Apogee Personal Training : News http://apogeepersonaltraining.com/ en-gb This site is powered by e107, which is released under the terms of the GNU GPL License. John Niarchos - johnniarchos@nospam.com johnniarchos@nospam.com Mon, 21 May 2012 01:14:32 -0400 Mon, 21 May 2012 01:14:32 -0400 http://backend.userland.com/rss e107 (http://e107.org) 60 Apogee Personal Training : News http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/e107_images/button.png http://apogeepersonaltraining.com/ 88 31 Search Search Apogee Personal Training query http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/search.php Phys Ed: How to Fix a Bad Tennis Shoulder http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.9.2
September 8, 2010, 12:01 am
Phy Ed: How to Fix a Bad Tennis Shoulder
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Thomas Northcut/Getty Images
For a study published a few years ago in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers at the High Performance National Training Center in Argentina X-rayed the shoulders of 18 elite older tennis players, both men and women. Each of the 18, between the ages of 51 and 75, had at one time played professionally, and all were still active in tennis, as either  competitors or teachers.
None had experienced any unusual shoulder pain or problems. But when radiologists reviewed the players’ X-rays, they found signs of osteoarthritis, or loss of joint cartilage, in a third of the players’ dominant shoulders (generally the right). Shoulder X-rays from an age-matched group of Argentines who didn’t play tennis turned up arthritic changes in only 11 percent of the group. With understandable circumspection, the authors, operating under the auspices of the Argentine Tennis Association, concluded that years of “intensive tennis practice may be a predisposing factor for the development of mild degenerative articular changes in the dominant shoulder.”
Playing tennis, in other words, might be gnawing away at the joint.Shoulder problems may not be the most talked-about condition in tennis. Most of us are more familiar with tennis elbow, tennis knee, tennis toe and, lately, Serena Williams’s lacerated foot. But aching shoulders are actually among the most common overuse tennis injuries, being both democratic and insidious, robbing professionals and duffers of playing time and comfort.

 “Tennis is pretty hard on the shoulder,” said Todd Ellenbecker, a physiotherapist in Scottsdale, Ariz., and director of sports medicine for the ATP World Tour, the men’s professional tennis circuit.The difficulty lies in the joint’s construction and the demands placed on it by the modern ballistic tennis serve.
A 2009 review article in Sports Medicine reported that, according to electromyographic measurements of the forces generated during overhand motions, like the baseball pitch or tennis serve, up to 120 percent of a person’s body weight can slam through the rotator cuff, located at the back of the shoulder, during a pitch or serve. The rotator cuff then has to work as “the brakes of the shoulder,” said Paul Borsa, an associate professor in the department of applied physiology and kinesiology at the University of Florida in Gainesville who has studied shoulder injuries, absorbing these forces and slowing the lacerating forward momentum of the serving arm.Unfortunately, many tennis players have relatively weak rotator cuff muscles.

“Playing tennis builds up the muscles in the front of the shoulder, but it doesn’t build up those in the back very much,”  Mr. Ellenbecker explained.Trips to the gym don’t help either. “The usual bench presses, overhead presses and rowing” exercises “won’t necessarily work the rotator cuff muscles,” Professor Borsa said. “They’re small and hard to isolate.”In many dedicated tennis players, one result  can be “muscle imbalances,” Mr. Ellenbecker said, with the front muscles becoming much more powerful than those in the back, leading, ultimately, to an extremely common type of injury that “we now call Toyota shoulder — all acceleration and no brakes.”
The symptoms of the condition, more formally referred to as shoulder instability, may well be familiar to anyone who’s played tennis for any length of time. “The soreness in the shoulder starts slowly,” Professor Borsa said. “You may ignore it at first, but then it starts lingering after a match. The pain may wake you at night. Nocturnal pain is definitely a symptom to pay attention to.”Another is “dead-arm syndrome,” a feeling that “your arm is just too heavy to lift, let alone to serve,” said Dr. Babette Pluim, a sports physician for the Royal Netherlands Lawn Tennis Association and an expert on tennis injuries.
Professional players, like those pounding the courts this week at Flushing Meadows, rarely suffer from this particular type of shoulder problem, “because they have trainers and coaches checking to make sure that they’re strengthening their rotator cuffs,” Mr. Ellenbecker said.
Local club players typically do not have such resources, even the best, most dedicated players, who, paradoxically, are at greatest risk. Players who lose in the first rounds of tournaments probably don’t need to worry much, Dr. Pluim said. They’re not hitting enough serves to endanger their shoulders. Tournament winners and runners-up are.It may behoove anyone who plays competitive tennis to consider adopting the rotator-cuff strengthening routines long common in the pro ranks.
Their programs typically involve simple exercises like holding an anchored exercise band and rotating your raised arm away from your body or using elastic tubing to simulate the rowing motion. “You don’t need to use a lot of resistance,” Mr. Ellenbecker said. “You want to build endurance more than power” in those tissues. (For examples of suggested exercises from Mr. Ellenbecker, see the slide show below.)
But will such regimens protect shoulders from the silent, accumulating damage suggested by the findings of the Argentinian study? Dr. Pluim says she is confident that it will. If a player doesn’t develop an actual injury and subsequent shoulder instability, she said, there’s little evidence that tennis contributes to overt shoulder arthritis. Even in the Argentinian study, she pointed out, the arthritic changes were mostly mild and asymptomatic, meaning that they hadn’t been causing pain.
The incipient changes hadn’t even kept the players, some in their 70s, from the courts. “You could read that,” she concluded, “as an endorsement of the benefits of the sport.”


