Speaking of ... College of Charleston

New Year's Resolution to Get and Stay Fit Year Round

January 21, 2022 Kate Pfile Season 1 Episode 6
Speaking of ... College of Charleston
New Year's Resolution to Get and Stay Fit Year Round
Show Notes Transcript


Kate Pfile, a College of Charleston alumna and associate professor of exercise science and chair of the Department of Health and Human Performance, talks all things fitness in the new year, how to set goals and what you can do to stay on track.

Resources on this Episode:

Amanda:

Hello, and welcome to the College of Charleston Podcast. I'm Amanda curve from university communications. And this episode, we speak to Kate file and associate professor of exercise science and Chair of the Department of Health and Human Performance at the College of Charleston. We'll talk about the annual resolution we all make to get fit in the new year, how to set realistic fitness goals and steps we can take to work out safely and effectively. To Professor file, your educational training is an athletic training and sports medicine. Um, can you tell us a little bit about what drew you to those fields?

Unknown:

Sure, yeah. So I would say that I grew up playing sports, my primary sport of interest was basketball. But I've kind of dabbled in a few other things, to the point where I actually played my freshman year here at the College of Charleston. And then I realized that I didn't want my full time job to be athletics. So I think that kind of background and introduction into really being a part of a team was what drew me into sports medicine, I loved having teammates, I, you know, relying on them, reaching goals together, you know, failing together, all of those things was something that was sort of part of my background. So from an athletic training standpoint, in Sports, medicine is more of an umbrella. World and athletic training, you know, you're kind of you remain in that team environment, if you choose to work in a traditional sports setting with you know, where you're assigned to work with a specific team or group of athletes, but more so I found that being an athletic training student at the time, and then as an athletic trainer, you are also working with other people. So you are essentially a team of healthcare providers. And that was something that kind of filled that niche for me in terms of having other people to connect with and colleagues that were sort of in the same boat. And you could relate to and, and grow together with.

Amanda:

And then what took you from, from that point in your education to pursuing a degree in higher education and ultimately becoming a faculty member?

Unknown:

Yeah, so I did not think that I would be a faculty member, that was not my, my plan, when I was 21, leaving the College of Charleston, I thought I wanted to be a collegiate level athletic trainer. So I did my graduate degree at University of Virginia. And during that time, I was sort of introduced into the world of research, get just sort of got a better sense of what academic academia look like. And I think I saw the opportunities to again, you know, work with colleagues, be part of, or working with other people on a research project. And so that teamwork sort of fell naturally. And I feel that today, you know, working in the Department of Health and Human Performance here, the college, I have, you know, teammates, we are all kind of working towards a similar goal or, or goals, you know, helping students advancing research, improving our teaching, and service opportunities, and things like that. And so I feel like, it all just sort of falls into that, as cliche as it might be as being part of a team, which is something that's really important to me.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And so I have to ask the question, what type of exercise do you like to do?

Unknown:

Yeah, so question. So I've gotten away from playing sports, based on my age, you know, and I'm trying not trying to avoid injury. And so one of the things that I've kind of gotten more involved in, I realized that I really enjoy lifting weights. So I've, I've started to do that. And then also, high intensity interval training or which is oftentimes referred to as HIIT. Training. So those are the things that I like to do, I've, I started going to a gym over in West Ashley called f 45. There's a couple of other ones around town. But it's a group exercise environment. And so again, there's some accountability there. I also like being motivated by the other people in the class, you're oftentimes kind of paired up with somebody at a station or doing a specific exercise. So if they're working harder than you, you know, I kind of have that like competitive aspect of my personality that kicks in. And then I also like the variety of HIIT training. So you're doing a lot of different things for short periods of time and kind of a high level intensity. So I can get, I tend to get a little bit bored with doing the same thing over and over. And so it feeds into that, you know, variability and newness each day.

Amanda:

Absolutely. So it's something that we all think about at the beginning of every year, which is how do we get fit get healthier in the new year, and obviously, we've just crossed over into 2022. So when we're thinking about getting fit this year, what are some key things to to consider as folks start weighing out their fitness options?

