Social Workout

Gym Dangers

Tripping on Jump Ropes and Falling Off Exercise Balls

The gym in January isn't just more crowded. It's also more dangerous. More than 50,000 people were injured at the gym last year, estimates the Consumer Products Safety Commission, with injuries sustained, "falling off exercise balls, getting snapped in the face by resistance bands, dropping heavy weights on their toes, tripping over ropes, or flying off treadmills. Especially flying off treadmills." Those new to treadmills, MSNBC reports, are especially vulnerable, making the January rush peak time for gym-juries. Now that it's February, we should all be safer. Still, a protocol is in order: If you see someone fall off an exercise ball or get snapped in the face with a resistance band, first make sure they're okay, then suppress guffaws till you're at least five steps away.  

Home Workout

Apartment Therapy on Exercise Balls and Emergency Challenges

A poll on Apartment Therapy this morning: Do exercise balls add style to a funky home, or are they an interior design faux pas? Obvious answer: Anything which encourages full body stretching during the cocktail or dessert is auspicious for the general dinner party vibe. And while we're on the subject of Apartment Therapy: Here's a warm welcome to the AT readers visiting today, post turkey, to peek at the Emergency Holiday Challenge! Saving the world, one body and one home at a time....

Newslinks

Gordon Brown, Yoga Cults, Overexercising, and Inflatable Chinese Bras

• Gordon Brown has taken up jogging, and the snarko-Office-loving Brit press can't help noting how poorly dressed, tubby, and generally un-Obama-like their P.M. is on the running path.
• Everybody knows superelite female athletes may experience a loss in fertility from extreme training. But a new study of 3,000 women in Norway suggests that short term fertility loss can happen to women who work out daily to the point of exhaustion. Our take: Regular exercise very good. "Over-exercising" can be problematic, and especially not helpful if you want babies. Your body needs energy to procreate.
• Gyms are booming in China, but Chinese people still think cardio is weird. Also in China, inflatable bras are the hot new thing.
• Winter is gym season, people. Our man Keith Worts, C.O.O. of Crunch, tells Reuters that gym memberships spikes by up to 25% in cold months.
• Remember when we discovered that some lucky kids were sitting on exercise balls in classrooms. That was so last week. This week it's stationary bikes.
• The Post reports that city schools are suspending their funding of "Brain Education," a program with ties to Dahn Yoga, which is embroiled in several lawsuits and accused of being a cult.

Newslinks

Marathon Cheaters, Elementary Exercise Balls, and Aggressive Faces

• A new study in Psychological Science shows that Width-to-Height Ratio (WHR) of your face is a good indicator of your aggressiveness, with greater WHRs tied to increased aggressiveness.
• Fourth-graders in Elgin, Illinois are now sitting on exercise balls instead of chairs, and the balls are apparently improving both their posture and their attention spans. Recall that Elgin was recently ranked the fattest city in Illinois. Cheers for potential progress.  
• Some marathoners cheat! Last year, reports the Times, close to 50 marathon participants were caught taking shortcuts. Not so much Meb Fekflizighi, who won the marathon yesterday, the first American since 1982. Edward Norton ran kind of fast — 3:48.
• The Fattening of Japan. Hamburger vending machines are all the rage in Japan. Except they're not actually machines. They just look like machines, and behind the facade is a person who puts the burger in the slot.
• New research shows that fructose raises your blood pressure. But don't worry about the natural fructose in fruit. Their antioxidants, potassium, and other goodies counteract the effect. Fructose in processed foods is the problem.
• Attention CIA-Conspiracy-Theorists: More than 100 children in the U.S. have now died from swine flu. So maybe you should get a shot despite your crazy theories in order to avoid infecting kids.
• CBS reports that Strollercize, a 45-minute stroller bootcamp, is the "ultimate outdoor workout for new moms."  
• NPR reports that women heal faster from brain injuries than men do thanks to pregnancy hormones. 

