Energize Your Life with Strength Training

Many of the changes associated with getting older are actually due to becoming less active with age. Unless you regularly engage in activities to strengthen your muscles, you’ll lose about a half a pound of muscle a year in your 30s and 40s, and that rate can double once you turn 50. As you lose muscle, you lose strength, and that compromises your ability to do even simple things, such as carrying your groceries, getting up from a seated position or gardening. Your metabolism also slows down as you lose muscle, so your body will need fewer calories to maintain itself, and you’re likely to gain excess body fat, unless you eat less. Excess fat contributes to a multitude of health problems: heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. It doesn’t matter, if you’re 50 years old or 80, studies show that strength training can help.

Here are some good reasons to start weight training:

1. Maintain your independence as you get older
2. Improve your quality of life, allowing you to do the things you enjoy with less effort
3. Strengthen and preserve your muscle tissue
4. Strengthen your bones
5. Reduce your risk of falling
6. Improve control of blood sugar
7. Increase your metabolism
8. Improve your body composition to less fat and more muscle
9. Reduce your resting blood pressure
10. Speed up the rate at which food moves through your digestive system, reducing risk of colon cancer
11. Reduce your risk of low back injury
12. Elevate your mood and your self-confidence
13. Relieve pain from osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis
14. Enhance recovery from stroke or heart attack

Group Training

Interested in hiring a personal trainer, but concerned about the cost of one-on-one training? Sharing the sessions and the cost with others is a growing trend. Small group personal training can help you reach your fitness goals without breaking your budget. 

For additional info, ask me.

Circuit Training

Circuit Training

Looking for a way to combine your fitness routine with some new energy and excitement? Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or just getting started with physical activity, circuit training is a great way to challenge your body in a variety of ways while boosting the fun factor.

What Is Circuit Training?

A typical circuit training workout includes about 8-10 exercise stations. After completing a station, instead of resting, you move quickly to the next station. A muscular strength and endurance circuit alternates muscle groups, such as upper body, lower body and core, so little or no rest is needed in between stations. You can combine aerobics with strength in a circuit too. This type of circuit alternates 1-2 sets of resistance exercise (body weight, free weights, dumbbells, kettle bells, bands, etc.), with brief bouts of cardiovascular exercise (jogging in place, stationary cycling, rowing, etc.) lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Depending on your goals and the number of circuit stations, you can complete 1 or more circuits in a 30-60 minute session.  Circuits can be tailored to your fitness level. 

Advantages of Circuit Training

Boredom and time constraints are frequently cited reasons for giving up on a fitness routine. Sound familiar? Circuit training offers a practical solution for both. It’s a creative and flexible way to keep exercise interesting and saves time while boosting cardiovascular and muscular fitness. You’ll burn a decent amount of calories too. In a 1-hour circuit training session, a 150-pound person burns about 308 calories at a moderate intensity; and 573 calories at a vigorous intensity. Because the exercises can be performed in any sequence, you can create an endless number of combinations and design every workout to match your mood or specific training goal. Participating in a group circuit-training class is a great way to discover new exercises you might not have tried on your own.

I can design a program just for you.

Cancer Patients Beat Depression with Exercise

By David Haas

Several years ago, doctors and professionals warned cancer patients against exercising while they were battling the disease. It was believed that exercise was a drain on the body and wouldn’t help the cancer patient heal. Today, professionals in the medical field know that the exact opposite is true. Exercise cannot only help prevent cancer, but it can help you beat it, too. Doctors now recommend that cancer patients get at least two and a half hours of exercise every week, no matter how light. Even walking at a slow pace is beneficial if you’re at the height of your cancer treatments. Regardless of if you have breast cancer or are dealing with treatment for mesothelioma, exercise will help in more ways than one.

Many people who have dealt with or are dealing with cancer feel depressed. Learning that you have cancer can drag down your mood drastically. Fearing the worst can make it impossible to function and regain a happy mood. Even after beating cancer, so many survivors live in fear of the cancer returning some day. This stress takes an immense toll on the body and mind. Dealing with cancer, even if the best possible outcome occurred, is so mentally taxing that many people never bounce back. When depression sets in, it can be near impossible to do things to help yourself get out of it.

