Warrior Fit Boot Camp Fitness Fun!

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

I recently read that the TSA is increasingly cracking down on travelers’ snack foods, ordering additional inspections of, like, suspicious-looking goldfish crackers or requesting that we place our KIND bars in the plastic bins beside our shoes, belts, and oversized bracelets. I snarled at that article the day before I flew to Europe, so part of my packing process included a few minutes of unpacking, as I shook all of the snacks out of my usual carry-on bag.

READ MORE »

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that kids aren’t getting enough physical activity.

Inadequate amounts of physical activity are a strong risk factor for obesity and metabolic dysfunction in kids.  It’s most likely causal, too, because as much as people question the usefulness of only exercising to lose weight, there’s no question that exercise and physical activity in general is important for preventing obesity from occurring. 

Kids are getting so obese that a new RCT came out showing metformin can help them lose weight and normalize metabolic biomarkers.

It’s not just that inadequate physical activity is destroying the physical vitality, body weight, and metabolic health of children. It’s also ruining their movement skills and general athleticism. I don’t work with kids directly, but I have many friends who do. And all of them, from gymnastics coaches to running coaches to basketball/base/football coaches report that the athleticism of the beginners has degraded over the years. Fewer kids are coming into practice for the first time with that raw movement ability. They’re clumsier, clunkier, and more confused than ever before.

Childhood is a big window, but it’s a crucial one. All that time spent throwing a ball—or sitting on the couch manipulating an Xbox controller so that the character onscreen throws a ball—establishes neural pathways. Do you want those pathways to enable efficient, competent throwing (a skill that may have required our big brains and allowed humans to conquer the world), or do you want those pathways to enable skillful button and joystick maneuvering?

The good news is that kids love to move. Even the ones who don’t look it. Go down to a park, the beach, or walk through the city square on a hot day when the fountains are flowing and kids of all shapes and sizes will be moving frequently at slow, moderate, and fast paces. They’re playing tag. They’re roughhousing. They’re jumping from ledges twice their height. They’re all over the place.

And that’s how it works: Get even the most screen-obsessed kid in a fun, physical environment with plenty of opportunities for movement and he or she will move. The innate desire for physicality and play exists in all children.

Overweight kids aren’t too far gone either, and exercise can work wonders. According to a 2015 meta-analysis, there’s “moderate” evidence that exercise by itself is an effective way to reduce bodyweight in overweight and obese children. Another study concluded that strength training and aerobic exercise are more effective at lowering children’s BMI than either alone. I imagine you could optimize a kid’s training regimen even further and get even better results.

How Much Exercise Do Kids Need?

Ethnographic studies have found that, by and large, kids in hunter-gatherer groups play all day long with little to no supervision (PDF). They don’t have scooters and Laser Tag, or barbells and kettlebells, but they also don’t have smartphones and televisions. For these kids, play is movement and movement is play. There’s no other way. Of course, contemporary hunter-gatherer groups are a very rough approximation of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The former have been pushed onto marginalized land by better-armed and more numerous city folk; the latter ranged across an untouched world teeming with large game. Even still, they’re the best model we have for ancestral childhood physical activity.

But we don’t even have to go back to the paleolithic to illustrate the amount of physical activity the average kid should be getting. Just talk to an elderly neighbor. Talk to an older colleague. Or heck, search within your own memory bank. What were summers like as a kid for you? I for one was out all day long if school was out, exploring the neighborhood, roaming the woods, getting into trouble. And I rarely stopped moving.

Anecdotes and personal memories not enough? The data tells the same story. The parents of today’s children got over 8 hours a week of outdoor play (which is still too little). Today’s children get under four. That trend is likely to continue as you go back in time, with outdoor play doubling in frequency and lack of supervision with each previous generation.

These are averages, of course. Some kids get quite a lot. Others don’t.

Kids in Denmark aged 6-12 average 90 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day. It’s highest in the six-year-olds and declines by 3.5 minutes each year.

Elementary school kids in Qatar average around 28 minutes of MVPA per day, with a large discrepancy along gender lines. By age 9, for example, boys are getting over 40 minutes a day and girls are getting just 23 minutes.

Even the Danes aren’t doing enough, in my book.

Kids should be moving all day. I won’t mince words. Look, my kids probably could have moved more, and I knew about this stuff. It’s hard. I get it. But that doesn’t negate that the ideal situation is for kids to be constantly moving. After all, kids have fatigue-resistant muscles akin to elite athletes’. That’s why they can run all day without getting tired, and that’s a fairly strong indicator they’re meant to move all day.

That’s not in the cards, though, so what should kids aim for?

