0

My cart

How to Safely Return to the Gym in 2022

The New Year is a great time to start focusing on your health and fitness goals. Part of your plan for achieving these goals may include joining a gym, working with a personal trainer or attending fitness classes. While fitness and wellness centers are starting to open up in many areas of the country and some are offering fitness classes, personal training and other fitness activities, you may be concerned about whether it is safe to join or return to these facilities due to the risk for COVID-19 transmission.

When weighing your options, it is important to consider both the risks associated with exercising at an indoor gym and steps you can take to keep yourself safe.

It can be helpful to understand some of the risks associated with exercising at an indoor gym:  

  • Air droplets can travel farther during exercise: The recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to maintain social distancing of at least six feet from other individuals to avoid inhalation of virus-containing respiratory droplets. When someone is exercising, they breathe with more force than while at rest. Therefore, heavier breathing during exercise can result in an increased concentration of air droplets traveling farther, thus increasing the risk for COVID-19 transmission. 
  • It is difficult to maintain social distance at all times at the gym: While many fitness facilities are following guidelines by spacing out equipment and encouraging social distancing, you may find yourself in a situation where another member decides to exercise on the cardio machine next to you or several members are having a conversation right next to where you are completing your set of bench presses. Even with limits to facility numbers, weight rooms and cardio areas can get crowded, making it more difficult to maintain social distancing throughout your workout.
  • Inadequate air ventilation: Some fitness and wellness centers may not have ventilation systems that can adequately remove viral droplets and particles from the air, thus increasing members’ risk of infection, especially in smaller indoor spaces.
  • Using shared equipment: While COVID-19 is most commonly spread through close contact with an individual who has the virus, it is possible to become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then touching your mouth, nose or eyes. Therefore, using shared equipment such as weight and cardio machines, mats, or dumbbells that are not cleaned before and after each use may increase your risk for COVID-19.

Now that you have a better understanding of the risks, here are some ways to mitigate that risk and keep yourself safe at your fitness facility:

  • Choose a gym where you feel comfortable and safe: Fitness and wellness facilities must follow state guidelines; however, some may take more precautions than others, such as implementing additional temperature and symptom assessments, cleaning and mask-wearing protocols and limited fitness class sizes. Therefore, visit a few different facilities and join the one where you will feel safe and comfortable to exercise. It may be beneficial to choose a facility that also offers online personal training, virtual fitness classes, and/or outdoor classes so that you can create a weekly exercise routine that includes workouts that take place at the gym, outside and at home to limit the number of times per week that you are exercising at an indoor gym.
  • Wear a mask that covers your mouth and nose while exercising: Although it may be uncomfortable to exercise with a mask, it can help keep you and others safe from COVID-19. Also, a recent study found that heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation were not adversely impacted in healthy individuals who performed aerobic exercise while wearing a mask. When exercising with a mask, it can be helpful to bring several disposable masks and change them throughout the workout.
  • Maintain social distancing: Maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet to avoid close contact with other facility members or employees. Work out in areas of the gym that are less crowded and avoid attending the gym during peak hours.
  • Bring your own equipment: When possible, bring your own equipment such as mats, dumbbells or bands to use during your workout or when attending fitness classes.
  • Bring your own water bottle: Some fitness facilities may not allow access to water fountains. Therefore, bring your own water bottle to make sure you have safe access to water.
  • Clean equipment before and after use: Clean each piece of equipment before and after you use it, and avoid touching your mouth, nose and eyes throughout your workout.
  • Wash hands before and after your workout: Wash your hands before and immediately after your workout with soap and water.
  • Limit indoor high-intensity exercise: When possible, perform high-intensity activities outdoors. If performing high-intensity exercise indoors, increase distance.

Beginning or maintaining an exercise routine is paramount for both physical and mental health and it is especially important during this health crisis. Make sure you choose a place and format that will best support your health-related goals and level of comfort for safely starting or returning to an active lifestyle.

Exercising at a gym or fitness facility, outdoors, or from the comfort of your home can help maintain a healthy lifestyle, and taking appropriate precautions can reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission in all settings. What is most important is that you find a way to safely keep moving during these challenging times to stay focused on your health and fitness goals.

Via: www.acefitness.org

5 Benefits of Training for Dynamic Balance

When we hear the word balance, we usually think of standing still on one leg or trying not to fall when walking on a slippery surface. While standing on one leg can certainly help improve static balance, maintaining control of a moving center of mass over a changing base of support is probably more relevant to many of life’s activities. This type of training is known as dynamic balance, and can help enhance skills that are relevant to a number of sports and activities of daily living. Dynamic balance training is also an effective way to help you achieve your fitness goals. 

Optimal balance is achieved when multiple sensory systems provide information about the body’s position as it moves over the ground. The eyes (visual), inner ear (vestibular) and skin (kinesthetic) contain numerous sensory receptors that provide important feedback to the central nervous system (CNS) about which muscles to activate and when. Maintaining static balance as the body remains in one position is relatively easy because you can concentrate on which muscles to contract to remain stable. However, many activities of daily living happen quickly, which means you have to rely on conscious thought to control which muscles to activate. 

Here are five reasons why it’s important to train dynamic balance and how adding it to your exercise program can produce results.

