Fitness, Business, Fitness Business, & Achieving Life Goals

Kettlebells, if you were to believe the hype, this is the only equipment you would need in your club.  Everyone thinks they should be using kettlebells. They are the flavor of the day. Yet another retro training device that gets all the press. In example, http://www.kettlebells.com.au/touts “Kettlebells: The ultimate hand held fitness tool for strength, weight loss and well being” WHATTA CROCK!

There, I’ve said it. Now I’ll get tons of people telling how wrong I am. I don’t care. Kettlebells are a nice piece of equipment. They offer some variety. But truthfully, there’s very little of real value that you do with a kettlebell that you couldn’t do just as effectively with a dumbbell. There are a couple of differences that I think have merit, but not enough to buy a whole set of kettlebells to appease the masses. 1) Because of the weight being below the handle, two-handed grabs are more comfortable and 2) an overhead lift is slightly easier and KBs may promote more shoulder flexibility because the weight sits on the back of the forearm. That’s about it in my eyes. Add to it that the techniques involved in flipping the KB are an extra curricular layer that is unnecessary for functional or sports performance and the religion that is kettlebell training seems all the more pointless.

Let it be said that I love my toys. I love having a wide array of training equipment even just to offer some mental variety for my clients. Know what and why you use the things that you do. Don’t get caught up in hype. No one training methodology or implement is THE WAY or THE THING. It’s all just tools.

Mark

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Greg Nockleby gnockleby@nsca-lift.org 800.815.6826 

National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Celebrates Mark Nutting To Receive The 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year Award LAS VEGAS, NV – Strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists and fitness professionals from around the world converged on NSCA’s 32nd National Conference in July 2009 to discover cutting edge research and practical applications in strength and conditioning, presented by the industry’s most elite and respected experts. One of the many exciting events during the conference took place during the Award Ceremonies where distinctive honors were given to several fitness professionals for outstanding achievement.

Accepting for the prestigious Personal Trainer of the Year Award was Mark Nutting, CSCS*D, NSCA-CPT-AR*D. Nutting earned this special honor in recognition of excellence in service to the personal training industry and the NSCA. Robert Jursnick, NSCA’s Executive Director states, “It is a privilege to honor Mark and recognize his achievement,” says Jursnick, “Mark’s well-earned award and his contributions shape NSCA into what it is today.” The NSCA National Conference and Exhibition featured more than 50 educational sessions and research presentations, all designed to help those attending to expand their knowledge and further their careers. The NSCA is the worldwide authority on strength and conditioning, and for more information regarding NSCA and their awards, please visit www.nsca-lift.org.

Media Note: To schedule an interview with Mark Nutting, or to arrange to cover the NSCA’s Conference, contact Greg Nockleby at 800.815.6826.

I watch my kids go through phases of not trying new things and know that, for the most part, there are a couple  of reasons why they won’t try them. First, it just plain old doesn’t interest them. In that case, who can blame them? Second though, they don’t try because they don’t want to look or feel stupid. That fear or intimidation is not unique to kids. We all have things we don’t attempt for the same reason. We don’t want others to think that we’re unintelligent or uncoordinated.

What if we got over it? What if we didn’t care what others thought? What if we thrived on the idea of trying something that was so different that we would feel completely out our element? Beside the fact that adding new abilities, skills, experiences can enrich our lives, it is exactly what keeps our bodies and our brains healthy and fit.

Ask yourself, if you if you could try anything in the world, what would that be? Take a moment and write down the top 5 things you would do. Now, what’s holding you back? Go try it and embrace the process of learning something new.

I just started listening to (I mostly do audio books) Outliers: The Story of Success. It begins with a discussion of Roseto, PA, a town with a remarkably low incidence of heart disease. Researchers, in an effort to discover why that was, checked out their diet, activity level, environment, and even hereditary factors (the majority of citizens were descendants of immigrants from Roseto, Italy). None of these showed any correlation to Roseto’s uniquely high health levels. Then they realized what was making the difference. It was that Roseto was a tightly knit society with a strong sense of family and community. Their days were spent interacting with others. That connection with others was making them more resistant to disease.

This is not the first time I’ve heard that social connection is a powerful health enhancer. And, in the research I’ve been reading on brain fitness, activities that involve social interaction also enhance brain health.

So what’s the take away message here? We are meant to be interacting with others. If our days are spent being by ourselves, our physical and mental health is at risk. Seek out those chances to connect. Join clubs, groups, classes, be a volunteer, get out and visit friends and family.

