NIFS Healthy Living Blog

We live in a world full of chaos, endless information, and never-ending to-do lists. It’s easy for our minds and bodies to become overwhelmed and fall into unhealthy coping habits. This is where mindfulness becomes so important. Mindfulness isn’t just quiet reflection—it’s the practice of staying present in the moment and taking time to reflect, reset, and recharge.

Less Stress, More Balance

Mindfulness helps your brain slow down and process the flood of information you take in every day. By pausing and focusing on your breath, you ground yourself and give your mind space to respond rather than react.

When you’re in “fight or flight,” it’s easy to rush to a solution without considering all your options. Staying present can lower tension, improve emotional balance, and give you greater mental clarity. Over time, this helps preserve your energy instead of draining it through constant stress responses.

Better Sleep

Do you struggle to unwind at night or replay everything you wish you had done differently? Mindfulness can calm racing thoughts and relax your body, making it easier to fall—and stay—asleep.

This leads to more energy, improved productivity, and greater presence throughout your day. Even a few minutes of mindful breathing before bed can help reset your nervous system and quiet those loud thoughts so you can rest fully.

Healthier Eating Habits

Mindfulness can also reshape your eating patterns. When you slow down and eat with intention, you’re less likely to overeat or grab less-nutritious choices out of habit. Paying attention to hunger cues helps you stop when you’re satisfied and choose foods that truly nourish your body.

How Can You Be More Mindful?

Mindfulness doesn’t have to look like the movie version of sitting cross-legged on the floor. It can be as simple as slowing down, grounding yourself with a few deep breaths, and giving yourself an extra moment before reacting.

Humans naturally react quickly, but that split second of pause helps break the cycle of stress-driven decisions. If you’re unsure where to start, try joining a yoga class here at NIFS. It provides dedicated time each week to reset your mindset, build awareness, and get back on track.

Mindfulness is a simple yet powerful tool that can reduce stress, improve sleep, and support healthier habits. With a few intentional pauses throughout your day, you can create more balance, clarity, and calm in your life.

Everyone knows that routine exercise benefits your heart and overall health in the long term, but what do those benefits look like? When we start exercising, we can experience benefits almost immediately, and even after months of training, our body continues to adapt. The key is to find a routine that best fits you and stick with it—because if we stop exercising, our body can lose the adaptations it made.

Understanding Your Heart Health Risks

Many people are unaware of their cardiovascular risks until symptoms arise, making prevention even more important. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) outlines several risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease:

1. Age: Men over the age of 45; women over the age of 55.*

2. Family history: A male family member who had a heart attack or open-heart surgery before age 55, or a female family member before age 65.*

3. Smoking: Current smoking or having quit within the past 6 months.

4. Physical inactivity: Not meeting the minimum of 150-300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise or 75-150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity exercise.

5. BMI: A BMI greater than 30.

6. Blood pressure: Resting blood pressure higher than 130/80.

7. Cholesterol: LDL >130 mg/dL, HDL <40 mg/dL, or total cholesterol >200 mg/dL.

8. Blood sugar: Fasting blood sugar >100 mg/dL or A1C >5.7%.
   Factors marked with an asterisk () cannot be changed.*

These measurements require additional testing done by a medical professional, such as your primary care physician (PCP).

How Exercise Benefits Heart Health

Now that you know what to look out for, let’s go through each of the changeable risk factors and see how exercise can benefit our heart health.

1. Smoking: It is well known that smoking harms your health. While exercise cannot undo the damage, it can help curb cravings, making it easier to quit. For additional help, talk to your doctor about other options.

2. Physical inactivity: Being inactive can lead to other risk factors worsening. It’s important to incorporate regular exercise and minimize long periods of sitting. The more we move, the better our overall health!

3. BMI: The fitness world often overcomplicates weight loss, but it ultimately comes down to calories in versus calories out. If you start exercising while maintaining your current caloric intake, you will likely experience weight loss over time, helping lower BMI. If you're curious about how many calories are right for you, talk to a health fitness specialist about our Resting Metabolic Rate test.

4. Blood pressure: Ideally, resting blood pressure should be under 120/70. When we exercise, our heart works harder, increasing blood pressure temporarily. After exercise, the heart rate lowers, and arteries expand, leading to an overall decrease in blood pressure over time.

5. Cholesterol: Regular exercise helps lower bad cholesterol (LDL), which can cause blockages, and increases good cholesterol (HDL), which clears LDL from the arteries. Exercise encourages your body to use cholesterol for energy rather than storing it. However, diet plays a significant role as well—meet with our registered dietitians if you have questions.

