Kelly Personal Training Blog

Happy New Year.

Some New Years quotes:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true.~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850 New Year's Day:

New Year's Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive. ~Jay Leno

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. ~Oscar Wilde

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore is last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. ~Mark Twain

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. ~Ellen Goodman

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

“There’s a lot of hype in this field in terms of brain improvement. I did set out to find out what actually works and what we know. What we do with our bodies has a huge impact on our brains. Our brains are more like our hearts in that everything you do for your heart is thought to be equally as good or better for your brain. Exercise is the best studied thing you can do to your brain. It increases brain volume, produces new baby brain cells in grownup brains. Even when our muscles contract, it produces growth chemicals. Using your body can help your brain.” From the NYT article, The Talents of a Middle-Aged Brain.

A strong body and a strong mind can be obtained through exercise. Prior blog entries dealing with cognitive decline and exercise:

Exercise Linked to Big Drop in Dementia Risk

Slowly the parameters of our world of physical abilities creep in on us. Each year we have a little less strength, stamina, flexibility, and ability to withstand infection and trauma.

We lose a few ounces of muscle, a little range of motion each year, and a few seconds off our personal records. This process will occur more quickly if we are not active. When we exercise we are placing demands on the body that send a message to the body that the stamina, muscle, and flexibility are needed for survival. The body will do what it can do accommodate those demands as an act self-protection.

How often does the body need to be exercised? Too much exercise can result in taking steps backward when there are repetitive-use injuries or when there is insufficient recovery from the stress of exercise. The body need not be constantly stimulated to retain or add to our physical abilities. In one flexibility study one group stretched three days a week and the other group stretched five times a week. At the end of the study both groups increased their flexibility by an equal amount.