Category Archives: Fitness Tips

Water-Plain Good Sense

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Nothing can be plainer than water, yet it is a vital source of life. It is an essential nutrient for us, and essential for all living things. Like the earths surface, our bodies are composed of roughly 60 to 70 per cent water. Blood is mostly water, and your muscles, lungs and brain are composed of 75%, 70% and 90% water respectively. We need water to regulate  temperature  and to provide the means  for nutrients to travel to our organs. Water also transports oxygen to our cells, removes waste, and protects our joints.  Yet many of us aren’t drinking enough fluids to keep us adequately hydrated. Although it makes sense that you would be thirsty if you needed water, thirst isn’t an indicator of hydration. By that time, lethargy, headaches, muscle cramps, or diminished performance are all warning signs that you might be mildly dehydrated.

Each day we need to replace 2.4 liters of water that we lose from breathing, sweating, and going to the bathroom. Broken down, we pee approximately 6.3 cups a day, plus another 4 cups of water through breathing, sweating and bowel movements. We can easily get 20% of the water we need through the food we eat. Fruits, for example, have more water than something dry like pretzels. The other 80% of fluid that you need comes from what you drink, and a little more than 8 cups, along with the food that you eat, will typically replace your lost fluids. In general, 8-9 cups is a good guideline, though variables such as your health, where you live and how active you are may vary person to person. A simple way to tell if you are dehydrated is that you don’t have to get up in the night to pee. ( Color should be clear )

Drink more water

I’ve always thought the title “drink more water” would be a no-brainer bestseller. Plain water fills you up. Researchers at Virginia Tech recently finished a 12 week study of 2 groups of people on the same diet. The only difference was that one group was told to drink 2 cups of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is no surprise that at the end of the study the water drinkers lost 30% more weight: 16 pounds to the 11 pound loss of the non-drinkers. The choices of waters with electrolytes, vitamins, sodium or caffeine is vast, and unless you are exercising for more than an hour, tap water, bottled or sparkling water is preferable, and slightly chilled, for increasing absorption. If you don’t really like water, try adding a squeeze of lime, lemon   or fruit slices to make it more palatable.

If you like plain brewed coffee, don’t worry. Once considered questionable for your health, coffee is not as much a diuretic as once thought. It is, if you drink more than 4 cups a day, but recent research shows that not only does it provide liquid, but valuable antioxidants as well. If you regularly consume caffeine the body will regulate itself to any diuretic effect .If you are sensitive to caffeine, as it is a nervous system stimulant, there is a vast array of herbal teas, many with soothing and healing properties. Again, water is the probably the best, inexpensive and readily available choice for hydration.

As the temperatures drop this fall, and you stay active, remember to drink at least 2 cups of fluid approximately 2 hours before you exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that you drink at least half a cup of water every 15 minutes during exercise. Whether you’re in spin class, hiking or practicing a vinyasa flow sequence, also drink another 2 cups of fluid for every pound you lose during exercise. A lot of water, I know, but it is the stuff of life. A simple prescription for a  happy healthy hydrated life.

Connie Aronson is American College of Sports Medicine Certified Health and Fitness Specialist , currently in the Mediterranean Sea enjoying the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lure and Myths of Diets

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“All excess calories are stored as body fat whether they come from fruit or fudge”
–What To Eat by Marion Nestle

 Diets come and go, all promising revolutionary changes, even though they really don’t work.  A recent Gallop poll showed than 52% of the adult population in the US is on a diet, fueling  a $35 billion industry, yet less than 5% of people can actually keep the weight off. In 2003,when the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet was all the rage, research had found that obese men and women , after 6 months on a low-carb diet lost 13 pounds on average compared to  a 4 ½ pound loss on a low-fat diet. But new research shows that eventually all that weight comes back on, and even more than pre-dieting. If you’re looking for a quick fix to lose some weight this spring, recognize that fad diets are just that, often eliminating important macronutrients, hyped by the media, and often ignore  basic exercise physiology. “People have been trying to figure out if it’s the carbs or is it the fat, when really it’s the calories, says Dr. Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “It doesn’t matter where the calories are coming from – carbs, protein, or fat-it’s the calorie balance. We’re trying to get people away from the idea that it’s a single food group or a single nutrient that’s causing the weight gain”

