Easy Ways to Make Sure That Your Children Keep Fit

If you’ve got a family, then you will already know how important it is for their wellness and wellbeing that you manage to keep them active. With so many sedentary passtimes for kids these days, from TV shows to games on tablets, it can be hard to get them moving as much as you would like. It’s also hard to juggle work, school, general family life and taking part in a physical activity.

 

Setting a good, healthy example is an ideal place to start. It’s important to think not just of your own heart health but that of future generations in your family. A shocking study last year actually found that teens and children who are obese actually have as much plaque built up in their arteries as a 45 year old adult. This naturally sets them up for a lifetime of serious health problems and diseases. If you manage to find a way to be fit, it will increase the chances of your child being fit too.

 

One great way to do this is for you all to take a class together. Ask around at your local community centres and fitness classes to find out about any classes such as aerobic or yoga which are offered to whole families. If your littlest children are too young to participate in classes, then try to look for classes that help you incorporate a baby or young child into the yoga moves, or a class that involves pushing a stroller to keep fit. If you don’t have children, then grab your partner or even your dog and do some yoga or go for a long walk.

 

You might also want to think about redesigning your living room. A room that is focused around the TV and has a shelf full of DVDs or video games will not encourage fitness, so instead make the room a nice space to spend time together, without making television the focus.

Categories: Children, classes, Family, fit, nbsp, room, yoga

Could Group Fitness Classes Help Improve Your Workout?

Group fitness classes are a great way to lose weight, as the support of others in the same position to yourself can be great to help you feel motivated. Without even realising it, you will be benefiting your wellness and wellbeing, whilst having a whole lot of fun. Group exercise classes provide a feeling of camaraderie, a very important aspect to any sport.

 

Group classes are often divided into skill levels, but anyone can take part and is catered for. There are so many different classes to choose from.

 

Cardio Challenge is one such class, and it mixes low impact and basic step aerobics in a fun format that is designed to get your heart racing and your muscles working hard.

 

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is another, which is a self-defence martial art class which centres around the idea of ground fighting and gaining dominance in a fight against an opponent.

 

Fitness Training Camps are also popular with people with all levels of fitness. They generally involve 30 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise followed by 20 minutes of strength training, done in groups, often outdoors.

 

Body Sculpting is along the same lines, too, focusing on strength training and endurance using resistance bands or free weight.

 

Iron Man core classes aim to boost cardio-respiratory fitness as well as core strength. Core Conditioning is similar, but focuses on the lower body and core muscles, which has the added benefit of strengthening your abdominal muscles and improving your posture.

 

Indoor Group Cycling provides an intensive cardio workout for people of all fitness levels and of various ages, as the pedalling speed and resistance varies from person to person.

 

Pilates is a gentler type of class, and focuses on building endurance and core muscles, rebalancing the body and building strength in a long-lasting way.

Categories: class, classes, Core, Core Muscles, fitness, fitness classes, group, group fitness, nbsp, Strength Training

Extreme Exercising Becomes New Craze – But at What Cost?

The reason why celebrities look so great in films or on the red carpet is simple; they work very hard, very quickly, in preparation for big events. It’s quite satisfying to realise the amount of effort celebs put in within a short space of time just to look that good, and it’s good for your wellbeing that you don’t have to worry about the paparazzi whenever you leave the house. In fact, wellness experts agree that this kind of high-intensity fitness makes you more likely to get injured, sick, or burnt-out than reach HD-ready perfection. So why are we engaging in extreme exercise more than ever before.?

 

According to nonprofit Running USA, since 2000, the number of people who finish marathons has soared by almost 50%. There has also been a surge of interest in yoga, with practitioners going from four to 20 million in the US alone over the last 10 years. This has gone alongside an explosion of interest in vigorous forms like Bikram (hot yoga) and Ashtanga (an athletic series). Plus, you can’t go into a gym these days without seeing offerings of high-octane boot camp sessions, Spinning classes, and barre workouts. And the people that take up these offers are forming their own kind of fitness enthusiast cult.

 

Tina Craig, a fashion blogger who takes back-to-back kickboxing and Pilates classes three days a week, raves, ‘I’m back in my size-24 jeans. I felt like an old milking cow most days. My exercise regimen was validation that I had some sort of control over my life, which had been taken over by an adorable but demanding little bundle.’ Tracy Stern, a Philadelphia- and New York-based tea entrepreneur followed a gruelling workout schedule that included several yoga classes, two aerial gymnastics lessons, and boxing and Pilates classes — all in one week. She says that she felt under pressure from friends to strive for an unnatural ideal of perfection. ‘I was under the influence,’ she remembers, adding that after one exceptionally strenuous period ‘I couldn’t even brush my hair after.’