SIDE-LYING ROTATION: Lie on your non-tennis-playing side with a rolled towel placed between your arm and side. Using a light weight, start with your hand near your stomach, then raise your arm upward. Hold for one second, and return to the starting position. Repeat for two to three sets of 15 repetitions.


EXTERNAL ROTATION WITH RETRACTION: Hold the end of an exercise band in each hand, about four inches apart. Then externally rotate your shoulders and squeeze your shoulder blades together, holding for one second. Relax and return to the starting position. Repeat for two to three sets of 15 repetitions.


SEATED ROWING: Hold elastic tubing in both hands, and perform a rowing motion by bringing your elbows back even with your body while squeezing your should blades together. Sitting on an exercise ball will increase the muscle activity in your core. Repeat for two to three sets of 15 repetitions.


STANDING EXTERNAL ROTATION: On a door, secure a piece of elastic tubing with light tension at waist height. With a rolled towel roll under your arm, start with your hand in front of your stomach (left). Then keeping an upright posture, rotate your hand and forearm outward to the finish position (right). Slowly return to the starting position. Repeat for two to three sets of 15 repetitions.


SHOULDER EXTERNAL ROTATION WITH 90-DEGREE ABDUCTION:
This simulates the position used in serving or throwing. Stand with your arm at a 90-degree angle to the body. Your elbow should also be bent 90 degrees. Start with the forearm parallel to the floor, and with light tension in the band, rotate the hand and forearm backward until it is in a nearly vertical position. Slowly return to the starting position. Repeat for two to three sets of 15 repetitions.
]]> Admin<johnniarchos@nospam.com> Sat, 11 Sep 2010 22:52:43 -0400 http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.9.2 Weight Index Doesn't Tell the Whole Truth http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.8.3
Weight Index Doesn’t Tell the Whole Truth
By JANE E. BRODY Published: August 30, 2010
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
 A frequent question among people of a certain age, including yours truly, is “Why, when I weigh the same as or less than I did when I was younger, does my waist keep getting bigger?” Phrased another way, the question could be “Why, when my body mass index has not changed, am I fatter than I used to be?”

