Don't Neglect Your Stretching

Many of you have heard me on the thread to make sure you are taking that rest day to stretch. I truly believe it's so important to your overall success each round of whatever program you are doing. If you're using any of the Beach Body programs, you've already experienced stretching when you are about to work out and stretching when you're cooling down. There is a reason why we warm up a little (get the blood flowing) before we ever do any actual stretching.

I found this question and answer on a fitness blog that I thought you might find interesting.

Ask a Fitness Expert: The Great Stretching Debate
by Sarah Brown

Dear Sarah, I don't understand the debate about stretching. I used to stretch before a workout because when I am limber, I find it easier to run. Then I heard you aren't supposed to stretch before a workout as you could pull something when your body is "cold." How does this make any sense when there are workouts entirely focused on nothing but stretching? When should I stretch?
Many thanks,
Chris

Dear Chris,
While most fitness experts would agree that the best time to stretch is when your muscles are warm, there is stretching and then there is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g.

In recent years, stretching has been credited on its own as a form of exercise to increase health and well-being. Also, people are encouraged to stretch at their desks and on long airplane rides. And keep in mind, animals stretch instinctively. Ever watch dogs or cats wake up from a nap? They stretch their legs and torso before setting themselves in motion.

Light active stretches are an essential part of the warm-up before your workout. Active stretching uses motion and momentum to extend the muscle. Examples of active stretches include joint rotations (i.e. ankles, wrists, shoulders, waist etc), arm swings, and leg swings to get the blood moving. This site has some suggestions on how to warm-up.

The kind of stretching that could hurt your muscles before you work out is passive stretching. Stretching cold muscles can result in microscopic tearing of the tissue, which makes it difficult for your muscles to generate the power necessary for the exercise ahead. Save the passive stretching for after your workout.

Passive stretching extends the muscle in a held position for 30 seconds to 2 minutes after your workout and/or in between exercises. Passive stretching is the key to recovery of the muscle tissues that have been held under a continuous load.

Both active and passive stretching are forms of physical exercise that elongate the muscles.

The benefits include:
Increased physical efficiency and performance
Decreased susceptibility of injury
Increased muscle resiliency, coordination and power
Increased blood flow to the joint structures, and improved circulation
Improved posture and muscle balance
Enhanced nerve/muscle impulse coordination and velocity
Increased joint lubrication
Reduced physical stress

Improved mobility helps you to perform everyday tasks such as bending over and picking up a bag of groceries. Stretching feels good, and it sends you body a signal to relax. Don't we all need a little more of that?

Sarah

Looking For Single Xers to Star In the next P90X Infomercial

If you don't come to the Single Xers thread, this was posted yesterday. Get your story in if you would like to make it in the new P90X Infomercial. I think it would be really great if we could get one or two people in it.

It’s time again for a NEW P90X INFOMERCIAL! Ned Farr our producer of the P90X infomercial is going to be back hard at work putting together a sequel to P90X. I’m going to need the help of all the coaches to spread the word on this one!!! If you or a friend have had results with P90X and you have kept track of your transformation (progress photos, measurements, etc) please contact me ASAP! I’m going to need you to send all your photos to successpictures@productpartners.com, and if you can also type up a 1 page summary of how P90X positively affected your life as well. You can email your both your story and your photos to the same email box noted above. Alternatively you can email me at jscaturro@beachbody.com with any questions you may have.

Joseph ScaturroSuccess Stories
SpecialistBeachbody/Product Partners
jscaturro@beachbody.com

Study: Obesity Can Trim 10 Years Off Life

We all know that obesity can take away precious years off your life but here is pretty amazing evidence that shows how serious it is. What we are doing for ourselves and our families by training diligently is so important. If you are reading this and you are not on some type of workout program, it's time to make a change.

From the Associated Press March 17th 2009

Being obese can take years off your life and in some cases may be as dangerous as smoking, a new study says. British researchers at the University of Oxford analyzed 57 studies mostly in Europe and North America, following nearly one million people for an average of 10 to 15 years. During that time, about 100,000 of those people died.

The studies used Body Mass Index (BMI), a measurement that divides a person's weight in kilograms by their height squared in meters to determine obesity. Researchers found that death rates were lowest in people who had a BMI of 23 to 24, on the high side of the normal range.
Health officials generally define overweight people as those with a BMI from 25 to 29, and obese people as those with a BMI above 30.

