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When you think about exercising core muscles, do you remember your diaphragm? Its two main functions involve breathing and biomechanics, and it’s one of the most important muscles for maintaining intra-abdominal pressure (Nelson 2012). Intra-abdominal pressure is like a weight belt applied from the inside. If your body can’t regulate this pressure, you may experience poor motor control and lack of spinal stability. Plus, when the diaphragm is not properly engaged, other muscles must compensate, increasing your risk of injury.
Water exercise is a great alternative to treadmill or outdoor walking for people who experience discomfort when training on land.
Serving cancer survivors is another area in which exercise is being acknowledged as an important part of the healthcare continuum. New guidelines, developed by an international group of experts, advise people living with cancer to avoid inactivity.
A spotter’s gender does not influence bench press performance during a 1-RM testing protocol, according to a 2019 report in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2019; doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000003156) This is true whether the weightlifter is male or female.
State-of-the-art cold-weather protective clothing adds a metabolic cost from the extra weight, independent of thermal effects, and you may not need bulk to optimize comfort and warmth, according to a study published in Applied Ergonomics (2020; 82, 102956).
Health and wellness coaching has hit an important professional milestone. The AMA has officially recognized the role of health and wellness coaches as nonphysician healthcare professionals by approving procedural codes for tracking health and well-being coaching services. This means that health and wellness coaches who are certified by either the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) or by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing Inc. are recognized as Category III healthcare professionals.
In a review of 10 studies—published between 1950 and 2019—that included 3.8 million people, researchers found that dog owners had a 24% lower risk of dying than nonowners during follow-up periods averaging 10 years.
How fast you walk at midlife may provide insight into your future physical and mental fitness. Researchers from Duke University in North Carolina and the University of Otago in New Zealand evaluated data from more than 1,000 male and female participants, who were assessed at intervals from birth to age 45 on factors including physical function, gait speed, aging pace and neurocognitive function.
The mental aspect of strength training is often given short shrift, but now a systematic review has analyzed relevant research to determine which most benefits weightlifting performance: focusing externally on the intended weightlifting result, focusing internally on the body or having no specific focus.
Here’s more good news for pregnant exercise enthusiasts. East Carolina University researchers found that women who did 50 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise three times per week during pregnancy had babies with better neuromotor skills at 1 month old than babies of mothers who did not exercise.
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IDEA Fitness Journal
Current Issue:
December 2019
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