Do You Worry Too Little?

February 08, 2012

Reblog

Many people worry a lot, but do you worry too little? No, I haven’t lost my mind, and in general, I’m not recommending that you worry more. As it turns out, the “don’t worry, be happy” people tend to die earlier.

Conscientious people live longer.

In looking at a group of people that were followed for 80 years, this is the conclusion drawn from the data by Leslie Martin and Howard Friedman, two psychology professors, and discussed in a recent article in The Atlantic and detailed in their book, The Longevity Project.

There are three reasons conscientious people tend to stay healthier and live longer.

1. Conscientious people do more things to protect their health. They engage in fewer risky activities like smoking, drinking to excess, abusing drugs or driving too fast. 
2. Some people actually seem to be biologically predisposed both to have that personality trait and to be healthier. It appears likely that conscientious and unconscientious people have different levels of certain chemicals in their brains, including serotonin, which may be involved. 
3. Having a conscientious personality leads people into healthier situations and relationships. When you care enough to make sure you’re doing the right things – especially as it pertains to health – you’re more likely to live longer. 

Overly optimistic people have a tendency to ignore details, meaning they don't follow doctor's orders correctly or lead themselves into unhealthy situations or addictions. You can’t think yourself thin or wish yourself wealthy, despite claims from silly self-help books. The path to health and vitality is the same as it has always been. It’s taking care of your shiny new toy.

When you get a new car, new house –  new anything, really – it comes with an owner’s manual that provides instructions for how to care for it. If you ignore the information in there, your car or house will fall apart much faster. And it’s no different from your body.

The owner’s manual for the human body details how we need to have something to strive for – something for our will to push against.  If we strive to be more fit and capable, we have ambition for a better experience in our own bodies.  And this leads to choices and behaviors that line up with healthier, longer lives.  Like eating the right foods and engaging in a host of health-promoting behaviors.

I was once exercising on a step-mill next to someone who was leaning over using terrible posture as the only way to keep up with the high intensity setting they were using.  When I offered a better posture to use while on the machine, the reply I got was, “I’ve always felt that if you do things from a positive spirit that everything will work out well.”  This shockingly naïve, child-like approach to life won’t just injure you, it could cost you your life. 

So the next time someone dismisses your efforts at health with, “Eat well, stay fit, and die anyway,” you can ask them, “So what’s your rush?”

More on Health Living:

7 Step Plan for Healthy Living

10 Ways to Eat Healthier

9 Tools for Quitting Smoking

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

How Can You Motivate a Loved One to Lose Weight?

January 24, 2012

Reblog

What can you do about a loved one who will not exercise? This can be one of the most dangerous, emotionally charged and difficult subjects to discuss. But it’s probably worth the effort.

I watched the last 10 years of my father’s life and they weren’t pretty. He got heavier, angrier, heavier, more bitter, heavier, grumpier and heavier until obesity-related issues took his life at 424 pounds. As he got heavier, his world got smaller. He often asked for help with basic tasks.

He was also the type of person not to be told what to do. A former United States Marine, it was often “my way or the highway” with him. 

I was too young to have any influence over him at the time he died, but I think often about how I might interact with him now if he were still alive.

Exercising for Overall Health

There are two main issues to address when it comes to exercise: exercising for health maintenance and exercising for fitness. Not everyone must seek to be “fit,” but it’s our duty to maintain our health. And, like it or not, that includes physical activity.  All humans need some degree of physical activity to function best both physically and mentally. The fact is, active people are smarter, have less pain and less issues with depression. 

Essentially, active people have a lot less problems with the bad stuff, and they get a lot more of the good stuff out of life. So why isn’t everyone at least active enough to take care of themselves?

Your Body is Your Home

One of the more strange and silly things about our world today is that people get so angry when you try and tell them what to do when it comes to health, but will willingly give up tons of freedom – and pay for the “privilege” – in other areas of life.

For some reason, many people have no problem with paying hundreds of dollars a month to a Homeowner’s Association or Condo Association to then be told what color their door can/can’t be, what size or where their shed can be located, etc. It’s all done under the guise of maintaining a certain quality of the homes and of the neighborhood so that we have a pleasing place to live.

