Breathing AND Running? Tricky Combination....

“You mean I am supposed to run a long distance, worry about form and speed AND breathe correctly?”  No, today, it is just about breathing!  Let’s get your breathing technique perfected and the rest will fall into place MUCH easier.  Creating a rhythm to your breathing while running is called entrainment and it will help you to feel better when running, allow you to relax and entrainment will ultimately aid in increasing your speed or distance. 

Entrainment, rhythmic breathing,  will insure that oxygen has enough time to be exchanged in your lungs.  Huffing and puffing and gasping for air all lead to hyperventilation.  In this state, your muscles do not receive oxygen from your lungs because you are exhaling faster than appropriate exchange can take place.  Rhythmic breathing creates a pattern of breathing in sync with your stride/heel strike and therefore your lungs are able to deliver sufficient oxygen to your muscles.

Athletes in many sports use entrainment – running, cyclists, swimmers and others all benefit from finding a rhythm to their breathing pattern.  The breathing rhythm is in sync with their heel strike, pedal stroke or arm stroke.  In today’s workout,  we will be listening to your heel strike and learning how to breathe using a greater amount of your lung capacity and setting a steady rhythm to your breathing.

You will begin slowly just by walking and taking full, deep breaths filling your lungs to capacity, like they are balloons.  Then you will speed up to a fast walk, continuing to fill your lungs to capacity regardless of the increased speed.  Finally, you will pick up a light jog, listening to your heel strike and determining what your entrainment pattern might be at that speed.  The most common entrainment rhythm for slower runners or beginner runners is 4 heel strikes for an inhale and 4 heel strikes for an exhale. 

 Try this rhythm first.  Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. You may even count in your head (in,2,3,4. Out,2,3,4.)  You will occasionally need a “catch my breath” quick inhale and exhale – no problem.  Take one and then get back to your rhythm.  REMEMBER, today is not about distance or speed or form or… it is about breathing and getting a rhythm!  Listen to your heel strike.

So remember these things on your running/entrainment workout:

Be tall.  Especially from your hips to your ribs and keep your shoulders back and chin up, look ahead.  Looking down will cause your airway to collapse.   Avoid talking to someone or listening to music during this workout.  Focus on what you hear your feet doing and your pattern of breathing.

Entrainment workout:

Choose a loop that is about ¼ of a mile.

Slow walk the first lap, deep breathing in through nose/ out through mouth.  Fill up your lunges each breath. (don’t worry about 4 x 4 breathing – that is only with a jog/run)

Fast walk the second lap, breathing will increase with speed; in through your nose and out through your mouth.  Deep breath. (don’t worry about 4 x 4 breathing – that is only with a jog/run)

Slow jog the next two laps, listen to your feet (4 strides in and 4 strides out).  If you have to take a quick “catch your breath”, do so and then back to rhythm breathing.

Slow your feet down if the breathing gets difficult.  Remember, today is not about speed, distance or form… it is about breathing and listening.

It will take several running workouts to get the entrainment pattern established.  

Stick with it, it will be worth it!

 

Countdown Workout 10,9,8.. You CAN do it!

Start by writing down the workout (or printing it)... See the pictures below for a guide!

10 minutes of a fast walk

9 minutes of a walk/jog – jog a minute, walk a minute

8 minutes of stretching – hold each stretch for a count of 30 or 15 per side if a bi-lateral stretch

7 minutes of jogging

6 minutes of stair climbing

5 minutes of travelling lunges

4 minutes of squats

3 minutes of crunches- regular crunch, bicycle crunch and scissor crunch

2 minutes of planks – 1 minute of elbow plank, 1 minute of full plank

1 minute of Burpees

~*ALL DONE!*~

Stuffed Zucchini... yum!

Fresh from the garden (or your local grocer), try this stuffed zucchini recipe for an easy all in one meal!

3 zucchinis

1/2 large onion, chopped fine

1 Tbsp butter

8 oz turkey sausage or lean ground beef

1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp curry powder

1 roma tomato, seeded and chopped

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

freshly grated Parmesan cheese

fresh cracked black pepper

Give the zucchini a quick wash for good measure.  Then, slice in half lengthwise.

Leave the ends on to keep the filling in. Scoop out the flesh with a melon ball scooper or a spoon.  Leave a ledge of zucchini around the edges.  Arrange the zucchini boats in a baking dish.

Chop the zucchini flesh as small as you like.  Place in bowl for later.

Finely chop half a sweet onion.

Sautee onion in 1 tbsp olive oil

Add the turkey sausage or ground beef and curry powder

Cook until desired doneness of onions and meat and remove from heat.

To the zucchini flesh

 Rough chop some fresh thyme leaves and add to zucchini flesh

 Mix onion and meat mixture with other ingredients.  Taste and adjust seasoning.

