Fitness

Exercise ranks No. 1 in resolutions

Published

1 year ago

January 11, 2025

GETTING FIT FOR THE NEW YEAR — Those who took part in an aerobics class taught by instructor Carol Teaff at the Weirton campus of West Virginia Northern Community College, will once again have the opportunity to join the upcoming free course that is being offered beginning Tuesday. The class runs from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through May 8 and is free of charge.
— Contributed

WEIRTON — Approximately 80 percent of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution this year chose to set a goal to improve their health.

Exercise and weight-loss were among the promises made by more than 96 million adults, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Health and Fitness Association.

That makes it the most popular theme for 2025.

The reality of making these resolutions come to fruition, however, can be expensive.

According to YouGov, research has shown that just 9 percent of Americans will actually keep their resolutions throughout the year. And almost nine out of 10 people said having access to structured spaces such as gyms, health clubs or exercise studios is an important factor to achieving their goal, resulting in those low figures of those who follow through on their Jan. 1 promises. One reason people end up shying away from continuing or beginning an exercise routine is that not everybody can afford to join a gym or club.

As a result, apps are being downloaded as a means to losing weight and getting physically and mentally fit so people can go through the process at home. The top aspirations of app users saw 50 percent of people wanting to build or strengthen their muscles and 44 percent seeking to establish a regular exercise regimen. Americans wanting to improve their mental health through physical activity stood at 42 percent.

“Americans are entering the new year with strong ambitions to improve their health and fitness, but financial strain is a real obstacle for many,” stated Liz Clark, president and CEO of the HFA. “This represents both a challenge and an opportunity to explore strategic solutions that can make fitness more accessible to everyone.”

But one area woman is helping community residents achieve their goal of getting fit by offering free aerobics to those intent on keeping their word.

Carol Teaff has been exercising non-stop for 45 years. She has been offering free aerobics classes since retiring as an English and speech professor at West Virginia Northern Community College in 2008, following a 33-year career.

The college had asked her to run a community education exercise class because she previously taught a one-credit hour step aerobics class as part of her schedule.

And she has continued to do so ever since.

Even during the pandemic, she still ran her class through Zoom, not allowing COVID to deter her from doing what she loves.

So, what prompted her to begin exercising in the first place?

Teaff explained, “I started exercising to work my way out of depression caused by life events. Exercise is the perfect cure for depression.”

“I started out going to exercise classes with friends, but they all eventually quit,” she continued. “So, I kept on going to classes by myself because I could see what exercising was doing for me — reducing my heart rate, strengthening my lungs, lowering my risk of cancer and other diseases, increasing my flexibility and just making me happy. Cardio is the best thing someone can do for their body, along with weight lifting, which I also did for many years and have recently gone back to.”

“Most people who start exercising drop out within six months, and of those who remain, many keep exercising at the same level instead of upping their game,” Teaff said.

“The goal should be to keep improving, whatever your age,” she stressed. “In addition, a lot of people set unrealistic goals — dropping x number of pounds or running a 5K race before they are ready, or lifting weights that are too heavy for them. Deconditioned people need to start with something easy and work toward realistic goals, resisting the urge to compete with others in better shape who have been exercising longer.”

“I can’t even tell you how many out-of-shape guys I have seen running on the beach in bare feet at noon,” she stated. “This is a bad idea for so many reasons.”

Even if one doesn’t take Teaff’s classes, she offered advice on the proper way those starting out their New Year’s resolution of exercising should begin.

She stressed the importance of starting slow, doing it three times a week.

“Make it harder when you’re ready,” she commented. “Schedule it into your life and don’t quit, even if you feel like quitting. If I skipped my exercise routine every time that I didn’t feel like doing it, I would rarely work out. Once my heart rate climbs, I am always happy that I kept my schedule. After 45 years, I can’t not do it!”

“To get the most advantage out of cardio, exercisers need to keep track of their heart rates,” she noted, saying anyone is able to go online and search for target heart rate zones. Wearing a fitness tracker also is a good idea, she added.

She will once again hold classes for those interested in continuing or just beginning an exercise routine starting on Tuesday.

The class will meet from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the student center of the Weirton campus, located in the back of the building. The class will run through May 8.

