Serin Fitness

07/05/2025

🦵 Why Pistol Squats Are a Hiker’s & Athlete’s Secret Weapon 🏔️🔥

Want stronger legs, bulletproof knees, and balance like a mountain goat?

Enter: The Pistol Squat.This single-leg powerhouse move builds functional strength, ankle stability, and core control — exactly what you need for steep hikes, explosive sports, and rugged terrain.Here’s why they’re gold for hikers & athletes:

✅ Mimics real-world movement (like climbing uneven terrain)

✅ Builds strength evenly on both legs — no more dominant side!

✅ Enhances mobility in hips, knees, and ankles

✅ Trains balance, coordination, and joint control under load.

Want to level it up?Grab a kettlebell. Holding weight in front of you:🏋️‍♂️ Acts as a counterbalance to help you go deeper🔥 Cranks up the challenge for your core, quads, and glutes🧠 Demands more focus and motor control — just like sport.

Whether you’re scaling peaks or sprinting downfield, this move pays off in every step and stride.

Try adding pistol squats to your training once or twice a week. Start assisted if needed — then add load as you master the pattern.

🌲💪—

07/02/2025

What Are Ultra-Processed Foods—and Why Are They Wrecking Your Health?

They’re not just “junk food.” Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are engineered products, carefully designed to hijack your biology and keep you coming back for more — all while stripping your diet of the nutrients your body truly needs.

🍕🍟🧃 These foods are made in factories using refined sugar, industrial seed oils, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, preservatives, artificial colors, and other additives — with little or no intact whole food remaining. Much of the fiber, protein, water, and micronutrients that once existed in the raw ingredients are removed or destroyed during processing.

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⚠️ Linked to Serious Health Risks

Research has linked high consumption of UPFs to:
• Obesity and weight gain
• Type 2 diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease and cancer
• Depression and anxiety
• Gut microbiome disruption
• Cognitive decline, including a higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease

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🧠 Why You Can’t Stop Eating Them

Ultra-processed foods are designed to be addictive. They trigger the brain’s reward system — especially the release of dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical — using a carefully crafted combo of sugar, fat, salt, and synthetic flavors. This makes them hyper-palatable and difficult to stop eating, even when you’re full.

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🔥 High Calorie, Low Nutrient

These foods pack a ton of calories into small portions, with very little actual nutrition. They lack the fiber, protein, and water content that help you feel full and satisfied.

Compare these examples:
• 🥔 Baked potato: ~160 calories
• 🥔 Potato chips: 300+ calories for a similar volume
• 🍟 French fries: 3x more calories and 150x more fat than a baked potato
• 🍦 Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (1 cup): ~500 calories, 46g sugar, 8g protein
• 🥣 Plain Greek yogurt (1 cup): ~100–150 calories, 6g natural sugar, 18–20g protein

UPFs don’t just make you gain weight — they leave you unsatisfied, prompting you to eat more in search of fullness.

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🥄 They Go Down Too Easy

Ultra-processed foods are soft, easy to chew, and quick to swallow — meaning they bypass your body’s natural satiety cues. Your brain needs time (and effort from chewing) to recognize when you’ve had enough. But with UPFs, you can eat double the calories before that signal ever hits.

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🍽️ Overfed… but Undernourished

Here’s the tragic irony: Many people today are eating more calories than ever, but suffering from nutrient deficiencies. That’s because UPFs displace whole foods in the diet — the foods that deliver the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber your body actually needs to thrive.

Your body may be full, but your cells are still starving.

As a result, your brain keeps triggering hunger, chasing the nutrition that never comes — leading to overeating, fatigue, and long-term health problems.

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🔁 The Bottom Line:

You are not the problem — the modern food system is designed to keep you hooked, sick, and consuming.

But you can take your power back.

Start making small, sustainable shifts toward whole, minimally processed foods. Foods that nourish you, satisfy you, and restore balance to your body and mind.

💬 Drop a comment if you’ve been cutting back on ultra-processed foods, or if you have a go-to whole food swap you love. Let’s support each other in reclaiming our health — one real meal at a time. 💪

06/25/2025

Struggling with energy, pain, or self-doubt about improving your health and fitness? You’re not broken. You’re not broken — you’re just stuck in a system that wasn’t built for you.

I coach people who feel:
– Winded from a flight of stairs
– Stiff and achy every morning
– Lost in a cycle of weight loss and regain
– Overwhelmed by gym culture
– Tired of being tired
– Disconnected from their body
– Embarrassed to even talk about fitness
– Ready for more, but unsure how to begin

Note: I have extensive experience training clients of all different ages, ranging from 12 to 80 years of age. And I take on clients of all fitness levels, including college athletes. But I am now focusing on people who need the most help getting healthy.

