Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

This blog was written by Lisa Larkin. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

Working at a corporate fitness center, I get a lot of questions on how to shrink the waistline. You may or may not have heard the phrase “you can’t spot reduce,” and it’s true. For example, performing stomach exercises alone won’t decrease the size of your stomach. There are, however, a couple of different things to consider when wanting to lose weight or tone up.

Cardio Burns Fat

You must do cardio; if you already do cardiovascular exercise four or five days a week, kick up the intensity of your cardio sessions. For example, add an incline while walking or jogging on the treadmill. Increase your resistance level on the bike or elliptical. If you aren’t currently involved in regular cardio exercise, that’s a good place to start. Spiking up your heart rate and oxygen consumption will help to burn fat.

Strength Training Builds Muscle and Bone Strength

Strength training is just as important as cardio. Performing strength training exercises can get your heart rate up, too, along with building muscle and bone strength. This will also help you to burn more calories while at rest. If you aren’t familiar with how to safely perform strength training exercises, schedule an appointment with your corporate fitness center staff.

Planks Strengthen Your Core

My last suggestion would be planks―and a variety of them! Planks help to strengthen your core (abdominals and lower back). I feel they are more effective than abdominal crunches. To perform a basic plank, you are on your elbows and toes. Keep your shoulders above your elbows and push your weight back toward your feet, as opposed to hovering over your shoulders. Start holding it for as long as you can and progressively add seconds onto your time. Ready, set, up!

This blog was written by Melissa Sherman. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

“What is the best time to exercise?” is a question I receive more often than not when people are looking to begin or alter an exercise routine. It may just be wishful thinking that your body is going to burn more calories depending on the time of day you choose to exercise; there is no reliable evidence to show that calories are actually burned more efficiently at certain times of day.

However, there are some things to consider when choosing your exercise time:

• Your personal body clock: Are you a night owl or an early bird? If your schedule allows, use this to help you decide when you are best suited to get your workout in. It may help make your routine more consistent if you exercise at the time of day you feel best.
• Perks of morning exercise: If your biggest problem is consistency, morning may be your best time to exercise. The biggest benefit of morning exercise is that there are no other conflicts, meetings, schedules, or mishaps that can creep in during your day. Most corporate fitness centers are open early to accommodate morning exercisers.
• Don’t let exercise interfere with sleep: Your energy levels need to stay consistent if you want to feel good and maintain a consistent exercise routine, so adequate sleep is important. Exercising right before bed will increase your body temperature and your heart rate, which can make it difficult to fall asleep.

For more tips on choosing your best time to exercise, see this article. Still not sure when you should exercise? Try different times to see which works best for you, but keep in mind: No matter what time of day you choose, the best time to exercise is any time that you fit your workout in consistently!

This blog was written by Penny Pohlmann, MS. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

Both cardiovascular exercise and weight training are important forms of exercise in a balanced, well-rounded workout routine. Cardiovascular exercise is great for keeping the heart and lungs functioning well, whereas weight training is best for building or maintaining muscle, preventing injuries, and improving strength.

If you perform both forms of exercise on the same day, you may have asked yourself which to perform first for the greatest benefit. Well, it depends. Don’t you love that response?

It depends on your exercise goals. If your goal is to improve your 5K race time or you’re training for a specific sport such as soccer, your primary goal is probably to get your cardiovascular system working efficiently for an extended period of time. If this is the case, performing your cardiovascular exercise first when you’re fresh rather than a bit (or a lot) fatigued from weight training ensures you perform the activity with optimal energy.

If your goal is to improve your strength or build a firmer, leaner body, the opposite will be true. You want to train your muscles before they are fatigued from other activities.

Encourage your employees to start making healthy changes, whether cardio or weight training, with a worksite health promotion program. A qualified personal trainer or fitness professional should take not only your fitness goals into consideration, but also your level of skill, to create a program that incorporates strength training and cardiovascular exercise.

