RSSCategory: Move Thy Body
The DVD I Use To Heal
January 26, 2010
I believe that there is no division between Nature and our bodies, between the energy fields around us and within us. There is also no distinction between what is happening to your body and what is happening in your mind. Your Deeper Self and these forces are one and the same, completely swirling and intertwined.
Read moreSonja’s 6 Great Workouts, Pt. 2
January 16, 2010
This is the second installment in my review of intermediate workouts (Christine just yawned and went back to her tea). This once includes a stability ball workout by Keli Roberts, a toning workout by Kari Anderson, and a Moira Stott Pilates video.
Read moreSonja’s 6 Great Workouts, Pt. 1
January 12, 2010
I brought the gym to me and ordered some workout videos from CollageVideo. Now, unlike Christine, I do not like videos that have the words “attack” , “combat”, or “killer” in them. My choices are all intermediate and more gentle. I have reviewed them here so you can see what you think.
Read moreSqueeze by Tracy Effinger
August 18, 2009
She’s gorgeous, she’s powerful, and obviously doesn’t buy into the Barbie body mentality that fitness people are probably pressured with, especially if they work with celebrities.
How fascinating would it be to have lunch with this woman. Her mind thinks way beyond the surface of things. Finding the connections between seemingly separate elements is one of the great talents of female brains. It always sends a spark in me when I see it.
Growth Occurs In Recovery
August 14, 2009
No one can go from 0 to 100 instantly, nor should they. You’d miss out on the real appreciation of what 100 is all about. The fastest way to move forward may be to create some aerodynamic drag to slow ourselves down. Let success find you.
Read moreCheap Home Gym Flooring
July 19, 2009
Kids’ Reversible Tiles that are used to cover play areas make the most ideal cushioning for workout floors.
Just one of those cheap, simple, and effective things that make life better.
3 Workouts You Should Know
May 1, 2009
The Collage Video site and the customer reviews do a great job of describing each program so I’m not going to. The hurdle with Collage is sifting through the 750+ choices to find the gems. Here are 3 superstars that I would not be without.
1. Squeeze with Tracy Effinger.
If you get through it with a 2 lb weight, you’re a powerful woman, regardless of what you usually lift. I can’t complete the arm section with 1.5 lbs. It gets into the movement and the muscle something unbelievable. There are stretching breaks, lots of bonus sections, total body attention, and the time flies. No question, this is one of the best examples of how much you can accomplish by exercising at home. Any kind of ball will do.
The title above is linked to the Effinger search page. Click on any title there to take you to the details for the program.
Part of the new Shock Training System, which consists of 40-some discs, but you can buy this one separately. It includes 6 separate ab workouts based on weights, yoga, Pilates, and more. Delivering no less than the excellence and challenge you expect, these are not beginner moves. Cathe never does anything bad, but she is now at her peak. She is at her most professional, calm, beautiful best.
Quite possibly the best designed workout ever made, by another pro who never does anything less than superb. It’s been out 15 years or so but it never dates. It’s as hard as you make it. It’s safe. It is so thorough. You can do it without the step but it’s better with it. It takes the cardio up and part way back down and up again a little higher with masterfully calculated objectives. The cardio and strength crescendo together and drop back in a deliberate design that amazes me.
While you’re there, check out my wish list:
Patrick Goudeau Hard Work Conditioning 2
Squeeze : Stronger with Tracy Effinger
Squeeze : Lower Body Challenge
Amy Bento Kickbox Surge and Core Training – watch the clip for this one!! it looks SO good! Amy always has the best music. I’ll be ordering this within the week.
-->The Collage Video site and the customer reviews do a great job of describing each program so I’m not going to. The hurdle with Collage is sifting through the 750+ choices to find the gems. Here are 3 superstars that I would not be without.
Read moreKegels
March 16, 2009
Oh, please not this topic. We all know we’re supposed to be doing this in grocery store lineups, everywhere, all the time, every chance we get, but it’s uncomfortable and irritating.
I know it’s odd but you need to know this. It is not often talked about, at least not at any exercise class or video I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s because it’s awkward to say “Squeeze your pubococcygeus now, ladies”. You only hear about it to help reduce urinary incontinence or to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles during and after pregnancy.
Where?
What’s a pelvic floor? Those are muscles that act like a sling to support and contain all the organs in your pelvis (bladder and its sphincter, uterus, the end of the intestinal tract or rectum, and its sphincter). Nobody wants to talk about it but NOBODY wants any of this stuff to go wrong either. It needs to be tuned and tight just like everything else to work really well for a long time.