Here’s what makes my virtual coaching different:
✅ A custom plan built around YOUR starting point. This is enabled by fitness assessments.
✅ Mobility, strength, cardio, nutrition, and habit change — all in one system
✅ Daily accountability and support
✅ Built for real life, not a perfect schedule. Workouts and meal plans will accommodate your schedule and preferences.
✅ Functional exercise designed to get you moving, feeling better, and strong enough to hike again, in addition to any other physical activity you have interest in taking up. This may include skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, kayaking, white water rafting, and sports.

You don’t need another crash diet.
You need a system — and a coach — who meets you where you are.

🧭 Ready to stop starting over? DM me “READY” and I’ll show you what’s possible.

06/05/2024

My holistic approach to fitness includes resistance training, mobility training, cardio, habit change, and nutritional counseling. This is everything you need in order to achieve your goals.

Message me for more information!

Please share!

03/16/2024

Upper cross syndrome is a common posture deviation in the desk-bound population. It is characterized by a forward head, rounded shoulders, and rounded thoracic vertebrae (hunched upper back). Everyone who fits this description should be concerned, because it isn’t merely an aesthetic problem. These suboptimal joint positions put you at a high risk for a multitude of ailments and injuries. They also make it impossible to do many fundamental movements with good technique. Exercises that include pushing and pulling are most notable, but the injury risk may also cascade to your legs.

In most cases, the root cause is routine chair sitting and leaning forward, most often towards a computer monitor and keyboard. Other, less common causes, include pattern overload from swimming, throwing, and bench pressing. All of these lifestyle factors contribute to a predictable pattern of changes to the length of specific muscles. In summary, the posterior muscle of the neck and upper back become lengthened and weakened, while the pectoral muscles, latissimus dorsi and anterior neck muscles become short and tight. These muscle imbalances contributes to joint dysfunction which lead to faulty movement patterns and injuries.

Click on the link to my website, serinfitness.com, to read the full blog which is titled Upper Cross Syndrome . There, I go into much further detail on every key point I included in this slideshow.

03/16/2024

Upper cross syndrome is a common posture deviation in the desk-bound population. It is characterized by a forward head, rounded shoulders, and rounded thoracic vertebrae (hunched upper back). Everyone who fits this description should be concerned, because it isn’t merely an aesthetic problem. These suboptimal joint positions put you at a high risk for a multitude of ailments and injuries. They also make it impossible to do many fundamental movements with good technique. Exercises that include pushing and pulling are most notable, but the injury risk may also cascade to your legs.

In most cases, the root cause is routine chair sitting and leaning forward, most often towards a computer monitor and keyboard. Other, less common causes, include pattern overload from swimming, throwing, and bench pressing. All of these lifestyle factors contribute to a predictable pattern of changes to the length of specific muscles. In summary, the posterior muscle of the neck and upper back become lengthened and weakened, while the pectoral muscles, latissimus dorsi and anterior neck muscles become short and tight. These muscle imbalances contributes to joint dysfunction which lead to faulty movement patterns and injuries.

Click on the link to my website, serinfitness.com, to read the full blog which is titled Upper Cross Syndrome . There, I go into much further detail on each key point I included in this slideshow.

03/13/2024

https://serinfitness.com

I am happy to announce that my fitness career has advanced to a new level. Four months ago, I started working as the exercise physiologist for Brookhaven National Lab. I am the only person with that title in the organization with a staff of over 3,000 employees. I landed the job because of my BS in Health Science and 16 years of experience as a personal trainer. There, I do group strength and conditioning classes with the BNL fire rescue team three days per week. Additionally, I do functional capacity evaluations with new hires, and those returning to work, to determine if they are physically capable of doing their jobs. And I teach employees on how to avoid occupational injuries specific to their positions.

Lately, I have gotten several messages asking if I still do personal training. The answer is yes. I still offer both in-home and virtual personal training, in addition to nutrition coaching. I just have not been advertising it for more than a year. But now, I am looking to expand my personal training clientele.

I’m most interested in helping those who meet these criteria:

Unskilled in fitness

Seeking weight loss

Suffers from lower back pain and injuries

Needs advice on nutrition

To learn more about my background and services, please visit my website serinfitness.com, which is attached in this post. If you are interested in setting up a phone call to see what I can do for you, feel free to sent me a pm. I look forward to hearing from you!

Please share!

Serin Fitness is a personal training service on Long Island, New York specializing in weight loss, strength & mobility training, and nutrition. Call us at (631) 255-2627

08/01/2022

Poor posture and mobility, attributed to a sedentary lifestyle, is a major public health issue in the US. In the slide show above, I have described three common posture deviations that are caused by muscle imbalances (patterns of weak, over-lengthened muscles and overactive, tight muscles). These posture and mobility issues limit the affected person’s ability to partake in physical activity; moreover, they present a major risk factor for injuries that often lead to a lifetime of pain physical limitations. Therefore, it is paramount to address these mobility issues during the first phase of an exercise program.

