MY TERRIFIC CHIRUNNING WORKSHOP I wrote about the ChiRunning method in my post Run Longer & Injury Free. I discovered its techniques last summer in the book “Chi Running, A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running” by Danny Dreyer. Ever since, I’ve been trying to put its several focuses into my running practice. Yet, I felt I wasn’t really combining the elements correctly. To actually find out how to put it all together I signed up and participated in a 6-hour ChiRunning workshop two Saturdays ago. Lisa Holloway, a ChiRunning Certified Instructor, gave the class at a park in Temecula...
FINDING A GREAT PERSONAL TRAINER Last week I wrote Choosing the Perfect Gym. Once you’ve found the facility, you may want to now seek out a great personal trainer. Benefits of having a personal trainer include safety, education and motivation. A trainer can help you choose exercises based on your desires and needs, teach you proper form and provide you with encouragement. You’ll probably look first at the trainers the gym you’ve joined employs. You can observe how these trainers are interacting with others at your facility or ask fellow gym members for referrals. A trainer should be certified. Here’s...
MARATHON MAN? Happy New Year! I finally did a marathon. On Tuesday, the day after Christmas. I can’t say I trained as much as I would have liked or that I was excited to do it this week, but an unforeseen happening called for doing it now. Just before midnight on December 4 we were awakened by a neighbor pounding on our front door and shouting, “Wake up! Fire! We all need to evacuate!” We jumped out of bed, looked out our bedroom window to a wall of fire coming down the hillside in back of our development—it was the...
HIIT WORKOUTS ADD UP TO MORE ENDURANCE & STRENGTH (& LESS FAT) High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has become very popular in recent years due to the great results it produces in relatively short amounts of time. It basically involves periods of higher-intensity exercise (exercise intervals) alternated with periods of lower-intensity exercise (recovery periods) within the same exercise session for a total of just 15-30 minutes. HIIT is not just for young athletes or CrossFit clients. Here’s an excerpt from the Mayo Clinic article Why interval training may be the best workout at any age: Mayo Clinic researchers studied the...
CYCLING—ROAD BIKE TECHNIQUE TIPS Ever since I was a kid growing up in Denver I’ve done lots of cycling. From the age of 12 to 16, I delivered the Rocky Mountain News from my bike every morning from 5:00 to 6:00 to some 150 customers. And before I got my driver’s license I rode everywhere around town. Even after I started driving, I took long-distance cycling trips on my old coaster brake bike with my best friend into the Colorado Mountains including one up and over Loveland Pass. In the 90s and early 2000s I rode my trusty mountain bike...
EASY CORE STRENGTHENING EXERCISES Happy Thanksgiving! Are you running a turkey trot this morning (giving yourself a chance to lose a few calories before piling them on later today)? As promised, I’m sharing some easy, non-machine exercises to strengthen your core. Because it’s a holiday, I’m making this week’s blog short and sweet. The Functional Aging Institute, sponsor of a certification course I’m taking, especially suggests core exercises recommended by Dr. Stuart McGill. McGill is a professor of spine biomechanics in the department of kinesiology at Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada. (https://uwaterloo.ca/applied-health-sciences/hes-got-our-backs). With more than 30 years of clinical research...
ENGAGE YOUR CORE! You’ve heard it before. “Engage your core!” “Tighten your core!” while you’re performing such exercises as a plank or squat. But strengthening your core muscles has real-world benefits in addition to perfecting your workouts What is Your “Core?” The core is composed of the lumbar spine and a group of muscles that can co-contract to stiffen the torso. These core muscles include the rectus abdominus (your “abs”) the transversus abdominus, internal and external obliques, plus major muscles in the pelvic floor. The core is supremely important because it joins your lower and upper body helping them work...
YOGA—A TERRIFIC WAY TO KEEP YOUR BODY & MIND IN GOOD HEALTH I’ve been going to yoga classes for 20 years. I was hesitant in the beginning. I remember that I kept getting backaches after running. I mentioned this to my friend Steve Haimovitz and he said, “Try yoga.” But I resisted and instead saw a chiropractor, and then an acupuncturist. My backaches persisted. Again Steve said, “Just try yoga.” I finally did. After a couple of weeks my back pain from running disappeared and I was convinced. But yoga gave me a great deal more than that. In time,...
COFFEE—YOUR ULTIMATE HEALTH & FITNESS DRINK I’ve been drinking two or three cups of coffee a day for more than 50 years. And over that time have read many articles, both pro and con, on its health affects. But lately, study after study is showing that coffee drinkers actually have a much lower risk of several serious diseases. And that it can greatly improve physical performance. Thus, coffee has now become the supreme health and fitness beverage. Bob Arnot, MD, writes in the October 2017 issue of BottomLine Health (www.bottomlineinc.com), “In a 16-year study of more than 500,000 people, published...
MINDFULNESS CAN TRANSFORM YOUR FITNESS TRAINING Mindfulness has lately become a hot topic. Actually, though, it’s rooted in ancient traditions—it was originally conceived as a way to ease suffering and cultivate compassion. There are various descriptions of mindfulness, but in short, it’s living in the moment. It’s a conscious effort to be completely present—to take your attention away from the past or future and simply focus on what’s happening with you right now without interpretation or judgment. I’ll talk about mindfulness in general and then how we can use it in our fitness training. The Mayo Clinic cites studies that...
