Spend time with friends and family – minus the calories

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With Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, I’m sure many of us are wondering where to take Mom to lunch.  While a few months ago I wrote a blog post emphasizing that you should have meals with family and friends, there are other alternatives to eating when you want to spend time with loved ones!  Instead of meeting a friend for a huge restaurant lunch, try some of these other options and save your calories rather than packing them on:

Go for a Walk

It may sound cheesy, but going for a leisurely walk can help clear you mind, improves your mood and ability to focus, improves circulation and best of all – it’s free!  All of these factors lead to some better conversation than meeting for cheeseburgers.  Improve your health, cardiovascular ability and mental focus during conversation by visiting one of the many trails and walking destinations in the Durham area:

Downtown Durham

Duke Forest

Duke Gardens

Battle Park – UNC Campus

See a Show!

Durham and the RTP area have an abundance of the arts – whether it’s a play, stand-up comedy, gallery showing or live music.  Take advantage of it by checking out some of the area’s most prolific venues (and maybe afterwards taking that walk downtown!):

• Durham Performing Arts Center (Durham)
• Goodnight’s Comedy Club (Raleigh)
• Memorial Hall (Chapel Hill)

Take a Class

This weekend treat your Mom or friend to a group exercise class, dancing or gardening course, anything you can think of – there’s probably a class for it.  Check out local papers and magazines to find upcoming classes or workshops – Independent Weekly is a great choice for local events and news.

Of course Empower always has our two weekend classes – Butts ‘N Guts and MELT on Saturday.  Make sure to stop by next weekend as well for our Group Fitness Expo – bring Mom for a belated gift (it’s free!).  Find out more information about this on our Facebook Event page!

Check out Our Facebook

Every Friday we post something active, local and healthy to do during the weekend – from free rock climbing hours to Parks and Rec events for the whole family to participate in.  Make sure to look for these posts for some great inspiration to get moving!  Friend us on Facebook to get these posts as well as to stay updated on our latest healthy tips and info:

http://www.facebook.com/empowerdurham

For more miscellaneous activities to do with friends and family, check out our recent “Warm-Weather Workouts” post.

Kat Whitfield

B.S., NASM-CPT

Embrace the ViPR!

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A couple Sundays ago, the Empower Team became certified ViPR instructors!  You may have noticed them (whether by observing other clients, or working with them yourself!) being used in the studio a bit more recently now that all of the trainers have some new tricks in their bags.  So what exactly is ViPR?

ViPR: Vitality, Performance, Re-Conditioning

The ViPR was at its core made to be a functional training tool.  There are several different definitions of “functional” out there, and here is ViPR’s take on the phrase:

ViPR was created to allow training and exercise to be more purposeful and free. There needs to be an objective behind every exercise that you do. Think of daily tasks such as putting shopping away, playing sports, carrying heavy bags – they all have an objective.

Unfortunately most movements and exercises that we perform in a gym are void of any real objective, and this mind-numbing process robs individuals of the opportunity to achieve fitness for life. Our bodies lift things, shift from place to place, and rotate to achieve optimum performance. Isolation training doesn’t often exist in real life because it’s too inefficient and ineffective… The body is designed to spread forces and stress out into the system, through each joint and tissue in the body. The more effectively that this is accomplished, the less injury will plague the system.

The ways that you can use the ViPR training tool are endless!  During our Training Workshop, we came up with our own exercises as well as learning how to progress, regress, and change things around according to how many participants we have, or how many ViPRs are available.  Take a look below for a short clip of the Empower Team doing an exercise to come up with partner variations of certain exercises!

Training for the Athlete, Everyday People and Rehabilitation

No matter your goal, whether you want to improve performance, stay fit, or work around injuries, ViPR has an exercise for you.  Ask your trainer for a good exercise – once you get acquainted with this functional training tool, you’ll be able to think of variations to do yourself!  There is no ‘incorrect’ way to use the ViPR, so you can help us add to our ViPR exercise library by coming up with new movements.

We hope that you’ll enjoy using this new piece of equipment.  Make sure to let us know what you think and how it’s working for you.

Keep your Temperature in Check!

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With the hot North Carolina summer months coming upon us, it’s a good time to talk about how your body regulates heat – and how you can keep safe and cool doing yard work, working on the car, hiking or exercising outdoors.

How does your body regulate heat?

Your body regulates its temperature primarily through your hypothalamus, a tiny gland at the base of your brain.

