Blog 9 - The gym :)

After thinking long and hard about what I feel a discourse community is I have decided to talk about the gym as being one. I have not selected one specific gym but just any gym in general that someone would attend. I have noticed that a gym actually has a discourse community that I am a part of. A discourse course community is where people share common goals and understand each other basic values and assumptions. The discourse community that I am apart of involves a fitness community. For example, everyone that attends the gym is all looking for pretty much the same outcome at the end of the day or there training. We as a fitness community share the common goals to gain strength within ourselves. We also want to have the flexibility and to being able to train our body’s for long endurance. Another positive thing about the fitness community is we all want to be able to gain confidence within ourselves as well as showing it to others.  As this type of community we would like to be able to walk with our heads held high showing off the progress that we have made to ourselves. Some of our values include safety and injury prevention. These two things are so greatly important when taking part in physical activities. If you are uneducated on how to properly prepare yourself for a workout, you must take some action before doing so. If you do not stretch what needs to be stretch you can cause some serious damage to yourself. Now not only are you going to be in pain, but you will be out of the gym while your recovering from this injury. The gym is our home, second home to anyone in the fitness community. This discourse community has taught me that we all may be taking part in this community for different reasons but we all intend for outcomes to be the same, we are one and no one should be judging. In my personally opinion, I work out because I have got sick awhile back as I have stated in my other blog posts. With that being said, I added extra weight to myself that I was extremely unhappy with. I have lost weight throughout the process and am very pleased and proud of myself for pushing myself and not backing down. However, I enjoy going and seeing all the different types of people that attend. I still have much to go, but I feel as though no matter what size you should never be afraid to make a change to yourself. There will not be judgment in this community of fitness, only encouragement. Another women might be working out on the treadmill next to me because working out relieve stress for her. The women may be perfectly content with her weight but just exercises for a stress reliever. Another man may work out because his doctor has ordered him to because of health reasons. The point I am trying to make here is no matter what the situation is we all share the same interest and goals for ourselves.  Once the people in the fitness community may have achieved their goals they may still remain in the fitness community because they enjoy it. I personally love belonging to the fitness discourse community because it has really brought the better person out in me, I look forward waking up every day knowing I am going to do something good for my health and my mentality.

             Blog Eight- Make the Change !

I am going to start off by talking about cardio exercise workouts. Cardio exercise is anything that is anything physically that is able to get the heart rate up. Cardio exercise uses large amounts of your muscles throughout a constant movement keeping your heart rate at a level of at least fifty percent. Cardio is the key to shredding off some extra weight. While taking part in cardio exercise it will most certainly burn fat and you should be sweating. However, in order for you to burn the fat you need to be consistant with some cardio workouts.  For example, you could run, walk, go for a swim or even ride a bicycle.  You need to be participating in this workout for a minimum of twenty minutes of a continued elevated pulse rate, at least three times a week to begin to see results.  Now sometimes you may not see a great amount of weight loss from doing cardio. However, it does have benefits for your health that are something that you should take into consideration. In my personal experience I have had some much more energy while participating in cardio workouts. Also I tend to stress myself out very easily. I go through things and take them as the worst possible thing that could have happened and have a difficult time copping with it. But when I am able to run on a treadmill or go to the park and run for miles at end, I feel relieved like I do not have a worry in the world. I feel it helps so greatly for the mind as well as beneficial for the body. On another note, these types of workouts are beneficial because it keeps your heart strong and you healthy. I am not saying go to the gym and purchase a membership. You are able to just go for a twenty to thirty-minute walk around your neighborhood or a development near you.  If you are not one to take part in physical activity at first it may be tiring and you may be sore. Although you may be sore from your muscles not being worked in that particular way, after time the effects on that will change and you will become stronger with those workouts. You should also be familiar with the two schools for cardio training. To start off there is the “slow and steady” and then the “high intensity”. Not one or the other is better nor worse. These two schools however just consist of two different type of people and how they participate in their workouts.  The slow and steady takes part in long duration workouts for possible forty-five minutes to an hour. While doing this there are burning fats rather than burning carbs. This is defiantly a low intensity was of cardio.  There also is the high intensity group. This group consist of short duration of twenty to thirty minutes of burning tons of calories while possibly sprinting or doing other fast movements. Remember to challenge and push yourself to do the most you can do, eventually it will pay off.

