Program Fitness News
www.profitness.net.nz May 2003
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1 |
Happenings and The Good Oil |
|
2 |
Gobbling Your Food |
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3 |
Hydration (again) and Weight Loss |
|
4 |
Getting Old and Coming Back |
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5 |
Still Coming Back and To Hell With It! |
Happenings
1 Harte, Michael 00:56:49
2 Hague, Peter 01:03:54
3 Chittenden, Bob 01:04:55
That was the way the results sheet showed the outcome of the leaders in the mens 10.55km walks section of the annual Nelson ½ Marathon.
"Amelia Delozano from Wellington set the pace & I took over at about the 8 km mark although (I) didn't really drop Amelia as (she) was only 11 sec behind at (the) finish - did 52:59 10 kms - new PB so pretty rapt. Only disappointment is we did an age graded presentation & mine was only 74%??"
These were the words of our new member Michael Harte from Nelson after he had completed the annual event. A good win, showing the way for even better performances to come. Well done Michael!
18th May
Huntly Half Marathon Walkers
Once again this prestigious event attracted a good field of runners and walkers and our own Marcia Soanes (Auckland) was there to mix it with world renowned race walker Craig Barrett and a previous national women’s champion Diane Barrett (no relation to Craig) and was pleased to put in another good effort. "Pretty pleased, I was neck and neck with Dianne Barrett, until about the 8km mark, literally breathing down her neck, Rodney was there also. But I couldn't keep up the pace, still very pleased with my effort." Another satisfying result for Marcia.
|
Place |
Time |
Name |
Town |
Grade |
Gd Pl |
|
|
1 |
1:31:50 |
Craig Barrett |
Hamilton |
MO |
1/11 |
|
|
2 |
2:08:53 |
Diane Barrett |
Whangarei |
W40 |
1/34 |
|
|
3 |
2:09:06 |
Rodney Thorne |
Auckland |
M45 |
1/6 |
|
|
4 |
2:13:26 |
Susan Prater |
Auckland |
W40 |
2/34 |
|
|
5 |
2:13:46 |
Maria Soanes |
Auckland |
W45 |
1/31 |
Craig Barrett, Diane Barrett and yours truly, Gary little, have all had their fair share of race walking disqualifications and Marcia came up against the chief judges red bat during the women’s 10km section while leading the field in the annual Taranaki Walks event on Saturday 31st May. This was a great disappointment for her but by the time the Sunday coaching clinic conducted by Gary came around, she was ready to get back into training and prepare for the next big event.
Also at Taranaki, Gary won the 15km race in a time of 1h 19m 56sec to set a new world masters record for M60-64 and on the way also set the M61 5km age grade best time with a 25m 01sec performance. Second place in the 15km went to Rodney Gillum from Taranaki with a time of 1h 27m 41sec.
Remember to take look at our website www.profitness.net.nz
Tea Tree Oil (Melaleuca alternifolia) for Infection
Tea tree oil refers to the essential oil distilled from the leaves of the Melaleuca alternifolia tree that grows in Australia (and also from New Zealand tea tree). This oil has antiseptic and antimicrobial activity that can be used externally to treat a number of skin infections. One study found that an ointment containing 10% tea tree oil was just as effective as the antimycotic, tolnaftate, in relieving the symptoms of athlete's foot after four weeks of use. Separate studies have also found tea tree oil effective in treating acne and toenail fungus.
Tea tree oil is typically used at concentrations between 5-20%; however, it can be used full strength to treat infections of the toenails. Skin irritation can occur in some individuals and its use should be stopped if this happens. Never take tea tree oil internally as it can result in central nervous system toxicity.
Cindy L. A. Jones, Ph.D. is a health and nutrition educator and consultant. She is the author of "The Antibiotic Alternative" and "Herbs for Healthy Skin". Visit her website at
http://www.sagescript.com.
Love Your Tomatoes:
Both tomatoes and tomato products are good sources of the phytochemical lycopene, which may prevent LDL ("bad") cholesterol from causing damage to arteries.
"Does eating more slowly really reduce your appetite?"
If you've been trying to lose weight for some time, chances are you're fed up feeling hungry. In fact, virtually everyone who tries to lose weight finds it hard to believe you can actually eat less and still feel full.
One theory commonly promoted as a way to help you feel less hungry during a weight loss diet is to eat your meals slowly. The idea is that taking long pauses between bites (by putting your fork down, for example) and chewing food more slowly helps to control your hunger. The result is that you're supposed to eat fewer calories at each meal and snack less, making weight loss faster and easier.
Despite its popularity, there's little evidence to show that pausing within a meal is an effective way to reduce your calorie intake. In fact, there is research to show just the opposite - that pausing within meals actually increases the number of calories you eat.
The study - published in the journal Appetite - tested the effect of regular within-meal pauses in volunteers eating a lunch of pasta with tomato sauce. Contrary to popularbelief, the introduction of regular within-meal pauses increased calorie intake.
