“I definitely think that ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ ‘So You Think You Should Dance,’ etc., have had a huge impact on the dance world,” Ginny Nicholson, who manages Triangulo, a New York City studio devoted to Argentine tango, said of the popular realty TV shows.

“The tango scene in New York City has grown from a few milongas (tango parties) a week … to at least two milongas on any given night,” she said in an interview.

Tango is not the only dance craze on the upswing, according to Patricia Klausner, spokeswoman for Steps on Broadway, which offers instruction in everything from ballet to jazz to hip hop.

“I think reality TV shows have sparked a great interest in and fascination for dance,” she said. “Some of the dancers and choreographers on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ have trained and taught here.”

Steps, a New York institution, has been instructing all levels of amateurs and professionals since 1979. But Klausner said beginner enrollment has been particularly strong of late.

Along with TV, Marc Santa Maria of Crunch, a nationwide chain of health clubs, credits the Internet, specifically YouTube and Facebook, with broadening cultural, and therefore dance, horizons.

“What has increased is more diversity in dance,” Santa Maria, Group Fitness Director for the fitness chain, which claims 100,000 members, explained.

“People are definitely more open to styles that may not have been as common in fitness a few years ago.”

This season dance classes at Crunch range from barre and jazz to something called Cardiac Go Go, a Los Angeles invention inspired by the white-booted go-go girls of the 1960′s.

Another, dubbed Rock of Ages, fuses traditional musical theater dance with pole dancing and rock music.

And Masala Bangra, billed as “the traditional Indian dance workout set to hip-hop, disco, salsa, techno, house and rap music” has gained numbers thanks to the soundtrack from the Academy Award winning film “Slumdog Millionaire,” Santa Maria said.

“Everyone wants to have fun, and dance is freeing and a great release,” he said. “It is also highly social and folks love that-especially when things like the economy are bringing people down.”

Santa Maria, who trained as a dancer, says it’s a great workout: “You engage all muscle groups and can really push the cardio,” he said.

Klausner agrees: “Dance is a great way to get into shape, stay in shape. Muscles stay long and lean rather than bulky. Besides that, dance helps with posture and grace as well as self-confidence.”

So why doesn’t everyone do it?

“The biggest barrier for beginners is fear of being judged by others and/or failing,” Klausner said. “(Truth is) that no one in class cares. They are so busy dealing with their own challenges.”

Indeed, as no less a purveyor of self-consciousness than Irish playwright Samuel Beckett advised: “Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”

Reuters

The term “shoulder girdle” is used to describe the entire shoulder area, incorporating the shoulder blade (scapula), collarbone (clavicle) and upper arm bone (humerus) and a total of three different joints. The specific articulation created where these three bony structures come together is known as the shoulder joint, and it makes sense that the function of this joint is dependent on the orientation of these structures and their relationship to each other. The shoulder blade provides the majority of the joint structure for the shoulder, and is closer to the body, which is why much of the work I do in shoulder rehabilitation and stabilization involves re-positioning the shoulder blade.

Since the healthy shoulder is capable of extensive ranges of motion and a high degree of dexterity, and can withstand heavy loads and significant forces, it is important to pay close attention to this complex joint and it’s functional performance.

At the first sign of any pain or diminished function, be sure to get professional insight by a seasoned practitioner because ignoring a small problem may lead to chronic, debilitating shoulder conditions.

Many chronic shoulder problems are caused by bad posture. As you slouch into a round-shouldered position, your shoulder blades spread apart and move forward around your rib cage. This changes the mechanics at the shoulder joint and limits movement, as well as increasing the risk of a painful condition called impingement.

Try the following tips to help keep your shoulders aligned and healthy:

- Stand with your back to a wall or post to “re-set” your posture multiple times daily.

- When you wake up in the morning, spend a minute or two on your back, without a pillow, to align your head with your body.

- Keep shoulders in position by bringing the bottom corners of your shoulder blades down and together.

- Analyze daily activities like computing, driving and reading to make sure that your alignment is ideal.

The exercises illustrated above are ones that I use regularly to balance the shoulder girdle musculature and re-establish normal joint movement patterns. Read the instructions carefully and be sure to stop immediately if you feel any discomfort.

Winsberg, a psychiatrist in San Francisco, said she and a string of physicians had attributed her slower times and overwhelming fatigue to aging, new motherhood and chronic anemia. She began to follow an iron-rich diet, took iron supplements and received iron intravenously. Still, her health continued to deteriorate.

