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Suffering from tight hips? Yoga to the rescue

March 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I had a ballet teacher in college who said that women have a larger range of motion in their hips due to how our bodies are equipped to work during sex and childbirth. That “usually” is a pretty huge word, because like many women, I have tight hips and as much as I’d love to swivel them, at least on the left side of my body that’s a difficult thing to do.

Lucky for my fellow tight hip suffers, there are a number of stretches and yoga poses that can relive the annoyance of having tight hips.

In a previous post, I mentioned that tight hips and knee problems are often related, so many poses that are good for strengthening knees are also great for hips. To see additional poses for both knees and hips, check out the poses in the previous post.

Reclining Twist

This pose is also a great stress buster, and it is great not only for your hips, but your entire spine as well. It’s also good for relieving stress and muscle fatigue at the end of the day.

Folded Pose

Another great restorative pose to do while lying down (or standing), this pose is great for extending the range of your hips and beating stress

Sukhasana

This is a beginner’s seated pose, and an easy one to use post run or after a weight training program. If you’ve attended a dance class, particularly a ballet class in the past, this one will look familiar.

Double Pigeon Pose

This another one of those poses that few people can manage to do in its full form, but even the smallest amount of effort will give you an incredible amount of relief to your hips.


Even if you don’t count yourself as one of the “bendy types,” there are easy ways to keep your hips flexible, even at your office. One is to get up every fifteen minutes to take a walk, which will stretch your hips in the most natural way possible.

Another way is to roll your desk chair back until you can grab the edge of your desk with your fingertips. Then put your forehead as far to your thighs as possible as you exhale. If you can’t get up from the desk, this is an easy stretch, and one that will also help to cut your stress.

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, yoga Tagged With: ,

Yoga relief for your aching knees

February 24, 2011 By 1 Comment

As any good runner—newbie or not—will tell you, maintaining strong, healthy knees is an absolute must. As you run, the majority of stress falls on your ankles and knees. If you aren’t mental enough to become a runner, you’ll find that you use your knees so much in the course of your exercise program so much that keeping them strong is must.

Knees are tricky to rehab because while they’re easy to injure, they are also difficult to operate on and comparatively slow to heal. And as anyone who’s suffered from a knee injury knows, they’re vital to daily life.

Two of the best ways to keep your knees healthy are by weight training and stretching them. Even if you’re new to yoga, there a several stretches targeted to keeping your knees in top shape.

Triangle Pose:

This pose is usually part of a standing sequence, but you can easily insert it in your stretching routine. This one also requires a bit of balance, so this is a good time to grab a block.

Warrior 1 Pose:

Believe it or not, there are three poses labeled, “Warrior,” but today we’ll be looking at the benefit of Warrior 1.

Pigeon

Pigeon is one of those poses that makes new yogis wince in fear. If your hips are tight, this can be a challenge, but even if you’re terminally inflexible, even the slightest bend is good for your knees and your spine.

Forward Bend

Forward bend is also pretty popular, usually appearing in the Sun Salutation sequence. So if you’re in a yoga class, count on doing it several times during the class. It’s also a good stress buster if you want to just hang out for a few seconds. If prolonged standing is hard, there is a seated version.

Chair

Chair pose not only strengthens your knees, it also works most of the lower body. If you have weak quads, this is a great way to make them stronger since they’ll take a lot of the weight of your body during the pose. A word of caution; this is one of those poses that looks deceptively easy.

Hero

Hero is one of those poses that’s always been uncomfortable for me, because it feels as if it puts more pressure than relief on my knees. I put it in because, as with all yoga poses, each body is different and what is uncomfortable for one person can be the pose that gives you the most relif.

A word about those suffering from knee pain:

Many people turn to yoga as a way to rehab after an injury or if they’re already suffering from pain in some area of the body. And most knee injuries are due to injury or over use from daily life.

If you’re already suffering from knee pain and either haven’t seen a doctor or haven’t been cleared to do light exercise, by all means don’t try to do any poses. You’ll most likely do more harm than good.

