New Dads Get Their Grove On!

Here's a great video with some dads getting exercise while spending quality time with their babies. By the way- moms or any caregiver can get into the act and have fun while burning calories too. Makes you want to have a baby!

The One Mile "Happy Walk"

Every once in awhile we try to re-energize our co-workers and get them more excited about exercising. As you hear time and time again, it is not too difficult to sneak exercise into your day. At the library we are allowed two 15 minute breaks during our day. For years, many of us have not been taking these breaks. But, it is so important to get up and take a stretch.
In 2008, one in four U.S. adults reported no leisure physical activity. In 2010, one in ten people over the age of 20 (that's about 25 million people) had diabetes. Sitting increases the risk of death up to 40% and doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease. Physical activity is not just the "exercise" you do in the gym, but the movement that you do throughout your day. Physical activity includes walking to the bathroom that is furthest from your desk, delivering a message to a co-worker in person rather than sending an email, etc. Short bouts of activity can change a person's mood, give a person a needed mental break, and is even shown to increase productivity in the workplace.

We have always been a big fan of excerise enthusiast Lesley Sansone. She has numerous walking dvd's that are simple to follow and get people up and moving. With this in mind, we try to get as many staff members as are interested to do her 15 minute video that is entitled the "1 Mile Happy Walk" with us once a day. It is the perfect amount of time for our break, it can be done by staff members no matter what their level of exercise expertise, and it is just plain fun.

 
Staff members participating during a morning break:

Simple Ways to Work More Exercise into Your Day

While this cartoon may seem funny to many people it is ironic how some individuals think about working out. Case and point, we work in a library that has a weekly morning exercise class. We always get a chuckle when we see the participants parking their cars. They must try to get the closest spot to our building. It's tempting to tell them to park further away and get a jump start on their class but we don't. They are missing the benefits of sneaking more exercise into their day.

What follows is an article we came across on lifehacker.com written by Mike Tennant. It has some great ideas for ways to incorporate movement into your day. The list is not exhaustive. What do you do to sneak exercise into your day? Let us know by posting a comment at the end of the article.

Simple Ways to Work More Exercise into Your Day

We're all busy. Between work, school, kids, parents, pets, there's simply not enough time in the day to get everything done. These long to-do lists force us to prioritize our activities, and ultimately leads to something just not getting done. More often than not, that one thing is exercise.

It's easy to see why we constantly bump working out further and further down our list of priorities. Exercising is just not as much fun as watching TV, going out to dinner with friends or catching that new movie you've been meaning to see. And of course, you can't place exercising ahead of work-related items. The same goes for family commitments – it's not like you can pick working out over dinner with your in-laws.

We all know it's good for us. We've heard the stats and figures and studies from all the great researchers and government agencies. We know that we need to exercise regularly, which is why we end up making empty promises to ourselves. "I'll jog twice as much tomorrow to make up for it," right? But how many times do you actually follow through?

The fact is, it's just too easy to come up with a reason for doing something—anything, really—instead of going to the gym. And thus, the cycle continues. Before you know it, you haven't had a good work out in weeks. But what if it was just as easy to work exercise into your daily schedule? What if it was so easy to work some quality physical activity into your day that you'd be silly not to? Good news: it is.

Here's how:

Park farther away. How often will you circle a parking lot trying to find a spot as close to the store as possible? Try parking farther away to burn a few extra calories during your daily errands. If you drive to work, parking at the far end of the lot every day can really add up. Think about it this way—you can burn an extra 10 calories every time you walk from your car to the store or office by parking farther away. If you do that five times a day, it adds up to more than 18,000 calories over a year—or an extra five pounds (1 lb. = 3,500 cal)!

Take the stairs. Walking up stairs is a surprisingly high intensity activity that can raise your heart rate quickly. If you're in need of some extra exercise, taking the stairs over the elevator is an excellent way to get it. Every office or apartment has at least one set of stairs. More and more retail stores, especially those in big cities, have multiple floors connected by an escalator. Go find the stairs instead for some quick physical activity you wouldn't get otherwise.

