Why is music coming from the dome? Is there a party out there? Tennis and music haven’t mixed much in the past, but they do now.

Cardio Tennis is off to a big start at Midtown. I took a class and quickly realized that yes, this was indeed serious exercise.

This new, fun, group activity is set to music guaranteed to get your heart pumping, and is comprised of high-energy drills to give players of all abilities a great workout. The purpose of Cardio Tennis is to train in your zone, burn calories, and improve your tennis game. Created in 1995, there are 2,000 Cardio Tennis-Authorized Providers throughout America. Players can even enjoy Cardio Tennis in 30 different countries.

Running, jumping, hitting, and other heart-pumping activities help to create a workout that’s more fun than a traditional treadmill run or weight-lifting session.

Here’s how a session works:

• Warm Up – The tennis warm-up consists of dynamic movements, tossing and catching skills, and light hitting.
• Cardio Workout – This is about 30% drills (working on strokes) and 70% games. Cardio Tennis is not about making you a great player. It’s about a great calorie-busting workout.
• Cool Down – The cool down portion of the session lowers the heart rate while incorporating tennis-specific activities and games, which also help cool down muscles.

My Cardio Tennis experience has been amazing. No matter your level, you can work on your game and still feel like you’ve had a significant amount of exercise.  Of the 90 minutes I was on court, I ran, jumped, skipped, and hit for about 80 minutes. The best part was that I completely forgot I was working out. Cardio Tennis was so much fun, I was able to ignore that my legs were starting to feel like Jell-O.

Check out our Cardio Tennis schedule and find a session that works for you. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Have you tried Cardio Tennis? What did you think?

Have you found it difficult to balance a healthy diet with increased exercise or training?

Midtown Chicago’s Registered Dietitian, Jenny Maloney, is back to tell you how.

Spring is training season for many members. If you have a marathon, triathlon, 5K, or other athletic competition on the calendar, you’re likely exercising more and getting hungrier as well.

There is a fine line between fueling for your exercise or sport and overeating, which can result in weight gain despite an increased caloric burn.

The tendency after a hard workout is to eat twice as much as you normally would, and this can get you into trouble, so ensure that you are eating an overall healthy and balanced diet.  Are you consuming enough fruits and vegetables? Are you choosing whole grain versions of foods and lean protein?

Once you are eating a variety of healthy foods, then you can start to think about fueling for exercise.  Instead of eating two desserts after a hard workout, add an extra serving of fruit, vegetables, or protein, or add an extra healthy snack. For example, if your dinner is a chicken stir fry, add another ½ cup of brown rice and an extra ounce of chicken. If you are still hungry after dinner, you can always have a snack.

Make sure to eat before and after exercise so you are not starving when you are done. During the off-season or taper periods, cut down your portions but continue to eat healthfully. When you are in training or exercising more, you can eat more but make sure the food is still healthy.

What race(s) are you training for this spring?

Courtesy of eatright.org.

March is National Nutrition Month, and this year, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is urging Americans to “Get Your Plate In Shape.” With the help of the “My Plate” model, which replaced the Food Pyramid in June 2011, the experts are giving us a reminder of the healthy nutrition goals we have heard before:

• Make half your plate fruits and vegetables
• Make at least half of your grains whole grains
• Switch to fat-free or low-fat dairy
• Vary your protein choices
• Cut back on sodium and empty calories from solid fats and added sugars
• Eat less
• Exercise more

I have never been a proponent of New Year’s Resolutions. They never seem to work, and I always end up feeling guilty when March comes around and I can’t even remember what my resolution was.

So this year I switched it up a little bit. I set a goal for myself, which is small in scope compared to member Keith Clemons’ Marathon-a-Month goal  from last year, but it’s a significant one for me.

I am running my first half-marathon.

Even though I played soccer my whole life, I have never been a distance runner. Actually, up until recently, the thought of running has made me gag. I decided to look up some running apps online, because I heard that they can really help you and motivate you to get going. The three most popular are:

1. Runmeter GPS- Runmeter GPS is said to have the most usable features. Workouts are rated by how well you do in comparison to previous runs (that way you can really keep track of your progress). You can customize voice alerts so you only hear the information you want, and it links with Twitter and Facebook!
2. RunKeeper Pro– This app was for sure the most talked about on the different websites, but it is also the most expensive. The app seems user-friendly and all of your info is available in an easy-to-read form. The app includes several customizable running workouts, and it can also shuffle songs from your iPod playlist (a MUST)!
3. Nike+- This app seems to be very popular since it is so easy and accurate. It includes a calibration option so you can tweak your runs if the GPS signal happens to go out. Nike+ GPS is easy to see during a run and you can control your music from the display, plus it links to Facebook and Twitter.

