I have a couple of clients that are working hard to make the necessary transitions to a healthier lifestyle. Hell, we all have a habit or two we need to break, adjust or get under control. How many unhealthy habits have you developed over the years?
Have you ever wished you could get a massage every day of the week? Want an easy way to get rid of the knots and sore muscles you feel from everyday life? Now you can!
By using just Three Little Balls and this special Intro Workshop offered by Gina Jackson of ThePilatesClub.Net to teach Self-Care of Your Own Body with Body Ball Rolling, you will learn how you can release the tension in your shoulders, spine, legs and body. The workshop will be held at the Palisades Sports & Fitness Center in North Bergen on May 6, 2007. Read the rest of this entry →
Work different muscles by varying your
routine
(HealthDay News)
– Cross training involves varying the type of exercises you do in each workout, to work different muscles.
For example, you might combine a cardio routine and weightlifting in one workout, for example use the elliptical and jump off the machine to perform some walking lunges, use the stationary rower followed by a lunge with a bicep curl and then simply go swimming the next time or take a pilates class.
Here are some of the benefits of cross training, courtesy of the University of Michigan
Health System: You’ll work and condition your entire body, not just one area.
It’s what I do personally for all the reasons listed above. Check out ThePilatesClub.net and TheStrengthClub.net for some real examples.
You want to keep the men (old and young as well as the women) in your life guessing about your age? You want to remain strong enough to dance around the floor, prance around the park and walk or run up any flight of stairs without difficulty?
If you want tight, taut skin along your neckline, legs and breasts well past your 60th birthday read about Morjorie Newlin, who at 86 years of age is still pumping iron.
“Fourteen years ago, when Morjorie Newlin was 72, her neighborhood supermarket had 50-pound bags of kitty litter on sale. Without anyone to help her carry the bags back to her house, she struggled mightily under the load. Never a particularly athletic woman, but staunchly independent, she decided that she had to do something about her deteriorating physical capabilities. Read the rest of this entry →
The Sept/Oct issue of PilatesStyle Magazine features an interview with 
Bob Liekens, the Director of Teacher Training at Power Pilates, the studio and training facility I call home. The article is well worth a read for all you pilates enthusiasts as Bob, an international name in Pilates Training, is crisp and clean in his thought and in his style of teaching. He works really hard to honor the integrity, precision and quality of teaching the Pilates Method. While I have had the pleasure of occassionally working out in and near him while he is training others (we share a smile, a laugh or a wink and an occasional correction during an exericse) I am still (after a year) trying to book a semi-private session with him – the man moves around a lot!
Back to the article and the reason for bringing up his name is the resonance I felt with his comment in the last half of the printed interview when asked, what a Pilates lifestyle meant to him," Bob replied,
"Being aware of living in a body and enjoying the physicality of the life experience. It means being aware of the responsiblity you have toward your body. Don’t say "I have back trouble" or " I have knee trouble" and then just take medications or leave the responsiblity to a doctor. Take care of your body and do what you can to prevent these issues. If you move (and I add when you move) you just feel better, which helps you deal with your mental and emotional balance. So just get out there and please enjoy life. The problem is too many people take their bodies for granted and then can do nothing but complain when something goes wrong. Be aware of what you’re eating and how you’re breathing, be aware of the steps you take, and choose quality over quantity."
He goes on, "Unfortunately, in America, it’s quantity over quality. Of course, on the other hand, don’t be a gym nut. That’s not healthy either. After all, Joe Pilates liked his cigars and whiskey too."
It felt good to read my own thoughts and mantra coming from him. Many of my clients have heard me utter the same words to them for my training advice is to live life fully – it is too short not to – and to work fully and consciously thru your training so that the living feels alive. When you do, you can feel good about the glass of wine, the piece of apple pie and an occassional shot of whiskey. At the end of it all, you have earned the right to experience it!
Please enjoy the article, the magazine and remember the mantra the next time you are working out!