To stave off overweight/obesity, 60 minutes of MVPA (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity) with at least 15 minutes of genuinely vigorous physical activity each day is the absolute minimum. That’s not optimal. That’s barebones.

Kids should be:

• Swimming
• Running (sprinting rather than jogging)
• Squatting (the movement pattern more than heavy weight)
• Lifting/hip hingeing
• Climbing
• Throwing
• Supporting their own bodyweight
• Jumping
• Landing
• Balancing
• Playing, ideally using all the skills and movements I just mentioned

Ideas To Get Kids Moving

What are some ideas? How can we get kids to get enough exercise while having fun and developing skill? Many need a little nudge. There are innumerable ways to unlock what’s already inside. I’ll throw out 30 of them right here.

1. Walk to School. If you can make it work, walking to and from school will contribute a good amount of MVPA to a kid’s life. Extra points for getting into trouble on the way.
2. Swim underwater as far as you can.
3. Dive for Objects. Give kids a goal, make it a game. Throw a handful of quarters into the pool; see if they can get them all in with one breath. Toss a kettlebell into the deep end and have them bring it back up.
4. Biggest Splash Contest. Who can make the biggest splash into the pool? Encourage different dives, cannonballs, jackknives, and other jumps.
5. Water Polo. An excellent training stimulus. One of the hardest sports around.
6. Lift Weights. Real ones. In Germany, 11-year-old soccer players and 12-year-old Olympic weightlifters are safely front squatting their bodyweight.
7. Race the Dog (with a Head Start). Tell your kid to make a break for it, hold your dog for a few seconds, then release.
8. Play Catch. Great way to practice throwing and catching, the latter of which is particularly tricky (and useful to learn).
9. Barefoot Hike. Your kid will thank you when she’s all grown up and thinks nothing of walking across gravel.
10. Creek Walk. Jump from rock to rock, climb over logs, balance on fallen trees, take a little dip.
11. Check Out the local rec center schedule. You’d be surprised at the quality of some of these classes. Gymnastics, dance, martial arts are all good options for building good movement skills.
12. Get a pullup bar in the house. Place it at a level your kid can reach. Start with hanging, swinging, and various holds, but work your way up to pullups. Give incentives (“do 5 pullups and I’ll give you $20”).
13. Get the dog they’ve always wanted, with the stipulation being they have to walk it and play with it.
14. Set up an obstacle course. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just give them things to climb under/over, crawl under/through/, leap over.
15. Hill Sprints. If you want a killer workout, sling that kid over your shoulder in between his sprints and run some of your own.
16. Gymnastics. Great foundation for movement later in life. Just stop short of elite competition unless it’s something they really want to commit to.
17. Have them race. If you catch kids at the right age, they love races without being attached to the outcome. They’ll just let it rip and go all out, all smiles. Winner and loser both have fun.
18. Roughhouse. Roughhousing is a lost art that helps kids establish boundaries and limits, learn what hurts and what doesn’t, grasp when something is “too rough.” Plus, it’s fun.
19. Try Parkour. Parkour isn’t something a seven year old just leaps into (go to a parkour gym for formal instruction),but they can certainly start playing around on manmade structures. Visit a business park for good climbing and play.
20. Animal Impersonations. Crawl like a bear. Hop like a rabbit. Leap like a frog. Slither like a snake. Walk like a duck. These are very difficult modes of transportation that make for great exercise. To keep things fresh and playful, come up with other animals to emulate.
21. Play Fetch. Throw the ball, they go chase it and bring it back. Same concept as running your dog.
22. Reverse Box Jumps. That cool Persian tot aside, it makes more sense for small children to practice jumping down from tall objects than trying to jump up them. Besides, landing is where the danger lies later.
23. Trampoline. Studies indicate they’re responsible for a large number of emergency visits, but a properly set-up trampoline enclosed by a protective net can be a great place to learn how to jump with good form. And again, fun.
24. Keep a scooter/bike/skateboard around. Kids love zooming around on wheels.
25. Chore Duty. Give them a standing order to help with bags/groceries/trash. There’s always something they can carry, and every little bit helps make them stronger and more resilient.
26. Kettlebell Challenge. Keep a kettlebell in the living room and have him or her lift it every day. Marvel at the perfect deadlift form.
27. Build forts, then destroy them.
28. Try conventional sports. Although specialization isn’t advised at such an early age (it can actually increase the risk of overuse injuries and inhibit the athletic growth of children), sports are fun and do offer a great path to overall athletic development.
29. Build up to a mile run. Start by walking it. Throw in some quick sprints in the middle. Then a full on mile run. Then unleash the offer: “I’ll give you [x] if you can run a mile in [x-amount of time].”
30. Set a good example. If you fail to embrace physical culture while demanding your child do the opposite, that’s a strong nudge in the wrong direction. Make sure you’re moving, too.