Your deepest core pelvic muscle is the pubococcygeus, the one you work with Kegels. It’s called “deepest” because it’s nearest the center of your body, organized like an elastic around a pole that goes through the middle of you in an up-down direction, like an internal pogo stick. That pole has another name – it’s called “gastrointestinal tract”, which curves around a lot, but is still a tube running right through the middle of your body.
Why?
MUST we really talk about this, you ask? Yes, yes, it’s cool how much stronger it makes your torso and how much deeper your abdominal control will become. Core muscles doesn’t just mean firm lower abs. It doesn’t get any deeper than this.
Pilates Pro has a technical but truly precise definition of what core stability really means. There are descriptions of the lumbar and core stabilizers, including the pelvic floor and the one we hear so much about, the transversus abdominus.
Having strength in these muscles is an integral part of having a strong trunk, the top and bottom of which can act in a coordinated way. If the top half is solid but the bottom half is slush, then the whole thing is weak and especially prone to injury in the weaker part.
How?
Stand in a horse squat or open plie ; now tighten those muscles you do for a Kegel. Basically, that means pretend to stop the flow of urine or tighten around a tampon. Did you notice how your whole trunk just stabilized?
Or try this. Sit on a stability ball, arms at your sides and feet on the floor in front of you. Lift one leg about a foot off the floor. Now pull the ball towards and away from the foot on the floor. Once you feel the ball unsteady from side to side, tighten the Kegel muscle. Notice how the ball is suddenly much more under your control and that side-to-side wobble disappeared?
Try the one where you lie on your back and do leg circles with an extended leg either out at 45 or straight up at 90. Try to keep your pelvis from rocking around. Even if you tighten the glute of the leg on the floor, it’s still hard. Now do the Kegel- see how the other muscles now don’t have to work as hard and yet you’re much more stable with less effort? The exercise gets easier and the entire pelvic region is suddenly more solid. Weird but it works.
When?
Every time you breathe out.
The diaphragm is a sheet of muscle that goes through your body cross-wise, like a plate under your lungs. It cups upwards, like a jellyfish, when you breathe out, like lifting a sheet off the ground by holding on to the center. It flattens out again as you inhale to make space for the lungs and to suck them open by pulling downwards.
Think of moving the diaphragm and the “Kegel” muscles together. Raise the pelvic floor by doing the Kegel exercise as the diaphragm lifts up to exhale. You can visualize the 2 muscle sheets (diaphragm under lungs, pelvic floor under abdomen) moving rhythmically, up and down, in synchrony. Now you’ve got control of your core.
The best everyday application of this is your ab workout. When you do a crunch, or any exercise that requires your abs to be tight (like a plank, bicycle in the air, whatever), tightening the Kegel muscle is like a handle you can pull against to help lift your shoulders off the floor. Just try it. It’s amazingly effective. The stomach muscles don’t have to work nearly as hard when you pull yourself up using the Kegel move, so they’re still capable of a little more exertion to get deeper into the exercise and more result from the movement.
To improve balance, this works like a charm. Stand on one leg and close your eyes; you’ll feel wobbly. Tighten with the Kegel exercise – notice how the top and bottom of the trunk suddenly start to work together to keep you balanced and neither part has to work as hard as when it was doing all the work alone? Gives a whole new meaning to the word “tight”.
Fun facts and funner anatomy
I know you need some comic relief right about now. Does it help to know that it is by contracting this same muscle that animals wag their tails ? How fun is it to know that? Why, you’re ready for Jeopardy!
If you really feel you have no need to know any more of this anatomic detail, do not follow the link. It will take you to Arnold Kegel’s view of the pelvic floor muscles. The pubococcygeus is colored red. Can’t get any more core than that. If you like visualizing and understanding the biomechanics of bodies, have a look.
So, this is a diagram of a woman sitting on a clear glass table, drawn from below. I’m sure this has been done many times on sites of a different type than this one, for different reasons than ours. Do you see the orientation? The hole in the center is the end of the digestive tract. At 12 oclock from that are the vaginal opening and the urethral opening right above it. The red muscle is the hammock under the organs under the pelvis. Slack and floppy is clearly not where we want to go here.
-->MUST we really talk about this, you ask? Yes, yes, it’s cool how much stronger it makes your torso and how much deeper your abdominal control will become. Core muscles doesn’t just mean firm lower abs. It doesn’t get any deeper than this.
Read moreHow To Have Too Much Fun On An Exercise Bike
February 14, 2009
Exercise machines always have great appeal for me because they’re different from how I usually work out. They involve so much repetition of movement that it makes a difference in the strength and appearance of those muscles quite quickly.
Exercise bikes can cost about $100 on sale, are small and easy to move around, and really tone your legs fast. Most importantly, they’re easy on the knees and great for the thighs and rear view.
