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According to IHRSA, the leading trade association for the fitness business, the most popular aerobic machines are treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical machines, stair climbing machines, rowers, and cardio cross trainers. We have all of those at The Training Station Gym, (except stair climbing machines). But which one is kind on bad knees? You may need…

Let’s call cardio, or aerobic, exercise that which is cyclical and continuous, lasting 10 minutes or longer. It is one of the two main types of exercise. The other being strength exercise, which we’ll describe as intermittent and without a minimum duration. Some people at The Training Station Gym always go directly to the barbell…

When an exerciser swings a kettlebell, at least two things will happen: he will burn a lot of calories and his muscles will have to contract rapidly even as they lengthen.   What kinesiology shows us about kettlebells   Let’s compare holding a 15-pound kettlebell by the spherical part and by the handle. During the…

Scientists performing experiments and doing research about exercise don’t normally list weight loss as one of the benefits of exercise. They do list weight maintenance as a benefit, which is related but not the same. (But there is a way to lose weight through exercise. It requires having the right information and doing a precise…

There are a number of moving parts in the spine. Some ab exercises cause the parts to move and some don’t. If you’re doing an ab exercise that causes back pain — because the exercise requires trunk extension or trunk flexion or lateral flexion — then the exercise is making some part of the spine…

Amy never asked to be among the fittest in Philadelphia. She runs a nationwide law practice and just wanted to improve her fitness and to keep her sanity. She didn’t know how far the improvement would go. She Didn’t Start with Us Amy did personal training up to four times per week at other gyms.…

What I mean by personal training is one-to-one fitness instruction. I’m excluding so-called semi-private training, where an instructor simultaneously supervises a small group of people. There is exercising with others in a group, and there is exercising alone under the supervision of one instructor. Many find the former helpful but I have expertise in the…

It has long been understood that one should do a variety of exercises, beyond the bench press, if he wants to bench press heavier weights. A similar idea is understood for just about every sport. Which is why track racers lift weights, baseball pitchers run distance, and swimmers do dry land exercises. But which exercises…

You glance at the menu board to know the number of calories in your bacon cheeseburger value meal. Where do you find the number of calories that your workout will burn? Why not at your gym? That’s why we created The Training Station Weight Loss Calculator. If a member plans to do, for example, 20…

Every time the body is moved—every time you clean a weight from the floor, for example—that movement can be described. If you raise your arm in front of your torso until it’s parallel to the ground, you could describe that movement as a forward arm raise. But it could also be described as shoulder flexion.…