New May session Tues-Thurs 6PM Webb Bridge Park Alpharetta

Our New Tuesday and Thursday Boot camp at Webb Bridge Park at the bottom of the big hill  is off to a great start. We have seen amazing fat loss from several of the new members is a few short weeks! The new class starts next week for May. 

We definitely need some boys! Poor Sean is a little lonely but pushing through the training sessions like a trooper. 

This class is a great mix of high school kids through middle aged adults. We play really hard and work even harder. At the end of the day the goal is to get what you came for- a fit, healthy body. We get it done and while putting the F-U in F-U-N. 

Workouts consists of cardio intervals with jump ropes, speed drills with cones, hill sprints, and various other circuit type training with resistance bands, kettle bells, light hand weights and body weight exercises. We do lots of lunges and burpies because they are my favorite! (and Jackie's too) I love to use props in the park environment like guardrail, park benches and a running track to vary workouts. The sessions are fast and effective for fat loss. 

We wanted to offer an alternative to 5am. I am so happy with the turn out and interest in this new class. I expect it will fill up in a few sessions. We had a great first month and are looking forward to building the group. Come on out and try a free class!

 

 

My Struggle with Insomnia: A personal Story...

I am using my health and fitness blog to tell a personal story about my own struggles with insomnia.  I know how essential sleep is and what a detriment I was doing to my health by ignoring my insomnia. I minimized my problem with falling a sleep and instead I tried to tough it out. I hope my story might help someone else get some relief sooner.

My insomnia began my senior year of high school. I would spend hours "trying" to fall asleep. I would lay in bed chasing my racing thoughts only to find myself in a panic, wide awake hiding from the clock that was facing away from my view on my night-stand. I tried everything from extreme exercise to Tylenol pm to shut down the committee that would hold my thoughts and my body hostage every night a I tried desperately to just go to sleep.

My boyfriend at the time would be sound asleep next to me in complete control.  He decided when he was going to sleep. Well that just pissed me off. I was harboring deep resentments towards his peaceful slumber. I envied his complete control. One time I was so angry that he was sleeping I through a shoe at him at 2 am.

I was barley functioning as a youg adult with no sleep. I loathed each night when it was time wrestle the blender of spoons that would soon be churning in my head. I avoided going to bed because I knew what was waiting for me. And the cycle began. I took copious amounts of ephedrine and caffeine to get me through my days as a college student. I drank at night to muffle the noise in my head.  I remember this vicious cycle like it was last week.

After I tried all the folk remedies East Tennessee had to offer: warm milk, honey and tea, Melatonin, Kava Kava, Jack Daniels. I remember this concoction well: 

1 tsp. chamomile flowers. 
1 tsp. hops. 
1 tsp. valerian root. 
1 cup of boiling water. 
Steep for 45 minutes, strain and drink 1 hour before bedtime.

None of this worked.

This went on for a few years until one day I sought advice from a doctor and she prescribed me Ambein. I slept. I woke up a brand new human being. I think she prescribed me a 7 day prescription. I was so afraid of not being able to sleep without it.

One day it just stopped. I cant seem to remember when but I started sleeping again with only periods of insomnia for most of my 20's and into my 30's. I only took Ambein for 7 days. Its like my internal clock had been reset and I was tired at night and alert during the day. (the alcohol and amphetamines required a different solution which I didn’t find until I was 28).

Its back. It started shortly after Riley was born. I began to have the racing thoughts, ruminating about the present, past and future and anxiously awaiting the time ticking away on the clock until it was 4:30 am when my Alarm would sound.

I started to recall the hell I went through in my late teens and early twenties. "Oh God, its back."But this time is different. I have a deep relationship with God that I nurture on a daily basis. I have a community of people that I love and service every day. My life is full and I am no longer chasing anything external. I kept fighting a losing battle. The anxiety always wins. I could not be perfect enough to beat my own insomnia. I needed to find a solution.  

Several months ago I started searching the internet for natural/home sleep aids. I polished my meditation skills, upped my practice to two times per day. I took Epson salt baths and each night I listened to deep relaxation pod-cast until I drifted off to sleep. And then I started to keep track of the time on the podcast and the thoughts began, "ok I have 22 min to fall asleep."  I began trying to control the process and there I was again up all night "trying to go to sleep."

I went to the Dr yesterday. Took an Ambein last night. I feel like a new human. 

The Dr suggested that my sleep cycle was reversed. The anxiety was caused by the repeated nights without sleep and exacerbated by the fear of never falling asleep. She suggested that the hormones that regulate the wake part of the sleep cycle were rising during the late afternoon and peaking at night. The sleep aid allows the hormones reset. (melatonin rising at night and cortisol in the morning)

Here is the damage I was doing to my body by not sleeping.

