Fitness Reads: Stability balls for squirmy kids? What is your fitness age?

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

• Functional fitness isn’t just taking the civilian world by storm, it’s also big with the military. Check out this story about how Fort Hood recently transformed its traditional gyms to functional fitness center. Though the exercises are similar to CrossFit, Fort Hood officials say the new centers help soldiers work all three planes of the body.

• Do you know your fitness age? Maybe you’re only 27 but your fitness age is that of a 40-year-old couch potato. How can you tell? Check out this New York Times story.

• If a marathon is on your customers’ bucket lists, they’ll find plenty of articles out there to sway them. We’ve seen a number of lists come out on the subject — including this post with 26 reasons to run a marathon. If you’ve decided not to run one and want some reassurance, here’s a top 26 reasons not to run a marathon list.

• This story gives new power to positive thought. Turns out if you’re hating a particular workout, you can keep telling yourself the workout is going great and it doesn’t hurt — and your body will make that statement true. We’re going to apply this to our regular leg workouts, which we hate. Oh, and to Mondays. We can all use this tactic on Mondays.

• We all know exercise does the body good, but many of your new customers are coming in because they want one thing: to look good. Perhaps they’re overweight and want to get thin. This article has tips on the best way to do that: cardio, strength, healthy eating and lots of sleep. It’s up to you, retailers, to sell them the equipment they need to do those things.

• Loss of muscle tone is one of the downfalls of aging but according to this story if we engage in regular exercise, it can slow this process down a bit. The fitter you are now, the fewer problems you’ll have with muscle atrophy, falls and injuries when you’re elderly.

• Some fitness routines can have would-be fit people running for the hills, never to return to the gym again. So before they start off on the wrong foot, they should read this article and ask themselves its six questions to start on the fitness journey that is right for them.

• Say what you will about the flaws in the healthcare system, there is one thing that is certain: Exercise can help reduce health care costs. This CNN article dives into the complex issue and discusses how the human bodies evolved to be able to do physical tasks. According to the story, our ancestors would run or walk at least five miles a day doing their tasks, in addition to digging and climbing.

• For the first time we have a gym buddy. We used to consider ourselves solitary exercise creatures, but going to the gym with somebody not only gives us someone to chat with, it also helps push us harder and longer than we would have gone without a buddy. This story confirms that what we’re experiencing isn’t an isolated incident.

• Retailers, you might be getting new customers purchasing exercise balls: teachers or school districts. This Orlando Sentinel story reports that one Florida teacher uses stability balls instead of desk chairs to calm the squirming of her 6- and 7-year-old students. We think that’s pretty cool.

Did you read anything awesome this week? Email it to us because we want to read it, too.