They’re coming back! For the second year in a row, the Fernandina Beach Rotary Club will bring back the wildly entertaining Harlem Ambassadors basketball team for an exhibition game with the hometown team, the Nassau Nets. The game, a fundraiser for the Rotary Club’s college scholarship and charitable programs, is scheduled for Friday February 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Fernandina Beach High School gymnasium. The FBHS Interact Club will be offering concessions, including Domino’s Pizza before and throughout the game and the proceeds will go towards their local and international projects.

Last year, the Ambassadors trounced the Nassau Nets 132-84, but the more than 600 fans that packed the FBHS gym were having too much fun watching dunks galore and laughing at the Ambassadors’ awesome athletic antics to care about the lopsided score. The Ambassadors also got the crowd and kids in the audience involved in the fun with skits, races and routines that kept the audience laughing throughout the evening.

All of the hilarity was for a good cause. Since 1993, the Rotary Club of Fernandina Beach has awarded $393,000 in college scholarships to graduates of all four Nassau County high schools. “Our goal this year is to raise enough money to exceed the $400,000 mark in scholarships awarded,” said Rotary Club President Shannon Brown. “Hosting the Harlem Ambassadors helps us do that and provides a great evening of entertainment for families in our community.”

The Ambassadors’ goal is not only to play a high energy game, but to emphasize the importance of getting an education and living a positive lifestyle. All Ambassadors team members must be actively pursuing a college degree and must remain drug and alcohol free.

“They ran us ragged and almost scored more dunks than we did points, but we couldn’t be prouder to have played against such a great team,” said Nassau Nets player and Rotarian Trip Clark. “I’m excited for a rematch.”

The game has received tremendous support from the community with local businesses including Vystar Credit Union, The News-Leader, the Residence Inn and more providing sponsorships. Sponsorships are still available at several levels that offer advertising and recognition during the game. For more information, contact Kim Harding at (904) 321-7002.

Tickets are available in advance at Vystar Credit Union, the AIFBY Chamber of Commerce or by calling Sean McGill at (904) 556-4225. Advance tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for children under 12 and free for children four and younger. The cost will increase by $2 on the day of the game. The FBHS Interact Club will sell concessions including Domino’s Pizza, soft drinks and snacks with all proceeds going to support the club’s community programs.

For more information, visit the Fernandina Beach Rotary Club website at www.fernandinabeachrotaryclub.org.

We know that regular fitness is good for the heart and that it can help the body to build muscles and maintain a healthy weight. But it also spurs the release of endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that promote happiness.

And now a new study in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology adds more evidence to the “happiness” benefit.

Researchers from the Penn State University found in their study that the more physically active people reported greater general feelings of excitement and enthusiasm, compared with the less physically active people.

“We found that people who are more physically active have more pleasant-activated feelings than people who are less active, and we also found that people have more pleasant-activated feelings on days when they are more physically active than usual,” study researcher Amanda Hyde, a kinesiology graduate student at Penn State, said in a statement.

The study tracked the daily activities of 190 college-age students, who were asked to journal the amount and level of physical activity they got in their free time (15 minutes or more), the amount and quality of sleep they got each night, and their overall mental states (like stress and their feelings). At the end of each day for eight days, the participants gave their journals to the researchers.

“Our results suggest that not only are there chronic benefits of physical activity, but there are discrete benefits as well,” Hyde said in the statement. “Doing more exercise than you typically do can give you a burst of pleasant-activated feelings. So today, if you want a boost, go do some moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise.”

Recently, a study came out in the Journal of Business and Psychology showing that bosses who don’t take the time to exercise are more stressed and lash out at their employees, compared with bosses who make time for fitness.

Researchers found that the more stressed out the bosses were, the more likely their employees were to say they felt like they were being victimized, the Times of India reported. And, the more the boss broke a sweat, the less abuse reported on the part of the employee.

For your convenience!

Members please use your keytag at the single door (now YOUR door) to gain access.
Staffed hours:
Mon-Thurs 8:00am to 8:00pm
Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm
Sat. 8:00am to 12:00pm
Sun. 9:00am to 12:00pm

Please come in anytime of the day or night. Get in, get out around YOUR schedule. You have your own special door (formerly the Exit door) and may use your keytag to gain entry.

Please note: your keytag will NOT work if you are behind on membership dues or you forgot to give us new draft information. Please help us by keeping your account current.

If your keytag needs replacing, you may purchase a new one for $5.

You may rest assured that the entire building is wired for security. Cameras are stationed throughout the gym. Please remember this if a non-member asks you to “sneak” them in.

