The answer from our perspective may surprise you. I sat down to calculate this out and came up with an amount that has nothing to do with cardiovascular requirements or calorie burning but rather what would it take for us to be able to maintain true physical health. True physical health meaning that our bodies are maintaining a high level of efficiency that allows us to be flexible, strong, have good posture, have high levels of endurance, and high energy levels throughout the day. We all had this at one point, it was called childhood.

Childhood was a time in our lives where physical activity was of premium importance. I am now 35 years old but I can remember how highly it was stressed in my Elementary Schools. Thank you Bear Creek in Lakewood Colorado! We had P.E. everyday along with multiple recesses all the way through 5th grade. Now my son who is in 3rd grade gets one recess if he is lucky and P.E. for 45 minutes 1x per week. So think back to being 6 years old and we begin to get closer to how much time we need to exercise during the week.

The answer is hours, many hours not per week but per day. Our Bodies were designed to be used, not occasionally sitting on a silly little bike reading a book but used, a lot. Playgrounds, fences, trees, and any other obstacle we could find used to be our training equipment. When we used them we were strong, had more energy than our parents could stand, and were as healthy as we will most likely ever be in our lives.

So how do we replicate this as adults now with kids of our own and full time jobs and the many other stresses we deal with on a daily basis? The answer is in smaller amounts. We no longer have the luxury of a 3 hour marathon game of Cops and Robbers. We now are luck to have 30 minutes. One of the many reasons I wanted to create this blog was to give you tools to become as healthy as possible regardless of your current situation. If you have not looked in the Store, go check it out. For the cost of going to a movie you can get some of our programs.

If you work at a desk all day, Purchase our AM/PM routines, the Complete Cubicle Workout Series, and the Abdominal program. You now have the tools you need to get an hour worth of exercise a day without making much of a difference in your current schedule.

Give us some feedback and let us know what other types of products will help you out in your goals to stay fit and healthy. In the meantime make sure you are doing exercise everyday. The ramifications of not doing so go way beyond not burning enough calories or needed to work your cardiovascular system more.

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Many people tend to use the cold weather as an excuse to not workout. It is so much more appealing to sit on the couch by that nice warm fire instead of going out in freezing temperatures. I have done this many times myself but for many I think they have a legitimate excuse of just not knowing if it is ok to go outside to workout when the temperatures drop into the 20′s or below.

Here are some things that we want you to be aware of when exercising in the cold. If you take the proper precautions it is completely safe for you to exercise when the temperature get real cold.

Stay hydrated - This is a mistake that a lot of people make. We tend to not drink as much when it is colder outside so make sure you are hydrated before you go to workout. You will still sweat if you follow the next piece of advice about your clothing.

Make sure to wear layers – Wearing multiple layers is a great way to combat the cold weather. Start with the lowest layer (closest to your skin) as a dri-fit type material that is designed to get the moisture off your skin. Try to not do cotton as this will absorb the moisture which can cause some problems for you as you begin to sweat because it can freeze and cause you to become chilled. Also make sure your layers are easy to remove or add back on based on how warm or cold you are. When you exercise your body can make it seem like it is 30 degrees warmer than the actual temperature.

Protect your extremities – I grew up in Denver and I remember my mom always telling me that I lose the most heat from my head so I always had these awesome winter hats to wear. This is key if you are going to be exercising in the cold. Wear some type of protection for your head. Also make sure to wear some gloves on your hands so you do not develop any frostbite. Double up on socks can also be a good idea to help keep the feet warm.

Talk to your Doctor – If you have asthma or any other type of respiratory issues make sure to ask your Doctor if it is safe for you to be exercising in the cold. The cold can make certain types of respiratory issues more pronounced which can have a dramatic impact on your ability to exercise.

Understand when it is too cold – These tips will help you to be able to exercise in the cold but do remember that it can get to be too cold. One thing many people forget about is the windchill factor. make sure to take into account the windchill when you are outside. If this drops the temperature down below 10 degrees it might be time to think about staying on the couch by that nice fire!

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The most common was still water and gatorade but there were also votes for Powerade, Vitamin Water, Propel, Arizona Tea, and more. There is a tremendous amount of research about what best hydrates the body while you are exercising. The one that has always worked without fail is of course water. I have often found it interesting as I walk down the beverage isle at the local grocery store that there is well over 30 different types of water to choose from.