 

So what motivates people to exercise to extremes? Sheenah Hankin, a psychotherapist in Manhattan, argues, ‘It’s fear. They think, If I don’t exercise, I am going to gain weight, lose my muscle tone. It’s emotional, not rational. It’s a terrible trap.’ Loren Bassett, whose namesake boot camp is taught in 100- to 105-degree temperatures, echoes, ‘It’s about control…The main thing is looking at the mind-set of the person. If you’re feeling anxious when you can’t exercise, that’s a sign you’ve crossed the line between healthy and compulsive.’ This was the case with Cassidy Vineyard, a Brooklyn-based production coordinator for a fashion company, who trained twice a day, swimming in the morning and riding her bike or going for a long run after work. ‘I missed my former roommate’s bridal shower,’ she admits regretfully. ‘That definitely burned a bridge.’

 

The truth is, even if dedicating your time and energy to fitness does give you the body results you want, you may be putting other aspects of your wellness at risk. For Stephanie Hirsch, a Manhattan-based artist who used to Spin five times a week at SoulCycle, some results of the gruelling sessions were ultimately positive. She recalls, ‘It lowered my stress and increased my energy level. I also noticed it in my stomach and arms.’ That said, once Hirsch lots 10 pounds, she scaled back her routine to three or four times a week. She comments, ‘I do feel guilty. I see a difference in my body, which I don’t love, but my kids are my top priority, work is second, and things like Spinning sometimes have to fall by the wayside.’

Categories: boot camp, classes, control, exercise, Extreme Exercising, fitness, nbsp, Obsession, pilates classes, week

Experts Debate Whether Spinning Classes Cause Weight Gain

If you’ve ever mentioned to a friend that you wanted to lose weight, the chances are that they’ve tried to drag you along to a spin class. Maybe you’re even one of those fitness fanatics that are addicted to the act of indoor cycling, booking back-to-back classes to get your weekly fix (yes, people can – and do – do that). While it’s hard to get yourself motivated for such a vigorous workout, you can see why people do it; it gets results. Spin classes help you to torch calories, shredding about 400 to 600 in the space of 45 minutes. But, if indoor-cycling is so beneficial to your wellbeing, why are some spinsters cutting down, or cutting it out completely?

 

The first thing to remember with spin classes is that their effectiveness depend on the kind of body you already have; pear shapes may find that indoor-cycling doesn’t give you the body you want. According to celebrity trainer David Kirsch, ‘If you have a predisposition to bulking in your lower half, Spinning can make your butt and quads bigger.’ Rebecca Battista, an associate professor of exercise science at Appalachian State University, adds, ‘Those are the muscles you’re using. Some cyclists get really big thighs.’

 

If you’re thinking that the recent trend of aqua cycling, in which you bike in the pool, can minimise that thigh-impact, think again. James Pivarnik, a professor of kinesiology at Michigan State University, comments it’s too soon to tell.  However, that’s not to say that these wellness experts are anti-spinning. Still, Kirsch rations his clients’ classes, letting an apple-shaped woman with skinny legs, for example, go once a week, but forbidding fashion models to ride at all. Michael Ciardulli Jr., the bodyworker of choice for New York’s A-listers, is another expert who warns clients against indoor-cycling, as he notes that ‘To be lean, you need to lengthen the musculature; cycling can shorten it.’

 

It’s not just the experts that are concerned about the impacts of indoor-cycling, but the spinning enthusiasts themselves. Take Sarah (not her real name), a 30-year-old publicist who used to love running until she fell head over heels for indoor cycling. However, this budding romance quickly fell flat when Sarah realised that, after a few months, ‘my butt felt and looked padded and my legs felt heavy.’ Sarah had to give up spinning classes and all kinds of exercise for a month in order to let her muscles atrophy. Now, she has taken up yoga and enthuses, ‘My lean, shapely runner’s legs are back.’

 

Then you have Holly (again, not her real name), a 49-year-old who was even an indoor-cycling instructor, loving the exercise so much that she taught eight classes a week. Yet Holly had to give up on her teaching schedule when she noticed that her jeans were getting ‘really tight, uncomfortable in the butt and thighs.’ In Holly’s case, dropping cycling and picking up barre classes and running resulted in a weight loss of 10 pounds, but not everyone agrees that spinning classes are to blame for the bottom-half bulge.