When a physician friend convinced Winsberg that her body was not absorbing the iron, she researched the problem online. She read about the symptoms of celiac disease, a genetic auto-immune disorder caused by eating the gluten protein in wheat and other grains like barley, rye and oats.

Winsberg said her first thought was, “This is what has been happening to me my whole life, and I just never put it all together before.”

Ingesting even small quantities of gluten causes the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine in celiacs, hampering the absorption of vital nutrients like iron, calcium and fat. Untreated, it can lead to a wide range of problems including anemia, infertility, osteoporosis and cancer.

“Celiac is grossly underdiagnosed in this country,” said Dr. Peter H. R. Green, a professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia and director of the university’s Celiac Disease Center. He said that at least 1 percent of the population had the disease but that only a fraction of the cases were diagnosed.

The only known treatment is a gluten-free diet. Winsberg began reading labels vigilantly and avoiding everything containing gluten, including cereal, bread and beer as well as many seasonings, food additives and nonfood items like some vitamins and toothpastes.

“You can’t even take a sip from someone else’s water bottle, because they might have been eating a Powerbar and left a trace of it on the spout,” she said.

Within days, Winsberg’s chronic gastrointestinal problems abated. Gradually her energy, weight, iron stores and oxygen-carrying hemoglobin levels rebounded.

“It was like doping,” Winsberg, 42, said. “Suddenly I was running six-minute miles instead of nine-minute miles. Before I had placed in the bottom third in triathlons. Four weeks gluten free, and I placed second in a triathlon. It was like reverse aging. I went from feeling 38 to 28 to 18.”

Winsberg’s transformation did not surprise Dr. John Reasoner, a medical director with the United States Olympic Committee.

“In six to eight weeks, if they’ve followed the diet, it’s night and day,” he said.

Reasoner said that symptoms of celiac disease were often subtle but came at a high cost for athletes who expected maximum performance. Dave Hahn, who has reached the Mount Everest summit 10 times, said he found he had the disease after he became “inexplicably weak” on his second trip to the peak in 1999.

Hahn was the climbing leader on a search expedition for the remains of the Everest pioneer George Mallory, who had disappeared on the mountain in 1924. The search was successful, but Hahn struggled. Then 37, he had become anemic. Perilously weak and short of breath on summit day, he had to depend on his climbing partner to make it off the summit alive.

“It was a huge source of shame which made me feel like I had to get to the bottom of the health problems that I’d been ignoring for so long,” Hahn said.

He returned to the doctor he had seen eight years before for chronic gastrointestinal problems, common in celiacs, and this time she diagnosed the disease.

Hahn said he had difficulty adjusting to the gluten-free diet.

“I got stronger again without question, and you don’t really expect that in your late 30s,” he said. “I had gotten to the point up high and in the cold where I completely ran out of gas.”

Hahn, now 46, continues to guide high-altitude expeditions all over the world.

“I could have lived out my life without knowing I have celiac,” Hahn said. “But I wouldn’t have lived the best part of my life.”

Green said that most doctors had a limited understanding of celiac and often believed it was a childhood disease that people outgrew.

“I get calls from gastroenterologists, specialists in the field, and they don’t even know how to diagnose the disease,” he said.

Celiac disease is diagnosed through an inexpensive panel of blood tests.

Green said the current “lack of pharmaceutical backing for the disease” — the fact that it is controlled by diet, not drugs — was behind the scant research, medical education and public awareness. Doctors frequently miss the pattern within telltale symptoms of celiac, as happened to Winsberg and Hahn, Green said.

Winsberg reached a peak in her athletic career this summer. She qualified for the Ironman World Championship Triathlon to be contested on Saturday in Hawaii. She will compete in the 2.4-mile ocean swim, the 112-mile bike ride across volcanic desert and the 26.2-mile coastal run — a prestigious event she could not have dreamed of racing before her self-diagnosis.

The elliptical machine is sneaky, and it fools us three ways. First, you can get your heart rate up really high and easily. Second, you can get a big sweat on. And third, the machine tells you that you have burned an awful lot of calories (even though the calorie counter is likely inaccurate, as was shown on a CBS news report).

So why doesn’t the elliptical work? Because you just don’t do as much mechanical work as you do when you run or cycle. Basically, it’s just easier and less effective. Getting your heart rate up is not the key determinant of fat loss.

Your body is a well programmed machine. It’s ‘wired’ to increase heart rate and breathing as soon as it senses motion (that’s why you start to breathe heavily after taking a single flight of stairs – it’s not just because you are unfit).

The key factor in fat loss is the amount of work done. Until you learn to separate the influence of the two, you won’t be using intervals in the best possible manner.

