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Greetings!
Happy New Year! Hopefully you managed to enjoy the holiday season without too much damage to your nutrition and exercise regime. Regardless, today is a new day and there is no time like the present to prioritize your health and fitness.
As demands for your time increase, it is more important than ever to make sure your workouts are both productive and efficient. One way to do this is to make sure you are including an element of power in your program. After all, you don't workout to get slower, do you? You can read more about the importance of power training below.We've included a delicious, hearty and healthy vegetable gumbo recipe with kale and black eyed peas that is sure to warm you up this winter. In addition, we want to remind you to get your blood work checked at your annual physical. Even if you are not experiencing abnormal symptoms, a yearly test establishes a good baseline for future tests. Read on to find out what these tests actually mean.
Finally, we are pleased to announce our brand new Metabolic Conditioning workout that kicks off THIS Saturday, January 14th. We're putting the fun back into your workout. If you are looking to raise your heart rate, torch your metabolism and change your body composition, all in a recess-like atmosphere, this is the workout for you. Read more about it below, or check it out on our website. In addition, our next boot camp series kicks off on Tuesday, January 17th. These are the two most effective, challenging, rewarding group workouts in San Francisco. Email us now to reserve your spot.
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Step Your Game Up!
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Training For Power
By Megan Driscoll
 Every balanced exercise program should include an element of power. Life doesn't happen slowly, it happens quickly and we need to able to respond that way. Train the way you play.
Power, by definition, means applying the greatest amount of strength in the shortest period of time. Power = Force x Distance/Time. The slower you move, the higher the force production. As you speed up that movement, force production decreases. Optimal power occurs between these two extremes.
Why train power? For athletes the answer is easy: performance. In actual athletic performance, an athlete will probably never use maximum strength. Athletes don't train to lift heavy things slowly. They train to move quickly and explosively in order to produce maximum power output. Simply being strong doesn't translate outside the gym if you are unable to apply that strength explosively in a short period of time.
Yet power training isn't just for athletes and young people. Every program should incorporate power training. As we age, we lose power faster than we lose muscle. Resistance training has a positive effect on strength but only a small effect on functional ability, while power training improves function. Power is thought to be a better predictor than strength of an older adult's ability to perform the activities of daily living. The loss of muscle and power make it harder to balance and to catch yourself when you trip. When older adults fall, they don't fall slowly. It happens quickly and they need to be able to react.
Sarcopenia, or the gradual decrease in muscle tissue, begins at age 30, partly due to aging, but dis-use is a culprit as well. It has been thought that as we age we lose muscle mass and therefore we lose power, but perhaps it is the other way around. We stop TRAINING power so the body lets go of muscle mass. Regardless, when we train power, the muscles stick around and boost our metabolism.
Power training is an important component of fat-loss. As intensity goes up, so does caloric expenditure. Medicine ball training, for example significantly increases heart rate even though it is not traditionally thought of as "cardio."
Power training can be achieved with Olympic-style lifts (it is important that these lifts be executed properly to avoid injury), medicine ball training, plyometrics, even hill sprints. The key is to move as fast as possible while maintaining control. Stability and proper movement patterns are important when moving explosively. It isn't how hard we train, but how well we train. For older adults, this only means moving faster than normal in order to be effective power training.
Click here to continue reading
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All About Blood Work
| | Everything You Need to Know
Courtesy of Precision Nutrition
What is blood work?
Blood is a transport system for the body. We carry all kinds of things in the approximately 5 litres of blood that circulates constantly through our system. Blood tests, aka blood work, can show us what's in our blood - and by extension, what's in our bodies. Blood can also show us changes in our bodies that we might not be able to see from the outside - such as our blood sugar levels or nutritional status.
Thus, we can use blood work to assess overall health, and it can give us a much more accurate and objective snapshot of wellness than "Gee, I think I had some veggies yesterday" or "I feel fat today".
How is blood work done? We get blood for testing from:
- Capillary skin puncture (finger stick)
- Dried blood samples
- Blood drawn from an artery
- Blood drawn from a vein (most common)
- Bone marrow aspiration
What happens to blood after it's drawn?
Blood is analyzed in a lab. The blood is put into a centrifuge and spun until it separates.