Also remember that knees don’t exist in a vacuum. For many people, weak knees are a symptom of a larger problem—namely, tight hips. (full disclosure: my hips have always been tight, so I can totally relate).

The most common reason for tight hips are the long hours that many of us spend sitting in an office chair, plunking away on a computer keyboard.

If you suffer from tight hips, the muscles in your hips don’t allow you enough rotation so that you are able to bend forward in a seated pose. As a result, your knees will try to overcompensate by rotating in a way that it unnatural for them.

If your “knee problem” actually originates in your hips, don’t worry. We’ll look at ways to help loosen your hips in an upcoming post.

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, yoga

Like the ballet workout? Here’s how to get it

February 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Image courtesy of Oude School via Flikr

 

Black Swan has reignited an interest in ballet themed workouts, and these days it’s not that hard to find a place to learn the basic moves. Many gyms and YMCAs are adding ballet workouts to their schedules, and if you’re lucky enough to live close to a professional company, most of them offer classes to the general public.

But if you would prefer to get your ballet fix at home, there are some DVDs that will allow you to learn at your own pace. The New York City Ballet has a two DVD series that was popular long before Black Swan hit the theaters.

I’ve done both of the DVDs, and to be totally honest, I think that they’re horrible. The first NYCB DVD has some kind of awkward mood lighting (that’s the best thing I can think of to call it), that for some bizarre reason leaves the dancers’ feet in the dark. Now, I don’t know about you, but any time I’m looking at professional dancers, the first thing that I look at are their feet and I have no idea why a self respecting cameraman would want to hide them in the shadows. But practically speaking, it means that if you’re trying to learn the moves, you have no idea what they look like since they’re shrouded in darkness. Oh, and did I mention that most of the male dancers are wearing black shoes? Boneheaded all around.

On the second DVD, they got the lighting problem fixed, but the cueing is so bad that in the middle of doing a pas de cheval, you hear the announcer telling you do de a pas de cheval. Good luck with that.

That’s what makes the DVD that I do recommend, Ballet Conditioning by Element, such a great workout. For starters, the workout is performed in the middle of a lush, sunny coastal yard with plenty of light on the instructor Elise Gulan. Even better, the camera focuses on her feet and her full body at appropriate times, which means you can not only get an idea of how the moves look, but how the entire carriage of the body should look when you do the move.

(For ballet newcomers, one of the most important things to remember in ballet is to get the proper carriage of the body. It gives dancers the lean, graceful appearance that we all envy them for.)

The cueing on the DVD is also just right. If you still don’t have a clue what a pas de cheval is, you don’t have to worry. You’ll be doing actual ballet moves without having to wonder what the move is called in French. On the other hand, if you learn the moves with the DVD and later attend a traditional ballet class, you will be surprised to learn that you do know how to do a developee.

I think that the strength of the DVD is that it mirrors a traditional ballet class, without the jargon that can be intimidating. Ballet developed out of the tradition of royal court spectacles, so it has a well deserved reputation for being elitist and a little out of touch for the common person. And I think the program proves that it’s easy to make ballet accessible to anyone by getting rid of the jargon and pulling ballet off of its pedestal.

For Pilates enthusiasts, there’s a nice quick Pilates flavored segment to the DVD. Pilates grew out of ballet as a way to rehab injured dancers, so the connection between the two disciplines is stronger than you might think.

Overall, this is a great solid ballet workout, perfect for the total ballet beginner. It’s also a thorough workout, so be prepared to have sore muscles the next day. This isn’t Ballet for Wimps.

 

 

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3 ways to meet the USDA’s activity guidelines

February 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One aspect of the USDA’s new recommendations on nutrition that’s getting little fanfare are their recommendations for physical activity that will support a new healthy lifestyle. While few of us think of the Department of Agriculture when we think of exercise, the government knows what we all should know: healthy eating works hand in hand with a regular exercise program. Think of them as BFFs. Here’s what the USDA recommends in terms of a healthy exercise program.

 

1. 300 minutes of moderate activity:

You can break those 300 minutes down any way you like, in ten minute, fifteen minute, half hour or hour long bursts. What qualifies as “moderate activity?” Brisk walking (read: no strolling) , gardening, biking, canoeing, water aerobics (easy on the joints), and some forms of dancing.