Aren’t our bodies really the same thing? Doesn’t everyone want a pleasing place to live? And you live in your body 24 hours a day. But try and tell someone what to do with their body and how to maintain it, and as a response you get whining about the food police and cries for freedom that are silent when it comes to home ownership.

 

Ask Them How They Feel

The truth is, we can’t nag or force anyone into taking care of themselves. But we can get them thinking about how they feel…in their body…right now…today. What does it feel like to live in your own body? No judgment, just a question. 

If it’s a bad experience to live in your body, then it’s likely that you are very limited in what you can do. And that means you’re limited in the experiences you can have with loved ones. Your world gets smaller and more limited like my father’s was. 

The next question to ask is “What are you willing to do about it?” And I’m not talking about drugs, surgery or doctor visits. “What are YOU willing to do about it?” 

If the answer is “nothing,” then your response should be, “Then until you are willing to make an effort, please stop complaining about it.” You can’t tell someone what to do, but you can tell them what you’re willing to listen to. 

This might seem harsh, but it’s no different than how we react with everything else. If all someone in your life does is complain about their job, but never looks for ways to change or improve the situation, don’t you eventually lose interest in hearing about it? Of course you do.  No one wants to come along for the ride when someone is wallowing in self-pity and unwilling to change. There comes a time when the problem has been identified and it’s time to start looking for solutions.

An answer of “nothing” means the person isn’t ready to change. And it also means you don’t need to keep providing an audience for the complaints. If they are willing to change something, focus on the behaviors and the effort they make to change them, not on the outcomes. This is the most important way to encourage continued effort.

A focus on outcomes like “Did you exercise today?” or “How many pounds did you lose last week?” don’t typically help someone make any real and lasting progress because it has the tone of a parent asking a child if they did their chores or homework. And health behaviors shouldn’t feel that way.

Ways to Encourage:

• “How was your mood today?” 
• “How did you feel after we went for that walk this morning?” 
• “What can I do to make it easier for you to improve your health?” 
• “I love you, and want you not to just be around for a long time, but for us to be able to share enjoyable experiences together for a long time.” 

Yes, this is hard stuff to do. Aren’t the people you love worth the effort? You don’t want to quietly sit by and watch someone you love killing themselves and then wish you’d said something when it’s too late. If they get angry, just remember, their anger is coming from their own realization that they aren’t doing something they should be. 

Too many people live in denial about their health. Inactivity leads to disease, obesity, loss of vitality and death. So step up and lovingly take a stand for the people you love. They might get offended, but just because they get offended, it doesn’t mean they are right. Often our first reaction to harsh truth is to attack. It doesn’t change the truth; it’s just our emotions fighting back. And it will pass. 

If you have a tip for what to say to motivate a loved one, please share it in the comments. There are endless strategies that will work to lovingly motivate someone to get active and treat their body properly.

More on Weight Loss:

Stay on Track with Your Weight Loss

20 Home Remedies for Weight Loss

Dr. Pam Peeke's 10 Weight Prevention Tips

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Digital Vision

What is Lack of Movement Doing to Our Bodies?

January 10, 2012

Reblog

Do you suffer from Acute Motion Starvation?  A lot of people do.

Do you have any of the following symptoms?

• Your body hurts in one or more places with no real reason (no pathology or other injury)
• You work out two to three days a week but don’t move too much apart from the workouts
• Your mind begins to seek reasons to move less instead of move more
• You have a desk job
• You have a long commute spent seated in a car/bus/train
• You need to “unwind” for 2 or more hours a day in front of the TV
• You feel “down” or mildly depressed often and with no real reason

If any of the above describes you, then you probably are suffering from something I like to call AMS (Acute Motion Starvation). 

There is a treatment for this condition that has a nearly 100 percent success rate, and it involves reversing what caused the condition. Get moving!!

Movement Therapy

Your body literally thrives on movement. It comes alive when moving. It sends small electrical signals all over the place to turn various muscles on or off at the right times, to sense where your body is in space and how fast you are moving. 

Movement also sends blood around the body and this brings warm, nutrient-rich blood to all your joints and muscles. Joints feel more stiff and painful when they are moved less, not more.  The only way blood gets into your joints is from the pumping action of muscles contracting and relaxing. No movement equals no blood flow. This is why joints (whether healthy or injured) feel stiffer when they are motionless for any length of time.