The repetition has a downside, which is the incredible boredom that sets in. How can you make the time more interesting and have a little fun?
Here are the ways I use to distract myself, make time pass, and get more out of the exercise.
Hey, the usual disclaimer right? Don’t drive holding coffee that’s too hot. Don’t do it if your body hates it. Don’t do what you’re not ready for.
1. Incorporate some core work by raising your arms above your head and waving them gently from left to right in a 1 foot- wide arc without letting your pelvis rock. Do it holding a 1-3lb weight and you’ll get it. It challenges the muscles along the side of the abdomen. You’re forced to vacuum-seal your abs against your pelvis to stabilize your body when the weights are off to the side.
Mehdi writes the great strength- training blog, Strong Lifts. He covers a great range of topics from inspiration and nutrition to specific moves for certain muscle groups. There is no hype here. This is a serious but approachable site, geared to injury prevention.
In this excellent article called How To Perform PushUps Correctly , Mehdi describes stabilizing your abs as hardening the muscle as if you were going to take a punch. That can work really well. I also like the visualization of the vacuum seal. Have you ever watched the ads for those plastic storage bags where all the air is sucked out of them and they crinkle down against the stuff inside till it’s tight? That is the image I use, of my abdominal wall sucking in and crinkling down.
2. Raise your arms and practice the feeling of lengthening by pulling up longer out of the hips and waist. The shoulder blades stay in the same place as when your arms are down. As your rib cage lifts up and away from your hips, the sides of your body get longer. Feel how unloading your pelvis takes the weight off your low back and lets your legs move more freely because they don’t have to support the same load.
3. Imagine a weight from your tailbone, dropping to the floor. This is an exercise used when riding a horse in an English saddle. It helps draw the stomach in towards the spine and anchors the pelvis while encouraging a neutral, flexible spine. The spine stays strong but relaxed and can be responsive to the spine of the animal beneath you.
4. Adjust the tension on the flywheel to be very high and stand up on your pedals. Your pelvis does not rock side-to-side. Think of your pelvis as a bucket you grow up out of. Your legs extend long to the ground. Cycle as fast as you can while holding the pelvis stable. You may find, as I did, that it will not be very fast at all.
5. Turn your toes in with the arch of foot on the pedal, weight on the inside of the ball of the foot. Turn your toes out with the heel on the pedal. Do each for 1 whole song. You’ll feel the inner thighs when the toes face in and outer thighs when the toes point outwards.
6. Put your hands on the sides of your butt cheeks and feel the tightening in your glutes (butt) . Activate your gluteal muscles and keep them switched on. Picture a sponge squeezing the fat out like water.
7. Pretend you’re running uphill and pushing the ground away behind you, but here you’re pushing the pedal behind you and pulling it upward at the same time. So the pedal is coming up because you’re pulling on it, not because the other pedal is being pushed down. It’s a feeling of making a distinct circle with the pedal instead of an up-down repetition. Feel your hamstrings tighten up in a hurry.
8. Push your arms together hard in front of you. Try it pushing your hands together above your head, like a church steeple. The more you pull in your abs, the more pressure you can exert between your hands.
9. Increase the tension to rest. Instead of dropping the tension when you need a break, raise it but pedal as slowly as you like (but no stopping!) . When you release the tension to your usual workout level, it will feel much easier.
10. Alternate 15 seconds fast and slow. You won’t lose yourself in this workout because you’re always counting time, but it’s easy to work harder than usual because you get lots of rest periods. Even if you just do it for a song or two, you’ll burn more calories with the sprint intervals and the time goes fast. Practicing explosive speed and power is good.
Do each move for 1 song and you’ve sailed through 30 minutes on a bike. You’ll have worked in some core, cardio, and strength.
Remember to make sensible decisions that reflect your fitness level. Start slowly and work up. If you can’t hold the middle strong, you’ve done too much. Remember to keep the fundament in place: heart leading and open, stomach sucked it till it pulls the butt under a little.
Hey, cupcake, get up! The workout’s not over till the 10 minutes of abs are.
-->Exercise machines always have great appeal for me because they’re different from how I usually work out. They involve so much repetition of movement that it makes a difference in the strength and appearance of those muscles quite quickly.
The repetition has a downside, which is the incredible boredom that sets in. How can you make the time more interesting and have a little fun?
How To Build Exercise Into A Holiday
November 7, 2008
Workouts are not put on hold when you’re on vacation.
Easier said than done. You’ve got lots of time but it’s busy time, visiting, shopping. I can’t get exercising done mid-day because by then the day is planned and I’m dressed and don’t want to get all sweaty again. Evenings are always overbooked with friends and dinners and relaxing conversation.
Create a time slot
You just have to wake up early. You just have to. I had to learn to do this year round, in a last ditch attempt to find an hour alone each day.
