by Jason Karp, PhD
Weight training is an extremely beneficial form of exercise but can be confusing if you’ve never done it. Jason R. Karp, MS, PhD student, college lecturer and track and field coach, answers frequently asked questions to start you on the right track. (Ask a personal trainer to set up a program specifically for you.)
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Expert tips on maintaining health and fitness
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1. Understand How Yoga Benefits Athletes. The postures, breathing and inner focus of yoga can help balance, strengthen and restore overtaxed muscles, joints and ligaments. In addition to elongating tight, fatigued and shortened muscles, yoga helps calm and clear the mind.
Want to get the most nutritional value out of cooked food? As a rule, rapid cooking techniques are better for retaining nutrients than slower methods. For healthiest results, most experts recommend cooking food thoroughly but rapidly. Try the following methods, described by Catherine Reade, MS, RD, owner of Healthfull Living™ in Littleton, Colorado, to preserve the nutrients you need to stay healthy.
Feeling stressed? Maybe you can’t get to sleep, worry more than before, suffer from shoulder tension or feel overwhelmed? Although the best response to stress may be to juggle fewer activities, you can’t always cut down on what you do. You can, however, trick your stress alarm system into thinking you are doing less. Use these tips from Janet Lapp, PhD, professional speaker, author of Plant Your Feet Firmly in Mid-Air and publisher of The Change Letter, to help alleviate stress.
Fear of failure stops many people from exercising or trying new activities. According to David E. Conroy, PhD—assistant professor of kinesiology and director of the sport psychology lab at Pennsylvania State University, University Park—they may specifically fear the shame and embarrassment that come with failure. They may be afraid that they won’t fulfill their ideal self-image. The thought of not doing well at exercise may make them anxious that they are not as competent as they believed and lower their self-esteem.
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Jest for the Health of It
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hat should you do when it's been a trying day, everything's gone wrong and you just want to scream? Go ahead and scream. Then find something humorous in the situation and laugh. Laugh? Yes, laugh. According to Steven Sultanoff, PhD-- a psychologist in Irvine, California, and the president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor-...
re you an older adult who exercises? Do you wonder if your diet is helping or hindering your workouts? Here are some nutrition tips from Jenna Bell-Wilson, MS, RD, LD, the media representative for the New Mexico Dietetic Association and a doctoral student in exercise physiology at the University of New Mexico.
ou’ve probably heard that 1 in every 2 women and 1 in 8 men will suffer from a bad bone fracture caused by osteoporosis. What can you do, diet wise, to help your bones stay healthy? Here’s the lowdownfrom Liz Applegate, PhD, a nationally known expert on nutritionand fitness, who is a faculty member of the nutrition departmentat the University of California at Davis, and author of Encyclopedia of Sports and Fitness Nutrition (Prima Publishing, December 2002).
Do you always feel as if you have just recovered from one cold when another comes along? Luckily, according to Jenna Bell-Wilson, MS, RD, LD, media representative for the New Mexico Dietetic Association and doctoral student in exercise physiology at the University of New Mexico, eating foods rich in four special nutrients can enhance your immune system:
