Newsletter Archive
May
2007
IN THIS ISSUE
Hello
from Cor Clinic!
With 4 weeks to go until the official start
of summer (Memorial Day Weekend), I hope that
everyone is right where they want to be with regard
to their fat loss goals.
Over the past couple of months, I have really
gone in-depth on ways that you can take your training
to a higher level and develop a well-rounded exercise
program. I hope the information has been valuable
to you in planning your goals and reaching those
new levels of fitness.
This month, our feature article explores the
subject of metabolism, and how you can improve
yours. In the research review, we will be looking
at training and exercise to help improve golf
performance and health. Finally, the Q&A deals
with a common problem that most people have when
they go to the gym: changing things up to continue
to make progress.
If you are interested in training over the summer,
we are offering a 12 week program including everything
(training and cardio program, gym membership and
nutrition consulting). The benefit of this summer
training offer is that instead of purchasig individual
training sessions and using them every time you
come to the gym, you will be able to come in as
many times as your specific program calls for
(designed to meet your goals and needs), for one
fixed fee. This offer is a complete overhaul program.
If that doesn't work for you, and you have a
busy summer and just can't commit to a full 12
weeks, we have a couple of other options. We have
our regular training packages that you can use
to set up your training times. Or, you can ask
about our fitness consulting package which gets
you a gym membership and 2 training sessions per
month to have us help you in planning your program
and help to keep you on track.
As always, the gym memerbship is the best deal
in town, at $30/month. This allows you to come
and use the private facility at whatever time
you schedule. You don't have to worry about going
to a crowded place, and I am always here to help
answer questions for you.
Finally, as school is getting out, you may be
wondering what to do with the kids this summer.
We have put together several programs for youth
training. If your child is preparing for a sport
next year, let them use the summer "off-season"
to work on developing strength, power and quickness
with one of our youth training programs!
Hope everyone has a great May and enjoys the
weather.
In health,
Patrick Ward, Ms, CSCS, NASM-PES, CPT, USAW
Club Coach
FEATURE ARTICLE:
Let's Talk About Metabolism...
Metabolism refers to the necessary processes
taking place inside our bodies that help to sustain
life. The processes can be broken down into two
categories: those yielding energy via the breakdown
of substances (catabolic) and those synthesizing,
or creating, substances (anabolism).
Our metabolism is dependent on several factors,
all of which we have some sort of control over.
The four factors that make up our metabolism are:
- Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)
- Exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT)
- Thermic effect of food (TEF)
Lets further look at what these terms mean, and
how we can potentially take control of them to
help our bodies burn more fat and maintain (or
build depending on your goals) some muscle (which
will help to increase our metabolism overall).
Resting metabolic rate is the amount of calories
we expend at rest. Basically, if you were to lie
in bed all day and watch television, this would
be the number of calories that you would need
in order to lie there and keep your organs and
tissues in normal working order. Since this part
of our metabolism is not dependant on us getting
up and moving around, you may be asking yourself
how we have control over it. Well, even though
our metabolic rate is controlled by a few factors
that are out of our control (genetics and age
being the two big ones), we can always work to
improve metabolic rate through a few other factors.
Whenever we exercise, we help to increase our
RMR as our body will become more efficient at
burning fuel at rest, in order to keep up with
the rise in metabolism due to our increased activity
levels. This is especially true when we perform
exercises at a high intensity (resistance training
or sprinting), as our metabolism may be elevated
for some time period after the exercise itself
has stopped. This is termed excess-post exercise
oxygen consumption, or EPOC for short. Although
research is still undecided about how long this
elevation in metabolism occurs for after exercise,
we do know that more intense exercise seems to
stimulate metabolism to a greater degree than
the traditional long and slow stuff (although
this does have its place in your training program
as well).
Another way to help to increase our RMR is to
increase our muscle mass. Our muscle-to- fat ratio
is going to help determine how many calories at
rest we burn. If we have a poor muscle-to-fat
ratio, then our metabolic rate will not be as
high. If we have a good muscle-to-fat ratio our
metabolic rate will be higher because muscle is
a metabolic pig.
Muscle has the potential to burn an extra 5 calories
per pound per day! So, if you have 150lbs of lean
tissue you can potentially burn an extra 750 calories
per day (150 x 5 = 750)!
Non-exercise Activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is
a measure of how many calories we burn doing daily
tasks (which are not specifically exercise). This
can be things like doing the dishes, taking the
garbage out, or walking the dog. While most people
these days lead a very sedentary life (we drive
to work and then we get out of our cars and then
sit at a desk all day) this one can be a very
huge deal! Any way that you can increase your
NEAT will be very beneficial to you.
