The Ultimate Exercise Dilemma

Time for a nappy nap

As I sheepishly ordered a large organic French roast, fatigue overtook me and I wondered whether even this gargantuan caffeinated goodness could work its invigorating magic.

Whether you’re a distance runner, heavy lifter, or even yoga devotee, you’ve confronted this existential dilemma I faced that afternoon: Workout or nap?

The latter seemed too path-of-least-resistance easy: Shut my office door and curl up on the sofa. Or swim upstream and sluggishly push through my workout.

Had a client expressed such a dilemma, I would become

The #1 Secret to Stay on Course

What gets measured gets managed.

A recent Associated Press (AP) story, appropriately entitled “Like gym memberships, enthusiasm for fitness trackers drops,” noted momentum popular tracking devices provide eventually drops significantly.

“Although sales of Fitbit and other fitness trackers are strong, many of their owners lose enthusiasm for them once the novelty of knowing how many steps they've taken wears off,” writes Anick Jesdanun.

I wrote about tracking devices about two years ago. Clients had long enquired about the latest technology to measure, track, improve, or otherwise monitor their workout, so I evaluated then-popular tracking devices.

“Today’s gadgets, I wrote, “monitor everything from sleep to recovery to hormones released when you work out… Do you really need these cool, sleek gadgets to measure, track, and record every rep, spoonful, and hour slumbering? Not really.” 

Today, we have Apple Watch and a zillion other fitness tracking devices. The question remains:

Sweat Smartly with these Strategies

The sweatier, the better

Confession: I secretly love those hovering-on-triple-digit, sweat-inducing heat waves that sometimes engulf Los Angeles during summer.

Sweat has a bad reputation. Talk about sweat at your next dinner party and someone will probably quickly change the topic.

You’ve heard someone say, “Don’t sweat it,” you remember like yesterday breaking into a miserable sweat before that make-or-break high school chemistry final, and excessive perspiration probably became an undesirable part of a first date or job interview.

Sweat serves a practical purpose. When something like exercise increases your body’s core temperature, fluid rises to your skin’s surface and then evaporates. If you didn’t sweat, even a comfortable-temperature workout room would quickly become unbearable.

Interestingly, fit people sweat

5 Ways to Fit Fitness into Your Overloaded Schedule

No time? Make time?

I recently read a dismal study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that found on average, only about half of American adults got sufficient aerobic exercise and 29 percent performed sufficient muscle-strengthening activity.

National Exercise Guidelines were admittedly less than stringent: just two and a half hours of moderate intensity exercise or 75 minutes of higher-intensity exercise weekly. In other words, a 20-minute daily stroll or 15 minutes of more vigorous exercise five times a week.

Regardless of these minimal federal recommendations, the study found

Prevent these 5 Guaranteed-to-Fail Diet & Exercise Myths

A harder or  a smarter workout?

Perfect beach body by July! a women’s weekly recently blared as I awaited checkout at my local supermarket.

Curious, I thumbed through to the article. Nothing new: Its celebrity-coddled author trotted out several over-worn nutrition and fitness clichés that should have become permanently retired around, oh, 1994.

These myths didn’t work then, they don’t work now, yet every year I see women’s magazines, social media pages, and so-called health gurus promoting these refuse-to-die nonsensical ideas.

As a personal trainer for two decades, I’ve watched fads come and go. While most become debunked and disappear, a few stubbornly stick around. Let’s look at five refuse-to-die myths, coupled with smart alternatives that really do work.