Welcome to the December 2005 Heart Zones e-Newsletter
copyright: Heart Zones USA
Trusted source for training and fitness and sports performance with heart

1. Stress (especially in the Holiday season) Makes Us Fat
2. What does it take to bring a Heart Zones Seminar to your town?
3. Schools Use Heart Zones Training in Physical Education
4. More than One Way to Train
   AND ...
   
   
5. Smart Bras for Women and Smart Shirts for Men
6. Holiday Gift Guide from Heart Zones USA
7. December's Workout: The Calm, Cool, Collected Workout
8. 45-Minute Classic Reverse Workout
9. Addenda
   

Your body is a biological engine fused with the highest intellect on the planet connected to energy, emotions, experiences, and yes, stress.  When you just sense stress, your body's physiological response is to go into "fight or flight" response in preparation for the "adversity" that may come. In response to this anticipation of stress, cortisol is released. It is the messenger chemical that signals to your brain to activate the biochemical response to store calories, primarily fat, particularly in your stomach area. Stored fat provides the back-up energy that is needed for survival. Fat deposits in the mid section have been linked to heart disease and high blood pressure. Under the perception or reality of stress, you may eat more and store more calories as fat - it becomes a vicious cycle that defies the calories in = calories out equation. The emotional response of this cycle of stress-fat storage is more stress or panic about the weight gain which leads to the stress of "dieting" or restricting caloric intake. The cycle of stress - weight gain - storage of fat - more stress continues.

One solution is this - don't stress out over the holidays. Here are two responses to holiday stress that are better than dieting:

1. Start a Heart Zones Training program with the necessary tools: a heart rate monitor, a logbook, and a training plan all available at the Heart Zones web store. http://heartzones.com/store/

2. Read the remainder of this article in the Addendum of this e-newsletter

2.What does it take to bring a Heart Zones Seminar to your town?

Heart Zones USA is the leader in heart rate training and education.  Let Heart Zones come to you with all the latest information on sub-max testing and various training certifications. If you are an individual, you can invite Heart Zones to come to your town. It's easy and can change how you and your friends workout. Every attendee receives a 16-function heart rate monitor, a 3-hour course that includes stress reduction, weight management, anchoring your maximum heart rate, using the zones, and a 1.5 hour workshop to learn how to push the buttons and includes a sub-max test. The seminar and workshop is $99 per person. For the all-day program the fee and certification is $249. If you are a health club, organization or club, you can invite Heart Zones to lead an event as well. You can increase membership, provide the latest in cardiovascular training, and get the "Buzz" going about getting fit and fitter.

Heart Zones offers marketing materials, group discounts and hosting gift packages.  To book a seminar, workshop and certification please call Bobbie Jackson at 304-645-6672 or email bobbie.jackson@heartzones.com.  

Keep checking the website as dates and cities are added all of the time - here's what is scheduled now for 2006:

From Deve Swaim, President, Heart Zones Education.

I want to tell you about one of the school districts that is using the Heart Zones program. Last summer I spent time with talented teachers in Bexley, Ohio learning from them and teaching them to successfully implement the Heart Zones curriculum in their schools. It was a wonderful three days in this small community outside Columbus.

Bobbi Little was my hostess and as the department chair is a consummate leader. My invitation came about from one of their middle school teachers attending Heart Zones Canada's Bev Robinson's session at the Chicago AAHPERD conference. Chad Mitchel would not rest until the Heart Zones program was infused into Bexley's curriculum. Bobbi Little, Physical Education Department chair, writes: "We feel that the Heart Zones Education program has put the heart back into our wellness program. We had good things going on, but this has provided the boost we needed."

The Heart Zones program for Physical Education helps students do better in school. The Bexley school district has jumped in immediately getting monitors on all their kids and gathering heart rate data to develop a truly individualized physical education program. Each student can not only select the level of program most suited to her/his needs, health-fitness-performance, but also develop personal goals to achieve those. For more information on Heart Zones Education for Schools, visit http://www.heartzones.com/educators/

There's Heart Zones Training methodology of using zones, setting goals, and connecting with the heart to anchor it. The two most common anchor points in this methodology are maximum heart rate and threshold heart rate. But there are other ways to apply the zones that are complimentary and rest on a solid foundation of science-based training. According to Carl Foster, Ph.D. and current President of the American College of Sports Medicine, "There are three contemporary scientist/coaches who have centered their training and methodology based on something analogous to the Heart Zones.  The VDOT approach of Jack Daniels, Ph.D., a highly regarded running coach and exercise physiologist based at the University of Northern Arizona; the polarized model of Stephen Seiler, Ph. D., and exercise physiologist at Agdar College in Norway; and the vVO2max approach of Veronique Billat, Ph.D. of the University of Evry outside of Paris. For more details on this article, see ADDENDUM 2 at the end of this e-newsletter for details.

