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.

Strong legs : learning the basic squat

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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.Nothing beats a great pair of legs. We need the strength of them to walk us through our lives. If you’re a skier, you can appreciate how hard your legs have to work on a powder day, as your hips and knees continually flex and extend. The lower body provides support and mobility for movement. The strongest muscles, for instance, the quadriceps, the front thighs, and your gluteals( posterior),  are powerful movers in  most every sport. No matter what your activity of choice may be, it is a good idea to keep them strong with a simple traditional exercise: the squat.

The movement seems simple enough: you “sit back “, as if you were to sit down a chair. Yet our bodies are a little more integrated than we think, as muscle is intertwined and inseparable from fascia. Rodney Corn, a biomechanics professor at the California University of Pennsylvania builds on the concept of how muscles are not islands by themselves. From the bottom of your foot, all the way up through your calf muscles, legs, hips, up to the top of your head is one continuous band of myofascia, transferring force from tendon to bone, all affecting each other. For example, the deep squat with the arms held overhead  is used as a movement assessment tool, as every joint in your body has to work. Here is where muscle imbalances show up. For example, if your knees track inward or outward, it probably indicates that your gluts are weak, or the inner thighs are weak and tight, or maybe your heels come up off the ground, indicating very tight calf muscles. Overtime, these kinds of compensations can lead to injury. Be aware of alignment, even though the squat seems simple enough, before you start adding either heavy weights or variations of a squat, such as a walking lunge exercise.

How-to:

Stand with your feet hip width apart, with your toes pointing forward. Bend your ankles, knees and hips as if you were sitting back in a chair. The authors of Strength and Conditioning Journal December 2009 use the cue to “sit back into the squat.†Shifting your weight backwards not only reduces the torque on your knees by decreasing the angle, but also distributes the forces throughout the whole lower body, not just the front thighs. Pause for 1-2 seconds, tighten your gluts, and extend your legs fully back up to standing.

Sitting back in the squat can also prevent you from arching your back. By engaging the glutes, it becomes easier not to arch the low back. Keep your spine in a neutral position. The authors suggest that repetitive extension of the lumbar spine beyond the anatomical limit (arching) places stress in the small bones that join the facet joints in the back of your spine, called pars interarticularis. Keeping  a neutral spine throughout the move increases stability through the spine and allows it to handle greater compressive loads. Once your movement patterns are ingrained, you can progress the difficulty of a body weight squat to ones that include free weights, weighted bars, kettleballs or medicine balls. The variations  are numerous.

A shallow squat might be better for you if you have knee pain or patellar tendinous, because more than anything, strong quads will help in your rehabilitation.

Knee flexion and extension strength was recently measured in competitors in the National Senior Games. They had an average of 66% greater isometric knee flexion strength and 38% greater extension strength than control groups because of the demands of 20 or more years of competing, and loading the skeletal muscle. Other research, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning  Research  Journal 2009 shows a 53% increase in leg strength after 6 months of resistance training in older men. The point is the basic squat is a good exercise to do. Stronger legs make for better days on or off the hill, or on the tracks this winter.

Connie Aronson is an American College of Sports Medicine Fitness Specialist located in Ketchum, Idaho

Printed in Idaho Mountain Express January 31, 2010

 

 

We Can Be Better-How Stress on our Long Bones is Good for Us

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A man is squatting on the floor with his hands in front of him.Modern man may not be the hottest athlete in history. Some prehistoric Australian aboriginals could possibly have outrun Usain Bolt’s 100- and 200-meter world record. With modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, it is possible that aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kilometers an hour chasing an animal. Anthropologist Peter McAllister, in his book “Manthropology; The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male,” believes our ancestors could most probably have outrun us, and opens his book saying to his male readers, “No ifs, no buts—as a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.” Ouch.

McAllister believes our predecessors were better at the basic Olympic athletics of running, jumping and throwing. His examples describe Roman legions completing more than one and a half marathons a day carrying more than half their body weight in equipment. The 26.2-mile marathon that thousands now participate in is not a strange genetic marvel, but proof of our ancient, inherited endurance capacity, dating back to the fabled Greek foot soldier, Pheidippides. We were great runners, millennia before these great armies and men, when primitive humans left the forests to seek out and hunt for food in the open plains. They had a crucial functional advantage—the ability to run long and fast to tire their prey.

What happened? Have we become a slovenly lot? In the United States, we spend a large part of our day sitting: driving to work, sitting at a desk at work, sitting for lunch, playing Nintendo, texting, sitting at the computer or watching television. I’m not suggesting that we give up all our modern conveniences and run barefoot in the mud or sharpen a spear to catch dinner. But research clearly shows that a lot of us have become sedentary.