You probably won’t believe this story either. It goes well with my earlier post this week about the amazing mistakes of your favorite sugar substitutes. This story doesn’t have a happy ending either….at least not for those of you diligently working hard on your bodies at 5-6:00am, dashing out to work to work hard for your money there, and grabbing a scone and frappuchino on the way into the office for that 8:30 meeting.
Scone you say? Light dough, melts in your mouth, maybe 120-150 calories you assume! What about the frappuchino? Its just coffee with heavy cream, maybe some flavor which you pay extra for – in dollars and in calories – as this story will clearly tell.
Before I go there, remember the documentary, "SuperSize Me," about the guy that ate McDonald’s SuperSize meals for 30 days and gained over 25 pounds to prove the point? Well, I believe that Starbucks is the next untold story.
Kathy, a 50+ active woman that just recently moved to NYC and changed her lifestyle habits as a reverse commuter to her NJ office. She works out 3X week in a NY gym with a personal trainer (along the lines of a Navy Seal/Bootcamp/Marine Cadet trainer-type!) and 2X week with me on Pilates in my NJ studio. She is conscious about what she eats: steamed brocolli, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, healthy proteins, etc.
She admits that she noticed with all the work she was doing on her body and with such consistency, she couldn’t drop a pound. I kept admonishing her to watch the protein intake and be diligent about her cardio (which I advise all my clients as its our biggest areas of neglect if you are regularly strength training.
Well, the big AH-HA! came when Kathy innocently decided to check the calories she was consuming 3-4X a week – AFTER she left the gym or the studio – on the way into the office. She went online to Starbucks where you have to download the nutrition facts of all the meals they supply. Her favorite Maple Walnut Scone – 3-4x weekly provided 650 Calories, 310 of which were fat, 34 grams of Fat 80 grams of Carbs, 36 grams of sugar and 7 grams of protein. She exclaimed, "this wasn’t even a meal," it was just a snack.
READ THE LABEL – the generally
accepted formula of counting calories is there are 9 calories per gram of fat, 4 calories per gram of carb,
and 4 for protein. Those of us that are resistant to weight loss (takes more work to shed one pound) KNOW that that glycerin and sugar alcohols can produce stalls in our progress and that all calories get broken down into blood sugar for use in the body as energy. However, Carb and Fat calories get broken down quickly into blood sugars for the energy source of the body. If you don’t burn them (and you really can’t do that if you overloaded the system, right?) it gets stored in those pocket areas we work so hard to make stronger and leaner. Protein is broken down more slowly (also into glycogen) in the process of digestion and therefore, replenishing the body with complex carbs and protein – after the workout – versus fat and simplex carbs (sugar) as done with the Starbucks Diet above will make a huge difference in increasing the body’s metabolism and balancing the body’s energy use.
In Kathy’s case, not only was she consuming a high-calorie, high-fat scone but she topped it off with a Frappuchino Grande worth another 2-300 calories of pure sugar!! What a way to start the morning!
I think the moral to the story is clear….if you go to Starbucks, get the coffee black and pick up a cup of oatmeal and two hard boiled eggs from the corner bodega. It will save you money, precious earned energy and lots of unnecesssary pain from your trainer!
Lastly, check your current Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts consumption. There actually is a tab for "Nutrition." Great eye-opener!
In order to achieve long, lean muscles for life and "for keeps" (one
in the same, I think), it is crucial that our fitness activity (cardio,
strength and flexibility training) be performed consisently,
consciously and regularly and that it be supported by more consious
attention to nutrition (food sources as well as vitamins and minerals).
Weight loss and weight management are about losing BODY FAT and
converting the un-used, stored fat around the tummy, legs,
butts and arms into burned fat to create strong muscle and toned
bodies. That’s the formula.
If you start to focus on how to qualitatively increase muscle
(strength and flexilibity training), how to feed it and support its
energy requirements, the importance of your overall weight becomes
really insignificant.
