Maximizing Weight Loss at Home: A Guide to Preventing Injury and Mastering Planes of Movement

Weight loss seems a constant struggle today with an increasing emphasis on “easy.” Everything is promoted as “the easiest way to….” or “fastest way to….” Technology and comfort have dominated our society, which increases our addiction to instant gratification. This, unfortunately, is not how a healthy weight loss plan works. It takes time, knowledge, and commitment to lose weight for the long term. A healthy and longer life results from maintaining a healthy weight and maintaining the body for movement to prevent injuries. The topic today is how to maximize your efforts to lose weight at home by adding injury prevention.  

Transparent Heart

               I talked about the proper heart rate zone to burn fat efficiently in this blog. I will build on this by explaining the planes of movement. When we want to lose weight, we want to do it in the comfort of our homes. Doing this can restrict what exercises we perform to meet our goal. This is where homeostasis (check out this blog) can set in and increase risk for injuries. When setting up our home workout plan, we need to set a goal, understand what energy system we need to train and what heart rate zone will be most efficient. We also need to be sure to train on all the planes so that our body can enjoy daily activities.

The body is simple, calories in should equal calories out to maintain and more calories out than in results in weight loss. Be sure to subscribe to get notified when I publish the blog on that topic. So, to lose weight we must train and burn more calories. This training needs to be focused inside all the planes of movement. There are three planes of movement known as the frontal plane, sagittal plane, and transverse plane. Each plane uses different small muscles to perform actions and neglecting the specific groups will lead to a decrease in conditioning which may lead to injury when you least expect it. Nothing would be more discouraging than committing to a workout plan, losing weight and feeling great, just to be injured enjoying your hobbies. This can be caused by overtraining a single plane.

               The planes I am talking about separate the body movements into three motions. The frontal plane is focused on movements from side to side. The sagittal plane is going forward and backwards. The transverse plane is rotating in the body. All these planes make up our daily movements. Think of when you go to check the mail and see that the newspaper was thrown into the yard. When you walk over to it, you are moving in the sagittal plane. Bending over to grab the paper is also in the sagittal plane but then the sidestep to change direction back towards the mailbox is in the frontal plane. After you grabbed the paper, you may look over your shoulder to see if the neighbors have their trash cans out, this twisting at the hips and neck is in the transverse plane. You can see in this example, that we are constantly using multiplane movements in daily life so we should also train multiplanes to build the muscles needed to maintain.

               At home, these movements need to take some thought to plan out and if you are attempting this journey without a personal trainer, you need to think through and ensure you are meeting all planes. For weight loss, it is important to train the full body and maintain the 70% maximum heart rate for 10 to 40 minutes. This is high zone two or low zone three of your maximum heart rate. This can be accomplished by doing almost anything. You could just walk, or ride a bicycle, and do a million air squats and still maintain this heart rate. The struggle comes in creating change and preventing a negative homeostasis by switching planes.

               So, understanding the movements will help you plan and train the whole body while losing weight at home. The frontal plane, as stated, is movement from side to side. We call this adduction and abduction. This is movement where your extremities are moving sideways, either in or out, from your trunk’s midline. Think of raising your arms out to your side. That is a frontal plane movement. Moving your foot from side to side and kicking your leg out doing side lounges are all frontal plane movements. Do not let the name confuse you and make you think frontal plane means movement to the front, that is sagittal plane movement.

               The sagittal plane consists of the most common movement in most exercises. Any movement that goes forward or backward from the midline is considered sagittal. We refer to this as flexion and extension when a movement extends out in front of the body or flexes back towards the trunk. Doing a squat, walking, lounging, even sit-ups are conducted in the sagittal plane. This is the most common trained plane and why most injuries occur when moving in the frontal or transverse planes.

Transvers plane of movement

               The transverse plane is probably the easiest to understand because the movement is any type or twist or turn. We refer to these twists as pronation or supination and any movement like rotating your torso, turning your head left or right, and twisting your wrist is considered the transverse plane. Think of swinging

a golf club, throwing a cast net, picking up an item and turning to throw it. This plane of movement probably causes the most injuries because it is the least trained.

               Now that we have a basic understanding of the planes of movements and the importance of developing the proper muscle groups to maintain action, we can talk about effective weight loss at home. Without getting into the nutritionist side of things (subscribe for more details about caloric intake) we will focus on the exercises. If you are a beginner and want to lose weight, then develop a workout routine that will last about 15 minutes. This plan should identify what heart rate you want to maintain during these exercises and be sure to monitor and maintain that heart rate for the entire 15 minutes. Think about and write down three exercises in each plane of movement and execute those movements with short breaks. To simplify this, I will give an example:

               Lose weight- Target Heart rate 128 (70% of maximum heart rate 183)

                              Maintain target heart rate for 15 minutes 5 days a week

                              Exercises-

                                             5-minute warm-up (dynamic)

                                             Air Squat (4 sets, 15 repetitions) *Sagittal plane, Muscles trained glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves.

                                             Supine Bicycle (3 sets, 20 in cadence) *Transverse plane, Muscles trained glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, core, and tibialis anterior.

                                             Side Lunge (4 sets, 15 repetitions each leg) *Frontal plane, Muscles trained glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, abductors, adductors, and calves.

                              WALK/RUN IN PLACE TO MAINTAIN TARGET HEART RATE IF NEEDED BETWEEN SETS

                                             5-minute cool-down (static)

In the example above, I target all three planes of movements while targeting the same muscles groups. This is to build the different stabilizers needed to perform different movements from the same muscles. The glutes, for example, are the primary movers to walk forward, jump sideways, and twist while bending over but there are different smaller muscles that assist the primary mover to accomplish those actions without injury. We are targeting our primary heart rate to burn fat, we are exerting extra energy to lose weight and training our body for all movement to prevent injury. It is that easy.

               This example can be done at home, takes only a few minutes, and will help you lose weight. This will also help maintain movement and prevent injury during our daily activities and adventures. This is the goal. You just need to understand and think through the exercise to target all motions. This example would be one of the five days of training for a beginner client wanting to lose weight. The other days would target different muscle groups but still represent each plane of movement. Please be sure to consult a medical professional before beginning any type of exercise and be sure to start small with complex movements until you build up stabilizer strength.

               I hope you learned something about the importance of training all movement planes and understand how to effectively target your fat burning energy system. For more information, be sure to read my other posts and subscribe to my YouTube to continue this knowledge journey for a healthier life. Leave a comment below or email me through the contacts page if you have any questions. Thank you for reading and as always, stay happy and helpful!

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