For our part in the fitness industry, we are trying to create greater opportunities for social interaction though group exercise classes, small group training, social events at our clubs, creating areas where you can hang out and talk with others, and even using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to further your ability to reach out to others. (NY times had an interesting article on social media Online, ‘a Reason to Keep on Going’ )

To coin a telephone commercial slogan, reach out and touch someone. Your life will be enriched for it.

Routine can be a great thing, or it can cause your brain to deteriorate.

In fitness, creating a routine of exercising regularly is great, but, if that exercise routine is… well… routine (same thing over and over again) results stop and benefits diminish. Your exercise program needs to change regularly to promote continued progress.

The same is true with brain fitness. If you do the same thing day in and day out, have the same experiences everyday with little or no variation, you set yourself up for a loss in memory capacity and a decline in cognitiveabilities. Do you know anyone where this is the case. As parents and loved ones get older (us too, for that matter) are they falling into a rut of experiences? Do they talk about and tell the same stories to the same people over and over? Are their physical challenges the same day to day?

What if we could help to jump start their lives again? Get them up and out of their “comfort zone” for a new physical and mental challenge on a regular basis?

In Brain Fitness, according to Lawrence Katz and Manning Rubin, our activities should do one or more of the following:

1. Involve one or more senses in a new context.

2. Involve your full attention.

3. Break your routine in a significant way.

I’ve come up with a couple of ideas to point you in the right direction for ideas of your own:

Learn to Dance - Step class – learn Martial Arts (classes in which you have to learn and remember changing physical patterns)

Take a cooking class (even better if you can learn a language at the same time. i.e. Italian)

Take a walking tour/lecture at a museum

Etc… the idea, in essence, is to layer the learning, physical and mental.

So what can you come up with? I’d love to hear your ideas. Now go out and share a new brain fitness experience with others. Give them something new to talk and think about and get them wanting more.

Best wishes, Mark

I’ve never done this before on my blog, but the following was forwarded to me via email. It moved and inspired me. It gives us all a little more hope for the world. Rather than forward it again, I decide to post it here where I could get more people to read it. 

“Two Choices What would you do?….you make the choice.

Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’ The audience was stilled by the query. The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay,who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’ Then he told the following story: Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’ Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball . the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’ Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’ As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team ‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces. If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the ‘appropriate’ ones to receive this type of message Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference. We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural order of things.’ So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process? A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.

You now have two choices: 1. Delete 2. Forward

May your day, be a Shay Day.”

Best wishes all. Mark

Historically, as we get older, balance starts to be a little less sure and, unless we work to correct this, a spiral of declining function begins. Fear is often the culprit that accelerates this decline.

The chances of decreasing bone mineral density, osteopenia or osteoporosis, is more likely as we age. This increases the chances of breaking bones when falls take place and that makes it scarier. Many people give in to that fear and develop what I call “the old man shuffle”. The following are compensations that, while we may think they keep us safe, actually begin to limit our ability to move fluidly and with confidence.

1) Body weight is forward so if you fall, it’s forward where you have more control and might be able to catch yourself.

2) Center of gravity never quite gets out onto the standing leg. If your center of gravity gets outside of your base of support, there’s a greater chance of falling and of not being able to save yourself. Strides become shorter and the feet tend to slide forward barely leaving the ground.

3) Finally, they start looking down at their feet as they walk. This makes sense doesn’t it? You want to see where you’re stepping. Well here’s a real interesting bit of brain research that I discovered. We’ve all heard that if we lose one sense the others are heightened. In fact, something similar takes place when all your focus is placed on watching where you are stepping. Because you rely so much on the visual, you don’t allow yourself to feel where your body is and you start to lose your sense of body position and balance.

The good news is that these are reversible conditions. Through strength and balance training, not only are your abilities improved, but so is your confidence. You can walk without fear of falling and be more self assured.

If you face these challanges, your next step (pun intended) should be to work with a Personal Trainer to create a fall prevention program for you.

There seems to be a general assumption that everyone should be doing 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions for your weight training workout, but there are a couple of key points that I want to bring your attention to.
 
First, SETS: there is a body of research that concludes that most of the benefits of resistance training can be achieved by doing one set to failure and that additional sets, while they do have additional value, have a diminishing return (i.e. doing 2 sets does not give you twice the benefit of doing 1 set. It gives you less.) Of course how many you do in your program depends on your own individual goals and current training status. I typically use between 1-3 sets with most of my clients.
 
