Yes, I saved $2000 this year!!

The study was designed to determine if higher fitness levels in middle age are associated with lower medical costs later in life, and the results were compelling. Average annual medical claims for the least fit men were $5,136, 36% higher than for the most fit men, $3,277. The average medical claims for the least fit women as compared to the most fit women were $4,565 versus $2,755, a 40% difference. Fitness confers big dividends for health and finances, even when there risk factors such as smoking, blood pressure and obesity are controlled for.

In another study from the Health Partners Research Foundation, researchers found that adults age 50 and over who started exercising just 90 minutes a week saved, on average, $2,200 a year in medical costs.

Exercise is the best medicine we have and can positively affect many of the chronic disease conditions and dramatically reducing health care costs. So, let’s promote exercise for your health and also your health cost savings! It’s one of best investments of your lifetime.

What am I going to do with my $2000 a year health savings – two weeks cycling in Italy! How will you spend your health savings?

Ciao,
Gwen

Here's what I'm doing with my savings!

I am so fortunate to live in Tucson, an amazing outdoor playground. OK, I played hookie from work today, so I could join my Syncardia mates and many other cycling friends and ride the mountain – yes, that’s Mt. Lemmon, 2800 feet to 8300 feet of some of the most spectacular scenery in the US – right here in our backyard! A perfectly calm morning, clear skies and great company made for ideal riding conditions. Thanks GABA for the great sags and sustenance enroute! And then there was pie at the top and cold beer, chips, salsa, guacamole and treats at the bottom. Another day of cycling nirvana!

So what are the best tips to fight the fat and excess consumption of food? Here are seven key behaviors from the members of the National Weight Control Registry, people who have lost at least thirty pounds and kept it off for a year.

1. consume a reduced-calorie and reduced-fat diet
2. Engage in high levels of physical activity (60-90 minutes per day)
3. Limit TV viewing
4. Use a high level of dietary restraint (just say NO thanks)
5. Weigh yourself frequently (if you gain 2-3 pounds, do something about it)
6. Maintain dietary consistency
7. Eat breakfast

Along with these practical behavior changes I have also found these strategies helpful on a regular or intermittent basis (like when I step on the scale and my weight is up 2 pounds):

1. Eat on a small plate
2. Cut the bread, sweets and alcohol for a week
3. Change up the exercise stimulus (incorporate several high intensity interval training workouts)

Small choices and small changes do matter. Eating 100 fewer calories per day can prevent weight gain. Walking 30 minutes a day can burn an additional 1200-1400 calories per week.

If you have lost weight or been able to maintain a healthy weight over the years, what small behaviors do you find helpful?

Promotes better posture
The symmetrical nature of ballet exercises, along with the extraordinary demands for both static and dynamic balance, makes ballet an ideal activity for improving posture. Ballet exercises are indicated for leg-length discrepancy, scoliosis, and postural restructuring and have a significant effect on the placement and use of the feet, ankles, knees, hips and spine, creating awareness of good alignment when performing daily activities.

Sculpts and tones muscles
The movements taught in ballet classes are designed to tone, firm and develop long, lean muscles as opposed to thick, bulky muscles. The exercises are performed on both the right and left sides, which promotes symmetry and allows the body the opportunity to train for stability (in the supporting leg) and gesture and movement.

Improves grace, poise, coordination and balance
In ballet classes, participants are taught a series of simple exercises called barre work. These exercises are designed to help build grace, poise and balance and are repeated at each class. Ballet activities teach you how to stand, move, balance and re-balance, change levels, move rhythmically, move gracefully and perform nonlocomotor movements most efficiently.

Improves flexibility
Ballet engages muscles that are seldom used in other sports, providing a total-body flexibility workout. Yoga postures are often used in conditioning for ballet.

Strengthens core muscles
Ballet requires the integrated use of the core musculature to maintain balance while executing demanding postures and complicated movements. It is an excellent form of exercise to strengthen and develop the core muscles of the back and abdomen, which may result in less back pain and a more toned abdomen and defined waistline.

Challenges and improves mental function
Ballet requires a keen sense of focus and discipline, which can sharpen memory and improve cognitive functioning. Learning a sequence of ballet movements and routines challenges the nervous, proprioceptive and sensory systems. The repetitive nature of short structured physical routines builds confidence.

Join LindaChristy Weiler as she demonstrates how to use ballet-based exercise to improve fitness and so much more.

Get more information from LindaChristy Weiler’s Adult Beginning Ballet Fitness continuing education course today!

Metabolic training is the basis of program design for many of the popular high-intensity training protocols used with TRX®, CrossFit, MMA, Kettlebells and boot camps. It involves a series of compound exercises with short rest intervals, optimizes the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, increases metabolic rate during and after exercises and maximizes calorie burn.

You can easily incorporate key metabolic training principles and exercises into your workouts to become leaner, fitter and stronger.

Key features of metabolic training include:
• Compound exercises that use large muscle groups

• Multi-joint compound exercises that require a maximum amount of energy such as a squat with an overhead press or a bench press followed by a pull-up

• High intensity exercise interspersed with short rest intervals – To produce a significant metabolic effect you have to work harder than what your body is accustomed to and push outside of your comfort zone.

• Circuit and interval training – Training usually performed in a circuit of 3-10 exercises with short rest intervals and repeated for 2-3 sets. Adequate recovery between metabolic training sessions is critical; therefore, this type of workout should be performed only 2-3 times a week to allow for optimal rest and recovery.

• Uses both energy systems – Both the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems are incorporated into metabolic training formats. This increases metabolism and optimizes calorie burn.

• Produces an EPOC effect – EPOC or excess postexercise oxygen consumption refers to the elevated state of oxygen consumption after exercise in an effort to bring the body back to its preexercise homeostasis. The calorie burn during a 30-minute metabolic training workout is around 500 calories. This type of training increases metabolic rate 10 – 25% for up to 48 hours, with some studies showing an increase in metabolic rate for up to 72 hours. The higher metabolism generated during metabolic training results in increased fat burning during and after exercise!

Metabolic Training Workout
Make sure the body is completely warmed up before beginning a metabolic training workout. An easy metabolic training format involves timed sets, such as 1 minute of exercise followed by 15-30 seconds of rest. The number of exercises per set can vary from 3-10. This is usually repeated for 10-15 minutes. All the variables will be dependent on your fitness levels and abilities.

Check out these 5 metabolic exercises and this training circuit from Doug Balzarini’s Strength and Conditioning for Combat Athletes CE course.

1. There is a loss of fast twitch muscle fibers with aging resulting in less delayed muscle soreness (DOMS) often elicited by eccentric strength training in older adults.

2. The greatest excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) effect is derived from high intensity training (HIT) because cell restoration to pre-exercise homeostasis is an energy consuming process, which includes lactate removal, CRP replenishment and recovery of heart rate, temperature, ventilation and hormonal levels.

3. There are a many novel variations to eccentric training based on the three primary eccentric training methods: 1 up: 3-6 down, supra-maximal eccentric training and 2 up: 1 down.

4. To achieve adequate protein for optimal health and performance the caloric cost of plant-based protein is much higher than lean meat/poultry/fish based protein.
For example each of the following provide adequate daily protein:
7 TB peanut butter: 670 calories
3 ½ servings black beans: 374 calories
1 ½ cups raw tofu: 236 calories
3 oz lean beef: 180 calories

5. Protein requirements for optimal health and performance are different than protein requirements to prevent deficiencies, which are what RDA values, are based on.

6. If you are not taking in adequate daily protein catabolism is occurring, essentially abolishing muscle.

7. Sports nutrition and nutrition-related weight management topics are hot. Specifically the role of protein in weight management and fueling pre, during and post exercise.

8. Indoor cycling still packs them in!

9. Exercise is Medicine is picking up steam and creating a lot of interest, specifically in regards to designing and implementing programming, evidence-based programming, gaining physician referrals, and appropriately training qualified staff to work with older adults and individuals with disease-specific conditions.

10. High intensity training is all the rage – Crossfit, TRX, PX90, metabolic training, boot camps, Traboki and more. However, the current programming is only relevant, appealing and doable for about 20% of the population. Are we missing the mark and is this a nemesis for the fitness industry?

• Arthritic knee pain and disability by 47%
• The progression of dementia and Alzheimer’s by 50%
• The progression of diabetes by 58%
• Anxiety by 48%
• Depression by 30%
• And the number #1 treatment of fatigue

Well this intervention is no pill. It’s less expensive and much more fun!

Check out Dr. Mike Evans short and fast-paced lecture – 23 1/2 Hours – for the best ROI for your health!

This is a must see lecture! Share this post with your colleagues, friends and family today!

Additional key findings from the study include:

• 40 percent of women who had experienced EIO and EISP had done so on more than 10 occasions.

• Most of the women in the EIO group reported feeling some degree of self-consciousness when exercising in public places.

