FitSugar

Fit for December: Must Haves

FitSugar — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 10:15:00 PST

They say the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year, but I must add that it generally isn't the healthiest. Here are a few things I think will help you stay happy, fit, and healthy in December.

REI Power Stretch Tights ($70)	Hands2Go: Alcohol Free Anti-bacterial Hand Sanitizer ($3.50)
Juice Beauty SPF 15 Tinted Lip Moisturizers ($15)	Peppermint	Single Leg Squats

If you want to see why these are my December must haves just

REI Power Stretch Tights ($70): Come winter and snow time, you want a pair of toasty pants you can wear for a variety of activities, and these Stretch Tights by REI will take you on a run through wintry streets and to the slopes as a great base layer. Made with Polartec fabric that stretches four directions to ensure ease of motion, they have a moisture-wicking velour fleece to keep you dry on the inside and a smooth nylon outer face that sheds light rain and wind. I love that they come with an unobtrusive zippered side pocket.
Hands2Go Antibacterial Hand Sanitizer ($3.50): Keep your hands germ free with this alcohol-free hand sanitizer. Not only does it kill 99 percent of bacteria, but it also moisturizes with a blend of aloe vera, chamomile, and lavender extracts.
Tinted lip balm with sunscreen: Just because it is cold outside doesn't mean the sun cannot do damage. I love this trio of lip moisturizers with mineral tint for color and SPF 15 by Juice Beauty ($15). There is a color for every occasion. I would definitely slip one if these into the zippered pocket of my REI running tights!
Peppermint: This herb is more than candy-cane flavoring; peppermint is considered by many to be the world's oldest medicine. Peppermint has been shown to help decrease symptoms of irritable bowl syndrome. It can also help relieve cold symptoms by working as a decongestant and expectorant. Warm yourself with a cup of peppermint tea.
Single-Leg Squats: Skiing season officially starts in December (here's hoping for a good snow year in the Sierras) and you need to start conditioning for the slopes now, if not yesterday! Single-leg squats are the exercise to get your thighs mountain ready. Start with six reps on each leg, for two sets.

4 Reasons to Add an Exercise Ball to Your Home Gym

Leta Shy — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:58:44 PDT

The exercise ball may occupy a lot of room in your home gym, but it's one versatile piece of equipment. Find out how to get the most out of your exercise ball below.

A healthier seat: Ditch your normal seat on the couch and sit on an exercise ball instead. Using a ball to sit helps correct your posture, tones your abs, and encourages you to stretch, all of which sounds a lot better than the lower back pain that too much sitting on the couch can cause.

Routine shakeup: Adding an exercise ball to your normal mat routines can shake things up and challenge you. For example, you can plank using an exercise ball at your feet to make holding your pose that much harder, or sit or lay on your exercise ball while you execute arm exercises. Even just practicing your balance by kneeling on the exercise ball can help you tone and whittle. Need some ideas? Try these amazingly effective ab and butt workouts using the exercise ball:

Find out how to do the plank pike and the hamstring curl using an exercise ball with this advanced exercise ball workout video.
Skip boring crunches and do this ball pass ab exercise instead.
Challenge your core and balance with this single-leg squat, done against a wall using an exercise ball.
Lie on the ball and work your arms with this chest press move.

Read on for more reasons to use an exercise ball.

Get on the Ball: Single Leg Squats

FitSugar — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Squats are so much fun. OK, maybe you don't love squats but you must admit they get the job done. If you have a stronger leg, or a dominant leg, chances are high you are not working your legs evenly and your weak leg is getting short changed. The answer is, of course, single leg squats. Doing them with an exercise ball is a great way to tone your booty, challenge your core as well as your sense of balance, and strengthen your legs independently.

Stand at a wall with your exercise ball at your low back with a considerable portion of the ball on your pelvis.
Walk your feet out away from you as far as they need to be so you can bend your knees to a 90 degree angle keeping your knees over your ankles.
Lift your right leg off the floor inhale as you bend your left knee to 90 degrees. The ball will roll up your back as you bend your knee. Don't tuck your pelvis – keep your sits bones pointed straight down.
Exhale and pull your abs toward your spine and straighten the left knee, coming to standing. Keep your right leg off the floor.
Do: 10 reps on each leg for two to three sets.

