Combine Cardio and Strength Training

The idea is to get the most out of your workout in the least amount of time.  A healthy fitness routine combines both cardiovascular exercise and strength training.  The goal is heart strengthening, fat burning, aerobic and muscle toning in your workout, by combining movements and taking little to no time in between.

• "Burpee": combines resistance and cardiovascular exercise--start standing and then drop into a pushup stance and throwing your feet back, do a pushup and then pull your feet under your chest and jump back into the standing position and clap your hands above your head.  
• Alternate half minute stints of as many pushups you can do with half minute air punches while jogging in place.
• Do your normal machines, but do the sets in rapid progression, stopping only to switch machines or positions, so that the rapidity creates an increased heart rate.

By combining strength movements with speed, you create maximum benefit in the least amount of time!


Robert G. Tupac, DDS, FACP, Inc., Diplomate, American Board of Prosthodontics (661) 325-1275 | www.drtupac.com 5060 California Ave., #170, Bakersfield, CA 93309

Exercise Enhances Brain Power

Even for older people, physical exercise has been shown to actually increase activity in areas of the brain, and helps ward off a host of cognitive impairments and enhances brainpower all life long.  Michelle Voss, Assy. Prof. of Psychology, Univ. of Iowa, and her team examined more than 100 studies on the topic.  They found that aerobic exercise improves ability to coordinate multiple things, long term planning and the ability to stay on task for extended periods.  Resistance training, such as lifting weights, improves the ability to focus amid distracters.  MRIs of people in their 60s showed increases in gray and white matter just after six months of exercise.  This happens in the prefrontal and temporal lobes, sites that usually diminish with age.  With exercise, they grow.  Voss also explained that the hippocampus area of the brain, key for memory formation, shrinks 1% to 2% per year over the age of 60.  But if the same people begin fitness regimens, it grows by 1% to 2% instead.  Beyond growing one's brain, exercise improves the ability of different parts of the brain to work together.  Benefits can be had by simple brisk walking for 45 minutes three times per week.  

Source: Los Angeles Times  

Robert G. Tupac, DDS, FACP, Inc., Diplomate, American Board of Prosthodontics (661) 325-1275 | www.drtupac.com 5060 California Ave., #170, Bakersfield, CA 93309