The study was published online Wednesday in the medical journal, Lancet. It was paid for by Britain's Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and others.

"If you are heading towards obesity, it may be a good idea to lose weight," said Sir Richard Peto, the study's main statistician and a professor at Oxford University.
Peto and colleagues found that people who were moderately fat, with a BMI from 30 to 35, lost about three years of life. People who were morbidly fat — those with a BMI above 40 — lost about 10 years off their expected lifespan, similar to the effect of lifelong smoking.

Moderately obese people were 50 percent more likely to die prematurely than normal-weight people, said Gary Whitlock, the Oxford University epidemiologist who led the study.
He said that obese people were also two thirds more likely to die of a heart attack or stroke, and up to four times more likely to die of diabetes, kidney or liver problems. They were one sixth more likely to die of cancer.

"This really emphasizes the importance of weight gain," said Dr. Arne Astrup, a professor of nutrition at the University of Copenhagen who was not linked to the Lancet study. "Even a small increase in your BMI is enough to increase your risks for cardiovascular disease and cancer."
Previous studies have found that death rates increase both above and below a normal BMI score, and that people who are moderately overweight live longer than underweight or normal-weight people.

Other experts said that because the papers used in the study mostly started between 1975 and 1985, their conclusions were not as relevant today.

Astrup worried that rising obesity rates may reverse the steep drops in heart disease seen in the West.

"Obesity is the new dark horse for public health officials," he said. "People need to be aware of the risks they're taking when they gain weight."

Inspirational Stories

Occasionally I'm going to take the chance to share stories from my coachees. I feel that the more stories I can share, the more people I can inspire. I realize that some people are inspired by different people. Some people might not be able to relate to my story since I've been an athlete my entire life. Although they may look to me for guidance, my story might not resonate with them and inspire them to stay diligent. So I requested that my coachees send me their stories so that I can share them with everyone.

So I want to thank Heather for stepping up to be the first person to share her story. Her story does resonate with me since she has cancer prevalent in her family. Cancer is also a big factor in my family's medical history and it's one of the reasons I train as hard as I do.

If you feel comfortable with it, I would love for you to send me your story so that I might share it here to inspire other people to keep with us on this fitness journey.


Thanks again Heather for sharing and keep up the great work!!


I've been overweight my whole childhood (I got up to 198 lbs.), but lost weight the summer between sophomore & junior year of high school (down to 145 lbs.). As I've gotten older, the weight pretty much has stayed off, with some slight fluctuations. My goal was to be the healthiest I've ever been when I turned 30, & I am healthy & strong now! However, I'm not setting a time frame on my body being where I want it- just trying to get there by this summer, so I'm on the X to get me there. My mom passed away from Pancreatic Cancer Dec. 9, 2008, My grandpa died from bone cancer in 2004, & my mom's sister had uterine cancer in her 20's, but is now cancer free thank God. So, cancer has hit my mom's side of the family hard. My dad's side of the family battles heart disease & diabetes. I refuse to let any of those things happen to me. That's why I'm on this journey.

A Request from Tony Horton

Tony Horton asked to pass this along:

Good News
By Tony Horton

So I'm watching the News with Brian Williams last night and at the end of the broadcast Mr. Williams mentions that with all the bad news lately the NBC Nightly News is looking for more Good News stories. There are tens thousands of good news stories in Facebook and here in the BeachBody message boards, so I think it's time we all team up and let Brain and the rest of the country know what's going on. Go to the link below and tell your good news story. Collectively we can help more people get fit and healthy and certainly make a dent in the bad news.

http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/03/04/1820270.aspx

Please copy and paste this note and spread the good news!

Peace,Tony

I know getting fit is hard. I think sometimes people think it's easy for me since I've always been pretty fit due to the fact I grew up playing soccer and have been an athlete all my life. The fact is, I too have gone thru long spells where I didn't work out. It hurts to get back into shape. I know how hard it is for me when I haven't worked out for 3-6 months or even a year. I can't even imagine the pain people must go thru when they are overweight or haven't worked out for years much less the people that have never worked out.

