Answer To Your Fitness Questions" />Yoga, YouTube, Hula Hoop All Work Out Great Inside
April 6, 2008
WEDNESDAY February 6, 2008–Many Utahns who hike, bike and explore the open air during warm Wasatch months suddenly have a change of heart about the great outdoors when the snow starts piling up.
Nancy Christiansen, for example, says in wintertime she quickly switches from outdoor hikes to early-morning power walks at the University Mall. She’s joined with several dozen other local mall walkers who take over the shopping center starting at 7 a.m. each day.
“It’s too cold, too snowy and too dangerous to be out there,” she said while standing beside Wetzel’s Pretzels after getting some exercise earlier this winter. “When you are stuck in the house so much with the cold weather you at least need some activity.”
While some will choose to brave the frost and ice this season, other fit folks will adapt to a variety of indoor options — many of which are made easier and cheaper with digital technology.
While exercise programs have been on television for years, shows like BYU Television’s “Total Body Workout,” which recently completed its first year of air time, can now be streamed online for people to watch whenever and wherever they want. The same goes for Comcast’s “Exercise TV,” which provides free On Demand workouts to cable subscribers and Internet viewers.
And, literally, with each passing day, more videos are uploaded on YouTube.com and other video Web sites that provide low-cost, creative options to users who want to stay healthy and stay indoors at the same time.
“You don’t have to schlep to the gym anymore,” said Chris Mansolillo, the general manager of “Exercise TV,” which offers about 200 exercise videos to its subscribers for free. And many of those videos can be downloaded at the company’s online store for $2. (exercisetv.tv/store)
If you search exercisetv.tv and YouTube.com, you can find just about every kind of workout: two-minute abs, step aerobics, kick boxing, hip hop moves, meditation, boot camp simulations and even gospel cardio or Hula Hoop dance (”Hoopnotica”).
“It’s no joke,” Mansolillo said. “If you have a Hula Hoop, you can download a workout and take it where you want.”
The Yoga Journal magazine announced in December that several international yoga instructors had posted samples of their yoga practices on YouTube. And while the daunting task of searching and filtering through the Internet for the perfect workout might shy people away, sites such as Be Well @ Stanford (bewell.stanford.edu), which launched in October, can help by providing prescreened You Tube videos for viewers under different categories such as fitness, nutrition, stress and wellness.
In the case of newer workout videos that are also sold on DVD or in their full versions online, it is more likely that the free online version will only include a few minutes of the full video. Older, more classic workouts from the 1980s and ’90s — including those starring Jane Fonda — can be found in longer chunks of video.
And still other video posts from amateurs and professionals alike are produced in show segments especially for the Internet.
For example, model Tara Stiles uploads a new five- to 10-minute yoga practice every few days as part of a program with her modeling agency. The videos each have an emphasis or theme such as “Yoga for Jocks” and “Post Thanksgiving Dinner Yoga.” You can’t search “yoga” on the Internet or specifically on YouTube without quickly running into these specialized clips.
Local aerobics teacher Deni Preston said these kinds of easy-to-access exercise offerings are important for people because they offer at least some guidance and inspiration for working out at home. She said it is especially important to have an instructor for some activities such as Pilates, which is quite technical.
“If you don’t want to watch, you can at least put it on in the background and just listen to guide you,” she said.
Preston teaches several kinds of exercise classes and courses at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College, and attending her classes is, of course, another option for locals with cabin fever. Preston is also the host of BYU Television’s “Total Body Workout” series, which plays yoga and cardio classes Monday through Saturday on KBYU and BYU Television. The episodes were produced in Provo with mostly local residents and have been airing for one year.
Her on- and off-air classes use a collection of simple exercise equipment such as yoga blocks or stability balls, depending on the kind of workout. Preston said having this kind of equipment in the house is a cheap and easy way to allow for a more focused workout at home.
The stability ball, an inflatable ball made of elastic rubber which is often called any of several names, helps users focus on strength, balance and flexibility while exercising and can be used as an aid in almost every kind of workout.
“And everybody laughs,” she said. “It’s just a toy in a way, so it brings back some of your youth.”
After more than 10 years of teaching, Preston has seen that winter influences the same cycle of class attendance every year. People stop working out in November because it gets cold, and holiday activities start to pick up. But then they come back in droves to start again in January.
“People have decided, ‘Uh oh, it got away from me,’ ” she said. “People start to not feel as energetic, and they feel a little more sluggish. They don’t sleep as well, and the pounds go on from all that rich food we eat at parties (that) time of year.”
Mansolillo said he has noticed a similar pattern with the users of “Exercise TV,” and he attributes the pattern to New Year’s resolutions that people make to get fit and drop pounds.
“January is huge for exercise,” he said. “Now we just have to find a way to get people to stick to it.”
No matter how easy it is to access exercise videos, classes or even equipment, people have to be dedicated if it is going to make any difference, Preston said.
“Exercise is a discipline,” she said. “We have to make up our minds that we are going to do it.”
Find more information at http://www.denipreston.com/
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Aerobics Program Keeps Students Fit
April 6, 2008
The Aerobics Program at BYU is something the program’s director, Barbara Neal, said she recommends because the classes fulfill the recommended amount of exercise for adults. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, adults should be exercising a minimum of three times a week for 20 to 60 minutes each time.
The classes offered use a variety of different methods to tone and strengthen muscles. One class, yoga, is aimed specifically at increasing flexibility as well as strength.
Yoga is an aspect of the program that Neal said has become particularly popular in recent years.
The origins of yoga are unclear, but its techniques have existed for over 5,000 years. It incorporates meditation, exercise and breathing to improve overall health and well-being.
Deni Preston, an instructor of StepKardio Fusion and Power Yoga classes for the BYU Aerobics Fitness Program, said she thinks the poses in yoga make it easier to focus the mind, thereby improving study skills. Yoga is “a total mind, body, spirit workout,” Preston said. It can also help students let go of things that are unproductive.
“We’re always so busy paying attention to the past,” she said.
Preston also said she believes that yoga forces participants to keep their minds focused on events occurring in the present.
Yoga also has physical benefits and can help anyone from athletes to those with physical disabilities, Preston said. She said she has had several BYU football players come to classes.
“It enhances their sport plus it decreases injury,” Preston said.
For those with injuries or disabilities, Preston said yoga can act as a means of physical therapy.
In the past, yoga has sometimes been associated with femininity, but Preston said she encourages both males and females to attend yoga classes, pointing out that yoga was initially intended for men.
“It is wonderful to have the men,” Preston said. “A lot of people think flexibility is too feminine, but it is a very important component of exercise.”
Despite yoga’s current popularity and apparent health benefits, some physicians have suggested that it should not be the only component of an individual’s personal health regimen.
“The foundation [of an exercise regimen] should be aerobic exercises like running and walking,” said Spencer Richards, a sports medicine physician at Utah Valley Sports Medicine Clinic.
Although Richards said he has had many patients tell him they have received health benefits similar to those described by Preston from participating in yoga, he said he knows of no studies that have been performed to prove that yoga helps focus the mind. However, Richards said he agreed that yoga exercises would add to an individual’s overall health.
For more information about the Aerobics Fitness Program at BYU, visit aerobics.byu.edu or call 422-3644.
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