  • Training for dynamic balance could help you improve your running technique. The gait cycle, whether walking or running, requires the body to maintain control of its center of gravity as it changes position over a constantly moving base of support. During the gait cycle your body must maintain control of your center of gravity—usually found near the belly button—as you transition from one leg to the other. As your right foot hits the ground, the left leg prepares to swing forward; at the same time your left arm is swinging forward while your right arm is moving backward. The motion created by the swinging of the arms and legs results in a counter rotation between the upper back and pelvis to generate the momentum to move the body in a forward direction.
  • Dynamic balance training is an effective way to strengthen and tone the obliques and the muscles of the hips, thighs, glutes and low back. These muscles connect your hips to your pelvis and your pelvis to your spine. Increasing the strength of the core muscles can help improve your balance and coordination, while also improving your appearance.
  • Having good dynamic balance can help improve your coordination and ability to react to sudden changes of direction, both of which can help reduce the risk of an accidental fall. Controlling dynamic balance should be a reflexive response that happens automatically. If you feel that you don’t have good balance, it is extremely important that you do the work necessary to improve it.
  • Dynamic balance exercises can easily be added to the warm-up phase of a workout to prepare for lower-body strength training, a long run, an obstacle-course race, or for recreational sports such as tennis, basketball or soccer.
  • Dynamic balance exercises can be used as low-intensity recovery exercises between sets of high-intensity interval training or as a low-intensity bodyweight workout to help promote recovery the day after a challenging training session. These exercises can also be used on those days when you can’t make it to the gym, but still want to do something active. 

Adding balance exercises to your workouts can help improve your overall energy expenditure and enhance your ability to perform your favorite activities. Here are six dynamic balance exercises to help you improve coordination and strengthen your muscles. Try adding this program as a warm-up at least two times per week for four weeks and you will be surprised at the difference you will feel and see.

Via: www.acefitness.org

12 Minutes to Better Health and Fitness

When time is tight, it can be difficult to do your usual 30- to 60-minute workout. For those days, a Tabata-style workout may be the answer. Tabata is a form of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that requires just four minutes to complete. In fact, research suggests this form of HIIT could actually be more effective than three, 30-minute sessions running on a treadmill for improving aerobic capacity.

Researchers organized 55 healthy, young male participants into three separate training groups for a 16-week workout program:

  • HIIT-T (High-intensity interval training on a treadmill): Seventeen participants performed a Tabata protocol on a treadmill. They ran at a velocity associated with 130% of VO2max for 20 seconds, followed by a 10-second rest, and repeated this pattern for eight cycles for a total of four minutes.
  • HIIT-WB (High-intensity interval training with whole-body exercises): Nineteen participants conducted Tabata intervals using body-weight movements including burpees, mountain climbers, jumping jacks and squat thrusts with 3-kg kettlebells.
  • MICT (Moderate-intensity continuous training): Nineteen participants ran on a treadmill for 30 minutes at an intensity associated with 90% of the heart rate at the second ventilatory threshold (VT2), a training intensity associated with an increase in breathing rate and an inability to talk comfortably while exercising.

For the warm-up to each workout, the HITT-T group did a four-minute warm-up on the treadmill, the HIIT-WB group used the same body-weight exercises but moved at a much slower tempo for four minutes, and the MICT group gradually increased running tempo. 

At the end of the 16-week training protocols, each group had improved their fitness levels, which was measured by time to reach VT2 and the time to reach exhaustion. The HIIT-T group demonstrated better results than the HIIT-WB or MICT groups, supporting the idea that HIIT is a time-efficient workout solution. This is great news for those days when time can be a factor and a gym workout just isn’t feasible. In other words, when time gets tight, a four-minute Tabata workout may be sufficient for maintaining your current level of fitness.

Here are two options for applying this research to your own Tabata-style protocols:

  • At a health club, use a rowing machine to complete a four­-minute Tabata consisting of 20 seconds of sprinting followed by 10 seconds of resting while standing on the side rails. Repeat this pattern eight times. (A rowing machine is recommended because it involves both the arms and legs working together and does not place additional stress on the knee or back joints.)
  • Use body-weight exercises for a Tabata, which can be perfect on those days when your schedule doesn’t allow time for a trip to a gym or when you’re traveling and are stuck in a hotel. The following circuit (patterned after the one used in the study) is ideal. If you don’t have weights available, replace the squat thrusts with ice skaters (hopping laterally from one foot to the other).

The entire workout should take about 12 minutes because you should allow some time for a warm-up and cool-down with stretching for the involved muscles. For the warm-ups, follow the workout protocols from the research study outlined above.

Here are some general guidelines when performing the body-weight exercises:

  • Keep your spine long. When your spine is extended, you use more of your hips. 
  • Move from your hips. Whether you are hinging forward or rotating, make sure that the movement comes from your hips, not your spine. 
  • To increase activation of your core muscles, press your feet and hands firmly into the floor when they make contact. Imagine you are trying to push the floor away from you, which can help improve activation of your deep core muscles.  

While it’s always nice to have a long, stress-reducing workout session, there will be days when time really is a factor. For this reason, it’s nice to know that time-efficient Tabata-style workouts really do work and produce results.

Via: www.acefitness.org


View on mobile

View on mobile