Single leg squats are a great corrective exercise and great for injury prevention if you are a runner. It is important to have balanced legs and single leg squats will help strengthen your weak leg.

One-Legged Moves Help You Bust Through a Fitness Plateau

Susi May — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:32:57 PST

Reaching a fitness plateau means you're getting stronger (congrats on all the hard work), but it also means it is time to kick it up a notch. You need to add some new challenges to your workouts. My Equinox trainer Lauren has taught me one simple tweak will make every exercise harder: go one legged. Taking one leg off the floor forces your entire body to work harder to keep you on balance. Here are a few examples.

Take a simple move, like standing biceps curls, and lift one leg to 90 degrees so the knee is in line with the hip. Making yourself unstable adds core work to basic arm exercise.
Work your legs independently with single leg squats and see how much more your glutes and abs kick into gear.
Lift one leg while doing push-ups, this works even if you do push-up on your knees, and you will be challenging your abs even more.
Any standing exercise with the cable pulley machine can be done one legged, like this triceps exercise or basic upright rows.
Do full sit-ups with leg extended in front of you, which is also a prep move for the Turkish get up.
Try a Bulgarian split squat, with leg on the ground and the other on a weight bench. A great way to work your legs and center.
Take your row and tip it over so you're standing on one leg with your body parallel to the floor - this works your legs, core, and back!
Reverse plank with one leg is simple isometric hold works the entire body.

Last Chance! An End-of-Season Workout to Up Your Ski Game

Leta Shy — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:14:27 PST

Even with this mild Winter, we've still seen our fair share of snow in the mountains. And while Spring is just around the corner, late-season storms around the country have given us the gift of fresh powder. If you're planning a snowy mountain weekend anytime soon, here's a circuit workout that works your core, lower body, and balance - courtesy of Erick Northrup, a district fitness manager at Crunch and avid skier - to keep in your workout rotation before you head to the slopes.

Get the workout after the break!

10 Sneaky Toning Moves You Can Do at Work

Self — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:30:38 PDT

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Self here on FitSugar!

Your office nemesis isn't that know-it-all in the cubicle over, it's lurking right beneath you: your chair!

The more you're sitting, the less calories you're burning... not the ideal bikini body plan.

Picture this: when sitting, your activity in your muscles drops and the calorie-burning rate decreases to just about one per minute. And, women who spent more than six hours per day of sitting (less than a full day of work!) had a 37 percent higher death rate, according to a study from the American Cancer Society. It's scary stuff.

Since I haven't quite mastered the art of jogging while responding to emails, I asked creator of the MELT Method Sue Hitzmann and creator of FitKit Office Amie Hoff to share tips for combating the effects of being chair-bound. And since turning your office into a pseudo-gym can garner a few strange looks, they've kept their exercises as sneaky as possible. Just tell your bosses what's good for your health is good for their bottom line, and try to convince them to bring these healthy vending machines to the break room!

Check out these easy moves after the break!

Strength Training No-Nos: What Not to Do When in Squats

Susi May — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:02:53 PST

No matter your fitness passion, from snowboarding to CrossFit, you likely do squats in your sweat sessions - they're a fitness staple. Sometimes, the more simple the move, the more careless we become when doing it, and before you know it you have sloppy squats. Here are four common mistakes that plague the standard squat. Next time you head to the gym, take a little time to get back to basics and run through this list. Not only will these corrections make the exercise more effective, but they prevent injuries too.

Mistake: Weight Too Far Forward
To take care of your knees and really engage your glutes, keep your weight in your heels. You should be able to freely wiggle your toes as you sit back into your squat. Weighting your heels also keeps the knees from moving beyond your toes, which can seriously strain that joint.
The Fix:
Practice squatting with a stable chair or weight bench behind you, and aim to lower your booty onto the front third of the seat - quietly and with control, no plopping down. This will help you shift your weight far enough back to truly challenge your glutes.

