Student Fitness

By: Joe Norton 

1. Don’t just hope to find time for going to the gym. Take the time to plan it. The college lifestyle can be hectic and plans/entire courses of the day can be changed with a decision. When you have plans in advance you can build your day around your fitness lifestyle.

2. If lines at machines at the college gym are annoying you then you might want to try going earlier in the morning or later at night. College gyms tend to have very light traffic till just before lunch, it will get more busy throughout the day usually peaking by 5-8 and die off the closer you get to closing time. With this in mind, you can have the whole gym to yourself if you go at one of the less busy time periods.

3. Don’t forget about all the old school bodyweight exercises you know of. You know exactly what I’m talking about: The Push-up, the sit-up, the pull-up (if you have a chin up bar to use). These are compound bodyweight exercises that are the basis for many fitness routines and it’s because they are some of the most effective excercises we know about. Pushups and situps can be done anywhere, any time. Why not do a quick set of each during commercials?

4. Hoof it a bit. Walking is a great form of exercise. Try to plan your day to allow for a few strolls. Even though they require little physical effort they cause serious health benefits. Take every chance you can to get out of the cramped dorm room and take a look around on a walk. Why take the shuttle to save 10 minutes when you could have just added in 10 minutes of light exercise…

5. Moderate your alcohol consumption. Alcohol is not going to help any of your goals – unless your goal is to pass out. Alcohol causes a decrease in testosterone and will negatively impact your ability to grow muscle. Alcohol is also full of empty calories and simple carbs, plus – a lot of people eat seriously unhealthy food once they have had too much alcohol (this is where most of the fat for the beer belly comes form). Read more about “Alcohol In College”

6. Get enough sleep. Atleast 6 for most people, 8 is recommended. Lack of sleep can cause many things, the worst of which is psychosis (that’s right, a psycho), including decreased cognitive ability. It will also completely screw over any kind of lifting / fitness plan. Your body needs time to rest and repair, if you never give it time it can’t ever rest & repair. Read more about sleeping…

7. Avoid the buffet. It is scientifically proven now that when you go to a buffet you definitely eat more. We all knew it, no one doubted it, yet for some reason people still go to buffets which tend to have the worse food on campus. Bleh, boo this buffet! Read more about buffets…

8. Put some Pilates into your fitness plan! Pilates are those core based bodyweight exercises that seems kinda somewhat similar to yoga but its not. Yeah those, they are amazing for abs and can be done anywhere. I suggest the floor because it has no give and works good as support. However, you can even do them in bed. Things like “the hundred”, leg raises, the saw, v situps, are all Pilates moves and there are many more – check’em out.

9. Stay busy. Join an organization or professional development club and participate often. Not only will this help out your resume and your skills in the given area, but also it means you are busy more and less time to sit around. Stay moving, stay burning calories.

10. Join a team or club, or atleast start a recurring physical activity (like Sunday basketball games, Saturday morning football games, whatever). Add something to your life that is going to continually cause you to do activities that benefit your goal. Deciding to run a 5k or hell, even a marathon – is a gigantic example of starting a recurring activity that will actually guide you to your goal.

Keep these tips in mind this upcoming semester.

By: Joseph Norton

When I lost weight it wasn’t because I went on a diet. It was because I analyzed my habits and lifestyle - chose my goal of what habits and lifestyle I did want. Then I worked to become the new me. When I was doing all this I noticed that every problem area of my life that was causing me discomfort could usually be grouped into one of three categories. Together these 3 categories are the major areas where the college atmosphere influences students and makes them prone to weight gain:

Lifestyle

College is different than high school. It’s as simple as that. The primary areas of the typical college students lifestyle that are affected is the amount of free time they have, how they use their free time, how much you physically exert yourself (be that excercising, lifting, anything that is aerobic). Usually, this new free time is used in ways which are, although fun, not quite conducive to weight loss. Just think about how often you use your free time to work out physically?
Many high school athletes who managed to stay fit from practice do not compete in college. Inherently, the additional hours of free time will undoubtedly lead to increased sedentary activity.