• Reduced performance and lack of concentration cause impaired learning.
• Depression. People who are depressed have shorter lengths of REM sleep. It is also a viscous circle. Depression may cause sleep loss and vice-versa.
• Increased mental illness
• Decreased immune system function
• Increased pain perception
• Decreased ability to metabolize glucose and an increased risk of diabetes.
• Less than five hours of sleep per night increases the risk of high blood pressure or worsening blood pressure. In a study at the University of Chicago, researchers found that for every hour sleep was reduced, the risk of high blood pressure increased by 37%.
• May trigger the release of stress hormones and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.
• An increased risk of breast and colon cancer. Melatonin fights abnormal cell growth, especially in breast cancer and colon cancer. Since melatonin is released at night, less sleep means less melatonin. Thus, a reduced cancer-fighting ability.
• Increased car accidents and occupational accidents Chronic or systemic inflammation can cause a variety of diseases and conditions.
• Weigh gain, inhibits weight loss

 If you are not sleeping, you are in effect starving your body of a basic right that it needs to function efficiently. So, go to bed and get your rest. Here is hoping I get mine again tonight. Night. Night.

Courtney Simon, MA

A New Study by ACE:Boot Camp Style Training Works!

By John Porcari, Ph.D., Kirsten Hendrickson, B.S., and Carl Foster, Ph.D., with Mark Anders

Fitness fads come and go, but boot-camp workouts are still among the most popular.

Back in the spring of 1998, the American Council on Exercise first spotted the rapid growth of instructor-led workouts based loosely on the calisthenics used (like push-ups, squat thrusts, punches, kicks, etc.) to whip new recruits into shape in the U.S. Army’s basic-training program. Ten years later, take a look at the class schedules of gyms and fitness centers across the country and you’ll still find boot camp. According to recent stats from the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, a trade organization for health clubs, 955 of its 3,306 member clubs offer boot camp–style fitness classes. And it’s not just hot in the gyms. A quick scan of the exercise videos offered on Amazon.com yields more than 30 different boot-camp videos.

"There’s a certain element of getting back to the basics and a more functional-training approach," says ACE’s chief science officer Cedric X. Bryant, Ph.D. "People are looking for different experiences. With boot camps, you’re giving them something outside the traditional club environment."

Maybe the boot-camp trend is still going strong because it’s not really trendy at all. The workout is simple and not tied to a single piece of equipment. Or maybe it’s the motivating team-oriented atmosphere that’s created as fellow exercisers ‘survive’ the workouts together.

Whatever the reason, boot camp remains wildly popular, yet surprisingly its efficacy has never been formally studied. "Boot camp is becoming more and more popular in the health club setting so obviously people want to know if they’re really going to get something out of it, and if it’s going to be worth their time," says Kirsten Hendrickson, a graduate student in exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin. "So we decided to take a look at it."

The Study

To analyze the health and fitness benefits of boot camp–style workouts, a team of exercise scientists from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Exercise and Health Program, led by John Porcari, Ph.D., and Hendrickson, recruited six men and six women ages 19 to 29.

All volunteers were given an exercise test on a motorized treadmill to determine each subject’s maximal heart rate(HR max) and maximal oxygen consumption (V• O2 max) to establish a baseline of fitness. Ratings of perceived exertion using the 6–20 Borg Scale, a measure of how hard subjects feel they’re exercising, were also recorded throughout the exercise testing.

Once that baseline was established, the subjects were invited back into the lab to view a 40-minute recorded boot-camp exercise video. Naturally there are many boot camp–style exercise videos on the market, so researchers reviewed a wide range of titles, eventually settling on The Method: Cardio Boot Camp with Tracey Mallett. "We chose that DVD because it has a good blend of aerobic movements and strength moves that you’d picture military guys doing at boot camp," notes Porcari. "Plus we wanted to pick one where people were taxed pretty hard because that’s what you picture when you think of boot camp."

The study volunteers were given a copy of the DVD to take home and practice until they felt familiar enough with the choreography to be able to follow along easily with the workout. At that point, they were asked to return to the lab for testing. Each subject was then outfitted with the Cosmed portable analyzer, a backpack and facemask apparatus that measures oxygen consumption and caloric burn. Heart rate and perceived exertion were also tracked every three minutes throughout the 40-minute workout.

The Results

After analyzing the data, researchers found that the average exerciser burns approximately 9.8 calories per minute during a typical boot-camp workout, which equals nearly 400 calories during the entire 40-minute boot-camp video studied (Table 1)

"The biggest benefit is you’re burning an average of 600 calories per hour," says Porcari. "That’s obviously going to help with weight loss, but you’re also getting the muscle-building benefit from pushups, arm curls and squat thrusts that you wouldn’t get just from going out for a fast walk or jog."

