April 2020 Non-Functional Overreaching vs Overtraining Syndrome Athletes who train and compete hard and long can work themselves to ‘death’, to where they actually stop improving and may start backsliding. Non-functional overreaching (NFO) is considered a short-term reduction in work capacity (reduced strength, power, speed, endurance) lasting a few weeks or months. Overtraining syndromeRead More
functional fitness
REAL News – March 2020
March 2020 Multi-Dimensional Balance Training Beats Strength Alone Preventing falls among older adults is a health-care crisis of economic, quality of life (QoL) and morbidity dimensions. With nearly 60% of those over 65 reporting limited mobility and the high rates of falling in this group, exercise researchers are attempting to discern what type ofRead More
Fit Happens – Winter 2019
Winter – or 30th Anniversary – 2019 Pillar 1: The Winter of Our Discontent In the summer of 1986, my colleague, Kathy Alexander, and I wondered what we would do once we finished our dissertations in exercise science at Vandy. At the time, there were very few options in that field: academia, hospital-based wellness andRead 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
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
REAL News – January 2019
January 2019 Within-Session Muscle Confusion Helps Older Adults Muscle confusion – the concept of doing pretty high intensity exercises in rapid sequence varying body parts and muscle groups – is a 21st century marketing pitch. Periodization – the idea that a training program should be divided into various elements on daily, weekly or monthly basisRead More
Free Holiday Season Advice, for what it’s worth
Here come those nasty holidays advice columns, again. Halloween ends, and the decorations for Thanksgiving come out in stores and homes. Everyone knows that that portends – Christmas decorations, gift shopping and those ubiquitous and invasive, and exhausting, parties are right around the corner. Every newspaper, magazine and TV news or talk show will beRead More
REAL News – November 2018
November 2018 When Hip Structure Compromises Hip Motion A more recent diagnostic of hip deformity, along with a more recent surgical procedure to manage it (thanks to the work of a Nashville orthopedist), has helped explain a lot of athletes’, and even non-athletes’, groin pain. Called femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), it is essentially a recognitionRead More