THE OTHER 15 HOURS OF THE DAY…
Did you get your daily workout done? Excellent! Now what other physical activity have you done today?
Going to the gym contributes to your active lifestyle, but alone doesn’t mean you live actively.
Just a reminder that a physically active lifestyle means physical activity is a feature of it. Said otherwise, past the hour you spend at the gym and eight hours you spend sleeping (ok, six), make it priority to be active throughout the other 15 hours of the day.
One, it’s a quality of life thing. Exercise uniquely and profoundly makes you better—stronger, sharper, calmer, more reasonable, more analytical—whether it’s 10 minutes of walking before (and after) a conference call or 60 minutes of body pump class.
Two, it’s a resilient motivation thing. The more activity you accumulate, the more you will want to accumulate from the well-being it evokes. The sustaining power strengthens each time you add to it.
What you do during the day past sleeping and getting to the gym dictates your wellness as much as…sleeping and getting to the gym. Kind of like credit card rewards where you get two airline miles for each one dollar you spend, prioritizing activity during the other 15 hours pays off!
WE ARE FAT…BUT IT’S CORRECTABLE!
It’s official: the world is fat, fatness is now a greater health challenge than hunger, and playing the lead role is none other than the US. Statistically, we are the fattest nation of our fat world. Great. Not a world ranking we want.
Step one to addressing a problem is admitting it exists. While I can’t speak for all 300,000,000+ of us, it works in our favor that the problem isn’t lost on many. So, step two is taking steps to correct it…pun intended.
In the scheme of wellness-degrading conditions, obesity/overweight is a very correctable problem. If each of us took a 10-minute walk right now, in 10 minutes we would be on our way to changing our health-related fate, and world ranking.
Yep, that’s how correctable this fatness thing is. Who’s in? 10 minutes of walking a day if you are just getting started, and then 10,000 steps every day once you have built your stamina.
Remember, with just ONE 10-minute bout we change our wellness trajectory – c’mon, and change yours right now!
FRIDAY FOOTPRINT FLASH – THE HEART OF THE MATTER
FOR your heart, running is the same as walking is the same as cycling is the same as basketball, is the same as…a gazillion other forms of activity.
IN your heart, different forms of activity are rank ordered according to what feeds your physical activity soul.
In a perfect world, your engagement in FOR is a neat and tidy expression of IN. A romanticist might dreamingly say it’s a natural force that draws our energy toward a particular activity form… But a humanist—the kind with two kids, a dog, and a demanding job—might say riiiight, meaning wrong, for IN is ultimately where the realities of time and place intersect, meaning yours is 5pm spin, or 7pm yoga, or 6am boot camp, or your mapped out 5-mile run.
Considering slammed schedules leaving few slivers open to exercise and the gym opportunistic for how it offers hourly programming, the ‘chosen’ form of engagement is the class scheduled during the sliver you can attend. Net/net, your exercise expression is more defined by the gym’s fitness class scheduler than impelled by intuitive force, so until the kids are grown, or the job settles (ha!) you may have to sacrifice the IN for the just-get-it-done of the FOR.
Ahh, so be it. Consistently doing the FOR will ensure that when you get to do the IN it will, I dare say, be to your heart’s content.
FRIDAY FITNESS FLASH – Family togetherness at the gym
FRIDAY FITNESS FLASH – Family togetherness at the gym
With schools on spring break and it being a holiday weekend, this week’s highlight was seeing families exercising together at the gym.
‘Moving families’ is in its own category of how parents can help kids develop regular exercise habits, even when perceived indifference makes it seem they don’t pay attention to what is said or done. The influential power of ‘talk the talk and walk the walk’ is even sharper when the talk occurs while matching strides on side-by-side treadmills.
Other than the style of headphones worn, there was scant difference between the exercise of the kids compared to their parents – I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the kids claim their parent’s ‘Beats’…
CARDIO CIRCUIT TRAINING CHALLENGE
Spice up your cardio workout with a simple circuit routine that doubles as a fitness event. Yep,
cardio sessions that build heart health AND feature competition and novelty to stoke your intensity-pushing and motivation-driving adrenaline.
First, decide how many components you want for your circuit challenge, and then, select the machines. The common choices include treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines, hand bikes, elipticals, and stair steppers/stair mills. If you are new to doing this sort of activity, you may want to begin by doing a ‘biathlon’ using the two cardio machines with which you are most familiar. (Add more/different machines to your repertoire to be able to use them for your next circuit challenge AND grow your Iron Footprint!)
