American College of Sports Medicine

5 Popular Fitness Trends in 2018

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In November, the American College of Sports Medicine released the results of a worldwide survey projecting the most popular fitness trends for 2018.

Whether you’re looking to get reacquainted with consistent exercise, hoping to spice up your current routine, or searching for workouts that are fast and effective, these forecasted trends offer a little something for everyone. Plus, many of these workouts can be done in the comfort of your home with very little equipment. From a list of 16, here are my top five picks for convenience, affordability, and accessibility.

1. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

If you haven’t tried a HIIT session before, this time-saving, full-body workout might surprise you. Generally, classes last around 30 minutes, but they could be longer or shorter depending on the repertoire of exercises. HIIT incorporates short spurts of high-intensity training followed by a brief time of rest or recovery. You can find HIIT classes in just about every gym and online. When doing the exercises, concentrate on your posture and form. Because HIIT can be very fast-paced and intense, you want to minimize your risk of injuries.

2. Wearable Technology

Whether you wear a Fitbit or keep your phone in your pocket, counting your steps can help you track how much mileage you’re logging each day. As a bonus, you can monitor your heart rate and time spent sleeping, so you can make sure you’re not just working hard, but getting adequate rest as well.

3. Yoga

Every year, there seems to be something new in the world of yoga, from pool yoga, aerial yoga, and yogalates, to more traditional forms like Hatha, Vinyasa, and Kundalini. Yoga’s staying power lies in its variety, and its ability to challenge both the mind and the body. Since it’s available at nearly every gym and online, this fitness favorite won’t be going away anytime soon.

4. Functional Fitness

The study defines functional fitness as, “using strength training to improve balance, coordination, force, power, and endurance to enhance someone’s ability to perform activities of daily living.” In other words, this type of exercise trains your muscles to work more efficiently in your everyday life, which is why it’s a leading form of exercise around the world. Functional fitness may incorporate props like medicine balls, kettlebells, or your own body weight. Additionally, you can complete a functional fitness session in your home, gym, or class setting. Who doesn’t like the sound of strengthening your body to make your daily activities a little easier?

5. Outdoor Activities

If the sound of going to a gym or working out at home has you feeling a little confined, you’re in luck! Outdoor, sporting activities make the list of next year’s fitness trends. Whether you’re into hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, or something else entirely, outdoor activities allow you to enjoy and interact with your natural surroundings. Best of all, they can be done alone or as a group — whatever motivates you to engage in an active lifestyle!

What fitness trends or activities are you looking forward to doing in 2018?

Ketones, Cancer, and Eating Right.

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The ketogenic diet goes against conventional wisdom asserting that we should consume a diet that is high in carbohydrates, and instead recommends a system based on the idea of putting the body in a state of “ketosis”. Ketosis is defined as a state of elevated ketone bodies in the human body. Ketone bodies are defined as three different water-soluble, biochemicals that are produced as by products when fatty acids are broken down in the liver for energy. Ketosis is achieved by reducing the daily amount of carbs in one’s diet, to 50 grams or less of carbohydrates. The premise being that your body will use fat and ketone bodies for energy, rather than glucose. Glucose is one of the main forms of energy that the body uses, and when carbohydrates enter the body, they are converted into glucose. So with the ketogenic diet, the goal is to essentially switch the body from a carb burning machine to a fat burning machine.

human

Controversy 

The controversy has been around since physician and cardiologist Dr. Robert Atkins(1930-2003) has been preaching a low carb diet. This kind of diet flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which says that carbs are needed for energy, eating fat makes you fat, and weight loss is simply a calories in, calories out equation. As far back as 1973, the chair of Harvard’s nutritional department, went on record before a US Senate committee and denounced the Atkins diet. In 2003 the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, came out against the Atkins diet, claiming that high fat, carbohydrate-restricted diets lead to increased risk of chronic health diseases and health problems. These same claims have been made for decades, and numerous medical associates and groups have spoken out against the Atkins diet, including the American Medical Association, American Dietetics Association, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, The Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, The American Kidney Fund, American College of Sports Medicine, and the National Institute of health. Of course, there also exists plenty of evidence showing that a high carb diet can itself be harmful.