*YES! The club will be open on ALL holidays. If you want to work out on Christmas day-you can!

Want to raise healthy and smart children? Then don’t allow them to be couch potatoes. Exercise, it turns out, does more than benefit the body and overall health — physical fitness builds smarter brains in youngsters, too.

That’s the news from a study just published in the journal Brain Research. Scientists used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the relative size of specific structures in the brains of 49 children, all of whom were 9 or 10 years old. The research team discovered that the hippocampus (part of the brain inside the temporal lobe that plays an important part in memory and learning) tended to be significantly larger in the kids who were physically fit. What’s more, the fit children performed better on a memory test than youngsters the same age who were out of shape.

“This is the first study I know of that has used MRI measures to look at differences in brains between kids who are fit and kids who aren’t fit. Beyond that, it relates those measures of brain structure to cognition,” University of Illinois psychology professor and Beckman Institute director Art Kramer said in a statement to the media. Dr. Kramer headed the study along with doctoral student Laura Chaddock and kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman.

The researchers zeroed in on the hippocampus because it has long been known this brain structure is intricately involved in both learning and memory and that a larger hippocampus is associated with better performance on spatial reasoning and other cognitive tasks. Moreover, previous research in older adults and animals has shown that exercise can increase the size of the hippocampus.

For the new study, the University of Illinois scientists measured the children’s physical fitness levels by seeing how efficiently the youngsters used oxygen while running on a treadmill. “The physically fit children were much more efficient than the less-fit children at utilizing oxygen,” Dr. Kramer noted.

When the researchers analyzed the MRI data on the young research subjects, they found the fit kids tended to have significantly larger hippocampal volume. In fact, this part of the physical fit kids’ brains was a whopping 12 percent bigger, relative to total brain size, than the hippocampus in out-of-shape youngsters. What’s more, the children who were in better physical condition also scored higher on tests of relational memory (the ability to remember and integrate various types of information) than their less-fit peers.

“Higher fit children had higher performance on the relational memory task, higher fit children had larger hippocampal volumes, and in general, children with larger hippocampal volumes had better relational memory,” Dr. Chaddock concluded in the media statement.

“We knew that experience and environmental factors and socioeconomic status all impact brain development,” Dr. Kramer added. “If you get some lousy genes from your parents, you can’t really fix that, and it’s not easy to do something about your economic status. But here’s something that we can do something about.”

Bottom line: getting children out of the house and playing sports, biking or being physically active in other ways could have an important effect on brain development and even intelligence.

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20735996

A popular myth is that there is a specific range of heart rates in which you must exercise to burn fat. Many cardio machines display a “fat-burning zone” on their panels, encouraging people to exercise in a specific heart rate range. Have you ever wondered if you really have to exercise in a specific heart rate zone to lose fat? And what happens if you venture out of that zone? Jason R. Karp, PhD, a nationally recognized speaker, writer and exercise physiologist who coaches recreational runners to Olympic hopefuls through his company, RunCoachJason.com, sheds light on this issue.

Fuel Use During Exercise
You use both fat and carbohydrates for energy during exercise, with these two fuels providing that energy on a sliding scale. During exercise at a very low intensity (e.g., walking), fat accounts for most of the energy expenditure. As exercise intensity increases up to the lactate threshold (the exercise intensity that marks the transition between exercise that is almost purely aerobic and exercise that includes a significant anaerobic contribution; also considered the highest sustainable aerobic intensity), the contribution from fat decreases while the contribution from carbohydrates increases. When exercising just below the lactate threshold, you are using mostly carbohydrates. Once the intensity of exercise has risen above the lactate threshold, carbohydrates become the only fuel source.

If you exercise long enough (1.5–2 hours), your muscle carbohydrate (glycogen) content and blood glucose concentration become low. This metabolic state presents a threat to the muscles’ survival, since carbohydrates are muscles’ preferred fuel. When carbohydrates are not available, the muscles are forced to rely on fat as fuel.

Since more fat is used at low exercise intensities, people often assume that low-intensity exercise is best for burning fat, an idea that has given birth to the “fat-burning zone.” However, while only a small amount of fat is used when exercising just below the lactate threshold, the rate of caloric expenditure and the total number of calories expended are much greater than they are when exercising at a lower intensity, so the total amount of fat used is also greater.

The Bottom Line
For fat and weight loss, what matters most is the difference between the number of calories you expend and the number of calories you consume. Fat and weight loss is about burning lots of calories and cutting back on the number of calories consumed. For the purpose of losing weight, it matters little whether the calories burned during exercise come from fat or carbohydrates.

