Tis the season

I've been super busy lately gearing up for 2009 at NPPT. We all know that the New Year brings with it goals of smaller pants and leaner arms. For those techies out there who love to chart and track every lb, check out Skinnyr.com. They have a cool weight loss chart and some other tools for tracking every pound.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Get Off of Your Butt, excessive sitting really sucks. Not to mention when your typing at the speed of a 1st grader you will be on your keister for a long time (I know.. I am the only person under 60 years old to use the word keister). Needless to say, my dead lift and row weights have not been stellar. This is just another reminder that your lifestyle activities need to be factored into your exercise program.


Rick Mayo

Lose 25 lbs in 6 Weeks!

Congrats to Laurie McFadden, the winner of our 4th annual Fall Back to Fitness weight loss challenge. Each year we sponsor the challenge just before the holidays so that our clients have the opportunity to lose some body fat BEFORE the holidays roll in.

Laurie was able to lose 25 lbs in only 6 weeks! This may seem excessive based on the "2 lbs a week" rule that seems to be commonplace in the fitness industry. Strangely enough, I have never read any solid evidence to support that someone can only lose 2 lbs a week safely and without a rebound effect. Sadly, if something is repeated often enough on TV or in magazines, it just becomes fact. We have seen many of our clients lose more than 2 lbs of fat a week early on and keep it off over several years with the proper strategy and a little motivation.

The key, of course, is nutrition. Laurie was able to lose fat training with weights 3 days a week. Her workouts consisted of full-body weight circuits and lasted from 30-40 minutes. Laurie is rehabilitating a painful lower back condition so the workouts were moderate by our standards. Here Laurie talks a little about her motivation and her secret to success:



Rick Mayo

Get Off of Your Butt

When our facility opened 17 years ago we had over six times the equipment in our facility than we do currently. Not to mention that our facility was one third smaller than it is now. Why? Great question!

There is a mountain of irrefutable scientific evidence to support staying off of your butt when you workout. Here are just a few reasons to never sit down when you exercise:

• Posture- We already spend way too much time in a seated position. Prolonged sitting promotes a head forward, shoulder rounded posture. The last thing you want to do in the gym is promote more bad postural habits by sitting down for all of your exercises. Read: AVOID EXERCISE MACHINES!!!

• Calorie Expenditure- You are going to burn far more calories when you use your legs and core musculature to support your body while you lift. Involving more muscles means higher energy requirements. You need to burn more than you take in to lose fat.

• Flexibility- When you sit you are shortening your hamstrings and hip flexors. These areas are normally very tight on most adults. By staying on your feet and mimicking primal movements (squatting, lunging, pushing, and pulling), you are essentially undoing some of the damage caused by excess sitting.

• Stability- Standing exercises challenge your ability to stabilize external forces. We have seen many machine trained adults who could lift significant weight on a machine, but couldn’t muster half of that weight while mimicking that same movement with free weights. So you need to improve your balance? Get on your feet!

Let’s face it, it’s just easier to simply slog your way through a machine circuit or sit down and perform arm curls. But, just like most things in life, if it’s too easy, you’re probably not getting any benefit.

Rick Mayo