It is common knowledge that exercising on a regular basis allows your body feel and function its best, but yet many people fail to incorporate exercise into their daily schedule. Work, kids, social lives, managing a household, various interests and ambitions, and finding some time to relax all tend to take priority over physically challenging our bodies to improve our health and wellbeing. However, this is not the case for everybody.
It is common knowledge that exercise is necessary for a healthy body, but what about for a healthy brain? While we would love for our skeletal muscles, joints, and heart to stay strong and functioning well as we age, making sure our brain stays sharp is of the utmost importance, too. Can exercise help us maintain or even improve our cognitive function as we battle Father Time? And, if so, what do various studies suggest in terms of the type of exercise to do as well as the frequency, intensity, and duration?
As a personal trainer and Muscle Activation Techniques® practitioner in Schaumburg, IL, using exercise to help my clients stay physically healthy as they age is a fundamental aspect of my business. I am well-aware of the potency of appropriate exercise when it comes to battling chronic illnesses and improving physical function and quality of life. However, I was not well-versed in the impact that exercise can have on cognitive function.
It is not uncommon for clients to report that they feel mentally “sharper” after beginning to exercise on a regular basis. But what does the literature have to say about this? Is there information to validate these seemingly subjective claims?
Fortunately for all of us, the answer is yes. Exercise does appear to have both a positive impact on performance during cognitive tasks as well as on the physical structure of the brain itself, as determined by functional MRI. And there is a mounting pile of research to back it up.
What is even more interesting–at least to me–is that not only are these changes in cognitive function dependent on the types of activity that are done, but the positive brain impacts are dependent on the frequency, duration, and intensity of the exercise, as well.
“Which is most effective to gain mass in my arms – the rod, the barbell, or the curly?” This question was posted on Quora.com recently. While there are many exercise and fitness questions that I choose to skip over, I decided to answer this one because I felt it highlighted a common misunderstanding in the fitness industry. There is a notion out there that the results you get from exercise are somehow dependent on the tool (machine, free weight, cable, band, etc.) that is used while exercising. And, if you use one tool versus another, that you will get better results (more muscle, less fat, increased strength, improved endurance, and so forth).
When it comes to working out, there are a lot of misconceptions about how to get started and what to do. As a personal trainer in Schaumburg, many of my daily conversations revolve around clearing up a lot of this misinformation with clients and on various online forums. If you are going to start working out on a regular basis, there are three things you need to keep in mind before you begin exercising. Each of these points goes against what is commonly thought to be the more important aspects of exercising, but, like I said, dispelling exercise and fitness myths is part of my job.
Three things to keep in mind for when you start working out:
1.Exercise should be used to build your body, not break it down. (more…)
You know you should be exercising, but how often should you take a day off from your workouts? As a personal trainer in Schaumburg, this question comes up often with my clients.
As with most things health and fitness related, the only truthful answer is, “it depends”. How often you take a day off from working out in part depends on:
When you think of the reasons why you should exercise or do your workouts, what do you think of? Improving your health? Increasing your fitness abilities, such as your strength, endurance, or flexibility? Changing your body composition? Changing how your body looks and feels? Increasing your energy levels? As a personal trainer in Schaumburg, I can tell you that all of these are wonderful reasons to exercise.
Now, when you actually go and exercise, what do you think of? While you are doing your workouts — the running, the lifting weights, the group fitness class, the biking, the whole exercise thing — what are you thinking of? Are you thinking about how your body is feeling? Are you thinking about what your body is doing?
When striving to live a healthy life, things can often feel as if they are “all” or “none”. Today, you either “were healthy”, or you “were not healthy”. We might think that as long as we keep living days that are “all healthy” everything will be okay. We won’t need Read more
I always thought meditation was some woo woo kind of thing where you would sit in silence and pretend like you were floating while discovering the answers to your deepest questions. I thought there was a perfect meditation position that you needed to sit in in order to attain the benefits of meditation. And, most of all, I thought that meditation, while an intriguing concept, just wasn’t for me. The “perfect meditation position” was extremely uncomfortable, my mind would be racing constantly, and I would often wonder how much time I had left before the alarm that I set for myself went off.
Then, back in 2015, I started using the popular app Headspace to guide me through meditation exercises. I wanted to see if a regular meditation practice could help me manage my stress a bit better. I was also starting to hear of the many health and brain benefits of meditating, and wanted to experience those for myself.
When I first got the app, I really enjoyed using it. I completed the first 10 days in a row, then the first 30. Somewhere between days 30 and 60, however, I fell off the wagon and stopped using the app altogether. I would open it up every now and then for a 10-minute meditation session, but those times were few and far between.
But then, last April, I decided that I wanted to start meditating using the app again. I wanted to see if I could meditate every day for an entire year and set the goal to do so. The app has a nice feature where it measures your current meditation streak, so that would be easy for me to track. It also has markers along the way at days 3, 10, 15, 30, 90, 180, and then finally 365.
So I started the “woo woo” activity, sitting in a more comfortable position than what I had originally believed was appropriate, and just dealt with the fact that my mind was wandering a lot during my practice. And I did that everyday for an entire year.
How personal is your personal training? It can seem like a ridiculous question, but let’s explore.
A quick search on Dictionary.com reveals that there are multiple definitions of “personal”:
The definitions continue, but, for our purposes, these will do.
When it comes to personal training, there seems to often be a disconnect between the type of “personal” that is marketed, the type that is delivered, and the type that could be experienced but is often overlooked.
When people think of muscles, they usually don’t immediately think of a Muscle Activation Techniques™ (MAT™) practitioner, but they should. Similar to how somebody might think of a dentist after hearing “teeth”, or a chiropractor after hearing “back” or “spine”, Muscle Activation Techniques™ may one day have that same relationship when somebody hears “muscle”. For the time being, though, that typically isn’t the case, and here’s why — many people aren’t sure of 1) what MAT™ is, and 2) what makes MAT™ unique. In that case, let’s discuss both of these.