Go Hard
A great way to perform high-intensity exercise and decrease your body fat percentage is through interval training, which breaks up the work with periods of rest. Not only does interval training allow you to improve your fitness quickly; it is also more effective than continuous exercise for burning lots of calories during exercise and increasing your postworkout metabolic rate. Try one or two of these workouts each week:

5–6 x 3 minutes at 95%–100% maximum (max) heart rate (HR) with 2-minute active recovery periods
4 x 4 minutes at 95%–100% max HR with 3-minute active recovery periods
8–12 x 30 seconds fast with 1-minute active recovery periods
Each of these interval workouts should include a warm-up and a cool-down.

Go Very Long
Long runs or bike rides (≥ 1.5–2 hours at 65%–70% max HR) that stimulate mitochondrial synthesis and promote the depletion of glycogen threaten the muscles’ survival, since carbohydrates are muscles’ preferred fuel. In response to this threat, muscles “learn” how to use fat more effectively and over time become better fat-burning machines.

IDEA Fitness Journal, Volume 7, Number 5

Members please use your keytag at the single door (now YOUR door)to gain access.




Staffed hours:
Mon-Thurs 8:00am to 8:00pm
Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm
Sat. 8:00am to 12:00pm
Sun. 9:00am to 12:00pm

Thank you!

Please note: your keytag will NOT work if you are behind on membership dues or you forgot to give us new draft information. Please help us by keeping your account current.

If your keytag needs replacing, you may purchase a new one for $5.

You may rest assured that the entire building is wired for security. Cameras are stationed throughout the gym. Please remember this if a non-member asks you to “sneak” them in.

*YES! The club will be open on ALL holidays. If you want to work out on Christmas day-you can!

Need help getting your SUMMER BEACH BODY??

Stop at the front desk to find out how to schedule a FREE consultation or call Reese at 912-631-4604 and make your goals a reality!!

Check out the February Group Fitness Schedule-it’s HOT!

The all-new 5:30am line-up is killer as well as the back-to-back evening classes.

Welcome back SUNDAY! Hathaway, Tara, and Amanda will rotate the ½ hour TRX at 9:00am. Participants can then head downstairs for Leon’s RPM express at 10:00am. What an awesome little (but powerful) Sunday line-up!

Check out our brand-new “3rd studio” in the club. Jackie is heading up Zumba in the Circuit in the Free Motion room. This ½ hour class is perfect for senior ladies and is offered at noon on Thursdays.

Mother-daughter team Judie and Ally are pulling their awesome Saturday Zumba class over from The Club in Yulee – Welcome, girls!

BodyFlow will now be offered late-night (7pm) on Mondays and Wednesdays. This is the perfect finale to your hard day and workout!

LOCKERS…

As you know, we now ask you to bring in your own lock and use any available locker during your workout. Please remove your lock for others to use when you’re done. You may rent a locker if you wish to leave your things overnight. The standard-size lockers are $10 per month and the executive-sized lockers cost $15. Just let us know which one you want and we’ll have your last name installed on it!

No more excuses! Not only have we expanded the Group Fitness Schedule, we now have 24 HOUR ACCESS! Please see the front desk for details.

Nitric Oxide additions are doubtless the hottest additions on the fitness market today. Walk into any health food store that deals with bodybuilders, and you can see names of products like NO2, Nitrix, NOxplode, SuperPump 250, NOX, TracNO and many others.

I’m a robust fan in nitric oxide products to add muscle and there’s been some double-blind studies that support the efficacy of nitric oxide supplements. But with so many Nitric Oxide products on the market, how do you know which one works the best for you.

To answer the question of which one would be the best for you, let’s look at what nitric oxide is. Nitric oxide is a drab gas that’s's found in the tissues of all mammals. It’s actually a natural vasodilator of smooth muscle ( but not skeletal muscle ). Nitric oxide also performs cell-to-cell communication for some metabolic functions and this is how it is utilized by the body to communicate with other body cells.

Natural nitric oxide by itself just lasts momentarily in the body. There is, however, an analogue to produce this gas, as it occurs when enzymes in the body break down the amino acid called Arginine ( l-arginine ).

Nitric Oxide has been striving to control the circulation of blood and may actually increase blood flow. It also sends signals between nerve cells, and can serve to deliver more nutriments to muscle cells, helping the muscles to extend in size when subjected to stress ( that ‘pumped’ feeling from working out ).

It is these large, full pumps that muscle builders seek when lifting weights. As a side note : Erectile Dysfunction ( ED ) prescriptions work in a similar way to increase blood flow (just that ED prescriptions focus on controlling blood flow in a different area).