To apply movement therapy, use a daily dose of movement for at least ten to 15 minutes a day. If desired, you can double the dose as this has often been shown to magnify the results of the treatment. 

Feel free to self-administer this treatment whenever you have ten minutes available. The type of movement matters very little to your body so long as it involves motion of the larger joints in the body – the shoulder, trunk, and hips.

Apply movement therapy one to two times per day for a period of seven days, and if symptoms are reduced, feel free to continue the treatment indefinitely. Movement therapy is available without a prescription, and you’ll find it wherever there is gravity.

 

More on Fitness:

5 Easy Exercises to Do at Work

Best Workout Equipment for the Office

Weight Lifting for Women

Photo Source: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

Can Exercise Increase Brain Function?

December 19, 2011

Reblog

“Exercise doesn’t make you smarter…it just makes you normal.” This great quote from John Medina in Brain Rules illustrates the essential role that physical activity plays in maintaining a sharp mind. The brain is best at solving problems related to surviving in an unstable environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. This is what the brain did for virtually all of human history until we engineered the need for physical activity out of everyday life.

Rush to the Head

Exercise literally increases the blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus, a vital part of the hippocampus. Exercise also stimulates BDNF, a protein which exerts a fertilizer-like growth effect on certain neurons. This protein keeps existing neurons young and healthy, rendering them much more willing to connect with one another. It also encourages neurogenesis, the formation of new cells in the brain. The cells most sensitive to this are in the hippocampus, inside the very regions deeply involved to human cognition and memory.

It’s what happens after exercise that optimizes the brain. Exercise increases levels of IGF-1 (a growth hormone), and in the hippocampus IGF-1 increases neuroplasticity (the way we learn associations with things), and neurogenesis. It’s another way exercise helps our neurons bind.

“The way exercise changes our brains is more effective than wine, medicines, and doughnuts,” says John Ratey, author of Spark. But too often, this is what we use to attempt to manage stress.

Find Stress Relief

Stress, lack of exercise, and junk food harms your brain. Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. The hormones released in response to stress are meant for immediate danger response, not chronic stress. Chronic stress makes adrenaline scar blood vessels while cortisol damages the cells of the hippocampus. Since exercise influences metabolism, it serves as a powerful way to influence synaptic function, and thus the way we think and feel.

As hard as it might be right now, instead of wine, medicine and doughnuts, what might be best to deal with stress is to get moving. Even if it’s just taking a short walk. The more you move, the better you’ll feel. Your movement choices don’t have to be exercise or nothing. A little exercise with a lot of movement in general can help you cope with stress – a great coping strategy to have at this time of year.

No matter how sharp or smart you are, your brain gets better with physical activity. It has a 100% effectiveness rate and the side effects are a healthier body as well!

More on Exercise:

Is 90 Minutes Per Week the Ideal Amount of Exercise?

Cardio vs. Weight Training

Can Exercise Improve Sex Life?

Photo Source: Thinkstock

The Cycle of Motivation - How to Find and Keep It!

December 01, 2011

Reblog

Why do people quit an exercise program? The top reason cited is a lack of results.  Interestingly, not having enough time is the most commonly cited reason why people don’t exercise. 

Time Crunch

It is important to note how one often leads to the other. With full-time careers, children to raise, long commutes with long work days (which often don’t stop once people are home) there are many demands on our time and energy. These significant time, family and work commitments can overwhelm your efforts at change, but are less likely to do so if you are getting results from your efforts. 

Results = Continued Motivation

Typically, when you begin to feel better, move more fluidly and enjoy clothes that fit better, the resulting enthusiasm helps to continue your motivation. Conversely, after the initial rush of enthusiasm passes, if you aren’t getting results, the time and energy you devote to the fitness program will seem less worthwhile, and a few missed workouts leads to complete relapse. In a way, this makes sense. No one will typically choose to continually devote time and energy to something that is providing no positive benefit in return. If there is effort without reward, the effort will soon disappear. 

Find the Time - It's Important!