You may find that you like the stronger,
length of your frame with the tighter, stronger, sexier curves that toned
muscle gives you – despite the fact that your overall weight hasn’t
shifted at all!
Gaining weight but losing inches
While muscle is really not any heavier than fat – a pound is still a pound, the truth is that muscle is denser and more compact than fat. The
number one reason most people exercise is to lose weight. People think
that exercise will automatically make them lose pounds on the scale as
well as inches on the measuring tape. However, as fat cells get smaller
from all the calories being burned in exercise, muscle cells respond by
getting stronger and heavier. That’s how a flabby body turns into a
firm one.
Many of us are so obsessed with
the scale. This is primarily because this is the only way we know how to evaluate our
weight loss progress. Losing inches or even a clothing size or two
is not enough to convince many that they are successful. If
you are one of these people, please try and change this attitude
because you will only get depressed over nothing. In fact, you should
celebrate your new body composition! Remember, it is a work in progress.
This is why, ideally, I use a body composition test with
skinfold measurement (calipers) to show how much muscle one has
gained and how much fat one has lost. However, not everyone has access
to these tests because they are only done by fitness professionals. Not
to worry. A tape measure and your own clothes will show your progress
just as nicely.
If you have a lot of weight to lose and you
continue to exercise and eat sensibly, you will eventually start to see
the weight drop on the scale as you also keep on losing in inches. This
is because muscle growth has a limit, especially if you don’t
progress to heavier and heavier weights. However, if you only have five
or ten pounds to lose, don’t be surprised if people tell you that you
look like you have lost weight when you haven’t. Your gain in
muscle mass is balancing out your loss in fat mass to equal a smaller,
tighter, more toned and defined you.
Muscle Increases Metabolism
More
muscle means a slightly higher metabolism. A pound of muscle has been
calculated as needing an extra 35 to 50 calories a day. This might not
seem like much until you realize that, all things being equal, this
translates to a loss of 3 ½ to 5 pounds; a year (3,500 calories equals
a pound of fat).
That’s why I highly recommend resistance or strength
training as part of a comprehensive, holistic plan to lose weight (the other
components are sensible eating and cardio exercise). You burn the most
amounts of calories during aerobic exercise (walking, running, cycling,
dancing, etc). You won’t burn as many calories during your resistance
training sessions (unless you lift very heavy amounts of weight) but
every pound of muscle you gain goes a long way in helping you to lose
weight. It’s the best long-term solution to weight management.
Inside the dressing room at Ann Taylor, Wendy Chao found herself at a loss.
”I tried on a size 0 skirt and it was too big,"
said Chao, a 30-year-old graduate student of molecular biology at
Harvard University. ”To me, a size 0 is antimatter; it’s something
devoid of any physical reality."
Chao was already mystified by
how she’d shrunk from a size 8 in high school to a size 2 today,
despite gaining 15 pounds in the interim. But now at size 0, she
realized something curious was afoot.
”As far as I can see, size
means nothing," she said. ”I am different sizes at different stores,
but they’re all remarkably smaller than what I wore as a scrawny
teenager. In my closet, I have everything from a size 0 to a size 12."
She added that a size 8 skirt she bought from Ann Taylor in 2000 is
”identical in cut" to the size 0 she bought at the store late last
year.
The incongruity in Chao’s closet is far from a fluke: While
Americans have statistically gotten larger, women’s clothing has gotten
smaller — that is, if the numbers on the size labels are to be
believed. It’s no secret that retailers have been playing to women’s
vanity for years by downsizing the sizes on garment labels, but the
practice has reached an extreme in recent months with the introduction
of the sizes ”double zero" and ”extra, extra small." If vanity sizing
continues on this path, analysts say, it is only a matter of time
before clothing sizes are available in negative integers.
In many ways we’re already there, said Bridgette Raes, an
image and style consultant in New York who notes that the sizes double
zero and extra, extra small available at stores like Banana Republic
and Old Navy are essentially negative sizes. Instead of putting a -2
size on the label, manufacturers use 00, which is the same thing.
