Kiama Fit Chicks Club Archives - Oxygen Health & Fitness

Fun and games at Kiama Fit Chicks Club

Skipping

Skipping is a challenging and fun exercise for improving your cardiovascular system and burning calories. Jumping rope engages your whole body, with emphasis particularly on your calves. Incorporating rope skipping into your workout program can speed fat-burning and boost stamina, while sculpting lean legs and a toned torso.

Skipping can build both endurance and power. To focus on increasing endurance, you should jump for long periods of 3-5 minutes at a time with a steady pace. For power, jump rope as fast as you can, in short bursts that last only 20 seconds to a minute. This is typical for our FitChicks who often use skipping as a high intensity “finisher” to make sure they leave nothing in the tank at the end of a tough session. Other benefits of skipping include better balance, coordination, timing and agility.

Skipping can burn 372 calories in just 30 minutes for a 70kg person, which may just help you in your quest to lose weight. Your results will of course be dependent on your diet, your commitment and your size, though. Simply adding a skipping session daily doesn’t guarantee you’ll see changes on the scale.

Have fun with it, practice different styles

The best way to get better at skipping is, like most things, practice! Skipping can be a fun way to improve your fitness so practice different styles and figure out what works best for you. Standard jumps, high knees, boxer’s shuffle, scissors, double unders – it’s a never ending list just get in and have a go!

FitChicks ready to go for Gold!

This week’s highlight goes to our entire bunch of hard-working FitChicks. The Power Clean, which can be a fairly intimidating exercise with heavy weights, has been dominated by these girls over the past few weeks. Should make for an interesting week and a half coming up as we combine it with another one of the exercises they’ve been working on, to compete in the Clean & Jerk during our Oxywealth Games event.

FitChick transformations are all about confidence

Again I have to send a big shout out to ALL our FitChicks who have overcome some big mental hurdles of late to lift some big, heavy weights. Everything many women have learnt to believe about weight training is that lifting will make them big, bulky and masculine. Turns out that working hard and lifting heavy is making them look fit, toned and more feminine than ever! Love your work girls!

FitChicksClub Kiama is a family affair

Incline Bench Press

The Incline Bench Press is one of the primary exercises for working the upper chest. Some people have a hard time getting results from this exercise…oftentimes getting tired triceps and sore shoulders. If that’s been you, I’ve got the solution for you. It’s a very simple adjustment to the setup for how you perform the exercise.

One problem I’ve encountered with clients over the years is the tendency for the chest and rib cage to flatten out during the exercise, which takes the tension off the chest and puts it on the shoulders and triceps instead.

In order for the pecs to get a good contraction, the shoulder blades need to be tight in together behind your back with the shoulders back and chest/rib cage expanded.

Here’s a trick to get that right…grip the bar and pull your torso just slightly UP off the bench like you’re doing a pull-up. When your torso is up off the bench, pinch your shoulder blades together behind your back (just like with a row), puff and expand your rib cage up to meet the bar, then set your torso back down on the bench. Notice how your shoulders are back, and your chest feels tighter?

THAT is the correct position to perform the incline bench press so now you’re ready:

Hold the barbell with a medium to wide grip lifting it straight up so your arms are fully extended.
Bring the weight down to your upper chest without bouncing the weight, pause, then press it back up to the starting point.
Use a full range of movement.
Note the eccentric (down-phase) should be roughly twice as long as the concentric (up-phase).
Repeat for reps.

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30-45 degrees maximum incline

Remember that the incline bench press works the upper chest. Set the bench to an angle of between 30 and 45 degrees. Anything higher than that will start to use your shoulder muscles too much and shift the emphasis of the chest muscles we want to target.

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Young gun leading the way

Jess Williams is the youngest Member of our community and she continues to impress taking out the Oxygen Member of the Week this week. Jess took on the challenge of FITCHICKS in April and has really surprised herself and others with some impressive strength.

Just this week she conquered a 38kg incline press! She squats 50+kg, deadlifts 60+ kg and is executing great technique and improved strength at her chin ups. Although a quietly spoken girl, Jess is always polite, thankful and friendly. Find me another 15 year old who’s like that at 6 o’çlock in the morning!

Leanne betters her best

Leanne Williams (yes mother of Jess above) is one of our original FitChicks that started way back in January 2013. She had been a Member of Oxygen prior to that since October 2011.

