Advice Column & Training Tips

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HEALTH & EXERCISE    ●    NUTRITION    ●    WORKOUT    ●    CALCULATORS

Health & Exercise Articles:
Physical Fitness & Health & Behaviors

Physical Fitness
Fitness problems such as obesity and overweight have reached truly epidemic proportions in the United States. In the last 10 years, obesity rates have increased by more than 60 percent among adults. In 1999, 61 percent of the adult population was either overweight or obese. The obesity epidemic impacts other diseases as well. For example, the incidence of type 2 diabetes, a major consequence of obesity, is on the rise. Among U.S. adults, diagnosed diabetes increased 49 percent from 1990 to 2000.

The rate of increase in overweight among young people has been even steeper. This is particularly troubling since many of the behaviors that lead to adult obesity are established during childhood. Just 10 years ago, type 2 diabetes was virtually unknown in children and adolescents. Indeed, the medical community commonly referred to the condition as "adult onset diabetes." Today, it accounts for almost 50 percent of new cases of pediatric diabetes in some communities. Medical complications associated with obesity in children can lead to hospitalizations for type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, and asthma. Since 1980, the percentage of children who are overweight has nearly doubled, and the percentage of adolescents who are overweight has nearly tripled. Almost 9 million young Americans, or about 15 percent of all children, are overweight.

Americans young and old should incorporate regular physical activity into their everyday lives. This does not necessarily mean joining an expensive gym or committing to a rigorous exercise or training routine. It is sufficient to choose activities that fit into your daily routine that speed your heart rate and breathing, or increase your strength and flexibility. Examples include walking to work, gardening, taking extra stairs, or mowing the lawn with a push mower. Besides building strength and aerobic fitness, regular exercise relieves stress, provides motivation, promotes relaxation, and facilitates sleep. Such activity reduces the risk of dying of coronary heart disease and decreases the risk for colon cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Regular physical activity is important throughout life. Healthy lifestyles are more influential than genetic factors in avoiding deterioration traditionally associated with aging. The growing number of older Americans places increasing demands on the public health system and on medical and social services. Currently, almost one-third of total U.S. health care expenditures are for older adults. These expenditures are largely due to treatment and care of chronic diseases, and the cost associated with many of these conditions could be reduced through regular physical activity.

For children, almost any physical activity is sufficient as long as they are moving. Playing actively or participating in athletic or physical fitness activities during school, running, biking, jumping rope, and dancing— instead of watching television or playing video games— all provide children with the kinds of activity they need.

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Health & Behaviors
One of the most important things individuals and families can do to promote good health is to make smart choices. Avoiding risky behaviors such as using tobacco or drugs, or abusing alcohol - even driving without a safety belt - can save lives and improve health. Behavioral changes reduce the chance of illness or injury; even washing one's hands regularly prevents the spread of many common illnesses and infections.

Misuse and abuse of alcohol continue to be a problem in this country. Alcoholic beverages supply calories but few nutrients and are harmful when consumed in excess. People who should not drink at all include children, adolescents, pregnant women, and individuals who cannot restrict their drinking to moderate levels. Having more than one drink per day for women or more than two drinks per day for men can raise the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and some forms of cancer. American adults who drink should use alcohol responsibly in all social and recreational settings. The effects of alcohol abuse can be devastating, from adverse health consequences, to domestic abuse, to drinking and driving.

Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death and disease in the United States, causing more than 440,000 premature deaths annually during 1995-1999. Smoking can cause chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke. Smoking has also been linked to cancer of the lungs, larynx, esophagus, mouth, and bladder. In addition, smoking contributes to cancer of the cervix, pancreas, and kidneys. Smokeless tobacco and cigars also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and mouth cancer. Aggressive and sustained anti-smoking programs prevent and reduce smoking and many states have successful efforts underway.

Regular marijuana use may also cause many of the same respiratory problems as regular tobacco use. Some of the respiratory problems associated with marijuana use include daily cough and phlegm, symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and more frequent chest colds. Continuing to smoke marijuana can lead to abnormal functioning of lung tissue. Research shows that marijuana harms the brain, heart, lungs, and immune system and limits learning, memory perception, judgement, and the ability to drive an automobile. Any illegal drug possession or use should not be tolerated. More parents need to learn about the power of preventing youth drug abuse.

Other simple behavioral changes save lives as well. For example, handwashing has been show to be a fundamental factor in preventing the spread of infections. One study of school children found that those who washed their hands four times a day had fewer sick days due to respiratory illness and fewer days lost because of stomach upset.

