The demand from consumers, insurers and corporaons has become so great that either health clubs will respond and take advantage of this opportunity, or healthcare providers will do it themselves. It is in the best interest of health clubs to offer these services in affiliation with healthcare providers. Second, health clubs are a market-driven business, responsive to the changing desire among consumers to maximize their health.

Third, over the past decade, health clubs have matured from gyms that only attract “jocks,” to fitness centers that attract individuals who want more control over their lives through fitness, to health clubs, where deconditioned individuals go for professional expertise to help them progress from one fitness level to the next.

To take advantage of the healthcare opportunity, health club owners must accept their role by expanding programs, communicating their availabilities to consumers, and creating liaisons with healthcare providers.

To better understand how the health club industry can enhance the healthcare system, it is important to understand the recent changes that have occurred in the healthcare system.

Brick-and-mortar superstores such as Staples and Office Depot have also expanded into the online fray, offering massive discounts and small-business advice. So far they are content to sell the office products that Louvat scorns, but should they decide to broaden into the services arena, they could steamroll a startup. Portals such as Yahoo! and Excite that offer both business information and links to vendor sites might also siphon traffic away, suggests Pelino. “If [small-business owners] are comfortable going there as a consumer, why not go there as a small business?” she asks. “They can do a key-word search for lawyers and think they are getting the information they need.”

Dataquest senior analyst Blaine Mathieu adds that because of its size many of BizBuyer.com’s potential customers will approach buying decisions in much the same way that consumers do. They may turn to business-to-consumer aggregator or auction sites, such as NexTag.com, Buyingedge.com, or Respond.com to buy goods.

BizBuyer.com hopes to stay ahead of competitors by raising an additional $20 million in venture capital for marketing and by continuing to add new buying categories to its growing roster of 35. Eventually there will be hundreds, says Louvat. One regret is that existing categories were not introduced early enough for BizBuyer.com’s own purchasing department to take advantage of them. That situation may be remedied in the future. Among the planned future categories is one focused on venture capital. “You could post the basics of your business plan, then venture capitalists will come in and buy, say, 10 percent,” explains Consiglio. “It would be great to open up this system to small companies like us looking for venture financing.”

BizBuyer.com’s own attractiveness will depend on its ability to expand explosively while keeping the auction scales balanced. As long as there is a balance of buyers and sellers the system can work. But if, for example, the vendor pool grows faster than the buyer pool, sellers may not find it worth their time and energy to submit bids. “They have to have a lot of commerce going on on that site to make the RFP fee system work,” concludes Gartner’s Knight. “It will be interesting to see whether they can get vendors into paying for bids that aren’t successful.” If they can’t, one more service category may be in order: bankruptcy attorneys.

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While no competitor has emerged with a model that exactly matches BizBuyer.com’s, there are plenty of others tearing out chunks of the market. One of BizBuyer.com’s better-financed challengers is Seattle-based Onvia.com, a 3-year-old reseller of products and services to small businesses. Rather than facilitate a competitive bidding process, Onvia cuts out the RFP altogether by forming partnerships with several vendors in each of dozens of buying categories. Small businesses can compare prices and then purchase a product, such as a computer system or a new long-distance service, without ever leaving the site. “We’ve done all the hard work for you,” boasts Onvia’s 28-year-old founder Glenn Ballman, who claims to have 800 vendors and 80,000 buyers using the service.

Ballman, who received $48 million in venture financing from Internet Capital Group among others, makes his money both by charging transaction fees on services he resells and by reselling discounted products, such as fax machines and computers. “We’ll go out and find the best deal and then offer that discount to our customers,” he explains.

While thousands come to his site just for the free advice, Ballman, who is going after companies with fewer than 100 employees, chafes at the term “small-business portal.” He insists his site is the antithesis of a portal. He likes to call it an “invertal.” Portals exist to provide links to other sites, he points out. “We will never link you off. You will always be able to complete your purchase without leaving the site. You will have one person to call on when you need help. It’s a get-it-done type of approach.”

PurchasePro.com has also taken the one-stop shop concept a step further. Small-business owners can use the site to perform services. For $149, for example, a customer can fill in the blanks on an electronic form and the Las Vegas-based startup will generate a press release. Email services are available starting at $400 to send out the release.

