Let me state from the get-go that I am not a biochemistry guru or even a registered dietician, so any comments below regarding the safety of artificial sweeteners (AS) such as saccharin, aspartame, sucralose or their ilk comes from an angle few in my profession are willing to take. Based on a hearty defense ofRead More
Fitness Blog
An Alphabet Soup for Shoulder Health
I love reading about shoulders and working with them mainly because they’re so complex. It’s not that I really understand it all, but having attended many lectures and a few specific conferences on shoulders, I retain a fascination that probably exceeds that of most personal trainers. My ‘mentor’ on shoulders is Dr Ben Kibler ofRead More
Balanced Training: For Young and for Old
A recent article in the American Council of Exercise (ACE) on-line newsletter provides a nice synopsis of the value and merits, and techniques, of balance training as a component of overall fitness. I want to address this very current and super-crucial elements of training as I do it here at STEPS Fitness. And sometimes youRead More
Wrist a Little, But Not Too Long
An internet colleague – someone I met on line via LinkedIn who is a fantastic blogger and an occupational therapist – sent me this blog she’d written on wrist pain. It is well worth sharing here. I don’t have as much knowledge about this critical joint as I should but this article fills in soRead More
Is it Calorie-Restriction, Calorie-Reduction…or Weight Loss?
So here’s a title of an article bound to catch your attention, in Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter: “Calorie Restriction May Promote Cognitive Function.” For those of us in our middle, or higher, years (Disclaimer: I’m now 66, and feel in my middle years though most studies would put in me in the elder category),Read More
Fatigue: Not Quite a 3-Way Street
Often times I find myself deflecting clients’ concerns about fatigue during an exercise session, or while they were involved in an activity outside the gym. Barring sleep-related matters that could impact how the body performs any particular activity session. If sleep is not the issue, then, then what is? The way I explain it isRead More
Barefoot Running, Minimalist Shoes – Revisited
I have written many times such as here, here, here, here and here on this topic inspired by different articles and studies, so why not revisit the topic one more time, maybe one last time. So this article from 2010 raises hope that maybe we can summarize the information and move on to the nextRead More
Core Exercise, Part 2: Training the Abs to Do Their Job
In a previous blog, Core Exercise, Part 1: Fad, Fashion or Fundamental?, I proposed that core exercise is not just about training the abs since the core is a more integrated, comprehensive functional unit that simply includes the abs as one element. In Part 2, I want to stress how the abs actually function – notRead More
The Sounds of Obesity
I remember the fad of the record album of my college days that gave potheads- of which I was NOT one (really, ask anyone on my freshman floor) – a mellow thrill: recordings of the humpback whales. Stoned, they’d express youthful ‘wows’ as if the combination of science and THC took them to another level.Read More
Core Exercise, Part 1: Fad, Fashion or Fundamental?
What’s all the fuss about “core”? Too many articles in the lay literature address core as if somehow it’s a brand new thing in fitness. Yet, those articles fail to appreciate the full measure of what core exercise is all about. In fact, they tend to further the image of core by emphasizing the abdominals,Read More