have some fat to lose I feel like I am losing my waistline over the years.  How does that happen?  Can you fix it?  If they say you should do side bending exercises with weights, run! The correct answer is you may have a loss of postural support that is causing your rib cage to move closer to your pelvis.  Create core strength that supports a long upright posture and you may gain it back.

After just a few questions you will have enough information to proceed with caution.  Don’t be afraid to back out, the cost of moving in the wrong direction can be high.  You may decide to continue your search for a potential body artist right away.

Until the INLINE Art of Exercise has reached more trainers I only have a few recommendations.  There are few that I trust beyond Pilates instructors.  So let’s start with them:  Lisa Johnson in Boston, Brooke Siler and crew at Re:AB Pilates in NY, Katy Striebinger and Gloria Tremonti in Chicago, Vanessa Pinkham in Johannesburg.   Trainers in the D.C. area:  Aaron Sterling, Shane Harris, and Chris Radousakis at Sterling in Adams Morgan.  And of course if you are ever in Maryland come see me and my team at INLINE Private Training!  I hope to add to this list soon.  Meanwhile, I will just have to teach you to help yourself!

Aynsley’s Story : A Dancer’s Body Shape Recovery

What does a training studio owner from Maryland have in common with an ex-dancer from Colorado? Twitter!  I admit at first I was skeptical about the whole “I am going to Tweet” idea, but a few highly rewarding connections later I was hooked.

Aynsley Stephenson (@Ayns719) contacted me through my INLINE Art of Exercise (IAE) website with this email a couple of months ago.  She heard about the studio through @jami2joy who I had connected with on Twitter.  Jami had attended a class, loved it, and wrote a wonderful review in her blog  Daily Jams

After reviewing the information on the IAE website Aynsley’s asked great questions regarding the possibility of changing 2 major things about her body shape – overdeveloped calves & upper back/shoulder hump

Aynsley wrote:  Hi Josh!  

Just came across your videos via one of your new students, Jami (@jami2joy) who I’ve been introduced to on Twitter. I wish you were either in Denver or that I could be in Baltimore as I love your philosophy!  I’m hoping you can answer 2 questions for me…

 What are some ways to lengthen and stretch calves? I watched the “cankles” video but would love more ideas…I have my dad’s giant calves! 

I have a fun video on the IAE site entitled “Only You Can Prevent Cankles”

My shortened response was:

1.      The video contains the best basic technique. YOU MUST RELAX the muscle and give in to the deep stretch, your calf is so strong there is no way to push or pull it into a stretch forcibly, so it must be from your mind.

2.      Myofascial release using a foam roller or body worker before stretching also helps a lot!  It’s great for the sides and the front of the lower leg which may be bulking and are locked up.

3.      If you are genetically gifted in this area, then your calf muscle will build easily when stimulated.  Running and compacting cardio exercise although great for burning calories will without a doubt thicken your calves.

Aynsley:   I watched the lat pull video and would love more info on reducing the “shoulder hump”. It runs in my family too and I’m already noticing the beginning stages due to lots of time in front of a desk, a nearly non-existent cervical curve and really tight traps/shoulders.

My response:  Watch these videos Chest Isolation Exercise, Chest Flyes Exercise, Shoulders & Biceps for Statuesque Top

These will teach how to OPEN your front, and bring your head up which balances your rib cage and corrects your curve.  Once the rib cage is in place then the back muscles can activate and help hold you there.  But the effort must come from your core (which your head is the most important part).  Do the chest first, then the shoulder/biceps.  The shoulder exercise will teach you to relax your upper back and traps also.

Aynsley responded:

Josh, this is awesome. Thank you! I’m taking tomorrow off work so it will be the perfect opportunity to begin your recommendations. 

I will send you pictures and will also be on the lookout for your book. From your innovative methods I’ve seen so far, it sounds like a must buy! Btw, I was a dance major in college and I can imagine your book being a key resource in kinesiology or one of the other classes! I’ll pass it on to my old dept head once it’s done!

Now that I knew that Aynsley was a former dancer, I began to suspect many other things about her ability to recover from this activity and establish a sustainable relationship with exercise! These suspicions were confirmed when she sent me some pictures and said…

 I used to be a dancer and did Pilates but was hit by a drunk driver in 2005 which put an end to my career. Ever since I’ve had back and neck issues and I’ve noticed my posture and general shape deteriorating more and more. 

You said you might have more advice if I sent pics…hopefully I’m not a helpless cause!

