Archive for June, 2008
June 30th, 2008
This is an old one, but since it came up again in a conversation last week, it bears repeating.
There is no such thing as spot reduction when it comes to exercise or dieting.
A specific exercise, say sit-ups for the abs, will not get rid of fat in a specific area of the body. There is no way to control where you lose the weight. It’s an all or nothing at all proposition and that generally means sensible eating and burning more calories with exercise than you’re taking in.
That doesn’t mean, though, that those same sit-ups won’t tone those abs so, that when the fat comes off, you’ll have something to show for it.
June 27th, 2008
When you think of abdominal exercises, the one that comes to mind is usually the crunch.
It’s basic and, usually, not too difficult. Lying face up with knees bent, abdominals tightened and feet flat on the floor, you flex your torso up by contracting your abs.
There are several ways to vary the crunch — feet off the floor, on a bench from a decline position, and a bunch of others. But what if, no matter how many variations you’ve tried, you’re just plain bored with crunches or you have osteopoenia or osteoporosis issues that indicate you shouldn’t be performing trunk flexion?
Here are a couple of exercises to try when the crunch just isn’t your thing.
Plank — You’re not moving, unless you count shaking while trying to hold the position during this exercise, but it’s a good one.
Begin by lying face down on the floor or a mat (your elbows with thank you if you use a mat), resting on your forearms with palms flat on the mat.
Push up off the mat by raising up onto your toes and forearms with your elbows directly underneath your shoulders. Your body should be in a straight line from your shoulders, through your hips to your toes. Keep your back flat.
Tilt your pelvis slightly down and forward and contract your abs to prevent your bottom from sticking up in the air. You will also want to keep your bottom and your quadriceps muscles tight to help hold the position. Don’t hold your breath.
If you’re a beginner, try to hold the position for 20 seconds, then lower and repeat for three to five repetitions. As you get more advanced, try to work up to holding the position for 60 seconds.
Captain’s chair — That’s the name the American Council on Exercise gives to an exercise performed on an apparatus from which you can hold yourself in a straight up position with your feet off the floor (such as where you do dips).
Grip the handholds to help stabilize your upper body. If the apparatus has a pad for your back, press up against it and contract your abs to raise your legs toward your chest. Don’t arch your back.
Slowly lower your legs and repeate for 12 to 15 repetitions, depending on your level of fitness. You may see people performing this exercise lowering their legs until they are straight, but you might want to try lowering them only four to six inches to keep tension on the abs throughout the exercise.
June 25th, 2008
A story I read on msn.com the other day reminded me that we Baby Boomers never seem to want to grow up.
Remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Award we tested for back in school? The payoff was a certificate that said you were in shape and could prove it.
Well, so many Boomers asked if there was a similar test for adults that the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has had one devised for people 18 and older who are in good health.
The test includes a one-mile walk or 1.5-mile run, push-ups done to failure, sit-ups performed for one minute and a sit-and-reach test to measure flexibility.
You can find information about the test and download instructions on how to take it at www.adultfitness.org. You can also enter your results along with information about your age, gender and height and weight to find out how you stack up against other people your age who have taken the test.
You don’t get a presidential certificate but you could get a few laughs and the motivation to continue or, maybe, upgrade your workout.
June 24th, 2008
New exercisers, if they take up both cardiovascular and strength training workouts on the same days, eventually come to a kind of “chicken or the egg” question.
Which workout should come first?
You can probably find as many different answers as there are fitness experts to express an opinion, because that one has been kicked around for quite some time. People a whole lot smarter than me have written as many research-backed articles that say cardio first as research-based articles that say strength training first.
 The most recent findings, though, are that the answer is really very simple.
Decide what your fitness goal is — such as being a good 10-kilometer runner — and do that workout first.
If your goal is to be a good runner, hitting the weights before hitting the pavement can cause muscle stiffness that inhibits your best training as a runner. If your goal is on the strength training side, running first can make you too tired to lift the kind of weight that will help you make progress.
Choosing what’s most important to you can help you focus on results and help keep you motivated.
June 23rd, 2008
New research has led to formulation of the “big breakfast” diet that includes milk, three ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and an ounce of milk chocolate or candy at the first meal of the day.
I read about it in a by Serena Gordon, writing for Health Day about The Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
The upshot is that the breakfast makes up about half of the calories the person will consume for the day — the rest of the meals are made up of protein and complex carbohydrates such as vegetables — at a time when the body needs energy but at a time when cravings are low.
Thus, eating the candy when a craving for it is low means it won’t taste as good as it otherwise would. The brain, then, won’t associate as much pleasure as it would later in the day.
Eventually, according to the research, that cuts down on the craving.
Gordon also reported that sedentary, obese women on the “big breakfast” diet lost an average of nearly 40 pounds over an eight-month study period.
June 20th, 2008
A bunch of us were having dinner after a game of golf a couple of weeks ago and, as older athletes are prone to do, we started talking about the body parts we’ve injured over the years during the course of our workouts.
Not very far into the conversation, it became clear that almost everyone had either undergone some type of shoulder surgery or was nursing a current shoulder or rotator cuff problem.
That reminded me of a segment I saw way back when ESPN still covered bodybuilding competitions.
The speaker in the segment talked about how the rotator cuff , being made up of four very small muscles — the teres minor, infraspinatus, supraspinatus and subscapularis — and in a part of the body where they don’t receive a lot of blood circulation, are very susceptible to injury when performing exercises for the chest or shoulders.