According to recommendations set by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), to enhance cardiorespiratory endurance individuals need to exercise at 70 percent to 94 percent of HR max and 50 percent to 85 percent of V• O2 max. Based upon the data collected in this study, subjects were exercising well within those recommended intensity levels. "On average, people were working at 77 percent of heart-rate max, which is considered moderate intensity, but it also gets as high as 91 percent, meaning, all these boot-camp workouts have peaks and valleys," Porcari explains. Figures 1 and 2 offer a visual representation of how heart rate and oxygen consumption varied by the minute as the test subjects followed the video from high-intensity moves like kicking and punching, down to low-intensity moves with the dumbbells, and back up again to high-intensity moves.

"These workouts are designed to be cyclical like that," he explains. "Boot camp is a good form of interval training because you get periods of high intensity interspersed with moves that tend to be lower in aerobic intensity but they serve a whole different purpose—to build muscle strength."

The Bottom Line

Boot camp is an excellent way to enhance aerobic capacity and help control body weight. "I think it’s a great workout with great variety," says Porcari. "It’s a good combination of aerobic exercise and muscle conditioning and it’s much more of a total-body workout than just going out for a run or bicycle ride."

But remember, not all boot-camp workouts are created equal, he warns. Some are heavy on cardio, while others emphasize martial arts–inspired movements or basic strength-training exercises. For best results, our researchers recommend picking a well-balanced program with equal helpings of aerobic movements and calisthenics. However, if you’re looking to improve in a particular area, you might consider looking for a boot-camp class or video that caters to your particular fitness weaknesses. For example, if you’d prefer build more upper-body strength and endurance, consider picking one with more push-ups, squat thrusts and similar moves.

"If people are looking for something that’s fun and variable that will increase their adherence to an exercise program, and, most importantly, burn a lot of calories," says Hendrickson, "boot camp would be a really great option."

Insulin: The big player in weight gain

Research on obesity is confirming what scientists have known for years: persistent weight problems are strongly associated with the chronically elevated insulin levels associated with a high carb diet.

Insulin is an important hormone secreted by the pancreas that controls glucose metabolism and glucose uptake by the cells. In other words, it helps keep your blood glucose stable by delivering any surplus to liver, muscle and fat cells. This is the way the cells can get access to glucose to use as energy and your blood glucose can stay within a normal range.

You probably understand that if we don’t consume a high carbohydrate diet (carbohydrates are transformed into glucose in the body), we need much less insulin to deal with it. The opposite is also true.

The problem with the western diet is that the amount of carbohydrates consumed is so high compared to what our ancestors were used to that our insulin is chronically high. This then triggers a chain reaction that we call the metabolic syndrome and weight gain is often one of the first signs.

The muscles and the liver can only store a certain amount of glycogen (stored glucose) at any given time. Once those stores are full, insulin has to put any excess glucose of the blood somewhere else. The glucose gets stored in the fat cells as triglycerides. This is the basics of how you store fat.

The story doesn’t end there though. Chronically elevated insulin also disrupts another hormone called Leptin. Leptin is a hormone that talks with the hypothalamus to signal hunger and energy reserves. When insulin is high all the time to deal with all the sugar, you get hungry and eat even more sugar even if your cells are overfed and don’t need more energy from food.

What happens next if the vicious cycle continues is your cells become resistant to the effects of insulin to protect themselves the damaging and inflammatory effects of too much glucose. Glucose then has trouble getting into the cells and more of it gets stored as fat, even when your cells are hungry and deprived. The problem is that your cells now don’t get the energy they would get from glucose, because they are resistant to insulin.

Your cells are now starving for food while sugar is being stored in the fat cells. Since your body needs energy and in the energy conservation optic, you get even more hungry and your energy levels fall while you gain weight.

Also note that excess fructose consumption (from sodas, fruit juices and anything with added sugar or high-fructose corn syrup) is also a big problem on the standard American diet and causes insulin resistance at the liver, which is very bad news. The focus of this article is not on fructose, but a whole article will be dedicated to the specific damage that fructose does. For now, just keep in mind that carbohydrate is less of a problem when fructose consumption is low, but in our present society about any kind of carbohydrate comes loaded with fructose.

People are sedentary and overeat because they are fat and not the other way around, just like teenagers who are not growing because they are overeating, but are overeating because they are growing. It’s not a defect in will-power or dedication, it’s a defect in ratios of macro-nutrients consumed which triggers an unnatural hormonal reaction.  The bigger your fat cells are the more they affect the hunger hormones and drive you to consume more calories.

It all boils down to this: Carbohydrates, especially simple carbs like sugar and starch, are quickly turned into sucrose by the body entering the blood stream quicker thereby causing the release of large amounts of insulin. The fewer carbs eaten, the less insulin is produced by the body, and the fewer calories are stored as fat. Less fat storage equals less weight gain and fewer carbs eaten equals less insulin in the blood and the body using its fat stores for fuel.

Drop the carbs, drop the insulin surge, drop the fat storage and regulate hunger. It’s a dynamic hormonal cycle that has as much to do with will power as growing taller.