This is why I was so shocked at my weight gain. Being a former athlete I felt immune to weight issues. It should have dawned on me that although I was a football player in the past, nothing about my current lifestyle includes any of the physical training from my football days. So what happen is I ate the same, and exercised less - big shock, I gained weight.

Even if you never played sports, its likely you still spent more time exerting yourself
during offhours in high school than you will in college. Also, take into account how much more downtime you really have. An average courseload being 15 credits, this means 45 hours of actual classtime per week.

College, technically speaking, takes up about as much time as a “full time” 40 - 50 hour workweek. Even being so, it’s not much time your actually in class.

Think about highschool and how it was typically 6 hours, 5 days a week. Well, for college the average schedule requires 3 hours, 5 days a week. Meaning college takes HALF as much time as high school. This is why moderating how you use your downtime is so vitally important.

Stress

College students are in a complex environment; surrounded by new people, learning new
concepts, and all while trying to maintain an active social life. It can get a little stressful. Stress causes all sorts of problems.

Stress can cause your immune system to get seriously bogged down, inviting illness.

Pair this with the fact that college is already a risky place for illness and you got a serious
threat of sickness Also note that stress causes higher cortisol levels, which directly increases abdominal fat.

Here are several strategies that can help you cope with stressful situations in college, according to the University of South Florida’s Counseling Center for Human Development:

Learn to manage your time wisely. Make and follow a daily schedule that includes time for classes, reading and writing assignments, exam preparation (don’t procrastinate!), healthy meals, exercise and a job.

Set priorities and make the most of your opportunities as a student. Write down the most important items and concentrate on those at the top of your list. Writing ideas down helps crystallize your thinking and reinforce important goals.

Learn to say “no” to some of the demands for your time. Protect your own best interests by refusing to allow yourself to become overstressed by taking on every request or opportunity that comes your way.

Make careful planning a basic part of your academic routine. In a student’s hectic world, poor planning often leads to crisis situations. And crisis almost always leads to stress.

Food

Far too many students come into school with the midnset that the meal plan will be there whenever they are hungry.

Only to realize that most meal plans only allow 2 meals a day on avg and definitely require additional supplementation.Without viable healthy alternatives to campus food, and with surrounding fast food, the convenience factor becomes overwhelming.

Students snack on candy bars and soda from the vending machines instead of buying fruit or juices to ease those late night cravings. With some planning and moderate discipline, students can learn that it is not terribly difficult to live a healthier lifestyle.

Upon entering college the average student’s life is dramatically altered in these three areas. Unfortunately for us with a naturally slow metabolism the impact of these three changes can lead to dramatic weight gain – The Freshman 15.
Together these factors tend to cause 3 significant changes in the fitness and nutrition of the college student.

1. Consume More Calories – poor food choices, to counteract stress

2. Burn Less Calories – from being less active

3. Start/Stop Metabolism – from missing meals, poor food choices

Another result of the lifestyle switch between high school and college is the proclivity of college students to live on a more nocturnal schedule.

This can cause problems especially given how the meal plans given out at colleges operate during day hours. This can lead to missing the “time zone” for a specific meal period. To avoid this you need to learn to work with your meal plan.
Another significant problem with the lifestyle inherited by the college student is frequency of meals. There is a significant problem with only eating 2 meals a day, and doing so crushes your metabolism.

By: Joe Norton 

It’s called progressive overload.
It is the process of systematically causing your muscles to overload, to get max’d out, and thus they adapt to this stimulus and grow to handle the weight. Then you do this again.

Try to make a weekly target, like add at least 2.5 pounds per exercise per workout.
After a few weeks you have made substantial gains and all the while it will hardly seem difficult. This is how the professionals do it, it’s as simple as that: Progressive overload.

I highly suggest using a journal to record your exercises and to make sure you are slowly progressing. After a month you will wonder how you ever managed to keep track of your progress without it (and you’ll realize you actually didn’t) It wasn’t until I kept a journal that I made significant gains in strength in short spans of time.