J.
Jill introduced its ”extra, extra small" size last year in response to
its petite customers’ demands for smaller sizes, said Lauren Cooke, a
public relations manager for the company.
”We’ve always had size
‘extra small,’ but our clothing tends to be cut more generously because
we cater to women over 35," she said, noting that an extra small at J.
Jill is the equivalent of a size 2 or 4 at other stores. Their extra,
extra small is equivalent to a size 0.
The downward evolution of
sizes illustrates the extent to which retailers, apparel manufacturers,
and designers are conforming to American women’s obsession with wanting
to be thin — even if it’s only in their minds, said Natalie Weathers,
an assistant professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia
University.
In addition, the small sizes help retailers attract
the junior-sized buyers — typically girls in their teens — to adult
stores.
Vanity sizing has been a common practice in expensive
women’s clothing for decades, but Weathers said the practice has crept
into the mass market because a wider spectrum of women — teenagers
through baby boomers — are more preoccupied with size than ever before.
”We
live in a world now where 14-year-olds shop at Victoria’s Secret," said
Weathers. ”On the other side, we’re always hearing how 50 is the new
30."
And the gap between what’s reality for most women and
fantasy also seems to be bigger. While more than 60 percent of American
women are overweight, women on television and on the big screen are
getting skinnier and skinnier. In fact, after producers of ”Desperate
Housewives" learned their star Eva Longoria is a size 00, they wrote a
reference to her clothing size into an episode.
While images of
Hollywood certainly feed the frenzy, there are other factors at work,
said April Ainsworth, owner of VintageVixen.com, an online vintage
clothing retailer. With some exceptions, manufacturers are simply
making women’s clothing larger and labeling them with smaller sizes. As
a result, what was a size 8 in the 1950s had become a 4 by the 1970s
and 00 today. The size labels just keep getting smaller, so it’s no
surprise they’re diving below zero now, Ainsworth said.
If this
trend continues, some petite women may find their own shopping options
limited as the smaller sizes available at some of their favorite stores
actually become too large for them.
Just ask Kelly O’Rourke, 27, of Roslindale. She loved shopping at such stores as Ann Taylor,
the Gap
,
and J. Crew because their petite lines were cut to her silhouette.
However, she said she recently found that sizes 0 and 2 are too big for
her at some of these retailers.
”It’s frustrating to me as a
petite woman when I try on a size 2 suit and it’s swimming on me
because it really has the measurements of a size 6," she said.
The
picture is further complicated by the fact that sizing varies among
brands and stores, making it difficult for many women to know exactly
what size they are. The problem has only become more acute since
January 1983 when the US Department of Commerce dropped a uniform
sizing system for women on the grounds that it no longer reflected the
size and shape of the average consumer.
”Sizing has always
shifted to match consumers’ changing behaviors," said Kathleen
Fassanella, a pattern maker and author who writes an apparel
manufacturing blog called Fashion Incubator.
”For instance, when
women stopped wearing corsets, manufacturers had to completely redesign
their patterns due to the great dissatisfaction of women who were no
longer wearing the undergarments."
But because women have gotten
larger, Fassanella said, their clothing is cut larger today — though
many of the labels won’t tell you that.
Core
strength cannot be achieved with one exercise, one discipline or one magic set
of repetitive exercises. Sorry to burst
your bubble! Pilates is great, but it is not the be all to end all programs of exercise!
A
lean abdominal wall is visually appealing but 2-3 sets of crunches with or
without a stability ball or medicine ball will not create “six pack” abs either, if you
have a layer of mushy fat on top of the muscle.
You
really don’t need a fat emulsifier, fat burner or fat metabolizer. You don’t need (and should not consider using
without your physician’s knowledge and admonition) ephedrine or MaHuang to burn
or whittle away your waistline. Those $29.95 electric belts won’t do the trick
either. Simply put, lean abdominal are
the result of your food choices, the calories burned and the muscle strength
developed.