We are typically very resourceful when it comes to fitting in time for things when we see great benefit in that activity. If something isn’t working or isn’t giving you the result it should, it makes sense to stop or find a different way.

Since fitness isn’t really optional, you can’t stop – if you value your health, the way you feel, having a healthy brain and great relationships at work and at home, then fitness is essential.  So if your fitness program isn’t delivering what it should, don’t stop, just change it up. Try a different class, learn a new sport, hire a trainer for a few sessions who can teach you how to exercise (rather than one who creates hard workouts – anyone can do that – but can’t teach you to do it on your own.)

And you’re probably wondering, “Why is Jonathan writing about this now?  It’s the beginning of the holiday season and it will soon be in full swing.  This isn’t the time to focus on fitness!”

Yes, it is!  If you make a renewed effort now, you’ll feel better than you ever have during the holiday season. You will likely make it easier on yourself to avoid the endless stream of holiday cookies, cakes and other treats, and perhaps best of all, if you can do it now, you can do it any time of year! Think of the confidence boost you’d get from that! 

Just try it. This December, make your emphasis getting a little fitter. All the stuff you “have” to do probably contains some things that are really optional, so take a look at cutting back on one or two to focus on you. What’s the worst that could happen?

More Fitness Tips:

How to Find Your Healthy Weight

20 Home Remedies for Weight Loss

How Can I Keep from Regaining Weight?

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Brand X Pictures 

5 Liquid Myths

November 18, 2011

Reblog

Fortified orange juice is a great source of ___________.

You can fill in the blank with just about whatever you want these days: calcium, vitamin D, fiber, you name it. In an effort to make fruit juice seem healthier, and in particular orange juice, manufacturers are loading it with healthful nutrients to try and hide the simple truth that liquid sugars are never good for you. The human stomach can’t sense calories from liquids so you not only get the damaging sugar hit, but you also don’t feel as full as if you’d eaten an equal amount of calories of real fruit.

You should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water daily.

Only if you weigh 116 pounds. Our water needs, like our calorie needs, are individual based on weight and activity levels. For active people, the guideline is to drink your weight times 0.55 in ounces each day. For someone 150 pounds, that’s 82.5 ounces. Drink water, but don’t stress too much about drinking the exact amount you need since you get water from other beverages (see the next item here), and from high-water content foods like fruits and vegetables.

Coffee and tea dehydrate you.

No, they don’t. Yes, they contain caffeine which is a diuretic. But they are both made with water. Sure, if you drink eight ounces of coffee, you aren’t going to keep as much of the water as if you drank eight ounces of water. But you aren’t going to lose more than the eight ounces of water consumed with the coffee. Green tea in particular has many healthful properties and many herbal teas are valuable as well.

An alcoholic day or two a day is good for you.

Alcohol is toxic to the brain and is the most simple sugar there is. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. Resveratrol is the compound in wine that has health benefits, but drinking wine to get more resveratrol is like eating an entire ice cream sundae to get one cherry.  You’d have to drink a dangerously large amount of wine to get enough of it to provide significant health benefits.  If you really love your glass of wine, beer, or mixed drink, have it occasionally and enjoy it.  But treat it like what it is…the opposite of a health food.

Diet-sodas and flavored water are a good choice for health-conscious people.

Sweet on the tongue means that your brain thinks you ate a sugar, so it reacts just like you ate one. Even without the calorie coming in, your brain has the same hormonal reaction and neurochemical response as if you ate sugar. And many artificial sweeteners are several times sweeter than sugar, making this negative effect amplified. Two studies in 2010 in The Journal of Neuroscience and the Yale Journal of Biological Medicine showed weight gain when people went on diets with artificial sweeteners.

 

More Diet Myths:

5 Heart Health Myths

5 Acid Reflux Myths

What to Know About Diet Pills

 

Photo Source: Thinkstock

How to Tighten Up on a Tight Budget

October 31, 2011

Reblog

Your body doesn’t care. Don’t feel bad; no one’s body cares. Your body doesn’t care how fancy your exercise equipment is or how long you workout, it just cares what you ask it to do. Your body reacts. It cares if you ask it to work harder than it’s used to. And it reacts by getting stronger, better and more capable to handle the task the next time. 

