Hear How You Run

Two of the most recognizable and successful brands in America, Nike and Apple have collaborated to develop a cutting edge fitness innovation.

The Nike + iPod Sport Kit monitors your running experience by transmitting data through a wireless connection between your Nike shoe and your iPod nano.   The microchip tracks speed, distance, time, and calories burned while real-time spoken feedback announces milestones throughout your workout .   The PowerSongs option integrates your favorite iTunes selections.   The kit works with the iPod nano 1G, 2G and 3G and any Nike+ shoe.

* Futuristic Factor: *****
* Fun Factor: ****
* Fitness Factor:****

Virtual Reality Enhanced Cycling Systems

Although The Expresso Upright Stationary Bike is designed for commercial fitness clubs (you can’t afford it), the cool factor merits a mention.   This futuristic system engages not just the muscles but also the mind by fusing exertainment with web-based personalization. Imagine playing a visually stunning video game, but instead of planted on the sofa with a game pad, you’re actually riding a top-of-the-line recumbent or upright stationary bike.   The handlebars move for realistic steering as you pedal and compete on an interactive course, creating the immersive illusion of being on the open road.   The web based high-res screen delivers personalized, real time fitness information. You can set goals, track progress and log data online, taking your workout places it’s never been.

* Futuristic Factor: *****
* Fun Factor: *****
* Fitness Factor: *****

A Personal Trainer in Your Pocket

Easily bored by your exercise routine? Get personalized guidance form Hollywood fitness trainers on your iPod or MP3 player. ITRAIN Personal Trainer downloadable programs include customized audio routines for running, walking, cycling, rowing, climbing, sculpting, stretching, swimming, boxing, pilates and yoga.   Celebrity endorsements include Courtney Cox, Sarah Silverman and Olympic Gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin. If you’re apathetic about your current exercise routine, iTRAIN’s ever-changing menu of workouts will keep things new and fresh.

* Futuristic Factor: ***
* Fun Factor: ****
* Fitness Factor: *****

Transform Exercise Into “Gamercise”

Some fitness-themed games can only keep your attention for a short time before becoming boring and routine. What sets this system apart is the ability to plug in to any of your favorite games or systems.   Gamercize interacts with your Xbox360, PSP3 or Wii, letting you play normally while exercising – but when you pause the game pauses with you.   Adjust the exercise level to maximize enjoyment of the game and provide the greatest fitness benefit. The system records your statistics and you’ll be amazed at how much workout time you’ve logged when the game is over.   The Gamercize system is available as a cycle or stepper, the best choices to leave your hands free to operate the controller.

* Futuristic Factor: ***
* Fun Factor: *****
* Fitness Factor: ****

Monitor Body Fat with a Bioelectrical Impedance Algorithm

The Omron Body Fat Monitor and Scale uses full body sensing technology to accurately measure weight, body fat, visceral fat, skeletal muscle and resting metabolism. Knowing you’re losing actual body fat, not just water weight will keep you motivated, and the additional indicators help determine your ideal exercise levels and calorie intake.   How does it work? Bioelectrical Impedance (BI) is an accurate and safe method of screening body fat. Muscles, blood vessels and bones have a high water content that conducts electricity easily. Body fat has little electric conductivity. The monitor transmits a harmless electrical current (you won’t feel it) through your entire body. It then calculates the amount of fat tissue using a formula that factors in electric resistance, height, weight, age and gender.

* Futuristic Factor: *****
* Fun Factor: ***
* Fitness Factor: ****

Track Cardio & Weight Lifting Progress on Your Wrist

For the gadget loving exercise enthusiast the Polar F55 Heart Rate Monitor for Fitness and Weight Lifting takes fitness monitoring to a new level. This multi-purpose device tracks three essential components of good health – cardiovascular, strength training & relaxation.

* Cardiovascular: Wireless ECG Heart Rate Monitor
* Strength Training: Body Workout Program (counts sets, reps and recommends weight)
* Relaxation: OwnRelax Program (checks the body’s state of relaxation and helps you “listen” to your body)

The Polar F55 prescribes the best total body program for your fitness level, and all training data can be uploaded and tracked on the Polar Personal Trainer website.   After 3 weeks of following the initial exercise program the unit will ask you to re-test your fitness level and then recalculate the next three-week program. This ongoing cycle of monitoring and testing is a great motivator.

