Club Blog

At University City Fitness Sports Gym, we get new members started out right with a complimentary Personal Fitness Evaluation and a Fitness Equipment Orientation with one of the UTC Fitness Gym Trainers. The Personal Fitness Evaluation is a 45-minute fitness assessment using a Microfit Analysis Program, during which you’ll learn about blood pressure, strength, flexibility, cardiovascular endurance and body composition. Your personal report will allow you to document your progress.

During the Fitness Equipment Orientation, a San Diego Sporting Club Trainer will work with you to suggest a customized fitness program that incorporates the Personal Fitness Evaluation, your personal goals and interests.

Our Junior Olympic swimming pool is heated year round to provide the clients of the UTC Health Fitness Center Gym with the most suitable conditions for our aquatics program. There are three lap lanes (two in the summer months) and an area for open swim. If you love to swim, we invite you to join Masters Swim or Aqua Aerobics. You can also sign up for private swim lessons, we offer them to both juniors and adults.

One of the many San Diego Sporting Club Programs is Masters swim is for the intermediate to advanced swimmer, we offer five workouts per week, and we work on stroke technique and overall fitness. Private swim lessons for any age or ability level are available 7 days a week.

Head Coach and Aquatics Director Kevin Bree is an accomplished elite level triathlete and has been working with swimmers and triathletes of all levels since 1989.

A few weeks ago we featured a blog on Nutrition that also discussed this nutrition gym‘s fitness lifestyle program. Today we decided to discuss exactly what the program includes, our philosophy behind it as well as encourage you to try it out.

The Freedom of Fitness Nutrition Program focuses on making healthy food choices, stabilizing & improving energy levels, and healthy weight management. This program introduces the client to a healthy lifestyle change, not a quick fix!

In addition, we provide nutrition programs for individuals with time sensitive goals, programs to enhance athletic performance and programs that cater to the nutritional needs for fitness & bodybuilding competitors.

No matter what your goal is, both the nutrition program and the suggested exercise program go hand in hand. To achieve the results and goals you want, you need to do both together.
Your Freedom of Fitness Lifestyle Program includes:

• 2 One-hour sessions
• 1 Health & Wellness Manual
• 3 Half-hour follow-up sessions (via phone or in person)
• 1 Dietary Journal
• 1 Lean For Life Cookbook
• 1 Feel the Freedom of Fitness DVD: 55 minute feature
• Phone & e-mail support for the duration of the 12-Week Program

During the winter it is sometimes difficult to feel that lovely glow. The tan (not that you do that) is gone, the dry skin is back, and yet, we make most of our party appearances during the cold days of winter. Don’t fret. Here is a simple three step plan to getting your glow back.

Step One: Diet
We don’t mean slashing calories, we mean watching your diet and ensuring you’re eating enough glow-producing foods. Most UTC Fitness Gym Trainers look to diet to really get your glow back, infusing your meals with such antioxidant-rich foods as blueberries, wild salmon, and even chocolate.

Step Two: Choose Skincare that Works
If you’re looking to reveal the supple skin you know is hiding underneath the red and blotchy one, look no further than the Epicuren Skin Care line at UTC Health Spa Center Gym at The Sporting Club. This wonderful line offers products that help shed dry skin, while boosting moisture and even adding “lift” when necessary!

Step Three: DRINK LOTS OF WATER! It sounds simple but this is the basic key to get your skin glowing. Bottled water that has a high silica content helps maintain optimal hydration, which happens to be a key element in maintaining the appearance of youth.

Busy day? Don’t let it keep you from staying on top of your fitness and wellness routine. After a day of stress or even before it begins, be sure to get in some form of exercise. It doesn’t have to be the typical one hour routine in the fitness gym. A very efficient and fast way of increasing your fitness, cardiovascular and fat burning goals is interval training.

Try choosing a few weight training exercises and throwing in a minute or two of cardiovascular work in between circuits. You don’t need a treadmill or bike. Use your body. Jumping Jacks, Burpees, or even jogging in place all work great in increasing your body’s ability to use a lot of muscles at once and increase your heart rate. As soon as you finish your time of cardio bursts, jump right back into your weight training circuit. Keep this going until you finish 3-4 sets. You can get this all done within 10-20 mins, depending on the number of exercises you choose. Opt for compound or multi-joint movements; Rows, Presses, lunges and squats.

Don’t let a stressful, long and busy day bring you down. You release positive hormones while exercising and will feel energized afterward. A little bit of time is all you will need to get a great workout and take you out of what may be a “comfort zone” style workout your used to doing for an hour or so. So spice things up!! Get it in and get it done! Don’t use the “No Time” excuse. You’re only holding yourself back from your health and fitness goals and allowing that stress to enter your body and take control of your life. Take the control back and do an interval training workout. See a San Diego Sporting Club trainer for ways to vary your interval training circuits. We are here to point you in the right direction!