 

2. 150 minutes of vigorous activity:

Don’t have 300 minutes in your week to set aside for exercises? If you up your intensity level, you can cut your workout time in half. The key is to sustain a higher intensity with vigorous activity. So what qualifies as “vigorous?” Jogging, running, jump rope, race walking, biking hills, swimming fast (no floating on an inner tube),or swimming laps.

 

3. Muscle building:

You’re probably heard it a thousand times: building muscle burns fat. And for women in their 30s, building muscle also leads to healthier bones. Go for pushups, sit ups, lifting weights that work all parts of the body. Yep, it’s time to pull out those old school exercises from P. E. class.

That’s the new guidelines in a nutshell. The easy part is making sense of it. The hard part is actually carrying them out. How are you going to start using the new guidelines in your workout routine?

 

 

 

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, Health, running, weight training Tagged With: , , , ,

Yoga love for your wrists

February 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Wrist pain is becoming more prevalent as more and more of us spend ungodly amounts of working hours in front of a computer. For yoga practitioners, who rely on their wrists and lower arms to support them during many poses, weak wrists are a hindrance. I use a laptop for work, and I quickly found that keeping my wrists in one position for a prolonged amount of time put some strain on them.

You can discover if you have a strong foundation for poses with a simple exercise. Put your hands on a wall. Spread your fingers out as wide as possible. Press the pads of each finger into the wall, then your palms. Maintain equal pressure in as much of your hands as possible. Use these cues when you practice weight-bearing yoga poses.

Wrist pain can be due to a variety of causes, from tightness of the muscles and tendons of the wrist, especially the flexor muscles of the forearm, to specific syndromes, such as carpal tunnel syndrome to anatomical changes at the wrist, resulting from significant trauma or growth of ganglion cysts in the joint.

Not all wrists problems start with the wrists, however; shoulder misalignment are often the culprit, too. The first thing to do is to open and balance the shoulders through a variety of poses performed with good alignment.

The next step is to strengthen the flexor muscles of the forearms (the muscles on the underside, or palm side, of the forearm). Do this through isometric actions in basic positions, while bearing light weight on your hands. It is essential to place the hands on a firm surface, shoulder-width apart; and make sure the creases of the two wrists (where the back of each hand meets the forearm) form a straight line. The fingers and thumbs should be evenly spread. The four corners of each palm (the index finger mound, mound of the thumb, little finger mound, and outer heel of the palm) should be evenly anchored on the firm surface.

To build strength in the flexor muscles, make a claw on a firm surface so that the tips of the fingers and the four corners of the palms press down and draw back toward the shoulders. Keeping the finger pads down, bend the fingers slightly and lift the center of the palms up without lifting the four corners of the palms. The flexor muscles should firm as you attempt to move the head of the arm bone backward in relationship to the torso.

Keep in mind that wrist problems will be aggravated if:

  • Your weight falls to the outside of your hands.
  • Your index finger knuckle lifts away from the foundation.
  • Your weight collapses to the heel of the palm.

t’s important to find an instructor who is experienced in finding variations to the poses that will be kind to your wrists. Blocks and foam wedges are an easy way to modify poses. Sometimes the hardest part of modifying a pose is a student’s reluctance to do anything less than a 100% full version of a pose.

Yoga pose variations for weak wrists:

  • You can also try Half Downward-Facing Dog or Right Angle Pose at the wall, with the arms and torso parallel to the floor.
  • Foam wedges can help reduce the severe angle of extension of the wrist in poses such as Upward-Facing Dog, Handstand, and many of the arm balances.
  • For Upward Facing Dog, Cat Cow, and Downward Facing Dog, instead of spreading the palm on your mat, use fists instead.
  • Use your knuckle pads and finger pads like frogs feet, suctioning onto and into the mat. At the same time, create what feels like a pocket of air at the point where the radius and ulna meet the bones of the wrist. Send breath under your palm, push the heel of your thumb and knuckle into the mat. The same way you create space in your shoulders in down dog, create the same space in your wrists, lift out of them. A great deal of pressure is released
  • Wrap tape 1-2 inches below the elbow across the entire arm.
  • To avoid all pressure on the wrists, substitute dolphin pose for downward facing dog. Keep your shoulders neutral and open during poses to help take pressure off of the wrists.

