Media Convergence Initiative

It’s only one hour and your workout for the day is complete! This aerobics class will improve those lazy legs thriving to exercise everyday. While the first couple of classes can be difficult for new beginners, don’t give up, because once you’re over that hill, the ride down is smooth and easy. A challenging hour workout on a spinning cycle can burn as much as 1,400 calories and keeps your body toned and fit.  While other cardio equipment likes the treadmill or stair stepper helps burn calories, the cycling machine is one of the only machines that truly allow an athlete to burn the necessary calories while toning their legs and upper body at the same time. Here I will include three major benefits of why you should take spinning classes when trying to get in shape and remain toned and fit!

Burns Calories: A spinning workout of 60 minutes may allow a person to burn around 1,400 calories which is a huge amount of calories to burn within an hour of cardio exercise compared to other cardio workouts. While the amount of calories one burn does depend on the level of intensity they are on, people can adjust their bikes to become much more intensified to help burn more calories.

Builds Muscle Tone: This spinning workout not only allows a person to burn an enormous amount of calories in one cycling class, but it also helps build some muscle tone. This workout puts a major focus on the core muscles of the lower body, more specifically including the buttocks and thighs. While constantly increasing and decreasing the tension of the bike, the body is able to burn fat faster while toning the muscles. While positioning yourself in different levels the body is also able to help build upper body strength and toning as well.

Helps Build Mental Strength: Taking a spinning class not only allows for a great workout, but it is a great way to relax your mind. By putting your body through a strenuous spinning workout it allows the physical exertion to become a catharsis for releasing pent-up emotions which gives you that feeling of relief after working out.

So next time you decide to go to the gym sign up for a spin class and sweat, tone, and relieve your body to a more strengthened and toned body!

Everyone gets a craving for chocolate every so often and we have all heard that dark chocolate can be good for us. As of now the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and Mars Inc. are creating a study with 18,000 participants to see if certain cocoa flavanols, if put into a capsule, can benefit the heart.

There have been smaller studies on dark chocolate but none of them have been as big. The smaller studies have found what appears to be a link from dark chocolate to good heart health. They found that eating dark chocolate a few times a week can help improve blood flow, which will improve blood pressure, and helps blood clots from forming. All of these areas that dark chocolate helps leads the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Mars Inc. to conduct the study in a pill on a larger scale.

Mars Inc. has developed a way to extract cocoa flavonols and put them into a capsule. The study will have three groups of people. One group will get a placebo, another will receive the cocoa pill extract and the last group will receive a multivitamin. The study will be watched for four years.

If you think you can gain these awesome benefits from just eating chocolate, then it’s hard to say but that will not help. This is because during the candy making process most of the protective flavanols are destroyed during the process. However, there have been studies as mentioned before of dark chocolate benefiting the heart and also the brain.

Preventative medicine chief, Dr. JoAnn Manson does suggest that we “do not jump on the ban wagon.” It is best to wait until the study is completed and accurate. She also states that sometimes more is not better but in past different studies sometimes can be damaging or bad for our bodies.