No matter what your goals are everyone realizes the importance of being healthy.  It is fundamental that everyone desires a flatter stomach or thinner thighs but what it necessary to make that happen comes in many varieties. 

For some getting a walk in every other day is a lofty goal.  Others feel like their day doesn’t go quite right if they don’t get a little exercise in each and every day.

Now before I give you the SINGLE most important questions you must ask yourself I must be diligent in ensuring fitness is something you can actually add to your life. 

Lets get real, you wouldn’t buy a used car without starting the engine right? 

Therefore you need to check your own oil before tying up the ol’ sneakers.  As an American Council of Exercise Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) it is my duty to offer up the following information.

A YES to any ONE of the following questions means you should talk with your doctor, by phone or in person, BEFORE you start an exercise program. Explain which questions you answered ”yes” to and the activities you are planning to pursue.

1. Have you been told you have a heart condition and should only participate in physical activity recommended by a doctor?
2. Do you feel pain (or discomfort) in your chest when you do physical activity? When you are not participating in physical activity? While at rest, do you frequently experience fast, irregular heartbeats or very slow beats?
3. Do you ever become dizzy and lose your balance, or lose consciousness? Have you fallen more than twice in the past year (no matter what the reason)?
4. Do you have a bone or joint problem that could worsen as a result of physical activity? Do you have pain in your legs or buttocks when you walk?
5. Do you take blood pressure or heart medications?
6. Do you have any cuts or wounds on your feet that don’t seem to heal?
7. Have you experienced unexplained weight loss in the past six months?
8. Are you aware of any reason why you should not participate in physical activity?

If you answered “no” to all of these questions, and you passed the first round of questions, you can be reasonably sure that you can safely take part in at least a moderate physical activity program.

But again, if you are a man over 40 or a woman over 50 and want to exercise more vigorously, you should check with your physician before getting started.

Now that we have learned what is necessary before getting started lets get to the nuts and Bolts of any successful program.  My sons tell me that if I type in all caps on the Internet, I am yelling.  So the next sentence is in all caps so you recognize the importance of this statement.  Okay?

WHAT WILL ACTUALLY GET YOU OFF THE COUCH AND GET MOVING WHEN YOU REALLY DON’T FEEL LIKE IT?

There you have it. The single most important question you need to ask.  Don’t decide to start a swimming program if you hate the pool.  If you have an knee injury then no matter how many of your friends and colleagues are doing that 5K race for a cure to Cancer, you won’t train because it will hurt and you will hate every minute of it.  

But ask yourself, “What will you do?” 

• Will you vow to walk the dog 15 minutes 2x a day?
• Maybe you will dust off the bike in the bake of the garage? 
• How about taking all the clothes off the treadmill in your office that has been collecting dust for past few months? (Years!?! OUCH)
• or maybe you need a social group so you head down to your local fitness center and join a class.

I don’t care what it is but do something you WILL do.  In the weeks and months to come I will be happy to give you ideas and programs to motivate, inspire and keep you moving.  Stay tuned.

 Sadly the general public lost one of the most respected and loved journalists on Friday when Tim Russert Passed away.   Unfortunately he died of a heart attack at age 58.

When I owned the gym in Washington DC it was not uncommon to see politicians everywhere since I worked at the White House, Department of Commerce, and Pentagon to name a few places.  Mind you it wasn’t often I ran into these people in the fitness centers but they were always running through the halls, getting in and out of town cars and rushing from meeting to meeting.

The other night I caught a segment on Larry King and he was interviewing cardiovascular experts, and heart specialists grilling them as only Larry King can about Tim Russert’s heart attack.  Tim was a diligent man and as recently as April had taken a stress test.  However this didn’t reveal any clue about the apparent heart disease.

I was glad to hear Larry King ask the specialists “How else could Tim have known he was at risk for heart disease?”The response if you didn’t see the interview may be surprising because of the simple way you too can figure it out. 

The answer …his waist circumference.

The size of your belt in relationship to your overall body is a very simply predictor of a risk of heart disease.  Now obtaining a six pack or that smaller dress size is an awesome goal but now you know you can actually save your life by getting a flatter belly!

 One of the doctor’s on Larry King gave this simple calculation that you can do to see if you are at high risk for heart disease.

 Find your height in inches

• Measure your waist at the level of your belly button (not your pants size–actual inches), using a tape measure.
• If your waist size is more than half of your height, then you might be at risk for heart disease.

So for example, lets take a man 6 feet tall whose height is 72 inches.

Half of that height is 36 inches.

If the waist size is 36 inches or more, It is probably a good idea to check into whether he has a higher risk of heart disease.

So grab a tape measure from the sewing kit, wrap it around your body when you get out of the shower and see what you get.

If your waist is too big, you probably need to take the dog for a walk and cut down on the dessert.

Okay so I write that you need to do interval training and the days of long steady cardio are long gone in one blog or newsletter and then I tell you that it works. 

‘Bobby you must have lost your mind’ you say to yourself. Some of my clients really love to run marathons and if you have followed my newsletters for a while you know that there are a lot of bike riders and riding groups in AZ.

So my answer is that as a form of exercise long steady cardio works.  It isn’t the devil re-incarnated or he work of some sadistic trainer. Well for some people it is just not all of the time.  It’s not that it doesn’t work. 

 It’s just the least effective thing you can do.

 Let’s take a look at things I have spoken about recently regarding working out.  Long steady cardio takes a lot of your precious time. Strength training is the most important thing to do as your main source of fitness for fat loss. Therefore with an average personal training client I will not suggest running or biking for 45 minutes as the integral part of his/her training program.

Long slow cardio is less effective for fat loss than interval training and circuit training.   Simple truth.

However there are times I will let a client do that type of training.

Here are the times that I let my clients do long steady cardio:

If they simply hate high intensity intervals.  Look if I have a client and they are not going to do intervals then it does me no good to have them do nothing. 

Or maybe they used to love high intensity intervals, but they’ve been doing them for so long they are so ingrained with them that they need to break things up a bit.  Now I would change the intervals so they are more like 4-5 minutes at 7 on a scale of 1-10 first and then rest for 1-2 minutes before I let them go to “boresville” and have them run 3 miles at a slower pace than a turtle.

Finally I will often take a client who is so new to fitness and let them walk on a treadmill or ride a bike for 20-30 minutes because they simply cannot do intervals yet.  For this person doing long steady cardio is just what the doctor ordered.  They are making an effort to get moving and it is not wise for them to start with intervals just yet.  Sometimes I can do intervals 1x a week but then I cannot have them perform the interval workout again for another week.  I don’t want them to not workout at all.  I just want them to get some sort of exercise 3 more times that week.  In that case long steady workouts are just fine.  

If you totally love long steady cardio, do it!  It is so much better than nothing at all.

After a crazy and hectic day, sometimes nothing helps me de-stress like a nice setting my MP3 player on shuffle and hitting the road for a nice long run.

Knowing me I will still sprint from telephone pole to telephone pole at least a few times.