Something I ran across, thought it was worth sharing.

Looking and feeling great requires a comprehensive approach. Easily said, but where to begin? Start with these 10 tips to a healthier you, from head to toe.

1. Get physical
Depending on your overall health, you should have a physical exam every one to five years from age 30 onward. After 65, you should have an exam annually. The tests your health provider orders will depend on your history. Generally, your workup will include a blood pressure check, a blood test, and sometimes urinalysis. Ask your doctor which biomarker exams may be beneficial to you. Be sure to record all values in your journal to serve as your baseline. You can track your progress over weeks, months and years.

2. Get a face lift – for your kitchen
The contents of your fridge and cupboards mirror your health. If your shelves are loaded with sugar and white stuff – chips, crackers, microwave popcorn packets (with oil and “flavorings”) – and your freezer is filled with ice cream treats, it’s time to take out the garbage. Remember, the prize for eating white stuff, processed foods, and soft drinks is a ticket on the Wrinkle Express. Toss the junk and make room for your new best friends. The prize for eating “positively ageless” foods is a slow ride to a healthy longevity.

3. Load up on antioxidants
When you shop with a health-minded list in hand, you can more easily restock your arsenal with wholesome foods and ingredients, and you’ll be less likely to buy the junk you used to eat. What you put in that shopping cart now predicts your health and longevity later. Once you know where to find all you need in the supermarket and local health food stores, you’ll be set. You won’t have to go scouting again.

4. Basket case
It’s time to make fruit more accessible. Keep the basket in a convenient place, such as near the entry door or kitchen (or on your desk), so it’s easy to pick up a healthy snack when hunger strikes. Plus, the vibrant colors will be a constant reminder to continually replenish your antioxidant levels.

5. Scope it out
If you’re under 40, have a dermatologist give you a top-to-bottom skin exam every few years, starting at your scalp and ending at the soles of your feet. If you’re over 40, schedule one annually. If you’ve spent a lot of time in the sun or have lots of moles, freckles, or pigment changes or a family history of skin cancer, you should be examined even more frequently.

Written By

Eating and sleeping are two of our most basic functions, and they bear an important relationship to one another. Clients and BL contestants have often asked me, “What is the best time to eat dinner?” It’s not so much a question of the best time to eat the meal, as it is of when’s best for you.

The time that you eat dinner is not as important as how close it is to your bedtime. If you’re eating dinner too close to your bedtime, you may experience reflux (heartburn), not sleep as well as you otherwise might, or skip breakfast the next morning (this is quite a common pitfall).

It works the other way, too. The proper amount of sleep is important to your meals. Sleep deprivation may actually cause you to eat more to help you wake up. This can cause unwanted weight gain, and may lead to less exercise because you may feel too tired for a workout. Not good.

Eating dinner 2-3 hours before bedtime may help with several common issues:

Reflux (heartburn): When you eat an adequate amount of time before hitting the sack you will likely experience less reflux since 2-3 hours gives your stomach some time to empty before reclining. When your stomach is too full and you lie down, things start to “repeat” on you and you may experience heartburn.

Digestion: Giving yourself 2-3 hours (without snacking) after dinner and before bed allows for digestion time. This may lead to you waking the next morning feeling a bit hungry – which is a good thing! You will then be less likely to skip breakfast, which is an important meal. Eating a breakfast that contains both carbohydrates and protein may help control overall hunger during the day.

Making the Most of Your 40 Winks: Spacing your dinner time and sleep time by 2-3 hours can actually help you sleep better. However, if you eat dinner at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. and don’t go to bed until 11:00 p.m. or later, it’s important to plan a balanced snack that contains about 150 calories and includes some carbohydrates and lean protein. Your snack, then, should be eaten 2-3 hours before bedtime.

These are some basic guidelines about the optimal time for your nighttime meals, but if you are having trouble sleeping most nights, or are experiencing heartburn often, please consult with your primary healthcare provider or doctor.

Written by

So, Cage Fitness just released our new Android and iPhone App!!
Search the App Market on your iPad, iTunes or Click Here on your Android phone to get the app.

It’s time to take charge of your health! Schedule an appointment with your health care provider to discuss what preventive health services you need and when you need them. You may also want to start a campaign in your community (i.e. a faith-based setting, workplace, school, or civic group) to encourage others to make an appointment for a check-up or health screening on National Women’s Check-Up Day (the day after Mother’s Day each year) or National Men’s Health Week (the week before Father’s Day each year). Below are resources to help you and your health care provider determine what health services and screenings are best for you.

Why Are Check-Ups Impotant

Regular health exams and tests can help find problems before they start. They also can help find problems early, when your chances for treatment and cure are better. By getting the right health services, screenings, and treatments, you are taking steps that help your chances for living a longer, healthier life. Your age, health and family history, lifestyle choices (i.e. what you eat, how active you are, whether you smoke), and other important factors impact what and how often you need services and screenings.

