Anyone today that has worked on, or wants to work on becoming a fitter individual so that they can live a more active lifestyle needs to be sure they are both setting attainable goals and to achieve these goals and surpass them. They need to track their activity so that they can hold themselves accountable.

Today, there is a wide range of tracking devices available at their fingertips. After all, most everyone today has a smartphone that has a multitude of apps available to them, and some of the most popular ones are health trackers. But for accuracy, most smartphone apps rely on receiving an accurate heart rate pulse, that synchs from a wearable device and then transmits that data to the app on your phone. But why have a two-step function when you can get instant results from a device that you can wear on your wrist? The wrist-based activity trackers, or heart rate monitors that can be worn on your wrist are able to give you multiple readings from your heart rate, your target zones to your VO2 and Lactate levels. One that I have come to rely on is the Garmin Forerunner 935 Multi-Sport GPS Watch 

A watch of this caliber can provide you with the data you need, in order to make correct decisions on what you may need to change in your training routines and what you may want to cut back on depending on just what those levels dictate.

From the number of floors, you climbed during the day, the intensity of your workouts at the gym, to the number of Intensity Minutes your tracking, along with providing you with a Training Status, (TE)

The Training Effect score is between 1 and 5 with 5 being overreaching and 1 not doing much. You would expect to see a score above 4 for a workout, hard, long run or race but when you start seeing high numbers on recovery or easy days, you know you are doing too much. Either you are not recovered from your harder training or races or you are just running/pushing yourself too hard on these lighter days. Everyone is different but if there are too many days above 4, consistently each week can cause you some problems down the line. This alone can be worth the price of the watch as it can tell you when it’s a good idea to take a break or cut back on your routines in order to let your body have adequate recovery time.

Remember, after so many hours in use, any engine needs to be taken offline to let it cool down and give its working parts a rest and some “TLC”. Your body is no different then any engine that performs a task, again and again, you need to take care of it!

The key thing to remember is that data, like anything else, can either help you or hurt you if you’re not cognizant to just what that data means to you based on your current, physical and even emotional situations. Data gathering, especially from a device that is intended to provide you with information on just how well your doing can, for some people become an obsession.

Data seems to be everywhere in the fitness world at the moment, from wearable tech devices that are mapping your every move, to biometric body scanners that tell you your body composition limb by limb to group exercise classes in which your performance is displayed on a big screen for all to see.

There are a lot of good things about this influx of technology into our fitness lives. Humans are task driven animals, and as humans, we like having goals and knowing when we have achieved them. Then we set new goals for ourselves to work towards. It is the fact that we are accomplishing these goals that provide a sense of worth to us as humans, and that feeling of accomplishment is hard to replicate anywhere else in our lives.

However, as with most things in life, you should aim to strike a balance. It's important to remember you're a human, not just a set of statistics. Remember, these devices don’t know about that work deadline you have for this Friday, or that your two-year-old is teething, or that your client meeting went on a little longer than expected last night. Life goes on, in spite of our best intentions of sticking to any workout plan.

If you’re working with a trainer, they should be sensitive to this. If you're setting your own goals according to the AI device attached to your wrist, then remember to have some empathy towards yourself. One sub-par performance in the gym or a missed session altogether is no reason to throw in the proverbial towel.

Remember exercise is not a punitive sentence for indulgences. Your Sunday morning platter of bacon, eggs, and home-fries doesn't have to be paid for by another half hour on the treadmill. Exercise, if looked at the right way, is - or should be - fun.

In short: data is great but use it as another tool in your fitness bag, for a bit of motivation and guidance, rather than letting it rule your life!

It seems like it’s taken forever, but spring has finally arrived here on the East Coast of the U.S.! I think we can safely put away our snow shovels, the rock salt and pick up the rake, and gas up the lawn mowers. Now that the temperatures are finally staying locked in the 60’s to 80’s we can all soak up that sunshine that’s been hiding out on us since St. Patrick’s Day.

But with all the schools starting commencement practice, and with Memorial Day just a few days away, summer is not that far off. And is your body ready for the beach and all that it has to offer? Or are you going to be hiding it under a t-shirt or worse when you and your friends hit the sand and surf?

Well, there are quite a few among us that might have put off getting to the gym or hitting the pavements early this year because of the cold, wet, snowy conditions that seemed to hang over everyone this year. But you can still pull off a pretty good-looking presence once the volleyball nets get strung and the shoes get swapped out for a pair of flip-flops. Here below are a few exercises and tips that can give that body of yours a little definition. After all, we don’t want anyone kicking sand on your beach towel now do we?