Is this really necessary or are they more or less all the same? Each of them have their own reason for why you would want to purchase their water as opposed to one of the other many choices. Someday I would like to visit some of these amazing springs that all these bottled waters come from. Did they really make a plant right there at the spring to capture the water? I personally think it is just as likely it is coming out of some persons faucet in their backyard. It is also interesting to see how many different types of shapes to the bottle and designs on the label their are. I’ll be honest I have bought a water before because it had the best looking bottle. With my luck that water came from a toilet somewhere but at least I had a sweet bottle.

So what do you typically drink while you work out? For me it is usually water. Most other drinks leave that sugary film in my mouth that makes me more thirsty than I was before.

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The final results came out like this:

Ability to Run without Getting Tired – 9 Votes, 47%

Ability to Eat Anything Without Side effects – 8 Votes, 42%

Ability to Lift Extreme Amounts  of Weights – 2 Votes, 11%

Working with the guys at train2move is always interesting when the new polls come out since I am in my mid 30′s and most of the other guys are around 20. They of course would have either voted to lift heavy weights or run without getting tired, so would I have when I was that age. However, now that I am older I can much more appreciate how important eating right is. Gone are the days of being able to work out for 4-6 hours a day like I did in High School only to stop for lunch and get my 2 Big Mac’s for 2 Bucks deal at McDonalds.

Nutrition is getting more and more difficult. Thanks to some changes I have made over the years I have been able to stay more or less healthy from the standpoint of weight, cholesterol, and other health factors that can relate to our eating habits. The ability to eat whatever we want without needing to worry about how it is going to impact our bodies is by far the most obvious choice of the 3.

I look at how easy it is to pack on ten pounds or how drastically we can impact every system in our bodies with poor eating choices and I wish it was just easier. It used to be. Think of how we ate 200 years ago. Lack of options for sure but at least most of them were not causing many of the health issues we face today.

So the choice was easy for me but I would love to be able to run without ever getting tired. Check out our new poll and let us know your thoughts.

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How Cycling Helped Me Lose 50 Pounds
Paul Lopez
pacificpedaling.com

In 1990, the year I got married, I was somewhere just over 190 lbs, which was a few pounds up from my high school days. Fast forward to the year 2007, 16 years later I was tipping the scales at just a pound or two under 260. I’d gained nearly 70 pounds in just under two decades. It was finally time for a change.

Like most people wanting to lose weight, I’ve been on the roller coaster ride of losing a few, and gaining them back, with no real plan of attack besides eating better and trying to get more exercise. The problem with telling yourself that you’ll eat better, is that can be a floating curve. The same is true about simply telling yourself to get a little more exercise. On top of that, I hate exercise, so that plan is bound to fail! But something needed to be done, so I started doing a little research.

I know that counting calories is not the end all, be all solution to losing weight and getting healthy, but for me, it was at least the start of some tangible measurement. When I stopped to add up what my day looked like, it was pretty frightening. Couple bowls of cereal in the morning, latte mid morning, (sometimes with a scone to go with it, ‘regular’ lunch out just about anywhere, and I could easily be pushing 2000 calories only halfway through the day. With another coffee drink, a big dinner, and a snack in the evening, I was regularly having 3000-4000 calorie days.

I set out to make a daily goal of eating less than 2000 calories each day, with the basic knowledge that any calories I didn’t burn, or expel some other way, would transform into additional pounds of fat on my body. Within the first couple weeks I dropped over 10 pounds and was excited about the realization that I could, in fact, control my weight if I simply made a plan and stayed with it.

However, I knew I would need to incorporate other elements into my plan. I started not only counting calories, but evaluating the types of calories I was taking in. I started drinking way more water than I normally did, which had previously been very little. I tried to eat more often during the day, in smaller meals, and I tried to stop eating altogether by 7 pm. To cap it off, I decided it was time to exercise.

As a kid I loved riding bikes, so I purchased a cheap WalMart bike and started getting out around the neighborhood, and immediately discovered that I still loved riding. Within a month or so, the bike started falling apart, so I upgraded to a Trek Navigator comfort bike and started adding in more miles.

Within the first month or so, I had been regularly doing a 12 mile loop near my home, riding in baggy sweats, garden gloves, and tennis shoes. Happily pedaling along on my comfort bike, dressing up in tight, bright clothes and locking my feet down to the pedals were the furthest things from my mind. I would never become one of THOSE cyclists, I was more of the fuddy duddy dad, happy to be on my comfort bike. Then I had a massive paradigm shift.

My younger brother left for two weeks on vacation. Before he left, he suggested I babysit his steel, Italian road bike and see if I like it. It was very much UNlike my comfort bike. It had dropbars instead of a nice upright wide handlebar. Super narrow tires compared to my big wide knobby balloon tires. Zero suspension as opposed to the fork and seat suspension of the Trek. And a seat that looked like it wouldn’t be comfortable to anyone at all, let alone a guy with a big backend, who’d be used to a wider, cushier saddle as he rode. “Looks can be deceiving,” my brother insisted.