Unfortunately, the training programs of most people, including those exercising under the supervision of personal trainers, neglect muscle imbalances caused by inactivity. The root cause of this is a lack of education about corrective exercises that restore healthy joint function.

Consequently, millions of people are not prepared for the exercise programs they engage in. They will be incapable of performing many exercises safely and effectively until their mobility issues are remedied and many people get injured as a result.

Below, I have listed some common injuries that are caused by inactivity and the resulting lack of healthy joint mobility.

Foot and Ankle Injuries:

Over one million doctor visits among the nonathletic population is attributed to plantar fasciitis.
Ankle sprains are the most common sports-related injury. These injuries often lead to longterm problems such as chronic ankle instability and weakness of the hip

Lower Back Pain:

Nearly 80% of all adults suffer from lower back pain, which is a sign of musculoskeletal degeneration. It is most prevalent in people who sit for periods of longer than 3 hours per day and consequently have an altered curve in their lumbar area. Additionally, it is common in people engaged in manual labor.
Work-related injuries, most often back injuries, result in an average of 9 days of restricted activity per episode. In the US, the annual costs linked to lower back are greater than $26 billion.

Knee Injuries:

80,000 to 100,000 ACL injuries occur in the US each year and over 70% are non contact injuries. These injuries lead to developing arthritis in the damaged knee.

Shoulder Injuries:

-21% of the population experiences shoulder pain and shoulder impingement occurs in 40% to 65% of those cases.
-This is due to degenerative changes in the shoulder resulting poor posture, repetitive overuse, and improper exercise technique.

Fortunately, the posture deviations shown in the slide show are correctable through exercise. My corrective exercise specialization enables me to:

Identify the posture/joint mobility problems through movement screenings.
Solve the problems through the design of a corrective exercise program composed of:
Reducing tension of tight muscles through self-myofascial relief techniques such as foam rolling
Lengthening tight muscles by using flexibility techniques
Strengthening the weak muscles that play a role in the altered joint function.

Click on the link below for a 7-Day Free Trial of Online Personal Training, so I can set you up with an exercise program that will address your deficiencies in mobility.
https://www.trainerize.me/profile/keithserin/?planGUID=144e04b0b4634cf0bf89434f4d40c570

07/24/2022

More than half of Americans are deficient in the four fat soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K.

Levels of these essential micronutrients are even lower in the obese, because they get stored in the fat tissue. Consequently, this makes them unavailable for the body to use. Therefore, overweight people have higher daily requirements. In fact, studies show that obesity is associated with a 35% greater risk of vitamin D deficiency.

Deficiencies of these vitamins have a wide range of adverse health affects, because they play a role in regulating blood glucose and insulin signaling, blood lipids, blood pressure, oxidative stress, and inflammation. Vitamin D deficiencies may lead to osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

The best way to prevent these deficiencies is to eat food that are rich in fat-soluble vitamins, because they have many other beneficial nutrients. But for many, eating these foods often enough to prevent deficiencies is impractical, so they may use a multivitamin supplement as a safety net.

In the slide show above, I have listed signs and symptoms of each vitamin deficiency and the corresponding food sources for their prevention.

Please share this post with those who may benefit and follow my page for future health and nutrition tips.

07/20/2022

Ball Slams, using a slam ball, are a good full body exercise that build core and leg power, when performed correctly. They are also a calorie burner since so many muscles are activated at once.

Watch until the end of the video to see how this exercise is commonly performed incorrectly!

Please share with anyone who may benefit from this video.

07/20/2022

Cardiorespiratory fitness is the ability of the circulatory system and respiratory system to transport oxygen-rich blood to the skeletal muscles during sustained physical activity. It is the most important of the five components of health-related fitness which includes muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. Engaging in cardiovascular exercise throughout the lifespan reduces the risk of death from all causes, especially heart disease.

The American Heart Association recommends the following amount of cardio (preferably spread throughout the week):

150 minutes per week of moderate intensity aerobic exercise (brisk walking)

75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity exercise (running)

75-150 minutes per week of a combination of both

Unfortunately, many people dread doing cardio, because they consider it time-consuming and associate it with the monotony of using a treadmill, recumbent bike, elliptical, or other stationary machine. Cardio doesn’t have to be so boring and repetitive. Consider cross training which is a dynamic approach to cardio that involves performing a sequence of strength training exercises in a circuit, without rest periods between sets. Another way of doing it would be to alternate a resistance training exercise with “cardio” exercise like a burpee or jumping jack.

Cross training makes up most of my personal training sessions and all of my clients love it. It makes very efficient use of their time since it combines cardio and strength training in the same workout. I alternate speed, agility, and quickness drills; kettlebell swings, calisthenics like burpees, battle ropes, etc. into the resistance training. Therefore, my clients not only improve their cardiovascular conditioning and burn a lot of calories during the session, but they are also consistently challenged and thus enjoy a wide range of fitness benefits.