Thursday, July 19, 2012

Current Trends in Health and Fitness-2012

Earlier this year I attended the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Personal Trainers Conference. During the conference, I learned some useful information and received validation that I am on the right path when it comes to my personal approach to workouts and fitness in general. Since these types of conferences are a good reflection of current trends and future directions of the health and fitness industry, at least among true fitness professionals, I thought you might be interested in learning about the most discussed topics during the conference.
On a side note, there are always personal trainers and other health and fitness employees who have no interest in increasing their knowledge or providing better information to their clients/customers. These people are not representative of the entire health and fitness industry, although they do make up a significant portion of it. The true professionals realize that health and fitness information is constantly evolving and we have to keep learning if we want to provide our clients with the most accurate information and the best quality service.
Personal trainers and other health and fitness employees who are not interested in improving their knowledge or staying up to date with information are usually more concerned about making money than they are about their clients. Naturally, it is best to avoid these people whenever possible, because they generally provide lower quality products or services that will not help you effectively reach your goals and generally result in disappointment and frustration.
Okay, with that little diversion out of the way, let's get back to the conference. There were many different topics covered during the conference including nutritional issues, performance enhancement for athletes, training special populations (children, elderly, people with injuries, etc.), and more. However, even with this wide variety of topics, there were some topics that seemed to keep coming up over and over in different presentations.
Probably the most frequently discussed topics were related to movement, specifically the importance of moving correctly and training to correct poor movement patterns. If you have followed my writings over the years, it should be no surprise that proper movement is very important to me and it is great to see that movement issues are taking a more prominent role in the health and fitness industry.
There are many reasons why movement technique is getting more attention, but one of the driving forces is actually the rising cost of health care. As health care slowly shifts from just treating problems to actively preventing them, research has found that people who have incorrect movement technique are more likely to develop muscle and joint problems later in life, which results in higher numbers of joint replacements, falls, and other major problems. To make matters worse, these problems are not only found in the elderly.
With the removal of physical education from many schools, children are growing up being less active. This not only has implications for increasing levels of childhood obesity, but it has consequences for movement as well. We are finding that inactive children are much more likely to have poor movement technique when they grow up, which results in premature deterioration of their body. Younger people commonly have physical problems that should not occur for another 10-20 years or more and many of these problems are the direct result of poor movement technique putting excessive wear and tear on their muscles and joints.
The good news is these incorrect movements can be retrained and when poor movement patterns are replaced with correct ones, people can dramatically improve their long-term health. Unfortunately, training biomechanically correct movements is more complicated than just performing random exercises and exercising on traditional machines will generally not do the job. It takes concentration and awareness of what muscles are contracting and how each segment of your body is moving, along with the knowledge of how each movement is technically supposed to be performed.
When all these elements are put together in a well-designed training program, people of all ages and ability levels can improve their overall health and physical function. This was evident at the conference, because there were sessions on exercising and training movements with many different types of people including, children, elderly people, athletes, pregnant women, and people with injuries. It is clear that training is advancing past simply working individual muscles and becoming more about training each muscle to work correctly with the rest of the body.
Proper movement was not the only topic covered and many of the usual subjects were represented as well. On the nutrition side, protein intake and supplementation are still popular, because people are always interested in learning things they can do to improve their results. Another topic that continues to be noteworthy is eating disorders, along with the importance of developing good eating habits. People with bad eating habits (eating too much before they go to bed, eating too few calories, etc.), almost always have a hard time making progress, because even a great exercise routine can be undone by poor nutritional habits.
There were also many sessions with practical information about different types of training and demonstrations of new training equipment. Much of the focus was on training to improve specific attributes, such as speed, agility, power, and balance. Improving these different characteristics is important for improving physical performance in athletes, but they also have applications for improving performance in everyday tasks and improving the quality of life in all segments of the population.
Of course, no conference would be complete without sessions on core training, because everyone cares about their abdominal muscles. Fortunately these sessions were not about generic topics, such as training to get 6-pack abs, but rather training to improve the function of your body. The core muscles are essential for protecting your spine, maintaining good posture, preventing back pain, and much more, but many people still only think about how they look and not about how they function.
The topics discussed above were not the only ones covered during the conference, but they were the most common ones. When looking at everything, it's clear the overall theme and general direction of the health and fitness industry is learning to use specific exercises and movements to improve physical function in people of all ages and ability levels. As time progresses, hopefully training not just to improve appearance, but also to improve physical function, will become a standard for personal trainers and others in the health and fitness industry. Unfortunately, right now we are still a long way from that happening.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Diet Health and Acid Reflux