The first time I took out the road bike, a hot looking, fire engine red Torelli, it felt foreign and unstable to me. The front end was squirrely, and I didn’t like leaning over the bike rather than sitting upright. Additionally, my butt and the tiny saddle didn’t agree. However, I noticed one thing that I did really like. The bike really responded to my pedaling. I felt like every ounce of energy I put into a pedal stroke, I was immediately getting back in performance of the bike. I began to realize that the big tires, both shocks, and the extra weight of my comfort bike were sucking up some of my energy. The trade off for a less comfortable ride, was a gain in performance….very much like a sports car vs a luxury sedan. I could get used to this.

The next day I took it out for a 20 mile ride. I had never been 20 miles, but figured I’d give it a shot since I had a ‘real’ bike to do it on. I was still in a funky, mismatched sweats and windbreaker outfit, but the bike looked good. I flew. Ok, in all actuality, I probably was doing 15 miles an hour or under the whole way, but to me, compared to my 10 mile an hour riding on the comfort bike, I was moving like the wind! And by the end of the ride, I was instantly addicted. I went out several days that week, and over the two weeks my brother was gone, logged 200 miles on his bike. After the first week I went to the local shop in town that had put his together for him, and asked him to build me it’s twin, and as quickly as possible!

As I said earlier in my post, I don’t enjoy exercise. I still hold true to that statement, with one exception, I love cycling. I started riding that comfort bike in early spring, and by late September I rode the 70 mile Livestrong Challenge, in a monsoon-like conditions. Additionally, along the way, with keeping an eye on my caloric intake, drinking water, making smarter food and meal choices and spending time on the bike 2-4 times a week, I had managed to lose 50 lbs, and felt TONS better. In a 6 month period of time, I had managed to turn my health completely around.

Fast forward two years and I still love cycling. I run a cycling blog, sponsor a cycling team, and even competed in multiple race series for the first time ever. My weight has waffled a little here and there, but I’ve managed to keep off 40-50 lbs over the past couple years. I won’t be going back to that crazy place I was at 2 years ago. Finding time to ride can be tricky, but I know how to eat smarter, and work in a couple workouts a week. I love helping other people discover the joy of cycling as well, and love to answer any questions about bikes or riding that I can.

Get out there and ride!

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The History and Evolution of A Cycling Blog
Paul Lopez
pacificpedaling.com

In the Spring of 2007, I set out on a serious effort to lose some weight. I had gained nearly 70 pounds over the 16 years I’d been married, and all my previous attempts at getting healthy ended like most folks experiences–either shortlived, or in rollercoaster fashion at best. I would need something to help me get out of that rut, and the internet proved to be an invaluable tool in doing just that.

I read an article about a very tangible way to lose weight by watching closely what you eat, counting the calories, and understanding how many a typical person needs for each day. The article made sense to me, and resonated with me as well, so I set out to give it a try, not really knowing what to expect. Surprisingly, it worked. I started dropping weight and was very excited about it, but I’d been there before and didn’t want to fail after just a few days, so I set up a sort of accountability for my efforts — I started blogging about it.

I launched a personal weightloss journal at http://weightlossgrace.blogspot.com/, and kept track of all the things I was doing to get healthy and lose weight. Additionally, I told all my friends about it, so they could keep checking in on me as well. If EVERYONE knew I was trying to do this, I’d be more inclined to succeed and not give up.

Over the course of the year and a half that I was journaling there, I realized that my posts had slowing started turning from meal plans and daily weigh-ins to stories about bikes, cycling and anything else having to do with two wheels. This change in postings reflected my thought process in life too. I had gone from thinking everyday about how to lose weight, to thinking “how can I get out on my bike today?”

In October of 2008 I launched PacificPedaling.com, a blog about cycling, bikes, and riding in this Pacific Northwest area we live in. Our goal was to not only write about what was going on, but also be a part of the cycling community in very real ways.

In April, we sponsored, and helped pull off the Union Street Bridge grand opening event in downtown Salem.

In September, the Pacific Pedaling sponsored cycling team began racing in the MTB Short Track races  and in October we began racing in two different Cyclocross Series.

As we end 2009 and look forward to 2010, the PacificPedaling blog is a sponsor of the Boys and Girls Club Junior Cycling squad, and team members have become part of the team of mentors and coaches that will help train the kids to ride a 100 Mile century ride this coming summer.

