Archive for July, 2008
July 28th, 2008
I’ve been thoroughly Bix-ed.
My wife and I were in the Quad Cities over the weekend for a family reunion and she signed us up for her favorite race of all time. The Bix 7-mile run.
She and her buddies have done this race several times, but it was always done as a girls weekend out, so husbands were never invited. That made this my first Bix, and probably my last.
I knew the course was hilly. I knew it would be hot and humid. I knew every inch of everything I was wearing — including sweat squishing out of my shoes — would completely soaked when I finished.
I did it anyway.
I have never passed so many people during a race and still finished so far back in the pack and, while I was munching on a couple of granola bars in the post-race cooldown area, it occurred to me — again — that I’ve done all the racing I care for.
It’s time to leave that to younger, stronger and certainly better runners.
Still, I did beat my goal of finishing in less than an hour and a half. My official time was 1:25:18 (1:19:23 chip time) and I was 100th of 187 runners in my division so I was pretty far back.
Then, of course, if I started training seriously at Rock Cut State Park who knows …………….
July 25th, 2008
A public relations firm sent this to my e-mail the other day. You may want to take a look at some of the tips. Note that Rockford Thunder pitcher Cat Osterman is one of the featured athletes.
Want to train like an Olympic athlete? Â
Watch and learn from members of the US Olympics team as they prepare for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. STACK.com features video clips of training tips from:Â
·        USA Track and Field (Reese Hoffa) - World’s #1 Shot Putter·        USA Women’s Basketball (Katie Smith) - Projected Gold Medal Winner·        USA Women’s Softball (Cat Osterman and Lauren Lappin)- Projected Gold Medal Winner·        USA Swimming (Mark Gangloff) - Gold medalist in 2004, 4×100m medley·        USA Women’s Soccer (Abby Wambach and Hope Solo) - Projected Gold Medal WinnerÂ
We thought you may like to link to the site. Videos can be found at: http://stacktv.stack.com/channel.aspx?channelID=US+Olympics+Training
Happy training.Â
July 23rd, 2008
It seems people are always looking for ways to look thinner and one of the easiest ways to do that is simply to stand up straight.
 Sound simple? It is.
In a person with good posture, the head is balanced and the chin doesn’t jut forward, the chest is slightly raised, the abdomen is flat without being sucked in, the knees are relaxed with the kneecaps pointing straight ahead, the shoulders are level and the hips are level and aligned directly under the shoulders. The feet are directly beneath the knees and facing forward.
In addition, there is a natural curve to the lower back and the hands hang naturally at your sides with the palms facing each other.
If all that sounded like things just got complicated, think of this simple trick whenever you catch yourself slouching or you just want to check yourself for that thinner look.
Imagine that two strings run from the bottoms of your feet up through your legs and hips and become one string when they reach your trunk. That string runs all the way up your spine to the top of your head.
Then, when you catch yourself slouching, reach back and pull that imaginary string straight up until it pulls you into proper position and hold it there. The more often you do this, the greater the effect.
You may not have perfect posture, but you may realize that you’re breathing better, your muscles feel more relaxed and you just plain look better.
July 21st, 2008
I’ll have some interesting reading in the next couple of days because my July/August issue of ACE Fitness Matters arrived today with a cover article on a study of the effectiveness of working out with a Nintendo Wii.
This happens on a day when the delivery editor for HealthyRockford.com, Collin Quick, and I went to Janesville to begin reporting on a series about workouts with the Wii.
Our first subject is Sarrina Phoenix, who works in Rockford, and her enthusiasm about the workout was just to infectious to miss. And, from what we heard today, a woman who has never been able to stick to a workout in her life is on the way to some serious weight loss and — if she isn’t careful — a much healthier lifestyle than she has ever had.
We’re hyped about the story and we have at least two more pieces of it to put together, so look for it some time in the next week or so.
July 18th, 2008
My wife, who was a better runner than I probably ever will be, passed along an article given to her by a friend the other day.
She had one comment about it. “Discouraging,” she said.
The article, which has the word “Health” printed in italics in its lower right-hand corner, says that, if despite trying to stay trim by running and climbing stairs, you suspect that you’ve been gaining weight around the midsection over the years, you’re right.
In a study of 7,000 lifetime runners, men who ran at a steady level between the ages of 20 and 50 gained an average of 3.3 pounds and three-fourth of an inch at the waist each decade.
“The only way to keep that weight off,” the article said, “is to continually up the exercise. A man who ran 10 miles a week at age 20 would have to run 52 miles a week at age 50 to fit the jeans he bought in college.”
Sure, metabolism is going to slow down with age, and that could lead to weight gain if a person doesn’t change their workout or their nutrition habits. But a theory that the only way to keep weight off is more and more exercise completely overlooks the possibility that a person with a well thought out eating plan couldn’t adjust their calorie intake to take metabolism and, maybe, a decreased activity level into account.