* Futuristic Factor: *****
* Fun Factor: ***
* Fitness Factor: *****

Globally Position Your Workout

Take your ride to the next level with the Garmin Edge 305HR+ GPS Navigator. With this Bicycle Computer, Heart Rate Monitor and Cadence Sensoron board you’ll always know where you’re going and how far you’ve gone.   The easy-to-install and highly sensitive device measures pedaling cadence, heart rate, speed, distance, time, calories burned, altitude, climb and descent.   The “Virtual Partner” makes your training more fun by matching you against a virtual competitor. The training timer auto pauses when you drop below a specified speed and resumes when you speed up again. Auto Lap automatically triggers a lap every time you pass a specified location or travel a preset distance.   From competitive road racing to mountain biking, the cyclist-friendly, lightweight Edge will keep you engaged on the path to achieving your personal best.

Do you want to lose weight in a healthy way? If yes, it is important that you focus on exercise, as exercise is the fundamental of weight loss. You may ask why exercise is so important in weight loss process. Here is the reason;

In order to lose weight, you must try to reduce the amount of calorie you put into your body. Some people misunderstand this concept by assuming that they have to stop eating 3 meals a day or stop eating for 2-3 days. This is very dangerous to your health when compare to the proper exercise.

The advantage of exercising is you burn off the calories in which your body can use to help you lose weight in a natural and healthy way. If you have plan to loss a lots of weight, you may need the exercise that can burn the most calories.
There are many ways that you can go about using exercise to help you lose weight. For beginner, you can buy a small set of exercise equipment such as exercise balls or dumbbell within your own budget.

Some of you might have a limit budget on buying exercise equipments so you may consider taking the time to check your local fitness clubs instead. Some fitness clubs have an expensive membership fees because of their lots of expensive exercise equipments. However, you can also find a number of them with affordable membership rates.

The good time for doing an exercise is depend on individual person. Some may want to do the exercise after work, before work or during lunch time, that doesn’t matter as long as you incorporate exercise into your weight loss plan because this is the only natural and healthy way to lose weight.

There are 2 types of sports clubs; those that offer multiple disciplines in sport and those that only offer one. The more disciplines a club offers and the bigger its membership base, the more powerful it becomes. Single discipline clubs tend to be smaller than multi-discipline clubs, but in certain cases they too can rise to great power. Clubs can offer these disciplines at an amateur or professional level, or both. Clubs also offer a range of programmes including competitive, recreational and instructional programmes.

The competitive programmes are usually held in different leagues to ensure that players of all levels get a chance to compete. There are also a variety of championships and tournaments that individuals are entitled to enter under the club name. If a club is lucky and has sponsorships or enough members to bolster its coffers, it may have enough money to subsidise tracksuits or t-shirts for its members so that when they do compete in tournaments they are able to wear club colours. It is often the smaller recreational clubs who don’t have identifying club colours, but they usually make up for it with club spirit. Bigger, more professional clubs may have club tracksuits, t-shirts and badges to identify themselves. They may have an established fan base and will probably have modern training facilities.

All clubs require their members to pay membership fees. That is part of how they make their money. Most businesses are happy enough to sponsor prizes for once off occasions like a championship finals day or a tournament but are very reluctant to provide long-term sponsorship, unless the club is big and well known and popular within the community. Being on a winning streak also helps. Then they are only too happy to be associated with the club on a long-term basis, which is handy for buying all the modern training equipment. If the team is really big and successful they could have TV rights, there could be transfer fees from players and in some cases there is merchandising. If you earn an income from merchandising then you know that you have hit the big time.

Wikipedia says that sports management is “a field of education and vocation concerning the business aspect of sport. Some examples of sport managers include the front office system in professional sports, college sports managers, recreational sport managers, sports marketing, event management, facility management, and sports information.”

I think that means that sports management takes care of all the admin in sport as well as all of the organising and arranging. It probably includes a lot of the functions of a committee i.e. the secretary for notes and paperwork, the treasurer for money, the chairperson for general management purposes. Without a structure in place to take care of these tasks there would be chaos and nothing would ever get done. No events would be organised, no training would take place, there would never be any money or if there was, no one would know where it was or how to get hold of it or what to spend it on (other than themselves). Worst of all there would be no one to complain to because with no one in charge who is there to blame?