Thousands of people needlessly die in traffic accidents yearly because they do not use safety belts. Seat belts are the most effective means of reducing fatalities and serious injuries in a traffic accident. In fact, seat belts save over 10,000 lives in America every year. Appropriate bicycle safety measures could also reduce the 690 fatalities and 51,000 traffic-related injuries that occur every year. Bike helmets reduce head injury risk by 85 percent. These are smart choices Americans can make that prevent injuries and death.

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Nutrition Articles:

Eating right is vital to promoting health and reducing the risk for death or disability due to chronic diseases such as heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, stroke, and osteoporosis. In fact, it has been estimated that dietary changes could reduce cancer deaths in the United States by as much as 35 percent.

Nevertheless, a large gap remains between recommended dietary patterns and what Americans actually eat. Very few Americans meet the majority of recommendations of the Food Guide Pyramid or the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Only 3 percent of all individuals meet four of the five recommendations for the intake of grains, fruits, vegetables, milk products, and meat and bean food groups. Only one-fourth of U.S. adults eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Unfortunately, poor eating habits are usually established during childhood. And more than 60 percent of young people eat too much fat, and less than 20 percent eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables.

The Food Guide Pyramid is an outline of what to eat each day, and it calls for a variety of food and nutrients. Fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, fiber, and other substances that are associated with good health. Low fat diets rich in fiber-containing grain products, fruits, and vegetables may reduce the risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. Milk products provide protein, vitamins and minerals and are the best source of calcium. However, fats, oils, and sweets provide calories and little else, and should be used sparingly. Drinking enough water is also essential to keeping hydrated, converting food into energy, carrying nutrients through the body, and removing waste.

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Workout Articles:
Strength Training & Cardio Training

Strength Training
How many body parts should I work in a routine? How often should I do strength training? How long do I rest in between sets or even workouts? How many sets, reps, exercises? And so forth. To help our members better understand some of the complexities of strength training, we’ve outlined some general principles for strength training, below.

Duration of Strength Sessions
Try to keep your strength training sessions (from first heavy work set to last) to an hour or less. This doesn’t include any warming up, stretching, or cardiovascular training you might want to do. While there ARE some people out there who have the capacity to do more high-intensity strength work beyond an hour at a time (i.e. someone with fantastic genetics, with a high tolerance for work, or who may be taking something to help them), for most of us, 45-60 minutes of high quality effort is about all we need or can put out before we actually start going into a catabolic (breaking-down) state.

Frequency
Try to train each muscle group anywhere from one to three times per week. When you first start a program, you may be able to train the full body three times a week; after you’ve been training seriously for a number of years, you may find that in order to recover enough to be able to make progress in the next workout, you only need to work a body part or muscle group once every seven to ten days! This is a highly individual variable; to share a training program, imagine someone strength training since the high school days of swim team and basketball, but then much more seriously over the last several years. Their split consists of upper body exercises twice a week (one day is pushing-dominant with assistance exercises and the other is pulling-dominant) and lower body twice a week (one is speed- and power-dominant, the other endurance-dominant.) There truly are as many “splits” out there as there are individuals, and Diamond Gym trainers can help you figure out what works best for you.

Choice of Exercises
Try to use primarily compound, multi-muscle free weight exercises rather than exercising on machines that “isolate” a particular muscle group or exercises that only work very small muscles. For example, the squat, clean, and deadlift (with any and all variations thereof) work the entire posterior chain (or back side of the body) including the thighs, hips, butt, lower back, upper back, abdominals, and to some degree (depending on grip) the shoulders or arms. Compare that to a leg extension machine where you’re only hitting the front of the thigh (quadriceps) and you’d have to do 6 more exercises to hit the same muscles that you’re using for either the squat, clean, or deadlift. Compound exercises let you get in and out of the gym more quickly, and allow you to use heavier weight, thus giving you more results.

Perfect Form
Be sure when you’re doing any exercise that you are controlling the weight and performing each repetition with quality form. If you get sloppy with your repetitions, you 1) won’t get as much from the exercise as you could, 2) increase your risk of injury, 3) recruit different muscles than you’re actually trying to target, and 4) teach yourself bad habits that will be much more difficult to break. The most common example is someone trying to “cheat” curl a monstrous weight who has to use a large amount of torso swing (involving the lower back, upper back, shoulders and thighs) to rock a barbell upwards and catch it somewhere before it hits his sternum. While he may be trying to target his biceps, the weight is far too heavy and he may end up having a hernia instead of getting the biceps to grow. If you’re going to cheat, there is a time and place for it AND a safe way to do it, but not when you’re just starting out.

