Monkey Bar Gym » 2008

FREE INTRO CLASS

Monkey Bar Gymnasium FREE INTRO CLASS

For Newcomers and First Timers

September 6, 2008

11am-2pm

Williamson Street Location

Learn what the Monkey Bar Gym is all about and Get Back to Basics.

We will be teaching the basics of pushing and pulling, running and jumping.

Plus, have you ever heard of a Burpee, a Divebomber, or a Pole Vaulter?

Learn how to do these and other MBG moves.

SEE WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING!

Call 608-663-7511 or stop in to sign up

Take an Earth-Friendly Shower

How to Make Your Morning Routine Greener

Jul 28, 2008

Wondering how to cut back on your energy and water consumption during your daily shower? You might be surprised at how much you´re using - and how much you can save.

Taking an eco-friendly shower is actually a lot easier than you may think. The average person my use up to 30 gallons of water every day in the shower. By putting a little bit of time and effort into your morning routine, you can save gallons of water and hundreds on your bill.

Take Shorter Showers

Although it may feel good, there is no need to spend 25 or even 15 minutes under scalding hot water. Timers can be placed in the shower to remind you to keep it short and if you have kids in the house, make it a competition: who can take the shortest shower? Showers serve the sole purpose of washing your body and getting clean. If you´re using your shower to wake you up in the morning, consider instead having an apple or going for a short run when you first wake up (both more effective than showers or coffee for waking up and getting energized in the morning).

Turn the Water Off

Rinse your body. Turn the water off. Lather with soap. Turn water on and rinse off. Repeat with shampoo and conditioner. Seem strange? This small change (which is daily habit for Europeans) can cut your showers in half.

Take a Warm Shower

Scorching hot water does nothing good. It wastes energy above all else, and while it may feel good, a warm shower feels just as good and once you get used to turning that water down a few degrees in the morning, you´ll wonder why you didn´t do it sooner.

Get a Low Flow Shower Head

Purchasing something somewhat negates the purpose of trying to go greener in most aspects, but in this case it´s worth it. Low flow shower heads drastically cut back on the use of water in the shower by regulating the flow. For example, a low flow shower head may run at 2.2 gallons of water per minute, while a low flow model averages at 1.2 gpm. They´re also relatively inexpensive. You can usually find them at your local hardware store, or even Wal-Mart.

Save Unused Water

This is another strange idea, but nonetheless effective. Place a bowl under the faucet to collective unused, dripping water. After your shower you can use the bowl of water you´ve collected to water house plants of small gardens. It may not be much but over the course of a year, that savings is quite significant.

These are all relatively small changes you can make in to your morning shower to cut back on your water consumption. You´ll feel great about reducing the unnecessary water usage and you´ll certainly notice the difference when you get your water bill.

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Mobility Training May Be the Most Important Factor in Musculoskeletal Health

By Steve Maxwell

Mobility, or joint mobility, is the ability to move a limb through the full range of motion–with control. Mobility is based on voluntary movement while flexibility involves static holds and is often dependent upon gravity or passive forces. Mobility demands strength to produce full-range movement, whereas flexibility is passive, thus not strength-dependent. Some authorities refer to mobility as ‘active flexibility’. It is possible to have good mobility without being especially flexible, just as one can be flexible with poor mobility, i.e., control. Of the two, mobility is more important. It is better to be inflexible with good mobility than flexible with poor mobility. The percent difference between your mobility and flexibility is the same percent chance of creating a musculo-skeletal injury during physical activities.

Sports, recreational activities and other daily physical practices can result in reduced range of movement in any participating joint. When the joint is unable to move through its full range, we call it compromised. When compromised movement is present in a joint, surrounding joints take up the slack, creating extra stress all around. A typical example are immobile ankles and feet underlying stress and injury to the knees, hips, and lumbar spine. It’s a cascade effect, albeit in reverse: the body tissues are held together with sheets of connective tissue called fascia, so stress extends upwards from the feet. Poor mobility in one area can cause pain and stress in seemingly unrelated areas, but once fascial anatomy is understood, the idea that immobile feet could cause neck or shoulder stiffness is no longer a conundrum.