Melting the Myths: Fad Diets

If a diet promises quick weight loss, has limited food selections, is promoted as a cure-all, and recommends expensive foods or supplements, says Laura Kruskall, Ph.D., R.D., and Director of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, you can be sure it’s a fad diet. Typically heavy handed on its’ use of testimonials, or not recommending permanent lifestyle changes are other red flags of a fad diet. Diets such as Scarsdale, Fat Flush, Carb Addicts, Eat for your Blood Type, Food Combining, Suzanne Sommers, Zone, Protein Power, Medifast , Slimfast  and Sugar Busters all promise  quick initial weight loss and do deliver, at first, because they all are low calorie diets. But do they last? If you are losing more than 2 pounds a week, it is more likely the result of fluid and lean body mass loss. Aiming for ½ to 1 pound a week loss is more realistic. Watching your calories and regular exercise is also the key. We gain weight because the body’s furnace is not burning quite enough fuel to keep pace with how much more we are eating. If you’re repeatedly gaining and regaining the same 10 or 20 or 30 pounds year after year, you know that fad diets won’t help you in the long run.  Acknowledgement of the need for lifelong changes, being flexible in your food choices, along with the advice of a registered dietician, Dr. Kruskall says, is your key to success.

Low carb, high carb  or all protein?

It’s a myth that carbohydrates are bad for you. A new study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine March 2010 showed that obese people who followed a low fat diet were more likely to keep the weight off after three years than those following a low carb diet. Although they lost more weight in the first year, they regained more during the next two years. The lead author of the study, Marianne Vetter, medical director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it’s really hard to sustain a low carb diet. Carbohydrates provide valuable nutrients, dietary fiber and volume and should generally make up the highest percentage of macronutrients calories when you’re trying to lose, or gain weight. The thrill of the initial weight loss on a low carbohydrate diet is due to several factors: you’re taking in fewer calories as well as losing fat free mass, and losing valuable glycogen stores, which also flushes out valuable water.  Almonds, low-fat yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, red and green peppers, whole grain bread, tomato juice, hummus, lentils, soybeans and oatmeal ; the list is long and colorful, and are all examples of carbohydrates, all providing the body’s preferred energy source. Atkins may work well for some, but the research supports the view that low carb diets, whether extreme or moderate, don’t help you lose weight, says Dr. Frank Sacks, of the Harvard School of Public Health. (Those with metabolic syndrome, or diabetes should always consult with their physician) Healthy eating following a low calorie low fat diet rich in fruits, vegetables, beans, or fish will also protect you against disease. A study published in the journal Molecular Neurdegeneration tested the effects of several diets and were surprised to find that eating too much protein contributes to plaque buildup that may make you more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.  Mice fed a high protein/low carbohydrate diet (60% protein/30% carbohydrate) were 5% lower in weight than brains from all other mice, posing the question whether particular diets, if eaten at particular ages, might affect the susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease.

Instead of stress, food cues, moods, habits, obsessions, advertising, and social expectations; let  common sense and true hunger be your guide.

For more information, look at these health resource Web sites:

  • Nim.nih.gov/medlineplus/evaluatinghealthinformation.html
  • Mayoclinic.com
  • mypyramid.gov
  • Consumerlab.com
  • Supplementwatch.com

 

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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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.

A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

 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.

 

Restorative Napping

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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

We could all use a little nap. It seems that many of us just keep going until too much stress upsets our normal balance.

According to the American Psychological Association, a third of us are living with extreme stress that can lead to high blood pressure, insomnia, anxiety, heart disease and a host of other health problems. We worry, plan, over-schedule and maybe not pay enough attention to what’s going on inside ourselves. Maybe we are simply exhausted. Restorative yoga is a way to help you relax deeply for a few minutes a day. And no, it’s not an infomercial.

Here is where modern science and the ancient practice of yoga merge. B.K.S. Iyengar, author of the classic book “Light on Yoga,” first introduced props and blankets to his students who had difficulty holding specific yoga poses. He then discovered that he could help them recover from their illnesses and injuries with supported gentle yoga poses that not only stretched the spine in healthy ways but also enabled students to rest deeply in the poses.

Iyengar taught that to relax is to cut tension, and as you practice restorative poses you feel harmonious and balanced. This works by returning the nervous system to its natural state, a state in which the body has the ability to heal itself. The goal when doing the poses is to be aware and passive, not falling asleep. (The sleep state is different from the state of deep relaxation).

The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center studied restorative yoga and looked at its positive impact on emotional wellness in ovarian cancer patients. Imaging studies show significant increases in left-sided brain activity when one relaxes or meditates, which is associated with healing positive emotional states.

In her book “Relax and Renew,” renowned yoga teacher Judith Lasater suggested thinking of restorative poses as taking a short holiday right in your home that it adds to one’s energy rather than subtracting from it. It’s particularly helpful when you feel tired or weak, during big life-changing events, or recovering from an illness.
Race To The Top

“Twenty minutes of restorative yoga is the equivalent to a one-hour nap,” Lasater wrote.