6. Blood sugar: Our body breaks down food into sugar, which is stored in muscles and the bloodstream. Exercise helps the body use excess blood sugar for energy, improving overall blood sugar levels. Like cholesterol, diet also plays a crucial role, so consulting with a registered dietitian can be beneficial.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Research shows that engaging in at least 150-300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise or 75-150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity exercise significantly lowers cardiovascular risk factors and benefits heart health. However, exercise intensity varies from person to person depending on training status.

To ensure you’re working at the right intensity and getting the most out of your workouts, schedule a free strategy session with a health fitness specialist at the Track Desk today! Even small changes can lead to big improvements in your heart health.

Please note that exercise is NOT a replacement for prescribed medication. Always consult with your medical provider before beginning a new exercise routine.

We all know regular exercise is great for your heart and overall health, but what does that actually mean? The truth is, the benefits of exercise can start almost immediately, and your body continues to adapt over time as you stick to your routine. The key is consistency: finding an exercise routine that works for you and maintaining it. If you stop exercising, your body can lose the adaptations it worked hard to achieve.

What Am I At Risk For?

Many people don’t realize they’re at risk for cardiovascular disease until it’s too late. These risks often remain hidden because we can’t physically see them. However, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has identified a set of risk factors to watch for. Some, like age and family history, can’t be changed, but others can be improved through lifestyle choices like exercise.

Non-Changeable Risk Factors

• *Age: Men over 45 and women over 55 are at increased risk.
• *Family history: If a male family member had a heart attack or heart surgery before age 55—or a female family member before age 65—you may have a higher risk.

Changeable Risk Factors

• Smoking: Current smokers or those who quit within the past six months.
• Physical inactivity: Not meeting the recommended 150-300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75-150 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.
• BMI (Body Mass Index): A BMI over 30 increases your risk.
• Blood pressure: Resting blood pressure greater than 130/80 mmHg.
• Cholesterol levels: LDL >130 mg/dL, HDL <40 mg/dL, or total cholesterol >200 mg/dL.
• Blood sugar levels: Fasting blood sugar >100 mg/dL or A1C >5.7%.

Items with a (*) are beyond your control, but the rest can be improved through regular exercise and healthy habits. These measurements require testing by a medical professional, like your primary care physician (PCP).

What Are the Benefits of Exercise?

Let’s break down how regular physical activity can positively affect the changeable risk factors:

Smoking

It’s well known that smoking is harmful to your health. While exercise can’t undo the damage caused by smoking, it can help curb cravings and support efforts to quit. For additional resources, talk to your doctor about strategies and options.

Physical Inactivity

Being physically inactive can lead to other risk factors worsening over time. Incorporating regular exercise, even in small amounts, can make a big difference. Avoid sitting for long periods, and aim to move more throughout the day. Every step counts!

BMI

Weight loss doesn’t have to be complicated. At its core, it’s about calories in vs. calories out. When you start exercising while maintaining your current calorie intake, your body begins burning excess calories, which can lead to weight loss. Over time, this reduces your BMI. If you’re curious about how many calories you should consume, schedule a Resting Metabolic Rate test with a health fitness specialist.

Blood Pressure

Ideally, resting blood pressure should be below 120/70 mmHg. During exercise, your heart works harder, and blood pressure rises temporarily. However, after exercise, your heart rate slows and your blood vessels relax, which lowers your blood pressure below its pre-exercise level. Over time, this adaptation helps your body maintain a healthier resting blood pressure.

Cholesterol

Exercise improves cholesterol by lowering the “bad” LDL cholesterol that clogs arteries and raising the “good” HDL cholesterol that helps clear LDL. Your body also uses cholesterol for energy during exercise instead of storing it. Pairing exercise with a heart-healthy diet amplifies these benefits. If you have questions about your diet, our registered dietitians are here to help.

Blood Sugar

Our body breaks down food into sugar, which is stored in the muscles and bloodstream. Exercise helps regulate this process by using excess blood sugar for energy, which improves insulin sensitivity and lowers resting blood sugar levels. Diet also plays a significant role, so consider meeting with a dietitian for personalized advice.

Where Do I Start?

Research consistently shows that exercising 150-300 minutes per week at moderate intensity (or 75-150 minutes per week at vigorous intensity) significantly reduces risk factors and benefits heart health.