To refresh your memory, the topic I have chosen was health and fitness. I feel like a good topic to blog about may be Zumba. Over the years I have been to numerus Zumba classes and all have them been quite a challenge for my body. You absolutely need to be mentally and physically prepared for this type of class. I have attended two different Zumba studios and they both gave me two completely different outlooks on them.  If you are unfamiliar with the term Zumba, it is an aerobic fitness program with movements by Latin American dance and performed to Latin American dance music. I feel as though these classes are extremely inspiring and up moving for the body and mind. In the past when I have attended Zumba classes, I think the reason I kept going back was because of the instructor. I have been to classes where the instructor failed to have the energy and pep.  I never went back to that one place because I felt I did not get the full effect of the studio. That studio did not catch my interest in the slightest bit. However, I attended another class at a different place with a different instructor and she was fantastic. The women made me want to take part in another class, you best believe I went back there for another session. The music was out of this world. The music was able to make my heart beat and keep me in the rhythm to work out and burn some calories. I have never been into that type of music but after hearing it in that atmosphere changed my way of thinking. I feel you are so unaware of how many calories you actually burn from this workout because of the upbeat atmosphere you are able to surround yourself in. But in addition to the fantastic instructor the facility could have been more up to date. The colors of the room were very dull. The color of the room was a simple baby blue with nothing else really to look at. I expected there to be bright colors flashing at my eyes when I walked in. For example, like a bright red, orange or even yellow. I also expected to see posters and signs all over the walls. If you have ever been to a gym you know they always have the posters encouraging, you to do your best. This place did not and I was let down. I expected the scenery to be very inspiring and motivating. This facility defiantly lacked this in my opinion. Another thing I was disappointed about was the amount of people that were in the class, it was a very large class. There was a wide variety of people. There is nothing wrong with this, the room just felt like it should have been bigger to have had so many people in this room. I felt like I was not able to move around as much as I could in the other facility I went to.

Blog 6: my story

We are being asked to share a story about the topic we chose. I chose health and fitness. Thinking about this topic brings many flashbacks to my head. However, I think I would like to talk about the time when I got the clear to do physical activity again. I used to be a really athletic person, soccer and softball was my life. Every day it consisted of me being outdoor or inside practicing these skills. It was around August of my senior year in high school when things started changing for me. This was the time when pre works out for soccer were starting and then try outs would come next. Knowing it was my senior year playing varsity with all my friends I could not be more excited, it was my year, my last year doing this. During this time, the days of running and kicking the ball around on the field became harder and harder for me to accomplish. I would cry about the pain I was in. I complained as though my body was shutting down. My bones in my arms and legs could not stand the activity this is when I knew I had a real problem at hand. I would get shooting pains through them, not being able to use my muscles. I was unable to hold something for longer than 2 minutes without dropping the object. Walking or standing for longer than 10 minutes was not possible either. I began missing more and more days of school because I was unable to hold the pencils and take notes and do the work that was assigned. Everything I did became a challenge for me.  I felt useless. However, after many long months of doctor visits and medicine after medicine, things finally began to improve and I got the energy and strength back to do activities. I got the okay to do physical activity. I remember being so excited to actually go for a run and do any sort of physical activity. It was September 27^th and I was finally able to go to the gym nine months later on my own. No one knew how happy and excited that had made me. I had gained unnecessary weight from getting sick that all I wanted to do was loose what had been added on. I wanted to feel confident with myself and not be ashamed. I remember walking into the gym door knowing I got this. The doctors gave me the okay but I knew I still had to take it light because my strength was still not all there. That was beside the point though, I remember do some cardio exercises to then lifting some weights. I began to go every day/night. I was so sore for the longest time because of not doing anything but resting for so long. Although I was so sore I enjoyed it, I was satisfied with the pain because it was a good kind of pain not like what I went through. I still have my issues with my health but am finally able to control and handle the pain and take the medicine to help. I think this is why I really am excited to blog about this topic because it defiantly hits home to me.

