Saturday June 5, 2008

Run 2 miles -



The desire to retain customers also has led to a modern gym environment that some critics believe sends mixed messages. "The problem with our gyms is that they misrepresent the fact that you are fundamentally there to do work," says Jack Berryman, PhD, a professor of medical history at the University of Washington and a historian for the American College of Sports Medicine. "The modern gym is a techno holiday with gadgets and lights. They're trying to entertain people."



And this can be detrimental to exercisers who are trying to stick with their workouts. Performance psychologist Jim Loehr, EdD, author of The Power of Story and chairman and CEO of the Human Performance Institute, in Orlando, Florida, advises busy corporate executives on how to become more successful at sustaining their commitment to fitness. He has found that a primary component for making exercise sustainable is to stop tuning out during workouts. "We don't want you disengaged while you are working out," he says. "We tell ourselves that exercise is so painful that the only thing you can do to get through it is to watch TV. Watching television and working out is a form of multitasking. To me, however, real value lies in paying attention. It is an engagement practice, it gets your mind off work, and it aligns what you're doing with what you're thinking."

Perhaps the best evidence against traditional health clubs is that these days most elite athletes rarely step foot in one. They work out in environments designed for functional training. Evolving on the sidelines of the fitness industry for the last decade or so, functional training, or FT, has become the buzzword within the fitness industry, and many observers feel that it can cure some of the ailments plaguing health clubs.

An FT approach to fitness stresses the training of movements over muscles, the irrelevance of strength without mobility, the neurological foundation to strength and athleticism, and the use of simple tools to gain complex results. The main purpose of FT is to bridge the gap between absolute strength and functional strength, to achieve peak performance, and to prevent injuries, says Gambetta, one of FT's early proponents. In general, FT discourages the use of machines in favor of free weights, body-weight exercises, and certain devices used in physical therapy, such as medicine balls, stability balls, wobble boards, and resistance bands.

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?