Next, REPS: Low reps and high weight deliver greater strength benefits. High reps and lower weight give greater muscle endurance. Most general conditioning tends to fall between that, somewhere between 8-15 reps. There is no magic number here, no lightswitch that says, if you do 7 reps it’s strength and 8 reps it’s general conditioning. There’s almost always a combination going on. 

Now here’s the important stuff about reps:
• Any of these repetition ranges will “tone” the muscle. “Tone” is what active muscles feel/look like.
• None of these are magic “get leaner” ranges. Getting leaner depends on your total program and your nutrition.
Whatever you or your Personal Trainer chose for your top rep, that is NOT where you should stay. It’s a graduation number. i.e. if you’re using 10 reps as your number (You could easily choose 13 or 14 as a target number), when you can do 10 reps in perfect form, you graduate. Raise the weight by the smallest increment that you can. Next time, if you can do 10, raise the weight again. Keep raising by small amounts until you reach a point where you can’t get 10 reps. That’s your workout weight. Stay with that until you can get 10 reps and then, guess what, you graduate. Raise the weight. Keep the progress happening.

To continue making progress toward your health/fitness goals, you must continue to up the challenge. Once the challenge is no longer there, you can even lose a bit of the benefits that you had already gained.

Good luck and keep pushing yourself. 

I’ve been thinking about how many people are satified just to survive. Club members that you see doing the same thing day in, day out and they never seem to lose the weight or progress in abilities. I know that there are challanges/difficulties that can hold us back. Sometimes they are greater than others, but they’re always there in some way, shape, or form. My concern is that those people become trapped in a frame of mind that locks them into mediocrity. Whether we’re talking about fitness, business, or life, some people seem to set their ceilings too low.

How long have you been plugging away and not really getting any closer to your goal? Have you given up on achieving it and are accepting not getting any worse as being good enough?

It’s about your mindset. Reevaluate your goals. Think about what it is that you truly want to achieve, not simply what is acceptable. How do you move forward? Well, first you have to care enough to step out of comfort zone of “same old, same old”. Does losing the weight mean enough to you to do something higher intensity than just coming in and walking on the treadmill? (not that that isn’t OK to start there, but you need to build to doing more) Analyze your obstacles. Is it lack of information, accountablity, time, or support that’s holding you back? Define it and take the steps to change it. If you need help, get it. What is it worth to reach your dreams? It starts with a little extra effort, a little extra planning, a little extra believing that you can achieve what it is that you truly want.

Amazing things can happen with a little extra effort, but you have to care enough to break out of the status quo. Watch this video for a little extra motivation! 212 the extra degree

According to Wikipedia – Exergaming (a combination of “exercise” and “gaming”) is a term used for video games that also provide exercise. Exergames have one element of exercise and one element of gaming.

Wii Fit, while all the rage with consumers these days, is just one many exergames. One of the most popular has been Dance, Dance, Revolution (DDR), a dancing game following lighted squares on the floor. One of the downfalls of video games (and why I won’t let our kids play them) is the sedentary aspect of them. It (too much inactive time in front of video games, computer, and TV) is one of the contributing factors of the ongoing childhood obesity problem. Exergaming takes the individual off the sofa and gets them to move.

What’s the real health and fitness benefit from using these games/programs? Well, the benefits of physical activity include cardio-vascular health, better weight management, reduction of anxiety and stress, improved sensory-motor learning, and improved cognitive alertness and performance, and, this is physical activity. There is research that shows improvements in all of these areas with daily use of various exergames. There is even research that shows that “Wii-habilitation ‘could prevent elderly from falls”. Will this replace the need to do other types of exercise? Will it replace the need for health clubs?

I’m afraid the answer is a resounding, “No”. The catch to the whole thing is that maximal health and fitness requires ever-progressing workloads for continued adaptation. (If you don’t do more, you don’t get more.) The programs don’t create a personalized workout based on your individual special needs (i.e. high blood pressure or adapting for injuries). No one is checking your form or keeping you safe.

What exergaming does do well that it needs to be commended for is getting the sedentary individual up and moving. It also gives a physically active option for those that like video games. Anything that gets you to move more will have some health and fitness benefits. Let’s face it. People will use it because it’s fun and entertaining.

I guess the ultimate answer is that we will allow our sons to save their money and buy a Wii even though I’m dead set against video games. (Of course that comes with a 20 minute time limit. I’d still rather have them go outside and play.) The best way to reach your health and fitness goals is still to have a personalized program created by a certified Personal Trainer.