It seems as if the producers and bigwigs at ABC have finally gotten wind of the fact that DWTS needs help. The show is getting old and more than that, the time commitment of a 2 hour competition on Monday and a 1 hour results show on Tuesday is just too much, especially for us TV junkies who have other things to watch. Here's a snippet from a media article:
The network announced on Tuesday that it will no longer air the reality series on two nights per week. Instead, it is folding the Dancing with the Stars results show into the competition's performance show as part of a two-hour block on Monday nights.ABC has traditionally aired a one-hour Dancing with the Stars results show on Tuesdays, one day after the performance show.ABC Entertainment President Paul Lee explained the decision to reporters: "We think that by taking the results show and building it in to the two-hour block, from 8 to 10 on Monday night, we can really build a sense of occasion to that and drive viewership to Monday night."
Source: http://www.wtma.com/common/more.php?m=58&ts=1368617704&article=88885F6BBD3E11E286DEFEFDADE6840A&mode=2
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How about a full workout in 7 minutes?
This is from Gretchen Reynolds originally published in the NY Times magazine on 5/12/2013 and it caught my attention and thought I would pass it on:
(Click on image to see full size)
Exercise science is a fine and intellectually fascinating
thing. But sometimes you just want someone to lay out guidelines for how to put
the newest fitness research into practice.
An article in the May-June issue of the American College of
Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal does just that. In 12 exercises
deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates
for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to
the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based
on science.
“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval
training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training
but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology
at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new
article.
Work by scientists at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, and other institutions shows, for instance, that even a few minutes of
training at an intensity approaching your maximum capacity produces molecular
changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike
riding.
Interval training, though, requires intervals; the extremely
intense activity must be intermingled with brief periods of recovery. In the
program outlined by Mr. Jordan and his colleagues, this recovery is provided in
part by a 10-second rest between exercises. But even more, he says, it’s
accomplished by alternating an exercise that emphasizes the large muscles in
the upper body with those in the lower body. During the intermezzo, the
unexercised muscles have a moment to, metaphorically, catch their breath, which
makes the order of the exercises important.
The exercises should be performed in rapid succession,
allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about
an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes
should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re
done.
