50 Years of Title IX: Spanning Beyond Sports to Improve Bone Health of Girls

As a nation full of soccer moms and dads can attest, the explosion of girls' and women's sports that resulted from the passage of Title IX has provided tremendous benefits for girls' physical, mental and social wellbeing....

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Is Handgrip Strength Related to Future Health Outcomes?

There are several different components of physical fitness; these include cardiorespiratory (aerobic) fitness, muscular strength, flexibility, and body weight status (e.g., BMI, percent body fat). Over the past few decades, it has become indisputable that higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are strongly related to a decreased risk of several adverse health outcomes....

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Is Muscular Strength a Predictor of Atrial Fibrillation in Older Adults?

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common type of irregular heartbeat that is seen in clinical settings, and affects approximately 1% of the U.S. population....

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Can Functional Movement Screening Predict Injury Risk in Older Adults?

New research from The Cooper Institute looks at whether the Functional Movement Screening can predict the risk of injury in older adults....

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Preventing and Managing Diabetes with Exercise

For the 30 million Americans with diabetes, exercise may be the key to living #WELLintothefuture....

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Pairing Stretching within Strength Segments Improves Flexibility and Strength

Sound to good to be true? Well it isn't. Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D. is a renowned fitness researcher, who also has practical insights for ways to save time during workouts without compromising results. He realizes that many of us spend time and energy in resistance training and cardiovascular programs, but fail to find time to stretch. So he conducted a study at the South Shore YMCA with 76 participants from their fitness classes aimed at showing the effect stretching exercises can have when mixed in with normal training routines.  The fitness class activity consisted in performing 12 Naut...

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Dumbbells or Bands: Is There a Difference?

For additional health benefits not provided by aerobic exercise, it is recommended that most adults perform regular muscle-strengthening or resistance training.  What is considered "regular"? The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans state that adults should perform muscular strength and endurance activities on a minimum of 2 days per week (Haskell, et al, 2007). On each of these days, individuals should perform 8 -10 exercises with 8 -12 repetitions. During these exercises, individuals should work against resistance, which can come in many different forms including body weight, resi...

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Exercise Options for Bad Knees

When thinking of bad knees, the term osteoarthritis often comes to mind. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition of the cartilage of synovial joints, commonly affecting the knee joint, and is relatively pervasive in society today, including in those with an athletic and active lifestyle. While athletic activity does not have a cause and effect relationship with osteoarthritis, traumatic injury often resulting from athletic pursuits can increase the likelihood of its occurrence, which I think may explain the issues that have plagued me and my knees. Currently I have been able to manage the e...

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Spice Up Your Exercise Program This Holiday Season

Most of us know that to be "totally fit" we need a combination of strength, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility but many of us only focus only on the cardio part. We do our running, cycling, elliptical, or walking with little to no regard for resistance training or stretching. Perhaps we justify it because we just think we don't have enough time to work in resistance training. And stretching is all too often an after-thought and only lightly regarded as important. But what are we compromising in the long run?  Think about this: what good is all that cardio if you throw your back ou...

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Does circuit training prepare firefighters for the job?

Firefighters face challenging physical stresses on the job. These include anaerobic activities which can produce significant levels of lactic acid (6-13 mmol/L)2 while also targeting the cardiovascular system requiring heart rates of 79-88% of maximum3,4. For this reason, circuit training where cardio and strength stations are alternated with short rest periods between is often a popular training option for firefighters to target both aerobic and anaerobic conditioning systems. But does circuit training stimulate aerobic and anaerobic energy systems enough to meet the demands of firefighting?...

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One fabulous exercise: chair squat to shoulder press

Want to get more out of your strength training exercises? Integrate what is called multi-joint exercises into your routine. Exercises like squats, lunges, presses, and rows. These exercises target multiple muscles all in one smooth motion of lifting and lowering of the body or the weights. In contrast, in a single joint exercise like the dumbbell bicep curl, only the elbow joint is moving, thus only one major group of muscles is involved or activated (i.e., the biceps of the upper arm).  Multi-joint exercises have the following benefits: • Time efficient. • Involve...

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Does a general warm-up really help lifting performance?

When working out, you want to get the most out of your strength training as possible. But what is the best method to do that? Many argue that a warm-up for strength should include static stretching, but that may not always be best, as was discussed in, Static Stretching Before a Workout: The Debate Continues. Other suggestions include a general warm-up or a lift-specific warm-up.1 A general warm-up normally has the purpose of warming up the entire body. Individuals can accomplish this through light intensity cardiovascular exercise, such as on a spin bike or elliptical, o...

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