If you aren’t experiencing any limitation in your wrists, many of the basic poses are excellent for building wrist strength as well as general upper body strength.

Poses to strengthen wrists:

  • Downward Facing Dog
  • Upward Facing Dog
  • Arm balancing poses (such as such as handstand, crow, scale and plank that require the arms, along with core strength, to hold the body off of the ground)

Wrist strengthening exercises.

When I had pain in my wrists, I found the exercises on Ergocise to be the most helpful.

In my own yoga practice, I’ve found that I’ve had the most success in using yoga and stretch DVDs that focus on the wrists or the upper body. Gaim’s AM/ PM stretch—which is my go to stretch yoga DVD–has a PM stretch program where the instructor has you to move your hand palm down, fingers pointing towards your feet. You then push your hips ever so slightly back towards your feet in order to give your wrists a slight stretch.

Jillian Michael’s Yoga Meltdown focuses on developing upper body strength for through her programs. Jillian isn’t to everyone’s tastes, and I certainly don’t recommend her for an absolutely newbie exerciser.

Filed Under: exercise, fitness

10 reasons to practice yoga

February 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Okay,  it’s a given that I’m going to promote yoga on a fitness blog.  And full disclosure:  I’m the “bendy type.”  But no matter how hard it gets to watch human pretzels “Ooooommm” and “Ahhhhh,” there’s lots of reasons to add yoga to your fitness program.  And I’ve got ten perfectly good reasons for you to start today.

Madonna has moved on. Good news: you’ll no longer be derided as just another sheep. She’s like twenty trends ahead of you. Now you can keep doing it and really mean it when you say you’re doing it for the health benefits.

You don’t have to buy shoes. I once had a coworker who told me “I only do Pilates and Yoga, so I don’t have to spend money on expensive shoes.” While I totally disagree with her criteria for choosing a workout method, I can’t fault her for being thrifty.

It’s a great way to ease into weight training. Downward Facing Dog, Plank Pose and Side Plank Pose work the upper body. Tree, Triangle and Warrior I and II work the legs. For strong abs, go with Cat-Cow, Plank or Boat Pose.

You won’t hear the “no pain no gain” mantra during class. In fact, no matter how you do a pose, the instructor will give you lots of encouragement. It’s kind of like kindergarten with sitar music.

You can do it at your desk. If you don’t have time to change and get down to a class, there are plenty of stretches that you can do at your desk.  In fact, one of the healthiest ways to deal with a stressful working environment is to close the door, take a seat and stretch out your body.

It’s cleansing. Yoga helps cleanse the lymphatic system and remove waste from our cells.  The empasis on deep full breathing also means that you’ll improve the amount of oxygen to your lungs and the expulsion of carbon monoxide.

The body benefits. Yoga stretches and loosens all of the soft tissue of the body, including tendons, muscles and ligaments.  Most new practicitioners see the most improvement in flexibility in the trunk and sholders.

The mind benefits as well. there is a decrease in catecholamines, the hormones produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. Lowering levels of hormone neurotransmitters — dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine — creates a feeling of calm. Some research points to a boost in the hormone oxytocin. This is the so-called “trust” and “bonding” hormone that’s associated with feeling relaxed and connected to others

It will help your posture. The standing and sitting poses put a demand on your abdominal muscles, which in turn aids in your posture. The increased awareness of the body also causes you to think about your body during the day. A slouched or collapsed spine obstructs deep breathing, so while you’re working on the breath, you’re helping your spine to sit straighter.

It will aid with other medical conditions. Research is ongoing on the link between an ongoing yoga practice and a lessening of depression symptoms. Yoga is also credited for helping with the symptoms of asthma, back pain and arthritis. The NIH has recently funded studies on the effect yoga has on insomnia and multiple sclerosis.


