Category: Fitness Training
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A Good Instructor Offers Modifications
Pilates of the Caribbean, by Dan Piraro
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Which Step Have You Reached Today?
Here is a nice illustration of the progression from resistance to success. Most of us are all over the map with these steps. For some things, we race all the way to the top every day. In other areas, it seems impossible just to face the stairs. This image was used years ago by Girls…
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Getting Past Judgmental Motivationals
The fitness industry has heavily promoted some of the motivational messages that have accumulated in competitive sports settings over eons. It’s a funny kind of image management — even when the idea is supposedly to help support people new to exercise, the slogans recall an old-school coach who doesn’t seem to care whether his athletes…
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Snackcercise!
Miss Piggy got in on the aerobics craze in 1982 with her own special take, featuring this item from her workout album. This was in a simpler time, before Cookie Monster was limited mainly to fruits and vegetables. Nowadays, banana splits are, I’m sure, strictly a “sometimes move.” Still from the video for one of…
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Is the Gym a Welcoming Environment?
Ask a regular lifter, “Is the gym a welcoming place?” and they may wax poetic about the support and acceptance they find there. Ask a person whose last experience with gym was PE class — which they hated with a passion — and you’ll get a very different answer. The reality contains a little of…
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Should I Join a Gym?
This may seem like a newbie question, but it spans experience from “just starting” to “planning to compete.” Whether to join a gym is about psychology and interests more than exercise ability. In favor of joining a gym: Gyms are expensive, and if you aren’t looking for instruction, specialized equipment, or a place to pursue…
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A Bright Moment for the President’s Council on Fitness
At the start of 1963, Kennedy discovered Roosevelt’s 1908 order establishing the 50-mile march for officers. He sent it to Marine Commandant David M. Shoup, noting that the leathernecks of the time had been able to complete the trek within 20 hours on a single day, and asking if “the strength and stamina of the modern…
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Comfort Zones and Safety Zones
When you make a new commitment to exercise, you get exposed to a lot of motivational sayings and aphorisms that come out of the competitive sports environment. “Obsessed is how the lazy describe the dedicated.” “You can feel sore tomorrow, or you can feel sorry tomorrow.” “Quitting is unacceptable.” It’s common to hear that you…