I have a confession to make. Sometimes, when I’m too lazy to head to the gym but I know I need to exercise, I pull out my mat, look online for a good workout podcast or video, and start trying to get my heart rate up in my living room. I know that, without proper equipment (all right, without any equipment), without an instructor or personal trainer, and without fellow sweaty bodies, I’m not getting quite the level of exercise I need. But often convenience trumps quality.
I’m not alone in this. A friend of mine keeps a stationary bike in her office; another one has an entire weight room in his basement. The fact is that sometimes fitness centres are competing for customers not only with other fitness centres, but also with those customers’ personal spaces (…)
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Home Sweet Gym
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I sat in a doctor’s waiting room for a long time today. I had accidentally left my book at home, and none of the magazines lying around appealed to me. As I’m currently attempting to renegotiate my relationship with my smartphone (I feel like I need some space but it’s having trouble letting go), I kept the thing tucked firmly in my jacket pocket, and there was nothing to occupy my attention except for a large monitor in the corner that kept cycling through a handful of health-related messages: avoid stress, substitute walnuts for croutons, exercise regularly.
I’m reading a great book right now: Friendfluence, by journalist Carlin Flora. As the title suggests, the book examines the ways in which our friends influence us. From our personalities to our choices to our emotions, habits, and self-perceptions, friendship, argues Flora, strongly helps determine who we are.
Gyms, fitness centres, health clubs, and other similar facilities do a lot for their members and clients. They help transform bodies into leaner, healthier shapes. They push individuals to meet personal goals and overcome limitations (the self-imposed sort and other kinds). They boost confidence, provide fun social settings, and introduce new modes of movement. But one of the best things about such organizations, to my mind, is that they can produce large-scale change that benefits whole groups of people.
A recent Mayo Clinic study found that, probably unsurprisingly, giving people financial incentives to work out helps them lose more weight. Researchers paid some study participants $20 every time they hit a monthly weight-loss goal and charged them the same amount if they failed to hit the goal. The result? Participants receiving the financial incentive — or trying to avoid having to pay — lost 6.74 more pounds than participants receiving no financial incentive.
Recently, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield awarded $125,000 to nine schools in Western Pennsylvania to help fight childhood obesity. This got me thinking. Childhood obesity, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past thirty years. The percentage of children aged 6 to 11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 18 percent in 2010. In 2010, more than one third of American children and adolescents were overweight or obese. What are we doing to our kids? […]
A few weeks ago, at a 24 Hour Fitness club in Costa Mesa, California, a 67-year-old man exercising on a stationary bike keeled over, apparently suffering a heart attack. What did the club staff do? They kicked into high gear. One employee called 911. The service manager alerted other staff members to the medical emergency. A team raced to the man’s side. While a personal trainer began to administer chest compressions, the fitness manager grabbed an automated external defibrillator (AED) and applied it one time. Then, the paramedics arrived. Under their guidance, the personal trainer continued […]
This month, most colleges, universities, and schools around the country have at least a week off. Not everyone goes to Cancun, and parents of small children are likely tearing their hair out, trying to figure out how to keep their energetic young ones entertained. So now is the time for you to be asking yourself: What can my fitness facility or sports center do to help? If you don’t already think of spring break as an event that you should be planning for each year, it’s time to start. Here are a few […]
Getting timely messages to all members of a sports team becomes very important when games are canceled, practice is rained out or tournament information is updated at the last minute. In the old days – and we’re only talking about 15 years ago – telephoning everybody on a team with schedule updates was common practice.