For example, try parking furthest away from the
office door so that you have to walk a greater
distance to get into the office. If you typically
take the elevator up to your office, try to take
the stairs. Go for a walk when you get home from
work at night instead of just walking in and sitting
down in front of the television. Stand up and
stretch out every 15-20min at work and then take
a walk around the office for a minute.
Be creative, just figure out some way to increase
you energy expenditure through out the day. I
went to a large commercial gym to work out last
week and one thing that I noticed was that they
had a valet service at the front door of the gym.
That is pretty funny. We wonder why we have an
obesity epidemic in this country. People can't
even walk from their cars to the gym!!
Exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT) is the
amount of energy we expend during our workout.
If you aren't working out consistently right now,
you should be! Make time to do some sort of structured
exercise a couple days a week.
This will make the greatest impact on your overall
metabolism. As stated before, the more intensely
we work out the greater potential we have to burn
more calories during exercise and possibly once
exercise has stopped for the day. Also, resistance
training will help to positively shift our muscle
to fat ratio and enhance metabolic activity.
Finally, thermic effect of food (TEF) is the
amount of energy we expend to actually digest
the food that we eat. The best example of this
is when people refer to celery as a zero-calorie
or non-calorie food. They say this because it
takes more calories to digest the celery than
the celery has itself.
Making sure to eat greens (fiber) can help to
increase our TEF because it slows down the digestion
of the meal and makes the body work harder to
breakdown the food. Also, because protein has
nitrogen, this nitrogen needs to be stripped away
and then excreted (via urea). The process of stripping
away the nitrogen raises the proteins TEF over
the other two macronutrients (carbohydrates and
fats).
With summer inching closer, we usually take time
to relax, vacation and lounge around. I hope you
can take some of this information and use it to
increase your metabolism and get the results you've
always wanted. Remember, if we do everything right,
as we are relaxing by the pool this summer, our
RMR should be higher!
RESEARCH REVIEW:
Functional Training Improves Club Head
Speed and Functional Fitness in Older Golfers
Thompson CJ, Cobb KM, Blackwell
J, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research,
2007, 21(1), 131-137.
My Comments:
With the summer right around the corner and
the weather starting to warm up, more and more
people are heading out onto the golf course. So,
I thought this would be a great study to look
at for two reasons. First, most people are looking
to enhance their golf game somehow and second,
most people are looking to enhance their health
somehow. This study really focuses on both golf
and fitness, so it is nice to kill two birds with
one stone when you can.
This study took 18 male golfers between the
ages of 60 and 80 years old. The golfers had to
meet the requirements of averaging more than 40
rounds of golf per year and they had to be free
of any uncontrolled cardiovascular or metabolic
disease. In orther words, they were normal healthy
60-80yr old men. The men were assigned to either
a control or exercise group. The control group
was instructed to continue their normal level
of activity throughout the study; while the exercise
group was placed on an 8-week exercise program.
The exercise program was written specifically
for this study and was based on the principles
of the National Academy of Sports Medicine's (NASM)
Optimum Performance Training model (a training
model that has been used for the general public
as well as professional and olympic caliber athletes
with great results). All subjects in the test
were asked to not take any golf lessons during
the 8-week period, in-order to prevent any changes
in swing speed or skill, which would throw off
the results of the study.
Subjects were tested before and after the 8
week period for club head speed. As well, the
subjects went through a battery of tests to assess
strength, flexibility, and endurance. The reason
these tests were used was to evaluate the subjects
current fitness levels and compare them to their
fitness levels after completing the 8-week exercise
program.
Following the 8-week program the subjects were
re-tested. The exercise group saw a 4.9% increase
in Club Head Speed. Additionally, the subjects
in the exercise group saw significant post-test
improvements in four out of the six overal fitness
tests.
What this mean to us:
This means several things to us. First, some
may be wondering what the term "functional"
means in the title of this study. Functional has
become sort of a buzz word in the fitness industry.
It seems to have a variety of interpretations,
depending on who you talk to. To me, functional
means nothing more than the fact that the exercise
program is designed to enhance everyday activities
(whether they are sports movements or life movements).
That being said, just about everything is functional.
I should make note of what the NASM-Optimum Sports
Performance model is, as this will give you more
understanding of exercise application. Basically,
the program is a designed program which targets
different skills at different times (periodization).
For example, in this study the subjects were given
8 weeks to train. The researchers broke the model
down into short phases which primarily focused
on enhancing different factors. focusing on endurance
(higher reps) and work capacity first, then moving
into hypertrophy (muscle growth or structural
changes) and finally strength and power. On their
time line, it looked like this:
weeks 1-4: 1-2 sets x 15 reps
weeks 5-6: 3 sets x 12 reps
weeks 7-8: 3 sets x 8 reps
In the last two weeks, the researchers also added
plyometric exercises (jumping and medicine ball
throwing) to help increase power output, a vital
characteristic in the golf swing.
