middle of all this hoopla about exercise 57% of our kids are still failing
fitness test and fitness leaders say they're worse now than they were thirty years ago we're finding 14 to 90 old kids with 40% block at the coronary arteries which used to be called adult onset diabetes and not showing up in kids between 4 and 10 years of age they say we're raising the first generation that will have a shorter life expectancy than either their parents or grandparents it has never before happened in our history the state of Oregon has the highest rate of obesity of any state west of the Rockies our public schools are being gutted because of budget cuts and the first thing we always cut is physical education they formed an Oregon health policy Commission to tell us how to solve this problem they published a 65 page report which basically said we don't know what they said this children's behaviors are substantially affected by the influential adults in their lives parents grandparents and teachers efforts to address childhood obesity in Oregon will not be successful unless they also include interventions that influence the healthy eating and physical activity behaviors of adults as well as children now they warded this message down a bit
in their final draft but the idea was out how many of you get all the exercise you need and if not why not well the two most common objections are what do you think it is number one I don't have time every time we've asked I don't have time number two and this surprised me how often they stayed and how boldly they stated was I'm too lazy to do it even
when I do have time or the way the way one can head to South Carolina said it I swear after college I'd never sweat again let's just call it lack of motivation but every time we in the medical and fitness field have been bold enough to ask why don't you do it you've been incredibly honest and you've been incredibly consistent you said two things over and over and over and over again I don't have time and I don't know how to stay motivated to exercise and you would think all medical and fitness leaders who cared would have scheduled a
national convention somewhere got into a big room and said let's just solve these two problems it has never happened as fitness leaders we are not trained to deal with I don't have time and I don't know how to stay motivated to exercise almost changed my major the University of North Carolina when I heard some guys in California say exercise that my wife is to take a bath pull the plug and fight the current what they teach us to say is ya gotta make exercise fun he ever heard that it's all over the place make it fun make
it folks over the past thirty nine years I've put over ten thousand Americans on exercise programs and I'm here to tell
you I've learned a lot about exercise one of the things I've learned is if what you're doing for exercise is fun I guarantee you you're not doing it right
there are physiological requirement that must be met in order to benefit from your exercise program whether you like it or not the intensity the duration the
frequency of your exercise are all more important than whether or not it's fun
you must work every muscle in the body the cardiovascular system flexibility muscle balance muscle strength and there's no single activity or exercise that we know of that adequately works your total body if you don't sit down and design a total body workout it isn't going to happen so how do you solve this problem well I got to meet dr. mark Angel dr.
mark Angel has a dual professorship at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro I do a professorship in the department of psychology and Health and Human Performance he wrote an article conceptualizing a new fitness major he was going to call applied exercise psychology which would have been what I majored in had it existed when I was in school but basically what he had done is wrote an article to the Journal of the board of sports psychology explaining what he saw was justification for this new fitness major and explains the problems he saw in physical fitness and it almost exactly mirrored what I've been speaking on for over thirty years to the point where I wanted to meet this guy so I flew back to Nashville drove down to Murfreesboro looked him up in his office went up to him gave a great big bear hug and said you're my hero and he called for security and know it no that didn't happen but but I explained them what I was doing and and he was so appreciative of that and and I has a new book out and promised to send me a new copy which I haven't gotten yet um but but what he basically said is this this fitness problem is more about our mental failures that our physical failures it's more about your head your attitude than it is about your body he said you just can't decide to exercise and have a sustain you for the rest of your life so your brains gonna fight you you say I want to start an exercise program your brain says what are you doing haven't we been down this road look at you look at your dog but he says you have to win the mental balance it's tough one guy said he got in his car decided to go to the health club he got down to the intersection the light turned red he said that's a sign turn around and went back home but if you can win the mental battle for five consecutive years you will never go back to your previously sedentary lifestyle but you got to keep it up how do you win the psychological battle associated with getting ourselves to exercise well make it just that a lifestyle it become has to become a habit now we know that rather than working out every day excuse me seven to three days a week the way we've been taught working out seven days a week or Gordon American College of Sports Medicine worked out most days or every day I should thank you I've been saying that for over thirty years see it's easy to work out everyday than it is to work out three days a week three days a week gives you too many decisions Monday Wednesday Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday can I skip the day and double up tomorrow folks if you're negotiating about whether or not to work out it's over do you work out first thing in the morning you have a 300 percent greater chance of getting it done than at any other time of day because you have more control over your schedule for stay in the morning than any other time of day try to confine your workout time to 20 minutes or less the more time you spend exercising the less likely you are to do it and then we're likely you are to get injured we'll keep you from doing it