Filed Under: exercise, fitness, Health Tagged With: ,

10 Healthy snow day activities

February 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Yes, being snowed in can quickly drive you stir crazy, but it’s also an unexpected opportunity to get some things done that you normally don’t get an opportunity to do.  While you sit there in astonishment at the two feet of white stuff out your front window, here’s a list of healthy things you can do while you’re stuck at home.

  1. Sleep. You’re working nonstop every other day of the week, so now’s a good time to catch up on your sleep. But don’t sleep too long or you’ll turn into a slug.
  2. Read. Remember your To Be Read list? It’s stacked over in a corner, waiting for you to
  3. Cut up a salad. It takes so long to cut up, but now that you’re not rushing to the office, you can have time to make it. You can even make a healthier salad dressing by combining olive oil and basalmic vinegar
  4. Cook up a pot of vegetable soup. Food for the week, or if you get really ambitious you can make a month’s worth.
  5. Exercise. Indoor walking is a good alternative to running out on the ice, or you can pop in a DVD for weight training, yoga, pilates, or dance. No DVDs? Turn on iTunes and dance.
  6. Clean out your closet. You can eliminate dust, clean out clutter and actually find your snow boots.
  7. Watch a movie. Granted, siting in front of a TV for hours is bad for your health, but watching the tube for a couple of hours is good for getting out emotions, like a good cry during dramas. Or watch a thriller as an unorthodox way to release tension.
  8. Use the phone. Is there someone you haven’t been in touch with for a while, like Grandma? Now you have time to make a call.
  9. Take care of your skin. You’ve got time to take a nice long bath or shower, so as long as you don’t over do it, you can get some exfoliation done with a loofah or a washcloth. As soon as you get out, slather on Vaseline or thick lotion to keep your skin hydrated.
  10. Drink some water. Now you have time to sit and sip, and if your tap water is of good quality, you don’t have to rely on bottled water.

That’s only ten things, but there are gobs more of things that you can do while you’re trapped in your cabin, waiting for the frozen stuff to melt. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can bundle up and take a walk or start a snowball fight. What other healthy activities do you indulge in when you have an unexpected snow day?

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, Health Tagged With: , , ,

Running my first marathon

February 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

This week, I committed myself to training for the Houston Marathon. Since it won’t come back around until the end of next January, I’ve got about twelve months to prepare.

I took up running for the meditative and cardio benefits it offers, not to be a competitive runner. So I’ve purposefully kept out of entering anything other than a fun run the entire time that I’ve been running.

But given the fact that it’s my home town, I’ll get to run downtown, and it’s so blessedly flat (despite a 127% relative humidity rate), I figured where better to start a marathon career?

Whether or not I’ll actually make it in is pretty much up in the air, since the popularity of the race led the organizers to go to a lottery system. Last year, both the half and full sold out in just 60 hours, so in the interest of fairness everybody throws in the entrance fee, and only the credit cards of those who are chosen will be charged. I managed to get out of taking statistics in grad school so I have no idea what my chances will be of getting chosen to run, but I’m going in with the full expectation that I’ll win a slot.

The organizers notify all of the lottery winners by mid August, so even if I don’t make it in, I’ve got a backup half marathon the week of Labor Day to run. Actually, it’s more like a 14 mile run but that’s plenty good enough for me.

In order to start getting ready for the marathon, I’ve got to start changing how I’m training. For starters, I’ve got to get serious about methodically adding the amount of time I run each week. Up till now, I’ve been just going at a nice leisurely pace for three miles at a time or an hour at a time. Now I have to start getting vigilant about the 10% Rule. I know that I’ll be able to go from 3 miles to 13.1 within a year, but my main concern is my pace. You may have read that my running style is more akin to a perturbed gestating fowl than a graceful athlete, so when I heard that the Houston Marathon is timed and HPD will start clearing the streets behind the stragglers, I realized I needed to get serious about moving my short little legs and my flat tooshie.

So this year is going to break down into goals, some of them directly related to running, some of them general health and nutrition. For the running goals, here’s what I’ve got.