 That’s really all you need for fitness. Give your body what it needs to change, and you’ll be feeling tighter. It’s guaranteed because the same rules apply to all. Consistent effort that makes your body take notice is the path to fitness. If you’re feeling short on time and short on funding these days, try this routine I’ve put together for you. All you need is some dumbbells, your own bodyweight and a good attitude.

Here’s how you do it:

30 seconds each movement; no rest – immediately perform each exercise in the circuit.

Creative Jacks (pick a different jack option each time) 

 

Standing Row with Rotating Grip (30 seconds per arm) 

  

Monkey Squat 

 

Pivot Press (alternate right and left arms each rep) 

 

Reverse Plank Swing 

 

Front-to-Back Lunge with Reach (30 seconds per leg)

 

If you’re really short on time, just perform the circuit once – you’ll be done in less than 10 minutes. If you have a set amount of free time, just keep repeating the circuit until that time is up. So if you’ve got a quick 15 minutes free before it’s time to pick the kids up from school, you can use it effectively.

If you have a kitchen timer or a timer on your phone, use it to let you know when the 15 minutes is up. If you don’t have an easy way to track the time of each exercise, try using a set number of reps of each movement. Pick a number of reps that doesn’t totally exhaust you so you can keep moving from one exercise to the next without slowing down too much. In this case, you might do 20 reps of the jacks and perhaps 10 reps of everything else. 

You will find that you would not want a lot of time on this workout even if you had it! By ditching the wasted time in a workout where you rest between sets, you keep your metabolism revved up and get the most out of every second of exercise you do. 

No time, no fancy equipment, no worries. 

 

More Fitness Tips:

Dos and Don'ts of Running

Before You Begin a Fitness Program

Get Inspired to Get Fit

Small Changes Make a Big Impact

October 17, 2011

Reblog

“I need to make major changes.”  I hear this all the time, and it’s usually wrong. Usually, it’s from someone who is at a low point in fitness and is frustrated/disgusted/tired from wanting to feel and see changes in fitness but never experiencing any.

If you’re out-of-shape, unhealthy or otherwise struggling for fitness, you might think that major changes are in order...and that’s the problem.

In general, we don’t get badly out-of-shape from major changes. After a single weekend of bad choices, we don’t typically pack on a hundred pounds. It’s the small changes we don’t think too much about that have the biggest impact. A few skipped workouts, a few “treats” after a hard day, an evening glass of wine to relax (“after all, wine is good for me” we tell ourselves), a few days of missed sleep or skipping breakfast…and we’re in a pattern of behaviors that lead us away from health. Then “suddenly” we’re living in a body that is evidence of years of little daily mistakes…not a few days of big ones.

We get to the point where we’ve had enough and seek a change. But, if you don’t set the goals just right, you can make the likelihood of success much lower. I call it the “Sundae, Sunday, or Someday” phenomenon.

Sundae:  If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your responsibilities at home and/or work – all the little things that just HAVE to get done every day – the notion of carving out more time to take care of yourself can be enough to push you over the edge. You need a quick hit of feel-good brain chemicals, so you might turn to an ice cream sundae. The combination of fat and sugar floods your body, and you get a quick shot of hormones that elevate your mood. Meanwhile, you send your body’s fat storing ability through the roof so numbing the pain in the moment only makes the problem worse.

Sunday:  You decide that today is the day and you simply start making better, smaller choices.  You have a balanced breakfast and start to think of planning your breakfasts for the week. It continues from there…you look for other ways to make smaller, healthier choices day-by-day.  Before you know it, you’re feeling better. This lets you put more effort into making better food and exercise choices. Your body starts changing. You feel better than you have in some time and are full of motivation to continue. Today is the day you can make the U-turn and reverse the small behaviors that have led to poor health - no drama, just small shifts in behavior.

Someday:  You step on the scale after dragging yourself out of bed feeling exhausted and despair at the number that stares back up at you. All you can feel is the tiredness in your bones and the weight of effort it will take for you to get to healthier. It’s all just too much for you to face today. You’ll lose those pounds someday, but today there’s just too much to do. There’s no time for self-care as you’ve got too much happening. There’s status updates to post, new cell phones to stand in line for and that new gourmet cupcake shop you just have to try. 