I settled on the Nike+ iPod Sports Kit. I already love the Nike and Apple brands, so it seemed like the one for me. It consists of a small transmitter device embedded in my shoe, which communicates with my iPod Nano. The computer tells me how far I have gone and how much further I have to run. I love when the voice says, “Congratulations! You have completed your run!” 

So far, so good. I have been training for about 6 weeks and feeling really good about it. I do owe a lot to the Nike+. It keeps me going and I feel more accountable for each of my runs.

I am running the Publix Georgia Half-Marathon on Marc h 18^th.

Are you running it too?

The stress of the holiday season is over, and now is the perfect time to relax and unwind.

One of our club’s hidden gems is our spa, where you can improve circulation, ease muscle tension, reduce the chance of injury, and experience a faster post-workout recovery.

The Spa at Midtown offers seven different massage experiences. Massage has myriad health and fitness performance benefits.

If you’re trying massage for the first time, our relaxing Swedish Massage will reduce muscle tension and stress. Need something a little stronger? A Deep Tissue Massage promotes improved circulation, faster post-workout recovery, increased flexibility, and deep relaxation.

Has tennis put a strain on your body? Treat yourself to a Sports Massage, ideal for athletes of all levels and sports. And if you have a baby on the way, pamper yourself before the bundle of joy arrives with a Prenatal Massage.

A Reflexology session is an ideal way to ease the pain of achy, tired feet at the end of a long day.  And a Hot Stone Massage promotes deep tissue and muscle relaxation, releases toxins, and relieves pain. 

And with Valentine’s Day coming up, look no further than our Couple’s Massage as a great way to relax and bond with your significant other. 

Are facials more your thing?

Forget the cucumber slices. The Spa at Midtown offers four outstanding facials.

The Signature Facial is designed to target your individual needs while restoring vitality to the skin. By utilizing exfoliation, detoxification and nourishment, you will see immediate results.

The Purifying Facial is ideal for treating oily, acne-prone skin.

 The Mini Facial is the perfect introduction to facials if you’ve not yet had one. 

The Marine Peel will brighten, smooth, and firm your skin with a gentle blend of Glycolic Acid, Lactic Acid, and Marine minerals to stimulate the skin’s natural renewal process.

We also offer full-body treatments, so you can pamper yourself from head to toe.

Does sitting at your desk all day tense up your muscles? Try our Stress-Reliever Body Treatment.  Are you looking for irresistibly soft skin? Pamper yourself with our Body Exfoliation Treatment. Have you ever considered a body wrap? Try our Aromatherapy Massage and Body Wrap, perfect to detoxify the body and shed excess water weight. It’s your body-treat it right!

We also offer waxing services, including brow arch and tweezing, lip, chin, leg, bikini, and underarm waxing. Leave the gym ready to hit the town!

What’s your favorite Spa at Midtown service?

Every January 1^st brings a new set of responsibilities, a new set of goals, and a new beginning. We spend most of the 30^th and 31^st figuring out our New Year’s Resolution and how to reach it.

Rather than talking about goals that we have set in the past, inches we want to shed, or pounds we want to lose, let’s talk about the Top Three Hot Trends that are going to turn your 2012 workouts into a blast!

1. Small Group Workouts

Many people need the guidance of a personal trainer, but also want the motivation of a group atmosphere. Working out in small groups of 3 to 5 people not only creates a team feeling, but is also an economical solution for a lot of people. With group Personal Training and group Pilates classes, Midtown can get you plugged into a group right away!

2. Zumba

Even though Zumba’s been around since 2001, it’s currently sweeping the nation and becoming a fitness craze! More than 12 million people of all shapes, sizes, and ages are taking weekly Zumba classes in over 110,000 locations across more than 125 countries.

People want to have fun and enjoy their workouts and have the freedom to move. It is an effective, easy-to-learn, calorie-burning dance fitness-party that’s helping millions get in shape. Midtown has a number of Zumba classes throughout the week! Check our Group Ex Schedule for times.

3. Express Workouts

Life is busy. Carpool, conference calls, soccer practice, doctors appointments, and a million other things get in the way of manypeople’s workouts every day.  Most want their workouts to be quick, effective, and fit into their busy schedules. Many of our personal training, pilates, and tennis sessions can provide 30-minute, express-style options that not only help you achieve your health and wellness goals, but are also great for the beginner exerciser.