  1. Register for a 5K as soon as possible to keep me on track. Done. I’ve got one coming up in March which will give me an idea of what kind of shape I’m in.
  2. Get one of those GPS thingies that measure my distance. I have no sense of time or distance, and I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those suckers who buys a watch to figure out my pace.
  3. Stock up on shoes and sports bras. So far everything is in good shape, but I’ll have to keep an eye on when I need to replace them. (I love new clothes!!!!!!)
  4. Plan out a more structured running schedule. Right now the weather’s dictating when I run. Now I’ll have to run in all kinds of weather.
  5. Get used to running in humidity. Now, given the weather in Houston in January is usually not that hot or humid, but you never know when a freak heat wave might crop up. If last Summer is any guide, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to sweat myself to death between May and September.

 

General fitness goals:

  1. Dedicate a day for stretching/ yoga. Okay, this one is pretty easy to do since I love both, it’s just finding the time to do them.
  2. Dedicate two days a week to strength training. Again, easy to do, just hard to find the time to have two days a week every week. But I want my core and lower body nice and strong.
  3. Cut out the sugar and salt. Well, Dr Oz and the government will be very happy to hear about that. I’ve cut both of them way down in the past year, so cutting them out will be much easier than a year ago when I was sucking down coffee and salt and sugar as much as possible just to get through the day.

Oh, man- that’s a lot of work to do. But I have an entire year to get this done, so I have plenty of time to get this done. And I’ll look and feel even better than I do now (if that’s even possible), so that’s a great payoff.

So, do any of you have some advice or pieces of wisdom for running my first marathon?

Filed Under: fitness, running Tagged With: , , ,

How I started running

January 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The decision to take up running wasn’t a hard decision for me; it was figuring out just how to go about starting that I had a problem with.  I spent a few hours online, looking at one of those Couch to 5K programs, probably on Runner’s World. This was my second attempt at starting a running program, the first one being a total disaster.

A bit of background: two years earlier, I joined a paid running program back in Texas, one that I assumed would be for absolute beginners since the program description on the website very clearly said “Running for Beginners.” Before I even started shopping for a training program, I had been walking for 30 minutes three times a day for weeks.  So I figured that I was in decent shape for whatever they had to throw at me.

I even told both the instructors that I had done very little running, but they ignored me and we were thrown out onto a public running trail to run for 30 minutes. I just couldn’t keep up. And to make matters worse, I developed Runner’s Knee. For the better part of a month, I had to take it easy just walking because I’d unknowingly done too much too soon.

So this time, I was determined to do it myself, so I could stop when I blithering well wanted to. I did my research and found a great plan to add running minutes gradually.

The eight week program allowed me to start with two minutes running, followed by three minutes walking with a 5 minute warm up and cool down included. Next week I went to 3-3, followed by 5-2, 7-3,8-2,9-1 and finally a full 30 minutes of blissful running. It was perfect for me, and if I didn’t feel like I was improving enough, I could just stick with the previous week’s numbers until I was ready.

The tricky part for me was timing things, since I have no concept of time, and continuously looking down at my iPod as I ran was dangerous and downright impractical. So I came up with a brilliant idea—I would do a sort in iTunes by time, and plan my songs around them. When a three minute song was up, time to switch to walking and so forth.

Until I’d started the sort, I had no idea just how few songs these days are just two minutes long. Luckily, I really like the Smith’s Girlfriend in a Coma, since I got to hear it a lot with those two minute intervals. I was also able to exploit my nerdy side by putting in lots of tracks from the various Battlestar Galactica soundtracks.

I didn’t just take it easy with the timing of the runs. I also started out on a more giving surface. My pre running days were walking days, using Leslie Sansone’s DVDs. So I got used to light jogging on a hardwood floor. This was a practical decision, for several reasons. One of them was the fact that this past summer we were under an unrelenting heat wave, and despite the fact that I’d lived in Houston before I wasn’t taking chances. So for part of my first few weeks, I would run inside and take one day to run outside on the asphalt.

