January 2015 - Taiso Fitness and Nutrition

Three Best Butt Exercises

Have a Functional and Great Looking Butt

With so many good butt exercises, it was hard to pick just three. But here in this short video this week we wanted to present some exercises that are not just great for the booty, but get you out of the same old plane of motion.

I know, I know most people are looking for butt exercises cause it’s the first of the year and you want to look great in your jeans come spring. But, there’s no reason to ignore function just for ascetics when you can have both.

This really is one time when you can have your cake and eat it too.

Lets get started with indicators that your booty might not be pulling its own weight. We highlight some of the common issues we see when the gluten are not firing properly.

Indicators of bad form are:

too much knee movement, and not enough hip which causes bone rhythm to be off
arch collapse or knee tracking to the inside of the toe line
too much arch placing stress on the low back
too much hip and not enough knee, also causing bone rhythm to be off
raising up on the toes showing weight is too far back

Indicators of good form are:

knees tracking over the big toe
knee and hip moving in unison and creating good bone rhythm

Lateral Squat

keep feet parallel
push off the trail leg
keep a good long spine

45° Lunge

long spine
step diagonally
moving the knees and hips in unison

One Leg Hip Hinge

long spine
base leg slightly bent
hinge at the hips and squeeze the base leg on the way up

Taiso Fitness and Nutrition

If you are looking for a unique gym experience try Taiso Fitness and Nutrition. We are Tacoma’s fitness and nutrition gym for people who want to […]

By admin|2017-09-06T15:55:50-07:00January 25th, 2015|Blog|Comments Off

How Dieting Effects Hormones

Eating Like A Mouse Got You Feeling Run Down?

Hey, I’m burning fat so why do I feel so tired and sluggish? Well, the short answer is that your body does not want to starve. As fat cells are depleted they release leptin which slows down your metabolism until the fat is restored.

But to understand the total impact on your body lets start with a little bit of history. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment of 1944. This study was conducted for the US military to aid with rehabilitation of famine victims in Europe and Asia following World War II. Healthy, normal weight men underwent a 24 week 1800 calorie a day diet in order to measure the effects of calorie restriction.

Let’s just pause more a moment. They used 1800 calories a day to induce famine. Considering how many diets I have seen recommending less than that, I was a bit surprised with this number.

The study concluded that restrictive dieting significantly increases severe emotional distress and depression. Dieting causes a pre-occupation with food during the diet and the recovery phase, a significant decrease in metabolism, and may cause edema in the extremities.

Many of the study participants who were previously healthy developed eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. A key finding of the study was that dieters need both physical nourishment and psychological training in order to recover from the dieting process.

Let’s look at how this applies today. The autonomic nervous system regulates the body’s unconscious actions. It’s comprised of two subsystems; the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system’s primary process is to initiate the flight or flight response in the body. While the parasympathetic nervous system’s primary process is maintenance of […]

By admin|2017-09-06T15:55:51-07:00January 12th, 2015|Blog|Comments Off

Three Steps to Creating Successful Habits

Three Steps to Creating Successful Habits

Often when we decide to make a change such as a New Years resolution, we decide to make several changes at once. Something like, “this year I’m gonna diet and exercise.”

When we try to implement one change at a time we have an 80% chance of success. But if we try to change two habits at once our chance to succeed goes down to 35%, and at three or more we have less than a 5% chance to succeed.

STEP ONE – Decide on a single habit to change.

In the case of changing our diet and exercise, we will be more successful if we start one habit first, take the time to get that habit established, and then start the second habit later.

When we make changes in our habits and routine we create stress for the brain. If we create too much stress we default to the emotional portion.

So we need to lower the overall stress on the nervous system in order to put the problem-solving and inhibition portion of the brain back in charge.

One of the ways we can do this is to create safety by making habits easy enough for us to be successful, and use that success to ease our way into bigger changes.

STEP TWO – The habit must be controllable, and measurable with a yes or no answer.

Now, we have to be able to actually control the habit, and it has to be stated in a yes or no format.

For example, my habit cannot be to “lose weight today.” This is because I cannot actually control “losing weight”, and I cannot answer that phrase with a “yes or no” answer.

Instead I have to pick a habit that […]

By admin|2017-09-06T15:55:51-07:00January 2nd, 2015|Blog|Comments Off