Exercise is among the best holistic approaches to improving your mood and beating depression. Exercise naturally raises your serotonin levels, which is the chemical in your brain that’s responsible for a positive, upbeat mood. People with depression don’t have enough of this chemical, which makes it pretty much impossible to simply feel happy on their own. Exercise will increase your serotonin, raise your mood and make you feel less depressed. You won’t even need any pricey medications to feel an instant lift.

Even if you’re feeling healthy enough to start working out daily, consult your doctor. Cancer takes a huge toll on the body and your doctor will be able to guide you towards what your body can handle at the moment. You’ll also need to learn the difference between feeling sick and feeling weak. If you’re undergoing chemotherapy, for example, you may actually be too sick to exercise. Take a few days off and get back on your feet when you’re feeling better.
 
http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/

What Is Functional Strength Training?

Most would agree that there is nothing functional about sustaining an injury due to improper training.

In many respects, functional strength training should be thought of in terms of a continued movement. As humans, we perform a wide range of movement activities, such as walking, jogging, running, sprinting, jumping, lifting, pushing, pulling, bending, twisting, turning, standing, starting, stopping, climbing and lunging.

Simply stated, the primary goal of functional training is to transfer the improvements in strength achieved in one movement to enhancing the performance of another movement by affecting the entire neuromuscular system.

In functional training, it is as critical to train the specific movement as it is to train the muscles involved in the actual movement. The brain, which controls muscular movement, thinks in terms of whole motions, not individual muscles.

Exercises that isolate joints and muscles are training muscles, not movements, which results in less functional improvement. For example, squats will have a greater "transfer effect" on improving an individual's ability to rise from a sofa than knee extensions.

The exercises with the highest transfer effect are those that are essentially similar to the actual movement or activity. It is important to note, however, that individuals cannot become expert at a particular movement or activity by training only with similar movements. For optimal results, repeated practice of the precise movement is required.

Exercises performed on most traditional machines tend to be on the low-end of the functional-training continuum because they isolate muscles in a stabilized, controlled environment. While it may be true that traditional, machine-based exercises are not the best way to transfer performance from the weight room to the real world, it does not mean that such exercises should not be a part of a training program.

For example, "non-functional," single-joint exercise can play a critical role in helping to strengthen a "weak link" that a person may have to restore proper muscle balance. Furthermore, doing such an exercise can allow an individual to more safely and effectively participate in functional-training activities while also reducing the risk of injury.

In the final analysis, it must be remembered that functional training is not an all-or-nothing conclusion. Functional strength training should serve as a supplement to traditional strength training, not as a replacement.

Properly applied, functional strength training may provide exercise variety and additional training benefits that more directly transfer improvements to real-life activities.

Fad Diets Do Not Work

First things first. The easiest way to maintain a healthy weight, of course, is to proactively strive to avoid weight gain and with that to eat a healthy diet and engage in regular physical activity.
For any diet to work, calories consumed need to be less than calories expended. Remember, it takes a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound of fat. That is, if you want to lose about a pound per week, you need to eat less and exercise more so that your net calorie intake is about 500 calories less per day than it is right now.

The best diets will advocate at least nine servings daily of a variety of fruits and vegetables – low-calorie foods that provide most of the body’s needed vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that ward off infection and disease. Fiber-containing whole grains and calcium-rich low-fat dairy products should also be encouraged. If the diet relies primarily on a supplement to assure sufficient vitamins and minerals, it probably is not the healthiest choice. 

Nutrition is only one component in making a long-term lifestyle change. Exercise not only speeds weight loss by increasing caloric deficit, but it also is essential in keeping the weight off.

To sell books and win over dieters who have “tried everything,” diet plans tend to make unbelievable claims that oftentimes are substantiated by dieters’ personal testimony. From promises to lose 8 to 13 pounds in the first two weeks of a diet to promotion of magic supplements, diets market themselves as so easy and effective that their irresistible – at first. But what comes off fast, comes on fast. You’re most likely to be successful in losing weight and keeping it off (the hardest part) if you aim for slow and steady with sustainable lifestyle changes. 

The most negligent diet is one that prescribes the same plan to all people regardless of their health status and other individual factors. If you have a history and significant medial illness, such as (but not limited to) diabetes or heart disease, you should talk with your physician before starting a diet or exercise regimen.