Stir in the tomatoes.  Seed them or else there may be too much moisture in the filling.  You don't really want the filling to be all runny when you cut into it. 

Refill the zucchini shells with the filling mixture. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese on top and sprinkle with fresh cracked black pepper. Bake uncovered at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes.

HINT: (This would be great with squash too!)

NO MORE! I am DONE.

No more!  I am done.

 

From this point forward my family will not be going to the doctor, we are quitting the dentist and the orthodontist too!  No more haircuts, no more sports physicals, no more mammograms, no more meetings, no more!  Anything that requires scheduling, planning, commitment – we are done.  Heck, might even quit work and school while we are at it too.  Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  Because it is. 

 

Just because something requires planning and commitment doesn’t make it unworthy of your time.  Exercise and eating healthy are no different.  If you quit the doctor and dentist, would that be beneficial to your health and well being?  No.  Quitting exercise because it takes commitment and planning is equally ridiculous.  Exercise is preventative medicine.  It takes 21 days to make a habit and 90 days to begin to change a lifestyle.  Commit to 90 days of true dedication to exercise and clean eating and see the benefits it will have on you and your family.

 

There are 168 hours in a week.

  Let’s subtract from those hours daily time for sleep (8 hours per day x7 days), work/school (8x7), eating and meal prep (2x7), errands/entertainment (3x7)…what do you have left?  You still have 21 hours each week to spend doing whatever you want to… take just 4 of those hours to exercise.  Check out various workouts on the blog that are great at home, at the gym, solo or as a family.  No more excuses or crazy talk about not having time.

 

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.”  Henry Ford

 

BINGO!!

Get the family together for this workout!  Pull out the old BINGO game and get ready to burn some calories.  Here is how it works:

 

**Each player has a BINGO card and when a number is called if you have it on your card, great, put a BINGO chip on it. If you do not have that number, you have to exercise according to what letter AND number is called.**

 

Exercises are assigned to each letter in B.I.N.G.O. and you must do the number of reps that correspond to that exercise.

B – Burpees

I – Push ups

N – Vertical leaps

G – Lunges

O – Speed squats

 

(So, if “N41” is called and you don’t have that space on your BINGO card, you have to do 41 vertical leaps.)

 

The game isn’t over until someone gets BINGO!  At which point everyone else does 50 jumping jacks!

Eating Healthy... Mini Quiche Recipe

Mini quiche recipe – high protein, pre-portioned breakfast option

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

-Spray muffin tin with a light cooking spray.

-Mix 10 eggs with ½ cup of milk and 2 tsp of black pepper.

-Divide egg mixture into 12 muffin tin evenly (OK, just get it close)

-Now add TONS of veggies (that is an unofficial measurement); mushrooms, peppers, onions, spinach, broccoli, garlic, etc. 

-Top each tin section with a PINCH of low fat shredded cheese

-Bake for 20 minutes or until each quiche is done all the way through. Makes 12 mini quiche.

-Voila – breakfast for a week!  Freeze quiche individually and pop 1-2 in the microwave for breakfast.  High protein, low fat, pre-prepared – does it get any better?  

Well, perhaps… substitute 8 egg whites and 4 whole eggs for a lower fat option.

The Scale: Your Worst Enemy...

The scale is a liar!

 When your child was born, what was one of the first things the nurses told you about your new baby – their weight.  When a friend has a baby, what is one of the first things you ask – how much did he weigh?  When you took your child to the doctor for their 1 month, 3 month , 6 month, 1 year check ups, what did the doctor track on a norm chart – their weight.  Every year when you go to the doctor what is one of the first two things they measure when they call you back – your weight.  So it is no wonder that everyone is obsessed with that number.  But the number on the scale in NO way defines you.  Who you are on the inside defines you and your goal is to be healthy!

Women and men alike confess to getting on the scale every day, hoping to see a number smaller than the one the day before.  Some even confess to getting on the scale multiple times each day.  A confession of a client really made me take pause.  She casually mentioned that she flushes the toilet each time she gets on the scale so that her husband wouldn’t know that she was weighing herself again.  She weighed herself up to 3 or 4 times per day.  It was then that I realized, I need to explain that getting on the scale and expecting it to reflect what you did the day before or the few hours before.  Exercising and eating right today may not show up on the scale tomorrow, it may show up 72 hours later.  But within those 72 hours you may have eaten poorly and not exercised.  Bottom line is this, what you do today is not reflected on the scale tomorrow.  Results are not immediate.  They come overtime and with consistent effort – eating  clean and exercising daily.  Period.  Stop weighing yourself each day.  Stop weighing yourself each week.  Monthly weigh ins are often enough to track what you are doing on a consistent basis.

In fact, take measurements instead of stepping on that scale.  Measurements will be a far more accurate assessments of changes that are happening in your body.  Take a look at what 5 pounds of fat versus 5 pounds of muscle look like.  Do you see that muscle takes up 1/3 of the space that fat does.  So the scale may not have changed, but your measurements can be drastically different!

