UM Rec Services Personal Training

by  Adam Toffan , M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP  Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator,  Recreation Services  at the University of Manitoba Nutrition plays a crucial role in our body’s function. From internal systems like the immune system to athletic performance. Aside from simply providing energy, evidence suggests that a meal's timing affects a wide variety of physiological functions, including the sleep/wake cycle, core body temperature, athletic performance, and mental alertness. Since activity is additional stress on your body, your dietary needs may change as you become more active. To get the energy you need, you need to consume an appropriate amount of protein, carbohydrates, fats and water. Protein is needed to maintain and rebuild tissues such as muscle. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred energy source, especially during higher intensity activities. Fats are also used as an energy source but are the primary energy source at lower inte...

by  Adam Toffan , M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP  Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator,  Recreation Services  at the University of Manitoba Even with gyms opening again, many people continue to exercise at home, whether to feel safer or because gyms are at a lower capacity. One of the most significant issues people are having without gym access is maintaining their strength training without the equipment. Maintaining high levels of muscle strength and hypertrophy is important to a variety of populations. For the general public, muscular strength facilitates daily living activities. It has wide-ranging implications for health and wellness, including evidence of a clear inverse relationship between muscular fitness and mortality. Traditionally, loads greater than 65% of the max weight you can lift one time (1 repetition maximum or 1RM) for muscle growth (hypertrophy) and even higher loads to maximize strength. This week I want to cover the effects and...

By Adam Toffan, M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP , Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator, UM Recreation Services Aside from potential discomfort, does wearing a mask affect our exercise? That is the question I want to cover this week — and recent studies are shedding more light on the subject. Wearing a mask is a recommended way to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Studies show that medical-grade masks and unvented N95 masks reduce aerosol particle emission from the wearer by 90 and 74 percent, respectively. (The efficacy of cloth masks was less clear.) Data from the American Society for Microbiology shows that cotton, surgical, and N95 masks protect against droplet spread, with higher protection when masks were worn by virus spreaders. As expected, N95 and other respirator masks were most effective, but cloth face coverings did have some benefit. Since mask use became mandated (including donning a mask while exercising in gyms), some people have raised concerns of potential...

by  Adam Toffan , M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP  Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator,  Recreation Services  at the University of Manitoba Sleep has a profound effect on our ability to function and adequately perform daily tasks. Sometimes, this leads to tragic events such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill linked to inadequate sleep. Now, sleep medicine is looking at the effects of sleep on a cellular and subcellular level, including the effects of sleep disruption and deprivation on metabolism, hormone regulation and gene expression along with relationships with several disorders including hypertension, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, impaired immune function, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, neurodegeneration, dementia and even loneliness. There’s ongoing research on maximizing sleep to prevent some of the health risks associated with poor sleep. Healthy sleep requires adequate duration, good quality, appropriate timing and the absence of sleep diso...

By Adam Toffan, M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP , Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator, UM Recreation Services  Last week in our fitness framework, I discussed some fitness recommendations, including 10,000 steps in a day and 150min of moderate to vigorous exercise in a week. In part 2 of our fitness framework series, I want to focus on higher-intensity workouts. While getting 10,000 steps is a great way to move through the day, it does not address the upper levels of our aerobic/anaerobic systems. There is a massive trend towards short, intense workouts with different terminology that sometimes get misused. In this blog, I want to explain the different types of intense workouts and how they are meant to be executed.  Tabata  The first exercise I want to talk about is Tabata. Tabata is a variation of high-intensity interval training and generally is meant to be very intense. Tabata is a short circuit of about 4 minutes with 20-second work bouts followed b...

by  Adam Toffan , M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP  Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator,  Recreation Services  at the University of Manitoba In recent decades, the average time that people are physically active has decreased dramatically in Western countries. Physical inactivity has been named a big, if not even the biggest, health problem of the twenty-first century. We know it's important to be active and get moving. However, it can be very overwhelming and confusing with so many different numbers and recommendations. Today, I want to explain some of the science behind these recommendations and the differences in some of the common terms being used.  Dose-response "Dose-response" is a common term in exercise science. It means how much of a given stimulus you need to achieve for a given result. This is the cornerstone of recommendations. Examples include 10,000 walking steps a day or 150 minutes of moderate-vigorous activity (as recommended by ...

by  Adam Toffan , M.Sc, NSCA-CSCS,  CSEP-CEP  Assistant Fitness Training and Assessment Coordinator,  Recreation Services  at the University of Manitoba This week we celebrate the love of fitness. Exercise has many similar hormonal responses to ones we have when falling in love. If you, or someone you know, has ever said they are in a relationship with the gym, they aren’t too far off. There are thought to be three stages of falling in love: lust, attraction and attachment. Each stage comes with different hormonal responses that you also see with exercise.  During the lust stage of a relationship, the body increases the production of testosterone and estrogen. From a relationship standpoint, this is critical for reproduction, a driving force in the chemical attraction between people. From a fitness perspective, we need these hormones for bone and muscle growth. They also have a positive effect on fat levels and mood. Exercise boosts the production of testos...