Even though most newbie running programs tell you not to worry about your stride until you get going on a regular running program, I had a feeling that I was doing something wrong.  My quads just felt heavy.  Since I was completely obsessed with avoiding a second case of Runner’s Knee, I figure out if there was something wrong with my stride that I could tweak from the beginning.  As it turned out, I was stomping like a horse as I ran, so picking up my knees as I ran made things much better.  It even got rid of a teensy bit of tenderness in my left knee that was starting to cause me a mild panic.

I also raided the Runner’s World website for any and all tips on keeping my knees healthy.  And since experts recommend that you strengthen your hips as well as quad muscles in order to give your knees all the support they can get, I tried every stretch I could find to get my hips and quads as well. On my off days, I did as many lunges and squats as recommended to get them strong during my weight training.

By the time I’d finished the eight weeks, all of my worrying and obsessing about my knees paid off.  I had nice strong runner’s legs and my lower body was incredibly toned.  And other than normal tenderness that comes with starting a new program, I really didn’t have any trouble with my knees.

For you runners out there, how did you go about starting a running program?  Were there any past injuries that you paid special attention to?

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, running Tagged With: , , ,

Old school exercise- they’re cheap and still your best bet

January 24, 2011 By 3 Comments

Women’s Health has a no equipment, no frills cardio workout that I’m going to switch to next week during my cardio rotation. I’m doing that in order to take a break from running while Snowmageddon piles on my driveway.

I love the no equipment routines because so many routines published in magazines require you to use at least one piece that I either hate or cant’ afford. Usually in the hate column are resistance bands. And as much as I’d love to get a BOSU, I just can’t afford one.

But what I love about this routine is that you don’t even need hand weights, which means that it’s pure cardio and if you want to knock yourself out, you could conceivably do it every day. But for most people that would be totally overdoing it.

Somethings just have staying power.  Usually, that’s because they simply work, or they’re just so simple that it’s hard to muddle them up.  Or they’re dirt cheap (or free, which is great for us poor people).  The same thing goes for old school exercises that you’ve probably been doing since elementary school.

And if for some reason your school cut the PE program before you got there, they’re so easy to learn that it takes very little know how to do them.

Push ups

Whether you’re on your knees or all the way on your toes, push ups are amazing for upper body strength training.  And they’re a great indicator of overall health for women.  No matter if you do them on your knees or one your toes, you’re getting a great workout for your core as well as your rear end.  If you’re a total glutton for punishment, 100 Pushups will give you a plan for working up to doing 100 of them in one sitting.  And they make you feel all nice and pumped when you finish slinking away.

Jumping jacks

Doing 20 minutes of jumping jacks will produce the same results as 20 minutes of jogging.  It’s also a great way to increase lung capacity, in addition to being a exercise that takes up very little room.  If you absolutely can’t move your arms up and down, jumping your legs out while crossing your arms will give you a good cardio workout.  Other than shaking my ponytail holder out of my hair, I can’t think of a downside for jumping jacks.  For a larger breasted woman, a sports bra is a must, but that’s the only piece of “equipment ” you need.

Jump rope

Jumping rope can burn up to 1000 calories an hour, depending on your pace and the amount of time you jump.  Jumping utilizes several skills at once, inducing agility, speed, coordination and endurance.  Oh, and did I mention that you can get great calves while doing it?  Since I’m a klutz, I just pretend to have a rope to skip.  You can go all out with a nice fitness based model, but if you’re at home and don’t mind looking silly with a pretend rope this is a nice free exercise that is great cardio.

Running

Known as the King of Cardio, running can burn more calories for hour than any other form of cardio workout.  Running can even work to diminish your appetite.  Price wise, you need to invest in running shoes.  That can run you about $100, so I can’t really claim that running is “cheap.”  But in terms of a return on your investment in your health, it’s simple and intuitive so it’s a high return.

These are my all-time favorite old school exercises, and most of them are a pretty good value overall for the benefit they bring to your body.  But this isn’t an exhaustive list.  Swimming, basketball are just a couple of ways to get fit with very few pieces of equipment.  What about you? What are some of your favorite old school exercises?

Filed Under: exercise, fitness, running, weight training Tagged With: , , ,
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