Keep in mind that exercise intensity is unique to each person based on their fitness level. Working with a health fitness specialist ensures you’re exercising safely and effectively for your needs. Stop by the Track Desk to schedule your free strategy session and personalized workout program today!

Exercise is an excellent way to complement other heart-healthy habits, but it’s not a substitute for prescribed medications. Always consult your healthcare provider before starting a new exercise program.

Conjugate training is a term coined and expanded upon by the late, great Louie Simmons, a well-known strength coach at Westside Barbell. Conjugate means to bring together, so conjugate training is literally joining together different training styles into one micro or meso training cycle. Conjugate training is bringing together training styles such as power, strength, agility, and hypertrophy into one training cycle.

Balancing Across Different Days

The key to conjugate training is to balance the volume across the different days. It’s common to have a setup as follows (but this is only an example):

• Day 1: Upper-body pull—hypertrophy
• Day 2: lower-body push—strength
• Day 3: Upper-body push—power
• Day 4: lower-body pull—speed

With these days an athlete or coach will need to make sure to balance out the loads and not have too much volume across the days. So if the hypertrophy day has a high level of volume, the power day needs to be lower to not apply too much load to the upper body, which can increase the risk of injury. The athlete or coach will also need to know the recommended rep ranges, set ranges, and percentages of max for each of the different training styles in order to find that necessary balance to push the body but not hurt it.

Pushing the Body to Adapt to Change

This approach is a great way to keep the body guessing what your next move is and pushing the body to adapt and change to reach your goals. So, if you find yourself plateauing and your maxes are not moving, maybe the conjugate method is for you.

This blog was written by Grant Lamkin, Health Fitness Specialist. To learn more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

VO2 max testing, or graded exercise testing, is a treadmill run or cycle to volitional fatigue—or pretty much going until you must stop. The test will tell us how many liters of oxygen you are able to take in and use for cellular respiration.

Physiologically, people use oxygen for a variety of things. The main purpose is for the oxygen to get into the cells’ mitochondria so that it can be used to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the main energy source in the body. People use ATP to do pretty much everything: move our muscles, think, and even digest food. So the more oxygen you can take in and convert to energy, the longer and faster you can run due to this surplus of energy you are making at the cellular level.

What the Test Is Like

The test starts at a low speed and no incline on the treadmill. Then every so often the treadmill gets a little faster and a little higher. The increases are almost unnoticed and most start out walking. On the other hand, on the cycle, the resistance gets a little harder occasionally and the participant is expected to maintain the same rotations per minute (RPM). With both tests, the person is expected to go until they feel they must stop, when their workload is too great to maintain or their legs become too fatigued to continue.

What the Test Measures

While exercising, you will be hooked up to different devices to monitor your vitals such as a heart rate monitor and a ventilator of sorts. Some tests will also measure blood pressure and rate of perceived exertion. Trainers can use the information from these devices to generate a customized endurance program for you to push you to increase your VO2 max, and in turn, your overall endurance. VO2 max testing is a great way to know where you are currently at in your endurance training. It is comparable to doing repetition max testing on weights in strength training.

How the Results Can Shape Your Training

Trainers can utilize the data from a VO2 max test to make a program customized to your physiology. From a VO2 max test we can see what your heart rate maximum is exactly, and using these numbers we can get more accurate training zones for you. The ventilator gives a variety of useful data such as your aerobic threshold, or the point when you really start to breathe hard. This is the point where a person really starts to hate running, so knowing this point can help us stay below that more often, making the training more enjoyable while still receiving the benefits. Knowing different heart rate zones can help prevent overtraining and help push you to your fullest capacity, causing your body to adapt and consume more oxygen.

The measurements of blood pressure and perceived exertion are more common in a clinical setting to ensure normal responses to exercise, so they are not always necessary in healthy populations. The trainer can use rate of perceived exertion, however, to know how a person feels at certain running speeds. If someone feels that they are working very hard at a faster speed, the trainer may stay below that speed more often to make the runner more comfortable; and if a certain speed feels very easy, the trainer may ramp up the pace.

VO2 Max Testing at NIFS

Korr CardioCoach metabolic system VO2 max testing is offered here at the National Institute for Fitness and Sport. Connect with a trainer at the track desk if you have any interest or questions. VO2 max testing is a great way to gauge your endurance level going into marathon training, and a great way to pace yourself in a race by knowing where you are at physiologically at different workloads. Knowing your VO2 max as a runner is like how a powerlifter knows what the maximum amount of weight they can bench is. If you don’t have a benchmark going into a competition, you run the risk of over- or under-shooting and not performing as well. You don’t necessarily have to partake in a full VO2 max test if you are concerned about going to volitional fatigue. There are submaximal tests and estimation equations that can be utilized to get a rough estimate of your VO2 max. See a NIFS staff member with any questions you have pertaining to a VO2 max test or to schedule your test today.

