MY HEALTH AT FIRST

If you want to have and keep a healthy well-toned body, a good gym or health club can offer you a variety of equipment and services to help you meet your goals. But remember that not all fitness clubs are equal.
You want a fitness club that’s in it for more than your cash. It should be fully committed to health and quality service so that you see positive results as quickly as possible. It should offer an informed professional staff that can guide you through your workouts and show you how to use new equipment. And it should offer a variety of programs that focus on different aspects of fitness and health. Having a professional nutritionist on staff is another important feature you should look for.
One health and fitness club you can count on is 24 Hour Fitness, with have five types of clubs to meet your unique needs. The Ultra Sport club offers all the amenities and is set up for every type of workout you can imagine, from basketball and volleyball to saunas and spas. You can even sharpen your rock climbing skills. There’s a kids’ club, so you won’t have to hire a baby-sitter and a complete juice bar for dietary health. After your workout, you can get a wonderful massage or visit a tanning booth. 24 Hour Fitness’ Super Sport Clubs include many of the same amenities, without the massage or rock climbing. Similar to the Super Sport, the Sport Club doesn’t offer tanning. The Active club type focuses on the basic – weight training, cardio workouts, sauna, steam room, and a kids’ club. Finally, the Fitlite club offers a complete cardio workout and some group classes.
Operating since 1983, 24 Hour Fitness is the biggest privately owned and operated fitness center chain in the world with over 385 clubs. For years, they’ve maintained a expert staff to help their clients get the most out of their exercise program, and they use qualified nutritionists to complement working out with great advice on the foods you should – and should not – eat.
Signing up to a new club only to find that they have incomplete facilities and gaps in their equipment offering is a real disappointment and a waste of time and money. You won’t be disappointed at 24 Hour Fitness. They maintain state-of-the-art fitness equipment for every workout need. You’ll never have to stop your workout because the equipment broke down, and you won’t have to wait until a machine becomes available to get the exercise you need.
They offer team sports facilities and group classes to help you learn new skills and enjoy your friends at the same time. 24 Hour Fitness classes cover a wide range of exercise interests, such as pilates, strength training, aerobic workouts, yoga, and water workouts. Their worldwide instructor team includes over 7000 professionals, and 24 Hour Fitness keeps them up on the latest techniques by offering in-house training for Group Trainers.
You can choose from a range of membership types to meet your schedule and your budget at 24 Hour Fitness. Four types of all-club memberships give you privileges at facilities everywhere, and three different one-club options allow for savings, great workouts, and short-term fitness programs.
Since they have facilities all over the world, travelers will want to take advantage of the Passport Program, where you can workout at other private fitness centers as part of your membership in 24 Hour Fitness. All you need is your 24 Hour Fitness Passport Program ID and a reasonable fee to get a great workout at any Passport Program member’s facility.
In 2000, 24 Hour Fitness made a bold move when they entered into partnerships with five world-famous athletes to advocate fitness and make fitness a way of life for all of us. Representing the qualities 24 Hour Fitness values (determination, hard work, persistence, and a positive attitude), these sports super stars are role models and living proof of the benefits of exercise and good health. Lance Armstrong, Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson, Andre Agassi, and Jackie Chan signed on to represent 24 Hour Fitness and bring good health to the people.
In 2004, 24 Hour Fitness became the first official fitness center sponsor for U.S. Olympic Teams, offering grants to help Olympic hopefuls follow their dreams and upgrading Olympic Training Centers across the country. Their commitment to good health is clear.
Your workout at 24 Hour Fitness will be fun, easy, and personally rewarding. You’ll find a wide range of exercise options and equipment, complete modern facilities and amenities, and a professional staff to help you achieve your goals in record time.
If you’re shopping for a health club, you owe it to yourself to check out 24 Hour Fitness.

A couple of months ago we had a discussion on this blog about the relative importances of diet versus exercise in achieving weight loss. Yesterday in my pile of monthly journals I received my copy of Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise (MSSE), the official monthly journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.  MSSE is an interesting journal -- it is a combination of clinical research, basic science, and applied studies often involving human participants.  If you are a lay person with any interest in exercise or exercise prescription, this is a very accessible journal in terms of the ability to interpret the content, and some of the articles are freely available.  Including the one that caught my attention this month...
But, I digress.  In this month's MSSE is an article presenting a subset of data from the large, clinical Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE) study.  In this component of the study, Eric Ravussin's group looked at the effect of caloric restriction or caloric restriction plus exercise on weight loss and markers of cardiovascular fitness.  In brief, they enrolled 36 sedentary, overweight individuals  and assigned them to one of three groups - a control group (CO) where individuals did not change food intake or fitness,  a calorie restricted (CR) group in which the participants cut their intake by 25%, or a calorie restricted plus exercise (CR+EX) group in which the participants cut their intake by 12.5% and exercised sufficient to create a deficit of an additional 12.5%.  What's important to note for the rest of our discussion is that over the 24 week period,  the CR and CR+EX groups had exactly the same calorie deficits.