I realize this isn’t the norm for our Cage Fitness blog, but I wanted to share a healthy main dish I ran across.

Ingredients:

6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup prepared mustard

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon dried parsley

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper to taste, and place in a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish. In a small bowl, combine the honey, mustard, basil, paprika, and parsley. Mix well. Pour 1/2 of this mixture over the chicken, and brush to cover. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Turn chicken pieces over and brush with the remaining 1/2 of the honey mustard mixture.
3. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Written By

Our first Home Kit’s shipped!

Not only did they ship, but we had to ship them around the world.  Australia, Canada, Great Brittan, and all over the United States.

Go ahead and post how you’re liking the Rounds.
Also post if you know someone with our home kit. We want to know what you think.

5. Body Composition

The final component of physical fitness is body composition.

Body composition simply is what your body is made up of. In other words, the proportion of lean tissue like bone, muscle, connective tissue, internal organs and water to your body fat levels.

Body composition is not based on your weight, hip-to-waist ratios, or inaccurate, one-size-fits-all formulas like Body Mass Index (BMI.) Instead, body composition looks at your percentage of lean tissue to fat ratio. This is important, because scale weight alone is a poor representation of a person’s actual physical fitness and body composition. Two people with the exact same height and weight, can have very different body compositions, depending on how much body fat or lean muscle they are carrying.

For example, a 5? 3?, 130 lb female gymnast at 13% body fat will look much leaner than a woman with 25% body fat at the same weight and height. Because muscle takes up less volume on the body than fat, a person with more muscle and less body fat will always look leaner than someone at the same weight with less muscle and more body fat.

Having a body composition that reflects a higher muscle-to-body fat ratio is important, because body fat typically gets in the way of most activities. Body fat is metabolically-inactive and provides no strength or endurance advantage. It’s basically dead weight. Excess body fat can impede activity, negatively enhance physical or athletic performance, increase your risk of developing heart disease, stroke, Type II diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome.

Body composition is most easily determined using a pair of inexpensive body fat calipers. These calipers will give you an estimate (with a margin of error of about four percentage points in either direction) of your body fat percentage. You can then use this to estimate how much lean tissue you are carrying.

Because your goal should be to always shift your body composition in favor of muscle, while reducing body fat, regularly measuring your body fat percentage is a much more useful way to gauge your progress toward becoming leaner than a bathroom scale.
Benefits of Physical Fitness

Physical fitness isn’t something that only athletes can possess or something you tried to develop in 6th grade gym class. It’s the foundation for an active, healthy life. Being physically fit means being well rounded. And that requires attention to all five of these components of physical fitness.

For example, if you all you do is spend time in the weight room, but can’t run 100 yards without puking, then you’re not physically fit, regardless of what the mirror tells you or how much you can bench. Likewise, if your idea of staying fit and in-shape is an hour of cardio each day on the elliptical trainer, but you never touch a dumbbell or weight machine, you’re only getting the health benefits of one component of physical fitness. You’ll never achieve your potential with a pick-and-choose model like this.

By improving your performance in each of these five components of physical fitness, you build the basis for solid physical health, which also can help you live longer, be more mentally sharp and participate in activities that you enjoy. And these five components also have health benefits that go far beyond how you look at the beach, including less risk of heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, better cholesterol-levels, improved mood, more stamina and energy, a better sex life and less risk of injury as you age.

4. Flexibility

Flexibility is the fifth component of physical fitness.

Flexibility is simply the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion. In other words, how limber you are. A person’s level of flexibility is partly determined by genetics and their joint structure, but nearly all people are able to improve flexibility through regular static and dynamic stretching.

Flexibility is important because it allows you to perform certain daily activities like stretching to reach an item on a high shelf or bending down to pick something up off the floor.

Having a high-degree of flexibility discourages certain injuries and muscle-strains because flexibility allows you to better use proper form when performing activities like lifting objects. For example, people with tight, inflexible hamstring muscles (the muscles on the backs of your legs) will often compensate for this lack of flexibility, by lifting from the waist, versus through the legs and waist. This puts them at greater risk for lower back injuries.

In sports and recreational activities, improved flexibility can also enhance athletic performance, ensuring that you are using proper form and working a muscle through it’s full and natural range-of-motion — for example during weight or resistance training. Nearly all sports and activities can benefit from increased flexibility, but some — like gymnastics – require a very high-level of flexibility. In recreational sports like softball, basketball or soccer, increased flexibility can also improve power, balance and agility.

(Continued Later) Written by

1. Cardiovascular Endurance

Cardiovascular endurance (also known as cardio-respiratory endurance) basically refers to ability of the lungs to transfer oxygen to the blood and to the heart’s ability to pump that oxygen-rich blood to your muscles and tissues. This is a critical component of physical fitness, since without that oxygen-rich blood, your body and muscles won’t be able to effectively perform work.

