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Cardio/Aerobic
Sample Class: Cardio, Core and Balance
If your students enjoy a challenging workout but you sense they may be growing bored with your traditional HIIT class, try adding unique bonus exercises to keep people interested, engaged and motivated! This cardio, core and balance class incorporates lower-intensity (but not easy!) unilateral balance and core moves in between cardio intervals.
How To Create a Workout Community
As we return to the group exercise studio, it’s good to remember how a workout community not only brings us together, but helps us thrive.
Fit to Travel: Exercises for Seniors
Programming exercises for seniors is more important than ever, especially now that travel is opening up again, but your clients may not have kept up with their workouts over this last year. Here are some great ways to prepare your active agers for more adventure.
Sample Class: Park Workout
Take your boot camp class outside with this simple plug-and-play park workout, a mix of high-intensity cardio and lower-intensity resistance.
Sample Class: Tape-Box Workout
This fitness class with “tape box” workouts uses painter’s tape on the floor to create high-intensity agility and body-weight strength drills.
Sample Class: Slam It!
This exercise class utilizes sand bells, sandbags or slam balls and incorporates elements of strength, agility, core work and mobility.
Sample Class: Band Blast!
If you want to keep participants engaged and challenged, this high-energy class will do the trick. Break out the exercise bands and add targeted strength moves to high-intensity intervals. This format includes three phases, each consisting of one Tabata round followed by four resistance exercises. Bands are safe, easy to use and portable, making this a great class to offer in any location.
What Is the Cause of Muscle Cramps?
Muscle cramps can stop athletes in their tracks. Although they usually self-extinguish within seconds or minutes, the abrupt, harsh, involuntary muscle contractions can cause mild-to-severe agony and immobility, often accompanied by knotting of the affected muscle (Minetto et al. 2013). And cramps are common; 50%–60% of healthy people suffer muscle cramps during exercise, sleep or pregnancy or after vigorous physical exertion (Giuriato et al. 2018).
Sample Class: Seated Exercises for Older Adults
Older adults are more susceptible to deficits in cardiovascular fitness, muscle mass, strength and power, which may ultimately lead to losses in physical function. The following chair-based format focuses on improving outcomes for older participants, especially those who may need the support of a chair during exercise. Ready, Set, Sit! offers the variety of three 15-minute training segments (cardiovascular, high intensity and strength/power), while targeting important components that boost overall function.
Exercise Reduces Colon Cancer Growth
Colon cancer cell growth slows immediately after a HIIT session, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Physiology (2019; 597 [8], 2177-84). More physical activity is linked with a lower death risk for people with colorectal cancer.
High-Cadence Cycling and Recreational Cyclists
A recent study supports indoor cycling instructors who urge students not to pedal at a cadence above 90 revolutions per minute. Researchers found that at 90 rpm and beyond, pedal forces exerted by recreational cyclists decreased, heart rate increased by 15%, and exercise efficiency and skeletal muscle oxygenation declined.
The study appeared in the International Journal of Sports Medicine (2019; 40 [5], 305–11).
High-Volume, High-Intensity Exercise Is Safe for Men
No need for concern about increased death risk from heart disease among experienced middle-aged exercisers who engage in high-intensity activity, at least if they’re male. Findings from a 10-year study of 21,758 generally healthy, very active men—like marathon runners, cyclists and swimmers—showed that even for those with higher coronary-artery calcium levels, athletic pursuits did not elevate risk of death.
Complex Training: Pairing for Power
If you work with athletes, you’ve likely run into the challenge of how to incorporate power components into their already-packed training schedules. Whether you’re working with a clutch outfielder, a center or a lineman, your client’s athletic skills need refinement, and power is one aspect that requires attention. Trainers typically program resistance training to develop strength and plyometric drills to improve speed.
A Case for Breakfast Before a Workout
Should you eat breakfast before a workout? A new study has confirmed that eating breakfast makes a difference.
Training Techniques for High-Performance Masters Athletes
Trainers and coaches can use examples of elite performances and aging research to develop training protocols for masters athletes.
Sample Class: Every Minute on the Minute
If you enjoy teaching (and doing) high-intensity classes, this workout is for you! The “every minute on the minute” (EMOM) protocol is fun, fast-moving and challenging. You start a predetermined number of reps at the top of a minute and rest for the time you have left until the next minute begins.
Sample Class: Tabata for Every Rider
This indoor cycling routine introduces Tabata-inspired intervals in a friendly, nonthreatening ride that provides a great workout for both beginner and advanced cyclists. The intervals—20 seconds of all-out effort, alternating with 10 seconds of rest—help to increase both aerobic and anaerobic capacity and may keep metabolism elevated for a longer time period when compared with low-intensity, steady-state training.
Are 10,000 Steps Necessary?
Are some of your clients obsessed with achieving their step counts every day? While 10,000 steps is a popular marker, it turns out that taking as few as 4,400 steps per day is associated with a lower risk of death for women with a mean age of 72 years.
“Clearly, even a modest number of steps was related to lower mortality rate among these older women,” said principal investigator I-Min Lee, MBBS ScD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
First-Time Marathon Training Has Anti-Aging Effect
Here’s a good reason to encourage your midlife clients to try an inaugural running event. First-time marathon runners who trained for 6 months saw a 4-year reduction in arterial age, according to study findings presented at EuroCMR 2019, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
2019 IDEA® World Convention: Igniting Passion With Purpose!
Purpose, passion and people! The fitness industry is all about forging relationships that lift others up. Fitness professionals have energy to spare, and they are dedicated to mentoring new generations of pros, networking with peers, and motivating clients and participants every day.
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