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Exercises
The Benefits of Cognitive Reserve
by Joe Hardy, PhD
Exercising your brain at a young age can protect your cognitive abilities as you get older, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco recently reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Led by Dr. Kristine Yaffe, the researchers followed a group of close to 1000 individuals for nine years, measuring brain function and taking blood samples along the way.
They found that levels of several compounds in the bloodstream – called beta-amyloids – predicted subsequent cognitive decline. These compounds are related to Alzheimer’s Disease, so this relationship is not entirely surprising. The protective effects of brain exercise were more interesting. The researchers found that people with high levels of cognitive reserve – as measured by previous experiences with cognitively stimulating activities like education – were relatively protected against cognitive decline associated with these chemical changes. In other words, if you take two people with the same levels of blood plasma beta-amyloids, the person with more cognitive reserve (built up through prior brain exercise) is likely to have better cognitive fitness down the road.
The message is clear: cognitively stimulating activity is critical for brain health and fitness. The more you exercise your brain now, the better off you’ll be later.
Reference: http://www.lumosity.com/blog/the-benefits-of-cognitive-reserve
About Joe Hardy
Dr. Joe Hardy is the Vice President of Research and Development at Lumos Labs. Joe works with an international team of researchers uncovering the secrets of cognitive enhancement. He has over 7 years of R&D… [ read more ]
Speed Sessions: Get Loose and Correct Form
In the first episode of Fast Forward, high school athletes from St. Xavier (Cincinnati, Ohio) build the foundation for speed training by loosening up their muscles.
Outdoor Activity and Its Positive Effects on Well-Being
April 26, 2012. Written by Adam Rankin
Can anyone remember the last time we’ve had a stretch of weather that has been this good? There surely is no better time than now to get outdoors and take advantage of all the health and wellness benefits that the great outdoors has to offer. In fact, a Swedish study recently showed that 99% of women and 95% of men who participated thought that being outdoors had a positive effect on well-being. Outdoor recreational activities include not only sports and exercises. It includes walking, sunbathing, bird watching and even camping.
Enjoying the great weather with friends and family has powerful effect on not only physical well being, but also rejuvenates mindset and spirituality. How many times have you had a stressful day at work, come home and go for a walk or run, or play out in the yard with the dogs, or go sunbathing and afterwards you’ve totally forgotten about what you were stressed about in the first place? Just being out in the sunlight helps release vitamin D into our bodies and releases endorphins into our bloodstream. This will make us feel better throughout the day, and give us energy to sustain our desired activities.
Goals and Rewards: Setting Realistic Expectations
April 18, 2012 : Written by Natalia Kielcz
Believe and you will achieve. This saying can be applied to many aspects of life, including health and fitness. Emotional training is just as important as physical training when it comes to total body strength. “Athletes that participate in mental preparation, rehearsal, and skills training tend to achieve a higher level of the elite status,” Mark Hogue, PsyD, clinical psychologist and sports psychologist at Northshore Psychological Associates in Erie, Pa.. This can be applied to anyone that wants to get in better shape, regardless of your goal.
5 Beginner Pilates Exercises
Pilates exercises strengthen what Joseph Pilates called the “Powerhouse”. Most people refer to it in the fitness industry as your core. The muscles that make up your powerhouse are the abs, buttocks, lower back, hips and inner thighs. When these muscles are strengthened they protect your back from potential injury and can alleviate most existing back problems. A strong powerhouse also helps to take undo load off of your joints and spine helping the body to work more efficiently. The Pilates method is also excellent for rehabbing repetitive stress injuries, shoulders, backs, knees, and hips by focusing on strengthening the deepest muscles of the body and increasing flexibility.
The 100 – This exercise is called the 100 because you do the exercise for 100 beats. It is for breathing, getting the blood flowing and strengthening your abdominals and torso.
The Roll Up – This exercise strengthens your core and stretches your hamstrings and back.
Rolling Like a Ball – This exercise will improve your balance, work and massage your back.
Double Leg Straight – These next two exercises are part of the stomach series. This exercise here works your Powerhouse to the extreme! It gets your entire core while fueling the stretch in the hamstrings.
Criss Cross – This exercise works the obliques and increases flexibility in the back, hips and torso.
The Best Interval Training Protocols
By: Adam Rankin
20/10 Tabata Protocol: Commonly known as the “Tabata” protocol, the 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest is one of the best and widely used work to rest ratio’s used in interval training. For good reason, this protocol has proved to be more effective than 60 minutes of steady state cardio. In fact, the interval protocol got it’s name from the study that proved maximal gains can be made in minimal time, if the intensity of the training is maximal. In this groundbreaking cycling study, researchers discovered that only four minutes of a 20-10 interval protocol (20 seconds of maximum effort followed by 10 seconds of rest) provided greater fat loss and conditioning than 60 minutes of steady-state cardio.
Now, one of the problems with this study is that in the real world most people aren’t able to perform multiple bouts of max effort for the same exercise with short rest periods (in fact, most of the elite cyclists in the study couldn’t complete all four minutes of the 20-10 protocol because it was too intense). This is exactly why it is important to employ non-competitive exercises (upper body exercise superset with a lower body exercise) so that high intensity work can still be accomplished with very short rest.
