Nashville's Premier Personal Fitness Training Center
July 2021 Whole Body Vibration Boosts Muscle Blood Flow Whole body vibration (WBV) training broke into the mainstream in the late 1990s with the introduction of affordable platforms that allowed for adjusting the amount of vibration users would receive. In its early days – and STEPS Fitness was one of the early pioneers here inRead More
June 2021 Carbs + Protein vs Carbs for Recovery Carbohydrates – sugars, starches, fruits, veggies – provide the fuel muscles and other organs (heart, brain) need to function. In the body, the carbs you eat convert to glycogen which is stored in muscles and the liver for when it’s needed. Exercise uses carbs, and prolongedRead More
May 2021 Revisiting Sitting: Does Your Cardio Fitness Protect You? Sedentary living defines modern mankind. We have reviewed some of these effects here, here, here and here. And we now know that too much sitting kills by contributing to peripheral artery disease by impairing endothelial function (EF), that is, how our blood vessels respond toRead More
April 2021 Why Exercise Doesn’t Burn Calories as Expected: Compensation We all grew up hearing a mile walk or jog burns 100 calories; that you have to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound of fat; that you can’t exercise weight off…WHAT? Yes, it’s much easier to eat 100 calories than it is to runRead More
March 2021 Does Higher Protein Intake Boost Strength in Older Women? For several years now, studies have shown that increased protein intake helps older people slow the rate of age-related muscle mass loss (sarcopenia.) This was true even as participants were dieting to lose weight. Resistance training (RT), a recognized stimulator of muscle strengthRead More
January 2021 Flexed-Hip Lunge vs Traditional Lunge: Function vs Tradition The lunge is a regular lower body exercise in almost every group exercise class and many lower body pre- and re-hab program. It is considered one of the more functional exercises in that, unlike the basic squat, it positions the body in a gait-likeRead More
December 2020 What Makes Old Folks So Tight: Muscle-Tendon or Nerves We all lose flexibility as we age and we all need it every bit as much as we age. We have addressed some of these issues here, here, here and here. There are basically 4 sources of restrictions on range of motion (ROM):Read More
November 2020 Is There a Gender Difference in How Runners Use Glycogen Intuitively, it would be difficult to posit that male and female runners use glycogen differently at similar intensities in different environments and in similar muscles. Glycogen is stored sugar in the muscle (and liver) that is readily available for energy production. AndRead More
October 2020 Progression & Running Injuries: Volume vs Intensity Running injuries are a bane to both the athletes and the healthcare system. Not only do the interfere with the joys and thrills of running recreationally and competitively, they contribute to emotional downers and economic consequences. One issue that has been questioned is, do increasesRead More
September 2020 Single- vs Multi-Joint Exercise: Order Matters In resistance training, exercises are divided into single-joint (SJ) and multi-joint movements (MJ). SJ are where only one joint moves, like the elbow during a curl, while MJ are those where 2 or more joints move, like a chin up. Both use the biceps but theRead More
