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What You Do Today Will Change Your Life Forever
May 16, 2011
It’s true. The things you do today will have an impact on your future. This is why we invest our money, to save for the future. It’s why we choose a certain college over others. Over time, the things we prioritize changes drastically as we age: we may not think about little things like what we eat daily and whether we exercise as important when we’re young and healthy, we’re usually less more concerned with starting our career, paying our bills, and adjusting to adulthood. But we need to invest in our health just like we would in our money, here are some reasons why:
Ralph Sacco, M.D., president, American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, professor, neurology, epidemiology and human genetics, and chairman, department of neurology, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami found some startling figures when it came to young American adults and their take on their health. In this survey, 1,250 adults ages 18 to 44 were asked to consider their level of health. Most of those surveyed stated they wished to have long and healthy lives, however, some of the health behaviors indicated in this survey suggest otherwise: - 15 percent of college age adults and 23 percent of 25-34-year-olds say they smoke. - 36 percent of those aged 25 to 34 say they aren't concerned about heart disease or stroke. - Only 22 percent of "older young adults" -- those aged 35 to 44 -- said they are not worried about heart disease, heart attack, hypertension, obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes or stroke. - All of the age groups surveyed said they ranked stroke as the least of their worries in terms of personal health threats.
"Even though young people may think they are in good health, the national statistics don't show that," says Dr. Ralph Sacco, President of the AHA/ASA , “less than 1% of young adults in the U.S. meet what is considered ideal cardiovascular health.”
Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, comments on this study, saying that young adults are “insulated against the adverse effects of their less healthy behaviors by their youth” in a way. Often times, say Katz, we don’t correlate our unhealthy behaviors-- overeating, excessive drinking, smoking, inactivity,-- with the health risks we see everyday in our parents’ generation. "But pay later, they will. And, with ever-more chronic disease [arising] at an ever-younger age, later comes sooner, and sooner."
Right now, the U.S. population has a higher percentage of adults suffering from chronic health problems; heart disease, diabetes, obesity, than ever before. The key to the prevention of chronic disease is by looking at the word “Chronic”--over a period of time unhealthy behaviors have a tremendous impact on our lifelong health. If you wish to stay healthy throughout your lifetime, start investing in your health by monitoring your habits today.
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Why the Numbers on the Scale Are Not That Important
Apr. 19, 2011
One of the most common reasons people start an exercise routine is to shed off unwanted pounds. As I discussed in my last post, exercise is not an efficient way to burn calories or fat, particularly in the short term. In combination with proper dieting practices, exercise can help the path to achieving optimal levels of physical fitness and health.
One important part to maintaining a successful exercise program is in evaluating your current progress. Unfortunately, many exercisers track their progress by looking at the weight they see on the scale, the number of calories burned on the treadmill, or by how much weight is moved in a single exercise. While these may seem like sound factors to measure your progress by, there are many variables that get left unaccounted for when people try to track how they are doing by merely looking at numbers. Often, exercisers can get discouraged because the numbers aren’t showing the progress they expected, be it decreasing the number on the scale, or increasing the number of reps on the pull-up bar. While it is important to be able to track the progress you are making in your exercise regime, here are a few things to consider.
If tracking your weight loss, remember that your body is comprised of four major components: water, bone and muscle are lean mass and there is fat mass. While you may be focused on losing those extra 10 lbs keep in mind that decreasing fat mass is more important than losing total body weight. Also, understand that if you are strength training, you are potentially increasing muscle, this is more dense than fat tissue. Replace a pound of fat with a pound of muscle and you will weigh the same but your body will be smaller. This this is a good thing, because by increasing muscle, you are adding productive, healthy, and lean tissue to your body.
Instead of focusing so highly on the number of pounds coming off, focus more on how you are feeling, do you feel healthier? Do you feel stronger or have more energy? If that’s the case, then don’t worry much about the numbers.
