I think it's important to teach your kids good, healthy habits. So as a personal trainer in Katy, I have 10 things I want to focus on as my son grows up.
I want him to learn his basic skills first. I want him involved in tumbling at an early age. Next we are going to enroll him in a class at Showcase Gymnastics so he can start focusing on these basic skills. It sets a foundation that is invaluable.
The habit of stretching. Have you ever noticed that those who are flexible love to stretch, and those that are not flexible hate to stretch. My hope is that I can get him accustomed to stretching consistently at an early age so he will continue it the rest of his life.
Swimming at an early age. I know we are late by some standards, but I want my son to start swimming very soon. It's such a great activity at any age.
Play a variety of sports. I'm sorry, I know it's common practice to play a sport year round, but I want my son to rotate among various sports throughout the year. Ask anyone who works with injured athletes and they will tell you there are way too many overuse injuries in today's youth.
Learn Team Sports - I want my son to learn how to play with others, to learn teamwork. He needs to know that it take a collective group to achieve success. It's more than just about him.
Play Individual Sports - That being said, I want him to play some individual sports too. He can't always depend on a team. Also, as he ages he will find it's more common to play individual sports (tennis golf, etc...) vs team sports. He might as well develop some of those skills while he is still young.
Learn how to lift weight properly - I'm in no hurry for him to start pumping iron, but when he does, I want him to learn how to do it properly. Not from his coaches that are stretched thin trying to supervise 20 kids, but from someone who will work with him one-on-one. Once he develops his form, I will feel much better about his safety in a group setting.
Helping Others - This world is not all about us, and I want to instill in him the importance of helping his teammates. As he learns, he can share with and teach others.
Nutrition is important - He will be taught what proper nutrition is at an early age. It is so important to eat healthy when you are active and we will do all we can to teach him good habits. It doesn't have to be crazy, excessive to be effective. Kids are smart and can learn.
Don't judge others - I don't want him putting other kids down that do not have the same things instilled in them. A kid's weight or skill level does not determine their worth. Simple as that.
It's no secret that our healthcare system has room for improvement. There is a huge gap between the medical and fitness world. Medical professionals look at the human body one way, and fitness professionals look at it completely differently.
Bridging the Gap Between HealthCare and Fitness
Dr. Michael Jones developed the Medical Exercise Training Institute to bridge the gap between the medical and fitness world. He teaches personal trainers how to work with various medical conditions and shows the medical community how to use fitness that creates measurable results. He developed protocols for over 60 different medical conditions, and created a foundation unlike any I have ever seen.
Changing Personal Training Forever
For those who are wanting to do more than just personal training, the Medical Exercise Training Institute takes fitness to the next level. With the aging Baby Boomer population, this information is a game changer. It allows you to help clients with knee injuries, back injuries, shoulder injuries, and Diabetes. There are many certifications that claim to help with this, but there is one major difference. This certification will tell you the difference in working with someone with a herniated disc vs spinal stenosis. It will show you how to create a program for an ACL injury vs a total knee replacement. If you are working with someone with Diabetes, this program will show you every precaution you need to know before you start their program.
Connecting with the Medical Community
One of the most important things about this program is the confidence it gives you to connect to the medical community. You will learn how to contact physicians and write progress reports. This is crucial for clients with a medical condition and will separate you from other fitness professionals in the area. It's not easy work, but you will quickly rise to the top by following the guidelines Dr. Jones has established.
If you are looking for the best personal trainer in Katy, definitely take a look at Medical Fitness Pros. They have a team of educated staff members who have been in the business for years. They have an interesting specialty with their personal training, in that, they work with a variety of medical conditions. Having been in the business for years, it's expected that a personal trainer can help their clients lose weight. It's not hard to help improve someone's nutrition and exercise program and watch them drop 10 or 20 pounds. The hard part is when someone comes in with back pain, knee pain, or shoulder pain and wants to lose 20 or 30 pounds. This is when you really test the abilities of a personal trainer.
Katy Personal Training Facility
The facility they are in does not make you feel overwhelmed when you walk in. It's comfortable and a friendly atmosphere. The staff is great and so are the personal training clients that work out there. They offer one-on-one personal training as well as small group personal training, so you can find a program that will work for you. As far as I know, there is not another facility in Katy that even comes close to offering what they do. There are some workout facilities, but none with the level of medical expertise that the staff possesses.