While the arguments for and against the low-carb, ketogenic diet are many, possibly the most common argument(and misconception) is in regards to what is referred to as ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis is a condition in which abnormal quantities of ketones are produced in an unregulated biochemical situation. The amount of ketones produced during a ketogenic diet are far lower than in ketoacidosis, which is something that mainly affects patients with type 1 diabetes. This simple similarity in terms has led to a confusion regarding a low carb diet being dangerous.

Health Benefits of The Ketogenic Diet

There has been research done in the topic of using a ketogenic diet to treat cancer. Dr. Thomas Seyfried has published a book called, “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer”, and in it he brings together methods and findings regarding the sources and prevention of cancer that he spent many years working on at Boston College and Yale University. In the book, he writes “Emerging evidence indicates that impaired cellular energy metabolism is the defining characteristic of nearly all cancers regardless of cellular or tissue origin.” The main idea behind using a ketogenic diet as a cancer treatment, is to deprive the cancer cells of the glucose and other fuels they need to survive, and to provide support for the mitochondrial respiration process in healthy tissues. The obvious advantage to using the diet as a treatment, is that there are no harmful side effects that are so commonplace in conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. The treatments have not always been successful, but newer research is showing that ketosis can be beneficial for many cancer cases.

Take the case of Dr. Fred Hatfield, a former power lifting champion, author of over a dozen books, and millionaire businessman. After being diagnosed with metastatic cancer in his skeletal system, he was given only three months to live by his doctors. He was preparing himself to die when he heard about an anti-cancer diet, so with nothing to lose he gave it a try. To his amazement, the diet worked, and his cancer is gone. “The cancer was gone! Completely. To this day there’s no trace of it, and it’s been over a year.” Important to note when undertaking this diet is that your body will need supplemental salt (NaCl) to offset the water retention lost during the change from a high carb to a low carb diet.

Another exciting development in the ketogenic diet it’s success at treating seizures of individuals with epilepsy. Several studies have shown the effects of the ketogenic diet with epileptic patients, and each study showed and massive improvement in most of the patients and even complete elimination of all seizures from some of them. Whether the ketone diet is always applicable or useful is a different question, but it seems clear that we can be healed or harmed through our nutrition.

The Scientific 7-Minute Workout.

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chair-pushup

Story at-a-glance

  • Exercise is a key factor of optimal health; it’s particularly important for controlling your blood sugar and normalizing your insulin levels. When done correctly, exercise can oftentimes act as a substitute for some of the most common drugs used today for things like diabetes, heart disease and depression
  • Compelling and ever-mounting research shows that the ideal form of exercise is short bursts of high intensity exercise
  • Not only does it beat conventional cardio as the most effective and efficient form of exercise, Peak Fitness exercises also provide health benefits you simply cannot get from regular aerobics, such as a tremendous boost in human growth hormone (HGH), aka the “fitness hormone”
  • A recent article by the Human Performance Institute shows how you can fulfill the requirements for a high intensity exercise using nothing more than your own body weight, a chair, and a wall
    • Exercise is a key factor of optimal health; it’s particularly important for controlling your blood sugar and normalizing your insulin levels. I often recommend viewing exercise as a drug that needs to be properly prescribed and “taken” at a proper dosage.
    • When done correctly, exercise can oftentimes act as a substitute for some of the most common drugs used today for things like diabetes, heart disease and depression.

      All of these conditions will improve with exercise and the help of an experienced natural health care clinician. High intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a core component of my Peak Fitness program, is key for reaping optimal results from exercise.