The bigger the club the more complicated sports management becomes, presumably. If the club is a multi-disciplined club then there may be many subcommittees for each of the disciplines. They would all have a representative on the large overriding committee to report on activities and functioning. The overriding committee would have to keep on top of all the subcommittees and know what is going on in all of them and help them sort out their problems as they arise or delegate tasks for each sub-clubs that would help with the overall running of the club. It would be quite a monumental undertaking and would require great organisational skills.

In cases like this it may help to have an online sports management system, which simplifies a lot of admin tasks and makes the information easily accessible and easily understandable once you have accessed it. An online management system will also allow the club to store all kinds of valuable data such as information on opposition players, opposition weaknesses as well as own team weaknesses, opposition strengths and own team strengths. You can store information on each game and statistics related to the game in general. The more information that you gain and store the more your teams benefit.

Online sports management systems allow you to be organised and efficient as well as keep up to date on all relevant information. All of this is to the benefit of the club and will help to make the club a winning club as well as a powerful one.

In talking with people, it is interesting to discover how many people attend a gym to keep fit. In the past, life itself was exercise enough. Just getting from place to place and working for a living was enough activity. Coming home from work, on foot, moms had to do laundry and cook the old yfashioned way and often, as in my childhood home, heating water and using a space heater or wood stove for heat. Even keeping warm was an activity.

Ok, now that I have that off my chest, I am back in this century. I do, however, think that we can find ways of getting and keeping fit without paying exorbitant fees to a gym. Even if your reasons are for social interaction, I am sure we can solve that as well.

First of all it is important to be checked out by your doctor to make sure that you are in good health in order to begin your exercise routine. Discuss with doc your plans for beginning a good routine and get his advice.

I am sure that you will have read that doing heavy activity once a week, or every once in awhile, is probably worse than no activity at all. It is extremely hard on our bones and muscles to do this. The answer is in smaller, day by day steps. Even if you have heard this all before, it is still worth reading again.

Our daily activities have decreased dramatically since the 1950’s. Every little thing we did then was activity. Consider that you had to get up from your chair to go and change the television channel; mom did the dishes by hand; she probably walked to do her shopping daily; and also walked to catch the bus. Usually children walked to school by themselves, but even if mom took them, they all walked. She hung her clothes outside and probably walked up and down the stairs twenty or more times a day.

If we take a good look at our lifestyles, we will see many places where we can increase activity without taking time out of our schedule or paying a lot of hard earned dollars.

Consider that if you drive to work, stop and park a few blocks away and walk the rest of the way.

If your company has an elevator, resolve to walk the stairs. If it is very high, just walk a few floors until your body becomes stronger.

Stop driving the kids everywhere and walk with them. Take a walk after dinner instead of sitting in front of the television. Take the dog for a few extra blocks. Walking as much as possible will dramatically improve your overall health.

Some people like to use a pedometer to gauge their progress. If this is you, definitely do it. Set a target for number of steps and work towards that goal. A starting point might be something like 3,000 – 4,000 in the beginning and working up to 10,000 daily steps.

Do the chores the manual way; wash dishes; hang clothes to dry; wash floors; wash the car; etc.
Play active games with the kids, or spouse such as tennis, skating, swimming, hiking. Rather than staying indoors in nice weather on days off, pack a couple of sandwiches and head out for a nice hiking day.

Ladies, you can rearrange your kitchen so that you will be bending and stretching more than usual. It is surprising how this can get that tummy back into shape.

These are a few ideas to get you moving. If, after you have made changes in your lifestyle you still want to join that gym, by all means do so.

Something else to think about. Did you know that a very large percentage of gym patrons only attend a few times and then drop out? Their registration fees are never refunded.

Linda is a retired piano teacher in Toronto married to the retired Chief Works Supervisor of the Water Supply for Toronto. She is interested in all environmental issues, budgeting, homemaking, frugal living and shopping, recycling, reducing, reusing and all things green. Currently she is working on a project with her friend/partner on how to make your life more simple.

