I have been looking through some of my blog posts for this year and realized that I have posted a lot about eating and not quite enough about exercise. You do exercise a lot don’t you?

Well if you are like most people the answer may be a sheepish no…that’s ok, change is near.

I wanted to kick off some exercise posts by today letting you know 5 exercise myths and why you have to stop believing them. Read this mythbusting a few times so that you are not as scared about getting scared about exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Motor fitness is a more inclusive term than physical fitness.

Physical fitness combines strength, stamina, and cardiovascular reserve. Motor fitness includes these and adds agility, balance, “explosive” power, and speed. This concept has more limited value for the sportsman but approaches an even higher level of general fitness. Because more parameters are measured, these tests tend to become increasingly complex and complicated.

Perhaps the simplest of these is the JCR Test. This is intended to assess basic motor skills such as jumping, chinning, running, and dodging which presumably require power, stamina, speed, and agility.

The J of JCR stands for the vertical jump. This is performed by having the subject stand erect, reaching as high as he can without standing on tiptoes, and making a mark
the wall.

Next, he squats down and then leaps as high as he can—making another mark on the wall. The distance between the two chalk marks is recorded.

The C is for chinning. With palms facing forward, the subject grasps a bar above his head. He then chins himself as many times as possible, making sure that his elbows are straight before each chin. Wiggling, kicking, and jerking are not allowed.

Running accounts for the R in JCR. This is a hundred-yard shuttle run. The subject runs a ten-yard course ten times—back and forth between two walls ten yards apart. His time is then measured in seconds.

In all types of fitness measurements, experts generally deplore self-testing. Unintentionally the subject may count partial movements as complete. Or the ability to time oneself may be askew. However, these objections do not apply to sportsmen provided that they always perform the test in the same manner, under the same conditions, and are measuring for comparison—improvement or deterioration. The sportsman competes only against himself in fitness tests; he is not concerned with what other individuals or other groups can or cannot do. He is checking his own progress.

Fitness is individual. A person knows that he is or is not in shape. He also knows the various degrees of his own fitness. Or he can define his fitness in terms of others of similar age and state of health. He may be proud that he is the only fellow on the block who can go out bicycling for the afternoon, climb three flights of stairs without panting, and shovel his own driveway. And by this comparison he knows if he enjoys normal fitness, which is indeed rare, or only average fitness.

There is a tendency to be too scientifically sophisticated in appraisals of fitness for people after college years. Why make things overly difficult? Either you are in good shape-for you-or you are not. That is easy for you to decide.

Your own base line or yardstick is you at this moment. From now on you improve, you deteriorate, or you hold the line. This is where you start. And a medically sound beginning it is. Consciously or unconsciously each sportsman has devised his own fitness testing. It may be formal (one more push-up, lopping two seconds off his hundred-yard swimming time, or returning to normal pulse less than three minutes after exercise) or informal (”it sure was easier to climb Mount Yahoo this year!”)-but it is there. Read the rest of this entry »