• 20 percent reported they could not control their experience.

• Most women reporting EIO said they were not fantasizing sexually or thinking about anyone they were attracted to during their experiences.

• 51.4 percent reported experiencing an orgasm in connection with abdominal exercises within the previous 90 days.

• Others reported experiencing orgasm in connection with weight lifting (26.5 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (15.8), running (13.2 percent) and walking/hiking (9.6 percent).

Learn to love the Captain’s Chair exercise
The captain’s chair exercise is one of the best exercises for strengthening the abdominal muscles.

To correctly perform the exercise:
Grip handholds to stabilize the upper body
Press the back against the pad
Contract the abs to raise the legs and lift knees towards the chest
Avoid arching the back or swinging the legs up
Slowly lower the legs down
Repeat 12-16 reps, 1-3 sets

If you don’t have the Captain’s chair equipment an ordinary chair can be used perform the exercise.

Now get moving…and experience exercise-induced pleasure!

Improve performance with the right training

Take a look at this 68-year old athlete preparing for the state time trial event. Coach Tyrone Holmes gives you the tools, the plan and special considerations to take his performance to the next level. You can learn more in Coach Tyrone’s Developing Training Plans for Cyclists and Triathletes CE course.

One of yoga’s enduring strengths is its ability to repackage itself for the contemporary world. Although traditionalists may disagree, I think this is admirable – and also essential for its survival in an increasingly (like it or not) commercial world. Yoga’s stress-busting and anxiety-relieving properties have never been more needed then they are today.

While most of us are aware of the physical benefits of yoga postures and training, yoga entails much more. It is also about living in the moment as best you can. A yoga practice teaches many life lessons. Here are 10 from yoga expert and Executive Director for the Academy of Holistic Fitness Linda-Christy Weiler.

Life Lesson #1
Establish a solid foundation
The base of support in yoga postures refer to the body parts that are receiving your body’s weight and transferring this weight onto the earth to create a sound foundation.

Standing straddle forward fold pose (with rotation)

Life Lesson #2
Cultivate a support system
The backside of the body represents the realm of your psychological support system as well as your organic structural support system. “Awareness in the body’s back side feels like having eyes on the back of your head.”

Inclined plane pose

Life Lesson #3
Get your priorities right
Knowing what is most important in terms of placement in each pose will make the pose safer and more beneficial for the body.

Preparing proper leg placement for Warrior pose

Life Lesson #4
Be in the moment
Sensory awareness and mindfulness are vehicles that yoga postures use for transformation and healing. “As long as you are living life as an embodied human, the life of your body is your life.”

King Dancer pose

Life Lesson #5
Meet and greet every challenge
People give up too quickly. Learn to stick with something until the superficial issues drop away and the deeper issues surface. Only then can true problems be identified and essential issues resolved. “Get past the wildness of the mind and tap into the steady and calm nature of your spiritual self.”

Single leg seated straddle pose (with fold and rotation)

Life Lesson #6
Learn tolerance and acceptance
We learn to tolerate and accept poses we don’t like and that may cause discomfort, uncertainty or humility. We understand they have value. We learn to tolerate and accept what we cannot change and instead consider changing our perspective. “Initiate mental equanimity.”

Seated forward fold pose

Life Lesson #7
Restore calmness
There is nothing inherently wrong with humans experiencing a full range of (noncalm) emotions. Even emotions like anger when channeled in a constructive, nonhurtful way can be energizing and empowering. Return to a relaxed presence and release noncalm emotions by deeply inhaling and exhaling to create a sense of peaceful grounding and calm.

Seated Hero pose

Life Lesson #8
Experience and accept change as a constant
By passing through the cyclical stages of a yoga pose we learn to accept the inevitability of change. “Realize that endings lead to new beginnings.”

Seated Funnel pose

Life Lesson #9
Let go
When practicing a yoga pose, detachment enriches the experience. Detachment is a psychological construct that relates to releasing tension, not trying too hard and not being aggressive, impulsive or competitive. Detachment allows you to let the process unfold naturally and accept and approve of how the body performs today.

Tree pose with prayer hands

Life Lesson #10
Live your mission
Practicing yoga enhances your awareness and is a way to help you gain wisdom and appropriate decision making regarding your body, health, behaviors, relationships and your life’s mission. “Make every pose a good pose. Make every day a good day.”

Seated spinal twist

Learn more about how you can incorporate Life Lessons into your yoga class, plus many more new ideas for today’s yoga classes from Linda-Christy Weiler.