Linda has a golden retriever dog named Rusty and a cat named Dusty. She is also involved in The Therapeutic Paws of Canada and her Rusty will be a regular visitor at a nearby nursing home. When she has spare time, she likes to play the piano with her duet partner and also her husband.

Anaerobic fitness is the force component of fitness in general, which also contains at least two other essential components: aerobic fitness (the part of cardio-vascular resistance) and joint mobility. Speed and skill are native qualities and they are not very relevant for the health state – which is the main concern in mass fitness, the one meant to keep the body in good shape.

The purpose of anaerobic training programs is developing the force, the fortifying of the body or the muscular mass. There are situations when only force or muscle fortifying is intended. The typical example for these situations is given by the sports organized in categories, in which physical force (with the interdiction of going over a certain limit of weight) is tested. Growth of muscular mass determines increase of force and fortifying of the skeletal muscles. In this case, the fitness programs are very similar to body building trainings, without being followed by the spectacular, yet dangerous changes, specific to body building.

The purpose of anaerobic fitness is uniform, balanced and harmonious development of all the muscles, without ignoring their functionality. This last idea is important for making a clear difference between fitness and the tendencies, many times narcissistic, manifested by body building practitioners. The sportsman who takes up fitness wants to be able to and is able to do something with his muscles, more than showing them in contests or in different other occasions and places (disco, swimming pool, clubs, etc.).

One of the important characteristics of anaerobic fitness trainings is the use of general programs, during which all or almost all the muscles are worked out in one training session. In body building the programs are divided and trainings are focused every time on one, two or at most three groups of muscles; while in fitness one training can be focused on a certain area, but it does not exclude the other muscles, which will benefit, directly or indirectly, of at most one exercise for each group of muscles. This way, the programs are not excessively long; they take an average of one hour and fifteen minutes; thus the catabolic faze is avoided; this usually appears in very long training sessions (two hours or even more).

Another modality of reducing the time of training is doing super-series whose object is to train two antagonistic groups of muscles (chest and back or biceps and triceps, etc.). Thus, for each group of muscles must be performed a series of exercises, without a break in between; the break is taken only at the end of this double effort. The programs can also contain triple series or even giant-series (more than three exercises one after the other). The intensity of the training can be considerably increased: many muscles can be trained in a short time.

The weekly frequency of the training remains the same (three sessions); so the aerobic phase can be covered in the free days. If only three or even two weekly sessions are possible, mixed programs can be adopted: after the anaerobic fitness, always done at the beginning of the session, 15-20 minutes of aerobic fitness are added for balancing the two phases (anaerobic and aerobic). In this case, also, training must not take longer than one hour and a half; otherwise the phase of catabolic processes is initiated – a phase in which muscles ’self-cannibalize’.

Anaerobic fitness is recommended to all somatic types, with specific differences of modality of training.

In the cases of ectomorphic and mezomorphic types, all the series (3 or 4) performed on the same machine must be finished, and then the machine and the group of muscles which is trained must be changed at the same time. This system is also called ‘workshop training’.

In the case of the endomorphic type (the overweight), circuit training is preferred: the group of muscles trained is changed after every series and the whole circuit must be repeated three or four times. This type of training consumes more calories because an aerobic component is introduced by not having breaks between series and slightly increasing the cardiac frequency.

Growth of muscular mass through fitness programs can’t exceed one weight category (5-6 kg), but they do not misbalance the other motion parameters.

Gaby Munteanu is a fitness trainer, with over 15 years experience, and editor at http://www.healthfitnessworld.com. HealthFitnessWorld.com – Health, Fitness, Body Building, Weight Loss, Nutrition – Articles and Resources.

HealthFitnessWorld.com is dedicated to providing high-quality, free advices, tips and resources on health, fitness, body building, supplements, nutrition, weight loss, beauty, massage, acne, medicine, depression, massage.

This article may be reprinted or published without the author’s consent as long as the “About” and “weblinks” are kept intact and active.

Fitness equipment leasing may be the answer to the growing demand for fitness facilities. Health-consciousness is slowly starting to stir among the masses. With it comes an awareness of the importance of exchanging an overweight, inactive body for a strong, lithe physique.

Although there are many ways to achieve this goal, a gym membership will always be one of the most popular choices.