    • There are many versions of HIIT, but the core premise involves maximum exertion followed by a quick rest period for a set of intervals.
    • My Peak Fitness routine uses a set of eight 30-second sprints, each followed by 90 seconds of recovery, as taught by Phil Campbell who is a pioneer in this field. Also, while I typically recommend using an elliptical machine or recumbent bike, you can just as easily perform a high intensity routine without any equipment at all.
    • A recent article in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal1 shows how you can fulfill the requirements for a high intensity exercise using nothing more than your own body weight, a chair, and a wall.
    • Best of all, this science-backed routine only requires a seven minute investment, as the program calls for as little as 10- to 15-seconds of rest between each 30-second exercise, which should be performed in rapid succession.
    • As reported by the New York Times2:
    • “’There’s very good evidence that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,’ says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.”
    • The health benefits of high intensity interval training are well-established at this point, and include:

·         The Scientific 7-Minute Workout

Significantly improving your insulin sensitivity, especially if you’re on a low-processed food-, low-sugar/low-grain diet Optimizing your cholesterol ratios, when combined with a proper diet Boosting fat metabolism and optimizing your body fat percentage (as a result of improved conservation of sugar and glycogen in your muscles)
Virtually eliminating type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure Naturally boosting your levels of human growth hormone (HGH) Increasing your aerobic capacity
  • One of the added boons of this 7-minute program is that since you don’t need any equipment, you can easily take this routine with you when traveling. You’d be hard-pressed to find a hotel room that doesn’t at least have a chair in it. When done at the appropriate intensity, which should hover around 8 on a scale of 1-10, the following 12 exercises, which are outlined in the report, equate to doing a long run and a weight-training session.
  • The exercises are ideally done in the following order, as this allows for opposing muscle groups to alternate between resting and working in each subsequent exercise.

Contraindications

I believe most people can perform high intensity exercises, provided you listen to your body and work out according to your current level of fitness and ability. I personally modified the Peak 8 to a Peak 6 this year as it was sometimes just too strenuous for me to do all eight repetitions. So by listening to my body and cutting it back to six reps, I can now easily tolerate the workout and go all out. That said, the authors stress that there are some contraindications for their program:

“Because of the elevated demand for exercise intensity in high intensity circuit training protocols, caution should be taken when prescribing this protocol to individuals who are overweight/obese, detrained, previously injured, or elderly or for individuals with comorbidities.

For individuals with hypertension or heart disease, the isometric exercises (wall sit, plank, and side plank) are not recommended. The isometric exercises can be substituted with dynamic exercises.

For all individuals, the Valsalva maneuver should be avoided, particularly for the isometric exercises. Proper execution requires a willing and able participant who can handle a great degree of discomfort for a relatively short duration. It is also essential that participants in an HICT understand proper exercise form and technique. As with all exercise programs, prior medical clearance from a physician is recommended.”

I firmly believe that most people would benefit from high intensity exercises but the key is to start very slowly if you have any of the risk factors listed above. You might actually require several months to work up to a high intensity level. But as long as you start at a safe level and continue to push yourself to progressively higher levels, you will eventually reach a level of intensity that will provide the benefits.

Remember, while your body needs regular amounts of stress like exercise to stay healthy, if you give it more than you can handle your health can actually deteriorate. So it’s crucial to listen to your body and integrate the feedback into your exercise intensity and frequency. When you work out, it is wise to really push as hard as you possibly can a few times a week, but you do need to wisely gauge your body’s tolerance to this stress.

Why High Intensity Interval Training May Be Ideal for Most

Contrary to popular belief, extended extreme cardio, such as marathon running, actually sets in motion inflammatory mechanisms that damage your heart. So while your heart is indeed designed to work very hard, and will be strengthened from doing so, it’s only designed to do so intermittently, and for short periods—not for an hour or more at a time. This is the natural body mechanics you tap into when you perform HIIT.

Repeatedly and consistently overwhelming your heart by long distance marathon running, for example, can actually prematurely age your heart and make you more vulnerable to irregular heart rhythm. This is why you sometimes hear of seasoned endurance athletes dropping dead from cardiac arrest during a race. I ran long distance for over four decades. So please learn from my experience and don’t make the same mistake I did.