Smart apparel arrives in January, 2006. No longer do you wear a transceiver for GPS signals, a device for recording data like respiration, body temperature, vital functions, a watch to show the data, MP3 player, and a transmitter belt. It is embedded in the fabric. The smart bra and smart shirt functions like a computer, with optical and conductive fibers integrated into the garment. Smart apparel is a quantum leap in healthcare monitoring. According to Stacey Burr, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wilmington, Delaware-based Textronics, Inc. the leader in energy-activated fabrics, "These application systems incorporate bio-physical monitoring sensors that enable specific physiological measurement capabilities to be built into garments or other textile products. The bio-physical monitoring system can sense the electrical response or mechanical movement of the wearer and can be used to monitor heart, rate, respiration, physical movement or blood flow." For more information, visit http://numetrex.com or http://textronicsinc.com/

Ok, we admit, we are biased. The best gift for every single body is the gift of health and fitness. Our mission is to get America and Canada, for starters, fit. The way that you can contribute is to give Heart Zones to everyone you know. We ask that you make the purchase from the Heart Zones website to save you money and because we ship fast.
We guarantee the lowest prices on the web and in any retail stores. Period.

Here's our top 10 Holiday favorites for your loved ones:

1. Log Books - Heart Zones Log Book & Triathlon Log Book
Because those who use a log stay on a training program longer and get more
out of one than those who don't.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_2

2. Heart rate monitor - Sports Instruments Fit 2.
Upgrade your heart rate monitor or get a 16-function Fit 2 monitor which
gives you time in zone and percent of maximum heart rate.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18

3. DASH! GPS monitor - Timex Target Trainer + a Data Recorder 2
Includes speed, distance, pace, altitude, heart rate, and can download into a mapping program.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18

4. Email Training Plan - 8-Week plan that includes 4 emails per week: the workouts, education piece, success story, and tips. If you need a little motivation and lots of educational support, this is the ticket. Include it with a book and a monitor and you have the perfect bundle.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=16

5. Book - Health in a Heartbeat by Dan Rudd, Ph.D. and Sally Edwards
This the best stress reducer and focus on fitness book of the 14 different Heart Zones books.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_7

6. DVD - Heart Zones Basic Part 1 and Part 2
This is Sally Edwards, founder of Heart Zones USA, at her best teaching the core material of the Heart Zones Training system.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_9

7. 10 Pack - Fitness Testing Cards or Sub-Max Testing Cards
Take these tests to determine your maximum heart rate
so you can set your Zones or to discover your current level of fitness.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=32_11

8. A day with Heart Zones - Seminar or a Certification
Send your loved one off to a day of experience the Heart Zones Training including a heart monitor and a workout.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=14

9. Start-up Kit - Choose from 7 different Do-It-Yourself Kits
Get started with the tools that you need to be successful
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=32_12

10. Zones Neck Scarf - Printed with the Maximum heart rate chart and the Zones chart
More than keeping your neck and head warm, this functional piece of headgear has all of the information to keep you in the Zones during your rides and workouts.
http://www.heartzones.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=58

7. December's Workout: The Calm, Cool, Collected Workout

By Karen Tusting, Heart Zones Red Jersey Master Trainer

Often in the pursuit of fitness and health we are focused on chasing the prize, the journey becomes a series of short cuts and frustrations.  like children, our anticipation of this prize shadows our experiences and decision.  In our quest to the finish line we often miss time in Zone 1. (50-60% maximum heart rate). These are the easy, the happy, and the healthy low zones. To enjoy them more, I'd recommend focusing your training inside them - not above them in the high, hot, hard zones. You get a lot of bang for your buck when you enjoy the blue and green zones - they are calm, cool, and collected workouts.

