Ice or Heat?

It’s the classic question.  Something hurts, should I ice it or heat it? Here are some simple ideas to keep in mind to help you make the right choice. If it is a ‘new’ or sudden injury, you will want to ice. If you are treating a long standing injury and or trying to warm up your muscles before your workout/race/game you will want to heat. ICE Ice constricts the blood cells around the damaged area and reduces the flow/amount of blood to the injured muscle. HEAT Heat dilates the blood cells around the damaged area and increases the flow/amount of

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Exercising In The Summer Heat

Exercising in the summer heat

Working out is challenging enough, but working out in the summer heat can be hazardous unless you follow a couple of basic precautions. Workout Early: Working out early in the morning or before the afternoon sun can greatly reduce the risk of overheating as the sun has not yet peaked. Stay Hydrated: Staying properly hydrated throughout the day is always a challenge but it becomes a matter of life and death when we are being active in the hot sun for an extended period of time! Water is good but an electrolyte solution like Gatorade or Pedialyte is better as

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9 Foods To Help You Get Through Your Workout

9 foods to help you get through your workout

It’s quite simple, if you don’t have any fuel in the tank then your workout will suffer.  If you come to the gym at 6pm and the last thing you ate was a salad at 1pm your workout will suffer and you will be more susceptible to injury. Pre-exercise meals should be mainly composed of "slow-burning" complex carbs, such as fruits, vegetables, whole-grain bread, rice, pasta, and cereals. Given that they are your body's main source of energy, 65% to 70% of the total calories of your pre-workout meal should come from carbs. Complex carbs take longer to convert to

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Cold Shower Benefits for Your Health

Benefits of a Cold Shower

Cold showers are any showers with a water temperature below 70°F. They may have health benefits. Water therapy (also called hydrotherapy) has been used for centuries to take advantage of our body’s tendency to adapt to harsher conditions. As a result, our bodies become more resistant to stress. Increases endorphins Depression affects at least 10 percent of American adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many drugs treat depression, depending on the severity or duration of symptoms. One holistic method of treatment that’s gaining popularity is hydrotherapy. Taking a cold shower for up to 5 minutes, 2

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What is healthy?

You’re not healthy!  That might sound like a harsh way to start a post given the current social climate but it is most likely a truth the average person needs to hear. While the coronavirus pandemic plays out in packed hospitals and empty streets across the world, most of us have been left to self isolate at home following the story from our televisions, the internet, and social media. As a fitness professional stuck at home watching all of this play out one of the things I cannot help but notice is how deeply the media has discounted the word

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Primal Movement Flow

Primal Movement Flow is a combination of primitive movement patterns like hinging, crawling, squatting, lunging, rolling in all possible directions and connecting them by using transition movements. The end result is a flow of challenging body weight exercises/moves that are fun and enhance every aspect of fitness. This includes improvements in mobility of the joints, strength, endurance, power, balance, cardiovascular, the list goes on and on. Primal movements are early building blocks for every move we make in our daily lives, and being able to perform them well, will keep our bodies up to date and fight back some of

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Need a break from Coronavirus updates and worries? Try this meditation

Hey CSC family! Shaq Wùkōng Bennett from Commonwealth Sports club here bringing some Taoism to your day with a meditation focusing on creating the peaceful, harmonious and healthy environment within that we'd like to see reflected on the world during these times of crisis, pandemic and uncertainty. Since we're all being forced to slow down our lives, take a break and stay inside, why don't we take this opportunity to dive even deeper, turning to our own inner space to do some well needed maintenance and show ourselves some peace and love in a time where we’d like to see the same reflected

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Food as Medicine

"An apple a day keeps the Doctor away" - We've all heard this phrase before, even my kids ( 6 & 9 years old ) go… Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I know dad ! At that young age , it is really hard to convince them that a bowl of broccoli is better for you than a bowl of skittles. Those colorful and chewy candies, so cute , so sweet and tasty…how that can be bad for you ? And , the truth is , they are not really that bad for you. It's pure sugar, and a little bit of

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How to be successful at the gym, Part 3: Consistency

It doesn’t matter what your goals are, consistency is key. That being said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t miss a workout (it happens to all of us). In that case, try to find a way to move a little more during the course of that day. Don’t think you need to start over and definitely don’t give up! Move on and understand that there will be thousands of other workouts to be crushed. Exercise Sometimes we get bored of our workouts and don’t want to repeat the same things over and over again. An easy solution to this dilemma

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How to be successful at the gym, Part 1: Nutrition

Start by making sustainable changes For weight loss,members changing their whole lifestyle at once may work for some, but definitely not everyone. People who start with big changes usually start well, they’re focused and committed to eating healthy foods, meal prepping, working out 5x a week and setting up a crazy caloric deficit. However, most of those people are just setting themselves up for failure and disappointment because they drastically cut out on the amount of daily calorie intake and eliminate foods they love to eat. They could make this work for a week or two, then something happens that

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