Although she has never had a problem with her weight, Leanne was never passionately into fitness prior to that, particularly strength training. With a stressful job, young family and a husband who regularly pushes his limits, Leanne took on the challenge of FitChicks.

She has since become known in the Oxygen community as one of, if not the strongest and fittest FitChicks we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

At a bodyweight of around 53kg, she needs to attach around 5kg to herself to make chin ups more challenging but some of her other stats include a 68kg squat, 70kg deadlift and, like daughter Jess a 38kg Incline Press. Big numbers for a little chick.

This focus on resistance training has laid the foundation for a strong injury free body, which has not always been the case for Leanne as she has nursed different injuries with her lower back, hips and piriformis muscle. As well as investing in her health by the way of regular massage and “adaptive” physiotherapy work, Leanne has been able to train for the upcoming Gold Coast Half Marathon in just over a week’s time. All reports are that she will do it in QUICK time!

What a fantastic role model for not only daughter Jess, but women everywhere.

Good luck Leanne, we know you will smash it!

Oxygen Health & Fitness Weekly Wrap is back

What’s Been Happening?

Winter Warrior Challenge kicks off for 2014

In it’s third year now, the Winter Warrior Challenge was designed to be a way to keep clients motivated and accountable over the colder months. In years gone by we operated entirely outdoors so having a competition or challenge was a great way of keeping people focused. Although we run strength training sessions at Kiama High School now, we obviously still have Conditioning and Super Saturdays outdoors and the challenge itself is a simple yet effective one regardless of the weather coming up.

The Winter Warrior Challenge is a great way to focus on the Process of training (ie how often will I train and what sessions will I attend specifically) vs the Outcome of training (I want to lose 5kg, tone up my stomach and fit into my skinny jeans etc.).

So, here’s how it works:

Winter is 13 Weeks (we’re into Week 2 now.)

Determine what is a realistic training schedule for you to commit to. For example, you may determine you can Mon-Thurs night plus Super Saturday.

Great, that’s a total of 5 sessions per week.

5 sessions per week x 13 weeks of Winter. That is 65.

Determine if you will be having any time away during Winter. It might be work related, holidays, anything. Subtract those days off your tally. For example, you may be going away for a work conference for 5 days. Now your total is 60.

Finally you may want to allow for the occasional slip up so you don’t feel totally defeated if you miss a session here or there due to work/illness/laziness. 3-5 slip ups over 13 weeks wouldn’t be a bad result if you complete 60 sessions.So, if we allow for say 4 slip ups, your final Winter Warrior Target would be 56.

Done. See how easy that was?

Now write that number 56 down in red pen in a big circle in your diary or a calendar on Saturday August 31st. Each time you complete a session write a 1 in a big red circle, then a 2 in a big red circle etc and just keep inching your way to the total.

If you’re on Social Media “check in” every Saturday and report on your session tally to help stay accountable.

Those that reach their target AND report weekly on their progress will win a free breakfast at The Brooding Italian.

New Programs for FitChicks and Spartan

After the chaos of Crossfit Kiama for three weeks, our strength training Programming returns to a more traditional approach over the Winter months. Rather than a 6 week block, our programs for Kiama Fit Chicks Club and Spartan Training Club Kiama will be periodised into 3 four week blocks that will see us through til Spring.

The first month has a focus on strength for 5 rep sets. This week starts off with moderate weights which allows us all to really focus in on technique and gain some confidence on some of the big compound movements. Really pay attention to the cues we give to ensure you gain the most you can out of each rep whilst also ensuring your own safety.

The volume of these sessions are probably a little less than we are used to but the focus is on good quality work. The sessions are probably around 40 minutes including some tough finishers.

Over the course of this month we will aim to increase weight almost every session and then by July we’ll be onto something different entirely.

Kayla Wrigley

I’m so pleased that this girl took me up on my invite to try out FitChicks! Since early April she has surprised herself and many other with her ability to lift heavy and push hard. During her final week of crossfit programming she belted out rapid fire power cleans, a ton of burpees and plenty of reps on the dreaded sled to rack up the most Performance Points and pip her FitChick buddy Lorien by 1 point. Well done Kayla, you’re our Member of the Week.

Bosu’s For Sale

We’re clearing out one of our storage sheds at Kiama High and offloading BOSU’s cheap. Purchase a brand new one (ONE available still in it’s packaging) for $160 or buy a used one for just $80 (7 available).