Mobility work reduces the potential body imbalances inherent in our athletic and recreational pursuits. For example, it’s widely accepted that running for distance shortens the hamstrings, calf muscles and hip flexors, resulting in decreased free movement in simple full-range exercises, such as bodyweight squats. Well-documented is the compromised range produced by heavy weight-lifting and body building strength sports–yet, properly conducted, weight training can improve range of motion! All too often, in practice, weight lifters endow themselves with tight, restrictive movement by over emphasizing short-range movements and excessive hypertrophy. Worse, especially in the U.S., is that ubiquitous non-activity: sitting. Sitting in a chair, at a desk, while hunching over a computer is a recipe for a compromised structure full of imbalance and continual pain.

The solution? A joint mobility program. Joint mobility exercise stimulates and circulates the synovial fluid in the bursa, which ‘washes’ the joint. The joints have no direct blood supply and are nourished by this synovial fluid, which simultaneously removes waste products. Joint salts, or calcium deposits, are dissolved and dispersed with the same gentle, high-repetition movement patterns. Properly learned, joint mobility can restore complete freedom of motion to the ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulders, neck, elbows, wrists and fingers. It’s especially important to keep the spine supple and free and if there were such a thing as a fountain of youth, joint mobility exercises come very close.

Use mobility exercises as a warm up, an active recovery during other activities, or as a stand-alone workout. You can rejuvenate yourself and reclaim the movement of a child with a good joint mobility program. Joint mobility makes a wonderful, energizing morning recharge and sets the day up on the right foot.

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“Snowman Trek” Training

Jon Hinds Training blog:

As you might have seen on my training blogs I have been training for the "Snowman Trek". So I have been doing my best to prepare for this by putting myself in a ‘high’ altitude feel here in Madison, Wisconsin:) haha yes, very funny as Madison is about 30 feet above sea level. So what I have been doing is adding a weight vest to every workout I do and not only wearing it but tightly wearing it to make it even harder to breath. And you know what, I think it is working:) The times in my life I have been above 10,000 feet I remember what that felt like and this feels a lot like it. Of course it is a totally different story hiking up to 17,000 feet:) But we do our best!

So, some of my favorite "Snowman Trek" workouts have been the University of Wisconsin football stadium, 70 rows of bleachers up, over to the next row, then down, then over and repeat for one trip around the stadium. It is tough enough without wearing a tight weight vest, took me 24 minutes last time I did it, but it was brutal with the 25lb weight vest on Saturday. You might have guessed from my training that I go pretty hard and don’t like to lighten workouts out once I’ve started…it’s a mind thing. So when I did the stadium in 24 minutes last time, I ran to the top each time, jogged over and down and over and then ran up again. This time…NOT HAPPENING, I gave it my best but at about the 1/3 mark I was crashing:), so the better sense got to me and said just hike it like in the mountains anyways:) so I did and finished in 36:30. I felt like I was at 12,000 feet for sure, hard to breath, legs burning, lungs burning…GOOD TRAINING

I really liked how it felt for preparing me. So next I did the same workout in a big building in downtown Madison…okay, big for Madison… it ’s 14 floors with 10 foot ceilings each floor. One time to the top is 140 feet in elevation, not bad, add in the 25lb vest and now your talking a great workout again. I started out doing the same pace as I was doing at the stadium of skipping every other step, sort of a good hiking pace. Anyways by the time I get to the top I’m feeling it big time! Same high altitude feel, which is great!! One trip (up & down) took me just under 5:00 so I said I’m gonna do this 10 times in 45 minutes, so I have to keep this pace….and I did! What an awesome workout!! I know this is gonna prepare me as well as I can for the "Snowman Trek". The Building and the stadium steps (with the tight vest) are two great prep workouts that I highly recommend for anyone wanting that "high altitude" feel but in a low altitude terrain.

Stay tuned for more of my training and hope your training is going great too!!
Jon Hinds, Owner & Founder of the Monkey Bar Gymnasium

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