For the rest of this article, see ADDENDUM 2 at the end of the e-newsletter

By Bev Robinson, President, Heart Zones Canada

With the holiday season, time is precious.  Here is a workout that will provide challenge, variety, and burn lots of calories and also allow repeated opportunities to gauge your own fitness.  This is a great workout to repeat every 2 to 3 weeks and compare your results.  The workout pattern is very simple to follow on any indoor exercise equipment (cycle, rower, elliptical, treadmill, and stepper)

• Warm-up for 7 minutes.
• 1 minute interval (highest intensity you can maintain)
• 1 minute active recovery..no resistance..note your 1 minute recovery heart
  rate.
• 2 minute interval (highest intensity you can maintain)
• 1 minute active recovery.no resistance.note your 1 minute recovery heart
  rate.
• Continue up the pyramid with 3 minute hard*, 1 minute recovery, 4 minute
  hard*, 1 minute recovery, 5 minute hard*, 1 minute recovery..work your way
  down.4 - 3- 2- 1
• Finish with a 5 minute cool-down.

NOTES:
1. Hard = highest intensity that you can maintain during that timed
interval.

2. Hard is typically between 80-95% of maximum heart rate or Zone 5a or Zone
5b ( 100%-110% of Threshold heart rate).  Intervals of 4 and 5 minutes will be
more of a tempo intensity or around threshold.

3. Workload: 155-170 Heart Zones Training Points

4. Repeat workout using same equipment and compare the recovery heart rates (9 provided in this workout) and also the highest intensity for the various timed intervals.

5. Modifications:

a. Lengthen workout by taking the pyramid to 6 minutes
b. Make the workout easier by taking every interval to the highest intensity that you can still "talk" comfortably at; probably between 70-80% of maximum heart rate or 90%-100% Threshold heart rate.

9. Addenda

ADDENDUM 1

Stress (especially in the Holiday season) Makes Us Fat

By Kathy Tossas, Director, Heart Zones Energy and Weight Management Program

1. LOVE:  Give yourself a break, cut yourself some slack.  Love yourself and understand your process.  Relax.  Do some yoga (it doesn't have to be a 1 hr class.  Do the sun salutations series 12 times using the months of the year for example!).  Feed yourself clean...so drink water, eat high fibers, healthy fats, lean proteins, etc.  If you think about your body in terms of it being a piece of real estate, like a home or apartment, and the $$ value was equivalent to your health:  upgrade your temple with the latest and highest quality amenities so that your property value continues to increase.

2. KAIZEN is Japanese for small constant changes.  So doing a crash diet or becoming an overnight vegan might not be the best choice.  Those two are neither small nor constant changes.  But, perhaps creating a new habit of drinking 16 oz. of water as soon as you wake up and incorporating fruits between meals. Boycott fast food restaurants. Life is not a sprint.  It's an endurance sport.  Work on improving each stride instead of your overall time. Make small changes every day to relieve stress and find more joy.

3. MOVE:  So maybe you are a swimmer and you love to swim - you can swim forever.  Now, try then incorporating in addition to swimming, a different cardio activity that your body is not used to.  Our bodies like activities that come easy to them. So if you always run 20 min at a certain speed, eventually you will NOT get any fitter because your body has incorporated this as an "every day" stimulus and not burning any additional calories. Challenge your self by increasing one of the F.I.T variables on the Heart Zones Training points system.

I know it's easier said than done.  Believe me!  I'm struggling myself right now with time to workout.  But the opposite (to be unhealthy, to realize you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure or diabetes), it's an even bigger, humbling struggle.  Genetics have two components and one of them, you can do something about.

If you want to read more, read Fit and Fat by Lorraine Brown and SallyEdwards (available at www.heartzones.com/store).  Email me for questions and information.  I do web and phone  coaching and can help. We're always planning seminars close to you.  We support you and believe in you....Hang in there Zoners. We can dissolve stress working together.

ADDENDUM 2

More than One Way to Train

1. Seiler Training System:

Stephen Seiler is the author of the polarized model. His work, largely with elite rowers and elite Junior cross country skiers, suggests that the majority of training is done at relatively low intensity (~Heart Zones 1-3), but that a critical 10-15% of training is done at high intensity (~Heart Zones 5).  Heart Zones 4 training seems primarily accomplished in the transition from low to high intensity training.  Seiler notes that progression from year to year within an athletes career is largely based on maintaining this general formula, with progression of the total training load.  He even suggests that in order to do the high intensity training that is critical for improved racing success; the athlete has to do more and more background training.  Seiler's research has been supported by work that Spaniard Alejandro Lucia, M.D., Ph.D. and Foster have done.  Briefly stated, at least 70% of training is lower intensity which equates to Heart Zones 1-3, 10% is more or less equivalent to Heart Zones 4, and 10-20% is equivalent to Heart Zones 5. Work from Alejandro's graduate student and coach Jonathan Esteve-Llano, suggests that taking time out of Zone 4 and adding it to Zones 1-3 is profitable.  Probably ~10% of training must be done in Zone 5.

