Steps to Golf Fitness:

To maximize your golf game, adequate Flexibility is necessary to complete all phases of the golf swing. Proprioception or body awareness is needed for proper swing mechanics. Exceptional coordination allows for proper movement sequencing. To maintain the body’s center of gravity at the various swing positions, Balance must be maintained. Consistent golf performance demands a solid foundation of strength. Strength will prepare your body to generate the force needed to sustain power. Power is what creates club head speed needed for long drives.  

Visit www.monstergolfswing.com for more golf tips.

PE F.A.D Buster|Open Chain Exercises and Glute Development

 

“Trying to build a butt with fire hydrant kicks is like trying to sculpt marble with an emory board.”

Terrence Thomas

The gluteus maximus muscles is designed for power and large movements such as squatting, running, jumping, and lunging. Therefore to develop the glutes, these movements must be performed. Whose butt would you rather have? A marathoner’s or a sprinter’s like Flo-Jo’s?  One of the major differences in the two “runners” is the intensity and muscle fiber recruitment that each of them performs. The marathoner moves in a slow and steady pace utilizing slow twitch muscle fibers. On the other hand sprinting activates the fast twitch fibers, which the glutes are predominantly composed of. This puts the butt in a perfect position to respond favorably. The squat and lunge patterns are the best for developing and shaping the butt. All squatting and lunging is done in a closed chain pattern (i.e. the feet are on the earth and the leg is moving the body away form the earth). This allows the glutes to be used in the exact way in which they are designed. Closed chain exercises for the lower body also promote optimal neural drive in the muscle. to learn more about neural drive, refer to my neural drive article in RxMuscle that explains it all. #neuraldriveincreasemuscletone #closedchainexercise

 

Awaken, Thrive, and Conquer Your Way to Physical Excellence

Awaken, Thrive, and Conquer Your Way to Physical Excellence
By Terrence Thomas

Twenty three years of coaching exercise and physical performance has convinced me that to be your best a developmental approach to fitness, exercise and physical performance must be taken. I have created a 3 step system that follows the natural developmental process of human movement and performance. I call it Awaken, Thrive, Conquer (ATC )

These three steps are critical to building a body that not only looks good but also performs at a high level. Before you can achieve optimal physical strength and performance you must first be able to awaken the body.

Awakening the body means having all of the basic reflex patterns and abilities in tact. Many of these basic reflex patterns are developed early in life. I mean really early such and pre birth and during infancy. For various reasons, these fundamental reflex patterns can and often become dysfunctional. For most people a small glitch in one’s developmental reflexes will not be a major cause for concern. However during high performance situation such as in sports or combat, developmental deficits can and often does make a massive difference in safety and performance.

The purpose of “thrive” phase of the system is to bring all physical abilities back to baseline. After the body is awakened, it can now progress to moving and performing at a level that supports life. The thrive phase develops what are known as primal patterns and biomotor abilities. The system of primal patterns was developed by Paul Chek and the gist of it is that there are 7 movement patterns that human beings must be able to perform. They are Squat, lunge, bend, push pull, twist and gait. Gait consists of walking, jogging and flat out running /sprinting. These movements were they to being able to survive and thrive in the wild. The concept of bio-motor abilities was developed by sports scientist Tudor Bompa and they are (strength, speed, power , agility, endurance, coordination, balance, and flexibility).

The “Conquer” phase of the ATC system is your where all of the advanced methods of exercising and training fit in. This phase is only warranted after you have successfully awoken your body and are thriving. If you try to Conquer while your body is still asleep and not thriving, you will set yourself up for injury and frustration from a lack of progress.

By following this progression you lay yourself a solid foundation for achieving long lasting and sustainable health and fitness. You must first awaken the body and then bring it to a point where it can thrive and ultimately bring it to a conquering aspect where you’re able to execute high performance tasks without destroying the body. This is Physical Excellence at it’s finest. ###

Create More Success With Your Exercise Program

Create More Success With Your Exercise Program

Terrence Thomas

 

There are two goals that are so important to ANY and results oriented exercise program. Failure to meet these two objectives will result in the following happening 100% of the time.

 

1. Your efforts will be wasted and your results will be mediocre at best.

2. You are guaranteed to suffer an injury.

 

With that said if you DO address the following objectives in your exercise program, ANY result that you wish to achieve is almost guaranteed.

 

Fundamental Exercise Objective #1: Restore and Improve Body Mechanics (movement quality).