This blog was written by Bethany Garrity. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

When was the last time you did an organizational health checkup? If your organization were one body, what would its state of health be? How would you read its vital signs? Permit me this analogy for a moment: The CEO is the head, the brain, the vision. Your employees are the rest of the body: limbs, skin, muscles, organs, and senses.

Brain directs and body makes it go.

Your organizational body is only as effective, healthy, and vital as its weakest part. If some parts are ailing or unfit, all are affected. From hangnails to heart attacks, the effects can be minor or devastating, but they cannot be denied.

What are you doing to help your corporate body stay healthy and fit in every part?

Usually there are two reasons your employee body may not prioritize a health-preserving/enhancing lifestyle choice. Either they just don't know how, or there's an obstacle.

Ignorance can be overcome by education―a connection with a knowledgeable staff member at your corporate fitness center, for example. And most often, an early encouraging outcome will spur your worker into action toward greater goals.

Obstacles can be many, and some of those are well beyond the organization. But with employees spending more than half of their waking hours at work, the employer has a prime opportunity to effect healthy change for its employees. 

Support is mission-critical. At the right place and time, it makes all the difference.

This blog was updated Friday, February 3, 2017.

What if you could take an inside look at how fast your heart is pumping during exercise? Well, it’s not a portable EKG machine, so why should you consider using a heart rate monitor? 

Worn around your chest and against your skin, a heart-rate monitor can pick up the electrical activity of your heart and transmit your current heart rate (number of beats per minute) to a wristwatch or to a display on the cardio machine you’re using. These devices can give physical evidence regarding how fast your heart is beating during cardiovascular exercise.

So what do you do with the information it provides? One’s heart rate tells us how hard your heart is working to supply oxygenated blood to your working muscles. The faster you run or the steeper you climb, the harder your heart works. It is generally recommended that a person’s heart rate attain a certain range to gain the most cardiovascular benefits.

After consistent monitoring of your heart-rate response during cardiovascular exercise, you’ll learn that your body adapts to the work demands you place on it. In other words, your heart does not have to work as hard to walk that mile as it did a month ago. This means you’ll need to increase your intensity (time and/or speed) to continue to attain your target heart-rate range.

A heart-rate monitor can be a very useful tool to receive feedback about your workout. Additionally, a fitness professional can also provide guidance in developing a well-rounded cardiovascular and strength workout customized to your goals and needs.

Are you and your employees in need of some exercise direction? A well-rounded corporate wellness program as well as a qualified corporate fitness staff can provide the guidance you’re seeking. NIFS can help!

This blog was written by Anna Hiple. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

Here’s some fuel to help you crank out one more repetition, finish an extra pushup, and hold that plank just a little bit longer. Along with all of its other wonderful benefits, strength training can help prevent type 2 diabetes. This should be of interest to a significant part of the population, as millions of Americans suffer from type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, with many more at risk due to obesity, existing health conditions, family history, and lifestyle choices.

Type 2 diabetes is characterized by a lack of insulin produced by the body or an inability of the body to properly use insulin. Weight training’s contribution to a reduction in risk for type 2 diabetes is supported by findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that the higher the proportion of an individual’s weight is muscle mass, the more sensitive the body will be to insulin. Muscle mass is efficient at handling glucose and keeping blood sugar levels steady.

This information tells us how important it is to keep body fat levels within a healthy range and that simply looking at body weight can be deceiving (ideally, you’d rather be both slim and fit, but being overweight and somewhat fit can still protect you more effectively from risk than if you are overweight and unfit).

Don’t know what your body fat is? Check with your local gym to see if they offer body fat testing (hint: NIFS and many of its worksite fitness sites do!). Some scales and other fitness tools will also measure body fat, but may have more of a margin of error.

In addition to your favorite forms of cardio, be sure to pump some iron, working all major muscle groups two to three times per week (as recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine). Obviously, prevention of type 2 diabetes is most desirable, but individuals with the condition can still benefit from a consistent strength training routine because it will help them make the most of the insulin that is produced. And, you’ll reap all those other good things that strength training does toward helping you achieve a leaner, healthier, happier body!