Gartner’s Knight says the simplicity of Onvia’s and PurchasePro’s buying models may give them some advantages over BizBuyer.com’s for basic purchases, but that most services require a more complex procedure. “If the customers are different enough, you can’t just create one standardized, prenegotiated package,” she says.

Yet another revenue model is being propagated by San Francisco-based business matchmaker eWork, which is targeting the online work force. It plans to make money through what it calls a “match incentive.” Buyers and sellers of services that can be delivered over the Internet can use eWork’s service free to find each other, but if they “want to go to the head of the receiving line,” they will have to pay for it, says Mike Hanley, vice president of business development. In other words, if several different people after the same Web contract all have the same qualifications, the one who offers to pay the most for the privilege gets his or her rЋsume sent first to the buyer. “If I really want to get this job, putting up 50 bucks is not that big a deal,” explains Hanley.

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Following are teaching tips specific to indoor cycling that every instructor should keep in mind when conducting an indoor cycling class:

1. Proper bike fit. Indoor cycling is relatively strenuous on the body, as the hip and knee joints move through limited ranges of motion at varied resistance levels during a typical class. Therefore, it is crucial that all participants are fitted properly on their bikes the first time they attend a class. Perhaps most important are the saddle height for adequate knee and hip flexion/
extension, and the fore/aft adjustment for knee position.

2. Safety review. No matter how many classes your participants have attended, it never hurts to review operation of the emergency brake and correct adjustment of the pedal straps and shoelaces.

3. Cadence ranges. Once the workout is underway, instructors should spend time explaining the interplay of cadence and resistance. Both high cadence/low resistance and low cadence/high resistance combinations can be stressful and unsafe for hip and knee joints. Counting cadence rhythms, using the music beat or demonstrating a relevant range are all tools that an instructor can use.

4. Workout intensity. Indoor cycling instructors are there to encourage class members to work at their own intensity range, and to provide clear guidelines on where riders should be at each stage of the workout. Relating workout intensity to heart rate, perceived exertion or simple examples of what the drill should feel like helps class members gauge where they are and what they should expect throughout the workout.

5. Form and technique. Frequent reminders on neutral spine alignment, pedaling stroke and knee and hand position are essential. As riders get tired and forgetful, their form inevitably suffers. An instructor who gives varied visual, auditory and kinesthetic cues for the same technique will be more successful in reaching all class members and will avoid sounding like a broken record.

6. Class atmosphere. The best way to create a positive class atmosphere is with a great sense of humor, a welcoming demeanor and an adaptable workout. A genuine and friendly demeanor, direct and unintimidating eye contact, and sincere interest for class members’ health and well-being are all key factors in making everyone feel welcome. Giving resistance or cadence options while climbing a steep hill will help beginners feel as successful as experienced riders, while both will be achieving the same goal.

7. Workout plan. A workout is a lot more manageable for the class when an instructor has a clear plan of the ride ahead. Tell class members how many more intervals they will be doing and explain each workout segment so that they are clear on what you are asking them to do.

Calling out exactly how many more seconds are left until the end of a sprint will give class members the opportunity to gauge their efforts.

8. Importance of recovery. When designing an indoor cycling workout, take into consideration the important role of recovery. Because indoor cycling can be an intense cardiovascular activity, recovery will improve the quality of the overall workout and provide for social time in the class; something that is very relevant to riding outdoors in a group.

9. Tune into class members’ needs. Have you ever attended classes where the instructors are clearly there to get their own workouts? Particularly in indoor cycling where coaching is everything, instructors need to be there for the participants’ workouts, not their own. This includes getting off the bike to demonstrate correct form and technique, and choosing music that spans a wide range of taste.

At least for me, being diabetic and pregnant meant staying on an ever-present schedule, with little spontaneity. Every moment was either a time to monitor my diabetes, an occasion to record the results of the routine, or an opportunity to feel guilty for doing neither.

I met with a perinatologist, an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, even before conceiving. He ordered a battery of tests to determine if I were healthy enough to support a pregnancy and then helped me improve my blood glucose control. It is important for a pregnant diabetic to keep her blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible, since high glucose levels in the mother can contribute to serious health problems for the baby, even before the woman realizes she is pregnant.