This is a low-impact class that puts an emphasis on continuous movement, strength improvement and flexibility. All of the exercise are done while standing, so there aren’t any chairs or floor work involved.

Everyone is encouraged to work at his or her own ability level, never pushing themselves beyond what they are able to handle.

Participants are asked to wear loose or stretchy clothing, along with athletic shoes. They should bring a bottle of water as well, she noted.

To register for the class and begin to fulfill that resolution to become healthier, visit wvncc.edu/community-education and click on “Current Courses Available.”

Select “Community Education/ Health and Wellness,” and then enter the information required.

Students can register on paper Tuesday prior to the first class.

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Fitness

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

Published

6 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

research review

People with high cardiorespiratory fitness were 36% less likely to experience depression and 39% less likely to develop dementia than those with low cardiorespiratory fitness. Even small improvements in fitness were linked to a lower risk. Experts believe that exercise’s ability to boost blood flow to the brain, reduce bodywide inflammation, and improve stress regulation may explain the connection.

Fitness

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

Published

18 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

While many swear by them, most people see burpees as a form of punishment – usually dished out drill sergeant-style by overzealous bootcamp PTs. Often the final blow in an already brutal workout, burpees are designed to test cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and mental grit. Love them or loathe them, they deliver every time.

For Max Edwards – aka Busy Dad Training on YouTube – they became a simple but highly effective way to stay fit and lean during lockdown. Once a committed powerlifter, spending upwards of 80 minutes a day in the gym, he was forced to overhaul his approach due to fatherhood, lockdown and a schedule that no longer allowed for long, structured lifting sessions.

‘Even though I was putting in hours and hours into the gym and even though my physique was pretty good, I wasn’t becoming truly excellent at any physical discipline,’ he explained in a YouTube video.

‘I loved the intentionality of training,’ says Edwards. ‘The fact that every session has a point, every rep in every set is helping you get towards a training goal, and I loved that there was a clear way of gauging progression – feeling like I was developing competence and moving towards mastery.’

Why He Walked Away From Powerlifting

Despite that structure, Edwards began to question whether powerlifting was sustainable long-term.

‘My sessions were very taxing on my central nervous system. I was exhausted between sessions. It felt as if I needed at least nine hours of sleep each night just to function.’

He also noted that his appetite was consistently high.

But the biggest drawback was time.

‘I could not justify taking 80 minutes a day away from my family for what felt like a self-centred pursuit,’ he says.

A Simpler Approach That Stuck

‘Over the course of that year I fixed my relationship with alcohol and I developed, for the first time in my adult life, a relationship with physical training,’ says Edwards.

With limited time and no access to equipment, he turned to burpees. Just two variations, four times a week, with each session lasting 20 minutes.

‘My approach in each workout was very simple. On a six-count training day I would do as many six-counts as I possibly could within 20 minutes. On a Navy Seal training day I would do as many Navy Seal burpees as I could within 20 minutes – then in the next workout I would simply try to beat the number I had managed previously.’

This style of training is known as AMRAP – as many reps (or rounds) as possible.

The Results

Edwards initially saw the routine as nothing more than a six-month stopgap to stay in shape. But that quickly changed.

‘I remember catching sight of myself in the mirror one morning and I was utterly baffled by the man I saw looking back at me.’

He found himself in the best shape of his life. His energy levels improved, his resting heart rate dropped and his physique changed in ways that powerlifting hadn’t quite delivered.

‘It has been five years since I have set foot in a gym,’ he says. ‘That six-month training practice has become the defining training practice of my life – and for five years I have trained for no more than 80 minutes per week.’

The Burpee Workouts

1/ 6-Count Burpees

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor (count 1)
Jump your feet back into a high plank (count 2)
Lower into the bottom of a push-up (count 3)
Push back up to plank (count 4)
Jump your feet forward to your hands (count 5)
Stand up straight (count 6)

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor
Jump your feet back into a high plank
Perform a push-up (chest to floor)
At the top, bring your right knee to your right elbow, then return
Perform another push-up
Bring your left knee to your left elbow, then return
Perform a third push-up
Jump your feet forward
Stand or jump to finish

Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.

