Shaping Up Your Stamina And Confidence

For young people still in school, the summer is a time of transformation. Seeing one’s peers on a regular basis affords young people an opportunity to recreate themselves. The new school year gives students a new beginning, a chance to start fresh.

 As the 2010-2011 school year came to a close, three teenagers asked me to help them lose weight, tone up, and eat more healthfully. Two of the three teenagers were graduating eighth grade and moving into high school, while the other teenager is in high school and gearing up for her departure to college. While all three come from an athletic background, all three were also deconditioned, in other words, they had not done any physical training in quite some time. For one of my girls, holding a modified plank was nearly impossible. For another, running up and down the stairs for a minute had to be curtailed. All of the workouts that I had customized for the teenagers had to be reworked, switching the emphasis on building their bodies and stamina from a minimal baseline.

 Proprioceptive training is highly effective when it comes to working with people who are deconditioned, or out of shape. Proprioception is about balancing; it can be done on stability balls, picking up one foot or leg, or better yet, using a JumpSport Fitness Trampoline™. Because the Fitness Trampoline is multifunctional, it really helped bring my girls up to speed, quite literally. These teens’ muscles had to fire in order to keep them balanced.  I was able to gradually develop their core strength, their balance and introduce cardio - all these benefits with just one piece fitness equipment.

 We worked in circuits beginning with a warm up and then moved into proprioceptive exercises, then did some trampoline training (increasing time on the trampoline by 30-45 seconds each session) and strength training in conjunction with proprioceptive work, and finished with some floor work with an emphasis on core development and flexibility. Each circuit was performed 3-4 times. The beauty now is that my girls, after six weeks, not only can trampoline train for five minutes at a time, but can also do stair exercises, speed and agility drills, and plyometrics.  As their coach I beam with pride, but more importantly, they are proud of themselves, and their newly found physical prowess speaks volumes to each of them.

 Incorporating the Fitness Trampoline into individual, group, bootcamp, sports team and many other types of workouts can be an excellent way to build up stamina, stability, strength and confidence.  Making cardio fun is especially important to those who find traditional cardiovascular exercise boring, challenging, or unappealing. Also, when a person becomes cardiovascularly fit they often venture into new territory, so consider the Fitness Trampoline a unique and special piece of equipment that can lead to a new lifestyle.

 For more tips and to share your experience with JumpSport Fitness Trampoline™, join our Twitter community @FitTrampoline and at the JumpSport Fitness Trampoline Facebook Fan Page.

 In good health!

 Heidi Aspen Lauckhardt-Rhoades Professional Fitness Instructor, ACE, AFFA, TRX, Indo, PIA, GROOVE Dance and Creative Movement Productions Writer and Social Media Correspondent www.thewritefit.us FB: The Write Fit & Open Barre Happy Hour Twitter: @ATweetFit