Under the perinatologist’s guidance, I worked for almost two years to lower my average blood sugar level. I faxed him my glucose tests weekly and, in turn, he suggested adjustments in insulin dose and timing. He was eventually satisfied with my diabetic control and gave me the green light to try to conceive. I was delighted to be pregnant within a month.

Then it was up to me to continue the routine I had developed over the long period of preparation. Each day I ran 10 to 15 blood glucose tests to detect any high or low blood sugar levels promptly and gave myself five to eight insulin injections in response to those readings.

This regimen continued around-the-clock. At night I set my alarm to ring at 3 a.m., so I could test my blood sugar, once again. If my glucose level was high (hyperglycemia), I gave myself supplemental insulin. If it was low (hypoglycemia), I drank milk. Much of the time I felt awful, but it was hard to discriminate between just being pregnant or actually having hypoglycemia, so I ran blood tests frequently to determine the culprit.

Living out this daily routine was more of an extravaganza than either my husband or I had expected, but we tried to keep a sense of humor throughout the nine months. The larger I got, the more I complained, and I was especially loud and grumbly at night. Eventually, I moved to a downstairs bedroom where my husband had installed a baby monitor. This way he could hear me shout if I had an emergency, but he also had the option of turning down the volume on my moans and groans.

There was a sudden change of plans at 37 weeks. By then, I was only able to sleep comfortably for 20 to 30 minutes each night, and my blood pressure was beginning to rise. The perinatologist thought it was time to induce labor, and I seconded the motion.

Thirty-six hours and one emergency Caesarean section later, our daughter was born. She was a 9-pound 10-ounce bundle of determination. My feelings of pride and satisfaction — not to mention exhaustion — had never been greater.

While I felt especially courageous to be a diabetic giving birth to a baby, I realize now that my pregnancy required the same of me that it requires in any woman, diabetic or not. Vigilance and discipline? Yes. Discomfort and loss of sleep? Surely. Joy tempered by worry? Of course. Perhaps I needed to develop these attributes a little earlier than some pregnant women do, but the qualities themselves are not unique to a woman who is diabetic.

It turns out to be fairly easy to describe the difficulties of a diabetic pregnancy but much harder to convey the sense of fulfillment in having a child. My daughter’s birth has deepened the meaning of “challenge” for me and has amplified the meaning of “joy.”

My naivete was a blessing, as it is unlikely I would have chosen to get pregnant had I really understood the complexities of my carrying a baby. In exchange for a pregnancy full of routine, I plowed ahead and delivered a little girl who has reintroduced spontaneity, gusto and pizzazz into my life.

But is it edible?
Day 19 brings the tribes mail with different colored body paint. They were told to choose one color per person and paint themselves. Everyone expects that it has something to do with a merge.

Everyone from both tribes really get into it. Clay says, “Come on, let’s really show some personality.” Jan thinks, “I want to look like a cult member!”

Wouldn’t life be grand if, in addition to wearing different outfits each day, we would also paint ourselves different colors? There would be a whole new world of products and psychology, increasingly more colors and “Paint for Success” books (instead of Dress for Success). The fashion industry would not only design clothes but they would also sell patterns for painting the body. Clothes would also be sold with paint. In the morning, conversations across the land would sound like, “But Mom, I LIKE to paint myself violet-blue.” “No, Jimmy. Today you must be green because we’re going to Aunt Martha’s after school.”

Both tribes arrive at a pow-wow circle kind of thing. Jeff greets them. “Welcome. Congratulations on making it to day 19, a physical and mental feat that your other tribemates were unable to accomplish.

We thought it might be fun this morning to give you guys a chance to get to know someone from the other tribe – a little quality time one-on-one.”

They paired up according to the matching colors. When Jeff called the color, the two people with that color chose 1 of 5 baskets from the center of the circle. Each basket has its own special treat, 2 of which contain further instructions.

“My theory is that the more we get away from pregnancy as a natural spiritual process, the less we support women and their partners through it,” said Stoline, who is opening a women’s mental health and wellness center, Millwood Place, in Fallston, Md.

For example, she said, there is a subtle dance of neurochemical readiness between mother and fetus before birth. Technological intervention in the birthing process is necessary in some cases, but overused in others, to the detriment of that mother-child bond.

That intervention, followed by the isolation of a mother at home with a newborn, can lead some women into a period of postpartum depression.