The other two factors that are of critical importance
in the NASM model of training are core and balance
training. The program is set up so that the individual
trains all three (core, balance and strength)
in one day, like so:
- core exercises
- balance exercises
- weight training exercises
So, now that we know a little bit about how the
program was set up, we can take away from it the
fact that aside from enhacing our golf game, this
type of training can be used to enhance our fitness
levels. We know that regular exercise is vital
to overal fitness. Of special concern is the fact
that as we age, we start to lose our ability to
display power and we begin to lose muscle mass.
By strength training and using some power training
(low level plyometrics and medicine ball work
as seen in this study) we can really delay this
natural response of aging. As well, the balance
and core training can be vitally important to
prevent falling in this population and increasing
these individuals confidence in their ability
to move and be more "functional.".
How can we use this information to our
advantage:
We can use this to our advantage by taking a
look at our currnet training program and making
sure that we are accounting for these variables
and setting up different phases of training so
that we can continually improve and reach higher
levels of fitness and health. Even by using something
as basic as the repetition scheme given above,
we can go pretty far.
Something as simple as that, when applied can
be very effective to your exercise program.
Wrapping it up:
Hopefully, not only the golfers out there, but
ALL of you, can use this information to better
their current exercise routine. The study, while
focusing on golf performance, was also geared
towards showing improvements in health and fitness.
Don't be afraid to take some of these ideas and
use them to your advantage!
MONTHLY Q&A:
Q: I have been doing the same
exercise program for the past 6 months. At first
it was really working, and now I can't seem to
make any progress. What is the problem?
A: This is a great question
and a real problem that seems to plague many people
in the gym. In a nut shell, "if you already
do what you've always done, you will always get
what you already got." This is 100% true!
Our bodies are adaptive creatures. We stress them
everyday, and they adapt so that they can handle
that level of stress, making it "less-stressfull".
Training is the same way. If you are doing the
same program for an extended period of time, without
changing up variables, you are not going to continue
to make improvements. The great strength coach
Louie Simmons once said "Everything works!
But nothing works forever." He is right.
Making small changes in your program can go along
way. For example, I write the exercise program
of a woman in New York City that I used to train.
By making small changes to her program, she has
been able to drop 7lbs in the past 5 weeks! That
is some great weight loss and all we had to do
was evaluate what she was doing and then figure
out where to go from there. What are some variables
that you can change in your program?
Well, the first (and obvious one) is sets and
reps. As seen in this months research review,
the subjects made great changes in their fitness
levels by altering their rep ranges every couple
of weeks. As the weeks went on, they lowered the
repetitions that they were doing. This was achieved
by increasing the weight (or increasing the intensity
of the exercise). Adding weight can be a great
way to create stress.
Another way to play with rep ranges is to add
a repetition. Let say for example, we are performing
bench press with 100lbs. We can do 100lbs for
3 sets of 8 reps. Next week, our goal might be
to do 100lbs for 3 sets of 9 reps. This increases
the total amount of voume that we are lifting
and presents a new stress that our system must
adapt to.
Adding a set is another way to increase our work
capacity. This was also seen in the research study
from this month when the subjects went from using
2 sets to using 3 sets. For example, lets take
that 100lbs for 3 sets of 8 reps and next week,
try and do 100lbs for 4 sets of 8 reps. Again,
we are increase the stress on our system and causing
an adaptation to take place.
A third way to mix up our program is to play
with the rep tempo. This is sometimes called time
under tension or TUT for short. Again, lets look
at that 100lbs for 3 sets of 8 reps and lets assume
that it takes us 4 seconds to complete the repetition
(2 seconds to lower it, no pause at chest level,
1 second to press it up, and 1 second to pause
at the top and regroup before our next repetition).
We can increase our TUT by focusing on either
lowering the bar slower. For example, purposely
lowering the bar for maybe 4 seconds (brining
the total TUT to 6 seconds) or holding the isometric
at our chest level for longer, maybe 2 seconds.
All of these are viable options to again increase
the stress on our system and force adaptation.
The final way that we can change our program
is to change the exercise altogether. So, if we
have been doing bench press for the past 3-4 weeks
we might decided to do dumbells instead or do
cable chest press. Again, stress and adaptation.
These ideas should give you more than enough
ways to change up your program and help to keep
yourself moving in the right direction, towards
your goals.
Do you have a question you'd like to see
answered in next month's Q&A column? Email
your question to pward@corlcinic.com
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