Unknown:

I would say that setting a goal is a really great place to start. Again, that might sound really basic and kind of obvious, but it's hard to deny Have a plan unless you have a targeted goal. So within sort of the exercise science and fitness world, and really all goal setting, there's the acronym SMART. So that stands for specific and measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. And so what setting a SMART goal allows you to do is it kind of really focuses in on what do you want to achieve? You know, you could say something that's super general, like I want to be healthier in 2022. There are so many ways to think about health, you know, is that emotional health? Is that physical health is that psychological health, right? And so it's important to sort of drill down to the next level and say, Well, what parts of your health are you looking to improve? Is that flexibility is that you know, cardio respiratory endurance, so you feel like walking up, walking up and down the stairs to your apartment or to your class or you don't feel winded, you know? So identifying some things that you feel like you could measure? How do you feel after you go for a 20 minute walk or a 30 minute bike or bike ride or, you know, swimming in the ocean or something like that is is important to kind of set some targets of what you want to accomplish, and then turn that into a goal.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And so if you're someone who hasn't really been all that active lately, but you want to make a goal to exercise more in the new year, where do you start?

Unknown:

Yeah, I think the first place to start is if you really have not been active for a while, and you know, that you may have or you suspect that you may have some conditions, I would say the first place to start would be with your physician. So primary care physician scheduling, if you don't have one, then that's another sort of great reason to kind of make that contact point and have somebody that you can follow up with over time. So visit, visit your doctor first and make sure that you don't have any conditions or that the conditions you have don't preclude you from certain types of exercise. So just sort of getting that baseline green light or yellow light, whatever that might look like. I think from there, I would say start with something you already enjoy doing. So rather than forcing yourself into something that you're like, oh, I don't know, if I'm gonna like this. Or maybe it's super expensive, and you have to, like invest into it. Start with something that you already liked doing. So if you already are enjoying walking, you know, you walk your dog every day, add another walk, it's probably better for the dog to depending on their age, thinking about like yard work, or maybe a casual bike ride walking on the beach or downtown, I just I think there's a lot of different ways that we can incorporate activity into our day to day that don't have to be thought of as super structured exercise. And obviously, the more likely you are or if you enjoy something, the more likely you are to do it. And then I would say the last thing to think about if you're just kind of starting out as don't overdo it. So you want to gradually build up, you know, the amount of time that you're doing something the frequency that you're doing it the amount of effort that you're putting in, so it shouldn't be a zero to 100. But it should be sort of a, you know, a gradual ramp up over time.

Amanda:

Absolutely. And then is what if you're someone who has been fairly consistent with moderate exercise, but now you want to set a higher goal for yourself, you want to run longer, you want to lift more weights, build more muscle, what sort of goals should you set in that case?

Unknown:

Yeah, I think you can still follow that same smart goal format, but now you're just tailoring it to whatever that new goal is that you have. So that might be maybe you've been, you know, you're pretty comfortable running a 5k event, but now you're looking at you're sort of eyeing, maybe I could do a half marathon. So you're going to set a goal that says, you know, finish a half marathon in under two hours by October, it's something that's relevant to you, it's, you know, attainable you've been running, it's not, you know, the timeframe in which you're talking about that goal isn't within a reasonable period. And so, or maybe, you know, you're thinking about being able to squat 150 pounds five times, you know, five times by the end of March, you know, just depends on where you're starting and where you're what you're trying to get at. But But setting a goal that same way is going to be beneficial to helping you develop a plan to then meet that goal. So I think, really the the part about the goal setting is then you can think about the training program, or what do you feel like you need to do to be able to reach that goal. And you know, if you're kind of moving from being a regular exerciser to maybe more advanced or you could think about finding a fitness professional who may be able to help you make a plan to help you reach that goal.

Amanda:

So for, you know, US average, folks, tell us a little bit more about what exercise science is, and what are the different elements of physical fitness for folks to think about when they're thinking about improving their physical fitness.

