If you’ve stopped seeing progress with your health and fitness efforts, your body has likely hit a plateau and adapted to whatever physical stimulus you have been giving it. To experience continuous progress, it is essential to keep both your mind and body guessing. Here are 10 tips for pushing past plateaus.

Source: ACE Fit | Fit Life | 10 Tips for Powering Through Plateaus

Strong, toned, powerful legs build a solid foundation for the body. While squats and deadlifts can be used to start a client’s foundation, lunges can add the perfect finishing touches to his or her quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves. Here are several lunge variations that can be used to add more dynamic and agility-based exercises into your clients’ workout routines.

Source: 5 Lunge Variations You Need to Try

When it comes to helping clients lose weight, we need to turn to the evidence and learn what science suggests is the most effective and, importantly, safe way to help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Here are five nutrition practices that are likely to help guide people toward a healthy and sustainable weight.

Source: 5 Nutrition Changes Clients Need to Make to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Don’t fall victim to sedentary environmental design and increasing sitting behavior patterns and start moving more today. Learn how you can add healthy movement to your work day and positively affect your quality of life, work productivity and sense of wellbeing, and decrease your risk for disease.

Source: ACE Fit | Fit Life | How to Be More Active during Your Workday

With so much conflicting fitness information out there, how do you determine the most effective program for you? First, it’s important to know that a well-rounded fitness regime should include cardiorespiratory training, resistance training, and mobility or flexibility training. Here is a summary of what and why each component is important in your routine.

Source: ACE Fit | Fit Life | Elements of an Effective Exercise Program

While core strength is essential, if you’re just beginning an exercise program, you want to be sure to first establish sufficient stability and mobility throughout your body. Here are two series of core exercises—the first will help you to develop stabilization throughout the core and spinal column muscles, while the second will progress you to training the core by mobilizing the limbs and incorporating movement.

Source: ACE Fit | Fit Life | Improve Stability and Mobility with These Beginner Core Exercises

Source: ACE – ProSource: February 2016 – ACE-SPONSORED RESEARCH: HIIT vs. Steady-State Training

If you’re like most people, you’ve recently resolved to lose weight, get in shape or maybe just to live more healthfully. These resolutions often include a commitment to exercising more regularly, but before you lace up your shoes and get moving, here are five common mistakes you’ll want to avoid in 2016.

Source: 5 Exercise Mistakes to Avoid in the New Year

More people join a gym in January than at any other time of year. While this can be a great first step, joining a gym does not necessarily mean a person will become more active. The key, of course, is actually using the gym. Before you sign up for a gym or health club membership, spend some time researching facilities. Make sure the gym offers the environment and types of equipment and classes you would be inclined to use regularly. And don’t forget the importance of choosing a convenient location. For many people, it makes more sense to join a gym that is close to work, especially if they are more likely to train right after work; others are more likely to use a use a gym that’s closer to home. Find out which location will increase your likelihood of using the gym.

Has anyone told you to “warm up” before you exercise or play sports? It seems simple enough, doesn’t it? What’s easy to do is also easy not to do, and the biggest mistake people make is skipping this important component of exercise. Learn how to warm up properly (and why it’s so important) so you can be more effective with your physical activities.

Source: ACE Fit | Fit Life | The Common Mistakes People Make When Warming Up

WHY

Most people sit for long periods of time or lie in bed before they exercise. Warming up helps you shift gears both mentally and physically. It’s preparation—kind of like chopping vegetables before cooking. The way you prepare your veggies changes the meal. And cooking them can be more challenging if you skip chopping or do it poorly. The same is true of your body when you warm up incorrectly or skip it all together.

When You Warm Up…

• The brain shifts its attention to physical activity mode.
• Joints move through their full ranges of motion.
• Your heart rate increases gradually instead of abruptly.
• Blood circulates through your system.
• The muscles practice movements to come.
• The likelihood of injury decreases.

Chronic stress can take a significant toll on the body and even lead to many long-term health concerns. Stress is so pervasive, however, that many people aren’t even aware of how stressed-out they really are. Here are 5 subtle signs that you may be feeling stressed, along with tips on how to alleviate the effects of that stress.

Source: ACE Fit – Fit Life

According to the American Institute of Stress, numerous emotional and physical disorders are linked to stress. In fact, chronic stress affects each system of the body differently and can cause long-term health concerns.

One of the greatest misconceptions about stress is that mental and emotional stress are not as detrimental as physical stress. Most people associate stress with work and a busy lifestyle, and although true, how we think and how we maintain our emotions affects the mind and the body. For many, their personal life is just as stressful as their career life, if not more so.

In addition, people experience stress due to things like environmental toxins, overuse of technology, constant traveling, changing time zones or switching work shifts, which changes one’s biorhythm and can take several days to adjust to the new schedule. Therefore, stress is a part of the modern day life and the body will respond to the stress placed upon it.

Stress that is stored in the body can show up in the most unexpected ways. Although associated with depression and panic attacks, stress manifests itself also through less obvious signals. These five signs indicate that something in your life is placing stress on your body.