The simple answer is that the index, usually called B.M.I. for short, is a crude measure of fatness in individuals. Calculated by dividing one’s weight in kilograms by the square of one’s height in meters, it doesn’t differentiate between fatty and lean tissue. “The B.M.I. tables are excellent for identifying obesity and body fat in large populations, but they are far less reliable for determining fatness in individuals,” explained Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist at the Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans.
Fat Tissue, Lean Tissue Fat takes up about four times the space of muscle tissue, for example, so it is quite possible to look and feel fatter even if your height and weight remain the same. This is particularly common among women past 50 and men past 60, and the results are likely to show around the middle. For children and the elderly, body mass values can be especially misleading because the relationship of lean body mass to height changes as they get older. B.M.I. charts pop up all over the place, in popular publications, exercise facilities and doctors’ offices.
The charts are widely used by doctors to determine if their patients are underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. Thus, a body mass of less than 18.5 is considered underweight; 18.5 to 24.9 is considered a healthy weight; 25 to 29.9 is overweight; 30 to 39.9 is obese; and 40 or more is morbidly obese. If you fall into the “healthy weight” or “underweight” range, you can easily be lulled into a false sense of security. But thinness is not necessarily healthy — recall the 97-pound weakling from the Charles Atlas ads of yore.
A low B.M.I. could be indicative of malnutrition, anorexia, cancer or a wasting disease. On the other hand, if you are an athlete or body builder, your B.M.I. could mistakenly put you in the range for overweight or obese. Degree of body fatness is a better way than body mass to classify individuals. Both the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health define obesity as more than 25 percent body fat in men and more than 35 percent body fat in women. So “a woman who is 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 120 to 125 pounds could be quite fat,” Dr. Lavie told me, “even though her weight and B.M.I. seem O.K.” Among Americans in general, he said, “a six-foot, 250-pound man will be obese, but if he were an N.F.L. lineman of 6-foot-3 weighing 280 pounds, he might be solid muscle with only 2 percent body fat.”
The Obesity Paradox Of course, most Americans with a body mass index in the overweight or obese range carry around too much fat in relation to muscle. And a study that followed 527,265 American men and women ages 50 to 71 in 1995-96 found that those rated overweight based on a body mass reading of 25 to 29.9 were 20 to 40 percent more likely to die within 10 years, and those rated obese, at 30 or higher, were two to three times as likely to die within a decade as those who had a lower reading in midlife. In an editorial in the July issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Dr. Lavie and colleagues discussed what has been termed the “obesity paradox” among patients with heart failure. The paradox refers to the repeated finding that while overweight people are more prone to heart failure, patients with heart failure have lower mortality rates if they are obese.
The reason for this paradox is far from clear, though Dr. Lavie suggested that one explanation could be that once people become ill, having more bodily “reserve” could be to their advantage. The editorial was prepared in response to a report in the same journal by Antigone Oreopoulos of the University of Alberta and her colleagues. The authors compared the B.M.I. of 140 heart failure patients with a more accurate, though more involved, measure of fat and lean body mass using a DEXA scan (DEXA stands for dual energy X-ray absorptiometry). They found that B.M.I. value alone misclassified the degree of body fatness in 41 percent of the patients. Their conclusion: Having more lean tissue and less fat may more accurately predict a patient’s survival chances.
Thus, among patients with heart failure, these authors stated, “body mass index may not be a good indicator of adiposity.” Dr. Lavie and coauthors wrote, “Although B.M.I. is the most common method to define overweightness and obesity in both epidemiological studies and major clinical trials, clearly this method does not necessarily reflect true body fatness, and B.M.I./body fatness may differ considerably among people of different age, race and sex.”
What to Measure A more reliable, but still relatively simple, assessment of fatness would rely on a skin-fold score based on measurements taken with a caliper at several areas (in men, the thigh, midchest and abdomen, and in women, the thigh, triceps and area above the hip bone) that reflects the amount of fat under the skin. Or, since abdominal fat is more hazardous, simply take a tape measure around the widest part of the abdomen and another at the hips and calculate the waist-to-hip ratio.
For men it should be no higher than 0.90, and for women no higher than 0.83. An oversize abdomen is symptomatic of too much metabolically active visceral fat, which increases the risk of heart attack and premature death. If just waist measurements are used, Dr. Lavie said, a man’s waist should be less than 40 inches and a woman’s less than 35.
Exercise is the best way to minimize an age-related rise in body fat, the doctor said. Aerobic exercise, though important at all ages, is not enough. You must also do weight training to build and maintain muscle. And since the body’s production of testosterone, the hormone that favors muscle-building, diminishes with age in both men and women, you may have to increase the amount of strengthening exercises as you get older just to stay in place.
]]> Admin<johnniarchos@nospam.com> Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:10:31 -0400 http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.8.3 Barefoot Running http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.6.2 Healthy Living
Thursday, August 19, 2010

Baring It All: The Barefoot Running Trend

 from Running with Susan, RUNNER'S WORLD on Aug 18, 2010 5:27am
Have you seen the alien shoes spotted on celebrities recently? Matthew McConaughey and girlfriend Camila Alves wear them to work out, actor Channing Tatum runs in them, and Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George sports them for beach football.

Just what are these funky, rubber glove toe socks? They’re Vibram FiveFingers—shoes that are meant to mimic the experience of running without shoes, yet protect your feet from dirt and debris. Why would people want to run without their cushy trainers? Running without shoes can strengthen your feet, ankles, and lower legs and improve balance. Some say modern running shoes are to blame for injuries. And one man wrote an immensely popular book that concluded as much.

