exercise

Breaking news! Some newly discovered compounds have just been found to turn off all of the genes that cause diabetes. Are these compounds found in a pill bottle? No!

Diabetes and insulin resistance are completely preventable and often reversible through aggressive lifestyle changes, including diet, supplements, exercise and stress management.

What motivates you to exercise? Is it weight loss? A healthy heart? A clear mind? Some jeans hidden in the back corner of your closet? All are viable and helpful motivators for exercise. And the more motivators you have to stay active, the more likely you may be to stick to your routine.

Here’s another motivator to add to your list: save the planet.

By The FIRM Master Instructor Annie Lee

My philosophy is all about the 3 E’s: effective, efficient exercise. Here’s a quick how-to video of my personal total body workouts that focus on the 3 E’s.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”     — Eleanor Roosevelt

By The FIRM Master Instructor Emily Welsh

You can work out every day or even hours a day and get little benefit if you are not fully engaged in the process. I have found that if I’m not paying attention to what I am doing when I work out, I move mindlessly through each set of exercises, not getting the best benefit from each repetition. I call this being on “auto-pilot.”

A few weeks ago, I taught my Core Immersion Training at the Century City Equinox in Los Angeles, Calif. Each day, we valet parked our cars before entering the club. Those who live outside of Los Angeles may have to re-read the prior sentence: Yes, we VALET PARKED our cars to go to the gym, as do thousands of other Angelenos all around the city, where valet parking is an unfortunate fact of life in a city where the car is king, and vast distances separate us from getting here to there.

Yes, you can have it all, really!

How you eat, think and exercise dramatically affects your mood. You can break the cycle of unhealthy habits and learn to have it all.

I consider myself a very “healthy” person. I eat well and walk and stretch every day. I challenge my balance to make sure I still can. I look both ways before crossing the street. But even with this preventative mindset, I still manage to end up wounded every month like clockwork. Don’t worry. It’s nothing my body isn’t designed to handle. And it is a wound borne by half of the people on the planet at about the same frequency.

By The FIRM Master Instructor Kirsten Palmer

Have you heard the awful rumor that clothing manufacturers use “vanity sizing”?  It turns out it’s true. They’ve adjusted their sizes to fit our expanding waistlines. What that means for you is that, without changing your weight or measurements at all, you might suddenly fit into a size 8 when you never could before. Or, you could have gained five or so pounds, but not notice it (or want to notice it) because you can still buy the same size clothes.

Ah, I see I got your attention.

And you are wondering what I could be talking about. The treadmill in your guest bedroom? (The one with the clothes on it.) The roller blades in your closet? The semi-inflated ball in the backyard, or the weights you have lying around just in case you are inspired to bicep curl? Nope, none of those. Give up? This one-size-fits-all, miraculous tool of amazing design is the FLOOR!