But I've witnessed the human body do amazing things when it's trained diligently and fueled correctly. The problem with this is that it HURTS! Humans are really good at shying away from pain. What's funny though is that people will shy away from acute pain but dwell in the long lasting dull pain of not working out. If we can just get ourselves to fight thru the hour of pain a day, the 24 hours a day of pain that we deal with when don't work out, starts to go away.

Believe me...I know it's tough. It sucks sometimes. It hurts but the results are priceless. Tony blogged today and said it well. I'm going to leave you with his words. Keep Working!!

Here's The Thing
By Tony Horton

Life with exercise creates a completely different journey than a life without it. Making the time for exercise means that you're setting an intention to have a great life. Life without exercise means you're setting an intention to miss out on a better life. The quality of your life improves with exercise and it will get worse without it. Period! Your weight loss is a minute piece to the overall health and fitness puzzle. Every time you exercise you improve your fitness, healthy and quality of life. You always feel good afterward and you allow your mind and body to become less vulnerable to illness and injury. Every day you decide NOT to exercise your health, fitness and quality of life diminishes. You become more vulnerable to illness and injury and the energy and enthusiasm (feeling good) for a better life is not there. This is true for everyone. No exceptions.

Make a plan, stick to the plan and do it... forever!

How Do You Train?

So I was speaking with one of my cousins yesterday and she was saying that she was substituting running for some of the P90X workouts. She felt because she sweat more when she ran that it was a better workout to lose weight. I told her that she probably was just not bringing it hard enough when she was doing the routines because I felt this type of training is so much more effective when you're trying to get fit and subsequently lose weight.

I found a pretty interesting article that I think makes this point and really drives home why so many of us have gotten such great results with P90X and the diligent type training we get from the BeachBody products.

The Truth About Cardio Training

Steady pace endurance cardio training is a widely recommended mainstream method for prevention of heart disease or weight loss. How often have we heard the medical establishment and certain health professionals encourage us to perform 30 minutes of steady pace cardio, 3-4 times per week, maintaining the heart rate at a moderate level? Before accepting this notion, it is worth considering recent scientific research that indicates that endurance cardio work may not be as effective as it is sometimes perceived to be.

First of all, consider that our physiology, like that of most animals is optimized to perform physical activity in bursts of exertion followed by recovery. In other words, a stop-then-go series of activities as opposed to endurance orientated physical activities. Most sports (with the exception of endurance running, cycling or swimming) are based on physical variability in the movements, and short bursts of exertion followed by a recovery period.

Recent research is pointing out that this physical variability is one of the critical aspects to consider in your training, especially if you are seeking to achieve a lean body. Consider it this way, a sprinter who engages in short burst then recovery training possesses a lean, muscular, and powerful physique. Contrast this body type with that of a marathon runner, still very lean, but almost emaciated.

Also, consider the benefits that physical variability has as an internal effect within our body. Scientist have found that variable cyclic training is linked to increased production of anti-oxidants. This is combined with an anti-inflammatory response and a more efficient nitric oxide response, leading to better cardiovascular fitness. In regards to reducing body fat, cyclic training is also highly beneficial due to the fact that it induces an increased metabolic rate.

This is important when you realize that excessive steady endurance exercise (sometimes defined as greater than 60 minutes per session most days of the week) increases the production of free radicals in the body. It can also lead to degenerated joints, reduced immune function, and most alarmingly - muscle wasting. Not really recommended if you are seeking great body tone.
When you undertake endurance training, you are only training the heart at one specific heart rate range. This doesn’t help the heart respond to various every day stress. Variable cyclic training on the other hand teaches the heart to firstly respond to, and then recover from, a variety of demands. When you train the heart to rapidly increase and then rapidly decrease, it will be less likely to fail when you need it. This is vitally important as stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to increase rapidly.

Variable cyclic training involves a recovery period in between bursts of exertion. This recovery period is vitally important for the body to develop a healthy response to an exercise stimuli. This is an aspect you don’t get in steady state endurance training.

