Author Archives: ConAron2799

About ConAron2799

Connie Aronson is an elite personal trainer who has been coaching and helping people for over three decades. She is an American College of Sports Medicine Exercise Physiologist and a BioMechanics Method Corrective Movement Specialist. Connie also holds top national certifications, including the American Council on Exercise Gold level, the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research and AFFA . She is certified as an Active Isolated Strengthening Therapist, a method of fascia release used to facilitate stretching. Connie is an International Dance Exercise Association Elite Level Personal Trainer, which represents the highest achievement in the personal fitness training industry. She also writes a popular monthly health and fitness column for the Idaho Mountain Express in Ketchum, Idaho.

Training Like a Pro for Golf

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The biomechanics and complexity of a golf swing could make your head spin. An elite player uses nearly every joint in their body to propel 900 kg of force to hit a ball in half a millisecond or so at impact. At the elite level, the club-head speeds can exceed 160 kilometers an hour, all the while taking only .2 seconds to accelerate the club to this speed. Furthermore, throughout the game, elite players maintain a consistent club-head alignment within 2 degrees from shot to shot. At this level of playing, the game requires core strength and stability, power, flexibility and balance.

So it’s no surprise that today’s top players take their preparation for the game very seriously. They are leaner, more flexible and muscular than previous generations. They are training like athletes to play at a consistently high level.

To excel at any sport you love requires preparation and training, and new research  offers some training ideas .The Canadian National Golf Team was recruited for a study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research this past May. The testing of these competitors looked at limb length, abdominal strength, pull-up strength, cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, balance, and leg power and how it all affects golf performance. The testing showed genetics gave some advantage to players with long limbs and height. Those long limbs generate much more force at impact in both men and women.  The results of a run test showed a relationship between a good cardiovascular base and total score short game and putting average.

The abdominal muscle endurance test s involved variations of forearm planks, where the body is held stiff using your arms and toes as pivot points. Strong internal and external oblique muscles on the dominant side of the female golfers helped swing power and drive distance. These muscles act like an anatomical girdle around your middle. There were also correlations between putting distance and 5 –iron distance, in both men and women, showing that core strength and stability are important to train. The balance test had the athlete stand on one foot, with the foot of the other leg against the lower part of the support foot. The test began when they were asked to raise the heel of the support foot from the floor, and to balance as long as possible.  Given the weight shifts and balancing primarily on the dominant leg that occur during backswings, and sometimes uneven ground, balance training was found to be very beneficial to performance.

Leg power was found to be more crucial for men than for woman for power during the golf swing. Upper body strength as in pull-ups and push-ups was correlated with drive distance. Forearm strength was different between the men and women, suggesting that very different recruitment patterns may be happening for the different sexes during different aspects of the game. (Distance in the male group; only putting in the female group)

Body angles, joint forces, and muscle activity patterns all sounds very complex. You can start to practice at least one good habit this summer by keeping your  warm-up simple, as another study of competitive golfers  warmed up  with 10 practice swings, then 15 full swings with their competitive clubs to longer lighter clubs,  as opposed to a 20 minute stretching routine. (Less force can be applied to the bone because of the slack in the tendon after static stretching).  It’s just a game, after -all.

Connie Aronson, ASCM Health Fitness Specialist                                                                                                        Published June 26 in The Idaho Mountain Express

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Are You Hungry For?

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Stare long enough at carrot cake in front of you and you will eat it. eventually you’ll take a bite or two out of it. Even if you’re stuffed, weren’t that hungry, or don’t particularly like carrot cake.

 It’s not that easy control sometimes, because the psychological drive to eat, our “head hunger” can take over. Not only are triggers such as stress and anxiety the wrong reasons to eat, but biology, conditioning and metabolic influences also drive our appetites and hunger. Researchers are studying at least 70 receptor sites on individual brain neurons known to play a role in how hunger works to shed some light on our hunger mechanisms.