2. Daniels Training System:

Jack Daniels, Ph.D., coach (Runners World called him the World's Greatest Track Coach in the late 1990's) and author of Daniels' Running Formula, uses a 4 zone model based on %VO2max called the VDOT model. His training zones are really speed zones because they are based on running speed and not heart rate per se:

Daniel's general mixture is >70% easy running, with the others run types of training mixed in for effect.  He has a rotating periodization scheme, but basically has three hard days one week (two of them together), two hard days the next week.  The hard days rotate amongst Threshold, vVO2max and Repetition at particular parts of the season.  Daniels' approach is remarkable in that most of his athletes complain that they are training too easily, but can't complain with the results; which he seems to achieve with both the highly talented (he's coached Olympic medalists) and the hopelessly untalented (at one time his women's cross country team at SUNY Cortland won the NCAA Division III championships almost at will).

3. Billat Training System - French researcher Veronique Billat, Ph.D.

This approach is similar in many ways to that of Daniels, in that she recommends vVO2max and Threshold runs 2-3 days per week called the velocity at max model.  What is unique is that she recommends the duration of the vVO2max runs to be 50% of the time that vVO2max can be sustained.  Ideally this is determined in the laboratory, but one can use 6 minutes as what Billat calls the 'time limit at vVO2max', meaning that you do repeat 3 minute runs at a pace you could just sustain for 6 minutes (interpolated from racing performances).  Billat has evidence that vVO2max runs may contribute to improving efficiency which is clearly the way for athletes with already well developed 'motors' to improve.  Like Daniels, Billat basically argues that 2-3 days per week of high intensity (Heart Zones 4 and 5) training is all that may be profitably tolerated.

ADDENDUM 3

 December's Workout:  The Calm, Cool, Collected Workout

In Zone 1, you strengthen your heart and improve muscle mass while reducing body fat, cholesterol, blood pressure, and your risk for degenerative disease.  In Zone 2, you start training your body to increase the rate of fat released from the cells to the muscles for fuel.  If our focus of these Zones is always a get in and get out mentality, we limit the benefits gained from these Zones.  Zones 1 and 2 are more than a Warm Up and Cool Down phase of a workout.  These Zones can be the focus of a workout, an inter-recovery within a workout, a means of attaining an emotional balance in our lives. Below are a few suggestions of workouts you can build into your weekly routine so you can reap the rewards of time spent down in the calm, cool, and collected low zones.

1. Emotional Workout - Get In Touch with Your Peaceful Self
This is a workout done best outside in a beautiful and peaceful place where you are far from the noise of day to day life.  Take a walk, hike or bike ride and just enjoy what is around you; the sights, smells, and sounds of nature.  Keep it slow and easy and take the time to let go of your cares and enjoy the moment.  I like to include my kids in these experiences as I can share with them what movement combined with nature can do for the soul.

2. Flexible Benefits - Active Stretching and Mindful Movement

When was the last time your workout focused purely on flexibility? Increasing range of motion improves performance, prevents injury and creates an environment to get in touch with how your body moves.  Take a class in Yoga, Mat Pilates, or Stability Ball that focus on slow controlled movement to increase flexibility and strength.  Try a stretch workout at home, Brian Dorfman's Flexibility Training DVD is recommended by those more interested in improving performance than stretching itself.  Enroll in a dance class for ballet or modern dance and experience the freedom of movement.

3. Intra-Recovery - Circuit Training for Strength and Endurance

The benefits of strength training can be combined with aerobics to create an efficient workout.  Start with a 10 minute warm-up on any cardio equipment staying in Zones 1 and 2.  Move on to two strength moves one combining upper body and lower body such as squats, step-ups, lunges with a bicep curl, front raise, or side raise.  Use light weight and work until you upper body fatigues.  Move to an upper body exercise next, such as chest press, narrow row or wide row.   Use moderate to heavy weight and perform between 8-12 repetitions.  Repeat the sequence by going back to the cardio equipment, each set alternate heart rate at mid point Zone 2 and top of Zone 2.  Watch what happens to your heart rate with each kind of activity in the circuit. Repeat the circuit 3-5 times and cool down.

With each of these workouts enjoy the moment, focus on your movement and don't forget your heart rate monitor. The benefits of Zone 1 and 2 are easy, enjoyable, and energetic.