That’s it for today, folks. I’d love to hear from you.

What kinds of games, sports, and other activities do you use to increase your children’s physical activity and help them develop a positive relationship with exercise? What’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s the most unconventional activity you’ve had success with?

Take care all.

The post How Much Exercise Do Kids Need? Plus, 30 Activities to Get Them Moving appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

Welcome to Kitchn’s series A Week of Dinners, where we show you how our favorite cooks put dinner on the table.

Alison Roman is the creator of a chocolate chip cookie that sent Instagram into wild fervor last fall — a recipe with enough panache to show off, but so easy it gives Tollhouse cut-and-bakes some competition. “They’re really, really good and they’re simple. They’re not crazy. There’s nothing polarizing about them,” Roman says about their virality.

The truth is that the cookies were not a happy accident. Roman has been a professional cook for 13 years now, and the thought and attention she puts into her work is substantial. “I want to help people feel empowered in the kitchen,” she explains. “It brings me a lot of joy.”

As a former Senior Food Editor at Bon Appétit (turned contributor) and new columnist for the New York Times, Roman is a force in the food world. She came out with her first cookbook, Dining In, last fall, and her second one is well under way. Somewhere between working on all of her various side projects and checking Instagram messages, she manages to make dinner for herself and her friends — usually unplanned, and sometimes involving popcorn and nutritional yeast.

I got to visit Roman in her new Brooklyn apartment, where we talked meal planning (or her lack thereof), the pantry ingredients she always has on hand for easy dinners, and the things she makes consistently for dinner (you guys, her steak salad recipe is so damn good).

READ MORE »

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

I’m one of those people who is constantly searching for keys, headphones, electricity bills … you name it. The door to my apartment opens up into the kitchen, so the counter closest to the doorway had become a dumping ground for odds and ends. Because it’s a small kitchen, though, any kind of clutter makes the whole room look messy. For a while, I had some hooks set up by the doorway, which were handy for my keys, but not much else.

During a recent Target run, I couldn’t stop myself from browsing their home decor section — even though I didn’t really need anything for my apartment. But I saw something from Target’s Project 62 collection, which I’m obsessed with, and a lightbulb went off in my head.

READ MORE »

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

Never in my adult life have I had a garbage disposal. And believe me, every time I scoop those little food bits out of the sink stopper/strainer after washing the dishes, I wish I did. Because this chore is disgusting. Of course, I know there is a better way: I have fond memories from my childhood of just rinsing my plate into the sink and grinding those scraps away.

Recently I heard someone suggest tossing food scraps into the toilet. Huh. I can see it making sense: We flush human waste out of our homes through our plumbing, so shouldn’t our toilets be able to accommodate dinner waste as well? It seemed bizarre and yet totally logical, so I called Paul Abrams, public relations director at national plumbing specialists Roto Rooter, to learn more.

READ MORE »

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

Turmeric is the golden darling of good health. This brilliant orange-fleshed root (in the same family as ginger) is beloved for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, not to mention the colorful hue it lends to food. Most cooks are familiar with the dried orange-yellow powder found in the spice aisle, which lends a bitter pungency to foods across India and the Caribbean. It’s the main ingredient in curry powder, and what gives bright-yellow mustard the color we all know and love.

READ MORE »

https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/

As research continues to support regular exercise in low risk, healthy pregnancies, the number of pregnant women engaging in moderate intensity exercise remains below recommended levels for health benefits.

Current guidelines recommend that healthy pregnant and postpartum women, perform at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (i.e., equivalent to brisk walking) [1]. However, statistics show more than 50 percent of pregnant women do not achieve this due to multiple barriers to exercise such as lack of time, child care issues, as well as life and work commitments [2-4].

With this problem in mind, I teamed up with fellow researchers at The University of Western Australia’s School of Human Science to conduct a small pilot study in an attempt to find out whether continuous or interval typed aerobic training provided greater exercise enjoyment in pregnant women.

Why Exercise Enjoyment?

You might be wondering why we chose to look at enjoyment. Research suggests that exercise enjoyment is a major predictor of attendance and adherence to exercise [5], and we all know the importance of encouraging consistency in exercise, whether during pregnancy or not.

