The great benefits of cardiovascular exercise are well known. However, it is common for many people to still question if this is the best way to burn fat. It is a FACT if a person’s body burns more calories than it consumes weight will be lost. The question is what percentage of the weight lost is fat?

 A new study consisting of overweight people came up with some surprising results. This study performed by Jeff Volek Ph.D, R.D. (an exercise nutrition scientist at the University of Connecticut) put people on a reduced calorie diet and divided them up into three groups. One group did no exercise, another group performed cardiovascular exercise 3 days a week, and the final group did weight training and aerobic exercise 3 days a week.

When the results came in, each group had lost about 21 lbs per person in 12 weeks. The amazing part was that the group who lifted weight shed about 5 more pounds of fat. The other groups shed around 16 lbs of fat and 5 lbs of muscle.

Since muscle is a very active tissue, it raises a person’s metabolic rate, which means the person will burn more calories at rest. This, in conjunction with diet and lifestyle changes, will help decrease the likelihood of a person gaining back the pounds they worked so hard to lose.

 At The Winchester Institute,  Dr. Johnathan Haggerty offers exercise and weight loss advice based on the latest research. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call today!

If a person is excessively tight in certain areas this can place abnormal stress on the surrounding joints and structure. By lengthening this spastic or shortened muscle group, stress can be reduced or relieved. But what about injury prevention?

Many recent studies have suggested that stretching poses no effects on the prevention of injuries that may occur during a sporting event. Some studies have even proven that a static stretching routines can actually cause a detrimental effect to a muscles performance (Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2009 Dec 18).

Static stretching seems to have been thrown by the way side for pre-performance warm-up routines due to recent research, but this doesn’t mean you should just start jumping off of the couch to go run a marathon or play in a football game. There are many different, effective, ways to warm up your body to prepare it for battle. The USTA has a great dynamic warm up on their web site (http://dps.usta.com/usta_master/usta/doc/content/doc_437_217.pdf). This warm-up will help increase the blood flow to a person’s tissues and decrease the likelihood of injury. Dr. Johnathan Haggerty highly recommends the participation of some form of active warm up before any athletic event. If you have any questions please contact us at info@thewinchesterinstitute.com.

At the Winchester Institute, Dr. Haggerty treats many patients that have muscle imbalances in their hip and lower extremities and don’t even know it. Muscle imbalance cause extra stress on tendons and joints which ends up causing pain and dysfunction. The worst part about the imbalance is usually the first time a person figures out they have a problem is when they begin to feel pain. This means that there is already damage occurring! Don’t worry, it’s not too late! If you want to get rid of that clicking or grinding behind your knee cap, a simple way to start taking pressure off of this area is to stretch the quadriceps muscle group. Excessively tight quads can cause greater than normal compression of the knee cap onto the femur causing cartilage wear and tear. Try this out! This isn’t the end all be all cure for knee pain, but it is a great start.