US Open 2009: Serena Williams Training

Serena Williams, the reigning Australian Open and Wimbledon champion, will have the opportunity to win her third Grand Slam of the year, and 12th overall, at the US Open 2009. Her first match will be against reigning French Open champion Kuznetsova, who will, in turn, attempt to win her second US Open.

What is Serena doing to prepare for this match, and the US Open 2009?
At the recommendation of father and coach, Richard Williams, Serena now travels to New Orleans for consultations with a strength trainer named Mackie Shilstone. Mr. Shilstone is known mainly for his work with prize fighters, and claims little experience in tennis training. Why does Serena visit him? His emphasis on discipline is something both Serena, and her father, agree she needs to improve on.

When Mr. Shilstone met Serena in her hotel room for the first time at the New Orleans Marriott, he immediately asked Serena for a tape of her best performance. She replied that she didn’t have one because "she’d never played her best tennis". “She was dead serious,” Mr. Shilstone recalled.

While working with Mr. Shilstone, Serena has developed a portable conditioning regimen using a system of tension cords that attach to the fence behind the baseline. The tension cords provide resistance as she moves around the court practicing her ground strokes. In addition to this, she and Mr. Shilstone have also developed a nutritional program to help avoid weight gain on the road. Serena has recently opened up about her struggle with weight in her new book, "On the Line."

Now, about a month before each Grand Slam event, Mr. Shilstone meets with Serena for daily conditioning sessions after her two-hour on-court practices. Their regimen includes quick sprint drills designed to recreate the back-and-forth movement required during long rallies.
“I told her before Wimbledon we were going to break the spirit of the Russians by being there on every shot they try, no matter where it is,” Mr. Shilstone said.

Now Serena begins each day with two hours on the court with various practice partners, or her father, and works on coming to the net. Her wingspan makes her nearly impossible to pass. “I’m good up there,” she says with a laugh. Net play also gives her the chance to end points quickly, preserve energy, and avoid long rallies on the baseline. When she leaves the practice court, she heads to the gym for two hours of strength training, then finishes her workout with 20 minutes of sprints.

Sounds like a lot of practice. We hope it pays off Serena! We are rooting for you.
This week we will be assessing other strength and conditioning
workouts designed for the athletes in the US Open 2009.

How To Be a Biggest Loser

Sometimes losing "weight" is not the most productive goal, because it can be an inaccurate assesment of your health and body composition. When you are working out, and taking more care about what is eaten your body will change, but sometimes that means gaining muscle. Muscle weighs more then fat, so you may not see the numbers on the scale decreasing and get discouraged. Often times, the way I know my body is changing is by how my clothes fit. Over time I can even tell which spots will decrease the fastest and which will stubbourbly hold on to my fat.
So, back to losing weight.
Now that you have discovered your BMR (yesterday's blog), lets figure out how many calories we need to cut to lose weight. We will use my body as an example. BMR = 655 + (4.35 X 130 weight) + (4.7 X 64 inches) - (6.8 X 31 age) = 655 + 565.5 + 300.8 - 210.8=1310.5 BMR
So I burn 1310 calories per day just living my normal life. The healthy standard for losing weight is 2 pounds a week. 1 pound is equivalent to 3500 calories. So in order for me to lose 2 pounds per week, I must burn an excess of 7000 calories.
In conclusion, if you would like to lose X amount of pounds, simply figure out your BMR number and add 500 calories per day. This is the amount of calories you will need to burn each day in order to lose 1 pound per week.
If articles like this interest you, and if you would like to learn more about personal trainer courses please visit us at AlliedHealthWorld.com.

Calories Do Count: Calculating BMR

Calories do count in any fitness program and small errors can add up to disappointing results. You don't want to work your butt off to burn calories while unknowingly adding to your waistline. We all know by now the key to losing weight is to burn more calories then you consume, but we should also be conscious of straining our bodies to burn unneeded calories. A personal example would be adding cream and sugar to my coffee each morning. These two small additions could add up to 200 empty calories! I could run an extra 2 miles per day, but over time this extra strain on joints and bones may not be worth it; and honestly, I probably won't run the extra two miles long term to make up for it. Instead you could eat something nutritious and equally as enjoyable such as celery and peanut butter, or a fruit shake.