Blog post 5! The start to a new lifestyle

I chose to write about health and fitness for my blog posts. I would describe this topic as someone being in a shape that they are able to fulfill a task that involves physical activity. This topic is relevant to me because I have been extremely dedicated to the gym within these last six months or so. Like I said prior in one of my assignments, I informed you about how I got very sick a little over a year ago and was extremely down with myself with the way I looked. I was unable to do physical activity because of my health conditions that changed my life. Sad to say I put on extra weight. With that being said I took my feelings about myself into my own hands. I have seen such physical changes in myself as well as my health ways too. I feel so much happier with the way I look now as of six months ago. I also feel as though I have more energy from the way I have been eating. I have changed the way I eat drastically making myself feel more energized. I feel that this could be relevant to other people because I feel that many people may want to change the life style they are living but are unsure of how to do it. Maybe they are unsure of the way to start or are too scared to ask for help on this topic. I plan to discuss ways to improve your personal look. For example, I am going to blog about workout exercises you should do. Another thing I am going to talk about is the way about of your eating, like what may be good and bad for improving your health and physical appearance. I really want to focus on your overall body image. I want to talk about the way many of our brains think about ourselves. This means that at some point I want to elaborate on why we think of ourselves as being “fat” “overweight” or even “to thin”. There are thoughts behind this and I want to talk and learn about this. Throughout the semester of me blogging about health and fitness, I really hope to learn much more about this topic. I hope to further my knowledge so I am able to help myself with this as well as anyone else who wants the help. I expect to discover things to improve my body weight and physical exercises that I may be not familiar with. You should know as the reader that I hope that you may take what I say into consideration and try it yourself. I also hope that if you do consider to do the exercises and meal plans that I talk about and see changes that you inform me about how you are doing.

Digital literacy in my opinion is basically reading an article online or doing research about the subject. Now in my opinion I feel that learning online can be much more difficult then as if you were in a structured class. I feel that it is more challenging for you to focus and grasp what is being asked because it is all the student with no help from an outsider. I feel that digital literacy can vary from traditional literacy because you may be used to having the assignment right in front of you making it a physical and mental learning experience. With digital it is just in the keyboard as you search for your information.

               Some of the issues that are associated with online reading may be because it takes so much time from a teenagers growing experience. They are hooked to the computer whether it is doing homework or searching things on YouTube. Teenagers testing skills are even going down because of this. Also may even have an effect on an induvial attention span. I absolutely agree with these statements. I would agree with them because I feel reading online changelings the mind, I feel like one may be more stressed from the lightening of the computer and the text being so small. I feel it absolutely have an impact on the mind, especially teenagers.

               However there are benefits to reading online. Some may say because you are able to create your own storyline. Also reading skills are valued by employers. This is a major key in your hiring process. There was a study done in 2006 which showed that people who scored higher on reading tests tend to make a higher income. I do agree with this as well, because in today’s world reading is an everyday skill we need. For example, as little as reading our gps to reading a 30 page paper our professor assigns us. Reading is an important skill to have mastered.

      

               A few things that stuck out to me while reading this article is how reading online can have a serious impact on the mind. I never truly thought about that until reading this. Another thing that stuck out to me was the way they stated about hunter being dyslexic and how he went through school in special education classes. However once he entered high school he dropped those classes. He stated how “Online just gives you what you need, nothing more or less.” I think that is a very powerful line to have said. If you are not a big online reader you are unaware of how useful the internet may be. I think this article relates to pencils to pixels because Baron talked about how technology has changed writing. As in this articles they talk about how much of the internet has affected our society.

In pencils to pixels, I believe baron is right when he said technology has changed writing. I feel over the years it has changed the way we communicate for sure, but possibly for the better. An example that may justify this reason is that the pencil was not intended to write, it was meant for measurements in math. Also as time went on other technology came into play. The type writer was what started and now today we have the computer and laptops.

Some writing techniques that I prefer today is the computer/laptop. I would say this because the computer is such a useful tool, that can help and teach us all well. Everything I possibly may need can be right in front of me with a click of a button. I feel this tool is so valuable and has such a powerful impact on us.  I prefer this because while I am doing this assignment, I can backspace, write, and rewrite making it just how I like.

However as a child the only way to ever have an assignment done was by writing in pencil. I absolutely hated using a pencil as a child, even to this day if you were to hand me a pencil I would probably chose to not write anything then to use a pencil. I hate the way it feels when you drag it along the page. I feel that was a reason why I struggled with writing as a child. What I feel may have hurt my writing techniques was using a pencil and a piece of paper. I feel by using them it would make the process and little harder with the editing and time consuming. Writing techniques that helped me was defiantly writing in pen. I always enjoyed that, I felt confident while writing with a pen.

I feel pixel has many advantages. One may be that it has spell check. Spell check is so important when turning in assignment, no teacher wants to read an essay that is messed up in grammar and punctuation. Also I feel that it may be quicker and easier. However, some disadvantages may be that you may tend to lose your work due to computer problems. Some writing techniques that may be disadvantage it may take way to long or even delete the work that you already did or started. An advantage to writing techniques is it is very reliable and simple.

I believe that the literacy of writing has changed in some ways. With this being said, I feel it is not the writing that changed but the way we go about it now. For example, instead of pen and paper we have a computer and keyboard. The concept is still there. However it just varies in the way it once was. I feel there is nothing wrong with this. I feel that in this time an age technology will always be changing meaning we need to expect it at one time or another, making it this time.