Treadmill

Now that it has become colder in much of the country, many runners are training on a treadmill. So it's important to know that the vital factor in getting the most out of a treadmill is its incline angle.A good treadmill allows you to raise the front of the machine so the rolling belt you run on is higher in the front than in the back, to simulate running up hills.The incline is absolutely necessary for real runners because running on level ground does not adequately develop your upper leg muscles.

Charm City residents looking to tone up for beach season have a number of options. They can hit the treadmill, take up yoga or start dancing off the pounds with Zumba. But there’s another, more extreme way to get in shape that’s gaining popularity in Baltimore: training with cage fighters. At Ground Control Academy in Canton, where some of the area’s top mixed martial arts fighters train, owners are seeing an increasing number of members who never plan to step foot in a cage, but value what the intense MMA workouts can do for their bodies.

If you want to use exercise as a way to help you lose weight, work out immediately after you eat.Since the only way to lose body fat is to burn more calories than you take in, exercise plays a major role in increasing the number of calories you burn. Therefore, it's obvious you can burn the greatest number of calories by exercising right after a meal. (In fact, your body continues to burn extra calories for several hours after you've finished exercising.)This news raises two concerns. First, does exercising after eating make you so tired you can't exercise as much?

Gov. Parris N. Glendening announced yesterday that he would seek to delay controversial vehicle emissions tests that were supposed to begin in June.The governor said that after consulting with legislative leaders, he will support bills already introduced in the General Assembly to postpone for another year the requirement that Maryland motorists have their autos and light trucks tested on a treadmill-like device.Motorists will still have to bring their vehicles to one of 19 testing stations to check their tailpipe emissions, state officials stressed.

PREDICTING THE issues that will dominate next year's state elections at this early stage is akin to peering into a crystal ball. It is too soon to know what hot-button items will surface.Gov. Parris N. Glendening hopes that no burning controversies emerge, that he can campaign on a ''Happy Days Are Here Again'' theme, touting his successes, in an era of prosperity, on education, economic development and planning for the future (''Smart Growth'').He also intends to make sure every voter knows he is the true anti-gambling candidate, while the rest of the field is on the fence -- or tacitly in cahoots with casino interests.

It took exactly two weeks for Kirstie Durr to break a pledge to get in shape for the new year on her brand new ProForm 525 X treadmill. It wasn't for lack of willpower. Blame this resolution relapse on the $450 treadmill that her husband purchased for her online as a Christmas present. The confounded contraption simply went kaput in the middle of a fairly innocuous 45-minute walk. "It just got stuck on 10, a really, really steep incline," said Durr, 36, a senior vice president of a high-powered marketing firm in Baltimore.

It's 7:30 in the morning and I am on a treadmill at my health club, watching CNN on the big plasma TV and slowly getting a migraine. I am here because if I didn't do this, I would weigh 400 pounds instead of having the sleek, pantherlike body I have now. A sign nearby says something about a yoga class. Don't talk to me about yoga. I tried it once. I went with my wife and a friend to this yoga place in Timonium. You had to take off your shoes, which I wasn't crazy about, and it was 95 degrees in the room.

WHEN I was an overwrought housewife and young mother, working part time and feeling a bit like a squirrel in a cage, I looked ahead, sort of, to when the kids would be launched and the days would yawn before me, full of stimulating occupation and discerning entertainment. I did not envision that soon after the kids became adults I would become -- almost, anyway -- old. I did not envision the expensive and time-consuming work that nature would demand of me -- physical maintenance. Instead of taking my children to the pediatrician, I now go to various specialists for checkups and procedures to check body parts that aren't as reliable as when I was young.

SOME MEMBERS of the General Assembly are playing a game of "chicken" to see if the federal government will blink on auto emissions testing. If they're wrong -- which they almost certainly are -- Maryland could lose plenty.A faction in Annapolis wants to block the governor from implementing mandatory dynamometer testing of vehicles in June. For most Marylanders, the inspection, which lasts a few minutes and is good for two years, is no big deal.Metropolitan motorists have been taking their cars for "tailpipe" check-ups for a decade.

WHO'S against clean air? Not I. Not you. What some of us are against, however, is the manner in which that essential substance we breathe is cleansed. Specifically, the cost and inconvenience of such purifying remedies.The governor, with appreciative cheerleaders from the business community, has virtually assured that most autos in Maryland will be required to pass a dynamometer test every two years. That means giving the keys to an emissions station "technician" to drive your car on a treadmill at speeds up to 55 mph.And that has upset a lot of people, whether they be the vocal minority or the silent majority of affected motorists.