True hunger, the stomach-growling kind, is an intense feeling of having to eat something, resulting from low blood glucose. We’re faced with hundreds of food choices every day, of wanting to eat, but good food choices go out the window when you are this hungry. Nor does it help us that our supermarkets tempt us with 17,000 new products on the shelves yearly, most of them dense with calories and fat. To make matters worse, when you’re over-hungry or skip a meal, the body needs to make up for this missing blood glucose to sustain itself and uses the amino acid alanine,which is stored in muscle. Overtime your lean muscle shrinks, and your body becomes better at storing fat. A better way to control your weight and hunger is to eat small meals throughout the day. Researchers found that female gymnasts and runners who ate less than what was required of their sport during the day had the highest body fat levels. Other studies that looked at athletes showed the ones that ate smaller, more frequent meals and snacks, instead of bigger end- of- day meals, had lower body fat and lower overall insulin release.

We receive signals from the brain when we want to eat and when we’ve had enough, but they aren’t always reliable. Ghrelin is one of the hormones responsible for wanting to eat.  When you’re sleep-deprived, this same hormone amps up to drive us to eat more, and decreases the turn-off switch, leptin, that tells us we’re full. A recent Standford University study showed that adult men’s appetites for high fat food increased by 45% when they were getting less than 8 hours sleep a night. Interestingly enough, anorexics are masters of ignoring these strong signals to eat. These signals to eat, if we listen to them, can help us understand our eating behavior .It just might be that maybe you really are exhausted, and need a nap, or you might be dehydrated, because you haven’t been drinking enough water.  Dr. Barbara Rolls, professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University, explains how you can eat normally, without dieting, if the foods you choose are simply less dense. For example, in her book, The Volumetrics Eating Plan,  a pale –looking traditional high-fat Shrimp Fried Rice, is transformed to one that includes broccoli, carrots, scallions, frozen peas, red and green bell pepper, fresh garlic and ginger. High fat-dense calories, like oil, are replaced by high fiber, lower calorie, nutrient rich vegetables.

It would be easy if there were just a pill to help curb our appetites and up our metabolism.  To date, 2 drugs are FDA approved and 300 clinical trials are underway that are tackling the complicated issue of obesity. The lifestyle changes involving diet and daily exercise are still your best bet to have a healthy, happy appetite for life!

Connie Aronson is an ACSM Certified Health Fitness Specialist, ACE Gold Certified Personal Trainer and an IDEA Elite Personal Trainer located at Koth Sports Physical Therapy in Ketchum. She is currently working on eating slower.

Published  August  10, 2007 in The Idaho Mountain Express.

 

Enjoy high altitude by staying hydrated

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Enjoy high altitude & high desert trips by staying hydrated

Enjoy high altitude & high desert trips by staying hydrated

Trust an Exum mountain guide to describe a day where the air looks good enough to gulp. Author and guide Jack Turner has a myriad of words to describe high altitude peak and meadow air: sharp, raw, crisp, and, yes, thinner. Most of us living here are used to the altitude, but there are some things you can recommend to friends and family while they are here to ski this March. Likewise, if you’re lucky enough to travel to Peru or Zermatt this spring, simple pre-cautions can prevent a lot of altitude-related illnesses. Ketchum, like Denver or Flagstaff, Arizona, is actually moderate altitude, (greater than 5,280 feet),and high altitude is defined as elevations above 8, 500 feet ( Baldy, Colorado ski resorts, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn, and of course, the highest summit, Mt. Everest at 29,028 feet.)
Nobody wants to start out their ski vacation with a splitting head-ache, and Dr. Keith Sivertson, Blaine County Emergency Medical Service Medical Director, has some good advice for visitors upon arriving here. Firstly, because we’re not sleeping above 8,000 feet, we are not technically high altitude; Ketchum is high desert. But altitude as low as 3000 feet can impose physiologic limitations on the body, and even mild dehydration can compromise performance during exercise. Add to that increased sweating and quick evaporation of that cold dry air, and you’ve lost up to 1-2 liters a day. Most people, especially those over 60, are sippers, and are not drinking enough to replace their sweat losses, furthering their risk of dehydration. A simple way to tell you are dehydrated, Dr. Severson says, is that you’re not having to get up in the night to pee (and that your pee isn’t clear in the morning).The American College of Sports Medicine suggests drinking two glasses of water two hours before exercise, and to drink during exercise at a rate that matches your sweat losses. In other words, as Dr. Silvertson says, much of the symptoms ski patrollers see at Seattle Ridge, like nausea, headaches, weakness and a heavy feeling are signs of dehydration, not high altitude sickness.
Getting off the mountain is important if there are any indications of any feeling of fullness in the chest, or a shortness of breath, as these can be serious health matters. Mike Lloyd, Baldy Mountain’s ski patrol director, has his staff trained to take no chances that it could be something of a more serious nature.
Evangelista Torricelli, in the 1600’s, was the first person to realize that the atmosphere above us create pressures that could support weight. At higher elevations, there’s less pressure of oxygen moving from the air into our blood, resulting in less oxygen to help our muscles & heart function. Many people experience high-altitude illnesses when they rapidly ascend to elevations above 8,000 feet. The most common of these is acute mountain sickness. Being in shape,( a good idea no matter what), or age seems to have no bearing on if you will develop symptoms either. More life –threatening are high-altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. Descending to lower altitudes and medical care are a must for these three illnesses.
While you may not know your susceptibility at high-altitude, there are some things to do for your next trip or a longer trek. Try to go a few days earlier, or if you can’t, try to pre-acclimatize by planning several week-end hiking trips to a similar target altitude in the month prior to departure, to judge whether you are susceptible to mountain sickness. While at attitude, stay hydrated, and consume enough calories. If you are skiing, trekking or climbing at altitude, you can be using up to 300-500 calories extra calories a day The energy used to support body functions, basal metabolic rate, burns up 200 of these calories, so it’s important to eat enough calories. Savor it all.