While you may be able to scrape together enough money to begin an expensive weight loss program, you may not be able to sustain the cost for an extended period of time. Plan ahead and assess your readiness to change and commit to a program before making huge lifestyle adjustments and financial sacrifices 

Social support is key to successful weight loss. If a diet requires you to eat a different food than the rest of the family, chances are good that you won’t be successful on the diet. If your family is not supportive and committed to helping you make the healthy change, you are probably going to struggle.

Long-term adherence to a program, which means a lifestyle change, is the most important factor for lifelong weight-loss success. The specific diet really doesn’t matter. A few years ago, researchers conducted a one year trial to assess the adherence rate and effectiveness of Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers and the Zone diets. They found that all of the diets modestly reduced body weight and cardiovascular risk factors and for each of the diets, people who adhered to the diet had greater weight loss and risk factor reductions. Of course, most of the study participants struggled with adherence, which overall was poor for all of the diets. This just drives home the point once again: permanent lifestyle change, not a quick fix time-bound diet, is essential for successful weight loss and subsequent improved health.

etrainer1.weebly.com

ViPR Free Weights Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w43ezAJoLoA&feature=plcp&context=C4cbe1a6VDvjVQa1PpcFPinPGaS8ct04LhmdC_cZXk0KRo8cesYsw%3D

According to a recent study, when it comes to reducing the risk of death, physical fitness plays a bigger role than weight.

Am I Too Old to Exercise?

If you’ve ever thought you aren’t standing as straight and tall as you once did, find walking up a flight of stairs to be a strain at times, or you groan when reaching for the arms of a chair as you slowly get up from sitting, you aren’t alone.
There are about 78 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964, with nearly 11 million of them working out in gyms throughout America.
Keep this in mind: “We don’t stop exercising because we get old, we get old because we stop exercising.”
Older adults hurt themselves more through INactivity than through activity. Strength, flexibility, balance and endurance wither from INactivity. Exercise will increase your healthy life-years and enable you to fully engage in life, adding years to your life and life to your years.
With definitive research demonstrating that activity helps forestall cognitive decline (dementia) and being fit keeps people healthier longer, it’s no wonder that more boomers are signing up for personal trainers, group exercise classes, boot camps, and walking groups.
Maintaining at least moderate activity is a key component in a positive health regimen that will combat or prevent these ailments: weight-related diseases, heart disease, anatomical and structural impairments, hypertension, osteoporosis, cholesterol, Alzheimer’s disease, sexual performance, loss of muscle mass, and decreased sociability.
To prevent normal biological changes caused by aging, seek kinder, gentler workouts; slower and longer warm-ups and cool-downs; and exercise routines that emphasize diminished risk of injury while promoting posture, strength, endurance, flexibility, agility and balance.
Specifically, here are five types of exercise that promote mental alertness and compress disability into as late as life as possible. No, these don’t include cosmetic surgery, expensive skin care regimens or hormone replacement — they don’t have the staggering amount of research that exercise does.

1. Cardio: Moderately intense aerobic activity for a minimum of 30 minutes five times per week or, if you can engage in more vigorous aerobic exercise, do that three times a week for a minimum of 20 minutes. Walking, swimming, using a treadmill or elliptical, and biking are examples of cardio exercise.
2. Strength training: We lose 30% of our muscle strength between the ages of 50 and 70 years. Normally, adults who are sedentary beyond age 50 can expect muscle loss of up to 0.4 pounds a year. At least twice each week, engage in exercises designed to maintain or increase muscular strength and endurance, including resistance training with machines or free weights.
3. Flexibility training: Here’s where stretching and range of motion exercises become important to connective tissue, so regular stretching at least twice each week for at least 10 minutes each time is recommended.
4. Balance training: Musculoskeletal injuries are the number one reason people seek medical help, with falls among the leading causes of death for the 65+ population. Backward and sideways walking, heel walking and toe walking are all fun ways to increase balance. Consider using a workout ball or balance pad and have a professional trainer demonstrating proper form and exercise options.
5. Core training: These exercises strengthen your abs and other muscles that stabilize the spine, pelvis, and run the entire length of the torso. These muscles make it possible to stand, shift body weight and protect the back and hips. Exercises include abdominal bracing, contracting the abdominal muscles, plank exercises, hip lifts, and having fun with medicine balls, dumbbells, kettlebells, Bosu Balls, balance and wobble boards.