The benefits these outfits gain by leasing fitness equipment, are numerous. To survive, a new gym has to keep overheads as low as possible. Leasing, rather than purchasing, enables you to do this.

Fitness equipment leasing allows you to have access to new technology or specialized equipment as soon as it becomes available, without committing your business to a substantial financial outlay. Constantly upgrading your facilities, is an important factor in staying ahead of the competition.

The additional financial benefit of never being stuck with obsolete equipment, can be considerable.

By not tying up a large chunk of your capital in equipment, you will be in a better position to manage day to day expenses, while your venture finds its feet. If you need to expand, you can do this by leasing fitness equipment, without stretching yourself to the limit, and compromising the stability of your business.

Borrowed finance goes hand in hand with high interest rates. When leasing fitness equipment, the long term benefit in saving on this aspect alone, becomes substantial.

As fitness equipment leasing will be shown as an operating expense, tax benefits will also flow from organizing your business in this way. It is even possible to structure payments to accommodate the flow of business in your establishment, further strengthening cash flow during the slow months.

Whether you are looking for multi stack gyms, ellipticals, benches, treadmills, cycles, steppers, or more specialized equipment, you will find it available on a leased basis.

Your business will function with more flexibility, and be able to deal with higher demand periods efficiently. Customers with special needs can also be taken care of without hardship to the business.

A trusting relationship with an experienced fitness equipment leasing company offers reliability, the ability to arrange speedy financing, and a low payment schedule to suit your needs – all important factors in keeping you competitive.

Some of the large manufacturers such as Cybex, offer their own fitness equipment leasing options. Here you have the added advantage of working with knowledgeable people on both the financial and equipment sides. They know the industry well, and structure leasing agreements accordingly. Cybex Capital sport a 96% approval ratio.

Cybex offers various fitness equipment leasing programs. The contract includes options such as deferred first payment programs, annual payment programs for schools and universities, or seasonal payments. There are also programs available for new clubs, and existing club expansion.

A Fair Market Value Lease is also available for utilization by schools, YMCA’s and other organizations. This option offers tax benefits, lower monthly payments, no end of lease obligation, and new equipment every three years. If you make use of this fitness equipment leasing option, you won’t have to be concerned about how you are going to fund a security deposit, as this isn’t required.

Many companies and organizations are realising that by establishing an in-house gym, they are making a positive investment in the future productivity of their employees.

The results will be seen in fewer sick days taken, a surge in employee-stamina, and a less stressed-out workforce. Most importantly, the bottom-line of the company (and its employees!) will give a clear indication of the benefits. By leasing fitness equipment, they have the opportunity to start such a program without a crippling capital outlay.

Documentation involved when leasing fitness equipment for the first time, includes filling out a credit application form, copies of tax returns for principals, personal financial statements, equipment listing, and business plan copies.

Existing businesses will have to include company tax returns, and interim company financial statements. Response time after providing this, should be between 2 and 5 days.

Whether you have a small outfit, ordering a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, or are well-muscled and in need of leasing fitness equipment in the seven-figure range, you will be able to find a leasing option suitable for you.

Find the right fit for you, and watch your profits grow.

Come June and it means goodbye freedom to many parents. This group of gym-goers anticipates the fact that once the school closes for the summer, their freedom would be clipped to painful proportions.

Don’t blame the parents. Any personal trainer can tell you that it’s true. June is the month when parents push on their training as if it was going to be their last time that they would see a treadmill or the weights again. This drive comes from their realization that they would not see their gym for the next couple of months, unless they do live a lavish life and can afford maids and babysitters.

Personal trainers notice that their clients are making good use of their personal training coupons. Some parents come to the gym until they run out of them. Others just let the coupons expire. Yet, this is the month when a typical gym meets its quota for personal training sales. It helps when everyone seem to use their sessions at around the same period.

Personal trainers know that this golden period would end once the summer vacation starts in schools. They feel the pinch when gyms see a huge slump in sales. This is a period when the gym-goers try to adjust to their roles as baby-sitters, a reality that had taken a detour while the school was in session when the parents had blissfully relegated their baby-sitting role to their child’s teacher. Now that the overworked, underpaid teachers have taken their vacation alongside their students, the parents and their trainers suddenly realize how miserly they had been in appreciating the role of teachers.