Second, set your measurement metrics. Decide between setting the duration of time you will spend on each piece of equipment—and track the distance you cover, OR the distance you will cover—and track the time it takes to cover the distance).
For example, you could spend 10 minutes each on the treadmill and stationary bike and track the distance you cover. Or, you could time yourself for how long it takes you to walk/run 2 miles on the treadmill and then cycle 5 miles.
Keep track of your measurements – as FitBESTS – so you can track your improvement over time.
Keep in mind you can do ‘traditional’ events such as a timed 1-mile run, or ‘nontraditional’ events such as walking backwards for distance at a 20-degree incline. You can also include non-machine cardio exercises such as jumping rope and step-ups.
As your cardio capacity improves (along with your machine repertoire), you can add more components to keep creating unique challenges.
The way I see it, your gym membership allows you to use ALL the equipment, so make the most of your monthly credit card ding – here’s to biathlons, triathlons, quad-athlons, octathlons, heptathlons, decathlons…and any other ‘ons’ you can conjure!
YOUR ‘NEW YOU’ IN 1 DAY!
No doubt, you’ve heard the promise in one form or another: 30 days to a new you, 6 weeks to a new you, 12 week transformation… And, no doubt, after 30 days or, 6 or 12 weeks of sustained exercise you WILL be new, if not transformed in any number of ways.
But the magic of exercise is its power to bring on a new you in ONE day, then more new you each time after that.
Talk about return on investment (and it’s guaranteed). For each ONE day that you exercise, you get a new you. No break in or probationary period, or trial membership, or try-out—1 day to a new you, and a new you each and every time you exercise that includes a shortlist of improved energy, revved metabolism, stronger muscles, increased joint range-of-motion, balanced emotions, and cognitive clarity. Yes, after just ONE day of exercise…which, is especially important to realize for how it sustains our motivation.
To many of us, but mostly to the previously underactive or chronically-disappointed-by-exercise-results crowd, 30 days might just as well be 30 decades. It’s no secret that some doubt they will be able to string together two days much less 30. Realizing that ONE day yields benefit means that doing ONE day of exercise is an achievement worthy of recognition. The result of ONE day – the wellness benefit and the motivation boost from notching the achievement of doing exercise.
So stop focusing on 30 days, or 6 or 12 weeks from now and instead center on the new that you will be after exercising today. After all, why go for one new you in 30-days when you can actually get 30 new yous in 30 days?
FRIDAY FOOTPRINT FLASH – Check out your county’s health metrics
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute team recently released the fifth annual County Health Rankings, a report that uses 29 factors to assess the wellbeing of residents in nearly every US county.
The results reveal physical inactivity is decreasing and rates of obesity are leveling off, trends that deserve a glass-half-full head nod. But other results reveal access to activity engagement and healthy food is wealth-dependent, a persisting, unsurprising correlation since SES influences the built environment that either invites or dissuades activity engagement.
Glass-half-empty? On the one hand, any disparity is unacceptable, but looking at this report through the lens of other reports that also reveal encouraging physical activity and obesity rates brings us back to glass-half-full, especially if we dig into the how’s of the improved trends.
The common citizen CAN initiate built-environment change. Many engagement improvements are the ground swells of one person’s advocacy for programming and policy. Net/net, one person can make a difference—and when there are lots of ‘one persons’ making a difference, WE get healthier.
Need an idea to get started on your one-person mission? Here are two examples of policy change that would make an immediate impact.
One, ensure the quality of your community’s programming by requiring leaders to demonstrate competency, either through an earned degree or comparable acquisition of knowledge (reputable fitness certification). Considering the stakes, we can’t leave our wellbeing in the hands of someone who only might be able to help.
Two, increase accessibility to physical activity by instituting joint-use agreements that eliminate ‘territory’ barriers. Schoolyards are just the safe spaces many communities need to offer programming, but squirrely usage rules lock the gates late afternoon and on weekends. Joint use agreements between school districts and community-based organizations can pathway, literally, regular exercise benefits to residents.
Be a ‘one person’ for your community, and look for the results in next year’s report. Better yet, see it in the eyes of the people whose quality of life YOU have improved.
CHOICE – A FEATURE OF MODERN LIFE
Motor skill practice is an Iron Footprint Fitness pillar because the better your proficiency the more activity choice you have, and the more activity choice you have the more likely you will engage any given day.
It just makes sense. If limited to doing one thing, that one thing is going to get old fast. Variety appeals to human nature whether for what we eat, or wear, or how we exercise—and more so every day, the opportunity to exercise choice is a feature of modern life.
