Athlekinetix Blog

Can you believe this is a news story? Can you believe people want to know if the first lady will wear sleeves when she meets the Queen Mum? Really?  There are so many things going on right now in the world - I mean a lot.. housing crisis, foreclosures, war, famine, gas prices on the rise again, trillion dollar deficit, markets tumbling… BUT all ears want to know if the Queen of England will see Michelle Obama’s Arms?  This is a riot. 

I only wish I could get my 15 minutes of fame based on my arms, which I gotta say are pretty rock star and if you haven’t seen them you are clearly not subscribed to my other blog - Exercise of the Day. Ok, I sound a bit arrogant but I don’t mean to I just don’t see the big whoop-dee-do with nicely shaped arms or well defined biceps.

If she wears a sleeve-less in London (by the way it’s really cold in England right now) the queen will see Michelle’s “guns” and if she dons a long sleeved parka, she won’t.  Either way, be sure it will be in the news and online within moments of the historic event.

If you ever look at runners about to embark on their morning run, they go through an elaborate series of stretches before starting. In spin classes and group exercise classes typically there is a pre-workout stretch period and then one at the end of class. Stretching has become as routine in exercise as brushing your teeth when you wake up in the morning.

Is all of this stretching necessary and is it really the most important part of every exercise routine, as has been espoused for years in the fitness world? The answer of course is not so clear cut. Sports Rehabilitative experts have found a definite benefit in stretching muscles that have been worked in order to prevent injury. But, new studies on stretching challenge the benefits gained of pre-workout stretching.

Pre-workout stretching is not only possibly a waste of time, but could actually be harmful to your muscles that have not been warmed up properly. Static stretching, holding one position for about 20 seconds, on muscles that haven’t been worked has the potential to create injury instead of the intended goal of preventing injury. Performance can also be negatively affected by inappropriately stretching prematurely in your workout.

A better strategy at the beginning of a workout, is to gradually warm up and ease into your challenging pace. This would be a good time to introduce a few dynamic stretches that you can perform while moving. Dynamic stretching doesn’t take away from your exercise routine, but rather enhances your ability to perform. Your power, flexibility, and range of motion will be increased.

For example, if you are a runner, begin your run at a slow jog and increase your speed to the intensity that you desire gradually. ‘Hitting the ground running’ makes for a good expression, but not ideal for your body. The same principle can apply in spinning. Start off with a light tension and after a few minutes you can increase your cadence and tension to fully challenge your body and elevate your heart rate.

On the other hand, stretching after exercise is completed is highly recommended. Your muscles are warm and loose and can be stretched further as a result. Be careful to not over-stretch. It is fine to stretch to the point of slight discomfort, where you feel your muscles actively stretching. However, it is not fine to stretch to the point where you feel pain. The goal of stretching is to prevent soreness after exercise, lengthen your muscles, and prevent injury. Stretching beyond the point your body allows is setting you up for future problems.

Women everywhere have the same mantra. “I don’t want to lift weights because I don’t want to bulk up.” The new mantra of women should be, “I want to lift weights so my body can be stronger, leaner, and toned.” The problem with women and resistance training is two-fold. The first problem is actually getting women to resistance train in the first place. The second problem then becomes getting them to use weights that are challenging for their bodies.

A study in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercises suggests that women are lifting with weights that are too light to affect change. Women are not biologically capable of becoming bulky because of weight training. Using 8 pound dumbbells instead of 1 pound dumbbells is not going to make you look like a male bodybuilder. Resistance training does not mean bench pressing hundreds of pounds. For muscular strength and endurance training, you should be using weights that are challenging enough to fatigue the muscles you are working.

The expression ‘no pain, no gain’ is not a cliché for nothing. Resistance training, if done properly, should not be painful but it should be slightly uncomfortable. If you can do 100 bicep curls at the weight you are using, you are wasting your time. Next time use heavier weights. You should be physically spent after each set and thankful that it is over. If you are not challenging your muscles, you are not going to succeed in changing your body.

If you remain erroneously convinced that heavier weights will make you bigger instead of firmer and leaner, do not give up resistance training entirely. Rather, incorporate exercises into your fitness program that rely on your body weight as resistance instead. Push-ups are arguably one of the greatest exercises ever. They work your chest, shoulders, and core all at the same time. Power Yoga also utilizes your own body weight to complete a series of poses that will challenge your balance, flexibility, and strength.

