Gibson's Gym Newsletter - August 2007
(Download a printable .pdf version of this newletter here.)
The Winds of Change, Sort Of……
As many of you may have heard, Kevin is now the proud sole owner of Gibson’s Gym and all of the fine buildings it is housed within. On Monday July 16th, the official closing was held, marking the onset of a new, but not so different era. On that day, Kevin purchased Liz’s stake in the business and all the buildings from Bill. Daily operations will remain the same, however some new faces will now be seen in our staff. The intention is to provide even better service and increase the variety of exercise options currently offered.
Many of you may be asking, “What about Liz?” Well, Liz is off to pursue a career in teaching, a passion she has silently embraced for quite some time now. Her last day of work will be August 31st, so be sure to wish her well. Being the exercise enthusiast she is, I’m sure you may still bump into her trying to catch a workout between her demanding class schedule. Liz has enjoyed over twenty years at the gym, and as many would attest, twenty years is quite a run for any career, especially at such a young age. We wish her all the best and hope she is able to share some of her practical knowledge on physical fitness with some lucky elementary children and their parents.
2007 marks the thirtieth year Gibson’s Gym is housed at this location. Progressively growing to occupy more space, the gym has undergone quite a renaissance over the years. Thirty years was a nice neat timeline for Bill to be free of all the headaches involved in being a landlord. His decision to sell Kevin all the real estate was based on the desire to see Gibson’s Gym make another thirty year run with someone else at the helm. In 1977 Bill was a 35 year old guy with a passion for muscle. Now, in 2007, Kevin is a 35 year old guy with a passion for muscle. With any luck Kevin will be able to duplicate Bill’s progressive attitude and success in this business.
Gibson’s Gym’s involvement in the community will be much more evident by the variety of fundraisers we will be sponsoring to benefit some charities our staff holds dear. Kevin will be making Gibson’s Gym more of a driving force within the community.
October marks our 30th year anniversary, so it is fitting the first event will be held then. Here is our tentative list of cool things to get involved in for fun and to help out some worthy causes:
Sunday October 7th 2007
Charity Golf Event to benefit HHH and the Norwescap Food bank
Hosted by Apple Mountain
18 holes and Cart
Dinner Buffet, Drinks, Novelties
Hole-in-One New Car Prize
January 2008
Charity Poker Tournament to benefit Transitions Center for Women
Single Elimination Texas Hold ‘em
Food, Drawings
April 2008
5K Run and Fitness Team Challenge
Dates and details will be available for each event by mid-August.
All events will be held in an attempt to unite our members with the community and to raise money for a worthy cause. Each charity we choose will be Warren County based. Although global charity is extremely important, Oprah and Bono are doing a bang-up job at promoting them. Gibson’s Gym will endeavor to help the people that need it most in our own backyards. It truly amazes me how many people will donate abroad yet snub a local homeless family. Local families need help too.
Is Your Body Color Blind?
MD's, PhD's, and even your mother have espoused the virtues of a diet rich in an eclectic assortment of fruits and vegetables, benefits that include: cardioprotection, cancer prevention, anti-aging effects, detoxification functions, brain health, and on and on. In fact, most us recognize the near essential importance of eating fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. Yet, at the same time, many of us fail to live up to even the baseline standards put forth by the USDA that require upwards of 2 cups of fruits and 3 cups of vegetables a day.
Even if you are one of the diligent few that manage to intake the suggested servings of fruits and vegetables, ensuring a variety is almost nearly as essential. For instance, some fruits (i.e. berries) contain potent antioxidants such as the phenols, anthocyanins, and bioflavonoids. Resveratol, a highly publicized anti-aging compound, is found in grapes. Still, others fruits are imbued with nutrients critical to heart health, liver health, or immune system function. Likewise, vegetables can be classified according to the phytonutrients they contain. Carrots and the carotenoids. Glucosinolates and cruciferous vegetables (i.e. cauliflower, etc.). Organosulfur compounds are found in the allium vegetables such as onion and garlic.
Fortunately, DaVinci Laboratories of Vermont has developed a line of fruit- and vegetable-based supplements designed to bolster your intake and to diversify your consumption of the same. Spectra Greens is a combination of nutrient-rich vegetables, fruits, herbs, herbal extracts, and a few other extracts designed to support your body's ability to cleanse, detoxify, and rejuvenate. Spectra Reds is chuck-full of nutrient- rich berries, fruits, and potent plant extracts in combination with compounds such as resveratol and lycopene. Each serving contains a minimum of 5000 ORAC units (oxygen radical absorbance capacity - a measure of antioxidant activity) and 3 grams of fiber for digestive tract support. Spectra Purples is an anti-aging drink mix that combines 19 whole fruits and vegetables and extracts with potent anti-aging properties. Also included are compounds to support mental energy, focus, and clarity. The final product in this line is Spectra Oranges. Spectra Oranges contains an energizing array of fatigue-fighting nutrients while providing a strong antioxidant blend equivalent to 3000 ORAC units. Consider adding one or more of these excellent powdered supplements to your daily routine.