Find this post interesting? Have any questions? Leave a comment!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Exercise Is Good for a Lot of Things, But It's Not So Great for Weight Loss
Apr. 16, 2011
Seems like a strange notion right? What do people do when they overeat? They go and run a few extra miles the next day with the idea of burning off all those extra calories. One of the most common reasons someone starts exercising is for a desire to lose weight. Yet, if we truly look at how and why our body stores fat, you see that exercise is not an efficient way to burn a lot of calories to lose weight.
In an article by Doug McGuff, he provides a clear and detailed explanation of why this is. Simply put, the problem of weight loss has less to do with storing fat than it does with having a food abundance. In fact, our ability to efficiently at store and use the fuel we take in for extending periods of time is a major reason why the human race still exists. Can you imagine how we could’ve survived if we burned off all of our calories while hunting for food for survival? We store excess body fat as a survival mechanism, our body doesn’t realize it’s not going to face a famine in the near future.
So this brings us to the actual problem of weight loss: an abundance of food intake. For this, McGuff gives some further explanation of simple ways to cut down on excess calories:
First, get stronger. As we age (especially post 30’s) our body begins to lose muscle mass, and we tend to have less active lifestyles. While muscle mass is more dense than fat, muscle is much more costly tissue for the body to maintain, so you are burning more calories daily basis simply by having more muscle. McGuff explains, if you lose 5 lbs of muscle, you will burn 250 calories less over 24 hours. If you continue to eat the same amount as you age, you can potentially gain 10 lbs over 20 weeks!
Consider also what a Calorie (also known as a kilocalorie) actually is: 1 Calorie is the amount of heat energy required raise the temperature of liter of water one degree celsius. If you were to drink 5 liters of ice water throughout the day, your body has to expend heat energy (Calories) raising the temperature of the ice water, potentially burning 180 calories simply by drinking water.
A third part to decreasing how much body fat we store is to literally decrease what you take in. Practicing portion size control and eating multiple smaller meals per day can make a significant impact in the total amount of calories we put into our bodies.
Find this post interesting? Have any questions? Leave a comment!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Myths & Facts about Exercise
Feb. 28, 2011
Although the fitness industry is a relatively new one, there has been plenty of time for myths and misconceptions about exercise to develop over the past few decades. As I mentioned in last week’s post, originally strength training was avoided by many athletes and coaches. In fact, there were many college football and basketball coaches who would threaten to kick their players off the team if they were found strength training? Sounds strange, right? Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, strength training was believed to cause athletes to get “Muscle bound” meaning they’d slow down in their performance, and lose flexibility. With further research, this eventually was proved false. Strength training actually increased speed and muscle strength, improving athletic performance. Flexibility isn’t lost so long as you use the full range of motion. Here are a few other exercise myths that developed over the years:
“Women should avoid lifting heavy weights because it will make them bulk up” How your body responds to any type of exercise, including strength training, varies per individual depending on their genetic potential. Muscle size does not directly relate to muscle strength, you can be strong without putting on a lot of muscle mass. Building strength isn’t only beneficial to women, it’s essential.
“You have to do cardio separate from strength training” The term “Cardio” regularly used today is actually a misnomer for cardiovascular work. What many don’t realize is that our body never completely stop being cardiovascular. Any time we do mechanical work, whether it’s running or strength training, your heart is still pumping blood to transport oxygen to the rest of the body. You can improve your cardiovascular fitness by strength training.
“There’s no point to going working out if I can’t commit enough time” Many people put off starting to exercise because they feel they don’t think they can devote enough time to get any results. But if you remember that exercise is a stimulus, you’ll understand that the only thing the body needs is most stimulus than it’s previously been used to. While exercising 2-3 times a week would be optimal, once a week is better than not exercising at all. You’ll still be able to gain results, simply focus more on the quality of your workouts rather than the amount of time spent doing it.
