Be Fit With Biray

In case you haven’t heard – PodCampAZ is coming to, well… Arizona, of course! Mark your calendars for this 2-day new media UNconference from November 1-2, 2008. This will be my first year as an attendee and a presenter. I’m totally thrilled to be a part of this event. (I imagine it will be like a mini SXSW-interactive).

Speakers gather to discuss topics ranging in film/video, print, TV, mobile, radio, IRL, and advertising. The newest member to the media party is interactive category, which certainly creates more opportunities to feature topics on exergaming and games for health. The session I will be presenting is entitled ‘Exergaming: Health Outside the XBox’ and the description goes as follows:

“Nintendo Wii and games like Dance Dance Revolution have propelled the exergaming phenomenon forward! Exergames are video games requiring players to be physical active during game play. In this session, discover their 25-year history, the scientific research to support game play and various applications in health and fitness.”

Read up on the speakers and topics and find out more about the event here.

Be there to help people answer the hottest new media question… “What’s your source?”

Cheerio, chaps!

Tonight I will be on a plane to spend a week in the UK. I wish I could tell you it’s for a relaxing vacation, but alas, it is a professional excursion. Most of my activities will be business-related.

As many of you may or may not know, the week of September 23 – 25 is dedicated to UK’s largest events: Leisure Industry Week and Sports Development Week (aka. UK’s recreation and fitness industry). More than 10,000 people are said to attend Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre to participate in various conferences, seminars, clinics and workshops.

The conference I’ve been invited to present at is the Major Moves In Physical Activity Promotion Conference, put on by SportEx, which will focus its efforts on the use of technology. To find out more about the session I will be presenting, click here. I will be posting a summary of my session in the days to come.

I will also reconnect with fellow colleague and exergame physiologist Alasdair Thin, who came to visit me back in May of this year. He will be presenting a session after me on exergaming. As well as, Richard Coshott from Gamercize, whom I met at the Exergaming Summit this past August. He will show me how exergames have penetrated the commercial gyms and health facilities.

I look forward to getting a different perspective in the sports and leisure arena. It’ll be interesting to see the UK’s approach fitness and innovation.

In February of 2008 I posted my interview with Krista Leopold, blogger and creator of “Unleash the Power of Group Fitness. I had wanted to showcase her blog because I felt she provided a great example of using blogs to target group fitness instructors (which no one was doing effectively, at the time). Since our interview together, not only have I had the privilege to guest post on her blog, but had the pleasure of developing a professional relationship with a fellow group fitness colleague.

A few weeks ago Krista decided to interview me! I was rather surprised to be asked, actually. I’d never expected to entertain an interview about my own blog (since I was the one doing most of the interviews). But after answering her questions, I realized they challenged me to evaluate my own professional efforts and helped clarify my technological focus to another online audience.

Read the full interview as I share how my journey went from simply exercising to ‘exercising the web’!

One of the reasons why I started this blog over a year ago was to have a place to explore my thoughts on how new media technologies and video games were effecting health and fitness in all aspects (both in those who seek healthier lifestyles and professionals who help guide others to pursue one). And although there’s still plenty more to learn, I’ve discovered many interesting applications along the way that enhance our health and fitness initiatives – especially living in this techno-driven generation.

I went to SXSW-interactive last year and was underwhelmed by the health and fitness-related sessions. Granted, it’s a tech conference, but there were a few health/fitness themes. (For one, they had yoga classes in the mornings!) Anyway, of the few sessions that discussed health and fitness, none were too tech-intensive.

This year I said “NO MORE!”

I joined forces with media and technology executive, David Eckoff, and together we submitted a proposal! Here was a tech-guy (whom I had met on Twitter, btw) who was also interested in fitness! Perfect. After a few gmails back-and-forth, cross-continental skype sessions, and several google doc revisions – we finally came up with the following idea:

Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer

Let’s face it, most of us in the Web 2.0 community lead a non-stop lifestyle, with jobs that keep us plugged in 24/7, online, time-starved and sedentary. And that could be killing us. Literally.