Katy Personal Training Exercise
If you are considering hiring a personal trainer in Katy or Cinco Ranch, you should definitely make the time to visit Medical Fitness Pros. You can feel safe knowing they understand the right exercise program for you. I know they also coordinate with your physician when they are developing an exercise program for you, and that is head and shoulders above what anyone else is doing in the Katy or Cinco Ranch area.
Medical Fitness Pros Location
Medical Fitness Pros is located at 2004 S. Mason Rd, between Highland Knolls and Cinco Ranch Blvd. You can call them at 281-500-6055 or visit their Medical Fitness Pros website.
Now that the New Year is here, there is a good chance that your New Year's Resolution is weight loss. If you want to lose weight, here are 5 tips that will guarantee Katy residents' success in their weight loss goals.
Decide on a goal - Take the time to write out your personal goals. Write out how much weight you want to lose and how long you expect it to take you. Don't skip this step.
Devise a plan - Your plan should be specific. Without a specific plan, you are just randomly trying things hoping something works. It doesn't just happen that way. You have to write out your weekly and monthly requirements to achieve your goal. Your plan will include components of the next 3 steps.
Nutrition - Most people hate to hear this, but nutrition is the most important step if you plan to lose weight this year. Follow a specific nutrition plan that you can stick with for longer than 3 months. You want a lifestyle adjustment, not a quick weight loss plan.
Cardiovascular - You have to include cardiovascular training into your program. The program should include some aspects of an interval based program that will help you burn fat fast and reduce the amount of time you spend doing it.
Strength Training - If you plan on losing fat fast, strength training must be included. By building muscle, you will increase metabolism, therefore resulting in faster weight loss.
If your weight loss plan is missing any of these components, contact me so I can help you get all of the steps in place to lose your belly fat this year. As a personal trainer for almost 12 years now, I have helped hundreds of people lose weight. If you are determined to see weight loss results, contact me. I will take the guess work out of your program and ensure that this year is the year you lose weight, once and for all.
This is the very reason we are seeing heart attacks happening at an earlier and earlier age.
Obesity is aging our children before their time.
The Association Press reported that studies presented last week at an American Heart Association conference found about a third of American children are overweight, and one-fifth are obese.
In a sense, that’s old news.
But what made one study depressingly newsworthy was the conclusion by researchers at Children’s Hospital in Kansas City that obese children as young as 10 had the arteries of 45-year-olds.Want more depressing news?
Another study by researchers at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Australia tied childhood obesity to abnormal enlargement of the left atrium, one of the chambers of the heart. The AP reported enlargement is a known risk factor for heart disease, stroke and heart rhythm problems. One researcher said he saw a clear link between rising weight and size of the left atrium.
Still not convinced about the danger of obesity?
A study by the Australian National University in Canberra found impairment in the heart’s ability to relax between beats in children who were overweight or obese.
Earlier research found more rigid arteries in such children — a possible sign of plaque deposits starting to form.
This isn’t just a matter of personal health. It’s a public health issue, too. Overweight adults are more prone to Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. The cost to society to treat these conditions is staggering, and it’s only going to grow as the number of obese Americans increases.Some people can’t help it. They have weight problems and other health issues because of their genes. They are not what they eat; they are what they’ve had passed down to them from their ancestors.
However, many children are overweight and obese because, like far too many adults, they are eating too much — and too much of the wrong kind of food — and exercising too little.
It’s not a matter of growing out of baby fat. When it comes to obesity, child is father to the man. The news service reported research increasingly shows that fat children become fat adults, and with that come higher risks for many health problems.
For these children, it’s about eating the right kind of food and exercising. And it wouldn’t hurt if their parents joined the regimen, either.
Overweight and obese children and adults must take this condition seriously. For them, it really is a matter of life and death.
Here's an interesting story I found at the daily mail that talks about the benefits of red wine, in a pill. They fed the ingredient to mice and found that fatty food did not cause weight gain. I don't know what kind of health side effects it had, but the weight gain didn't occur.
For dedicated couch potatoes, it sounds almost too good to be true. A drug inspired by red wine could allow them to eat as much junk food as they like without putting on a pound.
It could also provide the benefits of exercise without moving a muscle. And if that were not enough, the pill - which mimics the action of resveratrol, the 'wonder ingredient' in red wine - may also prevent diabetes.
The man-made drug, which is known only as SRT1720, fools the body into thinking food is scarce and it has to burn off fat to survive. The brainchild of scientists at US firm Sirtris, the drug exploits the healthy qualities of resveratrol, a chemical found in grape skins. Previous studies have endowed resveratrol with the ability to ward off a host of ills, from old age to heart disease, cancer, obesity and Alzheimer's disease.