Getting fit and toned requires the right balance of weights, cardio, and the right nutrition, to get your body working correctly in order to tone and shed that extra fat that you’ve grown accustomed with over the winter and sloppy spring months! Studies have found that incorporating into your fitness routines, strength training, it can have your metabolism working overtime, instead of just doing cardio all by itself.

A study at West Virginia University supports this. They found that people that incorporated a regular regimen of lifting weights, peeled off an average of 14.5 kg and watched their metabolisms speed up by 4 percent. The reason for this? Well, the more you incorporate weight training, the more calories you'll burn during everything you do. Lifting your coffee mug or watching your favorite show suddenly becomes more productive as you burn fat for free.

The people in the study who did just aerobic exercise, such as running, lost more weight, on a faster scale, but that also included four kilograms of muscle. Consequently, their metabolisms slowed down by an average of 14 percent. In the future, they'll have more trouble keeping the weight off, if they slack off on the amount of running they do in a week/month. The key to successfully losing the dead weight, which we call fat can be avoided if you build muscle, along with the cardio.

Keeping track of this crunch-time fitness activity can be a challenge without the help of a good activity tracker/monitor and one that also tracks your heart rate can be very beneficial when you're looking at the stats to see where you're improving and where your not hitting your mark.

One that I like and keeps me on track with my fitness goals is the Garmin Forerunner 735XT GPS Running Multisport Watch  It not only tracks various kinds of cardio exercises like running, (It has a great GPS, built right in) but it also is waterproof, so swimming laps is a no-brainer. And with its multiple performance features and the benefit of having a wrist-based heart rate monitor, you can plot just how well you're doing using the data calculated from your VOC max estimate, and lactate threshold.

Again, this is nothing but a tool, albeit a great tool for helping you get that body of yours in shape in time to feel confident as you walk the beach.

Now, It's Crunch Time!
The whole idea of this type of training, is to combine a weight regimen routine along with your regular cardiovascular sessions, just break out two-three days a week to add in the weight training, and in no time, you should start to see a faster reduction in your weight, while seeing the results of a more toned body frame.

You'll combine these lifting workouts with short, sharp interval training sessions. Research at Laval University found this burns fat, up to three times faster than exercising at the same pace.

This three-pronged attack is a surefire way to earn you more muscle and less fat. Repeat this workout 3-5 times per week to keep building muscle and burning fat, or alternate between the workouts listed below.

WORKOUT PRACTICES:
Choose a weight that's 80 percent of the most weight you can push or press just once.
Do just one set of every exercise using 8-12 reps.
When you can do 12 reps, add 5 percent more weight.
Take four seconds to raise the weight and four seconds to lower it.
If the routine takes more than 45 minutes, you're taking way too long.
Do 3-4 workouts per week, leaving a day's rest between each one. This is your light running day!
If you want to do cardio, do it after lifting to burn more fat.  But monitor your stats so you don't push yourself over your limits!
Don't rest between sets. The setup time for a new exercise is enough.
Push out the reps until your muscles fail and cry for mercy.
Use perfect form for all exercises to avoid injury.  

Recommended Weight-Related Exercises:
BARBELL SQUAT
1 set of 8-12 reps
BARBELL DEADLIFT
1 set of 8-12 reps
SEATED LEG CURL
1 set of 8-12 reps
SEATED CABLE ROWS
1 set of 8-12 reps
BARBELL BENCH PRESS - MEDIUM GRIP
1 set of 8-12 reps
BARBELL SHOULDER PRESS
1 set of 8-12 reps
PARALLEL BAR DIP
1 set of 8-12 reps
BARBELL CURL
1 set of 8-12 reps
SIT-UP
1 set of 8-12 reps

Remember, you’re going through this fitness routine, in order to get your body beach ready in a short amount of time. Once you reach the level of muscle tone and weight to mass ratio, that you’re looking for. Then slack off a bit and get back into your regular cardio/running routines, if that is your main fitness passion. Just remember to work in at least two days a week of weights, at a lesser pace and weight amount than we recommended above, just so you keep those muscles you've worked so hard on to tone up these past few weeks, in the same great shape!

 * If you search YouTube, for the above weight training exercises, you will be able to see the correct posture and stance that you need to maintain in order to not only do the exercise correctly but to avoid injuring yourself!

It’s been no surprise to most physicians, school physical education teachers, and now even the United States Army and other military branches that quite a few of those wishing to join, just are in too poor of shape, fitness-wise, to even make the cut.

According to some military publications, an average of 71% of those between the ages of 17 – 24 years old would not qualify because of reasons related to various health factors, physical appearance, educational background or as being physically fit enough to serve in the military.