This is a time when many parents rely on community pools to keep their children busy. Some parents with deeper pockets send their kids to camps. Some others do not have this luxury to send their children to these, should we say, more expensive baby-sitters. They stay home.

Whether the children are at the pool or their homes, they have been able to keep their parents from going to the gym, much to the dismay of personal trainers whose survival, it seems, depends on the numbers set by the management of their respective gyms.

So while the clients are gone for an indefinite amount of time, jobs of a personal trainer suffers from greedy repercussions of the management. Quotas are not respected. The trainers try to seek new clients in order to meet their monthly sales, but to no avail. They get slapped in the wrist by management because they didn’t bring the amount, say, $1500 monthly sales for Level 1 (personal trainer), $3000 for Level 2 (Pro Trainer), and $6000 for Level 3 and 4, so on and so forth.

The management of other clubs works in the variation of the above example. They are more or less the products of the same greedy machinery that places burden on the trainers to maintain a certain number of clients for their gyms.

When the personal trainers work for a company, they are protected by insurance if a gym member or client gets injured while being trained by the in-house personal trainer. A personal trainer has to be extra careful if he is working as a subcontractor. He is his own responsibility, especially if his client was injured because he was, say, staring at a beautiful gym member passing by and not paying attention to his client.

On the other side of the spectrum, personal training as a profession is pretty enjoyable. The trainer is his own boss. He makes his own schedule. Or rather, his clients pick the time and the trainer makes himself available to help this client. Appointments do not always take place as scheduled. Cancellations happen, especially during the winter season. This is when certain policies have to be enforced, such as a 24-hour cancellation policy, in which a client has to tell his trainer 24 hours in advance that he will be not be able to make it, sick or not. If not advised, a trainer can charge the client for the missed session.

Certain gyms have a monitored system when it comes to personal training session to evaluate quotas from the trainers. If the trainers do not meet the quotas they stand on shaky ground–they better start looking for employment at another gym. For this reason June is a month that it hard for the trainers to hold in high esteem.

Although the gyms see a drop in their sales, there would always be a faithful or two of regular gym-goers especially for the fact that this is also a month when many people head towards the beach for fun and relaxation. Extra reason to perfect their abs or their curves.

It is hard to determine how important it is to have some kind of relaxation. The West Coast, it seems, definitely knows how to relax. They seem to spend their whole lives relaxing. The East Coast, however, seems a bit uptight. It must be the weather or something more serious. Whatever be the cause or the difference in approach to relaxation, everyone – be they at East Coast, West Coast, or anywhere in between –seem to be in a mood to unwind, personal trainers including.
In this time of the year, even the personal trainers are likely to consider vacation for themselves. This is true especially when considering the fact that most of their client-base is doing the same. If one notices a decline in the number of personal trainers in the gyms, he’s not mistaken – the trainer is either on vacation, or is pumping iron in a gym next door.

Strange as it may sound, a trainer rarely does his workout at the same gym where he actually works. So if he works at one gym, he probably is not there when he does his workout. This explains his reduced presence in any given gym. Some trainers believe that they will lose the effect of a good pump if they workout in the same gym that they work. They feel the urge to change venues.

Changing venues can be expensive for the trainers too. But the trainers can turn this odd in their favor if they choose a gym that has branches in other locations. When a trainer — or a client for that matter– buys a membership, he can go and workout in the different gyms within the network. If the network has gyms outside of the given State so much the better for the members. This is a boon to frequent travelers who also wish to keep their workout schedule wherever they travel. If only more people shared this idea, America would be a healthier nation: obesity, for example, would surely lose its weight.

Now, before you go crazy on me… hear me out.

I’ve been in the health and fitness industry (more specifically health clubs) for a while now and I really have to say that if I were to start a club from scratch… I wouldn’t include an aerobic program at all.

Why?

Because I’ve never REALLY seen these programs work.

Sure, I’ve seen people start to drop weight with step aerobics, but they tend to plateau extremely quickly and plateaus lead to frustration. Frustration leads to doubt and doubt leads to failure.

Studies have shown that aerobic activities can burn away valued muscle AND have shrinking effects on the heart and lungs. Now, of course I’m not taking about aggressive cardiovascular routines that truly challenge the body.

