Wow...I have been seriously neglecting this blog...I am so sorry!
In order to help, why don't people send me updates on things that they want to learn about. I do research and look up what I've heard before posting I promise, so I'd really find that helpful. I have been trying to keep up on my regular blog, but since I just got done with the musical last night and I work more than twice the number of hours this week as I did the last few weeks, I'm hard pressed to find time :/
The time for my test is drawing near and I'm realizing that I'm not making nearly good enough progress on my studying so I also need to start doing that daily, which will help with my posting, since I will have information that I will have wondered about that I can post!
I'm super sorry guys! I'll just have to do better! A new challenge? Any thoughts?
I'm sure that many of you have already heard many of the statistics concerning what we call chronic diseases. For those of you who don't know chronic disease is defined as a "incurable illness or health condition that persists for a year or more, resulting in functional limitations and the need for ongoing medical care". This definition goes so far as to include cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and even allergies and asthma. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2006 chronic diseases were five of the top six causes of death in the United States, of these nearly 80% of those caused by cardiovascular disease and cancer (over 50%) could have been prevented by a healthier lifestyle (1). We hear all the time about how our schools are getting less and less healthy and the obesity rate in children is increasing. Over nine million of today's young people are obese or over weight, and it has been predicted that this nearly 1/4 of all American children will be overweight by 2015. The issue with this shows itself in the health of the nation. It has been proven that excessive body weight has a very high probability of leading to chronic diseases later on in life as well as a general decrease in the quality of a person's life.
Now what I'm doing here is not saying that we should all be super skinny, that's not the point here at all! However, if anything other than numbers can be taken away from this then I hope that people understand that it is very important to monitor your health, a healthy lifestyle is something that we can all live with and is something that is, thankfully, becoming more and more popular throughout the nation. Hopefully, we can decrease these percentages of overweight and obese children, and a great example that is set for them by their parents. I also understand that a healthy lifestyle isn't always possible or easy. But I will tell you that if you are willing to put just a little more effort into making homemade meals and eating closer to the correct portion size can make a big difference. At my house we have meatless mondays (well, I'm vegetarian so I'm always meatless, but none the less) and even just trying new foods and replacing some of the unhealthy snacks with healthier ones or even no snacks when we realize we are bored and not hungry. Why not give it a try? It will not hurt if it is done right! Keep that in mind!
Good luck and good health to you all! :)
As you may have heard, I'm getting ready to take the CPT exam, either in September or October (yes, I'm going to need that long to study...). CPT stands for a Certified Personal Trainer, which is what I am aiming to be. I got my study book today, which is a quite large textbook that goes over everything a CPT should know and everything I will need to know for the exam (all in all, quite a lot of information), but I am super excited to get started and began reading it today. I wanted to share a little bit that I learned in the first chapter.
This first section is about the history of personal training, starting in the 1950s with the men's fitness centers, which were called 'gyms'. Women's centers were brought about in the 1960s and were referred to as 'figure salons'. The men's centers concentrated on body and muscle building, while the women's concentrated on figure and weight loss (in many people's minds, this is not too much different than how we stereotypically portray genders at the gym). Similar to today's advertised workout tools, there were many different machines and accessories that people would use in order to help attain the desired results. For women, there were two machines that were mentioned in my studying. The first being the rolling machine which was supposed to roll away the fat, and the second was a jiggle machine, which was supposed to jiggle away the fat especially from the thighs.
I looked for a video of either of these two machines but there weren't really many that showed what I had wanted so here's an old exercise video from that time. This was the original television fitness show called The Jack LaLanne Show. Enjoy!
So I missed my deadline for the knee-up challenge, but I will have you know that I got quite close! I can now do 15 knee-ups before having to drop down. So I didn't quite make my challenge :( But now I also know to do a slightly easier challenge :P At least for now. I also finally got my boot off!! This means I am back to bike riding and most workouts, minus running. I should be able to start my running again by the end of July, which is super exciting!! :D