Do you know of any myths about exercise or have any related questions? Please post a comment on what your thoughts about this post are!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Some History on Exercise
Feb. 14, 2011
Ok, so we now know what exercise is, how did it all start? When did we discover that purposely making our bodies’ stronger would result in healthier, easier, living?
Milo of Croton. Mile carried a newborn calf around his farm everyday. As the calf grew into an adult bull, so did Milo’s strength grow. This was his training regimen, and helped him win 6 Olympic games in wrestling.
Ok, while the story of Milo is fabled to have happened around 6th century B.C., the philosophy behind Milo’s strength holds true to a lot of research done today. Milo’s training is classic progressive muscle overload, where weight is added very gradually but just enough to cause the body to adapt to the stimulus of exercise.
Let’s bring things forward a little of the 1970’s. Believe it or not, but up until the later half of the 20th century many athletes and coaches were opposed to strength training. Back then many believed that strength training would make an athlete “muscle bound,” and slow moving, ultimately damaging the athlete’s performance and decreasing flexibility and agility. Then an exercise physiologist named Arthur Jones helped to change the approach on strength training. If you’re not familiar with Arthur Jones, take a walk through Vertex Fitness Personal Training Studio and look at the name brands of our machines. You’ll see Nautilus, Hammer Strength, and MedX. During the 1970’s, Arthur Jones developed an exercise machine based on the shape of a Nautilus shell. What makes Jones’ Nautilus design unique was the use of a logarithmic-spiral cam, around which a chain is wrapped, connected to a series of weights, to control the resistance the user feels throughout the range of motion. Because the user moves through the entire range of motion, flexibility actually improves as a result of strength training as well.
Jones’ Nautilus machines started a new phase in strength training, it was during this era where strength training started to become accepted as ideal form of training for athletes, to today where strength training has become an essential component to healthy living.
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
How Exercise Works
Feb. 07, 2011
A lot of people go out and exercise, but how many people really know what they’re doing? I’m not talking about their technical knowledge, or if they know what muscle they’re using, what I am talking about is what the body is going through. Often, people run, they bike, they Zumba, and they move heavy things around expecting a certain result. So what is exercise?
Exercise is a science. As I explained in my last post, exercise is a stimulus that is placed on the body to produce a specific change. Seems simple enough, right? But why is it that sometime exercise seems to work for some people some of the time and not for others much of the time? Here are a few things to think about: first, as a stimulus, our body isn’t going to respond unless we provide enough stimulus to cause change. This is because our body has evolved to survive (back in days when the human race had predators, famines to worry about). Our body wants to hold onto any extra energy sources that we put into our body (i.e. excess food) and isn’t going to spend extra energy maintaining any muscle mass that it doesn’t need.
This is why we need to apply enough stimulus to cause our body to change and become stronger. Our muscles can’t tell the difference between working against a weights, or against a beast trying to eat us, it’s all just a stimulus. So in order to cause our body to get stronger, we constantly have to apply more stimulus than than it is used to. Our body responds to an overload stimulus by rebuilding muscle cells so that it can better survive the next stimulus (whether it be an angry bear or a number of reps on the leg press).
It’s pure and simple, in order to make our bodies stronger, we have to apply enough of a stimulus frequently enough so that body believes our muscles are needed.
Found this post interesting? Have any questions? Leave a comment!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Why People Don’t Exercise
Jan. 31, 2011
How many times a week do you see or hear in the news about the nation’s obesity epidemic? We hear over and over again about the increasing percentage of the U.S. population that is overweight and obese. While there are multiple factors contributing to the nations health problem, one element is that people simply have a difficult time exercising. The reason for this is that exercise in its truest form, just isn’t fun.
In my last few posts I’ve discussed how exercise trends are promoted through the fitness industry, and how many of these trends are a result of those in the fitness field trying to make it easier for individuals to exercise. There’s just one major problem with this: as you make exercise easier, the benefits and results you’ll get from it will diminish.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at what exercise is. Exercise is an activity that is done to achieve a specific adaptation in the body in order to improve an individual’s level of fitness and health. Think of exercise as a stimulus that causes your body to change. In order for this stimulus to work, it must be greater than your what your body is used to, otherwise there’s no need for it to change.