When Internet famous blogger Om Malik suffered a heart attack December 28, it was a wake up call that he needed to change his non-stop unhealthy lifestyle. “Living a healthier life isn’t just one of my New Year’s resolutions,” Malik wrote. “It’s doctor’s orders.” We know we should be taking better care of ourselves. We might even know a few things we could be doing. But how to get started? And how to keep it going with all the demands on our time? In this highly participatory session, discover how Web 2.0 platforms and technologies can help us achieve our health and fitness goals!

There are over 1200 sessions submitted to SXSW interactive this year. And popular vote definitely has some pull. We would love to have the opportunity to showcase innovative ways people are moving towards healthy behaviors by doing simple things online… can you say ‘Twittercise’? (No joke, this exists.)

Please click on the link above.
Create your SXSW account (it takes a few seconds).
Your VOTE is appreciated!

I’ve been playing around a lot on Gyminee, a fitness-related social networking site. (Just think Facebook for fitness with additional features for logging your workouts and meals.) Anyway, they’ve recently launched a new feature called “challenges” where you can challenge your friends (aka “Gym Buddies”) to a task. It can be for anything! ‘First to lose 10 pounds’ or ‘Most miles ran in a week’ or ‘Longest without a beer’… you get the picture. I’ve challenged my Arizona-based Gym Buddies to 5K race in October called “Ghosts and Goblins” (I guess the Halloween theme is appropriate since we’re not all at the same fitness level, so it might scary to see a few of my colleagues cross the finish line. LOL)

Anyway, these ‘challenges’ can be both public (meaning, anyone on Gyminee can participate) or private (you can invite specific participants). Create one for your personal training staff or one for just your clients!

Gyminee also let’s you set up rewards for each challenge. With our 5K challenge, whoever finishes the race first will get the prize: money towards iTunes store. Five bucks goes into the pot when anyone accepts the challenge. As of this post, there are only 4 of us… so the winner will get $15 worth of entertainment spending!

The cool thing about these challenges is each one comes with their own widgets. See below:

This leader board widget showcases the people involved in the challenge. Great for small group challenges when you want to see how everyone is doing.

Or, post this widget instead:

This one showcases your ranking in the challenge without listing others involved. So if you have an ongoing challenge with a lot of people involved, you can let everyone know where you rank above/below other participants!

Every time someone accepts a challenge or updates their progress toward their challenge, these widgets automatically update! Gyminee also offers other widgets that track things like body weight, protein intake, progress reports, etc. So, why not put a widget on your blog or website? This way you can generate excitement both within your Gyminee community, as well as, by cross-pollinating the web!

The application of these widgets are endless, but hopefully they act as another way to keep people motivated in reaching their health and fitness goals (and challenges)!

Oh yeah, and they’re FREE!

(Only 85 days to go until my challenge starts… wish me luck!)

An anonymous coward (seriously, that was his handle) posted a question on Slashdot.com yesterday asking the readers “How do geeks exercise?” It said:

I have always been thin but all the sitting in front of the PC is taking its toll now that I’m getting older. I have begun to get a little heavier around the waist. I don’t eat a lot but the weight seems to stay on these days. Most of the time I don’t have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office. And being an introvert, I’m not enamored of the idea of exercising in full view of *shudder* people. I regularly do press-ups (60 per night) and sit-ups (30 per night) and some fetching and carrying, but that is all and these days it isn’t enough. I need a solid and effective routine that will tone all my muscle groups efficiently. Do any Slashdotters have a regular workout routine that can be performed in the privacy of the home to stave off those pounds?

Well, there’s nothing unusual about this inquiry, right? It seems that ‘Anonymous Coward’ echoes the concerns of most sedentary individuals. Like most people looking for advice, Coward turned to his community. And the community chimed back with their comments (all 1625 of them).