Let’s
discuss food choices, and keep it simple. Eat lean protein sources,
fish, chicken or beef, nuts and/or legumes. Eat complex carbohydrates
(fresh vegetables
and moderate consumption of fresh fruit). Minimize or eliminate simplex
carbohydrates (sugars, starch, and refined
foods) and drink water frequently, minimizing beer, alcohol and sweet
fruit
juices.
Burning
the calories is pretty standard and the rules are simple: move the body at a
rate such that you achieve the greatest
rate of fat burning in the 65% to 75% range of your target heart rate. This
will keep you in an aerobic state, guaranteeing adequate oxygen is supplied and
allowing your body to burn fat. You want to move such that stored body fat will
continue to be used as energy. Bear in mind this is hard to do “walking and
reading” or “walking and talking.” Leave
the reading material for resting times and move at a pace that churns and
burns. For example, if you are trying to
lose weight and body fat, set a goal for yourself to work up to heart strength conditioning such that you can maintain
100 rpm on a cycle for 10-15 minutes and jog a 7-10 minute mile with ease.
There
are a plethora of abdominal exercises available for strength
training. Many you know and use regularly already. Two very basic
Pilates exercises you
may incorporate into your existing program to assist development of your deep
tissue abdominal, building muscle strength from the inside out are the Half Roll Down and The Hundreds.
The Half Roll Down
Start in a seated position, knees
bent with feet on floor and legs tightly squeezed together. Hands holding on
behind knees throughout the exercise. Round your spine into a "c"
curve and roll down toward the floor one bone at a time, only until arms
straighten (hands stay behind the knees), then roll back up to starting
position, maintaining the "c" curve in the spine throughout. This is
excellent in opening up the lower back which is generally quite tight.
The Hundred
Lying flat on back, bend knees into chest and then
extend legs up to the ceiling (keep back long and flat) and bring head up (chin
into chest). With arms beside the body, vigorously pump arms up and down,
taking a breath for with this tempo (inhale for 5 pumps, exhale for 5 pumps). 
Take 10 or more breaths.
Note: As you get stronger, lowering the legs and extend them (keeping back flat) to a 45-degree line from your hips.
I know a man, Barry, a 45+ year old that uses a gym in a northern Bergen County town at least twice a week. Following his cardio training on the
recumbent bike, he grunts and moans and sometimes yells out as he completes the
final few reps of his bench press of 180 to 200 lbs, always without a spotter. He performs shoulder presses with two 60 lb
dumbbells, shoulder raises with 30 lb dumbbells and alternating bicep curls
with 45 lb dumbbells. His coach and
assistant sits close by and only moves when he needs him or calls him.
This may not sound particularly phenomenal to
you. But, in fact it is. For you see, Barry came to the gym with the
help of his coach and assistant, a seeing eye dog. Barry is totally blind easily moves about the
gym, comfortably using free weights and challenging himself completely without
any assistance from anyone.
He sweats profusely and generally leaves a huge puddle of
water on the mat when he completes his abdominal work. Most people pay little attention to him and
stay clear of his path. I find him,
however, an inspiration and joy to watch. He deeply and fully challenges himself for the entire hour (or more) to get to his personal best and the most from himself. He had an inner chip that was working overtime!
Clearly, he literally and figuratively "knew his way around" the gym. He knew where the equipment he wanted was located, he knew how to accomplish his work and he was driven fiercely – from an internal source – to move thru his program, regularly and diligently.
For me, the "inner chip" is the extra umph we pull from, turn on or tune into when we approach a project, task or activity that may seem insurmountable, enormously vast or just too damn hard for one person to do! It is as much desire, as it is will power. It is as much energy, as it is endurance. It is as much that last megabyte, that final drop of juice, the last inch of space left between "I can’t" and "I did it!"
Tell me, what is it that provides the drive and motivation for you?
If Barry can regularly and consistently challenge
himself with only the help of a seeing eye dog, to do all that he does 2-3X a week, what can you do differently to start working with your inner chip?
