Fitness Reads: Muscle tone after 50? Battle the 'engineer spread'?

What did the SNEWS team read this week that other industry insiders might find interesting? Read on to find out!

• We recently came across this post on BWW Fitness World about a new website called Gyms for Sale. The site was launched by Jim Thomas’ Fitness Management and Consulting to help connect folks buying or selling gym or fitness businesses. Thomas said the website is a great place for anybody looking to get into the vertical market.

• When it comes to business dinners and dining with royalty, we’re all about etiquette, but when rules start to infiltrate our indoor and outdoor workouts we have to draw the line. Apparently it’s called “Sweatiquette.” The rules, outlined in this story, include things like not talking on cell phones (if you’re really working out, you shouldn’t really have the energy to talk on a cell phone), to laying off perfume and scents (who does this?). We like the rules, but suggest they be renamed “common sense.”

• Nobody wants to go into cardiac arrest, but according to this U.S. News story the best place to do so would be in a fitness center. This story reports that those who suffer cardiac arrest in a gym are more likely to survive than people who go into cardiac arrest in places like malls. The reason is that staff at the gym might be better prepared to perform CPR.

• This is not good news for your menopausal clients: Exercise is no help when it comes to hot flashes. This story reports that getting regular exercise doesn’t appear to help ease the number or severity of hot flashes among women going through menopause. This shouldn’t, however, keep women from exercising because exercise leads to better sleep and more pleasant moods.

• We’ve been in a fitness app phase lately. We have been longtime users of RunKeeper but recently found we could sync it to other apps like GymPact and MyFitnessPal. The former is an app where you enter your credit card information, set your fitness goals (for example, work out at least 30 minutes, 7 days a week) and either make money if you make your weekly goals, or lose money for every workout you miss. So in hunting for more apps to take up our phone’s memory we came across this post, outlining some other fun ones we’re about to download, including Simply Yoga and BodyFate.

• Our sister once told us it was called the “engineer spread” — the dreaded widening of our butts from sitting down all day. But rest assured, there is hope. This story outlines seven exercises we could do at our desk — and many of them include some equipment we could buy from you retailers.

• Yoga is getting so popular even the little ones are getting into it. Check out this Washington Post story about kid-friendly yoga and how to ease them into it. This article gives tips on how to improve kids’ strength and cardio to make yoga easier for them.

• Is there fitness after 50? Of course! What about muscle tone after 50? That could get a little trickier. This News-Press story said that we don’t develop new muscles as we age, but we can strengthen the ones we have. The older you are, there are certain steps to take to make sure muscles reap the benefits of strength training.

• The fitness industry could help reduce health care costs. This VentureBeat story discusses how fitness gadgets and tracking progress could help reduce health care costs by motivating people to get more active, which subsequently keeps them out of the doctor’s office.

Did you read anything interesting this week? Email it to us because you know we want to read it too!