Posts filed under 'Uncategorized'
August 4th, 2008
Swinging golf clubs, leaning halfway off the ladder to reach as far as possible while painting the house, lifting packed suitcases into the car — no wonder your back gets sore in summer.
Having a strong core — rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, the obliques, and erector spinae to name the main muscles — can help with prevention, but the experts at WebMD estimate that back pain is going to affect 80 percent of Americans at some point in their lives.
Here are a couple of stretches to help you avoid feeling like you need a week in traction:
Hip rotations – Lie face up with shoulders flat on the floor and arms stretched out to the sides so hands are at shoulder height. Knees are flexed with feet flat on the floor. Lean both knees to the right as far as possible without lifting the shoulders or glutes off the floor and hold for 20 to 30 seconds, return knees to starting position and then lean both knees to the left and hold for 20 to 30 seconds. That’s one repetition. Work up to performing three sets of 10 repetitions. You can increase the intensity by lifting both feet off the floor and even more by lying with legs straight with feet pointed toward ceiling.Â
Cat/cow — Kneel on hands and knees with abs flexed, hips lowered and upper back arched as if you were an angry cat. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds. Then let your head come up as you let your lower back sag and your hips raise. Hold for 20 to 30 seconds. Remember to breathe deeply and slowly during each position. Repeat each position three times.
One more thing. You’re less likely to overstress your back if you remember to lift with correct form.
Get up close to the object to be lifted and squat down with your back straight, grasp the object and stand straight up. If feasible, consciously keep your head up so you do the lifting using primarily your glutes and quadriceps.
August 1st, 2008
We did a three-part series on using the Nintendo Wii Fit for exercise this week and I was interested in an article published in the July/August issue of ACE Fitness Matters about a study to determine if the Wii Sports exercises are as good as the real thing.
No surprise. They aren’t, according to the article.
But, the study concluded, they do have some value.
Here’s a quote from the story, written by Mark Anders:
“For instance, playing 30 minutes of Wii Boxing burns 216 calories, which is 51 calories more than brisk walking, while a 30-minute Wii Tennis match burns a respectable 159 calories.
“Some people may also find that the natural competitiveness that comes with playing Wii against an opponent can help with their motivation and, thus, their ability to stick with a regular exercise regime. The convenience of exercising in one’s own living room may also improve exercise adherence.”
The article also says boxing was the exercise that burned the most calories and the only one the American College of Sports Medicine considered intense enough to maintain or improve cardiorespiratory endurance.
From what we saw in our reporting, Wii is one of those exercise tools that certainly doesn’t hurt.
The way I figure it, anything that helps keep someone on their exercise track is a plus.
You can read the ACE Fitness Facts story at http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/WiiStudy.pdf
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 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.
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 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.
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