Fitness time with Zelda Higgins the recreation coordinator at Zayed University.
If you want to reach Zelda try her email, zeldahiggins7@gmail.com
Lots of things going on this week so we got right down to it.
Here is the Podcast to hear the entire show.
Here are the show notes.
6 reasons to hate crunches1. Crunches load your spine at an equivalent of 340 kilograms of compressive force. This is over and above the maximum recommended by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. For an exercise that was supposed to help eliminate back pain by strengthening the core, crunches have only worsened the back-pain epidemic.2. When performing a crunch, the work is being done by the superficial muscles in the abdomen and the hip flexors, which shorten and tighten with each repetition. But here’s the thing: These muscles are already short and tight thanks to all the sitting we do in our daily lives, so it makes no sense to further shorten and tighten them. Crunches only weaken your core, mess with your alignment and set you up for back pain and pelvic floor dysfunction such as incontinence and, for women, pelvic organ prolapse, which is the descent and eventual protrusion of an organ into and out of the vagina.3. Crunches do not make your tummy flat. Next time you are at the gym, watch people doing crunches and pay attention to their abdomen – you will notice the tummy pooches outward, which is the opposite of the so-called purpose of this exercise. You will also notice that the shoulders round, the head tucks forward, the butt tucks under and the breath is often held. This is disastrous to the core and pelvic floor and only serves to exacerbate the terrible posture we live in all day.4. Crunches cause downward pressure on the pelvic floor and outward pressure on the abdominal wall, which can contribute to a condition known as diastasis recti (a separation of the outermost abdominal muscles) in both men and women. That’s right – men can get it, too.5. Research has shown that as many as 52 per cent of women with pelvic floor dysfunction have diastasis recti. This stat is alarming, especially given that women can have diastasis recti after pregnancy but have no idea. So when they start doingcrunches in an attempt to lose their mummy tummy, they make their existing diastasis worse by putting outward pressure on the weakened abdominal wall. The pressure also bears down on the pelvic floor and puts them at greater risk of chronic back pain, incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.6. When you do a crunch, the pressure inside the abdominal cavity increases and, in a dysfunctional core, the ability to manage this increase in pressure is hindered. This results in the internal organs being pushed down. Pelvic floor physiotherapist Julia Di Paolo of PhysioExcellence in Toronto has seen a consistent increase in prolapse and believes it is caused in large part by our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, the rise of challenging exercise programs such as CrossFit and boot camps, and the lack of awareness about core exercise in pregnancy and postpartum recovery. “Crunches are a part of every ‘hard-core’ exercise program out there and are often one of the first exercises a new mom will choose in an attempt to get her body back,” Di Paolo says. “New moms, and most people who sit for a living – which is most of us – do not have the core strength or stability to withstand the demands of most mainstream fitness programs and they end up in my office with a condition that will dramatically affect their quality of life and which activities they can do.”The Royal Canadian Airforce workout plan from the 50shttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/07/28/helen-mirren-workout-royal-canadian-air-force_n_5627392.htmlHow it works!What is 5BX?The 5BX Plan – Five Basic Exercises – was devised by Dr. Bill Orban for the Royal Canadian Air Force in the late 1950’s. The Plan is composed of 6 charts arranged in progression. Each chart is composed of 5 exercises which are always performed in the same order (warming-up and stretching is included in this order of the exercises) and in the same maximum time limit.The idea is that you perform these exercises for only 11 minutes a day to achieve a reasonably high level of fitness. There are targets/chart levels to aim for, (based upon age) and once you have reached your personal target, you only have to perform the exercises 3 times a week to maintain your level of fitness.The perfect lunch hour workoutJogging slow could be a good thing!As it turned out, and as expected, joggers consistently tended to live longer than people who did not exercise.But when the researchers closely parsed the data about how much and how intensely people jogged, some surprises emerged.The ideal amount of jogging for prolonged life, this nuanced analysis showed, was between 1 hour and 2.4 hours each week. And the ideal pace was slow. (The researchers did not specify exact paces in their study, using instead the broad categories of slow, average and fast, based on the volunteers’ self-reported usual pace.)Plodding joggers tended to live longer than those who ran faster. In fact, the people who jogged most often and at the fastest pace — who were, in effect, runners rather than joggers — did not enjoy much benefit in terms of mortality. In fact, their lifespans tended to be about the same as those who did not exercise at all.Is there a best way to lose fat on a neck? Can you spot exercise might be the questions?Do we need dietary supplements people in the office are always talking protein shakes?Target weight how do I figure that out?What is a target heartrate?
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