As everyone has a different metabolism, and each person has a different calorie intake, it is important to establish your personal BMR. BMR = the number of calories your body needs to function on a daily basis. Its what your body will burn on the most basic level. To calculate your BMR use this formula:

Women: 655 + (4.35 X weight in pounds) + (4.7 X height in inches) - (4.7 X age in years)

Men: 66 + (6.23 X weight in pounds) + (12.7 X height in inches) - (6.8 X age in years)

The idea to lose weight is to create a defecit in calorie consumption while supplying your body with enough energy to complete workouts while also creating a defecit through your daily activities. If you would like to learn more personal training tools, or personal trainer certificates, please visit us at Allied Health World.com. Tomorrow we will touch on how many calories we should burn each day to reach our training goals.

5 Tips For Strength Training

When I was in my late teens and early twenties it was relatively easy to stay in shape. I was always athletic in high school, and remained active throughout college. As the years crept by, however, I began to gain unexplainable weight. I was still running everyday, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I could not control my weight! Over a five year period, I put on thirty pounds. I felt powerless and didn't understand why my body was no longer responding to my methods. At age 28, I employed my first personal trainer, Michael McKinney, and it was money well spent. He taught me that weight training is truly the key to staying lean. Muscle tone from sports kept me in shape through my younger years, but it had slowly deteriorated while working 40 hours a week sitting at a desk. Here are 5 tips Michael taught me to improve the effectiveness of my weight training workouts:

1) Get Leaner by Being Longer - While doing squats, lunges or sit-ups, raise your hands above your head. It will improve balance, increase intensity, and elongate your spine.

2) Take the Bounce out of your Step - Pause for at least four seconds at the bottom of lunges and squats. This eliminates momentum and forces your body to use more muscle to recover.

3) Go the Distance - When doing push-ups, plank, or other exercises which facilitate your body weight as resistance, try putting feet or hands on a block or a stair to position you further from the floor. This will increase the distance you must overcome for each rep.

4) Add a Twist - We do lots of exercises bending our bodies up and down, but not many twisting from side to side. Add a twist to anything to increase the burn and engage your obliques.

5) Get off the Floor - Hold one foot or arm in the air while performing various strength and conditioning drills. This will make push-ups, planks, sit-ups and any other floor related drills a challenge in balance, and increase calories burned.

After many sessions with a Personal Trainer, I realized that all of these little steps can make a huge difference. If you would like to learn more about personal trainer certificates please visit us at Allied Health World.com! I have lost the extra thirty pounds, and lowered my body fat to 19% by just employing these methods.

Madonna Turns 51: Looks 20

So Madonna has turned 51. I promised to recap what I know about her fitness routine. But first, lets have a look at this picture....is she eating still? Is there such thing as being too buff? This is something you and your personal trainer will need to discuss.

Tracy Anderson is named as Madonna's trainer. She also deserves credit for training Gwyneth Paltrow, and Stella McCartney.

Tracy Anderson's top 10 tips - all you need is a spare hour a day, six days a week ... for the rest of your life

• Beware of the gym: the weights are too heavy. "After over-exercising in gyms in my late teens my muscles got very bulky and I was more like a gymnast than a ballet dancer. It looked like somebody threw me in the trash compactor: my neck got really short."

• High reps, low weights. "For me, fitness is all about high repetitions and low resistance. I mean 60 reps with 10 different exercises using weights of three pounds or below."

• Train for one hour a day, six days a week. "Do 30 minutes of cardio training [dancing, jogging, aerobics] and 30 minutes of muscular structure [weights and stretches]," says Anderson. "Do it six days a week for the rest of your life." Yes, you read that correctly.