Unknown:

So exercise science is an umbrella term that really encompasses a lot of what we would call sub disciplines within science, so things like anatomy and physiology, nutrition, psychology, motor control, human movement, or Kinesiology. And so when we think about exercise science, we are actually examining all of those different types of science, or we are applying those areas of science to physical activity, and that can be from sort of two directions. One, what happens when we increase physical activity, or we introduce exercise or we change nutrition? You know, we sort of change one of those variables, what happens to someone's health, and some of the, you know, specific, there's tons of ways that you can measure that, but a specific measurement within health, we can also look at the opposite side of what happens when we decrease activity, right? Or what do we know about inactivity or sedentary behaviors. So within the Department of Health and Human Performance, we have people that are sort of evaluating those different elements, we have faculty who are looking at hydration and thirst, we have faculty who are looking at introducing different types of training and the impact it might have on balance, or core stability, we have faculty, who are, you know, evaluating different elements of health in disease, state populations, like people with chronic kidney disease. So there's a lot of different ways that we can think about exercise and or exercise science and and a lot of different populations that it sort of touches on to Gotcha. And then your second part, I think, was about physical fitness. So there's different categories, again, of physical fitness, but mainly we think about cardio, respiratory, endurance, usually, muscular strength. So how much resistance can you develop or move, you know, muscular endurance? How long? Can you do that for flexibility? And then body composition?

Amanda:

And then that sort of takes me to an obvious thing, which is, are there some key safety tips that folks should be considering so that they exercise safely, regardless of whether they're just starting out? Or whether there's somebody that's been active consistently, but want to take it to the next level?

Unknown:

Yeah, I have a few things that I would say in response to this question. So I would say, I've mentioned this a little bit earlier, but gradually increased your in the aspects of your training program. So again, it's not zero to 100, or all in all at once, but thinking about how can you change your program? Are you adding more so we thought we think about that as volume? Are you doing so? Are you doing more exercises? Are you doing it at a higher level, are you doing it for a longer time? And are you doing it more often, right, so you don't want to change all of those at the same time to do more longer more often, because I think that's going to lead there, we know that that can lead to injury. So it's important to really focus on changing one of those variables at a time, add in a couple of new exercises, do that for a week or two, let your body adapt to that because it will and then either do more of those ones that you've already done, or add in more or do more frequently. But you don't want to do all of that all at once. I think also pay attention to the difference between soreness and pain. So soreness is something that sort of, you know, discomfort that comes in and goes meaning that we experience it for 24 to 48 hours, oftentimes following, you know, new exercise or maybe a strenuous session of activity, but it should go away naturally. Versus pain is something that will probably you'll start to feel during exercise or maybe immediately afterwards. Those are, those are your body's indicators of telling you, hey, there's something going on here. That's not great. And then the last thing to help avoid, you know, injury or is thinking about rest and recovery. So we want to avoid overtraining. And so sort of a good rule of thumb is 48 hours between high intensity sessions for the same muscle group. So for example, if you were going to do like weight a weighted lunge exercise on Monday, you don't need to do squats on Tuesday, you could pick a different body part or a different exercise that doesn't target those same muscles. Because rest and recovery, again, are really important to helping restore the structure of the tissues within your body. So if we don't give ourselves enough time to do that, then we're going to overtime we start to have this breakdown process take place and that can lead to injury.

Amanda:

So as folks are starting to think about exercising more ramping up, you know, how important is it for them to be patient with themselves and with the results that they're seeing?

Unknown:

Everybody is different. And so it's really important to keep that in mind. You know, we have different medical histories, we have different goals, we have different abilities and backgrounds, we have different ages. And so if you feel like you're you know you're making progress, and that's great. If you feel like you've kind of hit a plateau it may be time to kind of evaluate some other things. What are my what are my nutritional habits? Am I getting enough rest? Am I pushing myself hard enough? Right? So I think there is no one size fits all in terms of you know, how fast should you adapt because As it's there's so many things that come into play that are going to influence that for each person.

Amanda:

Gotcha. Professor bio thank you for these tips and giving us the tools to get fit and 2022 Yeah, absolutely. This episode of the College of Charleston podcast was written and produced by Amy Mercer from University Communications, reporting and sound engineering was done by Jesse Collins and the staff of the Division of Information Technology. I'm Amanda Coker. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the College of Charleston podcast.