And that’s just the energy benefits. The healing benefits abound.

Here are two simple poses to try: one at home, and the other at the office. The first one is Legs–Up-the-Wall–Pose. It refreshes your legs, especially swollen jet-lagged legs, enhances the health of your circulatory system by the mild inversion and gently calms the nervous system. (Don’t do this pose if you’re pregnant or if you have sciatica.) From a seated position on the floor, swing your legs up onto a wall, so that your tailbone and butt are not lifting off the floor. Your back should be completely supported by floor. If your chin is lifted towards the ceiling put a small pillow under your head to support your neck. Your chin should be slightly lower than your forehead, not strained. Keep your legs straight and relaxed with your arms comfortably out to the sides, palms turned up. Relax and take several long, slow breaths. Feel like your back is completely supported by the floor and your chest is open and free. Stay here for five to 10 minutes, and take your time when you come out of the pose.

The second nap is Desk Forward Bend, nice for a break at the office, at your desk. Lasater likens it to school days when she would simply lean forward and rest her head on her desk. Place your chair near your desk so you can lean forward, feet flat on the floor, and then lean forward and place your folded arms on the desk. Let the desk support your arms, head and worries, and relax completely for three to five minutes. When you’re ready to come up, inhale, and use your arms to sit up. Sit for one more long breath before carrying on with your day, refreshed.

Connie Aronson is an American College of Sports Medicine-certified, ACE Gold Level status-certified, and an IDEA Elite Level-certified personal trainer. She works at High Altitude Fitness and the YMCA in Ketchum.

Originally published in the Idaho Mountain Express – Friday, February 15, 2008

Training Muscles to Excel for Life

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Sometimes I get in my car and wonder how much longer it will hold out. I’ve had my car awhile and it’s reliable. All it really needs is an oil change, some gas in the tank and a look at the owner’s manual now and then.

Some of us may feel that way about our own bodies. We don’t want to get injured or hurt. You’ve probably heard that strength training increases muscular strength and endurance, bone mass, connective tissue and lean muscle mass, and reduces the risk of osteoporosis. Strength training makes everyday tasks easier. It also develops the quick reactive muscle actions necessary to avoid falls. All ages benefit, even people over 90 years old, and in particular, postmenopausal women who may experience a more rapid loss of bone mineral density. As the new year unfolds, here are some convincing facts about why and how you might want to do some strength training for some of the 430 muscles in your body.

Moderate-intensity strength training has many health and fitness benefits. The term covers a broad range of resistive loads and modalities, from light manual resistance to plyometric jumps, weight machines, barbells, dumbbells, elastic tubing, medicine balls, stability balls and body weight.

In each example, the exercise causes the muscle to work against a resistance that will lead to muscular adaptations and strength gains. Both men and women respond very similarly to weight training. Women shouldn’t worry about getting “big.” Men have 10 to 30 times more testosterone than females, which causes muscle build-up. In fact, you just may become leaner. Typical increases in lean muscle mass in up to six months of training range from 1 to 4 pounds. However, muscle is more metabolically active than fat, and we lose muscle as we age—two important facts.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends a minimum of eight to 10 exercises that train the major muscles of the lower body, upper body, abdomen and back, on two to three non-consecutive days per week. The range of movement should be comfortable throughout the full, pain-free range of motion. If it hurts or feels wrong, the exercise needs to be modified to suit your particular muscular or skeletal bio-mechanics.

Beginners will experience adaptations with just one set of exercises, mostly attributable to neurological adaptations than to bigger muscles, but as experience progresses, the sets and repetitions vary. Generally eight to 12 repetitions of an exercise are recommended, but you can vary the reps within the week also.

For example, on Monday try 12 to 15 reps, on Wednesday eight to 10 reps and on Friday three to five reps. That type of undulating system builds in a recovery that allows for better muscle tissue adaptation. Recent studies have shown that women predisposed to osteopenia or osteoporosis build bone better by lower repetitions (six to eight) and heavier weights for site-specific bone improvement, as in a single-arm shoulder raise, or weighted step-ups. Everyone should make sure to warm up for five to 10 minutes beforehand to increase muscle temperature and blood flow. Remember to breathe normally in the lifting and lowering phases of all exercises.

Originally published in the Idaho Mountain Express – Friday, January 11, 2008

Connie Aronson, an American College of Sports Medicine Certified, ACE Gold Certified, & an IDEA Elite personal trainer, works at the YMCA and High Altitude Fitness in Ketchum.