As fat loss expert Alwyn Cosgrove explains, “The problem is not the elliptical itself — it’s just that it tends to allow/promote momentum (as most people have the resistance too low) from bodyweight alone. So unless you crank up the resistance and actually produce some force and/or MOVE your bodyweight – it’s nothing but momentum. So if you’re not actively using your muscles to produce some sort of force you aren’t burning many calories.”

But even then, I still don’t think using a high resistance level on the elliptical will get you the results you are looking for. Yet despite their ineffectiveness, elliptical machines and the like remain a popular training method. But that’s only due to the human condition – like flowing water, we seek the path of least resistance. We’ll will do anything to get around obstacles rather than doing the real work required to overcome the obstacles. Given the choice, humans always go with the easiest option.

Compare the elliptical to the Stairmaster. Stairmasters are more effective but less popular. Why? Because we’ve found something easier (the elliptical) that still gives us the comfort of a sweat and an elevated heart rate (even if we don’t get the results). And now millions of gym goers pat themselves on the back after flailing around on the elliptical for 30 minutes and thinking they’ve been shedding fat.

Training in your comfort zone is useless. Your metabolic rate will increase when your body is forced to change. The harder and smarter you train, the greater your increase in metabolic rate. That is why you have to do things the right way (the TT way!), to lose fat.

So what works better? If you have my TT Reports, you know I recommend the stationary bike. It’s safe, effective, and convenient. You can work at a very high power outage, and that is no illusion. You are doing the work (as long as you are not spinning at a very high RPM – that is another waste of time!).

Of course, you can also use sprinting. But that has a few more risks to it, whether it is done on a treadmill (risk: falling) or outside (risk: muscle pulls – so prepare appropriately).

Some other manly fat loss interval options are sled pulling, Farmer Walks (see photo), pushing heavy objects, wheelbarrow carries, and complexes. I’ll talk more about the exciting fat-shedding potential of lifting complexes in my future reports.

A team of social workers, exercise physiologists, recreation specialists, nutritionists and camp counselors will offer programs in nutrition, recreation, weight training and aerobic activities. The camp will include fitness classes, recreational challenges, outdoor activities, field trips and swimming. Camperswill also learn how to make healthy food choices by preparing their own wholesome daily meals and snacks.

In a different approach to helping children stay fit, Anatomies, a fitness facility in Hattiesburg, Miss., opened its Youth Fitness Center in January. This exercise area was designed especially for children ages six to 13. It is furnished with resistance and cardio equipment for kids, a rock climbing wall, a Sportwall, interactive PlayStation games (Snowboarding and Dance Dance Revolution), basketball/multipurpose area and a study room. According to Toni Bailey, front desk director and a group fitness instructor, since the Youth Fitness Center opened, Anatomies has seen an increase in family memberships, both new memberships and individuals going to family rates. “We pride ourselves on being the best in town, and this helps to raise our level of service because this is the only children’s facility in our area,” Bailey says.

To show that there are countless ways to help children say fit and healthy, KettleBell Concepts, New York, N.Y., and Aces Tennis Foundation, Anchorage, Alaska, Baton Rouge, La., and Biloxi, Miss., teamed up to design a Kettlebell training program specifically for children. Thomas L. d’Aquin, tennis pro and president of the Aces Tennis Foundation, founded the foundation with a mission to help disadvantaged children learn to play tennis and how to stay fit. Trying to break out of his own training plateau, d’Aquin discovered that Kettlebells are ideal not only for tennis improvement, but for overall conditioning.

While working on a plan with Gulf region casinos to help repair hurricane-damaged public tennis facilities, he came up with the idea to establish Kettlebell training programs for children in the region.

d’Aquin is working with various associations in Mississippi and Louisiana to find sponsorships to outfit his Aces Tennis Foundation with Kettlebells, and to tailor the training specifically for kids. “I’m also working with KettleBell Concepts of New York on tailoring the current Kettlebell training protocols that are more geared for adults, to be apropos for kids, kindergarten through sixth grade. The ultimate goal is to show the educators and physical trainers in the Gulf area the advantage of Kettlebells, as opposed to [the] typical weight training that we’ve grown up with.” Says Dave Ganulin, CEO of KettleBell Concepts, “We look forward to supporting [d'Aquin] in his efforts to adapt Kettlebell training to a youth level, not only for tennis improvement, but for all-around physical fitness for these kids.” The Kettlebell training will be for both tennis-specific sports improvement and general physical fitness. As you can see, children’s fitness can take on many forms, as long as the kids are having fun and staying active.