After scanning through most of the comments, I began noticing that these responses were probably more ineffective than good. In fact, most fell under THREE categories:

1) JUDGMENTS: Health behavior change is hard enough without being judged about your current lifestyle choices. If people feel misperceived by a person or community, they may either tune out any ‘health’ advice from them or re-frame their commitment to that person or community. When the writer plainly states that he didn’t “have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office,” why did so many comments criticize him for staying indoors all the time, asking why he didn’t make ’spending time outside’ a priority. Some suggested his personality was the ‘problem’ he needed to take care of first. Another dismissively said, “So you’re an introvert. Big deal! Exercise in front of people anyway.” Imagine how it must feel to get not one, not two, but hundreds of comments in less than 24-hour period basically questioning your actions, motivations, and… well, YOU. But, I assume “Anonymous Coward” already knew the rules of the internet and should have expected some conversations to be cruel.

2) NON-ATTENTIVE: It’s amazing how much people simply don’t listen to other people. How is suggesting kayaking, biking, rollerblading or hiking going to help this poor indoorsman? The guy spends his time inside – what part of “inside” didn’t they understand? And why do people think that getting a ‘gym buddy’ and joining a martial arts club or a community swim team is an effective form of motivation for a guy who clearly doesn’t like the thought of exercising in front of people? Don’t get me wrong – outdoor activities and community support are all great suggestions. But great for who? It seemed no one was considering the variables: indoor, PC-geek guy who does pushups/situps. One person did suggest taking on an exercise video game, specifically Yourself Fitness (also available on PC), but that post also included ‘having sex’ as a viable option. Classy.

3) EXERCISE INFORMATION: Although this is not the most resourceful site for health/fitness information, there were a few folks who claimed they were knowledgeable in the field of weight training and weight loss. (And hyperlinking to health-related websites doesn’t count). These were the ones who took the time to write thesis-length posts on the physiology of caloric expenditure. Unfortunately, it led to a series of broken discussion threads about ‘who had the right answers’ vs. ‘who didn’t know what they were talking about’. And if any reasonable advice was included among the bunch, good luck sorting through 1600+ comments to find it. Let’s face it, the average reader doesn’t really care to apply Mifflin’s predictive equation for calculating resting metabolic rate. I’d probably be more interested in the ‘muffin’ equation of blueberry-baked goods and justifying their caloric intake.

To counter my point, I will say that there were some positive comments that came out of this forum. For instance, other introverts banned together, reclaiming their thrown and proposing there be a sport for all introverts! Countless other posts took the “biking to work” suggestion seriously, spinning-off into an entirely new discussion – from the pros/cons of showering at work to fighting for cyclist equality on the road. And there were a few joke-tellers in the forum… so I did laugh at a few funnies.

In the end, assuming you throw out the judging posts, irrelevant comments, bad jokes and scientific jargon, I really hope Mr. Coward finds a concrete answer to his question. Or perhaps, he’s still reading the answers…

Last week, I presented at the National Wellness Conference in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. While checking my regular Twitter feeds, I came across @jodyNwellness who had just started following me a few days prior to my departure. After checking out her tweet-feed, I decided to follow her, too.

Because of my crazy schedule, I had to miss the first 3 days of the week-long conference. The morning of my flight, I noticed a tweet from @jodyNwellness regarding a session she was attending, presented by Mary Miscisin. I wasn’t sure, but I asked if she was at the conference (and she was) and mentioned that I’d be there later that day. She gave me the scoop on the tech landscape of the area (wifi connection status, etc). And eventually we agreed we should meet once I arrived!

Jody introduced herself during one of my activity sessions on ‘exergaming’. It turned out, she had already planned on attending a few of my sessions (so I suppose we would’ve met, eventually).

We hung out at breakfast and quickly realized how much we had in common. We were both into health/wellness and technology (and quite possibly the only two using Twitter at the conference – LOL!). I guess Twitter works in mysterious ways. Not only did it make my experience at the conference more engaging, but I also made an awesome new friend!

Over the past year, I’ve been following fitness professionals on YouTube in hopes to learn the various ways they are applying online video sharing technology to their craft. I have written on this topic in this post and this one to document my discoveries. By summertime, I had met many YouTubers and watched enough videos to finally write an official feature article about a phenomenon which I eventually labeled as “StepTube”.

