The Month In Health & Fitness

The Fitness Representatives Health & Fitness tips of the Month

Health and Nutritional Tip of the Month

 Want to burn more calories during the day? Then hit the snooze button.

Seriously. Recent research shows how a sleep deficit does more than foster cappuccino cravings. A lack of slumber may also increase your risk for weight gain -- even if you're not overeating.

Sleepless and Sinking
In a study, middle-aged women who slept 5 hours or less per night gained more weight than the women getting 7 or more hours of shut-eye nightly. And the sleepless set was at much higher risk of gaining significant weight -- as much as 33 pounds -- during the 16-year study. Whoa! Women who slept 6 or fewer hours nightly also tended to gain a bit more weight than the 7-hour sleepers.

Haywire Hormones
The truly big surprise of the study? The short sleepers weren't raiding the cookie jar. In fact, they took in about 50 fewer calories than their skinnier, longer-sleeping peers. All of which left the researchers to speculate that a lack of sleep may somehow depress metabolism, so people burn fewer calories around the clock. Missing out on deep, restorative REM sleep could also alter hormones in as yet undiscovered ways linked to higher body weights. Better hit the hay happy -- and sleep better -- with these steps:

• Jot down your worries. Putting your concerns on paper can help you sleep better.
• Sleep solo. Your deepest sleep might be had by sleeping single in a double bed.
• Log out of Facebook earlier. Computer and TV light can scramble your body's natural sleep-wake cycles.
• Pull on some wooly socks. It helps your body release heat as a prelude to slumber.

Fitness and Exercise Tip of the Month

Incorporating Interval Training

The key to incorporating interval training into workouts is to manipulate a few simple variables that fitness professionals work with every day. Here are the variables:

Speed. Increasing speed, or the velocity of movement, is an obvious way to boost intensity. However, speed can cause injury and should be used to increase exercise intensity only with conditioned clients who are free from musculoskeletal injuries.

Incline. Adding incline, along with resistance, is an alternative way to increase intensity on most cardiovascular equipment. A change in incline changes the mechanics of movement by incorporating additional muscles or increasing output, both of which increase how hard the heart works and what the maximal oxygen consumption is.

Resistance. The greater the resistance, the harder the muscles work to move the bones. This variable can be manipulated by increasing resistance on cardiovascular machines or by incorporating load, which is added weight. For example, a squat without weight is unloaded; in a squat with dumbbells, the load is the weight that the dumbbells add. The greater the load, the harder the muscles work and the more demand there is for oxygen.

Relationship to Gravity. One of the most effective ways to train is to use body weight against gravity; for instance, by incorporating jump push-ups or squats into a workout.

Range of Motion (ROM). A muscle works harder with a full- versus a small- ROM movement. For example, given the same weight, a biceps curl is much more difficult when it is done through full ROM than when it stops halfway at 90 degrees of flexion. Another example is step climbing; it is much more difficult to climb three steps per stride than it is to climb one step, and much harder to step up 12 inches versus 6 inches. At the greater height, the leg ROM is fuller, requiring more muscle work and forcing the heart to work harder.

Impact. Impact is most commonly associated with sustained, high-impact activities like jogging, but plyometrics (explosive movements such as hopping and jumping) are effective for adding impact moves in a nonsustained manner. Including a plyometrics component can increase the intensity of almost any exercise. However, incorporating plyometric moves calls for the same care that is needed when speeding up an exercise.

Lower Alternating With Upper. A simple way to increase intensity and then recover is to alternate a lower-body exercise like a lunge with an upper-body exercise like a dumbbell shoulder press. This strategy is particularly effective for deconditioned clients. The lower-body exercise increases the heart rate, while the upper-body work allows a brief recovery.

The best way to interval train is to keep it simple by changing one variable at a time; for example, increasing resistance on the elliptical trainer and maintaining speed, or increasing incline on the treadmill and maintaining speed. The key to remember is that it makes no difference to the body which variable changes. All that matters is that the muscles work harder, oxygen demand increases, the heart rate goes up and thereby aging slows.

The big issue with interval training is how long to spend in the all-out phase versus the recovery phase. All-out efforts cannot be maintained for long; how long each all-out interval can be maintained depends on intensity and heart rate. The goal should be to sustain high-intensity exercise for 30 seconds to 1 minute. “High-intensity” is anything that makes the heart work at 85% of maximum or higher. However, 85% may not be feasible for all clients, and you may need to modify intensity levels. The recovery time is proportional to the intensity and the length of the all-out phase. For example, 1 minute at 85% should require 2–3 minutes of recovery. Sticking to the exact time increments is not nearly as important as simply incorporating short bursts of high-intensity exercise in training sessions.

 IDEA Fitness Journal, Volume 5, Number 9