Stresses and loads on our long bones are good for us. Dr. Walter Bortz, clinical associate professor at Stanford University, writes in “We Live Too Short and Die Too Long” that “the robustness of any bone is in direct proportion to the physical demands applied to the bone. Use it or lose it.”

The same holds true for incorporating as much moving as possible wherever and whenever possible during the day. New research shows that when rats are not allowed to stand, there is a large drop in lipoprotein lipase, the enzyme in the legs that captures fat out of the blood to be used by the body as fuel. Blood triglycerides soar, elevating the risk for cardiovascular disease.

If you do spend a good part of the day sitting, make some small changes—stand up and walk around more often, at least once every 30 minutes. At work, get up for some water or walk to a coworker’s desk rather than e-mail. Go for a fast-tempo, 10-minute walk break. At home, watching television, do some easy squats or curl-ups during commercial breaks or run up or down stairs for a bathroom break. Stand on one leg for one minute while you cook, or brush your teeth.

Above all, keep working out regularly. Make our ancestors proud.

Connie Aronson is a health and fitness specialist and personal trainer based in Ketchum.
Published November 13 2009 in the Idaho Mountain Express.

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Why Full Sit-ups Can Back-fire

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Core training is the foundation of great athletic performance, whether you’re a seasoned pro or week-end warrior. The core consists of the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex, and the thoracic and cervical spine-not just “abs”. 29 muscles attach to this powerhouse allowing   efficient acceleration, deceleration, and stabilization during dynamic movement. The abdominal wall, part of the core, is like an anatomical corset which also includes the deep transversus abdominis, which are below your belly button, internal obliques, the lumbar multifidus, pelvic floor muscles and the diaphragm. In any athletic move, these muscles work together, like a large stable column, to fire quickly and efficiently. This core, the body’s stabilization system, is like a good foundation on a home: if it’s not built right, the house will have problems somewhere down the road. In the gym, for example, someone lying on a weight bench lifting a bar for a chest press might have their lower back several inches arched in the air, demonstrating an inefficient core. So there is some misunderstanding of what kind of ab exercises work best to keep your mid-section strong .The full sit-up, for example, can place devastating loads on your spine. Simply modifying the sit-up to a partial curl-up, with the head and shoulders lifting a few inches off the floor, would be better.

In a New York Times article last month, titled Core Myths, the belief that the core means only the abs was challenged, for there is no science behind the idea. Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics and chair of the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo in Canada, compares the spine to a fishing rod supported by muscular guy wires. If all the wires are tensed equally, as in the whole lumbo-pelvic –hip complex, the rod stays straight. A core exercise program should emphasize all the muscles that girdle the spine, not just the abs, to ensure balanced strength. In his lab, he’s demonstrated how an average sit-up can exceed the limit known to increase the risk of back injury in normal American workers. In fact, in 1991, the safety of the full sit-up test was deemed no longer recommended for school-aged children as a means to test their abs. Instead, the partial curl was recommended.        

The full sit-up is 3 muscle actions: neck flexion, spine flexion, and hip flexion. It’s important to be able to sit up, no doubt, but repeated sit-ups   can place hundreds of pounds of compression on the lumbar disks. Hooking or holding the feet down places even greater stresses to the low back. Ironically, the bent knee sit-up has been taught to minimize the action of the hip flexor in the sit-up, though it is not correct. The abs can only curl the trunk. The sit-up is a strong hip flexor exercise whether the knees are bent or straight.

 Instead of full sit-ups, research shows that although there is no ideal exercise for each individual, the traditional crunch, or many variations of a curl-up, with the head and shoulders lifting a few inches off the floor, holding briefly, is a good exercise to challenge the abdominal muscles while imposing a minimal load to the lumbar spine. Speed of movement has an impact also. In The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research May 2008, curl-up speeds were shown to have a significant impact on spinal loads, and that the combination of slow and moderately controlled speeds  is generally recommended for health and fitness programs. In their opinion, at the competitive level, coaches can choose fast explosive trunk exercises, but to also aim for a more varied program that includes trunk endurance, strength and good motor patterns that ensure spinal stability.

McGill says that 3 exercises, done regularly, can provide a well-rounded core stability program: practice the curl-ups, learn how to do a side-plank (lie on your side and raise yourself in a straight line, and the “bird dog” (from all fours, hands and knees, you raise an alternate arm and leg level  for 4 or 6 seconds) .

 

 Connie Aronson is an ACSM Health & Fitness Specialist in Ketchum, Idaho

Printed in the Idaho Mountain Express August 28, 2009

 

 

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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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

Stare long enough at carrot cake, and you will eat it. Eventually you’ll take a bite or two out of it. Even if your’e stuffed, were not that hungry, or don’t particularly like carrot cake.

It’s not that easy to 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 theses signals are not  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 are 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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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

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