Warming Up
You and your child’s bodies are kept at a fairly constant 98.6 degrees, so you do not need to warm up for this workout. The first few repetitions of each exercise will serve as the most perfect warm-up for the area that is being worked. So with Slow Burn training the warm-up is built right in!
Setting a Tempo
Before I describe each exercise for each program, here are the general guidelines for repetition speed, or tempo that apply to every exercise. Take 3 seconds for the first 1 inch of movement to keep from starting too fast. Starting too quickly, as most people do in typical gyms, causes sudden and excessive forces that can result in injury. Starting slowly also makes the muscles do all of the work all of the time rather than relying on momentum. Momentum is the enemy of quality muscle work when you’re exercising to develop your strength.
After the slow start, the lifting portion should be completed in roughly 7 seconds (could be a second or so longer or shorter depending on a person’s limb length or the stroke length of the exercise). Don’t get overly caught up in a perfect amount of seconds. Once the lift (the raising of the weight) is completed, you carefully reverse direction in approximately 3 seconds and continue (lower) in approximately 7 seconds.
What this means is that the entire repetition may take as long as 20 seconds (or longer) to complete. The length of time, however, is not a hard-and-fast rule as it depends on the exercise you are performing.
For example, your legs are longer than your arms (I hope!). Performing an exercise for your arms will take less time to complete since the distance is shorter. So when you do an arm exercise, the time it takes to complete a repetition will usually be less than a similar exercise for the legs.
The key is to start very slowly, taking 3 seconds to begin the exercise, which causes less force at the outset, and then moving slowly and steadily after that.
To make it a touch simpler for young kids, they can perform each exercise in a 5 second up, 5 second down count, or 10 total seconds per complete repetition. It’s a lot easier to remember and execute. Counting to five is a simple thing to do for any kid and the difference in outcome is negligible.
If your child is still young and is into action heroes, princesses, or superhero characters, you can be creative and count in different languages or use the names of their favorite characters to make it a lot more fun. Instead of counting numbers, you could say “Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and Daredevil!” When we train kids, we dont always use these characters. It’s something that you should investigate with your own child or children to use as a tool to make it fun and interesting to them.
So, it should take approximately 5 seconds to finish saying the names, or counting, then the child reverses direction, and you repeat the names or whatever you’re using again. It’s a little more fun like this for youngsters than just counting 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Finding Your Range of Motion
Each exercise should be performed throughout the greatest, pain-free range of motion as possible. That means you should never fully extend or lock out your joints. For example, if you are performing an exercise for the biceps (which is a hinge type of joint), the arms should start with the elbows slightly bent rather than completely straight. Completely straightening your arm can sometimes irritate a joint and cause some tenderness.
It’s better to start slightly bent and then move toward a fully bent (meaning contracted) position.
For joints that are the ball-and-socket type (e.g., shoulder and hip), you need to start from a position that is slightly less than what the child can naturally stretch into. So for each child, the range of motion will be slightly different. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the exercise, from start to finish, should be performed in a pain-free fashion.
Breathing
Always encourage your child to breathe freely. The rule with breathing is this: Breathe! Holding the breath should always be avoided because it causes blood pressure to rise unnecessarily.
The medical term for holding the breath is valsalva. To control valsalva, simply breathe more. Tell your child to huff and puff like a train or try to blow out a hundred candles on a birthday cake. Sometimes over breathing (hyperventilation) can cause a little dizziness but it isn’t harmful. I know that many of you have heard to breathe in on the lift and out on the lowering. Some experts suggest the opposite, in fact.
This recommendation does not take into account the speed or tempo that you are using to lift and lower weights. When lifting in a slow rep fashion, this would be a bit difficult to do—they’d be some pretty long breaths. The point is that you breathe freely at all times and not hold your breath. This is the most important takeaway concept.
Maintaining Posture
For each exercise I’ve described what posture or form the child should strive to keep. Do your best to follow the recommenda tions and photos in this book. Show your child the pictures of the kids in this book doing the exercise and get him or her to mimic the postures in the photographs as closely as possible.
It’s much easier for children of any age to understand what you want them to do when they can see a visual to guide them. Always stress good form to children rather than how much weight they lift. Praise them for keeping their bodies in the proper position more than for how many reps they’ve performed. This is very important for the younger tykes.
Wearing Proper Attire
When strength training, it’s best to wear clothes that allow for body heat to escape. Keeping cool is an important part of maximizing your child’s ability to work hard. A T-shirt and shorts is the best garb to train in, but whatever comfortable works is. Sneakers or other non-heeled, soft-soled shoes are the choice for footwear. I don’t suggest bare feet even when doing the home program. All it takes is for a weight to mistakenly fall on a toe. So keep the shoes on. But when you are doing the push-ups or the body weight squats, it’s okay to do them in bare feet.