James DiMuzio
Elite Trainer
CPT CES PES IFS

6)MYTH: “If women lift weights, they get “bulky”!”
TRUTH: First off, “bulky” means, “excessive amounts of body fat and lifting weights does not make anyone fatter. If a woman is concerned with getting too muscular, this is not an accidental event. The muscular athletes we see on TV and in the magazines have usually been training intensely for years! Most women do not have the necessary levels of testosterone to get large muscles like their male counterparts. Actually, more women should be concerned about not having enough muscle, rather than too much! Muscle is our metabolically-active tissue! The more muscle you have the more calories you can burn, the stronger you are and the shapelier you look!

7)MYTH: “To lose fat, lower calories and do a lot of aerobic exercise!”
TRUTH: To build a lean, healthy body, you have to eat, weight train and do a sensible amount of aerobic exercise. Not enough food and too much aerobic exercise can create what is referred to as a “double deficit” (not enough energy in, too much energy out). Work with your body, not against it. People who force themselves to stick to a low calorie diet will lose weight but it will not be the right type of weight. Half of the weight lost may be valuable muscle tissue. The dieter will become weak, ill-tempered, hungry, crave sugar and eventually go off the “starvation diet.” He/she will gain the fat back, plus more. This whole “dieting style” slows metabolism and makes it harder to lose body fat.

8)MYTH: “Certain foods or food groups, make you fat”
TRUTH: According to UTC Fitness Gym Trainers, too much energy in and not enough energy out makes us store body fat (stored energy).
I have heard people say, “Carbs make me fat, “Fat makes me fat,” “Bread and pasta make me fat.” These are false statements. There are no foods or food groups that make us fat unless we ingest incredibly large amounts of the food or group. What it boils down to is this: 3,500 calories equals a pound of fat. If you eat an extra 500 calories per day, in seven days, you will gain a pound of fat. If you ingest and burn the same number of calories, your weight will remain the same. If you burn 500 calories more per day than you eat, you will lose a pound by the end of the week. It is better to increase activity than it is to reduce nourishment!

9)MYTH: “Eating right meals – three “square meals” a day
TRUTH: Eating 4-6 times a day is a better way to eat! There are many reasons why we should favor this “frequent feeder” way of eating. Eating often, in small to moderate portions, accelerates metabolism. Food is more efficiently absorbed. Your energy will increase and be more stable plus, you will be creating an environment that supports healthy fat loss and muscle gains.

10)MYTH: “The longer you exercise, the better.”
TRUTH: Long periods of exercise can not only be hard on your body, but draining on your mind, too. Short purposeful, intense exercise sessions work best. We stimulate change in the fitness gym and our bodies recover and repair at rest. However, there is a point of diminishing returns. Too much exercise coupled with a low nutrient diet can put the body into a “catabolic” state where tissue actually breaks down. The side effects include: potential injury, sore muscles for long periods of time, exhaustion, lack of motivation and poor results.

“FOOD IS ONE OF THE HIGHEST FORMS OF SELF CARE AND MOVEMENT IS A GIFT!”
EXERCISE YOUR OPTIONS AND EDUCATE YOURSELF, TODAY!

TO SET UP AN APPOINTMENT FOR A PERSONALIZED EXERCISE AND DIETARY PROGRAM: CALL SANDRA BLACKIE AT (858) 552-4563 ext. 817 OR E-MAIL HER AT: sandra.blackie@thesportingclub.com VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT: www.thesportingclub.com.

After 25 years in the fitness and bodybuilding community, I have had the opportunity to talk to thousands of people about their health and fitness concerns. So many are wrapped up in what I call, “myth-information;” false information that they believe to be fact.

This is the problem. We have so much information available to us, that the average person doesn’t know how to decipher it all. Infomercials are on every night promising, more often than not, some quick weight loss fix. Movie stars are writing diet books. Fitness magazines are full of articles by athletes telling the world what diet or exercise program works for them, but usually their methods are not meant for us. Even some self-taught personal trainers are teaching what they do, to their clients, instead of the science of exercise and nutrition!

Below, you’ll find what I think are some of the most common myths. Let’s put them to rest once and for all!

1)MYTH: “ If I do a lot of abdominal work, I’ll melt away the fat on my mid-section.”
TRUTH: There is no such thing as “spot reduction.” Body fat is stored in and comes off in a genetically pre-determined manner. By creating a calorie deficit through exercise and/or diet, the fat will come off. You have a higher likelihood of burning the fat off your abs by burning 300 calories on a treadmill, than by doing a few crunches.