Sirtris has already developed a concentrated form of resveratrol in a pill. However, the new drug could be even more powerful and have fewer side-effects.
David Sinclair, co-founder of Sirtris, which is now owned by Glaxo-SmithKline, said recently: 'The excitement here is that we are not talking about red wine any more. We are talking about real drugs.' In experiments, mice given SRT1720 didn't gain an ounce, despite being fed fatty foods. Blood tests suggested they were also protected against diabetes. The treated animals also had more stamina and were able to run twice as far. However, they had to be forced to exercise.
Left to their own devices, they would move around less than normal, the journal Cell Metabolism reports. The drug is made up of chemicals that affect the body in a similar way to resveratrol. Both resveratrol and the new drug trigger a protein called SIRT1 that plays a key role in regulating the body's supply of energy. The result is that the body burns off its fat stores, even when food is plentiful. Researcher Professor Johan Auwerx, of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, said: 'These results show that new synthetic SIRT1 activators can reproduce the positive metabolic effects that were previously demonstrated using resveratrol.
'But unlike resveratrol, these new chemical entities target only the SIRT1 pathway, making them more selective and potent for achieving these metabolic benefits.' He added that the drug, which is around seven years from the market, is likely to be used to treat obesity and diabetes. Prof Ian Broom, an obesity expert from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said any drug that burnt off fat while protecting against diabetes would be welcomed. But he cautioned that much more research - including studies into side-effects - would be needed before SRT1720 became accepted as a treatment for obesity.
Now the good news: The article states that we lose some of the insulation around the brain's wiring system and this causes our body and brain to start slowing down. However, if you keep active, and treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, this helps with brain health. The more physically and mentally active you are, the more likely your brain health will last for a longer period of time.
I found something I found to be pretty interesing online. With everyone always talking about the price of gas, it's interesting to see how our bodies compare to our cars. If you would like to see how many miles per gallon your body gets, click on the link below. If you would like, post your score in the comments section of this post.
If you like a lot of variety and you would like to workout at home, I found a great website that will help you do just that. My Pypeline is a great website for accessing and downloading videos that you can use anytime you want. It is probably cheaper than joining a gym and you can repeat or select a new workout whenever you want. The great thing is that it is on your schedule. Use it whenever you want.
It looks like a great device to keep your ipod in place no matter what you are doing. The problem I have with most ipod cases is that you can only put the ipod in one place depending on the case you have. This is interesting because you can move it whereever you need to.
Here is an interesting device. It monitors your sleep and tells you when to wake up. Personally, I think my alarm would normally go off before the device will tell me that it's time to wake up, but I guess that's why it's important to use something like this. Here is some information from the Sleeptracker's website:
How does SLEEPTRACKER® work?
SLEEPTRACKER® continuously monitors signals from your body that indicate whether you are asleep or awake. Because you wear SLEEPTRACKER® on your wrist like a watch, its internal sensors can detect even the most subtle physical signals from your body. SLEEPTRACKER® finds your best waking moments, so that waking up has never been easier.
When you sleep, your body goes through a series of sleep cycles. The average adult experiences 4-5 full sleep cycles over an 8-hour period. Each cycle lasts about 90-110 minutes and comprises five different stages, as illustrated by this chart.
No two people have the same sleep cycles, and nobody has the same cycle twice. Many factors can influence sleep cycles, including diet, exercise, medications, drugs or alcohol, stress, sleep disorders, and sleep deprivation. Age and gender can play a role, too: women tend to sleep more soundly than men, and as we age, we sleep more restlessly.
A typical sleep cycle has five stages and takes 90-110 minutes. During Stage 1 of your sleep cycle, you sleep lightly. At Stage 2, your sleep gets progressively deeper. At Stages 3 and 4, also known as "Delta Sleep," you sleep most heavily; this is when your body rebuilds itself.
Stage 5 of sleep, also known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, is marked by extensive physiological changes, such as accelerated respiration, increased brain activity, rapid eye movement, and muscle relaxation. People dream during REM sleep.
In the first third of the night, Delta sleep stages last longer than REM stages. As the night progresses, Delta sleep diminishes in length. By the last third of the night, Delta sleep usually ceases, while REM stages lengthen.
SLEEPTRACKER® may find multiple almost-awake moments within the sleep cycle. Almost-awake moments may also vary in frequency throughout the night.