Link Love

Rush Limbaugh at Quarterback, Stem Cells, and Improper Photography

• Sports: Rush Limbaugh has announced plans to bid on the St. Louis Rams, and the New York Daily News reports that some players are threatening to leave the team rather than play for him. Several possible outcomes: Rush scraps his plans like a nice guy, the NFL figures out a way to keep him out, OR he succeeds in buying the team. In that case, some players leave, and you end up with a "conservative" NFL franchise. Play that forward in your head, a world of overtly political football teams:  The Al Franken Vikings vs. the Limbaugh Rams. (Idea for fun road trip game: Match powerful P.A.C.s to NFL franchises.) In other sports news, the International Olympic Committee has approved golf and rugby for the 2016 games. Great, more golf.
• Science: Scientists have figured out a way to inject nano-particles into stem cells, thus creating super-fast healing tissue. Think Wolverine. Less amazing news: Other scientists have linked HPV to a head and neck cancer. A very rare head and neck cancer, but still, don't STDs do enough damage without having to also cause cancer of the neck?
• Gear: The iBike Rider case for the iPhone is here to make your cycling time more productive. Resist the urge.
• Gyms: A man in Chicago is suing his gym because his exercise ball deflated and he came crashing to the ground. A Fort Worth man was arrested for taking photos of unsuspecting men in the Locker Room of his local Lifetime Fitness. But he was only discovered because he left his phone on the floor, so he kind of wanted to be caught. The charge: Improper photography.

Link Love

Fat America's Love-Hate Relationship with Fitness Tech

• News: One small New York-based health insurer has a new plan for solving America's health problem: Replace your standard issue office chair with a combination exercise ball chair and under-the-desk-stationary peddling mechanism. They call this the "Pedal Project," and have gamely deployed the equipment to their own employees. Desperate times call for desperate measures. According to these guys, 49% of U.S. employees have "not engaged in regular physical exercise in the last 30 days." Also, one third of same "experiences one or more symptoms of clinical depression."
• Trends: But wait, the New York Times has noticed that, in fact, low-tech is the new, new thing in fitness. Gone are the days of personal trainers using high tech gear and machinery to sculpt perfect little biceps. Now it's all about using logs, wheelbarrows, sandbags, tractor tires, sledgehammers to increase "functional fitness." OK, scrap peddle gizmo. Replace with bag of sand or anvil under your desk.
• Tech: Actually, tech is out, unless it's digital technology.... eWeek is out with a list of the nine hottest health and fitness applications for the iPhone. What we are all downloading (if not using) after the jump....
  

Alt.Fitness.Videos

Improper Use of Exercise Balls

[This made Charity laugh so hard, she broke a sweat. ~The Eds.]

News of the Weird

How Much Do You Love Exercise Balls?

Forget about The Orphan or Sorority Row. Coming soon to a gym near you: The Exercise Ball Slasher.  Reality much stranger than fiction. The Minnesota police are currently on the hunt for one Christopher Neil Bjerkness, 31, who was captured by surveillance cameras slashing rubber exercise balls at a Duluth-area fitness center. Turns out our man was convicted in 2005 of slashing 72 exercise balls at the University of Minnesota. Confronted with his heinous crimes at the time, he plead guilty, citing a deep need to satisfy certain sexual urges. Experts noted (helpfully) that the man seemed to have "an unusual attraction to inflatable exercise devices."   

And I thought my extreme love of Gunnar Peterson's Core Secrets DVD series, and the "inflatable exercise device" that accompanied its purchase, was a little unusual.  In conclusion, friends, please be vigilant with your exercise balls. Someone may be eyeing them right now with impure thoughts.

FIterati

The Lebron Workout

Oh boy, Men's Health scores interview with NBA mega-superstar Lebron James, and they've created an eight page online feature detailing the non-basketball parts of his dailly workout. Here's the truth: In addition to being a comic genius, Lebron is a personal trainer's dream. There's nothing fancy or super macho here: Pull ups, push ups, some tough-looking core exercises on an exercise ball. (Does Gaiam make balls big enough for a guy 6'8" and 250?) No bench press, no Oympic clean and jerk. Nothing to wow the CrossFit set. Minus the part about doing squats on a vibrating platform, you could start this today. And if you aim to dunk this summer, you probably should....

Wake Up Call

On Touch

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.

~Hannah Arendt