Archive for November 2012
Opening Hearts and Minds: Inner IDEA® Report
This year’s 7th annual Inner IDEA® Conference was another breakthrough experience for the 450 Pilates and yoga instructors, personal trainers, mind-body studio owners and wellness professionals who attended. Those who chose to take this journey to wholeness shared an inner vision of a larger community where mind, body and spirit are all supported equally.
Read More6 Ways to Boost Client Commitment
Attracting new clients is an ongoing challenge for fitness and wellness professionals. Keeping clients motivated long-term can be even harder. A client might begin training with a strong intention to lose 40 pounds, run a 10K or reverse her prediabetic condition. But the best intentions may not be enough to sustain exercise interest and intensity over time.
Read MoreSample Cycling Class: Wake-Up Workout
Have you noticed that a lot of exercise fanatics work out in the morning? Here’s an indoor cycling class for these dedicated early birds. This ride, adapted from the Schwinn® Cycling continuing education workshop “The Wake-Up Workout,” celebrates early risers with a morning playlist and stage-by-stage escalation. Each stage offers visual imagery, motivational suggestions and intentional social interaction.
Wake-Up Workout Details
Read MoreHoliday Eating Strategies for Clients
How can you help your clients enjoy the holidays without gaining weight? Try these suggestions from a dietitian and veteran trainers.
Create a Plan for Success
Read MoreJason Karp, PhD
As a personal trainer specializing in running, Jason Karp has created a unique niche for himself. He encourages others to do the same. Jason’s teaching style has been called strong, but subtle, by others, but he claims to focus mainly on intrinsic rewards. “Running is unique in that it has the power to reveal things in us, so I use that as a way to motivate and inspire my clients to find out what those things are,” Jason says. He also invests in making changes in the relationship between the fitness industry and the medical field. Jason is pushing for exercise physiology to become a requirement for physicians in the future.
Read MoreThe HIPAA Effect
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (42 United States Code § 1320d), which took effect nearly 10 years ago, has had a profound impact on the healthcare industry. Though HIPAA covers many areas, the privacy rule in particular is noteworthy.
Read MoreEasy Ways to Increase Revenue
Wouldn’t it be great to gather the best practices of fitness facilities around the country and distill this knowledge into a succinct series? That’s what this new column explores: the very best secrets of success for operating, managing and marketing a fitness facility.
Read MoreTeam Development: The Perfect Member Experience
If you had only one chance to make a good first impression, you wouldn’t want to blow it by providing potential clients with a subpar initial experience. Yet, a shoddy introduction and a useless tour followed by a hardcore sales pitch are what people sometimes get when they walk into a fitness facility.
Read MoreOperation: Motivation
Retention, retention, retention. The fitness industry is continually seeking bigger and better ways to retain members.
Read MoreBroccoli
President Bush the elder snubbed it. Your mom probably made you eat it, wisely explaining how good it was for you. If you learned to love it, you’ll gain satisfaction from the following facts about this powerful vegetable. If you still don’t love it, maybe it’s time to try it again with a different preparation. Either way, it’s hard to argue with the nutritional goodness packed inside these miniature green trees that are in season now.
Broccoli Facts
Read MoreCoffee Consumption Linked to Longer Lifespan
Research published in the May 17, 2012, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (366 [20], 1891–1904) shows that coffee consumption may keep the Grim Reaper away for older adults—at least a little bit longer than for noncoffee drinkers.
Older adults who drank coffee—caffeinated or decaffeinated—had a lower risk of death overall than others who did not drink coffee, according to a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and AARP.
Read MoreLet’s Move! A View From the White House
Now that the presidential election is decided, it’s a good time not only to note the progress of First Lady Michelle Obama’s main initiative, Let’s Move!, but to explore how this important work will continue over the next 4 years.
Read MoreEducation Is Key in Eradicating the Obesity Epidemic
Robyn Stuhr is the sports medicine program director at UC San Diego Health System’s department of orthopaedic surgery. She also serves as an American Council on Exercise (ACE) subject-matter expert and media spokesperson.
Read MoreMaintaining Motivation
After Sam Sahagun embraced an exercise program and lost 55 pounds, he decided he wanted to pay it forward by helping other people with their fitness journeys. As a fairly new fitness pro, he enjoys using the free Client Challenges tool that is accessible through IDEA FitnessConnect, the largest directory of fitness professionals, connecting more than 16 million consumers to more than 250,000 fitness professionals online at www.ideafit.com. Below he shares his thoughts on how this tool helps him run challenges to inspire his clients.
Read More5 Tips for Teaching Teens
As the group fitness industry grows, so does its target audience. Now more than ever, teens (aged 13–19) are attending group classes. They’re popping into their moms’ yoga and Pilates sessions, shaking their bodies in Zumba® and adding strength training classes to their summer days. Some fitness facilities even offer teen-specific classes, work with local…
Read MorePostpartum Core Support
After having a baby, many women decide to head back to group fitness classes, hoping to get their “bellies” back in shape. While traditional crunches may not be appropriate, this is a time to “rebuild” the core, along with doing other supportive activities. If you teach a class that is specific to the postpartum phase of a woman’s life, feel confident using the following moves as a component of a safe, well-designed workout.
Read MoreAlzheimer’s Disease: Type 3 Diabetes?
There is a growing and compelling body of evidence that Alzheimer’s and Type 2 diabetes are linked by a common factor: insulin resistance. Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh proved it for the first time.
Read MoreAsk the RD
Answer
Like bean sprouts, sprouted grains are whole grains, such as wheat berries, that are allowed to sprout. In the case of popular sprouted breads, sprouted berries (often wheat but sometimes also oat, millet, barley and/or other varieties) are ground up and baked in the recipe. These little sprouted seeds are thought to pack more of a nutritional punch than unsprouted berries. And compared to refined and enriched grains stripped of the germ and bran, they do.
Read MoreChallenged With Overeating? Improve Your Dining Ambiance
Set the mood before consuming food. That’s the apparent take-home message of a recent study reported in the August issue of Psychological Reports (111 [1], 228–32) showing that environmental cues such as lighting and music strongly bias eating behaviors.
Read MoreClean Fifteen™ and Dirty Dozen Plus™ Lists of Fruits and Veggies
The 8th edition of Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ was released recently with updated information on 45 popular fruits and vegetables and their total pesticide loads. EWG highlighted the worst offenders with its new Dirty Dozen Plus list and recognized the cleanest conventional produce with its list of the Clean Fifteen.
Which of these do you regularly put in your shopping cart? It may be time to reassess your organic and nonorganic choices.
Dirty Dozen Plus
apples
celery
sweet bell peppers
peaches