The publication appeared in the IDEA Health & Fitness Journal – July/August 2008 issue. The piece is called “StepTube: The Next Wave” and you can read the full article here.

You can’t imagine how much fun it was writing this article! By far, my most favorite assignment. A special thank you goes out to Sandy Todd Webster, Joy Keller, Christi Taylor, Fred Hoffman, Gay Gasper, Keli Roberts, Rob Glick, Dana Hargis, Seasun Zieger, Leslie Cowling Stewart, Sabine Van Hoecke, Bobbie Stroud, Clara Dixon, Denise Hardy, Carol Espel, and David Albert Pierce for supporting my adventures and in entertaining my inquiries!

I’m always interested in how health instructors use web 2.0 technologies to educate about physical fitness and exercise. Here’s what I found on VoiceThread, an application where you can upload your pictures and let everyone make comments on it via text, flix, or audio.

This is how a health instructor used it to explain aerobic fitness:

It’s rather simple, but sparks ideas. VoiceThread allows the user to have multiple ‘personalities’ (hence the same voice w/ different character profiles). I haven’t figured out how I would apply it to my health course or use it with my fitness participants. I’ll need to find multiple applications before implementing it with my students or clients. Also, the free features have their limitations – you may have to upgrade to a $$ pro account to access all the features.

In an earlier post I had briefly pondered the applications of internet tools, such as Twitter, within the health and fitness industry. A few months later, a resourceful post was written on the “Spare Change” blog outlining the current extensions of Twitter for health. But today I wanted to ask a deeper question: Can Twitter be used to teach the art of mindfulness?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a scholar in field of mindfulness, defines mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” Most people shorten that down and say ‘living in the here-and-now.” For many, this concept seems abstract. It was for me at first. You see, I thought I was already ‘living in the moment’ and believed I had been paying attention.

In grad school, I took a class on the study of mindfulness. My professor, Dr. Ann Sebren, had suggested we first increase our cognitive awareness by paying attention to our thoughts more frequently. So, I did what was asked and for the next week tried focusing on my thoughts. But in doing so, I quickly became aware that I was focusing on the fact that I was focusing on my thoughts. Once I realized I was ruminating, I tried to stop. And when that didn’t work, I started questioning why I couldn’t stop this meta-thinking and soon lost my focus!

Through practice, I got better at experiencing my thoughts, being aware that I had them, and then letting them go. And now it’s an ongoing process that is still part of my conscious daily effort. But I had always wished there was a way I was introduced to mindfulness without it being such a transcendental process.

Here is where I think Twitter can come into play. If you’re introducing mindfulness to someone who has yet to fully experience it, how can you tell if what you’re teaching is helping them understand the concept? Or better yet, how do you know if they are even applying its principles? You don’t. Which is why I think using Twitter can be a metaphor for demonstrating both an understanding and the application of mindfulness.

Twitter is a platform that allows the user to selectively update their thoughts (aka “tweets”) as they are having them. It stores these ‘tweets’ on a linear timeline on the web. Each tweet is only allowed 140 characters and can be updated from the web or a cellphone, via text or voice (if you couple Twitter with Jott). Your activity (or data) can be quantified and examined using the mashup TweetStats. (Researchers should love this!)

As you can see below, I’ve included the most recent statistics for ‘Befitt’

The graphs can tell you when, to whom, and from where you’ve ‘tweeted’. For more information on what you’ve tweeted, you can simply go to your main Twitter page: http://www.Twitter.com/befitt.

Couldn’t this be the first step to quantifying mindfulness? Or perhaps make it easier to understand the mindfulness process? Can’t you define streaming consciousness via Twitter? So often I witness educators, trainers, wellness coaches suggest writing in journals or posting blog entries as a way to introduce and analyze abstract concepts to students or clients. But in my mind (no pun intended) these exercises are often outdated and pretentious.

Could there be an art of Tweetfulness. I’ll let you think about that one…