RSSCategory: Move Thy Body
3 Workouts To Love
July 18, 2010
If you’re looking for more emotional strength in your life, grab yourself a weight. I am not fond of moving more than 8lbs of weight. With these exercises and 3lbs., right away I feel like “well, I can do this, it’s only 3lbs!”. Remember that every ounce of fat that you replace with muscle sucks up more calories every minute of the day. You get to reap the reward of exercise even while you’re not working out.
Read moreCreativity And The Meaning Of Mind-Body Exercise
February 10, 2010
Since I’m forced to do something essentially boring, I’ve had time to ponder why so many more good ideas come to me on the bike than when I’m having a hot bath. Same thing with driving. I believe that my left brain feels busy and important, or thinks it is, so the other side is free to wander.
Read moreThe 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.
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