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This cordless Secateur from Bosch – the Ciso – is one of new range of body energy saving devices that raise some interesting questions about how much more sedentary our lives can become.

In Australia we’re experiencing an increase in the average house footprint with a corresponding decrease in the size of the average suburban block.

But even with shrinking gardens and smaller lawns, we’re also seeing a corresponding increase in the number of energy-saving devices that reduce our level of  physical exertion.

Everything has become powered these days. We now use hedge trimmers and leaf blowers where once we just got out the broom or large secateurs. And it’s taking a toll on our physical health.

While cordless secateurs are a great invention for those suffering from an impairment or injury that restricts their full range of motion, there are concerns whether there is really enough demand to produce such a product.

There’s an old saying – use it or lose it .  Over a lifetime, being sedentary leads to the possibility of insufficient grip strength to perform even simple tasks. Muscles atrophy and waste away through inactivity.

A common test to determine someone’s biological age is the “Grip strength” test.  Using a pair of secateurs is one practical example where a deterioration in grip strength affects a simple task such as pruning a rose bush.

And with concerns about the implications of global warming and conspicuous consumption, a great way to reduce the impact on the planet of landfill and the associated disposal of toxic chemicals from batteries – and keep our grip strength into old age -  is to use our plain old, battery-free secateurs.

Written by Andrew Talati

Well Melbourne’s crazy weather patterns continue with more balmy winter temperatures this morning. While there are conspiracy theories about the US and other countries projecting testing high frequency radio waves into the atmosphere, I like to think it’s more a result of good old global warming.

The benefits are great training conditions if your doing any outdoor fitness programs early in the morning, for our boot camps it’s make for great training conditions. Everyone was sweating profusely within 20 minutes as the unexpected warmer temperatures caught everyone off guard.

It’s amazing that yesterday morning we had a chilly 3.5º at 6am and exactly 24 hours later it’s 14º.
The usual layers of clothing that is required for the average 6 – 8º mornings being made redundant by these summer temperatures.

BUT within 3 hours of finishing, a massive storm traveled across Melbourne with high squally winds and heavy rain, then the sun re-appears.
Truly Melbourne is living up to four season in one day.

Well today at 6.00am it was 10º at Boot camp, 24º degrees cooler than last Tuesday morning at 6.00am when we had 34.2º.
So when they talk about Melbourne having 4 seasons in a day, I would like to redub that to “Melbourne four extreme seasons in one month”

For the weekend SNOW has been forecast down to 1600 metres in the Alpine areas of Falls Creek and Mt Hotham. Definitely, very extreme weather conditions!

At least we received some much needed rain and some mosquito and fly eradication with the colder temperatures. Funny though when I arrived at 5.45am and there were dark clouds looming in the distance, I said to myself that we will be fine and it will not rain during the session. Guess what, within 10 minutes of finishing the second session from 7.00-8.00am it bucketed with heavy rain. So maybe a coincidence but I must say that it rarely rains during our sessions.

Also a big congrats to all the Fitmates who braved the earlier heavier showers to attend our morning session. Once again it’s about commitment and overcoming the fears and belief systems that hold you back.

Well it seems to be occurring quite regularly, last night we had the Hottest overnight temperature on record in Melbourne at 32.3 degrees at 5.57am.
So by the time we started Boot camp at 6.00am it was almost at the temperature when we cancel the session.

It seems with climate change, we are experiencing these record breaking weather conditions with greater frequency, it was only in Spring last year that we experienced the warmest overnight temperature on record at 30 degrees at 6.00am

The current highest recorded daily minimum temperature (from midnight to 9.00am) was perviously 30.6 set in February 1902, so at 9.00am today, a teenee wenee bit warmer at 30.8.

So what’s next, 25 degrees overnight in Winter?
Hopefully Victoria will be ok with regards to the threat of catastrophic fires in the country areas with no more record breaking overnight minimum temperatures.

Well this morning at our Melbourne Boot camp it was 30 degrees at 6am, normally having a high overnight temperature would be rare for summer, net alone spring, anything to do with Global warming?

I recieved some interesting statistics from Climate Meteorologist, Dr Harvey Stern, Victoria Climate Services Centre Bureau of Meteorology:
*11.1°C: The average minimum temperature for November since records began
*26.3°C The previously warmest over night temperature in 1902, the average minimum temperature for November 1902 12.1
*28.1°C Warmest overnight temperature today, 19/11/09, the average minimum temperature for November 2009 to date 15.9°C

So not quite a normal cycle as the average minimum to date is significantly higher with the warmest average over night temperature being significantly higher with warmer temperatures expected for the next 2 weeks.

The next 50 years will be interesting as the Global temperature has increased 0.76°C from the mid 1850s through to 2005 which is nearly twice the rate for the past 100 years.

It’s a little difficult to predict the changes of a situation we have never experienced before, I liken it to predicting in the 1980′s when the Motorola “Brick” phone was introduced that we would be surfing the internet on “smart” phones. It is a quantum leap as the internet was not used by the general population and no body predicted that anything other than making phone calls would be introduced in the future.

Climate change will create new systems that currently don’t exist or develope more rapidly than we anticipate as did the mobile phone.

So while having warmer weather during our winters may be great for exercising outdoors, the long term effects of having a high overnight temperature in spring are a little worrying.