Why not kick off the New Year with some fun, exciting, and motivating fitness?

Get a group together, dance your socks off, or even head to the club when you only have 30 minutes to spare.

You will have the New Year’s New You before you know it!

How are you changing up your routine in 2012?

ViPR stands for Vitality, Performance, and Reconditioning.

It’s an exercise craze that’s sweeping the nation, and the #1 question people are asking:

“Why am I working out with a pipe?”

ViPR was created to encourage purposeful motion. It blends strength training with functional training and movement. This new and improved training tool is actually made of rubber and comes in 7 different weights.

It is meant to be carried, tilted, dragged, thrown, flipped, stepped on, rolled and more. You can do just about anything with this tool! Every ViPR exercise uses “whole body integration,” which basically means that the muscular system is interdependent and works best when trained together.

All ViPR exercises use rhythmical strength-to-shorten movements that work your muscles effectively. Gravity provides resistance, and helps to ensure proper motion. ViPR bridges the gap between movement and strength training, and because it’s so unique, it’s also inspiring people to work out!

Catherine Luciano, Midtown’s Fitness Director, is a ViPR enthusiast and uses the innovative training when working with her clients. We sat down with Cat and asked her about the benefits of ViPR:

Who benefits from ViPR Training?

- Absolutely EVERYONE can benefit from ViPR training, from a post-rehab client to an athlete of any age.  Benefits include increased flexibility, strength, muscle size (depending on weight of the ViPR), as well as fat loss.  Add those together and the overall benefit is to perform better, whether it be in a sport or just daily activities.

Is ViPR Training helpful in injury rehabilitation? How so?

I am a Medical Exercise Specialist and use this functional tool to teach the body how it is supposed to work. ViPR helps encourage all muscles to work together and fire in the proper sequence, which is exactly what’s needed in the case of an injury.  By teaching the body these movement patterns, you thereby reduce the chance of further injury. 

Why use ViPR Training instead of free weights?

Strictly for its versatility. The ViPR is another resistance tool of a different design allowing movement patterns that cannot always be done with free weights. And, it’s just plain FUN!

How is ViPR Training helpful in sports training?

I am also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.  The movements I teach with the ViPR have direct correlation to all sports.  Most movements are done from a standing, athletic base where we teach the body to maximize a muscle’s range (i.e. flexibility), and to work in all planes of motion (i.e. all angles and directions). But we also want to build strength throughout those ranges thereby reducing chance of injury and maximizing performance potential.

Have you tried a ViPR workout yet? What did you think?

If a personal trainer said the following to you, “After 10 Pilates sessions, you will feel the difference. In 20 sessions, you will see the difference. And in 30 sessions, you’ll be on your way to having a whole new body,” what would you say?

Now, as a trainer and Pilates instructor, I’m a little biased. That said, Pilates is awesome and life-changing. It might be relatively unknown in some parts of the country, but we are trying to change that.

Want to know more about Pilates and its creator, Joseph Pilates? Read on!

Joseph Pilates was a gymnast, diver, and bodybuilder. When he moved to England in 1912, he earned a living as a professional boxer, circus-performer, and self-defense trainer at police schools and Scotland Yard. It was in England that he developed an integrated, comprehensive system of exercise where the mind controlled the muscles.  He called it “Contrology.”

When he moved to NYC, he trained clients on his system of exercise, with a focus on core postural muscles that help keep the human body balanced and provide support for the spine, throughout the 1960s.

Joseph Pilates developed a series of exercises on a variety of equipment to work towards a more pain-free and balanced body. In particular, Pilates exercises teach awareness of breath and of alignment of the spine, and strengthen the deep torso and abdominal muscles.

The most common pieces of Pilates equipment used today are the Reformer, the Wunda Chair and the Pilates Cadillac.

The Reformer is the most well known of the Pilates machines. It has a sliding carriage and uses spring tension and straps for your hands and feet. This is my favorite Pilates exercise machine to work on! It is also what Joseph Pilates hoped that every home in America would have in their living room (would you have this in your living room?).

The Wunda Chair also utilizes spring tension and the exercises can be challenging: lying on your back and stomach, seated, standing, and kneeling positions that are both demanding and energetic movements.

The Cadillac was named by Joseph Pilates at the time when its namesake automobile was the most prestigious car in the U.S. The Cadillac was used for individually selected rehabilitation exercises. It is still used that way today, as well as for facilitating more movement and flow into the exercises.

There are four major purposes of Pilates:

1. Strength (We all need that!)

2. Stretch (Most of us need this too!)

3. Stability (Balance is important)

4. Stamina (It’s a cardio workout too)

On top of all of that, it exercises your body and your mind, which is a really good thing.