Before we talk about the results, I think it is important to point out how challenging this studies are to conduct.  For weeks 7-24 of this study participants went to the study center 5x/week to exercise.  They attended weekly group meetings to ensure compliance and for weeks 1-12 and 22-24 the study center provided the participants with all of their meals.  That is a huge undertaking.

With the coming of the new year, one of the most common resolutions that people make is to stick to their fitness routines, and the gym are currently crowded with exercisers who are full of determination and energy.
Getting, and staying fit, is not only the most common resolution, it is also the toughest to keep.
"We definitely see a huge influx of people trying to satisfy their new year's resolutions. Unfortunately, a lot of those don't quite pan out, and we really don't want that to happen", said Trevor Koppenhaver of Gold's Gym South York.
The best way to keep the resolution seems to be to have a workout buddy, who would motivate you when you are feeling down and vice versa, a method Laurie Renninger and Missy Parks swear by, who have now teamed up to hit the workouts together at the gym.
"I work out with my friend, and we both make a pact that we're going to be here for each other", Laurie said.
Many gyms and fitness clubs are offering discounts and deal at this time of the year and those serious about sticking to their resolution and working out all year around can make the most of these special membership offers.

Researchers focused on telomeres, the protective caps on the chromosomes that keep a cell’s DNA stable but shorten with age.
They found telomeres shortened less quickly in key immune cells of athletes with a long history of endurance training.
The study, by Saarland University, appears in the journal Circulation.

"This is direct evidence of an anti-ageing effect of physical exercise"
Dr Ulrich Laufs
Saarland University
In a separate study of young Swedish men, cardiovascular fitness has been linked to increased intelligence and higher educational achievement.
Telomeres are relatively short sections of specialised DNA that sit at the ends of all our chromosomes.
They have been compared to the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces that prevent the laces from unravelling.
Each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten and the cell becomes more susceptible to dying.
National athletes
The researchers measured the length of telomeres in blood samples from two groups of professional athletes and two groups of people who were healthy non-smokers, but who did not take regular exercise.
One group of professional athletes included members of the German national track and field athletics team, who had an average age of 20.
The second group was made up of middle-aged athletes who had regularly run long distances – an average of 80km a week – since their youth.
The researchers found evidence that the physical exercise of the professional athletes led to activation of an enzyme called telomerase, which helped to stabilise telomeres.
This reduced the telomere shortening in leukocytes, a type of white blood cell that plays a key role in fighting infection and disease.
The most pronounced effect was found in athletes who had been regularly endurance training for several decades.
Potency of training
Lead researcher Dr Ulrich Laufs said: "This is direct evidence of an anti-ageing effect of physical exercise.
"Our data improves the molecular understanding of the protective effects of exercise and underlines the potency of physical training in reducing the impact of age-related disease."

"It is still difficult to separate cause and effect from these studies – as longer telomeres may still be a marker of fitness"
Professor Tim Spector
Kings College London
Professor Tim Spector, an expert on genetics and ageing at Kings College London, said other studies had suggested more moderate exercise had a beneficial effect on ageing.
He said: "It is still difficult to separate cause and effect from these studies – as longer telomeres may still be a marker of fitness.
"Nevertheless – this is further evidence that regular exercise may retard aging."
Professor Kay-Tee Khaw, of the University of Cambridge, an expert on ageing, said: "The benefits of physical activity for health are well established from many large long-term population studies.
"Even moderate levels of physical activity are related to lower levels of many heart disease risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol and lower risk of many chronic diseases associated with ageing such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers."
Intelligence link
In the second study, published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of Gothenburg analysed data on more than 1.2 million Swedish men born from 1950-1976 who enlisted for military service at age 18.
They found that good heart health was linked to higher intelligence, better educational achievement and raised status in society.
By studying twins in the study, the researchers concluded that environmental and lifestyle factors were key, rather than genetics.
They said the findings suggested that campaigns to promote physical exercise might help to raise standards of educational achievement across the population.
Lead researcher Professor Georg Kuhn said cardiovascular exercise increased blood flow to the brain, which in turn might help forge more and stronger connections between nerve cells.
However, he said it was also possible that intelligent people tended to make more exercise.