Excess belly fat has been linked to numerous disease, and for the past fifteen years the average American waist circumference has grown and grown. In fact, according American Sports Data, “3.8 million people are over 300 pounds, over 400,000 people (mostly males) carry over 400 pounds and the average adult female weighs an unprecedented 163 pounds!”

I love to ballroom dance. Don’t know why. Could be a trait I inherited from my parents. My mother loves a good cha-cha. My father fondly remembers the ballroom dance lessons he took as an undergraduate at Annapolis—every officer has to know how to get around a dance floor.

As you age, one of the best things you can do is exercise. It allows you to maintain your mobility and reduces your risk of injury or falls. Unfortunately, as people age, they often become stiffer and less flexible, and that can make it more difficult to continue exercise routines established when a person was thirty or forty. To [...]

If you really want to lose weight and keep it off, it may depend on why you’re pounding the concrete. Researchers found exercisers who wrote down concrete ideas and action strategies, such as jogging with friends, taking a new class, or listening to music, had more fun and exercised longer than exercisers who wrote down abstract ideas, such as, “I want [...]

Adding muscle mass is most easily achieved in your 20s, 30s, and 40s because once you hit your 50s you start losing muscle. As you lose muscle, you also lose range of motion and are more likely to suffer from injuries and falls. However, you can reverse the process if you weight lift. Moreover, weight lifting speeds up a [...]

People often resort to Botox to maintain their youthful appearance, but according to Marie-Véronique Nadeau, a chemist, licensed aesthetician, and author of The Yoga Facelift, “contracting facial muscles, via exercise … shortens them, so sagging is reduced and the face takes on a toned and more youthful appearance.”

Strength training exercises, which includes resistance exercises, help strengthen your body. This is particularly important as you age, because when someone is weak, they are more at risk for injury and more prone to falls. In addition to strengthen your body, resistance exercises are good to tone and strengthen your muscles, and although many people think they don’t [...]

The request for this post came from Chase in San Jose. (If you have a question or want an answer to a specific question, you can Ask Us! by clicking on the Ask Us tab in the top navigation bar.)
Chase owns a pair of dumbbells, and he wanted a way to to exercise but didn’t want to buy any other [...]

Balance is key at any age. Without proper balance, falls are more likely to happen, and injuries are more likely to occur. Good balance reduces your risk of sprains, breaks, and falls, and all it takes is a few minutes of balance training each day. Proper balance requires you use your visual, spatial, and vestibular systems, and, [...]

There always seems to be controversy over whether to stretch before or after exercise. Recent research by  Robert Herbert, PhD, and Marcos de Noronha, PhD, of the University of Sydney, indicates it doesn’t matter whether you stretch before of after exercise because either way it does nothing to prevent injury or muscle soreness. However, most people enjoy stretching [...]