The injury, more often than not, occurs when the lifter is stopping the weight rather than performing the lift.
He suggested these exercises to help avoid injury:
Shoulder rotation – Think of the motion of an old-time pitcher’s windup or of one of those wind-direction indicators that looks like a wooden duck on a pole. Rotate the arm backward from the shoulder joint and then reverse and rotate the arm forward. Continue for 20 to 30 seconds in each direction for each arm.
Reach across — Reach to the left with your right hand straight across your chest. Use your left hand to grasp your right elbow and gently pull your right arm a little closer to chin. This should not be a big movement, but you should feel a little more stretch across the shoulder. Then switch and reach to the right with your left hand. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds for shoulder.
Overhead reach – Reach to the left with your right hand over your head. Use your left hand to grasp your right elbow and gently pull it a little bit more to the left. Again, this should not be a big movement, but you should feel a little more of a stretch on the back of your shoulder. Switch and reach to the right with your left. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds for each shoulder.
Do these before performing barbell or dumbbell chest presses, flys or exercises for the deltoids and you’ll be more likely to have something else to talk about at dinner. Â
June 17th, 2008
HealthyRockford.com, among other things, is supposed to impart information that helps people make healthy changes in their lives.
I don’t know about anyone else, but it may be changing me.
Until I wrote about them last week, I hadn’t given much thought recently to correct portion sizes. After I did, I realized I had let my own discipline on portion control slip quite a bit.
Consequently, when I dug into the pasta with vegetables at my favorite self-serve lunch counter today, the spoon dipped in a couple fewer times that it might have before.
Then, I went even further.
Of course, I’d read stories about the pesticides and so on used in growing food, but I’d never really worried about it before I edited a story on organic foods for the Web site, shot one video and helped with another.
Suddenly, I caught myself washing apples before I ate them.
And today I opted for the 10-cents-per-pound more expensive organic red delicious apples when the regular non-organic ones were less than a foot away. I’ve been eating one while writing this.
Those people who advocate organic foods because of the taste may have something here, because I can’t remember the last time I thought an apples tasted so good — and I really like apples.
Anyway, maybe paying attention again to portion control will help shed a few pounds. I still don’t know what to think about those organic apples, except that there are three more in the bag and one may be calling my name.
June 13th, 2008
I’ve written a couple of times about knowing the correct serving size when you’re trying to manage your weight, so here’s a list of easy visual cues to help figure the right size for various foods.
Hint: They have nothing to do with the serving sizes you’ll find on most restaurant plates.
A serving of meat or fish, which is approximately three ounces, is about the size of a deck of cards or the open palm of your hand.
A serving of fruits or vegetables — it varies slightly for cooked or fresh — is one-fourth to one-half a cup. In approximate size, think a closed fist or about the size of a baseball.
A serving of whole grain, whether it’s bread, pasta, rice or some other grain, is about what would fit in your cupped hand.
A serving of cheese is approximately one ounce. Think two fingers.
A serving of fat — yes, it is essential to the proper function of certain parts of your body — is about a teaspoon, which you could visualize as the tip of your thumb.Â
June 11th, 2008
The issue of health is so important and prevalent that it can be found almost everywhere. I noticed a blog posting about corporate wellness this week on Career Corner, the blog by QPS on our sister site, BusinessRockford.com.
Corporate wellness programs can drop a company’s health care costs, but finding the program that will motivate workers to make the needed life changes can be tricky. Discounted gym memberships, diet clubs and smoking cessation classes don’t always get the desired response.
A workplace wellness seminar is scheduled for Wednesday, June 18, at NorthPointe health and wellness campus, 5601 E. Rockton Road in Roscoe. Registration for the seminar may be made by calling Prudy Harker or Gloria Melvin at 608-365-2115, by fax at 608-313-8484 or by e-mail to gloria.lifecircle@tds.net or prudy.lifecircle@tds.net.
June 9th, 2008
I fulfilled a promise Saturday when I ran the 4th annual 911Run.
When Mark Marinaro called the paper four years ago to ask for publicity for the first run, I promised him I would run it because the proceeds benefit the Fire and Police Chaplains Division, the Rockford Fire Department and its Division of Fire Prevention.
Well, something came up and I didn’t run the race that year. And, somehow, something came up in the other years as well. But I was in town Saturday morning so I finally made my 911 Run debut in a less than stellar 17:05.
 Don’t look up the per-mile pace. I didn’t and I don’t want to know.
The remarkable thing, though, was that as we started out on the first loop of the race I overheard a couple of ladies talking about why they were in the race. One said to the other that, despite the humid conditions, she was glad they were getting their exercise in the race that morning “because it makes me feel good when I’m also doing it for a good cause.”
That reminded me why I got into running races way back when. Even if my time didn’t make me feel particularly good, the idea that a good cause benefited did.
If you’re looking for a motivation for your training, think about getting into a run, a bike race or even a non-competitive walk that benefits something you would support.
Rockford MELD has a 10-kilometer race coming up on July 4 to support its programs for families and youth (see www.rockfordmeld.org) and the Hall Creek Scamper, a well thought out 5-kilometer “green” race to benefit the programs of Severson Dells Nature Center (see www.seversondells.org or e-mail to dellsgreenrun@gmail.com) is scheduled for July 26.
 There are plenty of others throughout the year, just pick one and promise to do some good in more ways than one.
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