Since interval training is known to provide superior health benefits, and enhance exercise enjoyment and adherence compared with moderate intensity continuous exercise in a non-pregnant population [6-9], we were intrigued to find out if interval exercise had a similar effect in the pregnant population. This was of importance: if interval training was not well tolerated and enjoyed by pregnant women, it would be pointless to prescribe interval training to pregnant women and put them off exercise totally.

Stationary cycling was chosen as the mode of exercise as it is a recommended for pregnant women without obstetric complications [10]. This mode of exercise facilitates a higher self-paced intensity as it supports the increasing body mass of pregnant women. This  allowed women to expend more energy in the same amount of time compared to walking and thus a greater reduction in postprandial (post-meal) glucose concentration, which may have an implication to women with gestational diabetes [11].

Furthermore, a program of regular home-based stationary cycling also appears to have favorable effects on maternal fitness and glucose tolerance in previously inactive obese pregnant women [12]. Cycling on the stationary bike also encouraged adherence to the cycling training program as it can be performed indoors and not subjected to weather. Comparing the cost of exercise equipment, a stationary bike is also more affordable than most treadmills.

The Study

In our study published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth [13], twelve healthy pregnant women in their third trimesters visited the laboratory on two occasions within a two-week period and were scheduled at least two days apart to minimize any effects from the previous session. In a counterbalanced order, these women performed either:

• 30 minutes of continuous cycling exercise at an intensity of 65 percent of their age-predicted maximum heart rate, or
• An equivalent period of interval cycling consisting of continuous cycling at the same power output as continuous cycling, with the addition of six 15-second self-paced higher intensity efforts throughout, performed at regular intervals.

We measured the relevant physiological parameters (i.e., power output, oxygen consumption, heart rate and rate of perceived exertion) as well as assessed exercise enjoyment using the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES) immediately following each trial [14]. The women were also ask to provided written responses to the questions such as:

• Did you prefer the continuous cycling session or the interval cycling session? Why?
• If you had to perform a cycling program for three months during pregnancy, would you choose continuous cycling or interval cycling? Why?

Interesting Findings

Mean cycling power output, heart rate, oxygen consumption and energy expenditure were higher during interval cycling compared with continuous cycling, but there was no difference in mean rate of perceived exertion between the two. This is surprising and exciting at the same time because:

• The mere addition of six 15-second (90 seconds in total) higher-intensity intervals to continuous moderate intensity exercise had effectively increased energy expenditure by 28 percent. In other words, women in the study worked hard during the interval cycling but found the overall rate of perceived exertion to be similar to continuous cycling.
• This potentially means that there is a possibility of creating exercise programs for pregnant women that maximises energy expenditure for a given time without making them feel like they are exerting more.
• Enjoyment of exercise was also higher with interval cycling compared to continuous cycling even though they expended more energy during interval cycling.

From the written responses provided by the participants, all women preferred the interval cycling over continuous cycling, citing it was “interesting,” “challenging,” provided a “better workout” and made time “go faster” because the exercise was “broken up” as the reasons of preference. One woman had “expected to prefer the continuous cycling” but found that interval cycling gave her a “sense of accomplishment and better understanding of her exercise capacity.”

When asked which type of exercise women would prefer if it was a three-month, thrice weekly cycling program, the majority preferred an interval cycling or mixture of both training types. A mixture of continuous and interval cycling may be ideal given that no two days are the same for a pregnant woman in terms of the physically symptoms she experiences daily.

This was a very promising finding for us, to see that interval cycling not only was allowing pregnant women in the third trimester to expend more energy without compromising and instead elevating enjoyment of exercise in the twelve participating women.

Important Note When Interpreting Research Findings

When we interpret research findings, it is imperative to be aware of each research studies’ limitations. Of note, the findings in this featured study are specific to recreationally active women, and do not make it a blanket clinical recommendation for all pregnant women.  While the outcome of this study prompts for more research more larger group of pregnant women, it is definitely not the end of this story.

But the implications of this small study do suggest the potential of using interval exercise, with caution, to promote exercise enjoyment in a group of women who may not have time or enjoy exercise.

Coaches’ Corner

When we are working with unconditioned and previously sedentary pregnant women, it might not be ideal to just put them on a program of continuous vigorous intensity as this level of exercise intensity would require more regular prenatal monitoring for maternal and fetal well-being [15]. However, the use of interval bouts of self-paced effort could be a way to incorporate some vigorous intensity into their exercise program as it allows for a higher intensity training stimulus with partial recovery between efforts, keeping the overall intensity of an exercise session within safe limits.

The addition of brief higher intensity intervals to continuous exercise at moderate intensity can also be an opportunity to safely optimize health and fitness benefits for pregnant women by increasing the energy expenditure of an exercise session, at the same time as maximising enjoyment.