Further, if increased exercise is the choice, it wouldn’t all have to be aerobic exercise, such as running. Strength training routines can burn a ton of calories and a person’s metabolism tends to stay elevated for a longer period of time after a hard strength training workout as opposed to a hard aerobic workout.
July 17th, 2008
You may have heard of the concept of working out at low to moderate intensities to stay “in the fat-burning zone.”
But, if the purpose of your workout is to help lose weight, you need to work at a higher intensity, say 70 percent or more of your maximum heart rate, if you use a heart rate monitor or a rate of perceived exertion that you would classify as hard or very hard.
In a cardio workout, this might mean adding hills to or mixing in a few minutes of a faster pace with your regular pace during a run or simply increasing the grade during your walk on a treadmill.
Basically, you want something that makes you work closer to your maximum heart rate — read work harder.
It’s true that the body burns more fat during a lower intensity workout — something like 50 percent of the calories burned in exercise at 60 to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate are from fat, but as exercise intensity increases the body burns less fat and more carbohydrates.
 It also burns more total calories, and burning more calories than you consume is ultimately what you’re after for weight loss.
July 16th, 2008
When you have trouble squeezing the gym into a busy schedule, exercises that combine to engage more than one major muscle group can be the time savers that also save the workout.
A couple that have become popular with my clients work upper and lower body muscles at the same time.
Try these the next time you’re pressed for time:
Cable fly with lunge – Stand with feet together in the center of a cable crossover machine, holding a handle attached to each side of the machine at shoulder height in each hand. Your arms should be straight, but the elbows not locked out. Without bending the elbows and further, move both hands toward the center of your chest until they meet in the middle. At the same time, step forward with your right leg and lower yourself until your right thigh is approximately parallel to the floor and your left shin is an inch or two above the floor. Make sure your knee is directly over your foot and doesn’t extend farther forward than your toes. Return to the starting position and, as you bring your hands together again, step forward with your left leg and repeat the lunge. Repeat, alternating legs each time, until you have 8 to 10 repetitions with each leg forward.
Squat with one-arm cable row — Attach a handle to one side of a cable crossover machine at slightly above your waist height and set the weight at a challenging but manageable weight. Stand facing where the handle is attached, holding the handle in one hand. Lower your body by bending both legs as if you were going to sit down, making sure that your knees are aligned directly above your feet and don’t extend farther out than your toes. As you lower your body, pull the handle toward you, keeping your elbow as close to your body as you can, until your hand can touch your shirt. You can perform several repetitions with the same hand and then switch hands or switch hands for each squat repetition. Try to work up to two to three sets of 8 to 10 repetitions for each arm.
There are several other exercises that work upper and lower body muscle groups at the same time, including lunges with lateral side raises and stability ball squats with dumbbell curls, but we’ll save those for another time.
July 10th, 2008
Calling a pencil used to mark the scorecard the most effective club in a golf bag is a joke, of course, but that same pencil just might be one of the most important tools in weight loss.
Keeping a food diary has long been recognized as a way to form good eating habits or to control bad ones because everything that goes down the hatch also has to go down on paper.
Really conscientious food diary writers may even record the exact time that they ate something, why they ate it (not just “I was hungry”) and how eating it made them feel afterward.
Paying attention to this can help cut down on gratuitous extra helpings or mindless eating between meals, because you aren’t going to want to admit to it and write it down.
That leads to fewer calories, less wear and tear on the pencil and eventually less of you on the bathroom scale.
 In addition, you might want to track how many calories you do take in and how many you burn in your daily activities. Here are a couple of Web sites to help you do both:
To find out how many you take in try www.sparkpeople.com, which offers a free calorie calculator. It requires registration on the site and asks for your e-mail address to give you exercise and fitness and meal tips, including recipes. Or you can try www.myfooddiary.com. It also requires registration and asks for your name and age along with your e-mail address. You can join the site’s community for $9 a month.
For calculators of how many calories you burn, you can try www.webmd.com/content/tools/1/calc_calories.htm or www.dftools.ivillage.com/healthtools/calc_cb.cfm.
July 8th, 2008
It’s difficult to avoid diets. The average American goes on three to four of them a year.
But because nutrition — along with cardiovascular exercise, resistance training and flexibility — is a main component of a healthy lifestyle, it’s important to view a diet more as a performance-enhancing program than a deprivation-based punishment for trying to lose weight.
Safe weight loss is usually considered to be one to two pounds per week. That means it’s a slow, deliberate process so ask yourself when contemplating a diet if it’s one you can live with for the rest of your life.
If you can make the commitment to an eating plan, you won’t need to think about maintenance of a desired weight loss goal because that will have started when you adopted your plan.
That said, remember that even the most motivated dieter is going to overeat once in awhile. Just get back on your plan as soon as you can.
As a good friend of mine used to say, “There is no magic weight-loss bullet, just choices to make.”