Compelling and ever-mounting research shows that the ideal form of exercise is short bursts of high intensity exercise. Not only does it beat conventional cardio as the most effective and efficient form of exercise, it also provides health benefits you simply cannot get from regular aerobics, such as a tremendous boost in human growth hormone (HGH), aka the “fitness hormone.”

What Makes HIIT so Effective?

Your body has three types of muscle fibers: slow, fast, and super-fast twitch muscles. Slow twitch muscles are the red muscles, which are activated by traditional strength training and cardio exercises. The latter two (fast and super-fast) are white muscle fibers, and these are only activated during high intensity interval exercises or sprints. The benefit of activating these fibers is that they will produce therapeutic levels of growth hormone, which many athletes spend over a $1,000 a month to inject themselves with. So there is no need to pay the money or take the risks when your body can produce growth hormone naturally through high intensity exercises.

Getting cardiovascular benefits requires working all three types of muscle fibers and their associated energy systems — and thiscannot be done with traditional cardio, which only activates your red, slow twitch muscles. If your fitness routine doesn’t work your white muscle, you aren’t really working your heart in the most beneficial way. The reason for this is because your heart has two different metabolic processes:

  • The aerobic, which requires oxygen for fuel, and
  • The anaerobic, which does not require any oxygen

Traditional strength training and cardio exercises work primarily the aerobic process, while high intensity interval exercises work both your aerobic AND your anaerobic processes, which is what you need for optimal cardiovascular benefit. This is why you may not see the results you desire even when you’re spending an hour on the treadmill several times a week. So when it comes to high intensity exercises, less really is more...

For Optimal Health, Add Variety to Your Exercise Program

In addition to doing HIIT a couple of times a week, it’s wise to alternate a wide variety of exercises in order to truly optimize your health and avoid hitting a plateau. As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body. I recommend incorporating the following types of exercise into your program on days when you’re not doing high intensity anaerobic training:

  • Strength Training: If you want, you can increase the intensity by slowing it down. You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12 repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions. It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and rebuild.

For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high-intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff.

  • Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.

Exercise programs like Pilates, yoga, and Foundation Training are great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

  • Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is Active Isolated Stretching (AIS) developed by Aaron Mattes. With AIS, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body’s natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.

Source: .mercola.com

Do We Have to Cool Down After Exercise?.

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cool-down

If you’re like most people, the time you spend exercising is a valuable commodity that you’ve carefully planned and fit into your day. And when your workout is over, you may simply grab a quick shower or pull on a sweatshirt, skipping the post-exercise cool down because you’re eager to get on with your day.

Cooling down after exercise has long been touted as a necessary step to help prevent muscle soreness and improve recovery, but is it really?

The Case for Skipping Your Post-Exercise Cool Down

In 2007, one of the first studies on cooling down was published.1 The finding? Cooling down for 10 minutes after a workout had no impact on delayed-onset muscle soreness. Even though more than half a decade has passed, these results have yet to translate into practice, as most people are still under the impression that a cool down is beneficial.

Yet, newer research also suggests that the choice to cool down is simply one of personal preference – not one that will drastically impact your recovery. For instance:

  • Cooling down after performing strenuous forward lunges had no impact on muscle pain the next day among active adults; those who cooled down had the same amount of pain as those who did not2
  • Cooling down after soccer practice had no impact on performance, flexibility or muscle soreness the next day among professional soccer players3, 4

While it appears unlikely that cooling down has any real benefit in your post-workout recovery, muscle pain or next-day performance, it may help prevent the buildup of blood in your veins, which can lead to dizziness or fainting.5

The cool down also brings fresh blood into areas to help with lactic acid removal, while bringing your heart rate down to resting pulse quicker. A proper cool down also helps lower a raised heart rate down to resting heart rate safely.