Play with the kids. They don't even have to be your own kids, but you probably want to clear it with their parents first… The other day I was hanging out with my nephews, watching something on TV. They wanted to go play outside, so I joined them. You know what they played? Freeze tag. Twenty hilarious minutes later, I was worn out and completely drenched, but I didn't mind one bit. Kids have a ton of energy, and keeping up with them can sometimes be even better than going to the gym. The time will fly by too!

Use your lunch break. Rather than going out to lunch or just sitting in front of your computer checking the latest gossip, take a short walk during your lunch break. Just like parking farther away, it doesn't take much to make a difference. Try just going 10 minutes out the door, then turning around. That's an extra 20 minutes of exercise that you wouldn't normally get. If you manage to do it two or three times over the course of the day, you're looking at almost an hour of exercise! Do this every other day for a year, and that's an extra 15 lbs!

Learn to love commercials. You don't have time to exercise during the day, but plenty of time for watching TV, right? Same here. But those 2-minute commercial breaks that seem to happen all too often? Those are great opportunities to get in some quick and effective exercise. Try alternating pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks and arm circles during the commercial breaks of your favorite shows. If you're not sweating by the end of the episode then you're just not trying! The best part: this all counts as quality exercise. In fact, these are the same four basic exercises that my old boxing coach would have us do between drills every single practice. And you can get a similar workout without leaving your living room or missing a single minute of your show.

28 Day Fitness Challenge and a Dare!

We wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year! To jump start the "healthy" part of the New Year we are challenging everyone to participate in a 28 day fitness program that can be done during a break at work (wink, wink) or at home. If you are wondering why we chose 28 days it is because studies show that it takes a person 27 days to form a new habit, so for good measure we threw in an extra day.

For this challenge we brought back some of our favorite exercises from past posts. These exercises target arms, legs and abdominal muscles. The chart below lists your challenge (you can print the chart to keep track of all your activity by highlighting it and right clicking for the print option). You can find the instructions for each exercise by clicking on the links below the chart.

Now for the dare. We dare you to move! Get up from your chair. Walk a lap around the building where you work. Get a drink of water from the water cooler. Walk a flight of stairs. Use your legs instead of email to deliver a message to a co-worker. You get the idea. The last column on the chart is for you to indicate that you completed the movement dare for the day. Remember, "sitting is the new smoking!"

Date	Seated Crunches	Desk Pushups	Squats	Bicep Curls	Completed	Cardio
Day 1	10	5	10	10
Day 2	10	5	10	10
Day 3	10	5	10	10
Day 4	10	5	10	10
Day 5	10	5	10	10
Day 6	10	5	10	10
Day 7	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day
Day 8	15	10	15	15
Day 9	15	10	15	15
Day 10	15	10	15	15
Day 11	15	10	15	15
Day 12	15	10	15	15
Day 13	15	10	15	15
Day 14	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day
Day 15	20	15	20	20
Day 16	20	15	20	20
Day 17	20	15	20	20
Day 18	20	15	20	20
Day 19	20	15	20	20
Day 20	20	15	20	20
Day 21	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day	Rest Day
Day 22	25	20	25	25
Day 23	25	20	25	25
Day 24	25	20	25	25
Day 25	25	20	25	25
Day 26	25	20	25	25
Day 27	25	20	25	25
Day 28	Congrats!	Congrats!	Congrats!	Congrats!	Congrats!	Congrats!