Aynsley’s pictures revealed the classic example of a beautiful and powerful physique that had begun to collapse in on its self.  Her hip flexors and quads were severely overdeveloped causing a major hyper extension of her knees, forward tilt in her pelvis, and arched back that was pushing her abdomen forward.  Her head had also begun to move forward to compensate for her knees moving backwards.  Not to mention the buildup of stress in her upper back.  Much like the figure to the left.

After years of helping to correct this classic posture and muscle imbalance I knew just where to begin her recommendations!  I recorded a video consult for her and started her on the process of UNDOING before she begins DOING.  I plan on more coaching and training with her using SKYPE.

Thanks Aynsley for helping me believe in the power of social media to connect with people and bring good work to the world.  After helping thousands in the studio I am ready to reach out in a major way.  Your quote of Lao Tzu still rings true for those seeking solutions to their body shape.

“When I let go of what I am I become what I might be”

Cooking with Exercises Made to Body Taste

Exercise is an art.  Just like sculpting, painting, or cooking.  In fact, creating a fitness program that matches your body shape is like finding a complimentary blend of ingredients and  spices to make the perfect dish!  But no two pieces of art (or chilis;-) are the same.  So before you begin to exercise, cook, paint, or sculpt there are some basic things you should consider about your art project.

These common sense principles will help you make great decisions in the gym (and maybe your kitchen).  They are part of a much larger release that I hope to bring to you soon!

The INLINE Art of Exercise Individuality Principles ™

©2011 INLINE Private Press

1.)  Exercise that does not consider your individual body shape can create problems and set you up for failure.

For example, let’s say you have a short neck and tense traps (upper back and neck), mainly from your relentless desk computer job.

You go to body pump class after work and do intense shoulder shrugs and upright rows as a regular part of your weightlifting class.  The possible result: a large masculine upper back and tightness that could lead to a tendon injury or nerve impingement. OUCH!

Imagine you have flat feet and inward pushing knees.  But you choose running as your mainstay exercise.  Without awareness of this “shape” and how to compensate for it you may develop pain in your shins and knees, slowly bringing your motivation and running to a halt.

In both cases you did not consider the attributes and limitations of your individual body shape.  Why wouldn’t you consider this before exercising?  You may just be clueless as to how to look at yourself.  But don’t be embarrassed, not many do.  It’s why I have a job.

You may also want to be like somebody else, which brings up the next important point!

2.) No two physiques will have the same balance or look, only the best balance of body type, body shape, posture, and muscle tone that is sustainable for that individual.

Meaning no matter how hard you try you can only look like the absolute best version of YOU.  Not your friend or favorite exercise model.  It’s a simple fact that…

3.) Because we all differ in shape and physical coordination what works for one may or may not work for another.

Yes, we are all human (most of us)!  But, wow, just as every face and personality is completely diverse so are people’s movements and responses to exercise.  Resistance and weightlifting exercise especially.

Knowing and believing these principles gives you freedom!  Yes, freedom to do your own thing.  Freedom to break away from the crowd and create an individual program based on your body shape, and where you want to take it!

The INLINE Art of Exercise is here to help you.  I am here to help you.  You may talk to me about anything!  Simply comment on this blog, or send an email to josh@inlineartofexercise.com or fill out the subscription form at The INLINE Art of Exercise website.

I WILL BE PROVIDING FREE BODY SHAPE CONSULTATIONS THROUGH EMAIL, PICTURES, RECORDED VIDEO, AND VIDEO CHAT!  ONCE YOU HAVE CONTACTED ME WE CAN DETERMINE WHAT WILL WORK BEST FOR YOU.

In return, I ask only that you click some of the buttons below; choosing to subscribe to this blog, like the INLINE Facebook Page, or follow INLINEtrainer on Twitter.

As I have helped thousands of people in my studio I can now help you.  Soon I will blog about  some real stories of those helped by The INLINE Art of Exercise that may also ring true with you.  Stay tuned!

 

INLINE Sculpting Magic for the Perfect Butt : Program Included!

If you want to be a great body sculptor you should know that there are two types of  muscle clay in your body.  Depending on how you treat them they react in different magical ways.  Of course, these are perfectly normal muscle cell responses to exercise, but it’s more fun and much easier to understand them when you think of it in terms of magic clay that you can control.  You can’t ever know for sure how much of each muscle clay is in your butt (or any other body part).  Which, I know, is totally annoying.  Yet, with some experimentation and a program that covers all the bases you can figure out what works for you.

Instead of using the name Fast Twitch Muscle Fiber or Power Muscle Cells, I will simply call this “Foundation Clay”.  The most significant property of Foundation Clay is that when you work it hard with heavy resistance it will grow in size.    It will create the foundation of the muscle you are attempting to shape. 

How is this good for sculpting?  If you have an area that is flat and you want it to fill out all you have to do is find a way to stimulate the Foundation Clay in that area.  It responds to fatigue by giving you long-lasting tone and in the short-term a nice “pump up”.

How is it stimulated in the lower body? Heavier exercises with weights like squats, lunges, dead lifts, and pin loaded machines (inner outer thigh machines and leg presses) are best.  But they need to fatigue at a lower rep level to cast the “grow spell”.  Big jumping exercises and intense sprints will also help, but require even more focus to get it right.

How can it be bad?  Sometimes your exercise form can be sloppy and unfocused, spreading the spell into other areas.  This causes the Foundation Clay that is not in your butt (like in your hips and thighs) to grow!  Oops!  Bad posture during these exercises can also make you shorter, especially if you use them a lot.  Therefore, you should focus intently on your area of concern when using them.  The INLINE Art of Exercise shows you how to modify each exercise so that it gives you the intended result while diminishing and even undoing side effects.

The other muscle type your hear about is Slow Twitch Fiber or Endurance Muscle Cells.  For sculpting purposes I will call this  “Filler Clay”.  This type of muscle clay will keep you moving for long periods of time.  It’s not as strong as Foundation Clay but has lots of endurance. 

How is does this affect your body sculpting?  Filler Clay will pump up somewhat, but won’t give you a long-lasting tonal effect because it doesn’t grow very much.  It will go flat again quick. But it will allow you to spend hours on the treadmill without turning into a giant muscle ball, thank goodness you have some!

How is it stimulated?  Lighter body weight exercises like bridges, leg kicks, ballet bar kicks, Pilates spring work, and resistance bands depend highly on Filler Clay.  Lighter impact jumping and endurance cardio will also activate the spell.  These exercises cause the Filler Clay to pump up, filling out some gaps, firm up some, and can give your butt a nice overall appearance. But only if you also have Foundation Clay tone!

How can it be bad?   Over reliance. For example, you work really hard in class and do hundreds of little kicks, bridges, and mini-squats so that your butt looks good in your jeans and exercise gear.  But very quickly your beautiful coach can turn into a deflated pumpkin…  So you do a few kicks and bridges to pump it up again, but each time the effect may be a little less.  After a while, your butt starts dropping and you just can’t seem to get it back up!  That is because you are neglecting to take care of the Foundation Clay.

INLINE Art of Exercise™  Recommendations for Sculpting a Balanced Leg and Full Lifted Butt 

1. Use exercises and modified positions that isolate the Foundation Clay in your butt without spilling over into your hips, thighs, or messing up your posture.  These are listed as “A”.
2. Also use exercises that stimulate Foundation and Filler Clay, but make you stretch your legs and torso for a longer look.  They are listed as “B”.
3. Complement them with finishing exercises that gives the Filler Clay nice pump.  They are listed as “C”.

Monday Workout 1 = Pick one A, one B, and one C exercise

Thursday Workout 2 = Pick one B, and two C exercises

Saturday Workout 3 = Pick three C exercises

This should allow you workout and recover well through the week!  Workouts 1 and 2 lay the groundwork for lasting tone and workout 3 gives a nice little boost to your bottom just before you put on your Saturday night party dress or skinny jeans!

To see some of these exercises in action check out the INLINE videos sites (or click the direct links in the table)

http://inlineartofexercise.com or http://www.youtube.com/user/INLINEprivatevideo

I will update the video collection next week to include more of the exercises below.  Stay tuned!  Subscribe and you will get the link immediately when I do!

Class	Exercise	Sets	Reps
A	Leg press	2	8 to 10
A	Ball on Wall Squat with Dumbbells	2	8 to 10
A	Isolated single leg  press or weighted gluteal lunge	2	8 to 10
B	Slider Lunges	2	10 to 15
B	Sliding Warrior Lunge	2	10 to 15
B	Crossing Slider Lunge	2	10 to 15
C	Bridges	2	15 to 20
C	Slider Bridge	2	15 to 20
C	Single Leg Bridge	2	15 to 20
C	Side leg raises	2	15 to 20
C	Prone Rear Leg Kicks	2	15 to 20
C	Quadruped Rear Leg Kicks	2	15 to 20

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