By monitoring your sleep cycles for optimal waking moments during the preset ALARM WINDOW, SLEEPTRACKER® finds those almost awake-moments and gently wakes you when you're most alert. The result? You wake up refreshed instead of groggy. Waking up has never been easier.
1.) Free-Range or Free-Roaming: You probably most often see this term stamped on eggs, but it's also used on chicken and other meat to suggest that the animal has spent a good portion of its life outdoors. Consumer Reports says, though, that the standards for these terms are weak, and the rule for the label is only that outdoor access be made available for "an undetermined period each day." So those free range eggs could mean that the chicken who laid them lived in a coop where the door was open for five minutes a day. Roaming free? We don't think so.
2.)Natural or All Natural: People often assume this label means organic or healthy. But no standard definition for natural exists. Consumer Reports says the term only has meaning when it's applied to meat and poultry products and means that the items contain no artificial flavoring, colors, chemical preservatives, or synthetic ingredients. But the producer or manufacturer decides whether or not to use it, without having the claims verified.
3.) No Additives: Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher or Consumer Reports, says that a no additives label is often used to imply that a product has not been enhanced with the addition of natural or artificial ingredients. But there is no official definition for the term and it isn't verified when used.
4.) No Animal By-Products: You might see this label on everything from condiments and meat (to indicate the animals were not fed any animal by-products), to cleaning and personal care products. This term is used to suggest that no ingredients are by-products from slaughtered animals. This might be helpful when it's not obvious; natural flavor could come from vegetables or animals, for example. But Consumers Union says the label is tricky because there isn't a standard, precise definition of "animal ingredients" and the label isn't used consistently. It also isn't verified by an outside body.
5.) 100% Vegan: Vegans generally avoid animal products for food and clothing, and often want to avoid products that were tested on animals. But this label does not have a standard or consistent definition and isn't verified. Alternatively, a Certified Vegan label is a registered trademark signifying that products are vegan--meaning they contain no animal ingredients or by-products, use no animal ingredients or by-products in the manufacturing process, and are not tested on animals by any company or independent contractor. The logo is administered by the Vegan Awareness Foundation, also known as Vegan Action.
6.) Raised Without Antibiotics: Consumers Union says this term implies that no antibiotics were used in the production of a food product. The USDA has defined it to mean that meat and poultry products came from animals who were raised without the use of low-level or therapeutic doses of antibiotics. But a recent case of this label being used inaccurately by a major poultry producer illustrates some of the problems: there is no formal definition and while the USDA can hold a manufacturer accountable for the claim, no other organization is behind or verifies the claim.
Dallas Morning News published an article that showed that those who had the hardest time losing weight had more "mental roadblocks".
"Overall, the overweight and obese women told of more perceived obstacles than their slimmer counterparts. They were more likely to feel self-conscious about how they looked while exercising, felt they lacked self-discipline, hated to fail so didn't try, had minor aches and pains and felt too overweight to exercise."
The USA Today did a story on what the differences are between those who lose weight permanently and those who never seem to reach their goals. The key habits among successful dieters:
• Are physically active for about an hour a day, burning about 2,600 calories a week with exercise. • Do high-intensity activity, such as jogging, aerobics, biking, for about 70 minutes a week. • Are highly restrained eaters who are always aware of calories. • Are less likely to binge or overeat for emotional or environmental reasons than obese people. • Have fewer TVs than heavier people.
I need to let everyone know that right now KatyFitness.com is being redesigned. I've added a new template that I will be customizing and then I want to complete change the content in a way that will be beneficial for everyone who lives in Katy. Stay Tuned....
Jason Hodge Certified Personal Trainer
Medical Exercise Specialist
Bringing over 13 years of personal training experience to the Katy, TX area, Jason Hodge strives to improve the health of local residents by helping them lose weight and eliminate pain. While Jason has numerous educational accomplishments, he feels that his greatest asset is his concern for others. Trying to lose or get out of pain is a very tough journey, physically and emotionally. It is my committment to help everyone that I can.
Jason Hodge has been featured in:
Katy Magazine
Absolutely Katy Magazine
Houston Chronicle
OnlyKaty.com
Freckletown.com
Jason Hodge also:
Has Been featured twice on a national radio show
Leads the Katy Chamber Health and Wellness Committee
2007 Katy Sun Readers' Choice Award - Personal Trainer of the Year
2008 Katy Sun Readers' Choice Award - Personal Trainer of the Year
