Thanksgiving is upon us, and just thinking about it makes many of us gain weight. Are you trying to figure out how to lose weight this holiday season?

Determination, motivation and a healthy fun environment is how you do it. If you are having fun and enjoying yourself, losing weight is no problem right. Well, join us at Answer is Fitness. Not sure you can or want to make the commitment? Don’t worry about it; sign up for a free 30 day pass.
 
Offering Group Exercise Classes including Group Kick, Group Power, Group Step, Cycling and more , as well as a Cinedrome Movie Theater with 90 Cardio Machines, a Sauna and Steam Room, 200+ Circuit Training Machines, and yoga and pilates.

Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for help losing weight this holiday season.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we need to raise our heat rate for an extended period of time in order to lose weight. Therefore, many would say we cannot lose weight through yoga. But we beg to differ.

Of course there are many benefits to incorporating yoga into your daily life. Once you have established a regular routine of yoga, you begin to feel better about yourself and your body becomes stronger and more flexible. Does yoga help you lose weight? We say yes.

There are many benefits to doing yoga regularly. Yoga allows you feel better about your body as you become stronger and more flexible, as you tone your muscles, reduce stress, and improve your well-being. But does it help you lose weight?

Power and Vinyasa yoga classes can get your heart pumping, which causes a greater calorie burn than slower yoga classes. But, your perceptions change, you take better care of your body with regular yoga as part of your life.

Through Yoga you achieve mind/body awareness. As a result you treat your body differently, take better care of it and are more careful about the foods you eat; as a result, having a daily yoga practice results in weight loss. Contact Answer is Fitness in your area for information on yoga and weight loss.

During the course of an average mile run, your foot will strike the ground 1,000 times. The force of impact on each foot is about three to four times your weight. So of course runners complain of bad backs and knees, tight hamstrings, and sore feet.

This pain is not from running alone, but from the imbalances caused by running. If you bring your body into balance through the practice of yoga, you can run long and hard for years to come. Yoga and running lie on opposite ends of the exercise spectrum, but they are not mutually exclusive. They actually make a good marriage of strength and flexibility.

Striking a Balance
Those who only run are most likely structurally balanced people who can handle the physical stresses of the workout with minimal discomfort. Yet, many runners don't survive the imbalances that running introduces. Often, they suffer from chronic pain and are sidelined by injury.

A typical runner experiences too much pounding, tightening, and shortening of the muscles and not enough restorative, elongating, and loosening work. Without opposing movements, the body will compensate to avoid injury by working around the instability. Compensation puts stress on muscles, joints, and the entire skeletal system.

If you're off balance, every step you take forces the muscles to work harder in compensation. Tight muscles get tighter and weak muscles get weaker. A tight muscle is brittle, hard, and inflexible. Because muscles act as the body's natural shock absorbers, ideally they should be soft, malleable, and supple, with some give. Brittle muscles, on the other hand, cause the joints to rub and grind, making them vulnerable to tears.

Sport specific training causes muscle rigidity. This causes a structurally out of shape and excessively tight body.

The internal focus of Yoga centers your attention on your own body's movements rather than on an external outcome. Runners can use yoga to balance strength, increase range of motion, and train the body and mind. Yoga poses move your body through gravitational dimensions while teaching you how to coordinate your breath with each movement. The result is that your body, mind, and breath are integrated in all actions. Through consistent and systematic yoga practice, you can engage, strengthen, and place demands on all of your intrinsic muscle groups, which support and stabilize the skeletal system. This can offset the effects of the runner's one-dimensional workouts.

Original article-Yoga Journal

There are a lot of reasons to tell yourself why you shouldn’t join a gym. But with the Answer is Fitness 6th Anniversary Special, you can cross the cost of a membership off of your list.

So let’s go through some other reasons:

You don’t have the energy to exercise. Well if you exercise you will have the energy. Exercising actually increases your energy level; sitting around doing nothing is exhausting.

You don’t have the time. Well, if you are exercising at home, even sporadically, you can find the time. But, more importantly, you need to find the time. You should make exercise part of your lifestyle so it becomes a habit. You should exercise like your life depends on it, it does!

You can exercise at home. In a gym, using cardio equipment, you can keep a track of your progress easily by seeing how long /what pace / what level you can sustain on different machines. It really gives you such a good feeling to see that you’ve made strides in the right direction.

You just don’t have the motivation. In a gym, when you are greeted by name and welcomed it feels good. There are other like-minded people there who are able to help motivate you. A gym becomes a community where you meet people you would not have otherwise met. Once you start going to exercise classes, you’ll get to know and become friends with others in the class.
 