Our Ipods are filled with music we forget we have, our readers with material that spans all prose, our TVs offer channels many of us have no idea exist—wander around in the 800s if you haven’t—and, of course, the Web enables access to even more music…books…TV shows.
All this exercise of choice; except when it comes to exercise, which usually means going to the gym at the same time for the same class, or out for a walk/run around the same block. Nothing wrong with this, but even the best intended can get tired of the same, when one missed day becomes a string of several until we recover and return to…the same class or the same run.
There is a solution. Increase your exercise choice by adding motor skill practice to your routine. It’s never too late to improve skills, and you will be surprised how quickly you can develop proficiencies that allow you to add new activities to your repertoire.
Have a catch, hit golf balls, shoot baskets, play hopscotch. Then do it again, and before you know it, you will be ready for the recreation league. Most important your motivation will benefit from the choice it affords.
Don’t leave exercise in the prehistoric days of, gasp, 3G!
DON’T FORGET THE FUNCTION OF FUNCTIONAL FITNESS
If your gym follows trending fitness then no doubt it offers some rendition of ‘functional fitness.’ Whereas traditional strength training isolates muscle groups to induce strength, endurance, size or power gains (think barbell bench press), functional fitness is all about integration. It teaches muscle groups to work together, and the exercises almost always engage the core (think dumbbell shoulder press while standing one-legged on a Bosu ball).
Functional fitness is all about intra-muscular communication, especially because in traditional routines the upper body rarely connects with the lower body, and besides the antagonists talking to the agonists, other chatter is limited. Biceps day is biceps day, and any benefit to other muscles is (typically) incidental.
Functional fitness developed as a response to the seemingly improbable scenario of being able to bench press more than your body weight yet struggle to complete a benign task like putting an infant in a car seat. Physical activity professionals recognized that everyday movement was not isolative, thus overloading differently could optimize physical quality of life.
Fast-forward to now, and common to the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ dynamics that stir from lifestyle trends, functional fitness is the favored child while traditional strength training has been relegated to the dusty back rooms of gyms.
No doubt, the features of functional fitness make a significant contribution to wellness, cognitive as well as physical since control, synergy, and balance all stimulate different brain function than traditional strength training. But the all-or-nothing, or either-or stance is an ironic disservice to the very thing functional fitness touts – balance.
Like any approach to fitness, take care to engage in ALL of what we know to foster optimum wellness – cardiovascular exercise in its appropriate training zone, strength training to induce gains of strength, power and/or endurance, and stretching to sustain joint range of motion.
Mixing traditional and contemporary might be the ultimate in functional fitness since good old-fashioned strength, mass, and power training is beneficial just as that which induces synergy, balance, and integration.
Yep, and its ok to wear stripes with solids!
1-REPETITION MAXIMUM LIFTS – TREND THEM BACK
Remember when it WAS pc to talk about your maximum bench press or squat? Ah, the good ‘ole days! Today, the topic brings puzzlement or disgust, from either unfamiliarity or fear you will next strip down to your circa 1980 coaching shorts or leg warmers.
In contemporary fitness, the 1-repetition maximum lift (1-rm) faces extinction given the creation of various iterations of circuit training, and the evolution of weight machines that push free weights to the nether regions of the gym, rendering them prehistoric, almost museum-like in their (dusty) display.
1-rm’s, where it’s you versus a bar loaded with as much iron as a muscle group can successfully push or pull one time, are strength metrics. They are the epitome of isolated, one-dimensional down/up or up/down moves that make contemporary fitness-ists cringe, for there is nothing functional, integrated, or core about them.
Here though is a reminder of how valuable, powerful, if you will, 1-rm’s are to your exercise program, both for their contribution to your overall fitness and impact they have on your motivation.
Muscular development requires tasking your muscles with work that exceeds normal capacity. Called overload, muscles respond by calling in reinforcements to get the job done which results in enhanced fibers, meaning strength or endurance increases. Just as there are different types of strength training routines, there are also different types of overload. Adding 1-rm’s to your routine is a different type of overload than what your routine elicits. Different is good for how it stimulates a unique muscular response that leads to strength, endurance and/or power gains that otherwise wouldn’t be tapped.
1-rm’s gift to motivation lies in the simple objectivity of tracking strength gains. Last month’s 100lb bench press pales compared to this month’s 120lb bench press. Not only do we benefit from this aspect of improved fitness, our motivation strengthens from realizing the achievement.
1-rm’s may be down with contemporary fitness trending away from them, but never count them out. Let the old become new again for they can make a serious contribution to your fitness and exercise motivation.
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