Tag Archives: men’s health

Does your workout take advantage of the best learning about exercise?

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Best learning about exercise built into Koko FitClub workoutsI’m an exercise physiologist by training with a keen interest in keeping up with the very best research. I use it to design your Smartraining workouts! There’s solid science behind the Koko FitClub workouts planned for you each and every visit – so you don’t have to think about it. That’s why you’re here, right?

So, while I generally keep this stuff “behind the curtain,” I spotted a couple studies recently that not only reinforce the Koko Smartraining methodology BUT they have awesome motivational value. (You know my ultimate goal – successfully convince you to keep up with your workout prescription of 3 strength and 4 cardio a week!)

The first study, from the Journal of Obesity1 looked at the effect of high intensity cardiovascular exercise on male body composition. These men did interval training workouts that looked like this: 8 seconds of hard work followed by 12 seconds of light work. This workout was done for 20 minutes, three times a week for 12 weeks. The men in the study showed excellent improvements in aerobic capacity (15% increase,) a reduction in visceral fat (17% decrease) and significant increases in lean muscle level.

Once again, proof that it’s not the quantity of  exercise you do when you’re at Koko FitClub, but the quality of exercise that matters.  And, there’s no reason you won’t see the same type of results by just sticking to your Koko Smartraining exercise prescription.

The second study appeared Archives of Internal Medicine2 using research from the renowned Cooper Clinic and the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. The research involved men and women who were tested for fitness at age 50 and then again surveyed about general health a decade later.

What did they learn? “Physical fitness at midlife made healthy aging — long considered a contradiction in terms –a distinct possibility.” The fittest 1/5th in their 50′s had far fewer chronic conditions in their 60′s, ( by more than half,) than the folks in the lowest fitness category.

What does that mean for you? When your Q-score and lean muscle level goes up, or your eBMI goes down, the immediate payout is that you look and feel better right now. Turns out, you are also banking that fitness so you look and feel great for years to come. It’s an investment in healthy aging so you can enjoy your entire life!

All this by meeting your Smartraining exercise prescription of 3 strength and 4 cardio a week. Could it be any easier to take advantage of the best learning about exercise? No way. Now go hit the club!

Michael Wood, CSCS
Chief Fitness Officer
Koko FitClub

Koko FitClub Franchising

1Journal of Obesity link – http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/2012/480467/

2 Archives of Internal Medicine link – http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1352789

Get Your Heart Koko Fit for Valentine’s Day & American Heart Month

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February is American Heart Month and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to get to Koko FitClub and challenge yourself to work in extra Koko Cardio. In addition to hitting your 3 strength session per-week goal, how about doing four, or even five cardio sessions? During those extra sessions, you can try out some of my new favorite winter cardio programs like the  Koko Crater Head Challenge and the Santa Monica Stairs.

Our hearts are incredibly strong muscles, and we keep them healthy by moving our bodies, but Americans just don’t move enough. With more than 2 million heart attacks and strokes a year, and 800,000 deaths, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. That’s a sobering 2,200 deaths per day on average. And, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that individuals who are overweight or obese are at greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

Health.com states, “one cardiovascular death per year may be preventable for every 145 people who are persuaded to walk at least two hours a week, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.”

Research has shown that sedentary individuals who begin a regular program of exercise have the potential reduce their risk of a heart attack by 35 to 55%.  In another study, Harvard researchers found an approximate 20% reduction in heart-disease risk for individuals who most frequently found the time to vigorously exercise. Types of activity included: running or jogging, swimming laps, and playing tennis. Even the most basic aerobic exercise showed benefit. Walking 3 miles or more a week resulted in a 10% reduction in risk. Other moderate exercises include golf and yard work.

At Koko, both the circuit-based, strength workouts on the Smartrainer and the high intensity interval training you do for Koko Cardio are already making your heart healthier. If you add a couple of extra sessions of Koko Cardio each week, starting this American Heart month, you can even further reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. What are you waiting for?

Speaking of hearts, Valentine’s Day is only a few days away. What better way to show your love than to share Smartraining with your spouse, friends and family members. You may be introducing them to a new love – the love of exercise! For everyone who thinks they hate exercise, they only hate the negative experiences they have had in the past; discouraged by the “failures” and frustrations. The gift of Koko will be the best Valentine they’ve ever received. It’s a gift of good health that sends the message “I want you around to love for years to come!”

Here’s to your Healthy Heart!

Michael Wood, CSCS
Chief Fitness Officer
Koko FitClub

Koko FitClub Franchising

Exercise vs. Anxiety

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I was on the elliptical doing one of Michael Wood’s latest Winter cardio programs (loving them!) and he brought up the topic of exercise and mental health, mentioning his colleague, Dr. Michael Otto, PhD., who is a researcher doing great work in this area. It is so interesting and can help so many. That audio has inspired me to revisit this blog post on the subject. Hope you enjoy!

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Here’s another reason to feel great about your visits to Koko FitClub. It’s long been a commonly held belief that mood is elevated by exercise. Anecdotal evidence from my own life sure supports it. Juggling work and family commitments can leave me feeling frazzled at times, but Smartraining sessions always help me regroup. It’s 30, uninterrupted minutes of MY time. So, I was interested to see a handful of recent articles touting research that supports our intuition. Psychologists are actually “prescribing” exercise as a good intervention and treatment for people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

My further research into the subject has led me to some fascinating findings, here are a couple you may not have heard before:

  • The immediate mood boost we have come to know as the “runners high” is actually followed by longer term relief for depression and anxiety, not unlike the relief gained from medications and therapy.
  • Exercise battles anxiety and depression better than relaxation techniques or meditation.
  • Researchers think exercise is an effective stress buster because it trains our bodies’ physiological systems to communicate and work in concert more effectively during stressful situations, which in turn raises our bodies’ threshold for stress response. (In other words, exercise is “stress practice” so your body doesn’t respond to stress with the symptoms of anxiety and depression as easily.)
  • Exercise works fast, in 25 to 30 minutes, to alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and depression. In contrast, the therapeutic benefits of medication often take weeks to kick in.