What’s the best form of cyclic training?
Well, most competitive sports are naturally comprised of highly variable stop-and-go motion. Here’s some examples:
* Football
* Sprinting
* Basketball
* Soccer
* Tennis
* Weight training
* High intensity interval training (this is where you vary between high and low intensity intervals on cardio equipment)

To summarize, the potential benefits of variable cyclic training compared to endurance training are as follows:
* Improved cardiovascular health
* Better body tone
* Anti-oxidant production
* Improved immune function
* Reduces joint wear and tear and muscle wasting
* Increased residual metabolic rate
* Increased capacity for the heart to handle stress

It's Easier Than You Think But Don't Drive Yourself Nuts

Even for someone like me that didn't have a lot of weight to lose, it was amazing to me how big a part nutrition does play in getting fit. I truly realize now how hard it actually is to get great results if you're not eating clean. I took the first round of P90X and really did not take the nutrition part of the program seriously. I had convinced myself that I was not going to be one of those fanatical people "counting calories" but after my first round, I got pretty descent results. It was then, I realized that I could really take this to the next level.

Finding out about http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ made a HUGE difference because that made it so much easier. (check out the video tutorial on how to set this up) Even though I am more focused on what I eat, I'm not driving myself nuts with every little detail. That's why it was refreshing to find this answer that Tony posted to a question he got about a certain diet percentage. Now to be fair, I'm pretty sure Tony has a personal chef now and so he never has to worry about counting calories but I'm pretty sure the years before he made it huge, he probably ate this way.

So my point is, you can get serious about the nutrition without going over board. You don't want to replace the stress you are relieving by working out with a the stress of getting the diet "perfect".

2. What do you think of the 40/30/30 nutrition program? Submitted by "RustyEMT"

Tony's Answer:

Rusty,
I'm not a nutritionist so I can only give you a laymen's interpretation for why the 40/30/30 eating program works for some people. I've never been one to closely count calories or monitor portions of my food. I'm very old school that way. I find that focus on these kinds of numbers unnecessarily complicates life and can lead to too much time spent on things that make my eating experiences less enjoyable. I'm not saying that the 40/30/30 eating plan is a waist of time by any means. Some people like breaking things down in categories that way. They also enjoy measuring every inch of their body and jumping on the scale 5 times a day. That's just not me.
I was reading this month's Nutrition Action Healthletter and the title article is called, "How To Get A Gut." This brilliantly simple article explained how we make ourselves fat. There are 8 things many of us do every day that lead to poor health and weight gain. There was very little mention of calories or percentages or popular diet philosophies. It talked about changing to a healthy lifestyle. More healthy foods, less junk/empty calorie food, and adding physical activity. Period. Lack of physical movement was first on the list. A combination of cardiovascular exercise and resistance training. Funny, I've heard that somewhere before.

The second thing on the list was EAT LESS! Duh! You can't eat like you did when you were young, unless you are fit and strong. Thirdly, stop eating crap. Cookies, cakes, pies, doughnuts, croissants are crap. Don't eat it. Number 4 is calories from beverages. Frappuccinos, soda pop (even diet soda) do not satiate. Healthy, high-fiber food that absorbs water makes you less hungry later. Beverages that contain empty calories trick you into eating more. Yikes! Number 5 is eating out. You have no idea how a chef in a restaurant prepares your food. Butter, oil, salt, etc... The unhealthy choices at the local deli are far worse then the stuff you make at home. Find healthy dinning establishments or stick to the veggies when eating in unfamiliar territory.
Six is Trans Fat. Thank the Lord that Trans Fat is be banned in some big cities around the country. The problem is that it's still buried in pastries, pie crusts, biscuits and frozen pizza. Studies have shown that even diets low in calories but high in trans fat cause excess weight gain. Turns out that this nasty stuff interrupts normal fat storage and the body's ability to burn fat. Seven on the list is not so much about lack of restraint or willpower but something called "disinhibited" eating. If it's there or offered you eat it. You subconsciously or consciously for that matter surround yourself with bad food. You bring it home from the grocery store, eat it at parties when you show up hungry and continue to eat at restaurants that don't have any healthy alternatives. Number eight is lack of sleep. The fact is that when you sleep less you want to eat more. Turns out that sweets and simple carbs in particular are what people with less than 6 hours a night crave the most.

You ask about 40/30/30 and you get this. Now you understand what works for me and thousands of other people in this community who just followed these common sense rules. I honestly believe that it's as simple as a constant mix of different kinds of exercise combined with healthy food choices. This is what makes for a happy productive life. Isn't that the most important thing anyway?