“Our society likes to think motherhood is a matter of using your head,” said Stoline, who is the mother of two young children. “What we tend to forget is that motherhood is a relationship, a unique bond with another person that can’t be replaced.”

Lest any mother feel further overwhelmed, Zax has some reassuring words based on her research. After all, she said, “No caring mother gets up in the morning and says, ‘oh, gee, I wonder how I’m going to screw up my kid today.’”

First, she asked daughters what they want most from mothers. The overwhelming answer? “Approval.”

And what do mothers want from children? “Understanding of how hard they work at being a mother,” she said. “And I say amen to that.”

“From the 1950′s onward, epidemiological studies … identified personal characteristics as risk factors for the development of premature CHD [coronary heart disease] in previously health people. Of these modifiable factors,” The Lancet reports, “cigarette smoking, blood pressure and total blood cholesterol were most consistently and powerfully implicated.”

The bottom line is that cigarette smoking, elevated blood pressure and high serum cholesterol are the “big three” of heart disease causes. Yet despite the medical community’s knowledge of these factors, the message is still not getting out with proper emphasis in the popular media.

For example, the Feb. 21 issue of Newsweek published an American Heart Association sponsored advertorial on heart health. Both the group’s current president, Dr. Lynn Smaha, and President Elect Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, contribute commentaries to the magazine supplement titled, “A Heart Health Update.”

In his introduction, Smaha wrote about risk factors for heart disease, citing “high blood pressure and cholesterol levels,” but did not once mention cigarette smoking. When addressing “lifestyle factors” that affect heart disease risk, he refers to only two: living with an ill spouse, an alleged risk factor; and owning a pet, a purported protective factor.

In her commentary, Robertson’s first reference to heart disease risk factors omits cigarette smoking despite its significant role in causing heart disease. When she does mention smoking a few paragraphs later, it is only in passing and is given inappropriately low priority on the list of ways to reduce one’s risk of heart attack and stroke.

When asked to comment on the lack of attention given to smoking as a preventable cause of heart disease, both AHA doctors stressed that smoking is a key factor in causation, but said the intent of their articles was to focus on research strategies for treating disease. Unfortunately, general readers could not be aware of the authors’ intent, and the important message that smoking is one of the three major causes of heart disease is lost.

The American public has long relied upon the AHA for information about the causes of heart disease. But the message that young people will take home by reading the AHA’s Newsweek advertorial will not give them the guidance they need to resist the urge and pressure to smoke, nor will it help adults seeking information on ways to lower their heart disease risk.

If the AHA leadership cannot do a better job of alerting the public to the real risks of smoking, who can?

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If you find you are judging yourself harshly, however, stop before you get out your cat o’ nine tails to flail away, she said. It’s not your fault if things are not going the way you expected. Look at the context you are in: who you are, what your kids are like and what is going on around you. It is likely that it doesn’t look anything like someone else’s standard, or even your own childhood.

On a scale that surpasses anything you and your parents went through, today’s families are being hit with the fallout from fast technology, high expectations and too many choices, said Ronni Eisenberg, an expert in how to be organized.

A Westport, Conn.-based author of several books, including “Organize Your Home” (Hyperion, 1999, $9.95), Eisenberg said you can get your family to the point where you achieve a sense of balance for yourself. She should know. She’s raising a teen-ager and 8-year-old twins while running workshops and managing a consulting business.

But even if you can teach your kids the how tos of laundry and table-setting, Getting Organized
Ronni Eisenberg is the mother of three children and the co-author of a series of how-to-get-organized books, including “Organize Your Home” (Hyperion, 1999, $9.95). Mothers have so much to do today, they need to get organized to get it all done, she said.

can you get them to do it?

Absolutely, said Sal Severe of Phoenix, Ariz. A school psychologist and husband whose wife works full time, Severe is the father of four children, ages 3 months to 22 years. He said he gets plenty of firsthand experience in what makes kids tick. The most challenging age? “Adolescence, clearly,” he said.

The author of “How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too!” (Greentree, 1997, $21.95), Severe said the good news is that fathers are much more involved these days with child-rearing. He identifies three approaches for mothers and fathers who are dealing with kids of any age: consistency, patience and practice.

“Discipline is everything we do to teach our children,” said Severe. “It’s not a punishment.” The way to start making changes is to be aware of what needs to be done differently, make the commitment to change and then start doing it. “But don’t expect perfection,” he said.

