Exercise Benefits by the Numbers

At CORE Fitness, we talk a lot about the benefits for exercise (can you blame us?), but here are some numbers from the American College of Sports Medicine even we didn’t know about:

27%    The amount by which regular exercise lowers the risk of stroke

50%   The amount by which exercise lowers the incidence of diabetes

40%   The amount by which exercise lowers the incidence of high blood pressure

50%  The reduction in mortality and breast cancer occurrences from regular exercise

60%  The lowered risk of colon cancer from regular exerrcise

40%  The reduction in risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease

To improve your health and decrease the odds of developing these  and other diseases, try any of our group exercise classes.

NEW @ CORE: Ultimate Barre Workout

At CORE Fitness, we’re always keeping our eye on new developments in the fitness world. We watch as,  each year, some hot, new, fitness fad comes and then, soon after, goes.

But some fitness formats don’t fade. They stay on and become a part of the established fitness realm. Why? Because they work. They produce results–they make you feel better, get stronger, more flexible, help you slim down, burn calories, or tone up. Good examples are Pilates Reformer which has been around for about 90 years and Zumba, which although it’s been around about a decade, has caught on worldwide because it’s so much fun getting fit when it feels like you’re at a dance party.

One of the formats we’ve seen take hold in the last decade (even though it’s been around for 40 or 50 years) is the barre workout ballet dancers have been using for centuries.  In recent years, fitness professionals have adopted this dancer’s workout and added in elements of Pilates for additional core strength and yoga for added flexibility.

The result is a fitness format that will help you lose inches, firm up, develop core strength, increase flexibility and energize you. You will learn proper core alignment and develop sculpted, supple muscles.

That’s why we feel it’s time to bring a barre workout into the studio and it’s what we’re doing beginning Tuesday, February 7 at 5:30 pm in a new, pilot program.

Initially, the Ultimate Barre Workout will be part of unlimited group exercise, but this will soon transition to a paid, premier program, similar to our Pilates Reformer classes on pay-per-class basis.  So, come and get it, while the gettin’s good!

The Day Planner for Your Weight Loss Plan

You’ve heard it before, to lose weight, “Eat less and exercise more.” But how much less, how much more? And when?

The editors of Men’s Health magazine have put together what they think is a pretty good (and simple) way to attack your day from a weight loss perspective, what they call “A Perfect Day of Weight Loss.” Here’s what they recommend:

7:30 a.m.: 11 minutes of exercise

Yup, just 11 minutes, first thing in the morning, can boost your metabolism–that fat-blasting miracle–all day long. Do some upper body and some lower body with weights that challenge you, but don’t overwhelm you.

8:00 a.m.: It’s Breakfast, Not BreakFEAST

Breakfast is important to be sure, but Americans have a tendency to eat too much. Be conscious of, and stringent about portion control. If one cup of cereal meets the portion size on the side of the box, measure out one cup, no more, no less. Same goes for the milk.

10:00 a.m.: Third inning stretch      If yours is an office job and you sit on your keester most of the day, spend the next 30 minutes doing your work standing up. It increases circulation and metabolism.

1:00 p.m.: Soup’s On

Start lunch with a bowl of soup, almost any kind. Studies show you’ll consume 20  percent fewer calories overall if you start your midday meal with a bowl of soup.

2:00 p.m.: Spearmint, Peppermint, or Bubble?

Although researchers aren’t exactly sure why, chewing gum also reduces caloric intake, up to three hours after you’ve had the gum.

6:00 p.m.: Dinner Is Served

Studies show that when dinner is served on a plate and eaten at a dinner table–not watching TV–fewer calories are consumed and you feel fuller afterward.

6:30 p.m.: Savor Dessert

Limit your dessert calories to 10 percent of your daily intake, but don’t deprive yourself of your sweet treat, something which can lead you to overeat later.

11:00 p.m.: Hit the Sack

A 16-year-long study at Harvard found that people who sleep five hours or less per night gain an average of two pounds per year compared to those who got a solid eight hours of sleep.

To this plan, we would add just one thing: If you want to lose weight faster, add some more cardio exercise, like the kind we offer in our Group Exercise classes at CORE Fitness. With just three one-hour classes added to your weekly routine, anything from Zumba to U-Jam, you can boost your fat-burning regime by as much as 2,000 calories per week, another 1/2 pound or more toward your goal.

5 Best Fat-Burning Foods

Some folks come into CORE Fitness just to burn fat. That’s fine. Lots of our cardio classes can help you do just that.