This blog was written by Jenna Pearson. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has issued new guidelines for the Quantity and Quality of Exercise for Developing and Maintaining Cardiorespiratory, Musculoskeletal, and Neuromotor Fitness in Apparently Healthy Adults. What exactly does this mean? Simply put, it means that fitness professionals now have a new framework to use when developing exercise programs.

If you think of exercise as medicine (which, in fact, it is!), personal trainers and corporate fitness centers are now using new guidelines for prescriptions of this miracle drug (including dosage and use).

Following are the recommendations for each type of fitness:

• Cardiorespiratory fitness is developed through training that improves the efficiency of the aerobic energy-producing systems and can improve cardiorespiratory endurance. The ACSM recommends apparently healthy individuals to partake in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise five days per week or 20 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise three days per week. This can be achieved by one continuous session per day, or multiple shorter sessions of at least 10 minutes in duration.
• Musculoskeletal fitness is developed through resistance/strength training. To have musculoskeletal fitness, you do not necessarily have to have great muscle strength. You should, however, train all major muscle groups 2 to 3 days per week, using 2 to 4 sets and 8 to 20 repetitions as the range for each exercise. A regimen including 8 to 12 different exercises should serve to exercise all major muscles in the body.
• Neuromotor fitness is “functional fitness,” and can be improved through a variety of balance, agility, coordination, and proprioception exercises (think yoga and Pilates). The ACSM recommends these exercises be incorporated into an exercise program 2 to 3 days per week for 20 to 30 minutes per session.

In addition to these recommendations, the ACSM also suggests that healthy adults participate in flexibility training at least 2 to 3 days a week. Similar to strength training, a flexibility routine should target all major muscle groups. Each stretch should be held 10 to 30 seconds (to the point of slight discomfort, but not pain) and should be repeated 2 to 4 times so that each muscle group is stretched for a total of 60 seconds.

Considering these guidelines, how would you rate your current fitness routine? If you are meeting the minimum requirements, keep up the great work! If not, remember that all of these requirements do not have to be met in one single exercise session. If you have an onsite fitness center, make sure you are taking advantage of all that your wellness center staff can offer you!

This blog was written by Mechelle Meadows. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

Fitness and orderly finances. Do they go together? Now try this one: poor health and chronic debt. I bet you can see that relationship more closely. Just as with our health, we need to be proactive about our money and keep our financial lives “in shape.”

Financial Problems Cause Stress

It’s no surprise that money, or lack of money, is one of the biggest causes of stress in the human life. Long-term stress can lead to a whole host of health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, loss of sleep, and depression. Just as you encourage your corporate wellness members to take action now and build healthy physical lifestyles, there are measures they can take to build the health of their finances.

Urge Corporate Wellness Clients to Focus on Their Workouts

This article reports that anywhere from 30% to 80% of employees in any given workforce are taking care of personal financial matters on company time. This means they are probably thinking about their financial dilemmas during their exercise time, too. Urge your corporate wellness members to stay focused on their workouts at the gym and block out distractions. This not only enhances the physical benefits of their workout, but also provides post-exercise mental stress relief.

Other Ways Corporate Wellness Can Help with Financial Worries

Encourage others to examine their resources and have gratitude for their finances, large or small. These positive feelings of contentment can be linked to better mental health.

Also, consider hosting an educational Lunch & Learn at your corporate fitness center, and invite a trustworthy financial consultant to speak. Giving people tips they can use on a daily basis to save money or showing someone how to set up a simple budget can alleviate stress and maybe sickness down the road.

Refer to this website for other “Small Steps to Health and Wealth.”

This blog was written by Dan Walker. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

Your new year’s resolution fell to the wayside. You set out to lose 20 pounds, start working out regularly, get more sleep, or any number of things. But after a few months (or maybe even a few weeks), you’re back to square one with nothing to show for it. You start out with the best of intentions, but your motivation to change has slowly faded away.