Remember that it is highly advisable to work closely with your pregnant client’s obstetrician if you decided to utilize some interval cycling in her training and the extent of higher intensity should always be determined by the pregnant women and not the trainer.

As exercise professionals who work with pregnant women, the most important lesson to teach other clients is how to listen to their bodies and take their training to where their bodies and pregnancies want to go. Our physiology is very clever at sending us messages to reduce intensity or stop exercise during pregnancy. We just need educate our clients on how to pick up those messages.

References

1. Physical activity and exercise during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Committee Opinion No. 650. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Obstet Gynecol 2015;126:e135–42
2. de Jersey, S. J., Nicholson, J. M., Callaway, L. K., & Daniels, L. A. (2013). An observational study of nutrition and physical activity behaviours, knowledge, and advice in pregnancy. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 13(1), 115.
3. Evenson, K. R., & Wen, F. (2010). National trends in self-reported physical activity and sedentary behaviors among pregnant women: NHANES 1999–2006. Preventive Medicine, 50(3), 123-128.
4. Evenson, K. R., Moos, M. K., Carrier, K., & Siega-Riz, A. M. (2009). Perceived barriers to physical activity among pregnant women. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 13(3), 364-375.
5. Ryan, R., Frederick, C., Lepes, D., Rubio, N., & Sheldon, K. (1997). Intrinsic motivation and exercise adherence. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 28(4), 335-354.
6. Helgerud, J., Hoydal, K., Wang, E., Karlsen, T., Berg, P., Bjerkaas, M., . . . Bach, R. (2007). Aerobic high-intensity intervals improve VO_2max more than moderate training. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 39(4), 665.
7. Little, J. P., Gillen, J. B., Percival, M. E., Safdar, A., Tarnopolsky, M. A., Punthakee, Z., . . . Gibala, M. J. (2011). Low-volume high-intensity interval training reduces hyperglycemia and increases muscle mitochondrial capacity in patients with type 2 diabetes. Journal of Applied Physiology, 111(6), 1554-1560.
8. Wisløff, U., Støylen, A., Loennechen, J. P., Bruvold, M., Rognmo, Ø., Haram, P. M., . . . Lee, S. J. (2007). Superior cardiovascular effect of aerobic interval training versus moderate continuous training in heart failure patients a randomized study. Circulation, 115(24), 3086-3094.
9. Bartlett, J. D., Close, G. L., MacLaren, D. P., Gregson, W., Drust, B., & Morton, J. P. (2011). High-intensity interval running is perceived to be more enjoyable than moderate-intensity continuous exercise: implications for exercise adherence. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29(6), 547-553.
10. Artal, R., & O’Toole, M. (2003). Guidelines of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for exercise during pregnancy and the postpartum period. British Journal Of Sports Medicine, 37(1), 6-12.
11. Halse, R. E., Wallman, K. E., Newnham, J. P., & Guelfi, K. J. (2013). Pregnant women exercise at a higher intensity during 30min of self-paced cycling compared with walking during late gestation: implications for 2h postprandial glucose levels. Metabolism, 62(6), 801-807.
12. Ong, M., Guelfi, K., Hunter, T., Wallman, K., Fournier, P., & Newnham, J. (2009). Supervised home-based exercise may attenuate the decline of glucose tolerance in obese pregnant women. Diabetes & Metabolism, 35(5), 418-421.
13. Ong, M. J., Wallman, K. E., Fournier, P. A., Newnham, J. P., & Guelfi, K. J. (2016). Enhancing energy expenditure and enjoyment of exercise during pregnancy through the addition of brief higher intensity intervals to traditional continuous moderate intensity cycling. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 16(1), 161. https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0947-3
14. Kendzierski, D., & DeCarlo, K. J. (1991). Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale: Two validation studies. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 13(1), 50-64.
15. Penney, D. S. (2008). The effect of vigorous exercise during pregnancy. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 53(2), 155-159.

The post How Interval Training Can Increase Exercise Enjoyment During Pregnancy appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

Kitchn’s Delicious Links column highlights recipes we’re excited about from the bloggers we love. Follow along every weekday as we post our favorites.

What’s the best way to cook big-flavor dishes with minimal hands-on effort? If you’re thinking about the slow cooker (our readers’ favorite gadget), then you’re on the money.

According to the recipe author (who is in no way biased), this recipe is “one of the best chicken curries I’ve ever had!” You can either take her word for it or make it yourself to find out if she’s telling the truth. I believe her and I’m making this, so I am the real MVP.

READ MORE »

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

READ MORE »

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

read more