More interesting still, when subjects taking part in the study were asked to rate how hungry or full they felt, they were actually less satisfied at the end of the meal the longer the pauses.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you should eat every meal as fast as you can. Rather, eat at a pace that feels right for you. If slowing down helps you control your appetite and leaves you feeling fuller, then take more time over your meals. However, there's little reason to believe that putting extra effort into taking longer than normal to eat makes much difference to your appetite or the amount of calories you eat.
One simple way to keep your appetite under control is to include a source of protein in each meal, such as a chicken breast, or a portion of lean beef. As a rule-of-thumb, people eating a diet that contains more protein are generally less hungry and consume fewer calories over the course of the day.
On average, protein-rich foods have a high satiety (pronounced sat-eye-a-tee) index. Satiety refers to the feeling of fullness you get at end of a meal. The more satiety you feel at the end of a meal, the less likely you'll be to snack. You'll also eat less at your next meal. This makes it far more likely that you'll stick with your diet until you reach your target weight.
Reference
Yeomans, M.R., Gray, R.W., Mitchell, C.J., & True, S. (1997).
Independent effects of palatability and within-meal pauses on intake and appetite ratings in human volunteers. Appetite, 29,
61-76
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
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"The only place where success comes before
work is a dictionary."- Vidal Sassoon
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"Anybody can train when he's psyched up, but it's the guy who can go out and force himself to run when he doesn't feel like it who is going to eventually succeed." -Marty Liquori, who won the famous "Dream Mile" against Jim Ryun at Franklin Field in 1971 to cap a brilliant career at Villanova
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Snack Attack: "A good rule of thumb for beginners is to eat a light high-carbohydrate meal or snack such as a bagel an hour or two before running."
-From Dagny Scott's Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running
Hydration
As runners have learned the importance of hydration during long distance events, dehydration has become a less prevalent condition.
Medical crews at marathon finish lines now are dealing more with hyperthermia (heat illness), postural hypotension (pooling of blood in the legs), hyponatremia, and the normal injuries that are common among marathon runners such as blisters and muscle injuries.
Hyperthermia can occur regardless of hydration levels or the distance of a race. In fact, shorter races can pose more of a threat due to the faster pace per mile, which causes greater heat production. An adequately hydrated runner who is running too fast or pushing herself too hard, especially in hot and humid conditions, can fall victim to hyperthermia. It is therefore important that athletes adjust their pace to take into consideration race conditions, slowing their pace as heat and humidity rises, regardless of how much they may be drinking.
"Postural hypotension" is experienced when a runner suddenly stops, most commonly at the finish line. With blood pooling in the legs, there is inadequate blood supply to the rest of the body and the runner feels faint and can fall down. This had been thought of as demonstrating dehydration, so the response from medical teams was to rehydrate these runners. Now, medical personnel can identify this problem correctly and treat it specifically.
Treatment requires raising the runner's feet above the head for 3-4 minutes for full recovery. Runners can avoid postural hypotension by keeping the legs moving, even with light walking or moderate knee flexing when they otherwise would stand still at or immediately after the finish or at other locations along the race course.
NEW MEMBERS
If you know of a friend or acquaintance who might benefit from being a member of PROGRAM FITNESS, tell them about us and pass their contact details to Gary. There will be no obligation to join but they will receive full details on how an exercise package to suit their needs can be obtained.
5 Little Tips that can Help You Lose Weight
by Renee Kennedy
In order to lose weight and become healthier, you will need to plan a diet that you can stick to. Your diet plan is not a crash diet that you will give up after two weeks; it should be a LIFESTYLE change. Your diet changes must be reasonable or you will not be able to stick to them. That's why making a few subtle changes to your eating and exercise habits may help you develop a healthy diet plan. Sometimes, the littlest things make the biggest difference.
Look at your diet patterns and decide if there are some nasty patterns that you can break. For instance, are there certain times of day when you just have to have a candy bar? Or are there certain times of day when you can't go without that bag of chips? Think about what you can reasonably give up, or even better, what can you replace with healthier food choices.
Here are some little habits that you might consider changing.
The key is, you are breaking a BAD habit and instilling a GOOD habit in its place. This should be a PERMANENT change. Ask yourself, "Can I maintain this change for the rest of my life?"
While an appropriate nutritional programme, plenty of rest, and adequate recovery between workouts are all important for preserving fitness as you get older, certain key workouts are also necessary to keep you as fit as possible.
One of the best workouts you can possibly carry out is the '4-95-4' workout, in which you complete 4-minute work intervals at an intensity high enough to make your heart rate reach 95 per cent of maximal at the end of the interval, with 4-minute recoveries. Also good for you are cycling, swimming, or running races which last from 12-20 minutes.
From 45 to 60
If you're between the ages of 45 and 60, your motivation may fall a bit, and physiological problems include a modest loss of aerobic capacity (V02max) and a small decline in muscle tissue (muscle atrophy). Also, age-related increases in muscle soreness and tissue stiffness increase the need for longer recoveries between workouts, forcing a cutback in training volume. To increase motivation, make your high-intensity sessions more fun. A great motivational workout involves going to your favourite place in the city or countryside, letting your everyday cares and concerns drop away, and feeling the power in your legs by occasionally bursting at race pace for 20 to 30 seconds at a time as you run or cycle.