 Reference ranges
Then, technicians compare results to a "reference range." The reference range is the range of expected values for each test listed.
Expected ranges used in lab analyses include 95% of the "healthy" population. So, 95% of healthy people would have lab values within these ranges. This range varies depending on the lab, region (e.g. US vs EU) and type of blood component.
A number above or below this reference range can give valuable diagnostic information about body systems. High and low values are especially useful when taken in context with other symptoms, lifestyle factors, and tests.
Variation in results and ranges
Lab values vary for each person and must be assessed relative to other factors. While reference ranges are established after testing a large number of healthy people, everyone is slightly different.
Blood analyses vary based on:
- Time of year
- Posture/positioning
- Food/fluid intake
- Stress
- Medication/supplement use
- Alcohol
- Smoking
- Exercise/physical activity
- General tests
Blood work: The tests
The Basic Test: A general lab ordered by a physician is typically called SMAC-20, SMA-20, or Chem-20.
This basic test looks at 20 different parts of the blood including levels of certain minerals, proteins, etc. This test is standard and should be done, although it's not very telling of one's overall health profile.
Beyond the basic SMAC-20, there are many different blood tests you can request. Here are some of the most useful tests.
Click here for important blood tests and what they mean
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Healthy & Delicious Recipe
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Vegetable Gumbo
INGREDIENTS:
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika (preferably hot)
- 2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
- 1 pound kale or Swiss chard, stemmed and chopped
- 1 10-ounce package frozen black-eyed peas
- Brown rice, for serving (optional)
DIRECTIONS:
- Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
- Add the flour and cook, stirring, until golden, about 3 minutes.
- Add the onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, 3 tablespoons water, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper.
- Reduce the heat to medium, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 8 minutes.
- Add the soy sauce and paprika and cook, stirring, 30 seconds.
- Stir in the vegetable broth, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot, then cover and bring to a boil.
- Add the greens and black-eyed peas to the pot.
- Reduce the heat, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 15 minutes.
- Season with salt and pepper. Serve with the rice, if desired.
Nutritional information per serving: Calories 249; Fat 12 g (Saturated 1 g); Cholesterol 0 mg; Sodium 530 mg; Carbohydrate 32 g; Fiber 6 g; Protein 9 g
Courtesy of Food Network Magazine
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Exercise Education
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Why Metabolic Conditioning?
What is your go-to Saturday morning workout? A run to the bridge? A bike ride up Mount Tam? 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer coupled with 15 minutes of weights? Those workouts are not without benefits, but they get less beneficial each time you do them because your body adapts to the stimulus. You are also not making efficient use of your time because you are only focusing on one or two aspects of your fitness. Perhaps most importantly, you are putting a tremendous amount of strain on your body with the all repetitive motion, thus putting you at a much greater risk of injury.
What can help you lose body weight, improve performance and reduce your chances of injury in a time efficient manner? Our Metabolic Conditioning workout. It's tough - but that isn't what makes it good. Anyone can make a person feel tired. This workout will push your limits with proper progressions, sound movement patterns and exercise selection with a purpose - all things we put a premium on at Presidio Fitness.
Our Metabolic Conditioning workout combines all the essential components of a responsible exercise program into 60 minutes of training: a dynamic warm-up (prepares your body to move) glute activation and core training, movement, power, strength and we top it off with a circuit that will challenge not just your cardiovascular system, but your mental toughness. Half-way through you may ask yourself why you came, but when it's over, you'll feel amazing and fired up for next week. This workout will truly take your fitness, as well as your expectations about exercise, to a new level. We'll work your body at a higher intensity than perhaps it is used to and we'll focus on things you may not be training. Suddenly you'll smoke your friends up Mount Tam on the bike, you'll be quicker and more explosive on the court, you'll have a little more left in the tank at the end of your run, AND you'll have the body to show for it. It's a game changer.
We play with balls, bands, ropes, sandbags, TRX and kettlebells. Every workout is different. Dare I say fun? You'll get the sense of camaraderie that comes with working hard in a group, yet it is small enough that you'll still get individualized attention. It's a slam dunk of a workout that YOU don't have to think about - show up and we'll take it from there, but bring you're A-game!
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Stay healthy and strong!
See you in the gym,
Megan, Jakki, Tracey, Megan F. & Simon
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