8-12 Sprint Protocol: Since we’ve already determined that short bouts of high intensity are better than long, slow steady state cardio, what do you say we ramp up the intensity even more than the Tabata Protocol. With… [ read more ]
5 Innovative Ways to Train without Going to a Gym
You get home from a long day of work and the last thing you want to do is drive to a gym, so you say, “maybe tomorrow”. Well, those days are over because now all you need is your living room and a few cost-effective tools that can be found at any sporting goods store.
In later articles, we will introduce you to the vast world of training that can be done at your bedside when you wake up in the morning, or at night while watching your favorite television show. For now, here is a preview of the cool new ways to train.
Resistance Bands: Resistance bands are quickly becoming one of the best ways to train due to their variable resistance and the fact that literally hundreds of exercises from strength training to flexibility, can be done with them.
Body Weight Training: When you think of using your own body weight for training, the most common preconceived notion is that it doesn’t look very difficult. On the contrary — mastering your own body is a key step on the road to using external forces for resistance such as dumbbell or free weight training.
Plyometric Training: Also known as jump training, plyometrics is a sure way to boost heart rate and metabolism to the max. Once a base strength foundation has been developed, it has been proven that light to moderate jump training can improve tendon, ligament, and muscle strength of the lower leg.
Physioball Training: Also known as… [ read more ]
3 Keys to a Proper Warm-up
The best way to prepare for more strenuous exercise is to perform specific warm-up exercises because they provide an increase in body temperature. The warm-up can be considered the most important part of your workout. This is a period of transition from normal to athletic activity that will prepare you for what is going to follow. The purpose of a warming up is to prepare the body through gradual movements for the full effort it will perform during the workout session. Properly warmed muscles respond quicker than non-warmed muscles. Take the warm-up seriously, concentrate and work hard to develop fundamental movements. This is important in preventing injuries.
There are three types of warm-up methods: Passive, active and dynamic. Regardless of the type of warm-up activities used, the general purpose of warming up prior to physical activity is to increase core body and muscle temperature.
Passive Warm-up
Generally, a passive warm-up involves such methods as hot showers, massage or heat pads, but most research has shown that this type of warm-up does not achieve the desired increase in tissue temperature needed to cause a warm-up effect. Due to this, a passive warm-up may be better termed a pre-warm-up and may allow the individual to relieve some muscle pain and stiffness and therefore enhance facilitation of body movements for the general warm-up to follow.
Active Warm-up
The active warm-up is probably the most commonly used technique and employs various movements not directly related to those employed in the activity itself, with the… [ read more ]
5 Ways to Increase the Intensity of Your Workout
Starting an exercise program can be one of the most exciting changes in a person’s life, if they are committed and hold themselves accountable for the long haul. One of the very first questions we ask clients when we’re training them is, “Should exercise be easy or difficult?” They almost always respond with, “Difficult”. And it should not be just difficult, but progressively more difficult. The body will always return itself to a state of homeostasis (internal stability), and so it is that we must challenge our level of homeostasis to always function at a higher level. What was just described is the principle of Progressive Overload and it is essential if continual gains are to be made in your program.
The 5 factors that make up Progressive Overload are as follows:
1.) Increase Resistance – One of the most basic ways to break through plateau’s in fitness and to ensure that new, lean muscle tissue is packed on, increasing resistance is essential for continual growth but be patient with it and ensure that is done systematically over time.
2.) Increase Repetitions– The second most popular way to make your routine harder, increasing the amount of reps is a safe an effective way to ensure progress is being made. Exercise logs are a must because from week to week, remembering how many repetitions can easily be forgotten unless written down.
3.) Increase Range of Motion – Every muscle in the body has a specific distance in which it can work,… [ read more ]
Interval Training Finishers
Say goodbye to the dreaded long hours spent on cardio pieces. Get ready to lean up, and the best part is that it only takes 15 minutes after your resistance workout! The new wave of cardiovascular exercise is interval training, and it is the most economic way to get results fast. Helgerud et al. found that, “High-aerobic intensity endurance interval training is significantly more effective than performing the same total work at either lactate threshold or at 70% HRmax, in improving VO2max.” In the exercise world, VO2max is simply maximum oxygen uptake and HRmax is max heart rate. The key component to any form of interval training is that it should be done after a resistance training workout in a state where glucose stores are nearly depleted and fat is the prime source for energy. When performing intervals, set your elliptical, recumbent bike, or treadmill to a proper seat height/warm-up speed and perform 30 seconds to a minute. Initially, start your interval program at a 3:1 rest to work ratio. A sample beginner’s program would look like this; 30 seconds of 85%-95% of max heart rate and 90 seconds of rest. As experience with the program advances, the work time goes up along with the rest periods. Perform anywhere from 4-6 work/rest sets which should take anywhere from 10-20 minutes at most, efficiency at its best!
HELGERUD, JAN 1,2; HOYDAL, KJETILL 1; WANG, EIVIND 1; KARLSEN, TRINE 1; BERG, PALR 1; BJERKAAS, MARIUS 1; SIMONSEN, THOMAS 1; HELGESEN, CECILIES 1;… [ read more ]