Technology
MyPlate Goes Seasonal
Looking for new nutrition tools and resources to share with clients? MyPlate has launched seasonal resources for nutrition and health professionals to share with clients. Jump into spring with gardening resources and ideas for using homegrown herbs in cooking, and sample Earth Day activities, farmers’ market resources, and tips for prepping potlucks and parties.
Learn more at choosemyplate.gov/seasonal.
Healthy-Eating Blogs
Thinking of starting a nutrition or healthy-eating blog? Start by knowing the data on what end users find most useful.
How to Find Your Epic
The fitness industry is a rewarding and inspiring place to be. However, it’s not without its challenges, and getting ahead with passion alone can be difficult. The most successful fit pros know that to build an epic life and career, they must invest in education and learn from those who’ve been there and done it.
Healthiest and Unhealthiest States
America’s Health Rankings® has released its annual report, which ranks each state’s health based on 35 factors, including behaviors, community and environment, policy, clinical care, and outcomes data. Now in its 28th year, the report has two primary goals: to provide a benchmark for states and to promote action to improve the health of citizens.
According to the data, these are the five healthiest states:
1. Massachusetts
2. Hawaii
3. Vermont
4. Utah
5. Connecticut
On This Day in Fitness History
The first-ever Winter Olympics were held January 25–February 5, 1924, in Chamonix, France. The event involved eight sports and just over 250 athletes.
2017 IDEA® World Convention
Wherever they are, the best personal trainers, group exercise instructors, fitness entrepreneurs and nutrition/wellness professionals excel at what they do, but in the macrocosm of motion that is the IDEA World Convention, they redefine the limits of their potential. At the 2017 event, held in Las Vegas, July 19–23, more than 10,000 like-minded pros placed a bet on continued happiness and success, upping the ante as they attended more than 330 workshops and workouts taught by the industry’s greatest minds.
Recovery Tech—An Array of New Products, Services and Centers
New technologies, products and services are boosting the exercise-recovery business. What’s going on here?
The rising popularity of wearable devices is making people much more aware of their performance.
High-intensity interval training remains one of the most popular kinds of exercise.
Everyday exercisers can now afford treatments that were formerly reserved for pro athletes.
The Importance of Introductory Offers
Early in my career as a personal trainer, I was confused as to why my client base was growing at a glacial speed. After all, I had spent years preparing, applying principles, learning program design and getting certified so that I could have a career that would change people’s lives for the better.
Product Showcase
Nutrition By The Book
The Endurance Training Diet & Cookbook (Harmony 2017) by Jesse Kropelnicki is both a cookbook and a training nutrition manual. Kropelnicki shares his personal program of optimized nutrition, including 70 recipes that put his concepts into practice. The book provides nutrition information for distance runners, cyclists and triathletes and explores guidelines for what to eat pre-workout, post-workout and during recovery. There’s also a game plan for race-day nutrition.
Get in the Game!
Fitness facilities compete to offer cutting-edge movement trends, but what about cutting-edge technology? The fitness world is becoming ever more virtual, and incoming clients are looking for more than a fun indoor cycling class or a cool cardio machine; they want to play a game!
“What smartphone app or computer program could you not live without in your business?”
I could not live without the Tabata Pro™ Timer and MyFitnessPal apps. Tabata Pro Timer is essential to my private and small-group training sessions and our group running program. I can set three different timers to meet all my interval needs.
MyFitnessPal enables my clients to track exercise as well as food and water intake, and to share these publicly or just with me. The app provides accountability for my clients’ fitness and nutrition goals.
Is Advertising on Social Media Worth the Cost?
Remember social media 5 or 6 years ago? A lot of people thought of Facebook and Twitter as “free advertising” hubs for companies and entrepreneurs, because it was easier back then to gain attention with your posts (Snapchat and Instagram were just getting started at that time). If you were committed to posting decent content, you could expect ample clicks, likes, replies, etc. Now, however, times have changed.
Is There a Best Place to Wear a Heart Rate Monitor?
With heart rate monitors, where you place them may determine how accurate they are, according to data published in the Journal of the College of Cardiology (2017; 69 [11], 336).
Pokémon Go Gets People Moving in a Big Way
Pokémon Go, a virtual-reality app that requires players to navigate their surroundings in search of animated creatures, got people to log lots of extra steps last summer, according to researchers from Duke University in North Carolina.
Creating a Client Avatar
Do you remember the days before GPS and smartphones? When taking a road trip meant pulling over to look at a map, making U‐turns and stopping at gas stations to ask for directions? We had a destination, but not the exact route. What if you ran your fitness business that way? Taking action with no clear path? It would be frustrating, wasteful and inefficient. The reality is that many personal trainers do approach their businesses in that fashion.
Learning, Growing and Thriving for 35 Years
For nearly a decade, Robyn Krueger, MS, owner of Core Synergy Fitness in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, has traveled to the IDEA World Convention in pursuit of personal and professional advancement.
What’s Hot in Equipment: Fitness Pro Favorites
Fitness professionals like their equipment—from "tried-and-true" to "oh, so new." And equipment companies like to fill convention halls with fresh gear to help trainers and clients hit their goals. Of course, fitness pros also enjoy new gadgets for the pure thrill of them—and will sometimes go for equipment that targets a fun goal over a hypertrophy goal, for example.
Fitness Technology That Shakes Things Up
For me, the annual Consumer Electronics Show combines the joy of Christmas morning with the wonder of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. The massive Las Vegas trade show surrounds me with the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest technologies from around the world, with booth after booth full of people showing me why their products will be the next game changer in the health-and-fitness industry.
The Foundation of a Fulfilling Future
Las Vegas has a reputation for secrets. As they say, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." This July, more than 10,000 professionals will break that cardinal rule because what happens at the 2017 IDEA World Convention will be shared with millions of people worldwide. With more than 335 workshops, lectures and workouts, plus tons of special events planned to celebrate IDEA's 35th anniversary, it will be impossible to keep quiet about the career-changing experiences and top-level knowledge offered at this year's event.
Do You Need a Better Technology Policy?
If you've spent any time at all inside a gym, you've likely experienced this scenario: You're humming along on your treadmill when Joe Talksalot hops onto the machine next to you and proceeds to speak loudly into his smartphone. To distract yourself from Talksalot's not–so–private conversation, you scan the gym floor—and over in the corner you see a woman doing backbends while contorting her neck to maintain a visual on her tablet.
