If I Were (when I am) U2’s Personal Trainer
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Hi Gang,
Hope you all had an amazing Canada Day! What incredible weather – looks like it is going to hold for the whole weekend. I know I will have a great weekend, but I have to admit I am more than a little bummed because Paul and I were supposed to spend Saturday night with U2 in Toronto. Yeah, we were going to hang out together for a few hours – well, us and about 40,000 other people, but it was going to be awesome! Unfortunately, that won’t be happening – watch the video to find out why…
Cheers,
Maria
Touching base…
By · CommentsHi Gang,
So the hockey players are in full swing training at Revolution Conditioning, so there is much less time for keeping up with my blog posts. I just wanted to send out a quick ‘hello’ so you would not worry that I was trapped under a barbell somewhere and to show you the little video I took when the entire town of Ilderton came out to celebrate Scott & Tessa’s Olympic and World Championship wins!!
It was an awesome day in an amazing community! So far this has been the hi-light of my ’summer’. I will try to keep posting some helpful exercise tips, they will just be a little less frequent during the next few months – then I will get back on track in the fall. As always let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Maria
Crunches are not the best way to strengthen your abs.
By · CommentsHi Gang,
Here we are on the verge of another beautiful weekend in London, Ontario. Just one more group of athletes to train and I am off for two days! For those of you living south of the border have a great Memorial Day weekend! Be safe.
If you know me at all you know how I feel about crunches. I do feel guilty sometimes because I will admit there is something about the feeling you get after doing 30 good crunches – it feels like they are really working. Whereas after doing some of the more traditional stability exercise you feel tired all over your torso and maybe even into your lats. Well, enter Mike Reinold, Mike is a physiotherapist who in my opinion is also a genius. You should definitely check out his blog for great application of physio concepts and musculoskeletal biomechanics to athlete training. Anyway, Mike posted a blog this week which referred to a research article – (Mike’s blog post goes into great detail on it – I am just summarizing) that looked at electromyographic (EMG) data for various core training exercises using the stability ball versus traditional crunches and sit ups.
EMG data is obtained by placing electrodes (not the kind that zap you) over the various muscles and then measuring the muscle activation – more activation, more involvement in the exercise. Wanna know the winners? Here they are:
