Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

When most people begin an exercise routine, the primary goal is often weight loss. Getting rid of excess weight can benefit the body in numerous ways. Another goal that can benefit the body as well but is often overlooked is improving functional capacity.

Working out to improve functional capacity, put simply, is when one strives to exercise in a way that will improve their ability to perform their activities of daily living. These activities of daily living vary from person to person and from age group to age group, but the goal is the same: To work out in the most efficient way so that the results transfer directly to how you live your life. As fitness evolves, this goal is becoming more and more commonplace, especially in retirement home fitness centers and corporate health and wellness.

Why Traditional Workouts Can Be Ineffective

While playing basketball during my free time in college, I learned the hard way that what may appear to be an effective workout may not necessarily be so. I had no problem running three or four miles at a time on a treadmill and thought that would help improve my on-court stamina. Once I began to better understand exercise science, though, I soon realized that even though I ran around the same mileage in a game, it was a very different demand in-game than what I was training for on a treadmill.

This same problem I ran into years ago can still be seen at any gym across America at any time. We often train our bodies in a way in which they don’t function in real life, simply because we haven’t questioned “common practice.” And as a result, our bodies aren’t functioning at their highest capacity.

Next: How corporate fitness programs and senior fitness management are using functional capacity training.

Corporate wellness program members hear terms like BMI, body fat percentage, girth measurements, and waist-to-hip ratio floating around on a daily basis. There is more to a person's body composition than just the number on the scale, but what number matters the most? Let's compare body mass index (BMI) to body fat percentage.

Using BMI (Body Mass Index) to Measure Employee Health

BMI is a ratio of a person's height to weight. Think of it as a chart where you would find your height on one side and your weight on the other. Connect the two dots, and boom: That number you landed on is your BMI. (Here's an online BMI calculator.)

As you can see just from that description, BMI is a very general assessment of overall body makeup. It tends to be more abstract. Tell someone that his or her BMI is 23.7 and, chances are, that won't mean much to the individual. People are classified as either underweight, normal, overweight, or obese, with no breakdown within those broad categories.

Body Fat Percentage for Determining Employee Health

Percent body fat, on the other hand, requires a more involved process for testing (including bioelectric impedance, skinfolds, underwater weighing and BodPod (air displacement) technology) to determine how much of a person's total body weight is comprised of fat versus fat-free mass (muscles, bones, organs, tissue, etc.). Body fat percentage is more telling of a person's fitness level. Two people may look the same as far as appearances go, and quite possibly have the same BMI. But they could have very different body fat amounts.

The application of percent body fat is simple. If a person weighs 160 pounds and is told his body fat is 15%, he can do the math and know that he is carrying 24 pounds of fat and 136 pounds of fat-free mass. If this person loses 10 pounds over the course of a few months and retests his percent body fat, he will have specific data to compare, whereas his BMI rating may be in the same category as it was before.

Why Percent Body Fat Is a Better Emloyee Heath Measurement

Over the years I have seen articles surface claiming things such as that BMI may not be an accurate measurement for different ethnicities, neck measurements are just as valid as BMI, etc. But percent body fat cannot be as easily argued against.

The big commonly known fault with BMI, and the reason behind its generality, is that the number does not take muscle mass into account. This makes BMI misleading in two ways:

• Firstly, a person who is underweight or normal on the BMI scale may still have a high percentage of body fat, meaning a lower level of fitness.
• On the flip side, a person with a large amount of muscle mass, for example a football player or bodybuilder, could be told by the BMI ranking that he or she is morbidly overweight, when the individual in fact has a low percent body fat and high fitness level.

I perform body composition tests in my corporate fitness center, using the Jackson-Pollock 7-site skinfold protocol, and I see these scenarios often. I have to explain the huge discrepancy when a person's BMI is in a healthy range but the body fat percentage is high, or vice versa.

The bottom line is that BMI is a general overview and can be an introductory assessment of a person's body composition. It's perhaps useful when more involved testing is not available. For more truth behind the matter, look at percent body fat.

(Further reading: See this article, which discusses the validity of both numbers.)

Although each day may technically be a new day, today brings the stresses of yesterday and the preparations of tomorrow. Nowadays a 40-hour work week is hard to come by, and going home without work is even harder to swing. With all of this added work comes added stress.

Untreated Employee Stress Is Bad for Business

Stress that is not dealt with properly can lead to negative outcomes. The outcome you will be least excited about is loss of productivity. Along with loss of productivity comes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, headaches, upset stomach, and chest pain, and it can even worsen certain ailments employees already have.

According to an annual Harris Interactive Attitudes in the American Workplace survey, 83% of Americans reported they are at least a little stressed at work, and nearly half said they need help in learning how to manage stress.

Consider the following tips to keep your stress at bay.

Develop a Wellness and Fitness Program or add Stress Management to Your Offerings

If your company doesn't offer a worksite wellness program, get busy creating one! Worksite wellness programs offer great resources for employees to better their health, including stress management. A healthy and stress-free employee equals more productivity for the company, so it's a win for both! (See the Wellness Council of America's site for tips.)

Encourage Employees To Use Deep Breathing Techniques

Deep breathing counteracts the increased heart rate and blood pressure that happen when the body is under stress. It is one of the best ways to stay calm when the body wants to do the opposite, and it can be done anywhere. When you breathe deeply, you are sending a message to your brain and body to relax. Next time your employees feel stressed on the job, have them try these steps:

1. Sit up straight and exhale completely through your mouth.  
2. Place your hands on your stomach and slowly inhale through your mouth, pushing your hands out with your stomach.
3. Hold the inhale for two to five seconds and slowly exhale.
4. Repeat until you feel relaxed.

Encourage Exercise As A Lifestyle, Including at Work!

We've all heard about how exercise can help you maintain heart health and manage a healthy weight, but exercise can also be a great form of stress relief. Physical activity not only boosts the release of those feel-good endorphins (and in turn boosting your mood); it can also improve sleep that can so often be disrupted by stress.

If you or your employees aren't currently exercising, start slow. Choose an activity that you enjoy and maybe even consider including your friends. Making it a social activity can give you a stress-relieving social network and make you more likely to stick with the program.

The Results Are Worth the Effort

Learning to manage stress in healthy ways will keep your employees producing the work your want to see as well as keep them sane during the process. You are only as good as your body allows, and it needs to be healthy in order to perform at the top. Make every day a new day by dealing with the stresses of yesterday and breathing through the thoughts of tomorrow.  

In previous posts, I have talked about functional capacity and how corporate fitness programs and senior fitness classes are using this concept to improve workouts and make them more beneficial to everyday life.

But what about the average person? How can they improve their functional capacity? Should they even seek to? Everyone, whether young or simply young at heart, can and should strive to improve their functional capacity.

Start By Evaluating Your Own Life.

What types of movements do you typically utilize? What does your day consist of? From here, seek out someone who can help you design an exercise program to help you improve directly on the movements and muscles you most frequently use in your day:

• If you are on your feet a lot and on the move, starting a running or walking program can help improve your endurance, making your job that much easier.
• If you are glued to a chair the majority of your day, you may find it beneficial to work on the strength of the muscles in your upper back, neck, and shoulders to ward off any pain and changes in posture that may be lingering.
• If you are a recreational athlete, utilizing a program that will help you improve in a way that directly benefits your sport skills can be an exciting challenge. Fitness has evolved, and gone are the days of sitting down and doing bicep curls and triceps kickbacks every workout.

Join the movement and strive to get on your feet more, move, and train your body in the way in which it works every day. The improvements you’ll experience in both your health and your performance in everyday activities will be well worth it.

I have always wondered how people can exercise without music. Music is one of the main reasons I exercise! When I get a break at work or on a Saturday morning, I look forward to listening to my music while I burn a few calories.

Working in onsite corporate fitness management, I see a lot of different types of people on a daily basis. While some members want only the TV on for noise, most have their own iPods and headphones so they can hear whatever type of music motivates them. Sometimes, while I’m looking out the window in my office watching people work out, I try to imagine what type of music they are listening to. I think it’s entertaining because I’m sure most of the time I’m way off.

Music Can Help Your Workout

I personally find music very motivating. It helps to take my mind off the sweat running in my eyes and my lower-body muscles fatiguing out. I can also play mind games with myself using my music as motivation. For example, I will speed up the treadmill or increase the resistance on the elliptical for the length of the song. This helps me to work harder and in turn burn more calories.

Music Tempo Can Affect Your Workout

I have discovered that I need to have mostly upbeat music because I move to the tempo of the song. For example, on the stair climber I find myself slowing down or speeding up according to the beat of the music. That’s why most group fitness CDs have warm-up and cool-down songs. This helps to get the body and brain in the mode to exercise and then to relax afterward.

Your Music Challenge

Discover tunes that motivate you and make a playlist that includes slower tempos for warm up and cool down and faster tempos for working hard and burning calories. (Add links to some sample playlists).

As a health and fitness specialist in a corporate wellness center, it's not very often that I venture out into other buildings on our company's campus. However, a few months ago on one such trip, I saw a treadmill in the middle of a cubicle area. I did a double-take and realized this was a walkstation, a treadmill with attached desk space and a laptop dock.

Now, personally, I find it difficult to read a magazine while exercising, let alone plug away at data or send thoughtful, grammatically correct e-mails, so my gut instinct was that this was a case where multitasking yields fewer benefits than performing both things separately.

What the Employees Think About Walkstations as a Work Exercise Option

I decided to ask employees for first-hand comments. Here is a synopsis from one regular user:

• Pros: It provides a change of pace to work routine; allows an employee to stretch his or her legs and get some activity while continuing to be productive; provides an energy boost when things begin to drag during the day.
• Cons: It is difficult to do tasks that require a lot of computer mouse movement; once the treadmill reaches a speed of 1.5 mph, it is hard to do much besides read e-mail; there is often a self-conscious feeling of being on display, as this is a relatively new concept; the walkstation can be noisy for others working nearby.

This particular employee commented that he experiences more energizing and stretching effects simply by periodically standing up from his desk.

Another employee made remarks that were quite contrary to my assumptions about the walkstation. She said it forces her to focus on the task at hand and eliminates the distractions of the phone and people stopping by her office. She also said, rather shockingly, that her only complaint was the treadmill was too slow—the speed is capped at 2 mph.

One Professional Opinion on The Matter

I am concerned about safety and ergonomics. To my knowledge, this particular walkstation did not have the capability to adjust the computer screen to eye level, thus increasing the chance for neck strain and shoulder discomfort. In fact, the second employee also stated that after an hour of use, her lower back began to hurt.

I'm sure much of the walkstation debate depends on how coordinated and focused the user is, on or off a treadmill. If anything, these are best for very short periods of use. However, I'm not convinced that this invention increases workplace productivity or employee wellness.

Between inflation, the rise and fall of the stock market, never-ending projects at work, and screaming kids, there are plenty of things in a employee’s life that can lead them to feel overwhelmed. While we all feel this way from time to time, feelings of anxiety and depression that don’t subside within a few days must be dealt with.

With the use of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications at an all-time high, most Americans seem to be taking the pharmaceutical route to deal with their mental-health issues. As effective as this might be, however, it makes one wonder whether there are other options. Is medication the only hope for your employee's health and depression issues?

Evidence Points to Exercise as Another Answer to Employee Depression and Anxiety

One tried-and-true method of improving mental health is regular exercise. Some evidence suggests it can be as effective as traditional psychotherapy and can even eliminate the need for medication in mild to moderate cases of depression. This is encouraging news for your company wellness initiatives.

If your employees are like me, though, the last thing they probably want to do is get their body moving when they’re feeling a little blue. Here are some tips from the Mayo Clinic for getting started.

Once the initial discomfort of beginning to exercise wears off, I find my mind is a little more at ease and I can finally start to relax. I’m more upbeat, I can think more clearly, and I even leave feeling more energized than before. It’s not entirely clear how or why exercise can help improve mood, but it is known to do so regardless.

The Best Employee Exercises for Beating the Blues

Some employees will find aerobic exercise like walking or running to most improve their mood, whereas others find strength training more beneficial. I most enjoy running or playing basketball to get my mind off things; however, strength training has its place in my stress-relief program as well.

What Health Initiative Your Company Can Make to Assist with Employee Depression and Anxiety

As important as medication can be in a person’s life for a variety of ailments, never underestimate the body’s ability to heal itself. Whether it’s the release of endorphins that leads to the famous “runner’s high,” or the psychological benefits of setting an exercise goal and accomplishing it, performing regular physical activity can help employees deal with depression and anxiety.

So improve employee awareness through educating them on the benefits of exercise for depression and anxiety. Encourage them to grab a friend, get moving, and leave their worries behind. They might even lose a few pounds, too. And that alone can perk them up a little (as well as lower your companies health costs)!