But exercise is only part of the equation when it comes to burning fat. Eating right is the other part of the equation. While everyone (or almost everyone) knows you won’t shedding pounds by dunking doughnuts or noshing on French fries, many people still wonder which foods are best when it comes to helping burn calories and thus losing weight. Here are 5 foods experts say increase metabolism and thus help the body burn fat the fastest:

Whole grains It takes twice as many calories to break down the fibers in whole grains, such as oatmeal and brown rice.

Lean meats Beef or chicken burn up about 30 percent of the calories they contain just in the digestion process.

Low-fat dairy products Low-fat cheeses are still rich in vitamin D and calcium which sustain muscle mass and muscle mass helps sustain increased metabolism.

Green tea A compound in green tea, EGCG, temporarily speeds metabolism. Drinking four cups a day can help you shed as much as six pounds in eight weeks according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Lentils Lentils are rich in iron. Iron deficiencies can slow metabolism. One cup of lentils contains 20 percent of the average daily minimum requirement of iron.

Hot peppers Yes, we know this is #6. Consider it a bonus, especially if you like spicy food. Capsaicin, the compound in peppers that cranks up the heat, also boosts metabolism and burns fat.

At CORE Fitness Studio, we’ll help with the exercise part of your weight loss program. What you eat is up to you.

Get Fit! 5 Tips to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

Just about every last one of us is guilty of it. First, we promise not to overdo it over then holidays, and then the pumpkin pie comes along. Then, comes New Year’s Day and we make those lose weight-get fit-live healthier resolutions. And then, for many of us, as the days slip by, we fall off the wagon and the resolutions become a faded memory.

It doesn’t have to be that way. At CORE Fitness, lots of folks come in and stick with the program all year-round, year in and year out. Here’s what the experts recommend when it comes to keeping those weight loss, fitness resolutions:

1. Set a Goal    Just saying, “I want to lose weight,” is not specific enough. Set an exact goal, such as “I want to lose 10 pounds.”

2. Make It a Reasonable Goal   For many people, saying “I want to lose 100 pounds,” is just not only not reasonable, it’s hard to fully understand what that means.

3.  Break It Up Into Manageable Chunks   Start with 10 pounds. Then, when you achieve that, resolve to lose 10 pounds more. Then, 10 more.

4. Focus on the Positive    No one’s perfect all the time. If you take a misstep along the way, don’t say “I failed.” Instead, focus on what you’ve achieved so far. Try, “I’ve lost 7 pounds so far,” then get back on the horse and keep at it.

5. Have a Backup Plan Ready    When those unproductive thoughts creep into your head, like “I don’t want to go to the gym,” be prepared to replace it immediately with something productive, like “I want to lose weight, I want to get fit. I want to be healthy.” Don’t leave any room for the negative.

We’ve added six new class formats and 10 new classes to CORE Fitness group exercise schedule. Whether it’s time for your New Year’s resolution or just another great day of fitness, we’ve got a class for you. Come on in.

Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2012

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has released the results of its annual survey to predict the fitness trends we’ll see in the coming year. The ACSM is careful to distinguish between a fad (temporary) and a trend (permanent for the foreseeable future), so it’s easy to tell what’s likely to be around for a while and what’s just some infomercial wannabe.

For the fifth year in a row, the #1 trend is to have educated and experienced fitness professionals leading the way.  The new addition to this particular trend is the term “certified,” such as those certifications offered by the leaders in group exercise, ACE and AFAA, and such as the instructors at CORE Fitness have.

Also in the Top 10, strength training, fitness programs for older adults, exercise and weight loss, core training, group exercise, Zumba, personal training, and functional training. In fact, at CORE Fitness, we offer 9 of the Top 10 fitness trends for 2012.

Try our Zumba classes (5 per week), Pilates and mat Pilates classes (more than 50 per week), Pure Strength or Power Body, and any of our group exercise classes (30 per week) to launch your 2012 fitness regime and make 2012 your fittest year yet!

What’s So Great About Cardio-Kickboxing?

We’ve recently transitioned from one cardio-kickboxing program to another here at CORE Fitness. Not that there was anything wrong with our old cardio kickboxing program, there really wasn’t. But, when circumstances allowed us to bring in one of the original—and best—cardio kickboxing programs, the one that inspired our founder and chief fitness officer, Nanci, to earn the title TKB Queen around our house, we took the opportunity to do it.

The TKB, for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Turbo Kick Boxing and it is the brainchild of Chalene Johnson, whose infomercials you may have seen all over TV. And, although Chalene has become an industry unto herself, TKB remains at the heart of it.

We chose TKB because this cardio-kickboxing program provides everything you’d want in a great group exercise workout:

Fat Blaster TKB, especially in the “Turbo” rounds, blasts fat, particularly in the mid-section. Put your heart into a TKB class and you can burn up to 500 calories.