When the temperature of your skin reaches a certain level, your hypothalamus is what stimulates your sweat glands to produce sweat.  Sweat can then evaporate, lowering your body temperature.  In humid conditions, rates of evaporation are much lower, which leads to higher incidences of overheating (so watch it on a muggy day!).  Vasodilation is another way that your body regulates temperature.  Having less restricted blood flow allows more blood to flow closer to the surface of the skin, where cooling can occur.

How does your body adapt to warm temperatures?

The human body is capable of adapting to different temperatures through a process called acclimatization.  To function better in the heat, your body will begin sweating at a lower body temperature and in greater quantities.  As well, when you sweat you will lose less sodium and electrolytes, however you will need to take in more fluids due to your increased sweat production!

There is little magic in how you can acclimatize your body to the heat – simply perform low-intensity activities in the heat for a period of at least two weeks.  Activities such as walking, gardening or doing general yard work would be good examples of this.  It is ill-advised to begin running in warmer temperatures as you will fatigue quickly and without proper acclimatization, increase your chances of a heat-related illness or incident.

Lower your chances of heat-related illness!

Wear loose-fitted clothing in a breathable fabric such as cotton when partaking in any kind of outdoor activity.

Make sure that you are drinking plenty of fluids, and if performing activities for an extended period of time, think about replacing your salt and electrolyte balance as well with a drink such as gatorade.

Take breaks!  Give your body a chance to lower its internal temperature back down by going back inside, working in the shade or slowing from a jog to a walk.

If you feel any symptoms of heat-illness, such as cramping, headache, nausea, clammy skin, fatigue or hyperventilation, take immediate action.  Stop your activity, find someplace cool to rest and restore your fluids.  If you can, take a cool bath or find a cool towel to wipe yourself down.

Kat Whitfield

B.S., NASM-CPT

Exercise(s) of the Week: Spinal Erectors

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A few weeks back we talked about the Spinal Erectors and why they’re important.  (Refresh your memory HERE) Here are 5 exercises that are great for building up strength and endurance in this muscle group.

Hyperextensions

There are a few ways to adjust most of these exercises.  For posture, you’ll want to focus on endurance of the muscle group as well as strength, whereas if you simply want to improve something like your maximal deadlift, you’ll want to focus on maximal strength.  When doing hyperextensions, I like to pause at the top of the movement for a couple of reasons:

• Working on the endurance of the spinal erectors
• To prevent literal hyperextension of the back – we do not want to exaggerate the lumbar curve too much, and when simply going for reps there is a tendency to jerk up too high and compact the vertebrae.  When there is a pause at the top it promotes a more controlled movement.

Pause at the top of the movement for 5 to 10 seconds – you will most certainly feel the burn after a few repetitions!  There are also several ways to progress this exercise:

• Hold a dumbbell, kettlebell, plate, or any other heavy object to increase the resistance.
• Hold at the top for a longer period of time.
• Use different hand placements.  To begin, start with your hands crossed over your chest, then progress to a “W” shape, then finally to a “Y” (arms straight in front of you).

Above performed with the “W” hand progression: You only want to go to where you have a neutral spine, not a hyperextended one. 

Rack Pulls and Conventional Deadlifts

Spinal erectors play a BIG part in conventional deadlift form.  In fact, the role of your back extensors is one of the big things that differentiate a ‘deadlift’ movement from a ‘squat’ movement (though there are certainly other differences).  If you look at the post about the muscle group (linked at the top of this page), there are 2 pictures of deadlifting – 1 person using the spinal erectors and 1 who is not.  It’s apparent just from looking at the two pictures side-by-side that a conventional (narrow-stance) deadlift really hits all of the muscles of the back when performed correctly.

Rack Pulls follow this as well, with the added benefit of being able to load the bar with more resistance, due to the bar’s position higher off the ground.  When performing rack pulls, generally you want to make sure the bar rests below your knees at the start, so adjust the squat rack or boxes accordingly.

The beginning and middle positions of a Rack Pull.  To complete the movement, squeeze your glutes and stand completely upright. 

Deadlifts are a fairly complex exercise that I could write an entire post about on its own, so I’ll probably just do that soon and link back to here!

Good Mornings

After you get the hang of keeping your chest up, you won’t want to crane your neck as much as I did in this picture, especially if you already experience neck pain.

