Do You Validate?

A little validation goes a long way. I can definitely see the results of the high intensity style workouts that I have been doing on the scale and pants/dress sizes, but sometimes a little outside reinforcement makes me feel that I'm not alone. Recently I spent my airplane/airport time reading some fitness magazines. Here are some articles that may make you think I'm not so crazy after all:

From Shape (March 2009)

Win the fight against ab fat

In a recent University of Virginia study, women who regularly did high-intensity workouts (where they were breathing hard) had significantly less belly flab at the end of a four-month period than exercisers who always worked at an easier level--even though both groups burned the same number of calories. Pushing it may increase production of hormones that help burn fat postexercise--and ab flab may be very susceptible to this effect. Try sprint intervals, walking at a steep incline, or both.

Hmmmm...

From Women's Health (January/February 2009)

Bulletproof your body

One of the top 10 workout trends of 2008, according to the American Council on Exercise, was "functional fitness"-training by doing movements that mimic activities typically done outside of the gym. This is good news, because too many women still follow the old bodybuilder model of training, isolating individual muscles with moves like bicep curls or tricep kickbacks. They may make you look good when you stand still and flex for the mirror, but those narrow-minded moves don't help you bend and twist in ways that are actually useful. Think about it: How often do you bench-press your groceries? In reality, lugging produce recruits muscles from all over your body--legs, back, shoulders--and you need to train them to work together.

So...common sense rears it's head!

But there's more....

Also from Women's Health (January/February 2009)

Banish belly fat!

The average woman's waist circumference has been growing for 15 years and now hovers at a dangerous 37 inches. Belly fat does more than make those Rock & Republics impossible to snap. Because it's linked to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, excess belly fat can wreck your health. Get there: Do speed intervals. A study from Canada found that exercisers who did 30-minute workouts that include short, hard efforts lost three times as much fat in 15 weeks as their peers who performed steady-paced, easier workouts for 45 minutes. "Technically, you burn more fat as fuel during low-intensity exercise," explains researcher Jason Talanian, PhD., "But you become a better fat burner overall (even when resting) by raising your fitness ceiling, which you do by going fast." Specifically, Talanian found that interval training increases your fat cells' fat-frying ability by up to 50%.

And finally...

From Shape (March 2009)

Female boxers don't just have abs of steel--their bones are superstrong too, according to a study published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. Researchers found that women who box have a significantly higher bone mineral density (BMD) than those who do other types of exercise, such as running, biking and walking. BMD is an indicator of the amount of calcium in your bones, and the more you have (you guessed it), the stronger your skeleton is. The boxers' workout programs included plyometrics, jumping rope, and shadow boxing--all high-intensity, weight-bearing activities that have been shown to increase BMD, say researchers.

Still think I'm crazy to have you jump rope and step/jump up on the steps in the FLC? I know that I've been telling you that intensity matters, now you know that there's research to back me up.