Additionally, you may discover exercises that your really enjoy which you may have never discovered before. Finding a type of group exercise, like yoga or cycling, that you really enjoy, it is easy to get motivated.

Answer is Fitness has an extensive group exercise schedule, personal trainers to help you with a personalized training program specifically for you, and cardio equipment and weights.

Contact Answer is Fitness for more information on how we can help you help yourself become healthier, more physically fit, and lose weight. Together, we can help you meet your personal fitness goals.

Are feeling less than energetic? Exercising actually creates more energy for you to use. Physically active people feel more energetic overall than sedentary people.  In a study of 40,000 women, the more weekly physical activity they did, the more they reported feeling revved up. It has been shown that exercise stimulates neurotransmitters, like dopamine, and this creates the feeling of having more energy. You should aim for 20 to 40 minutes of cardio four or five times a week.

But, keep in mind, not all workouts need to be fast moving, hearth pumping sessions. Yoga is also restorative. A study at the University of New Mexico found that people who followed an eight-week yoga and meditation program had a significant increase in daily energy. And women who regularly practiced Hatha yoga had 41 percent less of a compound related to stress, in their blood than those who did not. In yoga, for every a single pose you bring freshly oxygenated blood to your organs because of the type of deep breathing that's incorporated into the practice.

On Sunday, April 3rd, Answer is Fitness in North Attleboro will be hosting a Vinyasa Yoga class in honor of the people of Japan. This class is open to the public for a donation of $15. All proceeds will be donated to the Tzu chi Foundation. Please join us from 11:15am to 12:45pm.

The Tzu chi Foundation provides compassion and relief to Northeast Japan. The Tzu Chi relief team continues to deliver relief goods to 7,000 people in northeast Japan who are living in shelters after their communities were devastated by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Currently, people from 38 countries have joined Tzu Chi’s global fundraising campaign to help the disaster survivors who suffered from the Japan earthquake/Pacific tsunami. Answer is Fitness would like you to join us in the fundraising efforts.

Come join Fabienne for a Vinyasa yoga class in honor of the people of Japan on Sunday, April 3rd, 11:15-12:45.
 

Many of us want to work out and stay in shape, but we don’t have the time to do as many exercise classes as we would like. Answer is Fitness has a solution. For all of you who like yoga, to keep your mind in shape, but want the toning and aerobic classes to keep your body in shape, we have designed a class for you. Yoga Glute Camp.

Yoga Glute Camp targets the glutes and the quadriceps, as well as the hamstrings. This exercise class is truly a great lower body work-out.  The combination of traditional yoga postures, coupled with a variety of repetitions in a flowing vinyasa style, adds a great aerobic quality to the workout.  This class is suitable for anyone who wants to tone and firm the lower body while enjoying vinyasa style yoga poses and flow.  Many of the participants of Yoga Glute Camp are learning just how many yoga postures actually target the glutes making a firm "yoga butt'!!
 
Join us on Fridays from 6:30-7:45 in North Attleboro. This is a unique class combining elements of yoga with exercises and repetition to firm up your lower body. Get your mind and body in shape with an exercise class that is truly for the body and mind: Yoga Glute Camp.

Yoga for runners can be a wonderful option to improve running performance.

Yoga for runners improves balance, flexibility, coordination, concentration and endurance at the same time removing physical and mental stresses. Runners can immensely benefit from yoga practice since running associated with yoga make a good marriage of strength and flexibility.

Come to this class on Thursday 17 March at 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Answer is Fitness to learn some poses that will help you to run better.

$15.00 for members and $20.00 for non-members. Handout will be given.

Fore more information, call 888-270-3640 or email us at info@answerisfitness.com. You can Sign Up at the Front Desk.

Viniyoga is using repetition for both muscular and neuromuscular benefit. In order to change the condition of a muscle it is not enough to stretch it but you need to alternate between stretching and contracting using the process of PNF (proprieceptive neuromuscular facility). This process brings more blood circulation to the muscle so the muscle get more relax, and yet stronger. The neuromuscular benefit of repetition is that it helps you re-establish new beneficial movement patterns.

Viniyoga is a safe and effective treatment for back and hips pain, and will help you to reduce the amount of pain and inflammation.

Yoga is a concept of self understanding and self development that oriented toward reducing the symptoms and causes of suffering at any level that it is happenings whether it is structured pain, chronic illness or emotional disturbances. It is oriented toward positive qualities in one self and increasing one’s confidence for the well being.

Contact Fabienne to reserve a spot on Saturday January 22, 2011 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm at
fabienneyoga@hotmail.com

$15 for AIF members - $20 for non-members