Strengthen your leg muscles by doing more hill training, and minimise soreness by adding at least one extra rest day for each two weeks of training and by cross-training occasionally (run in the deep end of a swimming pool or use an exercise cycle if you're a runner). Prevent leg-muscle atrophy, which can account for about 20 percent of age-related declines in fitness, by getting serious about weight training.
For the over-60s
If you're over 60, your V02max will attempt to plummet, and your muscles and connective tissues will lose some strength. In addition, body-fat levels will try to climb, in concert with some muscle atrophy. Your response should be to add 'Senior Intervals' to preserve your V02max and to compensate for losses in aerobic capacity by boosting your lactate threshold. Trim body fat by relying on long, weekend walk-run combinations, which last for a couple of hours. Continue weight training to thwart muscle shrinking. To enhance recovery, rest at least five days out of every two-week period.
To do the 'Senior Intervals' (also called the '2-10-3' Workout), run, cycle, or swim for two-minute intervals at the best intensity you could sustain in a 10-minute race, with three-minute recoveries. For a lactate-threshold booster, warm up, and then exercise for 10 continuous minutes at a pace, which keeps heart rate in the 85-88 per cent-of-maximal range. Recover for five to six minutes, and then repeat this 10-minute surge.
The best workout to maintain fitness when you're injured.
If you're a runner and a minor injury prevents you from carrying out your regular running workouts for a couple of days, there's no need to worry: The rest will probably do you some good.
On the other hand, if you miss more than four days of training, your fitness will begin to fall unless you challenge your muscles and cardiac centre in some way. So what's the absolute-best non-running workout to carry out? Should you swim laps in the pool, race down your neighbourhood pavements on roller blades, or lift weights in the gym?
Without a doubt, your best option is to climb aboard an exercise bike. There are simply more scientific studies demonstrating either a maintenance - or an actual increase - in running fitness associated with using a bike in lieu of regular running workouts, compared with any other exercise device. The stair machine isn't bad either, but we'll have to consign it to second place; the trouble with stairs is that climbing can sometimes aggravate existing injuries like shin splints, knee soreness, and IT Band friction syndrome. Aqua running places a quite distant third.
Which bike workout is the best for maintaining/increasing fitness?
Without a doubt, it's one in which you warm up thoroughly with 10 minutes of easy pedalling - and then embark on intense five-minute intervals, with five-minute recoveries.
How intense should these five-minute work intervals be?
Well, your heart rate should increase gradually and steadily to 90 to 95 per cent of maximum during the first two minutes of the five-minute interval - and then remain in that zone for the final three minutes of the interval. Don't forget, though, that your max heart rate on the bike is usually about 10 beats per minute slower than your max while running.
If you want to reckon your max heart rate on the bike fairly accurately, simply warm up with 10 minutes of moderate pedalling, and then pedal as furiously as you can for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Pedal lightly for a minute to recover, and then operate at maximal intensity for another two and a-half minutes. Near the end of this second 150-second burst, you will be very close to your max heart rate on the bike. Make sure your doctor gives the OK before you try it.
How many of those five-minute intervals should you do per workout?
Start with two your first time out, and don't feel bad if you can only make it through four minutes or so - instead of the full five - on your initial intervals. Hard work on the bike takes some getting used to for most runners.
If you are injured for an extended period of time, you can gradually progress to five of these five-minute intervals per bike session, and you can then begin trimming the recovery intervals, a minute at a time, until you reach two minutes. Just make sure you are recovered enough to finish the full five minutes of each work interval - with your heart rate at 90 to 95 per cent of max for the last three minutes.
A good idea is to keep your pedalling speed at about 90 rpm, even as you get fitter on the bike, because such pedalling mimics the close-to-optimal rate of 90 strides per minute while running. As you get fitter, you will need to increase the bike's resistance in order to keep your heart rate elevated and in the proper (90 to 95 per cent of max) zone.
Carrying out this workout twice a week, in conjunction with three other - somewhat more temperate - bike sessions, should be enough to preserve almost all of your running fitness.
You could increase your fitness even more with the following workout.
After at least a 10-minute warm-up, pedal at close to maximal intensity for one minute, recover with 30 seconds of 'spinning' at 90 rpm against very little resistance and then 60 seconds of easy pedalling (adding up to 90 seconds of recovery in all), and then peddle along at very close to max for another minute.
Continue this pattern - 60 seconds of maximal effort followed by 30 seconds of spinning and 60 seconds of light pedalling - until you have completed eight nearly all-out one-minute intervals. Finish with a 10-minute cool-down and some static stretching
Over time, this workout can be made progressively harder by increasing the number of maximal 60-second repetitions to 15, increasing the resistance on the bike, and reducing the recovery intervals to 60 seconds (30 seconds of spinning and 30 seconds of light strokes).
Conclusion
Time away from running doesn't have to automatically lead to a loss of fitness. If you carry out the right workouts on the bike, you'll come back from your injury as strong - or stronger - than ever.