Mr. America - still better than Captain America

Me being Mr. America (clinically proven to be BETTER than Captain America) I’ve got a way for you to do it – my
8 Week Superhero Body Transformation Program

For men and women
Benefits:
Destroy fat alarmingly fast!
Shape and contour the body for maximum visual effect
Radically increase strength, flexibility, quickness and fitness

Hey: beach season is right around the corner – time to get off your duff!

Available in personal training, group personal training and online personal training formats

to ask questions and sign up:
Call Jason at 310-721-4095
or Jill at 424-248-9349

email

Jane Fonda

Need proof? A news story last week reported that actress Jane Fonda (76) and fitness guru Richard Simmons (64) have released exercise DVDs and teach workout classes.

“This means that people in that age group, and even older, can – and should – exercise,” says Jason Kozma, owner and personal trainer at Santa Monica Personal Training. “There is a lot of evidence pointing to numerous benefits of physical fitness for midlifers, baby boomers, and seniors.”

That is a timely message, since May marks National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, which focuses on the important role physical activity plays – at any age – in our health, quality of life, and longevity.

Whatever age-related ailment you can think of, chances are regular exercise can help prevent it, or at least reduce its severity. “Arthritis, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, not to mention heart disease, cancer and diabetes, can all benefit from physical activity,” Kozma notes. “Not only that, but being fit and active can also prevent disability and loss of function many people are at risk of as they get older.”

In fact, a study published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society reports that physically active older adults experience significantly fewer functional limitations than their more sedentary peers.

And since May is also designated as Arthritis Awareness Month and National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month – both conditions impacting mostly older adults – it is a good time to remember how beneficial exercise can be in preventing or managing both these conditions.

“Remember that it’s never too late (or too early) to start exercising,” Kozma says. “It’s just a matter of getting your physician’s okay, and then starting slowly and gently as you gradually build up your intensity to the level that’s comfortable for you. Exercising with an experienced trainer will ensure that your workout is safe and effective.”

Kozma recommends including these workouts in your regular routine:

Strength training: With age, our muscle mass declines and the body becomes weaker. However, resistance training will not only build up muscle mass and keep the body strong, but also help prevent bone density loss that occurs in osteoporosis.

Balance and flexibility exercises will improve stability and coordination, keeping you from falling down and sustaining serious injuries – a big problem among older people. It will also increase your range of motion, decrease muscular tension, and strengthen your joints, tendons and ligaments – all of which will go a long way in preventing or relieving the pain and discomfort of arthritis.

Cardio training will ensure not only a healthy heart, but also – of particular concern to older people – a healthy, alert brain. Numerous studies have shown that, while boosting our cognitive abilities, exercise also significantly reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, dementia and other related conditions.

About Santa Monica Personal Training:
Launched by fitness expert Mr. America Jason Kozma in April 1997, Santa Monica Personal Training is a co-ed personal training fitness program which specializes in the areas of body transformations and next level training. Program details and client testimonials are available at www.smpersonaltraining.com. Kozma has been featured as a fitness expert on MTV, Fine Living, ESPN and Discovery Channel just to name a few. He is a certified fitness expert with 28 years experience in the fitness industry and can be reached 310-772-5105.

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About Jason Kozma, Fitness Expert:
Kozma is a certified fitness expert with 28 years of experience in the fitness industry. Kozma can be reached at 310-772-5105 and is available for media interviews on topics related to health, wellness and fitness.

Armed with this knowledge, many people think that losing weight should be easy with enough exercise. You may take this as bad news, but the truth is that for those who aren’t used to exercising and are out of shape, beginning an exercise program may actually lead to weight gain.

This fact, however, shouldn’t stop you from exercising, as you’ll eventually turn the weight corner and start losing.

What is it about exercise that may cause some people to gain instead of lose weight?

Muscle Mass: One of the main reasons exercising can lead to weight gain is that it promotes the growth of muscle mass.

If you are not used to working out and haven’t used certain muscles regularly, after exercising your muscles will be sore and will increase in size. While you may burn off fat, muscle is denser than fat. Therefore, the weight you gain is in your muscles.

And take heart. Since muscles take up less space than fat, your extra weight doesn’t necessarily translate to larger size. In fact, once you start working out, you’ll probably become thinner, even if you maintain your previous weight. Instead of using a scale to determine if you are slimming down, have your body fat tested regularly or measure your body at certain areas.

If you see that you’re losing inches, then you know you’re on the right track.

Cardiovascular activities like walking, running, or swimming will encourage the growth of lean, toned muscles. Other activities such as weight lifting promote the growth of larger, stronger muscles that contribute to weight gain.