Further, it may also help you to simply unwind after an intense workout, easing the transition back to your normal level of activity.

Personally I only cool down for three minutes after doing a high-intensity workout. If you are pushing your body to extremes it makes loads of sense to do a cool down, especially if you are close to or exceeding your maximum calculated heart rate (220 minus your age).

Static Stretching Before Exercise: Another Myth Busted

As with cool downs, stretching before exercise is another fitness dogma many of us wouldn’t dare neglect. After all, we’ve been told for decades that stretching is key for warming up your muscles and helping to prevent injuries.

However, pre-exercise static stretching generally hurts rather than helps your athletic and muscle performance, particularly when the stretch is held for 60 seconds or more.6 Static stretching is when you hold your muscle in a fixed position for a prolonged period, such as bending over to touch your toes.

This technique has been regarded as the gold standard for decades, but now research shows that it actually decreases the blood flow within your tissue creating localized ischemia (a restriction in blood supply) and lactic acid buildup. This can potentially cause irritation or injury of local muscular, tendinous, lymphatic, and neural tissues.

The evidence is so clear that the American College of Sports Medicine now advises against this form of stretching prior to your workouts. Unlike the cool down, however, which you can generally safely skip, all forms of stretching should not be avoided prior to exercise, only static stretching.

Dynamic stretching, on the other hand, has been shown to positively influence power, speed, agility, endurance, flexibility, and strength performance when used as a warm-up.7 And unlike cool-downs, warm-ups are very important and have been shown to help reduce and prevent muscle soreness.8

My favorite type of dynamic stretching is active isolated stretches developed by Aaron Mattes. With Active Isolated Stretching or AIS, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body’s natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints.

This technique also allows your body to help repair itself and prepare for daily activity. If you’re an avid exerciser, this news to overhaul your pre-workout stretches and your post-workout cool-down may come as a surprise, but these tips can help you to make the most of your workouts.

More Tips for Optimizing Your Workouts: The Benefits of Short and Intense Activity

f you’re excited at the prospect of cutting down your workout time by skipping your cool-down, you’ll be even more enthused to learn about high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Remember, if you do this type of exercise I do believe a three-minute cool down is important.

Researchers have repeatedly confirmed the superior health benefits of HIIT compared to traditional and typically performed aerobic workouts. For example, high-intensity interval-type training gives a natural boost to human growth hormone (HGH) production—which is essential for optimal health, strength and vigor—and has been shown to significantly improve insulin sensitivity, boost fat loss, and increase muscle growth. Anaerobic HIIT can be performed on a recumbent bike or an elliptical machine, or sprinting outdoors (with proper guidelines to avoid injury). You can even perform high-intensity strength training.

While there are a large number of variations, the HIIT routine I recommend involves going all out for 30 seconds and then resting for 90 seconds between sprints, as demonstrated in the video above The total workout is typically 8 repetitions. In all, you’ll be done in about 20 minutes, and you only need to perform HIIT two or three times a week.

Contrary to popular belief, extended extreme cardio actually sets in motion inflammatory mechanisms that damage your heart. So while your heart is indeed designed to work very hard, and will be strengthened from doing so, it’s only designed to do sointermittently, and for short periods—not for an hour or more at a time. This is the natural body mechanics you tap into when you perform HIIT.

How to Round Out Your Exercise Program

In addition to doing high-intensity interval exercises a couple of times a week, it’s wise to alternate a wide variety of exercises in order to truly optimize your health. As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body. I recommend incorporating the following types of exercise into your program on days when you’re not doing HIIT:

  • Strength Training: If you want, you can increase the intensity by slowing it down. You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12 repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions. It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and rebuild.

For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high-intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff.

  • Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.

Exercise programs like Pilates, yoga, and Foundation Training are great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

  • Stretching: As mentioned, my favorite type of stretching is Active Isolated Stretching (AIS) developed by Aaron Mattes. This technique allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plateto help you stretch.

Source: mercola.com