If you’d like to read more about it, here are some worthwhile online articles:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/exercise-and-mood/201110/exercise-anxiety

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/painter/2010-04-26-yourhealth26_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

http://blog.smu.edu/research/2010/04/study_prescribing_exercise_can.html

Stress Reduction and Exercise: Evidence suggest physical activity lowers stress via brain chemicals

Here’s to feeling better every day!

Mary Obana

President and Co-Founder
Koko FitClub
Koko FitClub Franchising

 

 

 

Sleep: For Your Health, It is Possible to get too Much of a Good Thing

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I may sound like a broken record, but you know my mantra – Koko Smartraining is just one piece of the fitness puzzle. Today I’m going to discuss another fitness necessity: restoration. Restoration, you say?

S-L-E-E-P!

You probably already know that not sleeping enough is a health risk (see below if you need reminding*), but do you know that sleeping too much is just as big of a problem?

Individuals who sleep less than six or more than nine hours a night have higher rates of heart disease and stroke, and are more likely to die of those causes,  according to research published in the European Heart Journal. Less than six or more than eight may adversely affect brain function, according to recent research in the journal, Sleep.

Major health risks aside, if you sleep too little or too much, it will affect how your body responds to your Koko workouts. Not only will your body feel more fatigued, but you won’t see the kind of results you can achieve when your sleep falls within the optimal range. Muscles, ligaments and tendons need to recover and restore from bouts of exercise, and this occurs during a healthy night’s sleep.

Sleep is a big piece of your fitness profile – make sure you are getting the right amount.

Michael Wood, CSCS
Chief Fitness Officer
Koko FitClub

*A few more unhappy consequences of sleep deprivation:

  • Decreased Performance and Alertness: Sleep deprivation induces significant reductions in performance and alertness. Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%
  • Memory and Cognitive Impairment: Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability — your ability to think and process information
  • Stress Relationships: Disruption of a bed partner’s sleep due to a sleep disorder may cause significant problems for the relationship (for example, separate bedrooms, conflicts, moodiness, etc.)
  • Occupational Injury: Excessive sleepiness also contributes to a greater than twofold higher risk of sustaining an occupational injury
  • Automobile Injury: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates conservatively that each year drowsy driving is responsible for at least 100,000 automobile crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 fatalities

 

Daily NEAT + Weekly Koko Smartraining = Body Composition Changes

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Now that you do your Koko Smartraining on a regular basis, no longer do you get dog tired just trying to play with your kids, work in the yard, or climb the stairs. And having energy again? Pretty nice.

Has being fitter encouraged you to be more active outside of Koko? I hope so. Especially if you have weight loss goals. Let me tell you why.

Research by James Levine, MD, PhD of the Mayo Clinic, found that lean people burn more calories than overweight individuals because  they are more active during the day; expending more than 100+ calories per hour simply by moving more and sitting less.

This phenomenon is NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.) It’s the energy, in the form of calories, that your body uses above and beyond your Koko Smartraining workouts. This can include everything from gardening, taking the stairs at work, navigating through the grocery store, playing golf, cleaning your house or walking the dog.

Let me share a quote from Dr. Levine’s book Move a Little, Lose a Lot that I find especially compelling:

“As a doctor who has spent more than 20 years studying human movement, obesity, and metabolism, I can tell you that the way we are living and the way many of us are going about weight loss is absolutely, fundamentally wrong.”

Dr. Levine is among a growing number of researchers who have concluded that one of the keys to achieving a healthy weight is to move more throughout the day – not  just during your exercise sessions.

Say  you are expending 300-500 calories in a typical Smartraining workout and you’re doing that three times a week. First of all, bravo! You’re  getting major health benefits like loading your bones and strengthening your muscles – including your heart. Not only are you feeling more energetic, but that muscle you are building burns more calories than fat. But the reality is,  if your goal is weight loss, the math still may not be working in your favor.

Those 900-1500 calories  a week may be enough to keep weight in check during the second and third decades of life, when we are typically more active in general, but it’s a whole different story if you are over 40.

Here is another quote from Dr. Levine:

“Our current obesity and related health woes stem from the fact that modern life in the Internet-driven electronic age has increasingly leeched NEAT from our existence to the tune of up to 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day.  And the loss is sucking the life out of us.”

This is a powerful statement. Think about what would happen, with your newfound fitness,  if you consciously return that lost NEAT to your daily life. Seemingly small changes – like parking farther from the store so you walk a longer distance – add up. If you burned those extra 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day, combined with the calories that you expend at Koko FitClub, you’d begin to witness a big shift in your  body composition. (Imagine also reducing your intake – but that’s another post!)

So, take that new-found Koko energy and get more active – everyday. You have nailed the first step: consistently doing 3 strength and 3-4 Koko cardio sessions each week. Upping your NEAT is the second.

One way I like to reinforce and remind myself of this goal is by wearing a pedometer to record how many steps I’m getting over the course of a day. Try it and then challenge yourself  to add an additional 2,000 steps to that base number over the next few weeks. Keep building up to 7-8,000 and set a long term goal of 10,000 steps a day. That’s where I’m at!

Daily NEAT + Weekly Koko Smartraining  =  Body Composition Changes. How’s that for a nice NEAT exercise prescription for you!

Michael Wood, CSCS
Chief Fitness Officer
Koko FitClub