We’re looking forward to 2010 at PacificPedaling.com!

Here are some great pictures we wanted to share showing off the awesomeness of the Pacificpedaling.com Team.

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The article begins with some information on research done with kids but there is also this link to a study down on adults.

The article on the kids was interesting. They noticed a major correlation between the activity and how quickly the children fell asleep. The more activity they received, the quicker they fell asleep. The quicker we get to sleep the more likely we are able to get through our natural sleep cycles that allow for a true and complete rest at night.

Take a minute to check out the article. If you are not able to fall asleep quickly at night we have several recommendations for you. One is of course higher levels of activity during the day. Next is to do some exercise to unwind in the evening. We built our Am/Pm program for this very reason. Loren also posted on this Yesterday. Also just like everything else we talk about in regards to something not being right with your body, ask why. Why are you not falling asleep. Are you lying there thinking about the laundry list of things that you will need to do at work the next day? Try getting a pad and paper and just make a list.

Try to establish why you are not able to fall asleep and do your best to make the changes to allow for a great, restful night sleep. The health benefits are numerous and your family and co-workers will thank you for it!

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Some of the Athletes I coach were discussing this topic today. They were doing a workout for our winter track program in our indoor training center. At the end we went outside to do some sprints to open up their stride and it turned out to be significantly colder than I had anticipated. I was worried this would be a detriment but they all said it was a relief since the training center was getting pretty humid from the sweat and heaters.

I laughed when I heard this because I understand my runners well enough to know they would not choose to run in the very cold temperatures. From there the debate continued as to when the best temperature or time of year was to run.

I personally am a fan of late summer and early fall. The Spring in Oregon tends to be still quite cold and usually very wet. I remember a few years ago during a High School Track and Field Season we had 12 days of nice weather. Thats 12 out of about 90. The summer in Oregon is typically very nice but I do not run long distances as well in the heat. Late summer or early fall ends up being just about perfect. Not only is the scenery incredible with the changing of the leaves but the temperature is right around the 60 degree mark most days.

For many of you I would imagine that your climate determines a lot about when you prefer to run. Pleas share with us what is your favorite time of year to run wherever it is you live. If you have pictures, send those over as well and we will feature it in a future post.

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There are a significant number of factors that can affect our posture and ultimately our spine. Genetics may be the biggest but also injuries, jobs, lifestyle, physical training we do or do not do, and sports we play can all impact the health of our spine. The key to keeping a healthy back is to keep it moving. The two major directions of the spine are the flexion/extension, and the rotation. Here are a couple of great moves you can use on a daily basis to keep, restore, or simply improve the flexibility in your spine.

The first is the Sitting Twist. It is a simple move that is very popular in the aerobics and yoga circles. Simply put both legs out straight, then cross one over the other and place the opposite elbow on the knee and twist. Hold it on each side for 30-60 seconds.

The second move is what we call a Kneeling Roller Coasters. Others call them dive bombers or even hindu push-ups. This is a fantastic move for the flexion and extension of the spine. Not only that but it will also help to maintain mobility in your shoulders as well. Start on your hands and knees and pull your hips towards your heels, then bend your elbows as you roll trough lowering your chin, chest, stomach, and hips along the floor. Once you reach the extended position, pull your hips back and roll trough again.

Mix these two moves into your daily routine to help keep your spine healthy. If you are looking for something more complete check out our Low Back Program and our AM/PM Program in our Store.

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If you Could Win One of the Following, Which Would it be?
Iron Man Triathlon: 29% (5)
Boston Marathon: 0% (0)
Olympic 100m Dash: 35% (6)
Super Bowl: 24% (4)
NBA Championship: 6% (1)
World Series: 6% (1)
Total Votes : 17

It was close but being the Olympic 100m Champion is the winner. I actually think I would agree, I love to go fast. I dream of owning fast cars and that thrill of being able to run fast is unmatched. It is why Track and Field is such a passion of mine. I love to watch people be able to go fast, jump far, jump high, throw far, and all the other components of track.

The thing that actually jumped out in the poll results is that only single vote was given to Baseball and Basketball. Obviously with only 17 votes I am not about to make any type of bold definitive statement but I do think is shows that Football is still king in the United States. No other sport captivates an audience like the National Football League.  Events Like the Olympics gather large audiences for a short time but I wonder what the ratings wold be if we televised all track and Field meets. The Ironman is not a great television watch but it is the Gold standard for human achievement. Being the IronMan Triathlon Champion means you are at the pinnacle of human performance.

Check out the latest poll and let us know your opinion.

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