FitSugar

Quality Over Quantity

FitSugar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:00:00 -0700

One of the great concepts of Pilates is quality over quantity, and this principle applies to more than just deep ab work. When it comes to forms of cardio, like swimming and cycling, the same idea holds true.

Riding a bike and pulling your body through water are not "natural" movement patterns for humans. Especially when compared to running and walking, two actions our bodies evolved to do. Learning correct form for cycling and swimming is important, more important than pushing your intensity. Learning good form takes time, but if you focus your energies on your technique you will be rewarded with greater efficiency while decreasing your chance of injury. Pretty good pay back don't you think?

Need some help on your strokes. Check out these before you head to the pool. And here are some tips for biking too.

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How to Avoid Sports Injuries

FitSugar — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:30:00 -0700

I think it is safe to say that no one enjoys being sidelined by an injury. If you have ever sat on the sidelines and watched your team play, you know how sitting out can hurt almost as much as the injury. On that sad note, here are a few ideas on how to avoid those sports related injuries that put you off your fitness track.

Warm up: Take 10 minutes to bring your heart rate up to your target zone while gradually priming your muscles and connective tissue for action. Warming up improves your overall mobility and coordination.
Cool down: Cooling down works like your warm up, but in reverse. By taking 10 minutes to bring your heart rate safely back to normal, you also help your muscles flush any build up of waste products from your muscles. This helps decrease post workout stiff joints and sore muscles.
Stretch: You should definitely stretch after every workout; just include it in your cool down (see number two). Keeping flexible reduces your chances of pulling a muscle or straining a ligament.
Good Technique: There is often a reason for "technique" and it is not usually an aesthetic one. No! Good technique helps to protect the body. Form is very important when it comes to working with weights. If you find that you are lifting sloppily, stop and evaluate the weight you're lifting and your form. Using control is always a good idea when strength training.
Good Shoes: Good shoes go a long way. Most athletics shoes are highly engineered to protect your feet and your body from the impact often associated with running. Plus, sneakers are designed to handle the specific demands of different sports. Playing tennis in running shoes is practically a twisted ankle waiting to happen.

Hopefully these tips will keep you playing all season, no matter if your sport is soccer, running, or step aerobics!

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Do You Like Working Out in Front of a Mirror?

FitSugar — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:30:00 -0700

I have to say that sometimes I LOVE doing yoga or lifting weights in front of a mirror - it's a great way to check for proper technique and alignment.

Mirrors can also be a way for women to obsess about how they look (or how they don't look), so I feel like it adds to issues of low self-esteem and poor body image.

What do you think?

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What's the Deal With The Tapping Technique?

FitSugar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:45:00 -0700

If any of you guys are following Paul McKenna's new show, I Can Make You Thin then you may have heard something about a Tapping Technique for cravings. I know that people follow the show religiously but I can't help but laugh when watching it.

Most recently a co-worker filled me in on McKenna's eight-step (yes, eight steps) technique for getting rid of cravings and wow, what a technique it is. I'm not sure this would work for my cravings other than confuse the heck out of me. Personally, I like your ideas for curbing cravings better than this interesting approach. However if you want to learn it then read more.

The Tapping Technique:

I want you to get the biggest desire for a food that you can right now. If you don’t have a big enough craving, put this technique to one side and come back to it when you’re really feeling it.
Focus on this craving for a moment, and when you’ve thought of that I’d like you to rate your desire for a food on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. This is important, because in a moment we want to know how much you’ve reduced it.
On a scale of 1-10, how strong is your craving? Remember, if you’re not really craving a bite (i.e. your craving is not at least a 7), come back to this technique later.
Now take two fingers of either hand and tap about 10 times under your collarbone while you continue to think about eating.
Now tap under your eye ten times.
Now tap under your collarbone again.
Place your other hand in front of you and tap on the back of it between your ring finger and your little finger. Continue to think about your desire for food as you do this and each of the steps which follow:
- Close your eyes and open them.
- Keep your head still, keep tapping and look down to the right then down to the left.
- Keep tapping and rotate your eyes round 360 degrees clockwise, and now 360 degrees counterclockwise.
- Remember to keep thinking about the food you were craving as you do this!
- Now hum the first few lines of "Happy Birthday" out loud.
- Count out loud from 1 to 5.
- Once again hum the first few lines of ‘Happy Birthday’ out loud.

Stop and check – on a scale from 1 to 10, what number is your craving at now? If it hasn’t completely gone yet, just repeat this sequence again until it does.

Anyone tried it? If so, I'm dying to hear if it works so share you stories below.

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Stand Tall to Ease Back Pain: Alexander Technique Works

FitSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:00:00 -0700

I have spent many a Pilates session teaching clients with severe back pain how to stand, sit, and walk. In these sessions, I have borrowed elements from the Alexander Technique. Learning basic body mechanics while unlearning bad postural habits seemed to help these clients out of pain, and now I have science backing me up on this.

New research from the UK found that patients with chronic back pain treated with the Alexander Technique had many more pain-free days than back patients treated with pain medication or massage.

Alexander patients experienced just three days of back pain a month compared to 14 days a month of pain experienced by patients who received massage, or 21 days of pain experience by patients using pain medication. The Alexander patients had 24 sessions to create this reduction in back pain, but retraining your body does come at a price. Private Alexander sessions come at a high price, upward of $80 for an hour lesson.

If you are interested in trying Alexander, you can find a teacher here. If you are in chronic pain, it might be worth investigating. Some practitioners offer group classes, which are considerably less expensive, or you can buy packages of classes for a reduced price.

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FREE Rowing Technique DVD

FitSugar — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:45:00 -0700

A lot of us shy away from the rowing machine at the gym. Usually it's for good reason because that machine can be downright scary. However rowing can be a great way to switch up your workout. Not only does it get your heart pumping, but it also works your upper and lower body. Talk about multitasking.

Before you sit down and start rowing your little heart out, you may want to learn a thing or two about how to do it properly. Luckily for us, Concept2.com is giving away a FREE Rowing Technique DVD. All you have to do is click here to enter your request. While you wait for it to arrive, check out my rowing machine dos and don'ts.

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Meditate For a Healthy Heart

FitSugar — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:00:31 -0800

My father introduced TM (transcendental meditation) to me my senior year of high school as a way to unwind, relax, and fight stress as I headed off to college. Since then, I've always felt lucky to know a kind of secret way to recharge my batteries, without needing a nap. But I was surprised to learn that practicing meditation has another heath benefit for your heart.

It turns out regular practice of TM doesn't just help your psychological well-being; it has also been shown to have significant therapeutic effects on people at high risk for heart attacks. A recent study, which followed 200 patients for five years, reveals that "the high-risk patients who meditated cut their risk of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from all causes roughly in half compared with a group of similar patients who were given more conventional education about healthy diet and lifestyle."

According to Dr. Robert Schneider, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, who presented the study's findings, TM's ability to help reduce blood pressure is essential to helping prevent heart attacks and heart complications, “We found reduced blood pressure that was significant – that was probably one important mediator," claims Schneider.

TM is also easy to learn and practice - it doesn't require specific education, and from my own experience, I totally agree with Dr. Schneider - "it's a straightforward technique for getting deep rest to the mind and body."

Active Release Therapy Is ART

FitSugar — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0700

While I love a massage, I have found the relaxing strokes of Swedish massages just don't penetrate the deep kinks that accompany overuse injuries from serious training. That is why I appreciate the targeted technique of active release therapy (ART). It is like no other therapeutic technique I've tried when it comes to healing a chronic injury.

ART is a movement-based soft tissue massage technique used to treat problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, and nerves. Plus, it is patented, so practitioners using this technique are certified through the ART program. This technique resolves chronic injuries quickly by creating length in scar tissue; it is this scar tissue that shortens muscles, binds nerves, and adds to tendinitis pain. All these injuries create the kind of pain that can make you inactive.

An ART session combines evaluating the tissue and the movement patterns around the injured area. The massage element combines active stretching while the therapist provides a tension to the stretch targeting the tight, scarred tissue. I will admit an ART session can be a little painful when compared to your average spa massage, and occasionally the sessions have left me bruised. Injuries are generally resolved in two to 10 sessions and sessions are generally 15 minutes long per area being treated. In my area, an appointment with an ART practitioner costs around $70. While not the cheapest treatment in the world, getting back on the run feels priceless.

To find an ART practitioner in your area, check out this provider search and get on with the process of healing!

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Running Tip: Keep Your Eyes on the Horizon

FitSugar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:58:36 -0700

When your mom told you stand up straight, you probably had no idea that she was also helping your running technique. Running efficiently and pain free has a lot to do with your posture. Keep your head in line with your spine, your shoulders relaxed, and your torso over your hips. A simple way to stack all these body parts one on top of the other is to gaze naturally at the horizon as you move forward. Adjust your eyes and chin so they are parallel with your body. It's tempting to look down at the ground or gaze at the peak of an upcoming hill, but this can overstretch your neck and cause your shoulders to hunch up toward your ears. Not only will gazing at the horizon prevent pain during and after your run, but it'll also make your workout easier.

What's the Deal With: Pose Method of Running

FitSugar — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:30:00 -0700

We all know how to walk and we all know how to run, right? The answer according to Dr. Nicholas Romanov, developer of the Pose Running Technique, is a resounding "NO." Romanov feels that running is a skill that needs to be taught to create more efficient running, which leads to less injuries over time. Since running is a skill it can be refined over time using the Pose Method, which they say works for all types of runners since the technique is a series of movements that anyone and everyone can benefit from using.

Named the Pose method since it is based on the "Running Pose" - the shape the body assumes as it moves forward. Here's a description of the pose:

The Running Pose is a whole body pose, which vertically aligns shoulders, hips and ankles with the support leg, while standing on the ball of the foot. This creates an S-like shape of the body. The runner then changes the pose from one leg to the other by falling forward and allowing gravity to do the work. The support foot is pulled from the ground to allow the body to fall forward, while the other foot drops down freely, in a change of support.

Yep you run just primarily on the balls of the feet instead of the heel hitting the ground first.

The idea is to move forward with the least amount of energy, with a simple fall and pull while holding the runner's pose. The technique has been tested and proven to reduce the impact on the knee joint by 50 percent. I must say I am I am truly intrigued by this method and so are my knees.

Leaning the technique can take some time and many newcomers to the method suffer from sore calves. There are plenty of books on the subject available from the Pose Tech Store, and clinics in Austin, Texas as well as Switzerland and the U.K.

Here is a video of the Romanov teaching the technique for trail running.