• Learn to dance. "If you want a dancer's body, dance. Dance aerobics is my favourite cardio. It's very frustrating if people think you have to become a dancer to do it - you don't. My DVDs are very user-friendly. You can take one or two combinations a day and learn them."

• Don't just switch off while you're working out. "I have done research about people who think they're doing movements and people - like Madonna and professional dancers - who are actually 'performing' movements. The people who can connect and perform during their workout get results way above and beyond the people who are just going through the motions."

• Watch yourself exercise. "Look at yourself in the mirror and critique yourself and your movements as you would a piece of artwork. Have an opinion about how you are moving."

Some criticize Anderson and her results, "Madonna does not have the body of a 20-year-old. She has the body of a 50-year-old who is well-exercised and half-starved. " author Faye Weldon comments. Anderson replies, "Who cares what some people say? Who wouldn't want to look like [Madonna]? But then I'm obsessed with intricate definition and strength. It's beautiful. Madonna is exquisite to look at and she works hard at it".

If you are interested in personal trainer courses, please get more information at Allied Heallth World.com

Heidi Montag: Miss Universe performance

This week on Allied Health we will be focusing on personal training, and different tips to stay in shape. We will start this Monday morning with basic gossip, why not?
The biggest craze this Monday has been Heidi Montag and her singing performance on Miss Universe last night; the main focus of tabloids has been her "newly" toned body that she worked "so hard" to achieve for the playboy cover this month. First of all, I would like to point out that she didn't have much to lose. I love when stars, if that is what she is (I haven't discovered any legitimate talents), claim to vigorously train to get their bodies! Sorry if I am skeptical, but Heidi Montag was tiny to begin with. Anyways that aside, Heidi divulged that her method to get fit for the Playboy Magazine spread was; 90 minutes of training per day, 5 days a week with personal trainer Chad Waterbury. Her personal trainer emphasizes full-body conditioning exercises executed as rapidly as possible, “so you burn fat faster,” says Waterbury, who does both light and heavy weights with Heidi to give her body “a hard look with a feminine shape".
Heidi claims to have modified her diet. She abstained from any enriched “white” foods (carbs) and stayed full with lean protein including steak, green veggies, berries and apples.
If this article interests you and you would like to learn more about Personal trainer courses , or other Allied Health careers please visit Allied Health World. Tomorrow, we will scrutinize Madonna's personal training. Now there is a woman that has beat the odds; at 51 she still has an incredible figure.

Childhood Obesity: Explored by Oprah and Dr. Oz

Oprah and Dr. Oz dedicated a show to childhood obesity. Statistics show that our children are becoming less active and eating more processed foods. Is your child struggling with obesity? Find out with the facts below.

Childhood Obesity is defined as an excess percentage of body weight due to fat. This excess fat puts children at risk for many problems. In children older than two years of age, obesity is measured the same as adults, the BMI. BMI stands for Body Mass Index, and the way to determine it is below.

BMI – Body Mass Index is calculated from a child’s weight and height. BMI is a reliable indicator of body fat for most children and teens. For children, BMI is specified by age and sex and then compared with other children in the same category to gain a percentile ranking.

How do you know if your child is considered overweight or obese?

Children with a BMI over the 85% but less then the 95^th percentile are considered overweight and those with a BMI greater then the 95^th percentile are considered obese.

Are you interested in learning more about Health Education ? Please visit Allied Health World

Allied Health: Careers and Degrees

This is an introduction to a new blog which discusses health and healthcare related issues. Allied Health is defined as the domain of medical practices that support medical professionals. I would like to start a forum which discusses and educates individuals on different health issues and ailments. Please let me know if there are any subject suggestions you would like me to research or address. As increasing numbers of Americans are losing their health insurance, and many can't even afford it to begin with, the internet is becoming increasingly important as a source of information. This week we will be discussing children and obesity as seen on Oprah Tuesday 8/18/09.