Summertime : taking care of you feet and ankles

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I couldn’t help but notice the 2 newsmen behind the morning CNN anchor, slouched like no tomorrow. Their necks were craned forward, maybe towards a good cup of coffee, but slouched nevertheless, as they sat their keyboards. While it may sound simple enough, sitting up very straight uses your muscles in a good way, without even going to the gym. Think of how uncomfortable your neck can get with a backpack, or heavy shoulder bag, if you let the upper back round forward or tip sideways. Many of our small daily habits, most stemming from poor body mechanics, whether sitting at your computer, golfing, or never stretching ,can contribute to many preventable aches, pains, and even sprains. This month the focus will be on good mechanics in the foot and ankle, to help you enjoy all the summer activities you love to do, without annoying little injuries.

 It’s All Connected. If you exercise regularly and walk, that’s great because you and your feet are getting exercise that promotes a myriad of health benefits. However, if you’re one of the 11 million people annually prone to ankle sprains or foot problems, fixing the problem is more than just putting on a high hiking boot to prevent another twist or fall. Your foot, consisting of 33 joints, 26 bones, and 3 naturally springy arches, support the entire weight of your body. Problems occur when your feet tip and tilt outward, like a duck, or collapse inward, where your arches are flattened and your knees roll in. Think of how exaggerated this can be if you’ve ever tried ice skating. Good foot alignment means your feet point forward. It’s taught in yoga as an essential pose. Called Mountain Posture, or Tadasana, and taught before attempting anything more advanced, you learn to keep your body weight even over the inner and outer edges of your feet, keeping your arches lifted. Imbalances in the foot in a dynamic sport like Alpine skiing can really make a difference in turning well right and left.

Train the balance receptors in your ankles to reduce the chance of losing your footing and re-spraining it by practicing rising up on your toes, barefoot, keeping the weight aligned over your big and second toes. Other factors come into play, when we look at the kinetic chain. (Hip bone connected to the thigh bone type-of–thing) When the knees roll in, most likely the outside of your thighs, the tensor fascia latae, is tight. This dense muscle is like a sleeve that covers the outside of the gluts and thigh. The inner thighs are usually tight in this case also. It also means that your gluts are probably weak.

Our feet cushion up to a million pounds of pressure during an hour-long hard work-out, and good shoes offer extra shock absorption. The New York Times recently ran an article on flip-flops. Researchers from Auburn University presented some findings at a recent meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, concluding that they’re best used for short periods of time, as flip-flops alter our gait. Since the toes don’t come up as much (from gripping them) as the leg swings forward, our stride length shortens, creating problems all the way up to the lower back. Similar to walking in high heels, the shortened leverage of the foot contributes to upsetting our gait from the foot upward.

Summer is so short, after-all, so for now maybe just toss your shoes off, enjoy a little bare-foot time sitting tall at your next picnic.

Printed in The Idaho Mountain Express July 25, 2008

 Connie Aronson is American College of Sports Medicine Certified Health Fitness Specialist, IDEA Elite personal trainer located at High Altitude Fitness and the YMCA in Ketchum, Idaho