Gibson's Newest Recruit
As a once highly lauded high school football talent, accolades which included 1st Team All State, All West Jersey Defensive Player of the Year, and Warren County Football Player of the Year, Matt Brunetti is certainly not new to the (college football) recruiting scene. So, recruit him we did (as a personal trainer). Matt's time as a Varsity Football Player at both Towson University and East Stroudsburg University allowed him to acquire practical experience with regard to sports specific athletic training. In addition, Matt holds the American College of Sports Medicine Personal Trainer Certification and has been a long standing member of NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association). Prior to his time at Gibson's, Matt honed his skills as a personal trainer while working with clients across the age, gender, and fitness level spectrums. If you're looking to add excitement and results to your fitness program, stop by the desk and schedule some time with Matt.
Gibson's Gallery
Peter Callas’s Show
Labor Day - Oct. 31 Press Release
What do fine arts and fitness have in common?
Gibson's Gallery in Washington, NJ
Founded in 1977, Gibson's Gym and fitness center has recently added "art center" to the growing list of services it offers to its members. Since its inception in 2003, Gibson's Gallery has attracted attention in the local community while bringing new members to the Gym and adding a cultural dimension to the concept of fitness.
The Gallery occupies five walls and adjoining floor space within the modern, luxurious, and multi-level fitness facility. Gibson's invites both amateur and professional artists of all media to exhibit and sell their work. In lieu of a normal gallery commission, current Gym membership is required.
From Labor Day through Oct. 31, the Gallery will feature the work of the most prestigious exhibitor in its four year history, the internationally renowned ceramic artist, Peter Callas. A resident of Belvidere, NJ, Peter and wife Chrissy, who is also a potter, joined Gibson's Gym a few years ago, following a stay in Japan where Peter was able to hone his skills as an artist.
Peter Grilli, President of the Japan Society of Boston, writes about the potter's exceptional freedom of expression and the innovation of style he has brought to the genre of ceramic art: "Freedom allows the artist to absorb, integrate, and, ultimately, leap beyond his sources and create something dramatically new. This is the creative dynamic that Peter Callas has demonstrated so splendidly."
For many years Peter studied and integrated the hindusiki, guinomi and anagama schools of Japanese pottery, together known as the Bizen style of ceramic art. That became the foundation and springboard for his own style, which Grilli refers to as "rougher and wilder and in some ways, more exciting than the Bizen. Callas has replaced the conformity of the oriental tradition with his own creative vigor, adding an explosive power to the art form."
The raw, vigorous, and earth-like ceramic creations of Callas have been exhibited and sold in a number of galleries in various countries around the world.
Exercise = Smarter
And you thought those “meatheads” were solely concerned with increasing their size… Yeah… of their brains!
The article below has been adapted from the an article written by John J. Ratey, MD, who is currently an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Ratey has a new book coming out soon entitled “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.”
Evolutionary scientists have long believed that those in good physical health also possess better mental health. Humans are mobile creatures, the thinking goes, and over the centuries our brains developed with our bodies. You can’t ignore one without harming the other.
“From an evolutionary perspective, it’s all about adapting,” says Dr. John Ratey. “A big part of adapting is learning, and a big part of learning is moving well and moving fast enough to get out of the way of the tiger.”
That makes sense. But, how are physical and mental health linked at the molecular level? Recent advances in medical technology have allowed a better understanding of how the brain operates, and many studies are under way in both lab animals and humans. These efforts are producing a raft of evidence that what’s good for the body is also good for the mind.
Exercise, it turns out, benefits the brain in two major ways. First, it helps generate new brain cells. And second, it strengthens the connections between those cells, providing more mental agility and actually allowing the brain to stay young even as the body ages.
It’s now understood that brain cell production — called neurogenesis — can occur throughout life, even as we advance into old age. However, neurogenesis doesn’t occur at an equal rate in every person or throughout the different times in one’s life. Among the variables affecting the rate of production is exercise. Each time a muscle tenses and relaxes, it releases various chemicals into the body. Among these is a protein called IGF-1 that, when it is conveyed through the bloodstream to the brain, helps organize the production of other beneficial chemicals called “neurotrophic factors.”
One neurotrophic factor, BDNF, or “brain-derived neurotrophic factor,” prompts brain cells to reproduce with remarkable speed. Ratey has called BDNF “Miracle-Gro for the brain,” and a brain surging with BDNF, researchers say, has healthy cells with numerous branches, making it better equipped to process new information. A brain with scant amounts of this chemical closes itself off to new information, and memory tends to suffer as well.
However, intelligence is not just a matter of more cells. “Neurogenesis without connectivity doesn’t work,” says Fernando Gómez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery and physiological science at UCLA. “The cells need to make the connection.”
Our brains consist of the gray matter responsible for information processing, but also include white matter, made up of nerve cells that allow the transmission of information between brain cells. Exercise also aids with maintaining and improving these connections — or what’s called the synaptic plasticity of the brain. People who exercise have higher levels of neurotrophins, resulting in a brain that’s able to function with more agility.
Researchers have found that the positive impacts of exercise on the brain come quickly. In under an hour, improvements in mental fitness often kick in, with synapses firing more efficiently.
These discoveries are the good news. The bad news? Well, the benefits of exercise tend to fall off fairly quickly. People have to keep at it, and these days Americans often don’t place much of a premium on physical fitness. We may be getting not only slower, but also slower on the uptake.
“The big impact is not just that we’re making those new cells, but that it signifies growth rather than death,” says Ratey. “If you’re not in the business of growing, you’re in the business of dying.”
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