2)MYTH: “If I run or bike, I don’t need to train my legs in the gym!”
TRUTH: If your goals are aesthetic, building your upper body through weight training but neglecting your legs, can result in a body that looks “out of proportion”. Although running and biking are great activities for developing muscular and cardio-vascular endurance, these exercises do very little in terms of increasing girth measurements or re-shaping the lower body. The joints in the lower body need to go through a full range of motion, with enough load (8-12 reps per set) to stimulate muscular growth and strength. Some great exercises for increasing mass and improving shape in the legs are: the squat, leg presses, hack squats, leg curls, and dead lifts.

3)MYTH: “Protein builds muscle”
TRUTH: Not all by itself, it doesn’t. Although protein builds and repairs muscle tissue, weight strength training has to come first and you have to train with intensity and regularity to stimulate that growth. Intense training creates little microscopic tears in the muscle tissue, which is considered normal, positive stress. The body needs rest to promote growth and repair. Proper recovery through food, sleep, and a good solid scientific approach to weight training is the ideal combination to build muscle.

4)MYTH: “High protein diets are healthy.”
TRUTH: High protein diets are not usually considered healthy. Usually high protein diets are low in carbs, too. This causes dehydration, which causes poor nutrient absorption, slow thinking, and possible electrolyte imbalance, to name but a few side effects. High protein diets put unnecessary stress on the liver and kidneys, especially if you are not drinking, at least, 8-10 glasses of water a day. These diets can even pull calcium from the bones, setting us up for osteoporosis. However, the proper amount of protein (varies based on activity level, type of activity, goal, and body composition) strengthens the immune system, drives your body’s catabolism/anabolism (tear down/build up) cycle, and boosts the metabolism, too.

5)MYTH: “Aerobics is better for shaping up than weight training.”
TRUTH: Weight training can significantly increase your metabolism, which is the rate in which your body can burn fat. When you gain muscle, your body requires more energy to maintain that new muscle. Weight training also re-shapes your body. Even though aerobic exercise burns calories and helps you lose weight, your overall shape will remain the same. You become a smaller version of your former self with aerobic exercise. Combine San Diego Sporting Club Cardio Strength Training for optimal results!

Over-eating is usually the solution, not the problem. Often over-indulgence is the result of going a long period of time without food. At this nutrition gym, we can help you recognize this, and it will be helpful for people who feel guilty when they make poor food choices or over eat.

Journal your foods, amounts and include the times that you eat. This way, you can see if the larger portions are a result of not eating enough during the day or going too long without food.

If you are someone who does not eat breakfast, this may be a set up for over-eating, later in the day. By minimizing the time between meals or adding healthy snacks, you have a much better chance at making food choices that support your goal and can reduce the chance of eating too much.

Let Sandra Blackie, the Nutritionist at The Sporting Club, support you as you pursue your health & fitness gym goals.

Here is a fitness gym tool to help you become more aware of your internal hunger and satiety cues. It is called the Rating of Perceived Hunger Scale. Think of “0″ as indicating “extreme hunger.” Your stomach is growling and you feel light-headed. Think of 10 as signaling “extreme fullness”, like 5 plates of food at Thanksgiving. Keep these guidelines in mind when you begin to read your body’s signals.

You should begin to eat at a level “3″ on the RPH Scale and stop at a level “7 or 8,” when you are comfortably full. When we go too long without food, we usually don’t feel our best and we over-compensate with too much food as a solution to extreme hunger. This makes it challenging to exercise “portion control” and may interfere with fat loss.

I am offering a free half-hour nutrition consultation at The Sporting Club to go over your nutrition goals and concerns. Call today! 858-552-8000

Sandra Blackie

Stop the “diet mentality.” When a client talks to me about being on or off a diet, I remind them that eating healthy is a lifestyle change, not something we go in and out of. Being on or off a diet suggests that one has not absorbed the concept of a lifestyle change. In the dictionary, the word “diet” means, “a way of eating.”

As a fitness professional of a UTC Health Fitness Center, I am going to suggest that your “way of eating” be healthy, most of the time, not a diet that changes dramatically from one extreme to the other. Also, being the nutrition gym that we are, we strongly suggest our Freedom of Fitness Nutrition Program to our clients because it focuses on “changing lifestyle habits.” Even our tagline says, “It is a lifestyle, not a life sentence!” Eat healthy foods you enjoy, in sensible amounts, frequently throughout the day. You will not only feel great, but look great, too!