But cardiovascular endurance isn’t just about providing the oxygen you need to power your workouts or daily activities. It also has a wide range of health benefits. As cardiovascular endurance improves, your resting heart rate decreases — putting less stress on the heart even when performing light activity. This is one of the reasons that doctors almost always prescribe light cardiovascular exercise as preventative treatment for heart disease or high blood pressure.

Even if your goal is to train for muscle mass (for instance, if you are a bodybuilder), improving your cardiovascular endurance can help increase your stamina during weight training, reduce fatigue and even allow you to lift more weight or perform more reps.
2. Muscular Endurance

Muscular endurance is the second key component of physical fitness.

Muscular endurance is the ability to hold a particular position (muscle contraction) for a sustained period of time, or to repeat a movement many times without excessive fatigue. This could be the capability required to hold a two-pound weight above your head for five minutes or the effort required to lift that weight 20 consecutive times. In both cases, muscular endurance is involves the extended contraction of muscles against less-than-maximum weight.

Muscular endurance is important because it allows the muscle to work longer without fatigue, which is critical during for sports and recreational or daily activities. Without muscular endurance, you would be unable to run more than a few hundred yards, stand for long-periods of time, or participate in sports like biking, swimming or cross-country skiing.
3. Muscular Strength

The third component of physical fitness is muscular strength.

Muscular strength is the ability to exert maximum force, such as lifting the heaviest weight you can move, one time. It’s typically expressed as your One Rep Max (1RM) — or the amount of resistance you can move in a single rep.

Muscular strength may be localized to certain muscle groups, for instance you could have muscular strength in your legs, but not in your arms. Overall, you should aim for muscular strength across all muscle groups, especially your core (your torso, which includes back, abs and chest), since your torso is heavily involved in supporting and assisting in nearly all movement and activities.

Imbalances in muscular strength between opposing muscle groups (for example lower back and abdominal muscles) can increase the risk of acute and chronic injuries, including muscle pulls and tears and strains to connective tissue.

Muscular strength is important, because without it, you would be unable to participate in recreational sports, support your own body weight, or even lift yourself out of a chair. Improving muscular strength also has broader health benefits, including:

• Improved bone density
• Reduced risk of osteoporosis
• Reduced risk for injury
• Improved insulin sensitivity, which can reduce the risk of developing Type II diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome.

(Continued Later) Written by

5 Components of Physical Fitness

What Is Physical Fitness? Understanding the Five Basic Components of Physical Fitness Can Be The Difference Between Fitness Success & Failure.

What does it mean to be “physically fit?”

Ask a dozen people to describe to you a person who typifies the concept of “physical fitness” and you will likely get 12 different answers.

Many people will probably mention Olympic athletes as paragons of physical fitness — people like swimmer and Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps or U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson. Others might point to professional athletes like NBA forward LeBron James or legendary NFL running back Herschel Walker. Other people might say that fashion models, certain actresses or actors, bodybuilders or even professional wrestlers represent “physical fitness.”

So clearly, physical fitness is in the eye of the beholder.

Or is it?
Can You Look “In-Shape” But Not Be Physically Fit?

While excelling at some type of athletic activity — whether you are a professional or amateur — requires a certain level of physical fitness, it doesn’t guarantee that they are physically fit.

For example, there are NFL linebackers who do their job very well on the field, but are over-weight and inflexible. The same goes for people who have lots of muscle mass like bodybuilders or professional wrestlers, but who may not be able to run more than a mile or touch their toes. And Hollywood actors and actresses, as well as professional models, may be skinny and look fit, but also have very little strength and enjoy their physiques thanks to fad diets, cosmetic surgery and weight-loss drugs. There are a lot of “skinny-fat” people running around Hollywood and the fashion runways.

So just looking like you are in shape doesn’t necessarily qualify you as physically fit.

The 5 Components of Physical Fitness

Believe it or not, there is an objective standard that can be used to determine overall physical fitness, and it’s broader than whether you can put a basketball in a hoop or sport a great six pack.

While athletic ability or a lean physique may be outward signs of physical fitness, they alone aren’t enough to qualify a person as physically fit. To determine true fitness, you need to evaluate that person (as well as yourself) against the five recognized components of physical fitness.

Physical fitness is broken down into five fundamental components:

• Cardiovascular Endurance
• Muscular Strength
• Muscular Endurance
• Flexibility
• Body Composition

While you may not have heard physical fitness broke down this neatly in the past, these are the main components of physical fitness, and should be at the core of any discussion around exercise, athletic performance and general health and fitness. In order to be considered truly fit, you’ll need to exhibit certain characteristics within each of these components.

Practically speaking, having a good understanding of these components of physical fitness can also help you make sure that your training and exercise routine (as well as your diet) supports improved fitness levels.

(Continued Later) Written by