I wish DIY was applicable in all aspects of life. As a client told me the other day, when confronted by a minor repair of his toilet a few years back, he considered DIY. His son, a wise young man, suggested that, buying a $1 item to do the repair in order to avoid aRead More
functional fitness
REAL News August 2018
August 2018 Resistance Training, Blood Pressure & Sleep High blood pressure (HBP) is one of the most prevalent cardiovascular diseases in the US with estimates of 25% of Americans having it. HBP has recently been defined as a systolic (top) number above 130 mmHg and a diastolic (bottom) number above 90. Ideal is 120/80 orRead More
REAL News June 2018
June 2018 All You Ever Wanted to Know About Planks but Were Afraid to Ask A brief history of spine pain and therapy takes us through the 1950s when the abdominal curl/crunch was highly recommended by Drs. Kraus and Williams to help those with mechanical low back pain. Then in the 1970s, McKenzie came upRead More
REAL News March 2018
March 2018 Potty Talk: FODMAPs & Athletic GI Distress Gastrointestinal distress is relatively common in endurance athletes: 30% – 50% report it. As blood is shunted from the gut to the working muscles during intense training, “acute enterocyte injury, increased intestinal permeability and altered motility” can cause bloating, diarrhea, pain and flatulence. So canRead More
REAL News August 2017
August 2017 Intelligent Training for Painful Muscles Believe it or not, scientists are still not sure what exactly causes musculoskeletal pain (MSP) from chronic use, overuse or abuse. A couple of Danish researchers propose a model that attempts to explain the source of such pains as are typically seen inRead More
REAL News July 2017
July 2017 Old Feet and ACL Repairs Affect Balance Similarly What do the feet of older folks and those of athletes with torn anterior cruciate (ACL) have in common? The answer may solve health and sports science matters more than you’d imagine. Much of sports science deals with the musculoskeletal system but new infoRead More
Fit Happens Summer 2017
Summer 2017 Training Tenets Take Back Seat to Neurological Aging Every so often, a brilliant concept crops up in the exercise field that makes such intuitive sense we trainers just want to slap ourselves with glee. Thus, over the past 20 years or so, balance and agility training for the aging population has offered theRead More
ACSM Annual Meeting Brings Nerves to the Forefront
The week of Memorial Day brings not just slow business but also the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (www.acsm.org). This year’s event was in Denver, one of my personal and professional favorite cities. Besides generally pleasant – at least low humidity – weather and lots of sunshine, the mountain scenery isRead More
Trying to Remember: The Tip of the Tongue Syndrome of the Aging Adult
Brain Games May Not Be as Efficient as Exercise We’ve all experienced it – starting a sentence, seeing a face, walking into a room, writing a blog…and then forgetting what we were going to say, what is the name, why did we go there, what to write. Aging is not all about forgetting but there’sRead More
Real News September 2016
September 2016 Injury Prevention Through Proprioception Toss around multi-syllabic words and people think you’re smart. Toss around a small ball while standing on one leg and holding a conversation and people think, well, I’m not sure what they think. But a new study shows it may help your body not think about what each jointRead More