The 10 laws of injury prevention

Vibram started making the five-toed shoes in 2006, but the trend really picked up steam last year, following the publication of Christopher McDougall's book “Born to Run.”  The book describes how Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians have become some of the greatest long-distance runners in the world despite running barefoot or in sandals fashioned from tire rubber. McDougall chronicles an ultramarathon race in Mexico’s Copper Canyons attended by a group of Americans including “Barefoot Ted” McDonald, who either ran sans shoes or in FiveFingers, in case of sharp rocks. The author argues that we’d be better off without the souped-up shoes marketed to us by giants like Nike and Adidas, which he says have done nothing to prevent injuries. The book made “The New York Times” bestseller list, and now TMZ is photographing celebrities in their very own lizard shoes.

According to CNN, the FiveFingers have become so popular that the company is having a hard time keeping them in stock—and stopping counterfeiters from selling knock-offs online.

Your ultimate guide to fall running shoes

Some barefoot devotees simply like the sensation of feeling the surface they’re running on while others swear up and down that ditching traditional running shoes has helped them prevent injuries. While there’s no scientific evidence to support the latter claim, we do know that running barefoot or in barefoot-style shoes like the FiveFingers or Nike Free changes one’s running mechanics. When runners aren’t wearing shoes with built-up soles, they tend to land in the middle or toward the front of their feet rather than on their heel and researchers believe that such midfoot or forefoot striking results in less impact on the body. But as Susan Paul, M.S., exercise physiologist and program director for the Orlando Track Shack Foundation says, “To date, there are no studies indicating that running shoes contribute to injury or, conversely, that barefoot running reduces injury or makes you run faster.” The mechanics of barefoot runningIf you’re thinking about shedding your shoes, consider these guidelines:
  1. Barefoot training is not for people who are just starting to run or returning from a long layoff—it’s something to slowly incorporate into an existing running regimen.
  2. If you have persistent or serious foot problems, consult your podiatrist first.
  3. Ease in slowly. Paul advises starting with a few minutes on a flat, relatively forgiving surface once a week. Grassy fields, smooth roads, and soft trails qualify. Running on sand might be tempting, but barefooting newbies should stick to wet sand at first as the unstable soft stuff puts a lot of torque on your joints and is much harder to run on.
  4. Listen to your body. “Barefoot Ken Bob” Saxton, founder of runningbarefoot.org and finisher of more than 70 barefoot marathons, says, “Luckily, your feet are sensitive, which is a good thing. Listen to them and they'll keep you from doing something stupid.”
Has anyone run barefoot or in minimalist shoes like Vibrams? What did you think? If not, would you ever try it? Why or why not?
A head-to-heel guide to running Susan Rinkunas is an  associate editor at  Runner’s World, a magazine (and website) that informs, advises, and  motivates runners of all ages and abilities—and we mean it. Her blog on Yahoo! Shine offers tips on running technique, nutrition and weight loss, shoes and apparel, and balancing fitness and life
]]> Admin<johnniarchos@nospam.com> Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:48:30 -0400 http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.6.2 Are you turning into a humpback at work? http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.5.3
 
Are you turning into a humpback at work?
(ARA) - As you're reading this are you slumping in your chair? Maybe craning your neck to see your screen, leaning back and rocking in your chair or crunched up on the seat? Bad posture is bad for your health, so improve yours starting now.

Good posture helps you breathe more easily and when you increase your oxygen intake, you can concentrate and think better. When you have good posture, you look better and feel more self-confident. And bad posture can result in health problems like back aches, poor blood circulation and even slipped discs.

Some steps you can take to improve your posture include:

* Sit up straight and stand up straight. Just thinking about your posture won't improve it.

* Remind yourself. Because it's easy to forget and fall back into a slouching position, put a note on your computer screen, on your bathroom mirror or any place that will prompt you into a better posture.

* Pay attention to when you have poor posture and eliminate your bad habits. If your desk lamp is dim, for example, you have to lean toward it to see. Get a brighter light; you'll be able to see better and you won't lean anymore.  

* If you sit most of the day, make sure you have a good quality chair with back support.
]]> Admin<johnniarchos@nospam.com> Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:22:56 -0500 http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.5.3 A Banana a Day Keeps the Doctor Away http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.4.4 Admin<johnniarchos@nospam.com> Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:00:40 -0500 http://www.apogeepersonaltraining.com/news.php?item.4.4