 

The health, strength and beauty of the human frame rely heavily on how it is used. Form follows function. Let me ask you this. What would happen to a Ferrari (a sports car) if you took it off road and drove it like a Jeep? It wouldn’t be a pretty site to say the least.  This example holds true with the human body. The more you move the body like it was designed to move, you will bring healing energy and strength into the body. Strength, body symmetry (i.e. the quality that makes for visually appealing and attractive physique), power, endurance and every other bio-motor ability can be developed when the body is trained to move correctly. One of the best ways to achieve this is to: 1. Know what your current physical capabilities are. Is your movement skill average, above average or below average? Knowing this will help you choose the ideal exercises for your physical training program.

 

Fundamental Exercise Objective #2: Improve Posture.

 

Paul Chek, founder of the CHEK Institute said the following in regards to posture;

 

“Posture is the position from which movement begins and ends. Ideal posture is that state of muscular and skeletal balance which protects the supporting structures of the body against injury or progressive deformity, irrespective of the attitude in which these structures are working or resting.”

 

This statement makes it crystal clear that if your exercise program is not improving posture then it is degrading posture. .  If your goal is to develop a strong and beautiful body, it’s important that you are training with proper exercise technique. Exercise technique and the improper use of the body is the #1 reason for most injuries associated with exercise.

 

The variable achieving the two foundational exercise goals is to have an assessment system that determines whether an exercise is going to be right for you.  Remember: technique first and intensity second.  Go ahead and practice. Consider your exercise program as a practice rather than a workout. If you approach it this way, your quality will improve and I guarantee you your results will come faster and you will have better health. There is less likelihood for injury and you will be able to stick with your program much longer because when you practice you’re achieving mastery and the subconscious mind likes to learn new things.  Bottom line: you will feel better about what you’re doing which will help you stick with your program longer. ###

Why Eating Clean Sucks

Why “Eating Clean” Sucks

by Terrence Thomas

 

Let’s discuss a mental construct that I believe is one of the major causes of yo-yo dieting. The idea that I’m talking is the “eating clean” and I believe has infected the entire health and fitness industry.  Here are three concepts about eating clean that explain how this mindset can sabotage your health, fitness, weight loss, and physique goals and what you can do to make sure you are not doing this to yourself.

 

1. Stop using the term “eating clean”.

The very idea that you are eating clean means that at some point you are not eating clean.  In other words you’re eating in a way that supports health and performance during a certain time and then the other times you are eating like crap. I don’t know about you but that sounds very much like an eating disorder. The mindset behind eating clean is that you are in some way depriving yourself. When the mind is in a dynamic of deprivation, it is relying on willpower to resist temptation. Eventually you will run out of willpower and the natural tendency is to either quit eating clean or go to the other extreme, which is to eat garbage or binge eat. Having “cheat” days are supposed to help deal with the deprivation aspect of “eating clean” but the mental dynamic of resisting or succumbing to temptation is still in play.

 

If you are constantly bouncing from eating “clean” to not eating clean you are on a yo-yo diet. On average, when you ask someone what eating clean means, they say eating in a way that helps them lose fat or get healthy. Why not eat like this all the time or at least consistent enough that when you do choose not to “eat clean” that it won’t totally derail your efforts.  Follow the 80/20 rule. In other words, if your are eating, living and managing yourself in a way that promotes health, fitness and vitality 80 percent of the time then when you should be able to tolerate the occasional culinary, or recreational vice without irreparable damage to your body.

 

2. Send the idea of Bulking up back to the 1970’s. If you want to gain quality muscle that lasts for a lifetime, eat quality whole food all the time. Eating garbage foods and supplements that only make you look swollen and puffy will give you the illusion that you are BIG.  If you want to have a real, bona fide brick shit house of a body, you must feed your body real whole food, train intelligently and consistently. Training intelligently means knowing when to crank it up and push it to the limit but also knowing when to back off.

 

3. Stop playing Tug Of War with our mind.

If you want achieve your health and fitness goals with zero resistance and a feeling of peace, stop creating extremes in behavior. Think lifestyle instead of dieting. Eat real food all the time and sprinkle in some treats instead of eating pathologically strict and then totally flying off the handle and single handedly keeping a local ice cream shop in business.