Here are the links to the exercises:
Seated Crunch
Desk Pushups (This is on the same post as the seated crunch. Scroll down on the page.)
Squats
Bicep Curls

R & R with Rachel (Rants and Raves with Rachel): The Back Is a Funny Thing

The back is a funny thing. One minute all is fine and the next minute you are in pain. Mets pitcher Steven Matz can attest to that. One day he was feeling great and then he decided to sleep on someone's couch for the evening and woke up with back pain (or "sleep-related back discomfort" as was reported by Newsday). Really, "sleep-related back discomfort"??!!?!? Here's a health tip for anyone who needs their body to perform their job (basically everybody).....Do Not Sleep on a Couch! And, here's another health tip for someone who can afford to stay in a hotel and sleep in a real bed (I am sure Matz can).....Do Not Spend the Night on A Couch! Starting Friday, the Mets will be playing in the NLDS (National League Division Series). Matz has been out since Tuesday, September 29th due to his "sleep-related back discomfort." Mets fans need him back!

Matz is not alone when it comes to major league baseball back injuries. If you have ever suffered from a back injury you too know that your back can go out basically by just breathing too hard. Here are two other incidences that I found entertaining. In 1986 Wade Boggs, in the heat of the pennant race, pulled his back out by putting on his cowboy boots. He missed six games! In 2004 Sammy Sosa missed a game because of back spasms he suffered after 2 sneezes.

There are many websites on the Internet with examples of exercises to help strengthen your back, but it is very important to do them correctly. You will find demonstrations for some back exercises at ACE Fitness.

R & R with Rachel (Rants and Raves with Rachel): Keeping Fit Away from Home

A few months ago I was in Washington, D.C. for a conference. As you may know from some of my previous blog entries I hate to sit. I was concerned that the long full days of classes would mean that not only would I be sitting all day but I would be unable to exercise. Although I am generally not a morning person going for a jog each morning was the only way I would have time to exercise, so I set my mind to do so. Every evening before I went to bed I decided on a destination for the following morning. Washington, D.C. is so chock full of outdoor things to see that I felt like I was sightseeing as well! I jogged past the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, just to name a few sights. One morning I jogged into Georgetown and alongside the Potomac river. I had headphones attached to my smartphone (at a low enough volume so that I could hear everything going on around me!) and Googlemaps to guide me. This was a big help. I did not have to stop and pull out a map at each turn and I felt safer because I did not look at all like a tourist. While running I was also testing out a few of the ios Running apps and I will share that information in a future blog (spoiler alert: Endomondo is the app I have decided to use).

So what can everyone learn from my trip:

1. If you are determined enough, you can squeeze exercise into any trip.

2. Googlemaps or any other mapping app is a great help while you are running in an unfamiliar location.

3. Changing your exercise routine to another time of the day can work (although I have not exercised in the morning since I returned from my trip).

Here is a picture of me at the Lincoln Memorial:

R & R with Rachel (Rants and Raves with Rachel): Let's Get Appy

Recently, I bought a smartphone. While I consider myself technologically savvy I never really had a need for one. Even now, a month later, I don't use it very often. One of the features I do like about the phone however, is that a running app can replace my ancient Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS which was big and bulky on my arm and lost its signal if it was cloudy or if I was running in an area where there were a lot of trees blocking the sky.

Now comes the hard part, picking the running app that is the best for me. I admit, I am a little obsessed with how far I run, walk or bike on each outing so obviously telling me that information is important. I also like to know how fast (or in my case how slow) I have ran that distance. The interface needs to be a large enough font so that my aging eyes can read it. Being able to save the information on my various runs would also be helpful though not imperative, and it would be great if I could transmit those stats wirelessly to my computer.

With all these requirements in mind, I started my research. I never imagined just how many running apps existed! I compiled a long list of apps that were given good reviews in various articles and plan on reviewing and critiquing each one on the basis of my needs. To whittle down the list a little I did start with the criteria of the following: the app had to be available for an ios device, it did not need any other paraphernalia to operate and the basic service had to be free. Here is the list of fourteen apps I plan on testing: Adidas Mi-Coach, Endonmondo, GPS Pro: Garmin Connect Mobile, Map My Run, Nike+ Running, Pear Training, Pumatrac, RunKeeper, Runmeter Pro, Runtastic, Strava, Up, Walkmeter, Wahoo Fitness.

I'll keep you posted! Meanwhile feel free to try some of these apps out yourself and let me know!