Sound familiar? If you’re like most Americans today, chances are you’ve set up honorable goals related to your health and well-being in the past, but had a hard time staying motivated and gave up shortly after starting. You had the right idea, but not the right strategy for achieving your goals.

Four Keys for Maintaining Fitness Motivation

When it comes to maintaining motivation, then, what is the key to helping you do so? There are four important things I’ve found in my own life that have helped me maintain motivation that I’d like to share with you.

• Have a plan. You won’t just magically arrive at your goal of losing 20 pounds or eating better. Make a plan and narrow down exactly how you will get there and what it will look like. Nothing worthwhile happens without a strategy and a plan.
• Minimize distractions. No matter what your goal might be, there are plenty of less important things that will try to get in the way. Make sure to periodically “clean out the closet” of your lifestyle. See what needs to stay and what needs to go. Anything that helps move you closer to your goal needs to stay, while anything that distracts you from it needs to go.
• Form a support network. Having a friend who has the same goal as you—whether it’s weight loss, eating less fast food, or getting to the gym three days a week—can help keep you on the right track. Now you know that if you give up, you let not only yourself down, but your companion in the journey as well. Letting others know your plan can help keep you accountable.
• Eliminate all-or-nothing thinking. Despite your best intentions, it’s inevitable that you will make some mistakes along the way. Don’t minimize your shortcomings and see them as unimportant, but don’t totally give up on your efforts after a mistake or two, either. See it as part of the process and don’t fall prey to wanting to give up the whole thing after one setback. There will be ups and downs along the way.

Don't Skip Any of These Fitness Motivation Tools

No matter how good your intentions are, chances are you won’t ever reach your goals and maintain them without following the four principles outlined above. You must have a plan in place, focus only on things that line up with your goals, have a network around you to support you, and allow for mistakes along the journey. If you skip any or all of these helpful tools, chances are you will still have trouble maintaining motivation along the way and will minimize your chances for success.

It may seem like a lot of work, but the old proverb, “All hard work leads to a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty,” couldn’t ring more true here, especially to those who have tried it all before.

This blog was written by Mechelle Meadows. Meet our blogging fitness specialists at the NIFS website.

We’ve all experienced fitness obstacles, health professionals included. It may be working through an injury or trying to set a new personal record, but for many corporate fitness clients, it may be as simple as finding the courage to step foot in a gym for the first time in years.

You need easy techniques to encourage your corporate wellness members to keep pushing for their goals and realize they have the power to control a big chunk of their health and well-being. Here are some of the most important things you can do as the motivating “team captain” of your corporate fitness center:

Always Use Encouraging Words

From the initial new-member orientation, come across as friendly and welcoming. Beyond that, stress to them that you are there to help, answer questions, and understand their individual situations. During group fitness classes or personal training sessions, be sure to use motivating words or phrases at the point of exercise when things get uncomfortable or tiring and the member wants to give up.

For some individuals, encouraging words are better received in written form—for example, a small note sent to congratulate them on a recent achievement or a touch-base e-mail to let them know you are still cheering them on. This way the message really sinks in each time the member sees the note or e-mail.

Help Set Realistic Fitness Goals

When you do a consultation with a member, ensure that his or her goals are realistic within a time frame. For example, for someone with a lofty goal of losing 50 pounds, split it into smaller chunks of 5 to 10 pounds each so that the uphill climb of weight loss doesn’t seem insurmountable.

Remember That Small Adjustments Can Add Up

Remind corporate fitness members that every step counts. Sometimes, as health professionals, we fall into the trap of trying to force too many life changes on a member too soon because we know the importance of all the elements. However, encourage members to initiate one new change a week and follow up to see how the adjustment impacted their well-being, getting them closer to their ultimate goal.

What motivational techniques or tips have been successful at your corporate fitness center?