Southwest Strength

Unfortunately, a lot of us wait until we have aches and pains to decide to start taking care of our bodies outside of the gym, and I am forsure guilty of this. I’m trying to get better!

 

I’ve been training consistently for about three years, and the more I train, I feel the better I know my own body, and what maintenance I have to do to be able to train five days a week without feeling like the tin man that has gone without oil for way too long.

 
Lately, I have been hearing “my lower back is bothering me”, or, “I’ve been starting to get some knee pain.” As a gym owner, this is not what I want to hear. I want my clients feeling sore because they push themselves, but by no means do I want them getting injured from overworked, under maintained muscles.

 
I’ve started to stress booking a regular massage, and some foam rolling, but I am feeling I need to start stressing self-maintenance a little more.
You’re probably thinking, “I’m already taking time out of my day to come to the gym to get healthier/stronger, I don’t have time to do additional work outside gym hours.” The truth is, you are going to have to make time, or you won’t be showing up to the gym because you are so out of whack you couldn’t even think about deadlifting an empty barbell.

 
If you are one of our members who has been coming maybe once or twice a week, then decided you wanted to increase to maybe four to five days a week, you may be noticing that you are continuously sore, or having the feeling of super tight muscles. The reality is most of our clients are beginners and have a low training age, Ie one year or less, if you started our Southwest Active class with all the weight training, skill work and conditioning sessions you are probably feeling very sore, its because your body is being broken down every day (I could talk about the importance of protein intake here as well for the beginner, we will save that for the nutrition article in the future) and you are most likely under recovering.

 

Unfortunately, without proper maintenance ie. stretching, mobility, foam rolling, those muscles with eventually get to the point where they no longer want to work for you,tight muscles will start to pull areas of the body away from their intended position and you will start to compensate with other joints or muscles that aren’t intended for the movement you are doing. This will eventually lead to injury or some uncomfortable aches and pains.

 
I’ll give you myself for an example, I am a “quad dominant” squatter, and I constantly have super tight IT bands, quads and hips. I go for regular deep tissue massages, but that is not enough. If I don’t stretch, foam roll or do any sort of mobility on those tight muscles, they will get so wound up that my pelvis will eventually shift out of place, and you’re probably thinking, “youch” and yes, it is an extremely uncomfortable feeling.

 
Without doing regular work on my muscles, I wouldn’t be able to hit my five workouts a week with the intensity that I want, I would most definitely stop seeing improvements in my lifts, I wouldn’t be efficient in my conditioning workouts, and my quality of movement wouldn’t be where I wanted it to be. What I’m saying is, if you are not doing regular maintenance to your muscles, you’re almost taking one step forward and one step back, meaning, you aren’t going to progress very much without taking care of your body outside of the gym!

 
All in all, I want people coming consistently to the gym and feeling good! I definitely do not want people getting injured from training but not doing regular maintenance . So this is my challenge to members who come to Southwest Strength, start taking a little more time out of your day to work on those tight muscles! If you own a foam roller, any kind of hard ball (think tennis ball or baseball) and some floor space, you have no excuses! And I will say that it’s not intended to be a nice relaxing stretch. If you are tight, and you mobilize properly, it should feel pretty sucky. (Maybe this is why people tend to not want to do mobility exercises!)

 
This post is not to scare any of you away from coming to SWS, rather just be aware that training does add “stress” to your body, unfortunately it takes time for your body to adapt and get used to the training stress you are putting on it. What I recommend is start making an effort to stretch more/mobilize more (checkout mobilitywod.com) and communicate with your coach if certain areas of your body are not “feeling” right or certain movements aren’t feeling like they should, we will make sure to accommodate/adjust you appropriately. Feel free to ask us for any stretching/mobilizing ideas that you can perform outside the gym. We will make a better effort to start incorporating more mobility/post workout stretching in our program as well.

-Sara Harmon, Coach at Southwest Strength

At Southwest Strength, we like to dig a little “deeper” than just “exercising” and “working” out. We personally like to understand the reason people are wanting to start their fitness journey in the first place. Understanding your purpose and your “WHY” is actually a difficult question for some people.

Asking the question, what is your why? This can lead to multiple different answers, “I want to be fit”, “I want to be strong”, or “I want to challenge myself daily”, “Fitness adds a quality to my life, nothing else can”, ” I want to feel better during my daily tasks”. Those are all good reasons behind starting your fitness journey.

At Southwest Strength, we truly believe if people have a deeper understanding of themselves, their goals and their true purpose of the WHY behind their training, it makes the ride much more enjoyable and meaningful. This can lead to a much more full filling success in and out of the gym. Rather than focusing on what I can’t do, i’ll focus on what I can do. Ie- “I can’t do a pull up yet, but I am getting better at front squatting”.

Sara and I just recently had this conversation about training, fitness and the gym. The conversation eventually narrowed down to this, if we didn’t have our daily fitness challenges/training, our clients to coach/help, our lives would be missing something. We talked about how after we complete our training for the day, how the rest of our day is that much “easier”. Don’t get me wrong, there are days we do not feel like training, but going back to our “WHY” is usually all the motivation needed to keep going.

We want all of our clients to understand the reasoning they have signed up to participate in this awesome thing called fitness. Next time your at SWS, don’t hesitate to put your WHY on the goal board. Like we said, fitness is a journey and at Southwest Strength we want it to be much DEEPER than just a “workout”.