Nor should you feel you have to compensate for being away 40 to 50 hours a week by giving children whatever they want. “Personally, I don’t think it works,” he said. What does work is to give kids limits that they understand, Some Mothers’ Helpers

help them practice, and then let them know if they got it right.

When mothers think their role is to manage their children’s behavior, an unfortunate thing happens, said Ann Tremaine Linthorst, a licensed family therapist from Orange, Calif., who practices pyscho-spiritual therapy. “Mothers tend to focus on what they don’t like, and not to notice what they do like,” she said.

“This gives rise to the Frankenstein principle: Paying attention to what you don’t like in another person’s behavior tends to create monsters on both sides of the seeing.”

Linthorst is the mother of two grown sons and the author of “Mothering as a Spiritual Journey: Learning to Let God Nurture Your Children and You Along with Them” (Crossroad Publishing, 1993, $12.95). She calls for mothers to stay connected to higher values like creativity, harmony and vitality and use them as a basis for going with their best sense of things. “Mothering is not nearly so much what we do for and to our children as it is how we think about them,” she said.

Even if it seems like every step of the way — from bringing home the first baby to saying goodbye to the last child leaving home — feels like a crisis, Linthorst said, “You can use it as an opportunity for learning and for spiritual growth.”

In fact, said Rutberg, the mother of two children, a whole lot is going on. On those little walks, she may not require a cell phone and a computer, but she does have call for a warm hand and a sense of wonder. For that is when she often teaches son, Teddy, age 2, about nature, or answers questions from her 4-year-old daughter Jamie about things like “Where is Pushing Buttons
You know what it is. The thing that really pushes your buttons, no matter how much you think you won’t overreact the next time your kid does it.

God?” and “Why is the sky blue?”

At the end of a long day with two small children, “I sometimes feel fried,” said Rutberg. “But this is what I wanted to do as a mother — teach my children and watch them develop.” Some of her favorite activities are reading children’s literature aloud and coming up with creative ways to do the ABCs.

Increasingly, for many mothers, those random moments of mothering are evaporating in the face of unyielding schedules. Modern mothers are at the center of a vortex, with everyone’s pressures — from their infants to their own aging mothers — swirling around them. There is always too much to do.

Mothering takes time and space, said Doctor, a psychiatrist specializing in women’s mental health at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md. “And with a pace of life that’s so fast and with so many expectations put on mothers, the experience is at risk in our society.”

Yet mothers are the last to say die. Tuned in to their kids and tired out by all there is to do, at the end of 1999 mothers are mixing their desire for timeless love with their need to time the minutes. And even as women are asking, “How am I doing?” they sense the only answer that counts is the one in their kids’ eyes.

“Frankly, I think we are writing the script every single day, based on where we are in our lives, and where our children are,” said Barbara Zax, a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. “Being a mother is not a static process. It’s a work in progress all the time, even when the children are adults.”

And, she added, “It is a stunningly difficult job.”

Sometimes that shows up in the details, large and small. To work or not to work? Strict discipline or easy-going control? Bake from scratch, or use a mix?

Katherine R. Hutt of Vienna, Va., said she uses books, experts, friends, church and family to provide a framework for her approach to mothering. But what she relies on most is her gut instinct. It comes in handy for everything from career to cookies, and “the zillions of little day-to-day decisions that are Mothering Styles
In the book she co-authored with Stephan Poulter, “Mending the Broken Bough”, family therapist Barbara Zax identifies different styles of mothering. There is no pure type of mother, she said, but most mothers have one distinctive style along with bits of each of the others. up to me,” she said.

After her second child was born, Hutt turned 15 years of experience in the highway safety field into Nautilus Communications, a “virtual” public relations and marketing firm based in her home. Now that she’s eliminated commuting and Saturday errands, she has more time for child-centered activities like weekend bike rides with Billy, 8, and Katie.

“I try to make parenting decisions based more on what’s fun than what’s expected,” said Hutt, who opts for things like slice-and-bake cookies so she and her kids get right to the good part — decorating the tops.

“I am acutely aware of being responsible for my kids’ childhood memories,” Hutt said. To make the best choices, she said she draws on her own favorite memories, like tooling around with her mother and sister in a white VW Bug for after-school adventures. “My mother was an inspiration on how to give your kids a happy childhood,” she said.