 

Disclaimer: With that said, I am fully aware of what it takes to achieve extreme levels of fitness, leanness and muscularity. For example if you are a physique competitor and are in pre contest training, you are asking the body to do something that by nature it does not want to do. This takes some specific training, diet, and supplementation strategies to achieve this and when done with a relative degree in intelligence can be done safely and at a high level. The key here is intelligence.  #BeBeautiful #BeStrong  #BeHealthy

The Physical Excellence Workout

The Physical Excellence Workout

by Terrence Thomas

 

Let’s discuss the five key principles that I use to design all of my exercise fitness sports performance weight loss and stress management exercise programs. The five principles of the Physical Excellence Workout are:

 

1. Infant development

There are certain skills that must be developed in the human body between the ages of zero and one years of age.  If these skills, reflexes and processes are not developed, it can predispose the body to injury, hormonal imbalances, neurodevelopmental and even emotional problems.  The Physical Excellence Workout uses infant development training to clear the runway to a fully functional strong, healthy and beautiful body. Infant development exercise can be used as a stand alone workout or in combination with other forms of training. Either way it will help build a balanced strong and healthy body.

 

2. Corrective stretching

The goal of corrective stretching in the Physical Excellence Workout is to balance the musculoskeletal system. It is similar to a guitarist tunes their strings.  Stretching is not about how limber you are but how balanced your body is. A balanced body is a beautiful, strong, and healthy body and the physical excellence workout will help you accomplish this.

 

3. Core conditioning

Proper core conditioning will teach the body to dissipate forces away from the spine. Real core training involves more than just training the abdominal muscles or putting the body under a balance challenge. The Physical excellence Workout core conditioning program involves training the entire musculoskeletal system to function as a unit in order to dissipate forces, stabilize joints, reduce wear and tear,  improve performance and  overall health and vitality.Anti-aging and the ability to stay youthful, beautiful and vital is directly dependent on the body’s ability to maintain a strong and functional postural system.  The Physical Excellence Workout strengthens the postural system to preserve longevity and vitality in the body.

 

4.  Scientific strength training

Strength training when done correctly provides a therapeutic response in the body. Yes, the Physical Excellence Workout strength training method is about increasing force and lifting heavy weights, but it is done in a way that promotes health, balances the system as well as strengthening the body. Choosing the right movement at the right time for the right person is how clients get  amazing results and lifelong success with the Physical Excellence Workout.

 

5.  Primal pattern development

Primal pattern development is a functional training technique that develops all of the body’s natural movement patterns that would be used in a primal or primitive environment. There are seven basic primal patterns and they are squats, lunges, bend, push, pull, and twist. The seventh pattern is gate, Which consists of walking jogging and sprinting. In the Physical Excellence Workout, clients are evaluated and then a program is designed according to their current level of skill and fitness levels. This aspect of the Physical Excellence Workout allows us to transform a couch potato to a well conditioned athlete.

 

Whether you were a couch potato, a professional athlete, a stay-at-home mom or someone just trying to look and feel their best, the physical excellence workout will help you reach your goal methodically professionally and efficiently. Give us a call and let us show you how we can help you get results like these satisfied clients!

 

—————->Success stories!

“Changing my energy level from an all time low to the highest its ever been..Changing my time spent training from inefficient to incredibly effective..Changing weak link aspects of my physique to the high levels of core strength..Terrence Thomas is the coach who has helped me get into the best shape of my life! Beyond teaching me to master exercise techniques specifically tailored to address my fitness challenges, Terrence suggested a diet suited for my metabolic type and advocated eliminating depleting cardio sessions. Thanks to his expertise and devotion to helping me reach my goal, Terrence has vastly helped me improve my quality of life -a priceless reward I’ll surely appreciate for the rest of my life.”

-Bari A.

 

“Terrence is one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Besides looking like a real life Super-Hero, he lives by the very high standards he preaches. He is relentless about results and will not stop until any willing person around him has reached their full potential. In other words, he cares very well for himself and also for everyone around him (that is, if you are fortunate enough to be around him).

I met Terrence through my wife (they went to school together) and since then he has not stopped impressing me. So much so that I decided to engage him as my health and fitness coach. The results have been outstanding… inside and out.

To expand on that, one of Terrence’s “Super Powers” is the ability to understand the human body from a level I have never seen anyone be able to do. I call him “The Body Doctor” because he has this interesting talent to derive what a person’s needs are and to easily guide them to overcome their limitations (present and future). In my case, I sure had many… suffering from all sorts of muscle constrains and joint pain, it was hard for me to get around to do the things I loved in life. It was as though I had aged prematurely, and Terrence has been instrumental at taking me from that point of limitation to where I am now. Today, I feel so incredibly better and much more able to do the things I like.