Cardiovascular training is great for your heart and for burning fat, but strength training is necessary for sculpting and toning your body. Less is not more when it comes to resistance training. Women are strong and powerful beings in all area of their lives. Why should women be afraid to be physically strong as well?

Competitive swimming has been life transforming for my son, both physically and mentally. What I didn’t know about having a kid that swims is that he would not be the only one to gain insight from this unique sport. I learn lessons daily from his swimming which I can apply to my own fitness and life.

Life Lesson #1: Just because you don’t excel in certain sports, doesn’t mean you’re not an athlete. Before the age of 12, my son played soccer, basketball, football, roller hockey, and baseball. A more accurate description would be that he was on the roster of these teams and warmed a lot of benches.  He discovered swimming 2 years ago and today he swam in the Junior Olympics.  Find your inner athlete.

Life Lesson #2: Everyone should train like an athlete. My son swims 18 hours a week and weight trains 3 hours a week. Of course most of us are lucky to find time to exercise an hour a day, if that. But, for a competitive swimmer or any competitive athlete, exercise is a non-negotiable. The inner dialogue of ‘I don’t feel like it today’ has no power over whether my son trains or not. He exercises because he knows the benefits regular training has to his sport and the positive effect it has on developing his muscular strength and cardiovascular endurance. Exercise because you know it’s good for you regardless if you “feel” like exercising.

Life Lesson #3: Competition and goals give purpose to your training. If it weren’t for swim meets and Junior Olympic times my son was striving to attain, there would be no purpose to his training and he would quit. Swimming laps day in and day out would be meaningless to him if it weren’t for a greater goal of being the best swimmer he can be. This applies to all of us. If you are literally spinning your wheels in spinning classes day after day, it is only a matter of time that your spinning days will come to an end. A better strategy for your mind and body is to use spinning as a training vehicle for something bigger. Plan a 50 mile outdoor bike ride with your friend, sign up for a duathalon or triathalon, or ride outdoors on a real bike a couple times a week. You would be amazed how much more meaningful your spinning classes will be when there is a purpose to why you are doing them.

Life Lesson #4: Know when to bring the intensity. Swimming is not just swimming your fastest until you reach the wall. It is about good technique and pacing yourself to bring out the best results you can. Anybody can go out of the blocks in life like a bat out of hell. It is almost a guarantee that that person will not reach the wall or finish line first. The swimmer who wins the race is the one who brought the intensity at just the right time. Life is an endurance race, not a sprint. Pace yourself and use your bursts of energy to empower you to finish the race as stronger than you were when you started.

Life Lesson #5: Even when you finish last, you are still a champion. Today at the Junior Olympics, my son finished last in his event. However, when he got out of the pool he was triumphant. How could that be? He swam with the best of the best. It was the fasted he ever swam and he dropped 2 seconds off of his time. When he saw me he said, “When you swim with the best, it only makes you better.” Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, stronger than you, and more disciplined than you and you will be surprised by how much better you become as a person. When you surrounded by the best, it brings out the best in you.

In her newly released book, Naturally Thin, Bethenny Frankel uses the Italian expression ‘Mangia poco ma bene’ to illustrate one of her approaches to healthy eating. Literally translated, it means “Eat little, but well.” This same principle should be applied to exercise as well.

The other day in the gym, a woman in her early forties was limping because her knee was bothering her. She didn’t know what she did to aggravate it, but the day before she said she “exercised a little bit.” Come to find out her definition of a little bit of exercise was 2 hours of spinning, an hour of boot camp, and a 6 mile walk. This was not over the span of a week, but in the course of one day.

You are probably thinking some knee discomfort might be worth it to be as thin as this woman obviously is with all of this exercising. Guess what, she is in moderately decent shape, but she is in fact frustrated that her body has hit a plateau. Maybe this woman and all of us should listen to the Italians. They may be on to something.

They emphasize quality over quantity. The only thing achieved by ‘more must be better’ thinking when it comes to exercise is potential for injury and plateaus caused by overtraining. It is not only harmful to your body to exercise for hours at a time, but in these economic times, it is unrealistic for people to devote this kind of time to exercise.

