This morning after waking up and doing some sit ups, crunches some cycling and running I had a male client above 60 years old.

 

It’s always good to check In with people’s energy, mood, what’s going on with them, physical injuries and medical health.

With people above 35 years of age or young people with weak knee health I get clients to cycle for 5 to 10 Minutes with adequate resistance to get the legs working with strength, endurance and also without impact on the knees. It helps with our feet- it activates and awakens the feet and the legs and glutes and spine.

Another thing we did after 5 minutes on the bike was a 5 minute hill walk on a 12 degree incline at 4 miles per hour. I like using the treadmill for after the bike as the bike loosens and wakes up the spine laterally whilst the treadmill wakes up the shoulders and core and legs while walking or running.

Cardio isn’t so popular among personal trainers which is sad and I really do think 5 to 10 minutes is excellent for  blood flow and circulation. Especially for men and women above their 40s.

After that I gave him what I call dumbbell squats from a bench. Most trainers and physiotherapists and social media influencers do not teach people to squat properly.

So what I do in my groups and for my one on one sessions is give people squats with their legs apart and their arms apart- usually people drop down far too quickly without proper engagement of the glutes, heels and spines causing all kinds of problems from the knees, hips, posture, inactive glutes and causing back pain.

The advantage of doing Box squats from a bench is to split the legs wide and apart from the bench, the feet will be more symmetrical, also I get them to push their hips and butt’s further back and away from themselves so that they engage their glutes. Remember to slow down the movement on the way down and also protect your spines.

 

So we did dB bench squats with a dumbbell curl to work the arms. After the form of the squats is better, heels pushing down into the ground and the back is pushing back and straight and the chest is up I had my client doing squats without any support and as he came up lateral raises to widen the shoulders and help improve shoulder health and get blood flowing into them.

Now the body is more warm I got him to do incline dumbbell bench presses which helps the coordination of the upper back, chest, shoulders, elbows and wrists to balance, strengthen, mobilise, coordinate and stretch.

Then to work the opposing muscles I get people doing these type of whole body workouts to do dumbbell prone rows pulling thr elbows back and past the body and pausing with the elbows held past the body and the chest lifted slightly off of the bench to engage the lats, upper back and stretch the chest.

 

I love this movement for the spine it’s a beautiful and great movement.  After that we do situps and back extensions and Russian twists to get the neck the abs and the hamstrings glutes and lower backs to work with the rotation of the spine from the Russian twists.

 

Now obviously all of my workouts are customised to every single client for every single workout as each person had a different lifestyle, mood, desires, goals, commitment, priorities, abilities and injuries, and strength and fitness levels.  I don’t even give the same client the same workout entirely ever that I remember of.

 

Having said that there are certain generic patterns that most people can do. And these things I have to work out in groups.

Come and join me at a meet up and or for one on one in person or on video call. It will be well worth it.