Some people associate smoking with being thin, but thin doesn’t always mean healthy. Smoking does suppress your appetite, which helps to keep weight off. But do the health risks of smoking outweigh the negatives of being overweight?

Negative Effects of Smoking on Employee Health

Smoking affects heart health and increases an individual's heart rate. It puts employees at a greater risk for stroke and almost any type of cancer that comes to mind. Smoking doesn't just affect their heart. It impacts every other part of your employee's circulatory system, too.

Although smoking a few cigarettes a day might not keep employees from being able to run a mile every day, if they quit smoking they would see how much faster they could run the mile. Employees that smoke and exercise might not even be aware of how much more their body can do until they quit.

Get Employees Help to Quit Smoking

Offer ways to help employees quit smoking. Quiting isn't easy, but there are programs out there to support them.

Encourage employees to schedule an appointment with a fitness trainer or consultant to get baseline numbers. Once they quit smoking they can reasses those numbers a few months later. They will be amazed at how their health and fitness level will improve!

We all know smoking is bad for an individual's body in several different ways. And yes, employees may be able to exercise intensely every day and smoke, but eventually the negative effects will catch up to them, their body and your company's finances. Helping employees now can pay dividends in the future.

The majority of office cafeterias post nutrition information for numerous items they serve. But how many employees want to waste valuable lunch-break minutes searching for them or reading their microscopic fonts? I know I don't! I tend to go for the meal I think sounds the healthiest and pray that, when I plug the details of my meal into my online calorie counter, I don't find out I blew an entire day's worth of calories on one little lunch.

An Innovative Employee Health Solution

If the small nutrition labeling on the wall next to the food isn't doing employee health justice, would seeing the calories, total fat, carbohydrates, and protein listed on the food receipt make an impact on employees' overall health? Check out SmartReceipt's Nutricate, a system that prints nutrition information right on lunch receipts. Nutricate has the potential to help employees make a positive change in their eating habits by making it easy for them to value their calorie intake like they value their hard-earned cash.

Weighing Cost Against Employee Wellness Benefits

The biggest issue with a product such as Nutricate will be cost related. Will a receipt plastered with nutrition information benefit companies enough to outweigh the extra cost? Will companies have to put a higher price tag on their food to make up for the expense of supplying a fancier receipt?

Worksite wellness should be about improving employee lifestyles, and thus controlling healthcare costs. Maybe, in addition to adding nutrition information on receipts, companies could also use SmartReceipt to advertise health tips and their corporate fitness programs – making the health impact on employees even greater!  

As employee waistlines expand, so do their pets. The good news is that man’s best friend can be just the motivation and camaraderie your employees need to jump-start a fitness routine that can benefit both.

According to a 2004 study by the Wellness Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, dogs and their owners lose weight and stay trim by dieting and exercising together. A few key preparation steps will have your employees walking and jogging with their four-legged friend in no time:

Help Your Employees Prepare for Fitness by Preparing Their "Paws"

Encourage employees to visit a running/walking specialty footwear store for proper shoes and socks. Everyone has a different gait, so it is important to purchase the right shoes. A pooch's paws are just as important. Some surfaces such as gravel, rock, and even concrete can be hard on a dog's paws. Check your dog's footpads when you return from your workout and adjust your runs accordingly.

Get Employees and Pets to Gear Up Appropriately for Outdoor Exercise

Instruct employes to wear running-specific clothing that wicks moisture away from the body and fits comfortably. For their furry pal, use a body harness and run-specific leash. This will help the dog’s comfort level during the workout and help him associate the leash and harness with serious running, not stopping to smell the roses. Both dogs and their owners should have water readily available, as well as reflective clothing or a blinking dog tag.

Share the Benefits of Starting Slow and Establishing a Routine

Employees should start off slow and warm up prior to their workout. This will prepare them and their dog's muscles for the upcoming workout and reduce the risk of injury. When walking or jogging, they should start with a slow and steady pace. If either one shows any changes in gait, slow down or end the workout. It may mean they're going too fast or too far for their current fitness level. Employees should also keep the age and breed of their dog in mind when determining the pace and distance for their run. They should always keep their dog at their side to avoid dangerous falls.

Dogs thrive on routine and so do humans. So use the opportunity to encourage employee health by teaching the importance of building a routine. Employess should keep their workouts three to five days per week. Not only will this give them a slimmer waistline and improve your corporations financial waistline, too, but they’ll gain some bonding-time with their pet.