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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]