That breaks down to about 7 out of 10 people within that age group would FAIL to qualify for military service, and that is after the military relaxed its guidelines for the amount of “Body Fat” a person could have in conjunction of the Iraq war.

The ineligible typically includes those who are obese, those who lack a high school diploma or a GED, convicted felons, those taking prescription drugs for ADHD, the Wall Street Journal reports, though some requirements can be waived.

Only 1% of young people are both “eligible and inclined to have a conversation with” the military about possible service, according to the Defense Department. This has been a growing concern for branches of the service like the Army. Who have stated that they are concerned that the American youth are just plain getting too far out of shape to serve and fight. For those who do make the cut, poor fitness can quickly lead to injuries during training. Each recruit lost to injury has been estimated to cost the Department of Defense approximately $31,000," says the study, published Jan. 10 by the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

So, what would you need to be military service ready? Below are a few recommendations and suggestions to help you prepare your body for the demands a recruit would need in order to make the cut:

Keep in mind that getting in shape for the service is a process that takes time. You will need to start well before basic training. Depending on your current fitness level, it might take months or up to a year to get in shape for the service. Becoming physically fit for the military involves cardiovascular training, strength training and maintaining a healthy diet.

In order to track your training and to make sure you're getting the best out of your workouts, you should go that extra step and get yourself an activity tracker. Today there are a variety of trackers/monitors out there, but using one that has the convenience of being able to wear it right on your wrist and its being able to track your progress and send that data off to an area that can provide you with the details you need in order to see just where you are meeting your pre-set goals and where you need work is a great benefit to you and your ultimate goal of being in the best shape you can be prior to stepping off of that bus and arriving at the military training center.

The watch that fits this kind of bill, one that comes with a list of features that will monitor all of your training progress is the Garmin Vivoactive 3 Smart Activity Tracker  It can track any kind of workout you wish to tackle, and its also tracking your activity when your engaged in some recreational sports as well, from biking, swimming to paddle boarding to running a 10K race, the Vivoactive 3 can stand up to the punishment of any sport. That being the case, its made with industry-leading Gorilla glass, so you don’t have to treat it with kid gloves. Believe me, your “D.I.” won’t be treating you that way either.

Now that you have a way to track just how you're going to be expending your energy, let's get back to the basics on how you want to get yourself into shape now, instead of struggling with the other “Dough-Boys” recruits during basic training.
1st. Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet.
To prepare yourself for exercise and basic training, eat a healthy, well-balanced diet. A healthy diet can help fuel your body -- including plenty of protein and carbohydrates for energy. To keep your body fueled, eat five to six small meals per day. Meals should include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and low-fat dairy products.
(We will do another post on just what and how much to eat to make this caloric intake work for you.)

Your starting this training with enough time to see you through to your departure date, so to train right you need to:
Build up your endurance. Cardiovascular exercise can help increase your endurance and stamina. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, five days per week, for weight maintenance. For weight loss, you should participate in 60 to 90 minutes of exercise most days of the week, although this varies from individual to individual. Cardiovascular exercise can include swimming, running, sprinting (especially when mixed with lower intensity intervals in the same workout), cycling, aerobics, and brisk walking. Remember, the military, loves to march, but they only march correctly once they have run you into the ground. Building up your stamina levels is the key to your handling your basic training and coming out of it with your head held high.

Strength train. Strength training can help tone your body and build muscles, thus preparing you for the physical demands of joining the military. Use weight machines and free weights to strengthen your upper and lower body. Perform bodyweight exercises -- exercises that use your own body weight to build strength -- including pushups, lunges, sit-ups, pull-ups/chin-ups, crunches, planks, reverse crunches and squats.

Participate in strength training two to three days per week on nonconsecutive days to ensure muscle recovery. Note: When you’re at this point, you should seek the advice of a gym instructor. After all, not too many people have a set of weights lying around the house. If you join a gym and speak with them about your goals they can assign a trainer who can help you achieve your goals of getting your body in the right shape so that your ready for the rigors of what those DI’s are going to put you through. And you never know, that gym may just offer you a discount for your joining up with the service. It never hurts to inquire to see what kind of benefits are available to you. Remember, your looking at serving your country and many businesses are looking to provide their services for the members of the armed services at a discounted cost. Take advantage of that.

So, the above are just a few stats and recommendations for anyone looking to join up with a branch of the military service and be able to handle the physical demands once you get there.

It’s still not going to be a piece of cake, no matter how hard you train in advance. Remember, it’s up to the Drill Sergeants to get the new recruits in the best possible shape they can, so they are ready to defend our country.

But by hitting the weights and bricks, (running), prior to your departure, you should be a lot better off than those who take this a little too lightly and find themselves groaning themselves to sleep at night.