In order to attain any real results, you need to do more than what your body is used to. In order to get to this point, you need to work hard. Most people simply don’t know how to work that hard while they exercise.
In my next entry, I’ll talk more in depth about how exercise acts as a stimulus and why doing only what your body is used can’t give you the results you want.
Do you have any questions about this blog or any others? Post your question in the comment box!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Fitness Trends: Why There Are So Many Products Available
Jan. 24, 2011
In my last post I started to discuss how the fitness industry is constantly attempting to create new forms of exercise to promote to the general public and fitness professionals alike. Think about all the products you see everyday advertised on TV, the web, magazines, and basically everywhere you go. There’s always a new fitness class, a new magic machine, a new diet plan. From one perspective this could seem great! There are so many options available out there, that must mean at least one of those will work to get you to achieve your fitness goals.
However, here’s one problem: with so many options out there, the difficulty lies in figuring out what will be both a safe and effective method for you to attain your goals without it digging into your pockets. One thing to take into consideration is why so many fitness facilities and fitness “experts” create new methods to exercise.
So why is there such a large output of new services and products in the fitness industry? Just like any business, one of objective of the fitness industry is to make money. For some fitness organizations that specialize in certifying fitness instructors and personal trainers, part of what they do is selling a variety of certifications: Zumba, pilates, Boot Camp, Step N’ Tone, you name it. You may not be aware that most fitness instructors must be certified in each one of these areas in order to teach it, that’s how many fitness organizations create revenue.
The fitness industry sells to those working in this field, who then sell their products to the general public seeking fitness guidance. There are a couple problems that occur form this: one is that there are a lot of product created to feel and look really cool. While this might be great to stay motivated, it might not get you the results you want. A second problem is that some fitness instructors and personal trainers provide misguided advice, they use terms that don’t really mean anything, like “muscle memory” and the “core.”
You may now be wondering why the fitness industry works so hard to sell fitness products and new trends, next week I’ll talk more about why the fitness industry is the way it is, and discuss what exercise really is.
Leave a comment and tell us what you thought about todays blog. Until next week!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Fitness Trends and the Truth About Exercise
Jan. 17, 2011
From the the “Shake Weight” and the “Perfect Pushup,” to shoes that promise to tone your thighs and bum, to bands, balls, straps, and balance boards, the fitness industry is constantly producing new equipment, classes, and methods of “exercise” to promote to both fitness specialists and the general public alike. When looking at all these fitness fads and trends, where is one to find what works, and what doesn’t, and what products and services are simply just produced in order to sell?
One thing to take into consideration is that because the fitness industry is relatively young and has only become prominent within the last twenty years, there remains a lot of inconsistency amongst fitness professionals and what is considered to be sound advice. Even definitions used on a daily basis by fitness professionals remain unclear, such as the “core,” “muscle memory,” these are key terms that are used often but lack a solid definition.
In the midst of all the information, products, classes, and methods that now exist in the fitness industry, a lot of confusion has been created. Over the next few entries, I will be discussing how the fitness industry functions and why a lot of products and even fitness specialists may not have your best interest in mind. And, a reminder of what exercise really is and how your body works in response to it.
Stay tuned for my next blog, and if you have any comments, we’d love to hear them!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Don’t Give Up, Just Keep Up the Effort!
Jan. 10, 2011
Ever feel like you have a great workout and then the next session everything just feels heavy, you’re unmotivated, and get tired easily? It’s easy to become frustrated when you feel like your not moving forward, but the fact of the matter is, every time you workout you are bringing something different to the table that affects you are going to feel during that session. As long as you maintain the effort you put in during your workout, you’ll still gain benefits from exercising.