The name of the game for the greatest results when it comes to exercise is intensity and efficiency. If you can do class after class in succession, you are not pushing yourself to the point of fatigue. If you are resistance training and you did not feel thankful that the set was over for the muscle group you were targeting, then you better use heavier weights next time or do more repetitions. Exercise, if done properly, is not meant to be done for hours at a time. You are not just wasting your valuable time and energy, but you are breaking down muscle and depleting your body of essential nutrients when you punish it in this manner.

If at the end of a class or exercise session, you have successfully incorporated cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, flexibility, balance, and engagement of your core and stabilizer muscles throughout the entire session, you have accomplished everything your body needs from exercise in one challenging hour.

You are an exercise rockstar, not if you exercise a thousand hours a day, but rather if you put forth every ounce of effort your body is capable of into one action packed, compact hour. The words that will guaranteed be music to your ears is “I’m done.” Who wants to hear one hour done, four to go? An hour, if done properly, is efficient, effective, and healthy for your mind and body.

Just as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so is whether mirrors are a positive or negative when exercising. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario have found that when women exercise in front of mirrors, they often felt worse after exercising than they did when there were no mirrors to look at themselves. The most interesting finding in this study, perhaps, is that there was no correlation to being overweight and objecting to the mirrors. Even women who felt positive about their bodies and their weight felt worse about themselves after exercising in front of mirrors.

The truth is that mirrors can actually be a very beneficial tool in any exercise studio. Mirrors are especially valuable when doing resistance training. They are excellent tools in making sure you have proper form when executing the exercises. Another benefit that mirrors provide is reinforcement of what muscles you are working. It is very useful to see your muscles engage with each exercise you execute. Mirrors provide motivation and reinforcement that the exercise you are performing is targeting the muscles you are intending to target.

In addition, exercise is not about vanity but rather about health. Mirrors allow you to concretely see the positive effects that your exercise program is having on your body. Instead of looking in mirrors at gyms the way you would at home, think of these mirrors as reflections of your muscles that you are working so hard to create and expose. Mirrors in exercise studios are not meant for analyzing if you are having a bad hair day. They are there to enhance your exercise routine.

In yoga, use the mirrors religiously to make sure your alignment is proper in all asanas  you do, so as not to incur injury. With resistance training, look in the mirror to make sure your knees do not go past your ankles in lunges. A good mirror is cheaper and less painful than knee surgery later. In spinning, a mirror can help you make sure your seat is in the proper setting with your knees in a 90 degree angle with each revolution and that your posture is proper in the all of the remaining seated and standing positions.

Nobody, it doesn’t matter whether overweight or thin, particularly likes looking at themselves in the mirror. Mirrors in exercise studios are not a matter of vanity. But rather, they should be thought of as ‘little personal trainers’ which help people focus on their form, prevent injury, and physically track their progress when exercising.

A new book has just been released entitled Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul by 76 year old Stuart Brown. He has made a career of studying what happens when adults don’t add play to their life. Brown argues that a life without play is one without joy.

How many people exercise every day and dread every minute they do it? Exercise is not just logging mindless miles on the treadmill and conjuring up every possible excuse to end the exercise session immediately. If exercise is done right, it is an activity that should nourish the body and replenish the soul. There is nothing better than a good sweat to clear the mind and re-energize the body.

The problem lies, perhaps, with the way that most people approach exercise. If dread is the predominant emotion involved with an activity that you are spending hours a week doing, then that is unfortunate. Exercise is just as much a mental activity as a physical one. Reframe the way you think about exercise and you will transform the way you perform that exercise.

The psychologist and author Stuart Brown might just be on to something. Maybe the best way to make exercise more fun is do what you enjoy doing. Bring play back into your exercise routine. If you loved playing little league sports when you were a kid, join adult leagues. There are softball, hockey, and soccer adult leagues all over the country. It is a great way to exercise and socialize at the same time. It will make you feel like a kid again.

Another idea is to join a tennis league, a golf foursome, or a master’s swimming program. The sense of competition and the camaraderie will bring out the best in you. You might even forget that you are exercising!