 

Jennifer Sage, founder of the Indoor Cycling Association, is, as you might expect, still extolling the benefits of spin classes. While Sage allows that results like Sarah’s and Holly’s aren’t exactly surprising, she is adamant that these are two cases in a whole wealth of other, more positive stories. ‘Very few people will get larger legs,’ from cycling, says Sage, adding that, if they do, ‘they could probably stand to lose a little bit of the body fat on top.’ Ouch. Pivarnik is less harsh in his explanation: ‘Not everybody responds to the same exercise stimuli the same way.’ So, I guess you have to just try it for yourself, and see if indoor-cycling works for you.

Categories: classes, Cycling, Indoor, Indoor-Cycling, nbsp, spin classes, Spinning, Spinning Classes, state university, weight gain

How to Have a Fun Workout That Burns Calories

Getting on top of your fitness levels is one of the best things that you can do if you want to lose weight. There are so many benefits that exercise brings to your wellness and wellbeing, so stop putting it off and find a way to integrate it in your life, starting from today.

 

Fitness shouldn’t be about drudgery and it shouldn’t feel like a chore. Staying fit should mean engaging in activities that you actively enjoy and look forward to. You shouldn’t feel that you are giving up something, you should feel like you are actually gaining something.

 

There are numerous ways to lose weight that don’t involve total boredom and frustration. You don’t have to go to a gym, even, if that is not your scene.

 

Local recreation associations are a great place to start; gather together your friends, neighbours and acquaintances and get yourself down to a local recreation ground to start up (or join) a recreational sports team. There are great basketball and softball leagues happening in recreation programs, but you can also find old playground favourites like dodge ball and kick ball. You could even visit the World Adult Kickball association website to find teams in your local area. You will have fun and get fit, whilst enjoying the camaraderie of playing on a team with other like-minded people.

 

Hybrid classes are often popular for those who seek fun and fitness too. Classes such as Zumba have soared in popularity since TV dancing shows. In a Zumba class, you attend what is basically a Latin dance party, and you do a full on and very sweaty workout whilst dancing to some amazing tunes. There are also other popular classes such as pole dancing classes, hula hoop classes and various different kinds of boxing.

Categories: classes, Dancing, feel, fitness, Fun, local recreation, Lose weight, nbsp, shouldn, Workout

Dancing to Better Fitness: Are You Hip Hop or Contemporary?

Christina Lin Elliot’s job requires her to don two pairs of shoes throughout the day; a pair of trainers to take her class through a hip hop routine, and something a little less bulky to demonstrate a section of the evening’s contemporary dance class. The petite dance instructor at Shani Active explains that the smaller shoes make it easier for her to make the turns required for contemporary dance, to which she is no stranger.

 

Christina has performed as a dancer in California and New York, before relocating to Kenya six months ago to start up contemporary and hip hop classes at the gym. According to Christina, ‘It is all about sharing my love of dance with people here and also showing people to exercise and keep fit.’ As a fitness regime, dance is gaining popularity at an alarming rate. Not only does it help to improve your wellbeing, but Christina notes dance is diverse and offers a different routine week in week out.

 

‘It’s not just the same routine each time,’ she says. ‘Usually, in a class you go through some warm up and strengthening and then we learn a routine. You will learn the steps and the choreography to music. It changes every couple of weeks.’ Plus it’s not just the variety that does wonders for your wellness, it’s also the stress-relieving benefits that have clients coming back for more. ‘People come here at the end of the day and feel that was really the release they needed for stress,’ Christina says.

 

So why do certain people gravitate towards her hip hop classes, while others favour contemporary? Christina comments that hip hop appeals to people because the fact that they hear it daily means that they can relate to it, and the routines do not require a technical background – making it easier to pick up. Contemporary dance, on the other hand, is a more technical dance, with Christina describing it as ballet movement to modern music. The style may appeal as you carry out the steps with more poise and emotion, and you perform more intricate jumps and turns.

 

So which is Christina’s favourite? She says her preference is contemporary as ‘it is a little more emotional and expressive’ but is the technical side too challenging for her hip hop clients? Not at all, says Christina, who notes, ‘Last week I had a woman who came for my contemporary class. She is in my hip hop class but has never done contemporary before. It is a little tricky in the beginning because you are using different movements and muscles but now she is doing really great. The more you do it, the more familiar its gets.’

Categories: classes, Contemporary Dance, Hip Hop