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With the development of smart apparel clothing with an inbuilt heart rate monitor, even clothing can’t escape the advances in technology.

Thanks to the advancement of are stretchable silicon, MC10, a company based in Cambridge Massachusetts has developed this silicon device that enables microchips and electrodes to be implanted within the silicon.

Sportswear company Reebok is working with MC10 in development of this new style of apparel, or smart clothing that could be in the marketplace within the next couple of years. The devices can be used in stretchy material such as spandex to monitor a person’s heart rate during exercise and would be less obtrusive than the current heart rate monitor belts you wear around your chest.

Ultimately they could find their way into everyday garments and could prove to be an amazing way to monitor people’s energy expenditure during the day when tethered to a mobile device such as a smart mobile phone.

The great thing about this new type of heart rate monitoring is it’s application into garments that would be much more comfortable compared to the current hard case pressing against the body.

Once the technology is refined the possibilities are infinite with measuring a persons blood pressure, an athletes gait, strains on the joints and even measuring metabolism can be incorporated into the technology.

This could have wider reaching benefits to the general community to monitor people’s general health and well-being

I think this is an absolutely an awesome technology as it would allow people to truly manage their energy expenditure based on precisely what they heart is doing.
Once tethered to a receiving device the user could determine the calories burned in a day based on their age, height, weight and fitness level.

While the pedometers are a great way of setting daily goals of the number of steps one must achieve her day, having a person know exactly how many calories they burn using real-time monitoring allows the user or their medical practitioner to set calorie expenditure goals while keeping their heart rate within safe levels.

It’s interesting to see the rules changing of the AFL (Australian Footy League) that is seeing the game being more endurance based.

Over the last few years we have seen elite athletes in any form of sport perform at incredible heights as technology, coaching and management improves each and every year. For years now we have seen AFL transform from raw ability to a combination of raw ability with unbelievable player management – optimising the influence that player has on the game.

It seems the management of players has a more vital role in the success of the team rather than just simple individual brilliance. This has been observed through the frantic pace that AFL these days is now played at. In the last decade the game has transformed from aerobic training and adaption to almost sole anaerobic adaption, meaning short, hard intervals, rest, and repeat the process. Now it seems as though the emphasis has reverted back to the ‘old school – aerobic’ method in combination with the ‘new school – anaerobic’

However at the commencement of the 2011 season we have already seen the physical strain that the new rule change has placed on our elite athletes. The effects of prolonged and sustained physical efforts has come as quite a surprise to some, as the adaption to remodeling the physiological construct of the human body has taken more time than perceived.

For years elite AFL players have fined tuned they aerobic and anaerobic fitness based on the style of the game, now that the style of game has been altered through rule changes, that extra couple of minutes of game time has affected what they have been so accustomed too.

To understand the physiological changes and demands on the body through the change would require significant research and testing, but through generalized analysis we can come to the conclusion or at least hypothesis that there is a threshold in physical performance or at least a significant adaption process where changing a finely tuned individual takes time.

Very funny fitness quote in relation to inactivity and the difficulties faced with performing everyday tasks.

A new fitmate, Clair C, who at the sprightly age of 24, found it difficult to carry the groceries home due to her lack of strength in her shoulders. While it may seem comical that she said I’II have to “lift more weights or starve” as she would be limited in the amount of food that she could carry, there is a more serious side to muscle atrophy (muscle loss).

While there is a saying “use it or lose it“, there have been numerous studies that support endurance resistance training earlier on in life determines how your body will hold up later in life.

The Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University that found that a the long-term benefits of regular endurance exercise found they had increased muscle stem cells which in turn help maintains muscles.

Prof. Dafna Benayahu found that the density of stem cells per muscle fibres increased sinificantly for a group of rats that were placed on a tread mill for 20 minutes per day.

Towards the end of the experiment, the older rats had a massive 33% to 47% increase in stem cell density in their muscle fibres versus the younger rats of 20% to 35%. increase.

This was the first time that research supported by people who exercise regularly throughout their life aged more gracefully versus those who lead a sedentary lifestyle.

If you’re looking at getting some incidental exercise into your day, way not start with some car park exercise.

Rather than getting stressed and agitated trying to park as close as possible to the front door of the shopping centre, try parking as far away as possible.
The big plus is the extra 200-300 meters of walking you can get. Throw in some weighted shopping bags and you have some extra calorie burning without having to do any specific exercise.

The other plus to parking way down the back, is that you’ll have more room and there’ll be less likelihood of other people parking next to you and slamming their door into your car, so your car will be happier for it.

But, if you are parking among other cars, try deliberately forgetting where you parked the car. When you return, run down every aisle looking for your car, before you know it you will have covered 1-3km

Very funny quote from Katina K about about the exercises being performed, “Rookie mistake” Don’t say you like the exercise, otherwise Andrew will change the exercise quick smart.

The underlining point is when an exercise is perceived as being enjoyable or the person likes that particular exercise in a boot camp environment, it’s probably too easy and the level of exertion is too low. I prefer Katina’s usual gauge regarding the effectiveness of the exercise by whether the f word is expressed repeatedly:))

Ultimately there is always a little bit of discomfort when you are pushing and exerting yourself, of course this is always within your limits.

Unfortunately a lot of people sustain injuries by engaging in a particular exercise when there are signs that things are not quite right, sore knees, hips, joint pain etc that indicate maybe an expert opinion should be sourced rather than the old adage that “No Pain, No gain”.

Alternatively we have to know our limits and not burn ourselves out through excessive exercise either.

But with Katina’s funny comment, all I can say is there will be more burpees:))
P.S I have never heard a Fitmate at Boot camp say that the “like” burpees