The MRI company defined this industry when they came out with the 1st nitric oxide supplement. I suspect it still is the best nitric oxide on the market, but sometimes it is also the most expensive. BSN and MHP and pinnacle and Gaspari also make good nitric oxide additions, but to me, they do not appear to be as effective as the MRI NO2, although I believe different folks will have varying results till they find the one which works best for them.

The way to say which nitric oxide supplement will work well for you is to try one for 6 weeks. In about 2 weeks of employing a nitric oxide supplement, you should be able to feel a ‘pump’ after your workout and you will be reminded of this feeling during the day as you continue to feel ‘pumped.’ It is a bit like that ‘tight’ feeling you may feel the first 5 minutes in the morning on arising, before your muscles have had a chance to stretch.

If you don’t feel ‘pumped’ and have a replenished wish to head back to the gymnasium each morning after six weeks of trying a nitric oxide supplement, try a different one. If the 1st supplement you try doesn’t get you to that ‘pump,’ you can likely only need to try 1 or 2 others till you get that ‘good’ feeling. Then you can stick to your chosen nitric oxide generator for a long time.

I should also mention possible side effects of nitric oxide. While I haven’t heard or seen any serious health side effects, it’s possible to have dizziness, some fatigue, headaches or diarrhea, as these would be evidence of too much arginine and they’ll go away upon reducing the amount of arginine taken.

There’s also been some recent reports stating that certain ED prescriptions may lead to a sudden blindness, and seeing that some of the method of vasodilation might be similar to nitric oxide, I analyzed to work out if nitric oxide could lead to a unexpected blindness similar to the ED prescriptions. What I found is that nitric oxide works alongside a different receptor and it seems that this would not be a problem. I continue to take NO2 and I actually like it.

This information is not intended to replace medical advice. If you want medical help, look for a qualified physician and explore all of your options together.

Your lifestyle is the way that you live your life.

Each decision you make throughout the course of the day plays a role in your fitness. Each lifestyle consideration is important and offers a unique spin on the quality of life you will lead. Improve them, and physical fitness increases.

Smoking, Drinking And Drugs

Each of those three things, smoking, drinking and drugs, is a problem for your health and your ability to make it through the life you have. You probably already know the risks of what these things can do to your life, but you may not realize the extent at which it takes to improve them.

For example, smoking will eat away at your lungs and will cause cancer. There are no ifs about it. It will cause cancer eventually in your lungs.

But, smoking is something that you can stop, even if it is one of the hardest things you will have to do. To improve your fitness, find a method to stop smoking and do it. You will find that your health increases, your energy increases, your stress levels DO go down and you can feel better about the life you are living.

When you quit early enough, your body can repair the damage that you have done to your lungs. This can only happen if you stop soon enough, though.

Drinking and drugs are just as bad. Each time that you consume too much alcohol that makes you drunk or you take illegal drugs, you destroy your body slowly and methodically. You kill brain cells, you put your life at risk and you destroy the organs in your body. Some damage can be fixed through healing over time, others can’t.

To improve your lifestyle and to extend your life, you need to remove these problems from it. Smoking and drugs are simply a no no. Drinking alcohol isn’t nearly as bad for you when you drink it in moderation and only when you are drinking low concentrations of alcohol such as in wine rather than in hard liquor or beer.

Sleep

Do you sleep? No, we mean actually lying down and sleeping for 7 to 9 hours per night? Do you wake up rested? If not, then you aren’t getting the right amount of sleep for health. Your lifestyle fitness requires that you get quality sleep each night.

Why is sleep so important? There are actually several reasons. For one, sleep is the body’s time to relax and to recoup what it’s done all day. You need this time for your mind to. It’s the way that your mind works through problems. It’s the time that your body heals from the exertions of the day.

It’s a time to restart, refresh and give yourself the best chance at improving tomorrow.

Those that don’t get enough sleep are not capable of performing at their best physical or mental level. They aren’t able to improve the level at which they can function and they make bad mistakes. Stress hurts more, physical ailments hinder you more when you don’t get enough sleep.

If you are having problems with sleeping, there are many ways that you can overcome them.

•Reducing stress levels during the day is helpful as is working out the stresses that you can’t get rid of.
•Try to go to sleep at the same time everyday and give yourself as much time as necessary to feel rested.
•Don’t do stimulating things before bed such as watching television or working on a project.
•Don’t eat before bed, at least two hours beforehand.

If you are facing problems with insomnia or are struggling to get to sleep, talk to your doctor about it. There may be an underlying medical condition that could be causing it.

While it used to be that nearly all sleeping medications were addicting, today there are many that are not which can offer you a night’s rest. Don’t use these unless your doctor has Okayed them for you, though!