anyway and then work against resistance if you work against resistance you get tired faster now the most important rule in exercise physiology is called the overload principle it says no benefit occurs in any exercise program until you get tired the problem is as you get more fit what happens to the amount of work you have to do to get tired it goes up in the public schools they did Studies on high school boys and asked them to do as many pushups they could every day until they get got tired do that every day for a year the boys you can do five push-ups on the first day after year we're doing between 100 and 120 to get to the same level of fatigue that five got it on the first day we're talking major-league boredom even if you do have time so then we say we'll just go on a diet well folks the quickest way I know to get an American fat is to go on a diet don't ever diet another day the rest of your life eat for nutrition never eat for weight loss and never make any change in the way you eat that you're not willing to make permanent now there's a lot more I want to talk about nutrition but for lack of time let's just concentrate on on physical fitness today so seven days a week first day in the morning fan to spend about 20 minutes or less and then work against resistance so that as you become more fit you don't spend more time you work against more resistance so how do you do that well I was speaking to the University Rotary Club in Seattle and one of the members came up when I was done and said I'm one of the editors for prentice hall publishing we're the largest publishing company America we have a waiting
list of people that want to write books on exercise nobody is telling us how to stay motivated and what you told us here today makes more sense than anything I've heard anywhere in the country we do a book for my company on fitness motivation I said sure that was 30 years ago they haven't gotten motivated to do it yet but what I said was this the problem with Fitness is we don't know what Fitness is and the reason we don't know what Fitness is is because there's no such thing as generic Fitness fitness is activity specific until you define what you're trying to get fit for the term has no meaning I've trained Portland Trailblazers not change Seattle Seahawks I've trained real-estate agents and I trained plumbers totally different approach to fitness depending on what I'm trying to get done in that fitness program so what is the most universal appeal I can make for physical fitness and I came down with this health exercise being called the best medicine in America today outperforming almost every prescribed medication in the country in terms of its overall impact on our health everything from colds and flu to cancer is being impacted by exercise but you can't just pay lip service to the idea you actually have to do it so how much fitness do we need in order to be healthy I said no problem I'll go through the experts I went to the medical school library in Portland and look up how fit you have to be to stay healthy and for the most part to find virtually nothing written on the subject some information on aerobic exercise but other than that there was nothing there so I wouldn't talk with physiologist that I had known and and read about and asked him they're in definition about physical fitness and they're already tests and norms that had been established for the components that could make up total physical fitness but nobody ever packaged it and said this is the level of fitness he wanted to have so that's exactly what I did I put together what I could tend it was a level of fitness sufficient to stay healthy and for 14 years took my definition around the medical societies in college physiology departments trying
list of people that want to write books on exercise nobody is telling us how to stay motivated and what you told us here today makes more sense than anything I've heard anywhere in the country we do a book for my company on fitness motivation I said sure that was 30 years ago they haven't gotten motivated to do it yet but what I said was this the problem with Fitness is we don't know what Fitness is and the reason we don't know what Fitness is is because there's no such thing as generic Fitness fitness is activity specific until you define what you're trying to get fit for the term has no meaning I've trained Portland Trailblazers not change Seattle Seahawks I've trained real-estate agents and I trained plumbers totally different approach to fitness depending on what I'm trying to get done in that fitness program so what is the most universal appeal I can make for physical fitness and I came down with this health exercise being called the best medicine in America today outperforming almost every prescribed medication in the country in terms of its overall impact on our health everything from colds and flu to cancer is being impacted by exercise but you can't just pay lip service to the idea you actually have to do it so how much fitness do we need in order to be healthy I said no problem I'll go through the experts I went to the medical school library in Portland and look up how fit you have to be to stay healthy and for the most part to find virtually nothing written on the subject some information on aerobic exercise but other than that there was nothing there so I wouldn't talk with physiologist that I had known and and read about and asked him they're in definition about physical fitness and they're already tests and norms that had been established for the components that could make up total physical fitness but nobody ever packaged it and said this is the level of fitness he wanted to have so that's exactly what I did I put together what I could tend it was a level of fitness sufficient to stay healthy and for 14 years took my definition around the medical societies in college physiology departments trying
