American Fitness

Welcome to the season of change. Now is the time to get ready for the coming tidal wave of New Year’s resolutions by preparing yourself with fresh perspectives on how to help your clients transform their lives. This issue is loaded with bold new ideas and insights that will help you achieve your personal and professional goals. Randy Hetrick, MBA, Optima 2020 keynote speaker and the subject of our cover story (page 34), talks about the unique journey he took in creating his revolutionary brand, TRX®. At each step along the way, Hetrick found ways to build on his experience and the lessons he learned. We can all find inspiration in his strategies and apply them to our own journeys. Reflecting on the pandemic, NASM and AFAA pros share valuable anecdotes on…

“My whole schtick when I opened in 2013 was to provide the fitness industry’s first one-on-one personal training that’s done in a group setting,” says Donny Day, NASM-CPT, owner of Peak Zone Fitness in Lake Highlands, Texas. Pre-pandemic, his workout classes held up to 24 members, with each person receiving individualized medical testing, vitals tracking, motivational coaching, nutrition counseling and workout parameters (such as tempo, weight load and difficulty). Then, on a Monday night, Day caught wind of the governor’s shutdown order. “I sent out an email right away and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll have a workout for y’all tomorrow,’” he says. The next morning, Day was live-streaming on Facebook, and he hasn’t stopped innovating ever since. Below, he shares some of the approaches that helped him retain most…

We love watching our biceps flex during a set of curls, but it’s tough to see triceps in action, even with a mirror nearby. As a result, novice exercisers may largely ignore these muscles, even though they make up two-thirds of the upper arm. Giving triceps equal time in the gym can result in a better-balanced physique for clients, whether the goal is toning, strengthening or making serious gains in size. Here, Mike Fantigrassi, NASM-CPT and Master Instructor, shares some ideas for amping up any arm program: Be flexible with phases. Even if clients are in Phase I: Stabilization for most moves, they may be able to use Phase III: Hypertrophy protocols for their arm work. (A seated biceps curl will deliver more arm benefits than a single-leg standing move.) If…

Many clients ask what they can do about saggy upper arms. The culprit is usually excess skin and too little muscle, says Mike Fantigrassi, NASM-CPT and Master Instructor. “For example, a female who’s 50 and used to have ‘toned’ arms may have lost muscle mass—which happens every year after age 30—so the skin is looser in that area,” he says. “In that case, doing strength training can help those muscles return to the size they were when the client was in her 20s.” The result? The skin fills out a bit and the arm becomes better defined, all of which gets the client closer to the desired aesthetic.…

For years, researchers have explored how the menstrual cycle affects athletic performance. The consensus? There is none. That may be, in part, because symptoms differ so much from woman to woman. “Just as some women experience horrible cramps and others don’t, some women experience increased fatigue during exercise, while others carry on as usual,” says Maria Luque, PhD, certified personal trainer and a faculty member at Trident University in Cypress, California. “I always ask female clients to use a journal to track their motivation and energy so they can tell if their cycle is impacting their workouts.” American Fitness asked Luque for a quick primer on what to know—and do—based on that information. When is performance most likely at its peak? Though hormone levels fluctuate every day of the month, progesterone and estrogen…

Going to bed even 30 minutes later than usual can result in a higher resting heart rate, beginning during sleep and extending into the next day, says a study published in npj Digital Medicine (2020; 3 [29]). This is bad news: A higher RHR can negatively affect overall cardiovascular health—and the next morning’s workout. (Effects wear off by the following night.) Just another reason to talk to clients about establishing a healthy sleep routine, which they can reset when they change their clocks.…