But there is good news in this. If you stick with the exercise program, your muscles will soon stabilize in size and after a time, become toned. After your muscles are strong and able to handle more strenuous workouts, you will be able to burn calories faster.

While it may be frustrating and disappointing to see the scale go up after starting an exercise routine, it shouldn’t stop you from exercising. You may just be building muscle faster than losing body fat. This can be especially true if you’re genetically prone to building muscle fast. The key is to incorporate plenty of cardio exercise in addition to strength training. That way you will burn plenty of calories during your routine and be more able to shed pounds.

Eating Habits: When you work out and burn calories, your body will feel the need to replace those burned calories.

This may make you feel hungrier than usual, which can cause you to eat more than normal – sometimes without knowing it. A good idea is to keep a food journal to track of the actual number of calories you are consuming.

You may also end up eating more calories and justifying their consumption since you’re exercising. After a good workout, you may see an ice cream sundae as a reward for the calories you burned. Just be careful. If you’re interested in losing weight, you can’t simply break even with your caloric intake and the amount of calories you burn.

At the same time, eating too few calories can be counterproductive and slow your weight loss. Without enough calories, your body may slow its metabolism. So eat plenty to keep your body well fueled, but choose healthy calories that will help your body recover after a workout and grow stronger.

Hydration: Depending on the time of day you weigh yourself, the scale may read differently. Your weight can fluctuate as much as five pounds depending on the amount of water or food you have recently consumed or the amount of water you have shed in sweat. It is therefore important to weigh yourself at the same time each day.

My exercise programs are specifically designed to produce results quickly.

Contact me today to test drive a program that will get the numbers on your scale headed in the right direction.

Give It Time

Whatever the cause of your weight gain after exercising, don’t give up! Not only is exercise the key to shedding pounds, but it is also vital for overall health and well-being. Give your body time to respond to a new routine. It can take several weeks for your body to “recalibrate” itself to increased activity and changes in eating habits. But once it does, you’ll begin seeing the weight-loss results you seek!

Mr. America Jason Kozma is a professional Santa Monica Personal Trainer in Southern California. Jason and his High Performance Training Team are helping residents all over Southern California lose weight and get in the best shape of their lives. Find out more by visiting Personal Trainer Santa Monica

Jason

By Alice Reid, Published: January 9

Well before sunup, Chuck Linderman launches his daily workout at the Alexandria boat house: 30 minutes pulling hard on a Concept 2 rowing machine, an equal stint lifting free weights and 30 minutes pedaling a stationary bike. He drives himself to sweaty, breathless exhaustion, for Linderman is training for the race of his life — a race against Parkinson’s disease.

Linderman is one of a million Americans afflicted by this neurodegenerative disease that kills off the brain cells responsible for the body’s ability to move. His diagnosis came six years ago, when his wife noticed that his right arm was moving weirdly and that he was having trouble fastening the top button on his dress shirts. His doctor recommended seeing a neurologist.

“It took the guy less than 15 minutes to make the diagnosis,” said Linderman, 64.

Rowing already played a role in his life. For nearly a decade, he had been active in Alexandria Community Rowing’s masters program. So his response to Parkinson’s was immediate. Fight back with what he knew best: strenuous exercise.

“What is the alternative? A descent into invalidism?” said Linderman, who retired two years ago from his job as director of a power company association.

Exercise of any sort has long been known to be helpful for Parkinson’s. Before the development of effective drug therapy in the ’60s, patients often improved with any exercise, even the act of folding laundry, according to Michael Okun, national medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation, which emphasizes exercise as an important tool to fight the disease.

While today’s pharmacopeia offers patients effective means to allay the disease early on, most of the drugs have serious side effects, which can range from nausea to involuntary movements and memory problems. Many of these medications can lose effectiveness over time.

Much of Linderman’s regimen — daily cycling and hard rowing, plus weight training twice a week with a personal trainer — is just the sort of workout that is intriguing researchers. There is evidence that challenging the muscles through repetitive resistance motion far beyond one’s comfort zone can diminish some symptoms.

Preliminary studies show that after eight weeks of cycling three times a week at a pace high enough to break a sweat and raise the heart rate, some patients can recoup much of their mobility for nearly four weeks. After that, gains disappear unless the patient resumes exercising. While it cannot cure Parkinson’s, heavy-duty exercise shows promise for countering, even delaying, the inability to move that the disease causes.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has funded close to $3 million in exercise research. And Okun of the National Parkinson Foundation said the focus is on finding the most effective exercise.

“We know you need to sweat,” said Okun. “But we don’t know exactly what kind of exercise is most effective, its optimum frequency or what the long-term benefits are.”