Every individual is different. Your body responds differently depending on many factors. Understand that there are many different factors affecting how your body responds to exercise, changes in your diet, and other activities. Stress levels, your metabolism, the amount of sleep you get, and even your genetics affect your ability to gain results from your exercise routine. And on occasion a number of these factors are not under your control. In these cases, what you need to focus on is doing the most you can for the present workout. It doesn’t matter whether it’s not as many repetitions or if the weight feels like it’s heavier for no reason, simply give 100% effort in each exercise. If you do this, then you’ll still be gaining results in the long run, you will be more likely not to injure yourself, and you will feel the accomplishment of having done all you could to benefit from your workout!
If you found this entry interesting, leave a comment and describe what you thought!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
How to Fight off Travel Fatigue
Jan. 03, 2011
Flying from Philadelphia to California and back, I got the inspiration for this week’s blog from the achy, stiff neck I experienced during my travels. Whether you’re flying to visit family or travel for business regularly, we’ve all experienced the long flights sitting in seats severely lacking in back support, unable to stretch our legs, or really do much of anything.
So I thought, what are some ways to stave off the aches, pains, and tiredness that comes from air travel? Here are some tips:
When you can you move, do so: before boarding your flight, opt for a stroll in the terminal browsing the shops rather than taking a seat at your gate. Depending on the length of your flight, try to stand up from your seat (once the “fasten seat belt” sign has been turned off of course) while you get something from the overhead compartment, stand and stretch for a few minutes.
If you’re stuck in the middle or window-seat and can’t conveniently stand, then just take a few minutes during each hour of your flight to pull your knees to your chest one at a time, flex and point your toes, and stretch your back by straightening out and sitting as tall as you can.
Avoid back pain: many airline seats have terrible back supports that cause pressure in your low back and forces your neck into an uncomfortable crick. If your airline provides pillows, place one pillow beneath your low back. Some companies also make inflatable pillows designed specifically for airplane travel.
Lastly, stay hydrated. Avoid alcoholic beverages and sodas while flying and stick to water or juice. The caffeine in coffee may help you forestall travel fatigue but won’t help you in the long run and will actually cause you to become more dehydrated.
If you know of more ways to help fight off fatigue while traveling, leave a comment!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
Why You Cannot Do Personal Training in a Vacuum Part 2: Client’s Perspective
Dec. 27, 2010
In my last post, I wrote about personal training and it’s similarities to refereeing fencing. Wait, what does refereeing a sport that most people are unfamiliar with have in common with my job as a personal trainer? The answer is both have multiple components occurring simultaneously that the personal trainer (or ref) must be able to process all at once.
Personal training is much more than counting repetitions and setting up weights. When you’re working with a good personal trainer, he or she will be trying to take in all of the information that you provide, whether verbal or non-verbal. From when we say “Hello, how are you doing?” and “How did you feel from the last workout?” we’re trying to assess where you are today, how well you felt from the last workout, what has happened with you during the days between our sessions, which allows us to better probe how we can make the best out of your workout today and in the future.
A good personal trainer is going to learn the trade. Our business is to know and understand how the body works, it’s structure, and how it functions during exercise. We need to able to explain the reason and benefits for a given exercise compared to another, and be able to adjust and substitute different components of the workout to fit each individual.
If you work with or are looking for a personal trainer, make sure they are really doing their job. Is your personal trainer taking the time to ask how you are doing? Are they willing to adjust their program to fit your specific needs and capability? Are they doing the most possible to be reassuring and gain your trust? Most importantly, are they listening to what you are telling them and taking that into account during your workout? Personal trainers need to be good communicators, but more importantly they need to be good listeners and observers. The best personal trainers are going to make an investment in your success and are genuinely interested in how you are doing.
Tell us about your experience with personal trainers, what in a personal trainer do you consider to be most important? Tell us what you think!
24 N Merion Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 610 525 660
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24 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 • 