Furthermore, Terrence possesses many other skills, not limited to the workings of the mind as-well-as potentiating one’s metabolism and biochemistry for optimal digestion and healing. Terrence ensures a complete and holistic physical and mental state of excellence for anyone that is fortunate enough to partner with him in their pursuit of happiness.

At this time, I invite you to make a strong determination and decision in your mind to contact Terrence and go over any limitation or goals you may have.”

-Marcello.

 

For a FREE consultation today call, 954-454-5305!

 

Working In Vs Working Out

I would like to share with you a very unique concept that is probably exclusive to C.H.E.K. practitioners and Chek trained holistic lifestyle coaches. This is the concept of “working in” versus “working out.”  Here’s what I mean.

When the average person begins an exercise program, their primary goal is to get back into shape. They have not done physical exercise in a long time. Their diet is poor, their vitality slipping and energy levels are low. In other words, their stress levels are high.

Consider that exercise is inherently stressful.  When highly stressed people begin an exercise (workout plan), they are adding stress on top of stress.  This approach may work short-term, but the reality is that in most cases their body ultimately rejects the exercise.  Rejection  means they get injured, get sick or become so tired and sore they just lose the desire to stick with their workout program.

Inflicting high intensity exercise “workout” program to a stressed out body causes one’s stress level to rise to a destructive tipping point. Stress overflow equals physical and metabolic shutdown. It’s a natural survival mechanism. The body is saying “Ok, if you don’t have the common sense to shut it down, let me do it for you in the form of an injury, illness or pulling the plug on your energy levels”.

The concept of working in means that when you’re beginning an exercise program, your initial goal is to train in a way that brings energy back into the body rather than making withdrawals on an energy account that’s already in the red. Working in involves paying attention to your exercise volume and intensity. In other words controlling the number of sets, reps, and training frequency. The goal here is to achieve successful fatigue, and not feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck after your exercise training session.  Any good training session will have the ability to be duplicated.  If you can’t duplicate a training session–because it was too intense, it was not a training session but a maximal effort or a competition level event.  If you’re working in properly, you’re creating successful fatigue, which will bring energy back into the body, reduce stress levels and build energy reserves. #workoutworkin

The Secret To Permanent Weight Loss

Physical Excellence From The Ground Up

Among the Fitness gadgets and fad diets, inactivity, obesity and chronic illness are still on the rise.  The exercise equipment and diet companies have made billions by taking advantage of knowing that most people will try anything once. If the latest infomercial “do-dad” doesn’t work then it’s just one more piece of junk to add to the collection.
The reality is that there are no quick fixes to achieving optimal health and vitality. It violates the laws of nature. Can a seed skip steps in evolving into a beautiful redwood tree? Neither is the case in creating a healthy, strong and resilient body.

The Seeds of Physical Excellence…

1. Posture is the foundation for total health and fitness.  A body that is properly aligned will look, feel and function better.
2. Flexibility exercise is needed to maintain proper length and tone to your muscles and connective tissues and also to prevent injury.  You cannot exercise if you are injured.
3. Proper body mechanics. The quality of human movement plays a very important role in the maintenance of optimal health and fitness. Ideal body mechanics during exercise and daily living maintains the health of the joints, muscles and connective tissues.
4. Strength is dependent on flexibility. A muscle that is short and tight will not have optimal strength and the likelihood of injury increases. Strength also allows one to perform more physical work if the need be.
5. Conditioning: Not to be confused with cardio, physical conditioning is the ability to perform one’s desire task effectively and repeatedly. Conditioning is the ability to apply strength and power a given amount of time.
6. Nutrition is what ties all of the fitness components together. A proper diet according to one’s Metabolic Type is paramount to all of your fitness efforts.
7. Ideal weight and body composition. Weight loss is a concern for many people however body composition is often overlooked when determining one’s ideal weight. Pay special attention to monitoring body composition so that it can be determined if weight loss is from fat or muscle.
8. Stress Management prevents physical and mental burnout. The body will not function optimally in a state of chronic stress and or fatigue.

Health & Fitness is a journey not a destination. If you use these seeds as your guide, your journey towards physical excellence will be one of positive self-discovery and personal evolution. ##

Transform Your Body With Kettlebells

Coming Soon!

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