Your diet health is critical if you have acid reflux and don't want to experience all of the uncomfortable symptoms associated with the condition. Therefore, you need to educate yourself on what foods you should be eating.
Many doctors and other health experts will tell you that there isn't really any specific diet to help acid reflux sufferers and you really have to find out what you can and can't eat for yourself by trial and error.
That is such nonsense and doesn't solve anything. You don't have to experience more uncomfortable symptoms just to find out what you can't eat.
Diet Health and Fitness Never Fails
What you need to understand is that you didn't just happen to get acid reflux. Diseases don't just happen to people. They are caused by the way people think and the lifestyles they live.
Your reflux was probably caused by poor diet health and lack of fitness in your life. If you are sick of the uncomfortable symptoms of this condition you need to get honest with yourself and focus on making some positive changes. These changes include a strict diet change, exercising hard everyday for one hour, and making a commitment to feeling good and living a long healthy life.
The exercise is often the hardest thing for people who have lived a sedentary lifestyle to get the daily motivation for. So try to always do something that is fun for you. A lot of people think fitness has to be done with weights in a gym or pounding the pavement for five miles, but that is not true.
Just get out and move. Have fun, do whatever you want as long as you are getting significant exercise. Also, once you make it through the first two weeks of consistent exercise your body will want to exercise and you will enjoy it even more.
If your acid reflux is severe you may need the help of your doctor to help you make some of these lifestyle changes. But the good news is that these diet and health changes, once you make and work at them, will enable you to completely rid yourself of the condition.
The Diet
You need to switch your diet to one that is full of organic fruits and vegetables and nuts. I know you have probably heard this before and it may sound to simple to be true, but I assure you it works.
Have you ever really tried eating a healthy diet for a prolonged period of time? Probably not if you have acid reflux, so give it an honest try for six months and see if you have any problems anymore.
However, there are just a few foods in this group that you may want to avoid because they could spur symptoms. They are:
* Raw garlic
* Tomatoes
* Raw onions
* Fats and oils
* Peppermint
* Citrus fruits
Get real with yourself and understand that the days of eating processed food and going out to eat at restaurants all the time are over. You can still eat unhealthy sometimes if you want to. However, if you really want to feel better you need to mostly make healthy choices when it comes to your diet health.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Improve Health and Fitness With Nutrition

Vitamins and minerals supplement can improve your health. There were controversies about the daily use of supplements. Many studies have proved that taking multivitamin and multi mineral supplement regularly does not cause any harm but helps in improving the health and fitness. They facilitate the smooth functioning of the entire body by providing the essential nutrition.
It is proved beyond doubt that anti oxidants are more effective when taken for long periods. Vitamin A, E and C are known as anti oxidants. They have the ability to remove toxic free radicals or cells from the body. These toxins and free radicals cause various diseases from allergy to cancer. Anti oxidant vitamins, gradually, build up the resistance power.
B vitamins like thiamine, riboflavin, pyridoxine and B12 helps in over all body functions. Vitamin D strengthen the bones, vitamin K and folic acid helps blood. A multivitamin aids many body functions.
Minerals are also essential. Calcium is needed in plenty for the bone, marrow and blood. Other minerals like potassium, iodine, sodium, selenium, zinc, copper etc. are required in small amounts. Some of them help in hormone production. Iodine helps in producing thyroid hormone. Some helps in body protection like selenium and potassium.
Hence, a multivitamin and multi mineral supplement helps in improving over all body functions like circulation, hormone production, digestion, assimilation and nerves.        
We can not get the daily requirement of essential vitamins and minerals from our best nutritious food. It is always not possible to eat nutritious food either despite best of our intentions. Addition of a multivitamin and multi mineral to the regular food sounds practical and useful.
Deficiency of vitamins and minerals in our body can cause variety of health problems. Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness and reduced vision, vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy. Similarly a host of diseases are caused. Some may become chronic with passage of time.
Good news is that we may avoid vitamins and minerals associated health problems with proper supplements and care. But, you should always remember that supplements are supplements and not replacement of healthy food. Without food, they will not work. Their nutrition providing ability is nullified. Taken under proper guidance, they can prove to be be very beneficial. You become healthy, fit and radiant.
Quality of life also improves and gets better when you are physically fit and healthy. That, in turn, improves your mental health too. You become more positive and confident. I believe the old proverb 'sound mind in a sound body'.
I am running an internet business. I keep myself healthy and fit as i combine healthy food with good supplements barring very occasional splurge of rich food. After all, i am human too. I believe, being health conscious and proactive is very beneficial.