This blog was written by Grant Lamkin, NIFS Health Fitness Specialist. To learn more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

While training your cardiovascular system, it is important to understand how much you are stressing and overloading the system. Just like with your musculoskeletal system, there is a maximum rate your heart can achieve. The best way to discover this number is to undergo a maximal aerobic capacity test, but it isn’t necessarily practical or safe for all populations.

Calculating Your Maximal Heart Rate

A much easier way to determine your personal maximal heart rate is to use a predicted value. For the general population you can simply subtract your age from 220 and that would equal your age-predicted heart rate.

220 – (Age) = Age-predicted maximal heart rate (APMHR)

Now that you know your predicted maximal heart rate, you can figure out where your heart rate should be when exercising aerobically. The ranges are as follows:

• Very light: <30%
• Light: 30–39%
• Moderate: 40–59%
• Vigorous: 60–89%
• Near maximal: >90%
• APMHR x (desired percentage lower end) = Lower target heart rate

APMHR x (desired percentage upper end) = Upper target heart rate

Choosing the Right Range

So what do these ranges mean?

• If you are new to the gym, you probably want to start more in the very light to light range. This can prevent burnout and reduce the risk of injury. Starting lower and progressing the duration of the workout, the number of times you exercise per week, or the intensity is a great way to ease yourself into exercise.
• If you are looking to gain some cardiovascular fitness and reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease, you want to shoot for the moderate range. This will stress your system enough to see the benefits associated with cardiovascular training such as a lower resting heart rate.
• Finally, if you are looking to set a new personal best mile time or are training for the Mini-Marathon, having a few training days in the vigorous range to near maximal can really help overload your cardiovascular and reap the benefits.

Ask Your NIFS HFS

If you want to learn more about heart rate ranges, come to the Track Desk and ask one of our Health Fitness Specialists.

This blog was written by Grant Lamkin, NIFS Health Fitness Specialist. To learn more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.

We all know that core stability and strength is an important factor in exercise, athletics, and even daily living. Being able to properly brace and stiffen the core is an important skill in preventing lower-back injuries when attempting certain movement patterns that occur every day. The abdominal crunch, which people often think of as a core exercise, is actually not a movement we see in our day-to-day lives. Try and think of a time you have had to mimic the abdominal crunch under a heavy load: it simply does not occur.

More often than not, we need to be stronger in the core in a more upright or natural standing posture. The abdominal crunch is now being found to stress the low-back area, can cause discomfort by compressing your back joints, and can even lead to injury after a while.

So you are probably wondering, how do I strengthen my core in an upright position? The answer is through anti-movement patterns. These could be anti-rotational, anti-flexion/extension, or anytime you are forcing your body to resist being moved from a normal posture. These patterns can be accomplished in an isometric hold or a dynamic pattern with bands, kettlebells, or weights.

Anti-rotational Exercise: The Paloff Press

An example of an anti-rotational exercise would be the Paloff press, shown here:

The goal is to press the handle from your belly button slowly and in a controlled manner so that the core has to work to not let your body turn.

Anti-Flexion or Extension Exercise: The Plank

An example of an anti-flexion or extension would be a plank, as shown here:

The goal is to keep your hips down and really engage the core area by pulling your belly button in. You can add weights to your back or increase the time you do these to make them more challenging!

Strengthening Exercise: The Kettlebell March

An example of strengthening the core in that normal standing position would be a kettlebell march, where you can either do two kettlebells in the front squat position or one held out in front. Both are shown here:

Marching slowly and controlled is the key for this exercise. While doing this, all the muscles in your core fire to prevent you from falling any direction while you balance on one leg.

See a NIFS Health Fitness Specialist to learn how you can start strengthening your core in a neutral position to assist with your exercises and your day-to-day life. See these links for more information:

ACSM core PowerPoint: http://forms.acsm.org/TPC/PDFs/23%20Best.pdf

PT Dr. Aaron Horschig: “The Big Three”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_e4I-brfqs

This blog was written by Grant Lamkin, NIFS Health Fitness Specialist. To learn more about the NIFS bloggers, click here.