General Fitness is not just about looking good. It is about your overall health and well-being. A healthy workout and healthy diet can improve the general appearance and looks from within resulting in healthy glowing skin, hair, and nails. It also prevents a series of heart and organ failures.

Diet itself helps to increase your calorie burning by boosting your metabolism, a process further enhanced as you gain more lean muscle. We will work with you on an aerobic exercise program to burn fat and increase your metabolic rate. This is done on equipment such as stationary bicycles, treadmills, or elliptical machines or by jogging outdoors.

The aim is to sustain aerobic activity for a minimum of 40 minutes at a time at a moderate intensity of 50 percent to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. We will help you establish this intensity level.

Your diet and aerobic programs will be the core of your fat-loss plan. We will create them only with you in mind and based on your current condition, goals, schedule, and lifestyle.

Aerobic activity is also called cardiovascular exercise. During this sustained activity the body uses oxygen from the blood as the primary fuel for the muscles. The utilization of oxygen requires the body to adapt itself to more efficiently store and deliver oxygen to the muscles where they are converted to fuel.

Therefore both lung capacity and oxygen carriage and storage are increased when cardiovascular activity is performed on a regular basis.

Amber Atherton with Ricardo

In addition, the heart as a muscle is strengthened and its ability to pump blood that carries oxygen is greater. Cardiovascular conditioning, therefore, lowers resting heart rate and blood pressure. Also, the “good” cholesterol, HDL, is elevated through aerobic exercise, and LDL, or “bad” cholesterol is lowered. As a result, overall heart and circulatory system health is improved, and stamina and endurance increase.

Today the cardiovascular disease is the number one killer.

We encourage all clients over 40 years of age, at risk of coronary or circulatory disease to engage in systematically monitored cardiovascular training programs.

Today cardiologists all recommend and facilitate some form of cardiovascular training for recovering heart patients. We will supervise the intensity and duration progress of these programs, making sure that you are working within target heart-rate zones suitable to your age, weight, and fitness condition.

The goal for this training is generally to work in a range of 60-80 percent of maximum heart rate for 20-30 minutes, three times a week.