No, what I’m referring to are the activities that try to “put” you in a certain target rate… you know… the vaunted “fat burning” zone.

Listen to this:

Yes, it is true that your body burns more calories from fat when you are operating at a certain effort level like what is experience when most people are involved in activities like step aerobics.

However, what you truly miss out on are the “afterburn” effects that other types of exercises can provide. Most people lose any and all the benefits of a heightened metabolism within 30 minutes of finishing a step aerobic workout. Compare that to the 72 hour lift in metabolism that interval training and weight training can provide and you can now start to understand why many of the people that are actually on the workout floor subjecting themselves to more grueling workouts look and feel better than their “step aerobic” counterparts.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the step aerobic DVD’s and tapes that go on sale in places like Walmart or even on TV…

Don’t waste your money.

Most people only do these tapes for a short amount of time and then they quit.

Why?

No results… it’s too convenient… it gets stale… etc.

Remember, your body is an INCREDIBLE assembly of systems and it’s ability to adapt to any given stimulus is quite remarkable. That being said, the other downfall of step aerobics is that you are always doing the same routines over and over again and you adapt.

Adaptation = NO RESULTS

There is one good thing about step aerobics though…

Most step aerobic classes are VERY SOCIAL and this social atmosphere actually helps people to continue their workout programs.

I like social programs and working out… the right social program properly formatted will give you incredible results.

Unfortunately, step aerobics really doesn’t fit the bill of what I would consider “proper formatting”.

“Greg” just couldn’t keep still. In a meetings, he’d fidget in his chair or jiggle his legs. If a conversation took place in the break-room or hallway, he’d do a little two-step while he talked. On phone calls, he’d pace back and forth like a tiger on a leash. Greg’s restlessness may have been a symptom of a medical condition or he may have just been one of those people who moves their bodies a lot. It bothered some people that he couldn’t keep still but, whether Greg was conscious of it or not, he was healthier for all of his extra movement.

A recent study indicated that people who naturally fidget are burning more calories than those of us who naturally keep still. If one of our goals is improved health, we may want to take a page from Greg’s book and keep our muscles moving and our blood flowing throughout the day.
Watch athletes when they are “at rest”. They are often moving just like Greg.

When people say they cannot exercise everyday, the most common excuse is lack of time. One tip is to stop trying to find the time and instead make the time. Exercise does not have to involve health clubs, membership dues, spandex and a plethora of exercise machines and equipment. Exercise is simply increasing the movement of your body. How much of an increase and what type of movement is up to you.

Like Greg demonstrated, there are many “exercises” you can do at work. Try standing up when you’re on the telephone. Walk to somebody’s office to talk to them rather than sending an email or calling them on the phone. Make your own copies and run your own errands. When you feel tired or stressed take a break and take a short walk around the block or around the building. All types of fidgeting–moving your feet, legs and even your fingers, while you sit or stand, is exercise.

Most people know that the golf fitness routine that you can stick to and be consistent with is the one that is best for you and will end up being the most effective.

This rule applies to all fitness routines and not just golf fitness routines.

The problem with any fitness routine that you are not able to stick with is that even if it has beneficial effects, they will not last long as you will quickly sink back to your earlier situation where you were not involved in any exercises.

The good news is that a genuine golf fitness routine from a good golf exercise expert will be easy to stick with for several reasons.

Good golf exercise experts realize that most amateur golfers hardly have enough time to play the game, let alone time to go into the gym for a golf fitness routine.

The result is that the better golf fitness routines will include some exercises that can be done in the comfort of the home or even in the office when you have a few moments to spare. Some can even be done right there at your work station while you are still seated at your chair.

Here the first exercise that comes to mind is a certain stretch exercise where you reach as far back as possible on the side while you are seated. Flexibility exercises work wonders for golfers and especially with the golf swing.

The other aspect which makes golf fitness routines extremely easy to stick with is the fact that they work. They often do wonders to people’s golf games. In a few cases they have even helped get rid of troublesome lower back pains for good.

There is no greater motivation in doing anything than results. If the results are quick and dramatic, then there will be all the motivation and determination to continue with that thing so as to maintain the good results.

Golf fitness routines are no exception to this rule of human nature.