to get somebody to disagree with me and
the date have not found one disagreement on one item on my test so I turned it
into a business that's still going now and Beaverton Oregon and then I wanted to get it even out farther to the general public so I got on the speaker circus your attention is your own public how to measure their own physical fitness that will be sufficient to impact your health both physical and mental health by the way and the test which you'll believe will have a copy of later as this here's your test that you can do at home I want you to be flexible enough to sit on the floor your legs straight and reach your fingertips at least five inches past your toes most men can touch your toes some of you haven't seen them in five years why it's flexibility that big a deal because one of the leading cause is not showing up at work in America is my back hurts 85% of the back pain in America today is being traced to people with tight back muscles caused by weak stomach muscles because you sit so much when the stomach muscles go on vacation the back muscles have to work overtime they tighten up you bend over to pick up a pencil on you off work for six weeks strengthen your abdominal muscles and stretch your lower back an 85 percent of an 80 to 100 billion dollar problem will either lessen or go away completely but none of you can strengthen your abdominal muscles by taking Doan's pills you have to exercise.
I want you to have enough cardiovascular turns to be able to step up and down on a 16 accordance box chair or stool or an 8-inch there for three consecutive minutes take the pulse for 15 seconds and multiply the beats by four if your pulse is higher than 144 beats a minute for men 156 beats of a minute 156 beats a minute for women on a sixteen the quarter-inch step you just failed the test and 75% of the people in this room if your typical will fail that test a lot of your runners don't have good cardiovascular fitness but no has been able explain that to you that test will and it's not my test I didn't make it up it's out there being used by the research community and then finally keep track of your body fat one lady started a 15 mile a week jogging program a light weight training hoping to lose weight she gained eight pounds but dropped six dress sizes because muscle is heavy and fat takes up less space this is a skin fold caliper I've been taking it everywhere I go every time I speak for over 30 years it measures your subcutaneous body fat have to fatten your body or directly beneath the skin I can pinch the thickness of your skin and the upper back in the thigh for men upper arm in the waistline for women I can fairly actually tell you how much body fat you have women shouldn't carry more than 20% men no more than 15% if you're carrying more than that you tend to be more prone to everything from colds and flu the cancer and by the way for you researchers this is Sloan's formula that I'm using for s2 body-fat I'll be happy to stay around at the end of the day and do body fat percentages for anybody wants to have that done the quickest way I know to clear the room and if you don't have a skin fold caliper keep track of your body shape if you're losing inches but you're not losing pounds what are you losing fat and that's a good thing so keep track of your shape for men you should at least drop your keep track of your waistline if you're dropping body fat you almost always a drop in the waistline measurement for men it's excuse me for women it's the hip measurement keep track of a hip measurement I found if you're dropping body fat you almost always are dropping the hip measurement so your body's giving you the information you need to motivate you but you have to know how to read your body this is stuff we should have taught you back in grade school and we didn't in a major price for it as a nation and finally don't forget to fit exercise into your busy schedule be basic things you want to remember with doing that number one I want you to work out everyday I want you to work out first thing in the morning go beyond it every day first thing in the morning 20 minutes or less and then work against resistance but here are the motivational principles that say I want you to define what Fitness is until you gain agreement about what you're trying to do you're in deep trouble - then I want you to measure Fitness measuring Fitness is a way of identifying what the need is focusing on the need is the thing that motivates you to do it and take it seriously and three I want you to reward physical fitness isn't that important to get recognition for doing it I found one of the most effective reward tools I've ever found a physical fitness is the belief that you're intrinsically doing something that will impact your health it is the most powerful reason for exercise but beyond that here's what comes in number two a little sticker stars and paper certificates some of the top executives in state of Oregon I've had rearranging our schedule to get their next dicker star this stuff works okay so define fitness measure fitness and reward fitness thank you.
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