You and your child’s bodies are kept at a fairly constant 98.6 degrees, so you do not need to warm up for this workout. The first few repetitions of each exercise will serve as the most perfect warm-up for the area that is being worked. So with Slow Burn training the warm-up is built right in!
Setting a Tempo
Before I describe each exercise for each program, here are the general guidelines for repetition speed, or tempo that apply to every exercise. Take 3 seconds for the first 1 inch of movement to keep from starting too fast. Starting too quickly, as most people do in typical gyms, causes sudden and excessive forces that can result in injury. Starting slowly also makes the muscles do all of the work all of the time rather than relying on momentum. Momentum is the enemy of quality muscle work when you’re exercising to develop your strength.
After the slow start, the lifting portion should be completed in roughly 7 seconds (could be a second or so longer or shorter depending on a person’s limb length or the stroke length of the exercise). Don’t get overly caught up in a perfect amount of seconds. Once the lift (the raising of the weight) is completed, you carefully reverse direction in approximately 3 seconds and continue (lower) in approximately 7 seconds.
What this means is that the entire repetition may take as long as 20 seconds (or longer) to complete. The length of time, however, is not a hard-and-fast rule as it depends on the exercise you are performing.
For example, your legs are longer than your arms (I hope!). Performing an exercise for your arms will take less time to complete since the distance is shorter. So when you do an arm exercise, the time it takes to complete a repetition will usually be less than a similar exercise for the legs.
The key is to start very slowly, taking 3 seconds to begin the exercise, which causes less force at the outset, and then moving slowly and steadily after that.
To make it a touch simpler for young kids, they can perform each exercise in a 5 second up, 5 second down count, or 10 total seconds per complete repetition. It’s a lot easier to remember and execute. Counting to five is a simple thing to do for any kid and the difference in outcome is negligible.
If your child is still young and is into action heroes, princesses, or superhero characters, you can be creative and count in different languages or use the names of their favorite characters to make it a lot more fun. Instead of counting numbers, you could say “Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and Daredevil!” When we train kids, we dont always use these characters. It’s something that you should investigate with your own child or children to use as a tool to make it fun and interesting to them.
So, it should take approximately 5 seconds to finish saying the names, or counting, then the child reverses direction, and you repeat the names or whatever you’re using again. It’s a little more fun like this for youngsters than just counting 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Finding Your Range of Motion
Each exercise should be performed throughout the greatest, pain-free range of motion as possible. That means you should never fully extend or lock out your joints. For example, if you are performing an exercise for the biceps (which is a hinge type of joint), the arms should start with the elbows slightly bent rather than completely straight. Completely straightening your arm can sometimes irritate a joint and cause some tenderness.
It’s better to start slightly bent and then move toward a fully bent (meaning contracted) position.
For joints that are the ball-and-socket type (e.g., shoulder and hip), you need to start from a position that is slightly less than what the child can naturally stretch into. So for each child, the range of motion will be slightly different. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the exercise, from start to finish, should be performed in a pain-free fashion.
Breathing
Always encourage your child to breathe freely. The rule with breathing is this: Breathe! Holding the breath should always be avoided because it causes blood pressure to rise unnecessarily.
The medical term for holding the breath is valsalva. To control valsalva, simply breathe more. Tell your child to huff and puff like a train or try to blow out a hundred candles on a birthday cake. Sometimes over breathing (hyperventilation) can cause a little dizziness but it isn’t harmful. I know that many of you have heard to breathe in on the lift and out on the lowering. Some experts suggest the opposite, in fact.
This recommendation does not take into account the speed or tempo that you are using to lift and lower weights. When lifting in a slow rep fashion, this would be a bit difficult to do—they’d be some pretty long breaths. The point is that you breathe freely at all times and not hold your breath. This is the most important takeaway concept.
Maintaining Posture
For each exercise I’ve described what posture or form the child should strive to keep. Do your best to follow the recommenda tions and photos in this book. Show your child the pictures of the kids in this book doing the exercise and get him or her to mimic the postures in the photographs as closely as possible.
It’s much easier for children of any age to understand what you want them to do when they can see a visual to guide them. Always stress good form to children rather than how much weight they lift. Praise them for keeping their bodies in the proper position more than for how many reps they’ve performed. This is very important for the younger tykes.
Wearing Proper Attire
When strength training, it’s best to wear clothes that allow for body heat to escape. Keeping cool is an important part of maximizing your child’s ability to work hard. A T-shirt and shorts is the best garb to train in, but whatever comfortable works is. Sneakers or other non-heeled, soft-soled shoes are the choice for footwear. I don’t suggest bare feet even when doing the home program. All it takes is for a weight to mistakenly fall on a toe. So keep the shoes on. But when you are doing the push-ups or the body weight squats, it’s okay to do them in bare feet.
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