An accidental discovery

Jay L. Alberts, a Parkinson’s researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, discovered how good intense cycling could be quite by accident eight years ago, as he rode a tandem bike across Iowa with a friend who has the disease.

“The purpose of the trip was simply to show that with Parkinson’s you can live an active life,” said Alberts.

But something surprising happened. Although the disease had already robbed his friend of her ability to write legibly, she could suddenly write her name clearly after the first day of strenuous cycling.

The following winter, Alberts rode with patients in Tucson and elsewhere, “and I heard the same kind of thing. I knew we needed to follow this up.”

For five years Alberts has been researching the effects of strenuous cycling on patients. With $1.5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has finished a 60-person study and has just launched another for 100 patients. Although no final answers are in, Alberts’ work has sparked interest in the Parkinson’s world. Indoor cycling programs have sprung up at YMCAs in Seattle, Cleveland and Sarasota, Fla., with another in the planning stages in Los Angeles. A nonprofit called Pedaling for Parkinson’s is affiliated with the YMCA .

For Alberts’s just-completed study, patients rode indoor bikes. First he tested them to determine the pace at which they were comfortable, which was about 60 pedal revolutions per minute. Then they were required to pedal 35 percent faster.

After three-times-a-week sessions, nearly all patients showed improvement in mobility and small motor skills, and not one dropped out of the rigorous program. And although cycling involves the legs, mobility improved elsewhere as well — “in ma­nipu­la­tion — the ability to open a jar, for instance. Something global was happening in the brain,” Alberts said.

When Alberts did brain scans on his research subjects they showed that exercise sparked blood flow and brain activity as effectively as the medications routinely prescribed for Parkinson’s.

“One of our goals is, can we delay the onset of symptoms. This is a neurodegenerative disease,” Alberts said. “If we can alter the slope of that progression, there is tremendous value here.”

Firing up the neurons

To discover exactly what is happening in the brain, Alberts, who is a kinesiologist and not a brain chemist, depends on others, including University of Pittsburgh Medical Center neurologist Michael J. Zigmond, who is studying how exercise affects the brain chemistry of animals that have a version of Parkinson’s.

Parkinson’s disease kills off the brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical that enables the brain cells, or neurons, that control muscles to communicate with those muscles. The result can be the patient’s loss of small and large motor skills such as walking or writing, swinging a bat or tying one’s shoes.

Research has shown that when lab animals hop on treadmills or wheels, their brains produce increased blood flow and more synapses, or message paths, between brain cells. Their neurons fire with more energy.

Zigmond is testing a hypothesis that might explain what’s happening with Alberts’s patients and why Chuck Linderman is doing so well.

“One thing Parkinson’s does is it decreases the amount of compounds in the brain called neurotrophic factors,” Zigmond said in a recent interview. “Our hypothesis is that exercise increases neurotrophic factors, and they in turn protect the neurons that produce dopamine.”

In such a scenario, more exercise means survival for more dopamine-producing cells, which can slow the loss of mobility.

Setting a fast pace

Alberts has shown that the pace of the exercise is important. “You want to make sure the person is really doing something. They must actively participate,” he said. By cycling intensely, Alberts speculated, “you have information about a [muscle] movement going back to the brain. So if you can increase the quality and the quantity of that information, it may trigger biochemical changes in the brain.”

Linderman’s personal trainer, Rob Kreider, bases much of his weight training program on a similar theory. Kreider has Linderman lift quickly and repetitively. He calls it power lifting rather than strength training.

“When you do a curl or a squat, your brain is sending messages to your muscles,” Kreider said. So, he reasons, the more repetitions, the more messages to help the Parkinson’s sufferer.

Kreider says Linderman is incredibly motivated and determined.

And for those qualities, Linderman credits the time he spent as a rower before his diagnosis.

“Rowing provides the discipline, the ability to get up and do it every day,” he said. “It would be very easy to drift off into Parkinson’s.”

He no longer rows with the Alexandria program, although a lifetime membership allows him to use the club’s gym. Club leaders stopped his rowing after he exited a shell one morning two years ago, lost his balance and fell backward into the boat. Linderman said he was sorry to quit, but he understood the safety concern.

“Balance is an issue with Parkinson’s,” he said.

Now he rows with a program for people with disabilities that is run out of a boathouse on the Anacostia. He has won gold and silver medals at so-called “adaptive rowing” regattas in a double and in a four. The double, a tippy boat under normal circumstances, comes equipped with pontoons on the riggers that keep it upright no matter what.

Alberts said he has never put any patients in a rowing shell or a rowing machine. But, he agreed, either of those devices could convey the advantages of the bike, and he said he has received one query from a rowing club about his research.

Another researcher, University of Florida neuroscientist David E. Vaillancourt, has been comparing how patients do on two exercise programs, the National Parkinson Foundation’s “Fitness Counts” and Progressive Resistance Exercise, which is directed at lifting increasingly heavy weights.

“My colleagues and I believe that pushing the patients to work out hard is the key to exercise training in Parkinson’s disease,” he said. Told of Linderman’s workouts, he added, “It sounds to me that Mr. Linderman has figured this out on his own.”

Linderman, for his part, said fighting Parkinson’s with exercise has many benefits. “And it beats taking a whole lot more pills,” he added.

Reid is a retired Washington Post editor and writer.

original link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/bicycling-and-other-exercise-may-help-people-with-parkinsons-curb-their-symptoms/2011/12/10/gIQAnWT1lP_story.html

Jason’s note: I’ve always used Co-Q 10, glad to see some new solid info!

Javier Diaz-Castro, Rafael Guisado, Naroa Kajarabille, Carmen Garcia, Isabel M. Guisado, et al.  “Coenzyme Q10 supplementation ameliorates inflammatory signaling and oxidative stress associated with strenuous exercise.”  European J Nutrition, 12 October 2011.

I saw this video and immediately thought of you, my readers. I found it VERY inspirational an moving.
This video speaks the truth.

 2- James Flex Lewis

 3- Jose Raymond

 4- Jaroslav Horvath

 5- Shaun-Joseph Tavernier

 6- Jason Arntz

 7 -Stan McQuay

Stan McQuay trained at Gold’s Venice for this years’ Olympia.

Dexter Jackson and Hidetada Yamagishi trained at Gold’s Venice for the Olympia this year. 

I’m often approached and asked to pin down a single exercise as the one that will help lose the most fat and sculpt the quickest. That’s not an easy question to answer.

You see, I’m very aware of the fact that though an exercise may be perfect for Client A, it may not be the best choice for Client B—hence my hesitation to label any exercise as the universal best.

That being said, some exercises are definitely better than others. And, yes, there are even a few that I would call the best.

What makes an exercise the best?
When you decide which exercises to include in your routine, it is important to consider the type of movement involved. The simpler the movement, the fewer calories you’ll burn and the fewer muscles you will strengthen. On the other hand, the more complex the movement, the more calories you will burn and the more muscles you will strengthen.

To put it simply, exercises that use complex movements will deliver better results than exercises that use only simple movements. Complex movements recruit multiple muscles, some to stabilize and others to perform the movement. This process keeps your heart rate higher than a simple exercise would, giving you a more intense workout.

What is a complex movement?
A complex movement is a multi-joint movement that recruits large portions of the body to complete the exercise. Let’s compare a simple movement leg exercise with a complex movement leg exercise:

The leg extension machine uses a simple, isolated movement to work the quadriceps. You’re in a seated position moving only your knee joint. There isn’t much involvement, if any, from other muscles and it doesn’t burn very many calories.

Now let’s look at a free weight walking lunge. You start by standing with your feet together and a dumbbell in each hand at your sides (or a barbell across your shoulders, or a medicine ball held at your chest, or even with no weight at all). You take a large step forward and lower your back knee, keeping your front knee at a 90 degree angle. Now you push off your front foot and pull your back leg forward, repeating the movement.

How many muscles did you utilize while performing the lunge? Probably too many to count.

You certainly worked your quadriceps, gluteus, hamstrings, calves, abdominals, supporting muscles in your shoulders, arms and back- just to name a few. You also raised your heart rate and really kicked your metabolism into high gear. That’s what I call a great exercise.

Other ways to increase intensity
Using complex movements are just one of many ways to kick your workout intensity up a notch. Try incorporating a Super Set into your routine. To do so simply perform two or more exercises in a row and then take a short rest.
Or how about a Compound Set? Perform one exercise, rest, then perform an exercise with opposing body parts. To find exercises that compliment one another, choose ones that have similar but opposite motions such as a chest press and a row.

The key to finding the best exercise is to find the ones that bring your workout intensity to a whole new level.

I’d be shortchanging you if I named any exercise as the best. The fact of the matter is that it is a combination of changing your workouts up, using interval training, and even some good old cardio that will ultimately see you to your goal.

These methods will help you to burn more calories, increase your metabolic rate, and will stimulate the production of more fat burning and muscle toning hormones. Of course, there is more involved to achieving your fitness goals. You need to incorporate fat burning into your routine. You need to consistently challenge yourself during workouts. You need to take control of your eating habits and to get your diet dialed in.

So what’s the best exercise for you? Find out – call or email me today to schedule your no obligation fitness consultation.