Recently at SWS we have had a few questions/comments about lifting weights and becoming bulky, yes these concerns/questions were from women. At SWS, strength training, barbell work and lifting weights is part of our program. To be honest, its the most important part of our program. By assessing our current client base most of our clients are just starting their fitness journey.

When people are first starting their journey everything they are doing is new. The routines, the movements, understanding and reading programs, this is all something from foreign territory. People just starting their fitness journey need to start out on a “slow” strict strength program. They need to understand the movements, practice them and slowly get stronger. We have to understand something, lifting weights will not make you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or some body builder thats been lifting weights to look huge for the past decade. However, doing our strength training/structural balance work will make your body move in positions it was meant to. It will increase your overall strength and mobility during activities, daily tasks or performance in sports.

The common misconception is that we need to do “cardio” to “tone” up or get lean. My guess is that if your guilty of believing this, you probably have not seen great results in your body composition. Unfortunately we get caught up in the fitness magazines, articles online and tv advertisements with people being displayed having “6 pack” abs. However, we do not see the stories behind the pictures, most likely those individuals have dieted pretty hard to peak for that photo shoot. Ultimately it is not very “real” or even close to being sustainable to live like that.

The common myth that “lifting weights” will make you bulky is very hard to do. Even ask any male that has made it a goal to get “huge”, it definitely doesn’t happen over night, as it could take decades to achieve a large physique with proper training protocols, eating a ton of food, rest etc. Being a woman, this is even HARDER to do as women do not have the levels of testosterone like males do.

So the question, “how do I increase my lean body mass and improve my body composition”. Understand and put a lot of effort into the strength training/weight training components of the program, with consistent efforts in training, eating quality and enough protein, carbs and fats results will start to show.

Have any questions about this topic, do not hesitate to ask me!

Sara and I want to say thank you to everyone that came out and supported us during our grand opening yesterday. We had a great day. THANK YOU!

If you were unable to make it and have some questions, DO NOT hesitate to give us a call. There was some questions in terms of what would a workout look like at southwest strength. If anyone just wants to come and watch a class, PLEASE DO. You can see how the dynamic of the class is organized and works. This may make some people feel more comfortable.

Moving forward, our schedule on our website is what we are using from here on out. So make sure everyone signs up for the classes they want to attend early on in the week. I am so pumped to be able to help ALL OF YOU that have currently signed up. We look forward to making everyone a happier, healthier, fitter individual.

Take care,

Nathan

Hey guys

The gym is finished and all ready to rock. We will be having our official grand opening Oct.25 @ 1pm (63 Front Street, Melita MB). We encourage everyone in the community to come check out the gym and hear what were all about! Current members that have trained with us, if you want we are going to have a fun group workout shortly after the info session. Hope to see everyone there.

Nathan

Sara and I have been coaching individuals for almost a year out of our garage. We just recently both had the conversation about consistency and its importance.

We feel this is the most important part to a person’s progress. Consistency has truly allowed our clients to see amazing results. If you are a client and have consistently been coming for 2-3 months, you most likely have seen some sort of results. Whether that is in your body composition/weight, or in your physical ability- IE getting stronger.

We all have busy lives and getting to the gym at times can be difficult. We also all have 24 hours in the day. I guarantee you we can all be better at managing our time and managing our priorities in our life. Now, if your goal is to workout twice a week and you say it is a priority, but you miss one workout at our facility, I think it’s safe to say we automatically have the “choice” to either try make it up later in the week, or make up your own workout at home. If you can commit to consistently making fitness a priority in your life, good things will happen.

The magic lies in how consistent you are in your habits. How often do you exercise? How often do you prepare healthy meals? How often do you eat donuts, ice cream, chips and drink soda? If you answer those questions honestly and feel guilty, you know your not consistently working towards your goals.

It really comes down to a few things. 1) Educate yourself and surround yourself with like-minded people all trying to work towards something greater. 2) You just have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, “how bad do you want to see results?” Consistently working towards something will only get you closer to your goals.

So the next time you sit back and think, “man it would be nice not to exercise today?” Ask yourself, “How bad do you want it?”

At Southwest Strength we train people with fitness, health and body composition goals. We offer group fitness classes, individualized programming/coaching, private one on one, and semi-private group coaching.

We are a strength and conditioning service that offer appropriate programs for all levels, from the beginner starting their fitness journey to the experienced athlete looking to increase their performance in their specific sport, we can help you reach your goals!

At Southwest Strength, we would like to think our coaches educate clients about fitness being a life long journey. We emphasize good movement patterns, proper programming and assessment, and a positive environment to workout in. You will notice when you step in the doors the lack of “machines”. At Southwest Strength, the movements you perform are functional. We teach people how to put their bodies through full ranges of motion. This type of training helps achieve and seek overall health, body composition/weight loss, mobility, function of everyday life and can help athletes perform at their true potential.

We understand people want to look good and feel good. Through consistent efforts in the gym and your nutrition this can happen. At Southwest Strength we can help you, but were not going to sugar coat anything, there is no “21 day fix” or get “6 pack abs in 6 weeks”. We are to going to tell you the truth, its going to take TIME. We feel that with our training methods, quality coaching and the community Southwest Strength has to offer, the journey is going to be well worth the time and effort!