You can probably guess which approach will actually work. It’s the “Sunday” one. If the pressures in your life are too great, you’ll just need to escape them with whatever unhealthy food or behavior helps provide relief. If you only focus on how far you are from where you want to be, it will overwhelm you, and you’ll put off changes to some mythical later date of “someday.”

Big changes come from small changes and simple choices that are repeated over time. The fallacy that big results come from making big changes is what often keeps you from taking any real action. If it seems too big for your brain to figure out where to start, then you never will.

Start today – whatever day of the week it is. Just figure out a single behavior you can change that will be easy enough to alter, but big enough to have an impact in your life. 

More on Healthy Living:

7 Step Plan for Healthy Living

5 Tips for Conscious Living

5 Steps to Heart Health

 

Photo Source: Thinkstock/Brand X Pictures

The Truth About P90X

October 03, 2011

Reblog

I’m always getting asked about fitness products, and I always give straight answers on what works, what doesn’t and everything in between. Below are some of the most common questions I get asked about a popular program, P90X, and the truth about what you need to know before you consider ordering and using a program like this.

1. What makes P90X different from other workout DVDs?

There are many different types and intensities of exercise shown. Most DVDs and programs focus on one type of exercise or one type of equipment, and it’s up to the individual to integrate the workouts into whatever else they may be doing for exercise. The variety keeps the workouts from getting boring and can help prevent injuries from doing too much of one exercise.

2. What should I know about it before ordering?

It’s a big commitment – both financially and time-wise! Twelve DVDs plus the program manual isn’t cheap. Also, get your schedule ready for 90 minutes of exercise five to six days per week. If you can devote that much time to exercise, it almost doesn’t matter what program you follow, you’ll get results. I’ve rarely met people that find the prospect of such a big time commitment realistic.

There’s nothing magical about “muscle confusion” - it’s a term created by P90X, not an idea created by P90X. To describe what every entry-level trainer has known for decades: without a varied stimulus to the body, it is difficult to make long-term progress. You’ve got to force the body to change. The only thing revolutionary about “muscle confusion” is the term itself. The concept is an old one.

3. Any precautions about who should be doing the program (is it safe for everyone?), how to execute it safely, etc.?

If you know how to listen to your body it can potentially be for anyone. New exercisers will need to make the movements easier at first. In general, it’s for younger people (teens, 20’s and 30’s) who are exercising already but not getting great results from their time and effort. Just jumping in and following everything at full intensity if you haven’t already been exercising is not going to be a wise choice.

4. Is there anything I should do before I begin the program to be more prepared?

Make room in your schedule – can’t stress this enough. The time commitment on this program is more than most people typically say they have available for exercise.

5. Anything I should do (either during, before or after) to get the best results from the program?

Plan on getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night, eating small, frequent meals that are high in veggies and fruits and taking a fish-oil supplement. In addition, either schedule a deep-tissue massage every two to three weeks or spend some time on self-massage with a tennis ball, foam roller or other similar device. Your muscles will need it! 

Remember: Progress from fitness isn’t from the workouts – it’s from the body’s ability to recover from a workout. 

6. Any advice for when I’m performing the workouts to help me get the most benefits?

Feel free to modify any exercise for your body, your injury history and your goals. There’s nothing magical about doing everything exactly as someone else does it. Know your limits, and push them. However, know that the risk of overdoing it is common with this ambitious program.

7. Anything I should not do while performing this program? Is there anything that will sabotage my results?

Don’t feel pressure to do all the sets and reps at the highest intensity shown. Listen to your body and know that during a workout, it can be easy to get “in the zone” and overdo it. Then a few hours later, you’re hurting - and not in a good way. Intense muscle soreness is from a poorly executed workout. A little soreness lets you know you had a challenge, but very sore or painful muscles need to recover before getting hit hard again. Even if you have to take an extra day or two of light exercise to recover and skip a workout or two, that’s fine if it is what is best for your body. 

8. Are there any other things you think i should know about P90X before I begin? Or tips/advice on how I can see the best results while completing the program?

