An avalanche of fitness monitoring devices has poured onto the market in recent years.
I wondered how people in the fitness business are using them, so I polled a bunch of people I know. I was particularly interested in how heart rate monitors are figuring in the mix. Heart rate monitoring figures prominently in recommendations about prescribing exercise routines, but I found my own results pretty confusing. Continue reading How Fitness Experts Use Monitoring Devices (Part II)
Until yesterday, I was feeling so good. I had overcome my knee pain and started running again, loving it like I never did before. I was bounding up the hills near my house, fit and powerful.
Did I really need to know that I was only doing a 10-minute mile?
That information came to me courtesy of a cell-phone app I just downloaded, RunKeeper. It’s part of a new era of devices that continually monitor all our bodily functions, aggregate the data, store them in the cloud, analyze them using artificial intelligence, compare them to the data of our friends or celebrities, and make them publicly available.
I am not exaggerating. On assignment for Medscape, I spent three days in Silicon Valley last week at Health 2.0 Fall Conference, a celebration of digital health technology. The meeting included a fashion show of health monitors inside pendants, bras, shirts and wristwatches. “We envision a world with sensors all over the place,” said Christopher Glode, Under Armour vice president of connected fitness.
There was June, a bracelet that measures sunlight exposure and tells you to put on a hat. There was Sensoria smart socks that correct your gait. There was Medtronic’s Guardian Real-Time glucose monitoring device that literally gets under your skin.
There was also an embarrassing moment when Continue reading What Exercise Monitoring Device Should You Use? (Part I)
The argument for testosterone sounds irresistible: It’s a naturally occurring substance that can boost your strength and energy, possibly fire up your libido and might even lengthen your life.
Drug companies have churned out advertising around these claims in recent years, sparking a 65 percent boost in sales in testosterone-boosting drugs from 2009 to 2011. But a committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stepped in last week to recommend against prescribing these drugs for men whose symptoms can only be attributed to normal aging.
So where does that leave those of us who might like to add a little jet fuel to our sports performance?
Several studies have shown that testosterone makes both men and women leaner and stronger as well as more Continue reading Will Testosterone Help Your Sports Performance?
UPDATE: Referees may stop soccer matches for up to three minutes while the team doctor decides if a player can stay in the game in European competitions, wire services are reported on Thursday.
Gianni Infantino, the secretary general of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), said the policy was approved by the organization’s executive committee and will take effect immediately, according to Reuters.
Should referees stop a soccer game if a player gets hit hard in the head? Should team doctors should overrule coaches in deciding if a player stays in the game?
The answers to both questions seem obvious, but they are only now trickling into the minds of soccer’s governing body.
Leaders of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) last week put the notions forward, but Continue reading Update: Soccer Leaders Institute Concussion Rule
One day in Snowbird, Utah, a snowboarder hurled out of control into one of the world’s most prominent sports medicine doctors.
Bert Mandelbaum, a Santa Monica, California orthopedic surgeon, has treated famous athletes, such as David Beckham.
And he has helped create some of the most successful injury prevention programs, including FIFA11+, the program promoted by soccer’s governing body.
But on that day he was on a ski trip with his family, no doubt a much needed break from the challenges of battered flesh that dominated his work-a-day world.
Then in a flash, as he writes in his new book, The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit (Greenleaf Book Group Press), the doctor became the patient. Continue reading Life Lessons from an Orthopedic Surgeon
So you want to play tennis and not get injured doing it. Sounds simple enough, but research shows that for every thousand hours of the sport, up to 3 injuries occur.
You’ll get to a thousand hours in less than four years if you play a few sets each week.
Researchers are beginning to figure out how you can prevent these problems. But we still have a ways to go.
Kei Nishikori, who lost the U.S. Open final yesterday, is a case in point, according to Sports Illustrated:
His injury woes started with a right-elbow issue that required surgery and sidelined him for all but three months in 2009 and most of the first three months of 2010. He’s also struggled with back, knee, abdominal and toe injuries. In May, Nishikori led Nadal by a set and a break in the Madrid Open final before eventually retiring with back pain.
Of course, Nadal himself has struggled with injury, including a wrist problem so serious it kept him out of the U.S. Open this year.
So what can you do to reduce your risk? Continue reading How to Play Tennis Without Injury (We Think)
Heat. Fatigue. A strained thigh. Eugenie Bouchard had plenty of reasons to explain her defeat in the fourth-round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament yesterday. And anyone who plays tennis regularly can sympathize. Even though you don’t have the opportunity to crash into another player the way you do in a team sports, you can easily get hurt.
Of course every vigorous sport takes its toll. But researchers are beginning to pinpoint the biggest risks for each and figure out how to prevent them. While they’re not as far along as soccer researchers, tennis experts have already scored some important points. Continue reading How Tennis Players Get Hurt
Ever wonder how your health might change if you worked with a personal trainer or some other sort of health coach? Possibly quite a bit, according to a new U.S. government study published today.
On average, it found that people who are overweight and have at least one other risk factor for heart disease could lose significant weight, cut their risk of diabetes in half and improve their cholesterol and blood pressure as well.
Based on that, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended some sort of “behavioral counseling” to everyone in this category. Continue reading New Study Measures the Power of Health Advisors
So there I was at 7:15 in the morning last Thursday, the only man surrounded by 140 women doing yoga, most of them young enough to be my daughters. And I was thinking, “Did I take a wrong turn?”
The answer I decided by the end of my four days at IDEA World Fitness Convention, was “absolutely not.” But it took me a while to know that.
IDEA World brings together fitness professionals — especially personal trainers — from all over the world to exchange ideas about getting people in shape.
This year it included an optional two-day seminar on fitness blogging, essentially a meeting of 140 people within the larger meeting of 12,000.
When I signed up, I knew I was in for a feminine experience. Continue reading How My New IDEAFit Sisters Can Keep You in the Pink
Maybe it’s obvious to you. But wishful thinking can be a powerful force for distortion. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to think that tossing down a bottle of beer after a sweaty workout was actually the healthy thing to do?
And some people have claimed just that, notably an article in the Telegraph newspaper.
In a rare piece of good news for those who like a pint, Spanish researchers say beer can help someone who is dehydrated retain liquid better than water.
Prof Manuel Garzon, of Granada University, also claimed the bubbles in beer help to quench the thirst and that its carbohydrate content can help to replace lost calories.
Such reports have encouraged athletes to try quenching their thirst with beer, Luis Fernando Aragón-Vargas, told me. I met Aragón-Vargas at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting a couple of months ago. He is a professor of human movement science at the University of Costa Rica and was Continue reading Why Beer Doesn’t Make a Good Sports Drink
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