Why do you love Pilates?

Thanksgiving is a day for family, friends, giving thanks, and, of course, food.

The average American will consume anywhere between 3,500-4,500 calories (or more) on Thanksgiving.

This figure is higher than the average 1,800-2,400 daily caloric intake recommendation for women and 2,000-3,000 daily caloric intake recommendation for men. Our plates will be full of starchy goodness and oversized portions. 

And who can blame us? Turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing, and buttered rolls are delicious, and…it is a holiday after all.

But after reading this, you are probably dreading your expanding waist line as much as you are sitting down to a meal with the in-laws. Fear not, we have the perfect solution for you.

On Thanksgiving Day, the club is open from 8am-4pm. We’re offering you two exciting exercise events, guaranteed to alleviate the Turkey Day guilt.

Turkey Day Tennis Drills

Start your Thanksgiving off with some cardio while you improve your game. We are offering two sessions: 9-10:30am and 10:30am-12pm. All levels are welcome to attend. This is the perfect event to get your appetite up and burn off those calories before the Thanksgiving feast.  The event costs $27 per drill and will include snacks and refreshments. Mimosas will also be available for purchase. RSVP is required. Contact Andrew Sirota to reserve your spot.

Annual Turkey Burner

From 9-11am, this intense cardio and strength training program will burn those calories leaving you guilt-free and ready to have that second piece of pumpkin pie. Sonny and Latretha are leading, so ready to sweat! Contact Latretha Howard to reserve your spot.

Come get in your perfect workout while the turkey is in the oven. We hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and we look forward to seeing you at our Turkey Day events!

How are you staying fit this holiday weekend?

The popular saying, “Good things come in small packages,”  describes Midtown Personal Trainer Megan Meurer perfectly.

She recently took some time out of her busy personal training, thesis-writing, and puppy-training schedule to answer some member questions.

What made you want to get into fitness?

Megan: I’ve always been in it. I grew up exercising outdoors with my parents, sisters, and friends. I didn’t actually work out in a gym until high school and even then I preferred being outside. It’s a passion for me and I love it!

Do diets such as South Beach, No Carb, Raw, and others really work?

Megan: The key to a great diet is everything in moderation, except fruits and veggies (eat lots of those). I find the better I eat, the better I feel and the more I want to work out, and also the less I want to eat unhealthy things. Life is too short to deprive yourself, but having enough self control to not let the sweets/salts/or whatever your weakness is, get out of hand, is hugely important.

As far as the whole No Carbs diet – which is the most popular-well, there are carbs in everything so not eating them would mean not eating. Its the type of carb that’s important.

You want to eat the carbs that will make you feel fuller longer; for example, whole grains, pasta, granola, and brown rice will satisfy you longer than white bread, candy, and chips. Without going into the science of it, the more unprocessed the food the better it is for you. Also, your brain is fueled by carbs, severely restricting them can can cause headaches and irritability.

Whats the best cardio workout and how long is good enough?

Megan: This totally depends on the person. Keep in mind that what’s appropriate for a college-aged athlete is not going to work for an elderly person with a hip replacement. You have to be honest with yourself and listen to your body.

People generally know when they aren’t doing something correctly, whether it be diet or an exercise program, but some are in denial. The best cardio is something you enjoy doing. It’s much easier getting motivated to do and to continue doing it when you actually like it.

How long also depends, but listen to your body; you want to feel good when you’re done. To burn maximum calories, get on machines that are more vertical; so at the club: the stair climber, the rock wall, and the treadmill on an incline.

For more on the best cardio workouts, check out this post.

Why are my clothes fitting better, but I’m not losing weight?

Megan: You are undergoing a body composition transformation. As you begin to exercise, you tend to build muscle in addition to losing fat. Because muscle is more dense than fat it takes up less space in the body. Therefore, you can weigh the same but be taking up less space.

What are the best ab exercises?

Megan: Pilates!

Tell me your dream workout.

Megan: Take some of the World’s Strongest Man Competition trials and downsize them significantly. Flipping tires, wading through water, carrying a large weight while walking, throwing things, etc. These are obviously exercises and equipment not found in a traditional gym.

Do you have a question for Megan or one of our other trainers? Post your question as a comment to this post, or email it to me at allison.ford@midtown.com. If you email the question, I will ask it anonymously on your behalf, and post the question and answer (but not your name) on the next “Ask the Trainer” post. You do not need to be a member to ask a question.