If you combine exercise with activities and places you love, you will learn to love to exercise. If you hate running on the treadmill but love going to the beach, take your morning run at the beach. Beach volleyball is also great fun.

Exercise is a necessary component for leading a healthy life. Why not make it a source of joy while you’re at it?

What exactly is this blog all about?  LOL  Fitness of course. These are after all Fitness Tips!

The answer is both are best.  Because aerobic training is related to the oxygen cost of the activity, there is an inverse relationship between intensity and duration. HUH?  English please.

OK, simply stated if you increase your intensity, you can reduce the duration.  That’s great news for those times when you need to get a workout in but just don’t have the time.  Go hard and then go home.  Conversely, if you are feeling kind of sluggish, you can keep a lower intensity and workout a little longer and get the same benefit. in general terms, when the cells of the body consume one liter of oxygen per minute, about five kilo calories per minute have been expended. If two liters per minute are consumed, the expenditure would be ten kilo calories per minute.

Realtors have been saying for years, “location, location, location.” Of course, this is usually in response to selecting a home in a desirable neighborhood. Factors like proximity to good schools, hospitals, and parks are taken into consideration when buying a home. But, who thinks about McDonald’s?

A new study by researchers out of UC Berkeley says maybe we should start thinking about the proximity of fast food when buying a home. Now it is not enough to be near a good school, but is the school close to fast food restaurants as well? Out of 3 million 9th graders in California, 5.2% were more likely to be obese, the closer their schools were to fast food restaurants.

Of course, you are not going to put up a ‘for sale’ sign or transfer your child to a different school based on this information, but it is interesting to take into account some of the lessons this research provides. Children are a target demographic when it comes to fast food advertising. Studies have shown toddlers recognize the golden arches of McDonald’s even before they are verbal.

In addition, children are for the most part a captive audience for fast food providers. They don’t drive and if they do, most don’t drive their own car to school. If fast food is within walking distance to schools, teenagers can frequent these establishments daily on their own, without parental assistance. Furthermore, even younger children are at a disadvantage with fast food being so readily available because the temptation for parents to go through the drive-thru on the way home from school or to extra-curricular activities is very inviting.

Childhood obesity rates according to this UC Berkeley study have more than tripled since the 1970’s and the number of fast food restaurants has increased over 50% in the same amount of years. The proximity of fast food restaurants to schools is similar to the notion of  bingeing on junk food at home because it’s readily accessible at a moment’s notice.

The movie Field of Dreams had the premise ‘if you build it, they will come’ when talking about building a baseball field in the middle of a corn field. Unfortunately, the same principle applies to the location of fast food restaurants and schools. If children can access fast food easily and quickly, they will eat it often.

It is no surprise that in these tough economic times, the revenues of McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants are up. The convenience, relatively low cost, and location of fast food makes it a no-brainer for America’s kids. Maybe adults should be smarter.

New studies released by the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research found that the combination of healthy diet, regular exercise, and proper stress management are not only important for a healthy lifestyle, but have been found to actually lower your risks of developing cancer.

In an interesting related study from the National Cancer Institute, researchers found that exercise may prevent cancer but only if combined with proper amounts of sleep. Regular exercisers who exercised at least one hour a day but slept less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep were found to be 47% more likely to develop cancer than regular exercisers who slept 7 hours or more.

What these findings illustrate is that it is not enough to just eat right or exercise more, or get enough sleep or manage your stress. If you are not incorporating all of these components into your lifestyle, you are possibly shortchanging yourself when it comes to your health.

This makes sense when you think about it closely. For example, how many times have you exercised intensely, binged on junk food afterwards, and wondered why you haven’t lost weight? Or, if you are constantly sleep deprived and feel like a pressure cooker about to erupt inside, do you think that diet and exercise alone are the answers to your problems?

Our bodies are built like machines and nothing is effective done in isolation. Everything complements and feeds off of one another to yield the best results. If you feel like a rockstar because you eat right, but everything else you do sabotages the benefits that might be gained by your healthy diet, then you are missing the big picture of what makes for a healthy lifestyle.

Healthy diet, regular exercise, proper sleep and stress management are all necessary in order to live a long life. If you compromise one area of your health at the expense of the other, you are negating the benefits of what could be gained in the long run.