The over-the-top delivery style of the workout leader on the videos can get irritating after multiple viewings. After one or two times through and you have a good idea of the moves, try following the videos with the sound down while you’re listening to your own motivating music.

 

More Fitness Trends:

What Are the Craziest Diet Trends of All Time?

Pros and Cons of Wii Fit

10 Weird Workouts

 

Photo Source: Thinkstock/BananaStock

Top 5 Fitness Mistakes

September 19, 2011

Reblog

There are a few recent trends in fitness that can potentially lead you off course in your pursuit of fitness. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the common fitness mistakes coming from these recent trends with some tips on avoiding them.

1. Running barefoot on concrete or asphalt. I’m no fan of the traditional running shoe with its over-cushioned, elevated heel. I personally do a lot of work with people to strengthen their feet since they are the platform for all human movement, but running barefoot on concrete or asphalt must stop. The modern running shoe is unnatural, so getting rid of them is a good idea. But modern surfaces – perfectly flat, rock-hard streets and sidewalks – are just as unnatural and our feet aren’t equipped to run on them. Our feet work best on highly variable terrain. The barefoot running fanatics only see half the problem. Run barefoot or in minimalist shoes, but do it on grass or other more forgiving and variable surfaces.

2. You’re not really doing Tabata training. “We’re doing Tabata today: 20 seconds on, then ten seconds of rest, for eight cycles.” You’re hearing this more and more from personal trainers and fitness instructors, and they couldn’t be more wrong. Tabata is the last name of a Japanese researcher who, along with other researchers, studied the effects of short, intense bouts of exercise. The protocol was 20 seconds of high-intensity effort, followed by ten seconds of full rest. The part that no one seems to notice is that the high-intensity part is at 170% of VO2 Max. In layman’s terms, this is far higher than most people have ever worked or are capable of working. It’s not Tabata training if you’re not at those insane intensities. You can’t do it with body weight squats or push-ups.

3. Get your head straight. The inverted push-up (sometimes known as the handstand push-up) has gotten more popular, but to do it right, you don’t just need significant upper body strength. You need to keep your head on straight. When doing any push-up variation, the head should be positioned so that the neck stays neutral. In this position, your nose points the same direction as your chest. In a regular push-up, this means you’d be looking at the floor (between your hands.) In a handstand push-up, this means you are NOT looking at the floor but out from the wall so that the top of your head is pointed toward the space on the floor between your hands.

4. Avoiding crunches. Based on some seriously flawed conclusions from research, some people have recommended that you stop doing crunches. In a nutshell, these studies show that when you take the spines of dead pigs and put them through thousands – and in some cases tens of thousands – of spinal flexion cycles, there is a big jump in damage to the spinal structures. You aren’t a dead pig. When you put living tissue under stress in a workout and let it rest, it remodels itself and gets stronger to handle the stress better next time. You don’t do thousands of reps at once with dead tissue so it’s really silly to make this comparison. Further, when you compress and release pressure on living discs, you improve hydration and fluid flow in and out of the disc…another thing that can’t happen with dead tissue. It gets big headlines to shout, “Stop Doing Crunches!” but it’s intellectually lazy to do so. As I demonstrate in Abs Revealed, a smarter solution is to perform better crunches.

5. Wasting time on planks. Most of the anti-crunch zealots also make the error of thinking planks are the secret to world peace. Planks are a great exercise…to help you get better at doing other exercises. But many people make the mistake of doing planks for more and more time and with more and more challenges – all while staying perfectly still. Beyond 30 seconds, static planks are a waste of valuable training time you should be spending on movement. Life is movement, not staying still. Doing static planks for longer and longer is like staying in 1st grade forever. If you’re an adult in 1st grade, you’re likely getting perfect scores on your tests every time! But so what…you’re supposed to move on. If you’re up to 30 seconds on planks, either start shifting your body or moving your arms and legs to add a more appropriate challenge. Here’s a terrific example I created for you called “Walking Plank”. 

 

Your time is valuable and in short supply so you want to make sure you’re making the most of your precious workout time. Avoid the mistakes here and you’ll be getting fitter with some of the recent trends in fitness but avoiding the problems that come from not getting them quite right.

 

More on Fitness Trends:

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10 Heart Health Myths

5 Worst Fad Diets

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