Avoid Training to Failure
In general, try to end each set before going to all-out failure. This means trying to keep a couple of repetitions remaining in reserve. As with any rule, there are exceptions – for example, if you want to find your 1RM (1 repetition maximum) on a bench press or squat, on occasion you will do a repetition that you simply cannot complete (which is the same as going to failure). Since this is quite taxing on the nervous system, if you “train to failure” too often, you run the risk of overtraining.

Variety
Try to vary the number of repetitions, number of sets, and types of exercises you do every two to six weeks. If you like body weight exercises including situps, pushups, and pullups. If you like the bench press, alter the angle, hand spacing, try dumbbells, barbells, 1-arm presses, stability ball presses, chain presses (more like a pushup), or try adding bands or chains for additional resistance. Try alternating back and forth between muscle groups –in other words, do a set of a pulling exercise, then a set of a pushing exercise, and repeat back and forth until you’ve completed the desired number of sets. If you always try to do sets of 20, throw in a few sets of 6 or 10 and try to lift more weight; if you always do single repetitions, try a few sets of 4-6 to build a little more endurance.

Progressive Overload
IN GENERAL, each workout, try to make some sort of progress over the previous workout. That may mean trying to add 1.25 or 2.5 pounds to each side of a dumbbell or barbell, completing an extra repetition over what you tried last workout, or slowing down the repetitions so that the muscle group has to work that much harder. You need to progressively overload a muscle group in order for it to be stronger the next time you work it. If you’re always doing the same 20 situps or 30 pushups, you might find that that particular exercise gets easier, but then what? Find a way to change the angle, add weight, or somehow make it more challenging. Remember, though, that there will come a point where the dramatic gains you may experience when you first begin ANY new program will eventually slow down and it will seem harder to keep increasing your strength – which is when you have to become more creative with your lifting and start trying more advanced training strategies including:

If it were a simple matter of forever continuing to add weight in order to get stronger, top bodybuilders including Arnold Schwartzenegger would be able to hoist a truck in the air and top Olympic and powerlifters would be shattering world records left and right.

Safety
Finally whenever doing exercises such as bench press or squat, be sure to use a spotter or perform the exercise inside a squat rack with the safety bars set to act as your spotter if you get in trouble and cannot lift the weight back up. Always be safe! Keep lifting!

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Cardio Training
Cardiovascular fitness can be defined simply as your body's ability to get oxygen and blood to the muscles. The slang term "wind" sums it up nicely.

How much Cardio do I need?
There are a few simple guidelines you can follow when determining how much cardio work you should do. Basically, it all comes down to your goals.

Which Type of Cardio Should I Do?
Cardiovascular training, no matter what the exercise, is categorized based on duration and intensity. When you are choosing which type of cardio to do, keep your goals in mind.

Maximum Heart Rate

Target Heart Rate
Your Target Heart Rate is the range of heart beats per minute at which you should work at in order to best achieve aerobic fitness. This range is typically between 60% to 80% of your HR max. The bottom end of the scale is best for low intensity training while the top end is for high intensity training.

Taking Your Heart Rate

Aerobic vs. Anaerobic
Aerobic literally means with oxygen while anaerobic means without oxygen.

The Anaerobic Threshold is the point at which the aerobic, oxygen-burning system can no longer supply enough energy to meet the demands of the exercise and you begin to produce lactic acid. Once over 85% HR max, you will not last longer than a few minutes unless you decrease the intensity. High caliber endurance athletes can feel the point where they are about to cross their Anaerobic Threshold and can operate for long periods of time just below it.

Cardio and Weight Training
The best way to incorporate cardio into your training is to do it in a completely different session then your weight training. If you plan on doing both weights and cardio in the same session, do the weights first. There are two major reasons for this:

Types of Cardiovascular Training

There are a number of types of cardiovascular training which can help you meet your fitness goals. Each has it's own advantages and disadvantages. Some types of training are better for advanced trainers while some are more appropriate for beginning trainers.

1. Low Intensity, Long Duration

2. Medium Intensity, Medium Duration

3. High Intensity, Short Duration

4. Aerobic Interval Training

5. Anaerobic Interval Training

6. Fartlek Training

7. Circuit Training

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Strength Training Guidelines Information Provided By C. and D. Schurman, CSCS
Cardio Training Guidelines Information Provided By Better U, Inc.

Calculators:
Coming Soon!

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