Ab, Arms, and Thigh Toner Because so much of TKB involves kicks and lots of torso-twisting punches, your abs will grow stronger with every class you take

Coordination Called the “sweet science,” boxing requires excellent eye-hand coordination, and TKB is no different. Over time, you will gain coordination throughout your body.

Stress Reduction Any form of cardio exercise helps raise your endorphin levels and, somehow, through the miracle that is our bodies, those endorphins and all those kicks and punches help melt the everyday stresses away.

But best of all, TKB, with its high energy music and our motivational instructors, is fun. And, as any exercise specialist will tell you, anytime you can make exercise fun, you are much more likely to stick with the program. So, check out our Group Exercise schedule, and find one of our TKB classes, to turbo-charge your workout.

Top 10 Aerobic Exercise Benefits

We doubt this CORE Fitness list will make David Letterman’s Top 10 List and if it does, we did something wrong, but it’s hard to go wrong with exercise. You can overdo it (but that’s another story) or you can do it wrong (don’t worry, we’ll show you how to do it right), but otherwise, exercise and keeping fit is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your loved ones.

Here are 10 ways aerobic exercise will improve your health:

1. More Stamina Whether for work, fun, or play (or even, you know…), increased stamina reduces fatigue.
2. Weight Management Eat a nutritionally balanced diet and exercise regularly and you will keep those pounds from adding up.
3. Fewer Health Risks Study after study shows that aerobic exercise is effective at reducing the risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
4. Stronger Heart A strong, fit heart can beat slower and still pump blood more efficiently than a weak heart. Improved blood flow improves overall health.
5. Vanquish Viruses Aerobic exercise fortifies your immune system, making you less prone to colds and flu viruses.
6. Manage Chronic Illness Whether you’ve had a heart attack or high blood sugar, aerobic exercise helps maintain a healthy heart and control blood sugar levels.
7. Conquer Cholesterol Aerobic exercise boosts HDL (the “good” cholesterol) levels and lowers LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) levels. The result: Less plaque buildup in arteries, lowered risk of heart attack or stroke.
8. Makes Every Day Independence Day Staying active with aerobic exercise keeps your mind sharp, your muscles strong, and can help you maintain your independence as you age.
9. Mood Enhancer Aerobic exercise has been shown to reduce depression, lower stress and anxiety, and help you relax.
10. Live Long and Prosper Plenty of research supports the notion that people who do aerobic exercise regularly live longer than their sedentary counterparts.

CORE Fitness has plenty of ways to work some aerobic exercise into your workout, all while making fitness, easy, fun, and affordable. Come on in, we’ll show you how.

Too Old for Pilates? We Think Not.

People coming in to CORE Fitness often want to know if they are too old to take one of our Pilates Reformer classes.

We tell them about our members who are 80-years-old and up, doing Pilates Reformer with us. So, what does that tell you?

What it tells us is that Pilates Reformer is for just about anyone looking for a workout that will help you get fit no matter what fitness level you’re starting at.

Pilates Reformer is designed to help build core strength while improving balance and flexibility, because it improves range of motion, relieves back pain and joint stress, because it increases neuromuscular coordination and enhances mobility, it’s perfect for people of all ages, of course, but especially for senior citizens.

Because our Pilates Reformer instructors provide modifications based on your abilities, and because our Reformers are low to the ground, as long as your physician indicates you are ready for exercise, a Pilates Reformer class at CORE Fitness is for people of practically any age. We’ve had clients from Olympic athletes to one who was 92-years-old!

So, come see what improved balance, better posture and flexibility can do for you with a Pilates Reformer class at CORE Fitness today. We are Silicon Valley’s leading Pilates Reformer provider with more classes than any other studio.

NEW@CORE: Power Body, Pure Strength, Turbo Kickboxing

We’ve added some new classes at CORE Fitness starting this week for those of you who like  to get it all done at once, that is to say you want the most effective and efficient workout possible.

New to our schedule:

Pure Strength is a high intensity total body workout, using functional movements to strengthen muscles, increase endurance, and burn fat.  Each class is different to keep your body balanced and guessing.  See results fast with hard work and consistent effort.

Power Body takes off where Body Pump left off. A high-energy cardio-strength workout, you will get a total body workout in 60 minutes using barbells and weight levels you choose.

Turbo Kickboxing (TKB) continues the cardio-kickboxing tradition we began with Body Combat but (if you can believe it) with even more intensity.  A little more dance-oriented with a fat-blasting Turbo round at the end of every class designed to strength your core and burn up to 1,000 calories per hour.

See our Group Exercise schedules online for the latest updates.