Mistake: Leaning Forward
When squatting, you want to keep your torso fairly upright, but tight hips can pull the upper body forward, straining the knees and the low back. Leaning forward also interferes with your ability to go deep in the squat, decreasing the amount of work for your backside.
The Fix:
Before a strength training session, do a dynamic warmup to open the front of the hips. Walking lunges work well as an active stretch for the tight hip flexors. To keep your torso upright, use an exercise ball at the wall for your squats and single leg squats too. Here are details on how to set yourself up for ball squats at the wall - just make sure you're going deep enough into the squat so your thighs are parallel to the ground.

Keep on reading for more about squats after the break.

Work Out With Lady Gaga

Self — Wed, 25 May 2011 05:03:00 PDT

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Self here on FitSugar!

Lady Gaga has finally dropped her latest masterpiece, and Born This Way was born to inspire our workouts. The '80s-inspired opus is full of gym-ready grooves, from Eurodisco to Latin rhythms. Let's get moving!

Gaga training sessions with Harley Pasternak consist of a 25-minute routine combining strength and cardio. The trainer has attributed her killer abs to an intense regimen of crunches, but we know the pop star is a fan of core-chiseling yoga as well. With her new album freshly loaded on our iPods (the fourteen songs clock in at exactly one hour), we took her daily drill to the next level.

First, we hand-picked eight tracks (35 minutes) to keep our feet pounding the treadmill - raising your heart rate for at least a half hour will melt fat so your toned muscles emerge. Warm up with the easy-paced "Electric Chapel." Lady Gaga's monster singles - "Hair," the Madonna-esque "Born This Way," club-thumping "Judas" and Bruce Springsteen-inspired epic "Edge of Glory"- all made our list. Then we added the Debbie-Gibson-meets-Donna-Summers jam "Marry The Night," the empowering, rave-worthy "Scheibe" and "Highway Unicorn (Road To Love)," with its "run, run" lyrics.

Read on for the rest of this energizing hour-long workout after the break!

Weekend Workout: Get on the Ball

FitSugar — Sat, 14 May 2011 04:20:16 PDT

It's true that using a fitness ball can make any exercises more challenging. But the more challenging the exercise the stronger you will become, making your workout more efficient. Working on an unstable surface, like a ball that can roll, means you must stabilize your core, so it doesn't take many reps before you begin feeling the work. Grab an exercise ball and a set of dumbbells (five to 10 pounds) and try these three moves. Repeat all three exercises for a total of three sets. Trust me, you'll have a ball with this workout.

Single Leg Squats
10 reps, each leg

Chest Press
15 reps

Plank to Pike
10 reps

Looking for more workouts? Try these Weekend Workouts.

How to Push Past a Fitness Plateau: Get Unstable

Susi May — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:41:57 PDT

Once you've mastered the basic moves of strength training - like squats, lunges, and planks - gym time can become a little dull. Workouts creep by slowly due to boredom, and if you don't push yourself to the next level, you may find your fitness level stalling as you coast onto a plateau. When the going gets boring, it's time to get unstable.

Performing seemingly simple exercises on an unstable surface creates a whole new set of challenges for you to master. Fitness tools like the BOSU, balance pads (sponge-like pads, two to three inches thick), rocker boards, and exercise balls can help you work out harder by disrupting your sense of balance. If you're ready to experiment with instability, here are a few exercises my Equinox trainer has recently taught me.

Plank on the rocker board: There are a wide variety of rocker boards, but for this move the one we use looks like an over-sized skateboard with a cylindrical piece attached in the middle. I place my hands equidistant from the center and hold a plank, trying not to dip to either side. When that becomes somewhat easy, add alternating leg lifts. This move seemed impossible to me at first, but once you find the zone on the third set you feel a core master.
Hold the plank for 30 seconds; do 10 lifts on each leg.

Learn two more moves after the break.