Trying to get a little more umph from your exercise, without adding more time?

Try adding a balance requirement.

Start using balance tools, like a wedge, foam block or air-filled disc. By combining dumbbell moves with cushy equipment, you increase the workout challenge and the payoff.

That’s because when you step onto an unstable surface, your body has to work to stay balanced — so you naturally recruit more muscles than just the ones you’re targeting. Strengthening these stabilizer muscles (the quadriceps, hamstrings, upper hips, inner thighs and core muscles work the most when you’re standing on a balance tool) reduces your risk of injury and helps you perform everyday activities with greater ease. Plus, you’ll look slimmer and more sculpted from head to toe.

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The American College of Sports Medicine claims that you need just 150 minutes of “moderate intensity” activity per week to reduce the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Moreover, exercise mavens now say you can divide your workout into smaller increments and still get health benefits. At the annual ACSM meeting in June, researchers from Britain’s Loughborough University reported that people who took three 10-minute jaunts daily achieved the same overall fitness results as people who walked continuously for 30 minutes. “How you package the activity is not as important as how much you actually do. Package it any way [that] it works for you, just get it done,” advises Russ Pate, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Carolina, who helped author a set of federal guidelines on exercise.

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Modern snacks are laden with calories and generally come in larger serving sizes than they did ten and twenty years ago. If you’ve got the idea that you can have that pint of soft serve and then play some hoops for a half hour to burn it off, you should reconsider.

She warns that torturing yourself on the tennis court to burn of the tiramisu may not work. “For the most part, it is a lot easier to take in calories than it is to burn them off,” Phelps-Coxton says. “Weight loss takes diligence, cutting calories, eating the right type of calories and exercising.”

Fitness experts say it helps to visualize how much exercise it takes to burn the calories in comfort foods, the ones we love to indulge in.

By the way, a pint of soft serve ice cream has almost 800 calories, and you’ll burn just 200 calories per half-hour on the basketball court.

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Russian doctors have long used “low oxygen” therapy for their elderly patients. A current study shows that breathing air with a lower than normal oxygen count increase red blood cells and hemaglobin levels.

Moreover, based on changes in heart rate and blood pressure, low oxygen training increased aerobic capacity and exercise tolerance. The investigators found that the low oxygen sessions appeared to provide similar benefits for men with and without a prior heart attack.

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Sue West has released a new DVD that combines the grace of ballet with some basic yoga and Pilates work. Titled “The Sante Fe Stretch,” the video aims to help viewers develop lean, supple, dancer-like bodies.

The program is not simply a stretch routine, despite its name. Though it offers few aerobics benefits, it provides plenty of toning and strength-building moves along with the expected flexibility training.

And it also offers the beautiful, even inspiring scenery of Santa Fe, with its verdant forests and grayish purple mountains.

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