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Happy New Year.

Some New Years quotes:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true.~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850 New Year's Day:

New Year's Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive. ~Jay Leno

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. ~Oscar Wilde

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore is last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. ~Mark Twain

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. ~Ellen Goodman

Strength training enables you to engage in other activities more often and longer than had you not strength trained. You'll to enjoy life more and play longer and more often. Additonally, You will suffer less injuries. Engaging in activities longer and more often compounds the benefits derived from strength training creating a virtuous cycle.

Examples:

Carole lived with constant back pain. Her back pain disappeared shortly after she began strength training. Three years later she was still going strong attending dance classes with people half her age. The additional activity of dance classes contributed positively to her health as well.

“There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain.” From the NYT article, The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain.

A strong body and a strong mind can be obtained through exercise. Prior blog entries dealing with cognitive decline and exercise:

Exercise Linked to Big Drop in Dementia Risk

[Lief, one of our clients' has gone from five insulin shots a day down to one. He has been training with us for about four years. His testimonial is on this page.]

Men in a small study who added short, intense bursts of activity to mini workouts seemed better able to metabolize sugars – from this article The Brief Way to Better Blood Sugar:

Researchers suspect that bursts of intensity during workouts elicit stronger contractions and therefore more glucose uptake in the large muscles attached to bones.

When the men were given the equivalent of a meal's worth of glucose at the end of the study, their bodies metabolized it better than before the study.

Slowly the parameters of our world of physical abilities creep in on us. Each year we have a little less strength, stamina, flexibility, and ability to withstand infection and trauma.

We lose a few ounces of muscle, a little range of motion each year, and a few seconds off our personal records. This process will occur more quickly if we are not active. When we exercise we are placing demands on the body that send a message to the body that the stamina, muscle, and flexibility are needed for survival. The body will do what it can do accommodate those demands as an act self-protection.

How often does the body need to be exercised? Too much exercise can result in taking steps backward when there are repetitive-use injuries or when there is insufficient recovery from the stress of exercise. The body need not be constantly stimulated to retain or add to our physical abilities. In one flexibility study one group stretched three days a week and the other group stretched five times a week. At the end of the study both groups increased their flexibility by an equal amount.

There are many changes that come from exercise - increases in strength, stamina, body leanness, speed, and flexibility – that can be measured. Changes that cannot be accurately measured include the decreased likelihood of injury and the attendant pain and how well you feel. The right exercise can result in an increase in one’s quality of life. In some cases it can be dramatically life changing. As trainers this is the most rewarding result we experience with clients.

One client: “ A year ago at this time I was experiencing frequent bouts of aches and pains in my neck, shoulders, and back. I figured it was just part of growing older. Since I started strength training last January, these problems have gone away. Amazing!”

Number sixteen in a series about what clients have to say about their workouts.

Barbi was an avid runner. She began strength training eight weeks ago. Barbi had this to say, “I have had more results in eight weeks than in three years working out with another trainer”.

With strength training in order to produce a change the body has to perform more work than it is used to handling. Then, given adequate time to recover and adequate nutrition, the body adapts as a form of self-protection by becoming stronger.

The Wikipedia definition of EPOC : “Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is a measurably increased rate of oxygen intake following strenuous activity.”

Anaerobic exercise increases EPOC more than aerobic exercise does. Resistance exercise (strength training) is primarily anaerobic. Circuit resistance training produces the largest EPOC response.

When I first began lifting weights I worked out every other day - Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday - repeat - and I never missed for five straight months.  The sessions were with a personal trainer, and accurate records were kept.

Soon my progress stopped. I was particularly stuck with bicep curls just barely achieving eight reps each time for five months. Twice during that time I got nine reps on that one exercise; I likened it to a religious experience – achieving beyond the realm of normal.  The workouts during this time were grueling, as I was hell bent on breaking through a plateau.

I went home for Christmas.  It had been more than a week since my last workout when I found a health club with the very same line of equipment I had been using. I thought surely I would be weaker. I was shocked to find that I was stronger. On the bicep curls I got eleven reps, not the usual eight. I had no explanation for it.

A study designed to test the efficacy of exercise in lowering metabolic risk factors consisted of three groups.  One group used a less-intense regimen called “moderate continuous-training” (CME). Another group did not exercise, and the third group used a high-intensity aerobic-interval training for four months.
From this article High-intensity exercise better at improving metabolic syndrome risk factors the results:

“• Short bursts of high-intensity exercise, rather than longer spells of moderate-intensity, exercise may improve the health of people with metabolic syndrome.