This is an exercise to be performed in a controlled manner, taking each rep slowly.  There are a lot of ways to look like you’re performing a Good Morning correctly, but there are a few points you need to check off in your head to be sure to get the most out of every rep:

• Keep your chest up!!  This will be the most important part of making sure your spinal erectors are being fully recruited, as well as preventing the bar from sliding up your neck.
• Sit your hips back as far as they can go.  You should feel a stretch in your hamstrings – keep pushing those hips back until you can’t anymore.
• Only SLIGHTLY bend at the knees.  You just want to softly unlock them, nothing more.

Supermans

I like using the Superman exercise as another way to train endurance for long-term postural improvement.  I tend to do these in a similar manner to the hyperextensions mentioned above – with a brief hold at the top.

The key things you want to think about with Supermans are to make sure your shoulders are not pinched up by your ears, but instead pull your shoulder blades down like you’re going to tuck them into your back pocket.  This will get additional recruitment of posterior muscles, such as your rhomboids and lats:

Above, shoulders are close to my ears, indicating that I do not have my scapula retracted.

When I retract the scapula, my shoulders move down and away from my ears.

There are a few different ways to utilize this exercise:

• For slow and controlled reps.
• With a 5-10 second pause at the top for moderate reps.
• For holding time, similar to a plank

Which way you choose to perform them will depend on your goals and your progression stage.

Whether your goal is better posture, decrease in back pain or a stronger deadlift, including some spinal erector work can benefit you.  Give some of these a try – you may find yourself standing a little taller!

Kat Whitfield

B.S. , NASM-CPT

Did you watch “Is Sugar Toxic?”

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There’s been a lot of buzz around the internet about a recent 60 Minutes piece, “Is Sugar Toxic?”.

Video: Is Sugar Toxic?

If you ask either of our nutritionists, Monica or Cara, I’m sure they’d agree – Cara’s 21-Day Detox requires the elimination of all sugar in the diet!  The video is only 14 minutes long, but here is a short summary of the key points made:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup is no worse than sugar – but it is also no better.  They are both equally terrible for your health.
• Sugar promotes the creation of “LDLs” – Low Density Lipoprotein, more specifically it is “Small Dense LDL’s” that promote heart disease by clustering in our arteries and causing heart disease and high blood pressure.  (Read more about Small Dense LDL’s HERE)
• A diet of 2000 calories with majority of calories coming from sugar will cause higher incidences of cardiovascular disease due to higher levels of LDL’s and other risk factors than someone eating a 2000 calorie diet with no added sugars.
• Fat has been wrongly vilified as the cause of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, etc.  Sugar is the true culprit.
• Sugar increases the chances and growth rate of cancerous tumors.
• Ingestion of sugar triggers the ‘pleasure’ centers in the brain – similar to the effects of cocaine, alcohol and other addictive substances.

Now, many of us already knew some of these points.  But I think the key ones to point out are “Fat has been wrongly vilified as the cause of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, etc.  Sugar is the true culprit,” and “High Fructose Corn Syrup is no worse than sugar - but it is also no better.  They are both equally terrible for your health.”  I think that many of us know that HFCS is bad for our health, which is one of the reasons that ‘throwback’ sodas from Pepsi and Coca-Cola came out – they use real cane sugar instead of HFCS.  However, it is good to know that these are in no way ‘better’ for our health than regular sodas.

I was a little confused about the point made in the video about how sugar increases our chance and the growth rate of tumors – so I dug a little bit online and found a question and answer that cleared it up for me, hopefully this will help anyone else who was confused:

Q: “I was kinda confused on the cancer shuttling glucose to themselves via insulin receptors. Glucose is very good for you. It essentially powers you. Are they saying insulin spikes caused by excess sugar create insulin receptors in tumors, then the receptors on tumors shut off when we eat whole food like nuts or veggies? Doesn’t make too much sense. You have glucose in your system regardless of whether you eat good or bad food. Otherwise we wouldn’t survive.”

A: “What they are saying is that the tumors evolved to contain insulin receptors. If you eat foods that result in large amounts of insulin being released this is going to trigger the receptors on the tumor allowing it access to large amounts of glucose. If you eat say a high protein and fat meal that results in very low insulin levels you can reduce or cut off the supply of glucose to the tumor by not activating the insulin receptors. Yes we always have glucose circulating in our system, but we don’t always have insulin circulating. The key is to prevent the release of lots of insulin that triggers the receptors on the tumor allowing the glucose uptake.”

So what do you think?  Talk to us about it!

Kat Whitfield

B.S. , NASM-CPT