Fitness

Six ways your smartwatch is lying to you, according to science

Published

1 day ago

April 20, 2026

Press Room

Six ways your smartwatch is lying to you, according to science

You check your smartwatch after a run. Your fitness score has dropped. You’ve burnt hardly any calories. Your recovery score is really low. It’s telling you to take the next 72 hours off exercise.

The worst bit? The whole run felt amazing.

So why is your watch telling you the opposite?

Ultimately, it’s because smartwatches and other fitness trackers aren’t always accurate.

Smartwatches can shape how you exercise

Using wearable fitness technology, such as smartwatches, has been one of the top fitness trends for close to a decade. Millions of people around the world use them daily.

These devices shape how people think about health and exercise. For example, they provide data about how many calories you’ve burnt, how fit you are, how recovered you are after exercise, and whether you’re ready to exercise again.

But your smartwatch doesn’t measure most of these metrics directly. Instead, many common metrics are estimates. In other words, they’re not as accurate as you might think.

1. Calories burned

Calorie tracking is one of the most popular features on smartwatches. However, the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.

Wearable devices can under- or overestimate energy expenditure (often expressed as calories burned) by more than 20 per cent. These errors also vary between activities. For example, strength training, cycling and high-intensity interval training can lead to even larger errors.

This matters because people often use these numbers to guide how much they eat.

For example, if your watch overestimates calories burned, you might think you need to eat more food than you really need, which could result in weight gain. Conversely, if your watch underestimates calories burned, it could lead you to under-eat, negatively impacting your exercise performance.

2. Step counts

Step counts are a great way to measure general physical activity, but wearables don’t capture them perfectly.

Smartwatches can under-count steps by about 10 per cent under normal exercise conditions. Activities such as pushing a pram, carrying weights, or walking with limited arm swing likely make step counts less accurate, as smartwatches rely on arm movement to register steps.

For most people, this isn’t a major problem, and step counts are still useful for tracking general activity levels. But view them as a guide, rather than a precise measure.

3. Heart rate

Smartwatches estimate your heart rate using sensors that measure changes in blood flow through the veins in your wrist.

This method is accurate at rest or low intensities, but gets less accurate as you increase exercise intensity.

Arm movement, sweat, skin tone and how tightly you wear the watch can also impact the heart rate measure it spits out. This means the accuracy can vary between people.

This can be problematic for people who use heart rate zones to guide their training, as small errors can lead to training at the wrong intensity.

4. Sleep tracking

Almost every smartwatch on the market gives you a “sleep score” and breaks your night into stages of light, deep and REM sleep.

The gold standard for measuring sleep is polysomnography. This is a lab-based test that records brain activity. But smartwatches estimate sleep using movement and heart rate.

This means they can detect when you’re asleep or awake reasonably well. But they are much less accurate at identifying sleep stages.

So even if your watch says you had “poor deep sleep”, this may not be the case.

5. Recovery scores

Most smartwatches track heart rate variability and use this, with your sleep score, to create a “readiness” or “recovery” score.

Heart rate variability reflects how your body responds to stress. In the lab it is measured using an electrocardiogram. But smartwatches estimate it using wrist-based sensors, which are much more prone to measurement errors.

This means most recovery metrics are based on two inaccurate measures (heart rate variability and sleep quality). This results in a metric that may not meaningfully reflect your recovery.

As a result, if your watch says you’re not recovered, you might skip training — even if you feel good (and are actually good to go).

6. VO₂max

Most devices estimate your VO₂max — which indicates your maximal fitness. It’s the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise.

The best way to measure VO₂max involves wearing a mask to analyse the amount of oxygen you breathe in and out, to determine how much oxygen you’re using to create energy.

But your watch cannot measure oxygen use. It estimates it based on your heart rate and movement.

But smartwatches tend to overestimate VO₂max in less active people and underestimate VO₂max in fitter ones.

This means the number on your watch may not reflect your true fitness.

What should you do?

While the data from your smartwatch is prone to errors, that doesn’t mean it is completely worthless.

These devices still offer a way to help you track general trends over time, but you should not pay attention to daily fluctuations or specific numbers.

It’s also important you pay attention to how you feel, how you perform and how you recover. This is likely to give you even more insight than what your smartwatch says.

Hunter Bennett is a lecturer in exercise science at Adelaide University. This piece first appeared on The Conversation.