It’s easier on vacation. You don’t have to rush anywhere after. It doesn’t matter if you’re a little tired during the day. It’s an hour for you alone. Getting from horizontal to vertical can be tricky if it’s been a late night, but then it’s all about you. Part of the restorative power of a holiday is more solitary time to reflect. This is a glorious time to get that done too.
Start small
Don’t start by getting up early AND working out. That’s too many steps all at once. Just have a cup of tea and look at the ocean, or outside at the snow. Give yourself a pedicure. Make this time consciously and peacefully about building YOU. Every 5 minutes, think “This is MY time.”
Come week 2, your body has learned to wake up and feels a little sharper. Exercise is how you’re going to survive the year’s fattest month, but you have to start getting up earlier NOW. Come December, even if you can manage 3 times a week, your clothes won’t be any tighter by New Year.
Build strength safely
You don’t have to do complicated exercise programs. Go for a walk. Take a piece of elastic tubing.
Elastic tubing, or so-called Resistance Bands, are one of my favorite pieces of exercise equipment. Your muscles adapt to the same moves on the same machines, or with the same weights, so progress becomes very slow if not stuck. This is a terrific equipment search page at CollageVideo because it shows you the many forms that elastic tubing can take, as well as the videos that utilize each type of elastic.
To build beautiful definition and a powerful frame, learning new movements and/or varying the equipment is the answer. The same move feels surprisingly different done with elastic if you’re used to weight.
And, listen. As we get older, working strength is unbelievably important. I try to do as much Strength as Cardio. It gives you physical and mental resilience against the onslaught of aging. Forget feeble. Aim to be stronger every year.
8 Great aspects of elastics
1. It is much harder to hurt yourself because you are limited by your own power or lack thereof. There is no momentum involved, so the weight won’t swing out of control. This one is most important for me because I have a tendency to overdo just about everything.
Figure 8 band, bow and arrow.
2. Tubing works both sides equally. I have to focus hard on this to prevent my strong side from taking over. What happens next is the weak side gives in, and we’re back to #1, where injury occurs.
Figure 8 band, side leg lift.
3. You can take it on walks. Walking on vacation is the absolute best. You can feel like you’re on top of the world, like a model in a Nike ad. With tubing, a walk can become a circuit training workout, with strength and upper body moves added in even while you’re walking, so you have some core and multi-joint work as a bonus. Wrap the tubes around your waist when you’re not using them.
15lb band with handles, front arm raise.
4. Pack it anywhere. They’re light and flat and take up no space. When I travel, I take a few exercise videos and my tubing. If it rains or I don’t want to go outside, I can still do a little workout and feel great.
15lb band with handles, kickbacks.
5. They’re cheap!! And available in many levels of resistance. 5 lbs of resistance is a starting point. 15 lbs of resistance is difficult for me.
15lb band with handles, biceps curls.
6. You can work every muscle if you use your imagination.
Biceps curls standing on the band.
7. They are a brilliant addition to your strengthening arsenal. Elastic tubes are a highly effective to tighten, tone, and build strength.
Pushups, planks, leg to the side, band on the foot and under the hand.
8. Using a tube is a nice way to stretch. Somehow my muscles relax better than when I’m using my own force or gravity.
Front shoulder press.
The challenge at the beginning is learning how to use these elastic bands. Some are flat and wide, others are tubular with handles on the end. I recommend you have both because they work the muscles differently. Also, those with handles can be looped around your feet or around a weighted body bar, increasing the movement variety.
Rowing, elbows up or down at your sides, or both.
Begin by purchasing a few DVDs using tubing or bands to see the various ways that fitness professionals use them. If you search elastic tubing, and resistance band at Collage Video, you will have 75 to choose from. This is worth doing to get some safety guidelines. I’m not a fitness instructor. The moves I’ve shown here are some of the ones I’ve learned from videos to work a variety of muscles but you still have to be sensible. Assess your own fitness level. Learn how to protect your back and stabilize your shoulders and pelvis (Pilates is great for this) before you add external resistance.
On the Collage site, you’ll see how each video makes use of time, how others have reviewed it, and the difficulty level. There is also the all-important 1 minute video clip of anything you are considering buying.
Your workout’s done. Have a spectacular day.
Workouts are not put on hold when you’re on vacation.
Easier said than done. You’ve got lots of time but it’s busy time, visiting, shopping. I can’t get exercising done mid-day because by then the day is planned and I’m dressed and don’t want to get all sweaty again. Evenings are always overbooked with friends and dinners and relaxing conversation.
Get up early. Go for a walk. Take a piece of elastic tubing. Feel like a goddess.
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A Greener Tea
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