Stop the scale insanity.  You are playing a game where there are no true rules.  Today does not show up on the scale tomorrow.  Eat clean, control portions, drink water, exercise daily.

Here are the measurements I recommend for tracking body changes.  Note that each measurement is taken at a bone landmark, do not measure “at the biggest part” because in just a couple of weeks that “biggest part” might have moved!  Always measuring at these bony landmarks will insure that you are comparing apples to apples.

Chest – right up under the arms

Waist – at the belly button

Hips- across the hips in front of the pubic bone

Thigh – half the distance from your hip bone to your knee cap

Upper arm – half the distance from your shoulder to your elbow

Pop Playlist Workout

We all love some good pump up songs when we're working out! 

Download these songs, make a playlist, and try out my routine. Under 22 minutes! Make working out fun!

Good Morning by Mandissa (3:24)

Start out walking

Jog on the chorus

Go back to fast walk on verses

Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen (3:20)

Walk or Jog during each verse

Jog or Sprint during the chorus

Like a Prayer by Madonna (5:40)

Do walking lunges during the chorus

Jump rope during the chorus

One week by Barenaked Ladies (2:55)

Do stationary squats with hands on your head during the verses

Do push ups during the chorus

What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction (3:27)

Start out walking or in a  light jog; each time you hear the word “beautiful” speed up, because you ARE beautiful.

If you are on a treadmill start out at 3.0mph and increase 0.5mph each time you hear “beautiful”.

Never slow down, maintain your new speed until you hear “beautiful” again!

Stronger by Mandissa (3:41)

Time to stretch – especially those calves and anything else that feels tight

Nice job!

Morning Workouts

Need 2 workouts to boost start your morning? How about choosing one of these, then trying the next one another day! 

Which one do YOU like better?

Morning Sculpt Blast

Move quickly from one exercise to the next.

You may take rest as needed. But try not to J!

 

100 squats

50 lunges each leg

30 push ups

30 triceps dips

25 crunches

25 bicycle crunches

Repeat as many times as you can in 20 minutes!  Next time, beat that number.

 

 Morning Cardio Blast (20 minutes)

Move quickly from one exercise to the next.

You may take rest as needed. But try not to J!

25 Jump rope

25 Jumping jacks

25 lateral hops over line

25 Slalom ski

25 Lunge and switch (Iron Mikes)

50 High knees

25 Jumping squats

15 squat thrusts/Burpees

Repeat as many times as you can in 20 minutes!  Next time, beat that number.

H.I.I.T

H.I.I.T. High Intensity Interval Training

 

Time yourself in completing this workout.  Complete 20 reps of each exercises as quickly as you can - with correct form.  Move immediately to the next exercise.  Stop the timer.  Record the date and your time.  Next week try to complete the same routine faster than you did this week.  Challenge friends to do the workout too!  Time each other, feel free to have a healthy competition.  Healthy competition can drive results.  Post your time via comment here within this blog – let’s see who has the fastest time!  Ready, set, go!

 

Body Fold Abdominal Exercise

            Lying on your back, with your arms overhead and legs outstretched, contract your abs and bring your arms and legs into a pike position over your belly button,.  Reach with your finger tips up to touch your shoe strings.  Lower back into the start position and repeat.  Your low back should not arch.

 

Superman hyperextensions

            Lying on your stomach with arms and legs outstretched, leg both arms and legs simultaneously, hold and return to start position.  Repeat.

 

Squat to overhead press with medicine ball

            Feet wider than hip width apart, toes face ahead, sit down as if there is a chair behind you by sitting your rear end back.  When your return up to standing, press medicine ball overhead.  Lower medicine ball and repeat.

 

Decline Push ups

            Toes on a step, a chair or a bench, hands on floor, shoulder width apart.  Lower body to the floor by bending elbows.  Keep body straight and abs tight.

 

Motivation for the day: If 99% Were Good Enough...

If 99.9% Were Good Enough, then... 

 

• Two million documents will be lost by the IRS this year.

·         22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next 60 minutes

• 1,314 phone calls will be misplaced by telecommunication services every minute.
• 12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.
• 103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly this year.
• 2,488,200 books will be shipped in the next 12 months with the wrong cover.
• 5,517,200 cases of soft drinks produced in the next 12 months will be flatter than a bad tire.
• Two plane landings daily at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago will be unsafe.
• 3,065 copies of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.
• 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour.
• 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year.
• 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect card holder information on their magnetic strips.
• $9,690 will be spent today, tomorrow, next Thursday, and every day in the future on defective, often unsafe sporting equipment.
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next 12 months.
• 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped this year.
• $761,900 will be spent in the next 12 months on tapes and CDs that won't play.
• 107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day today.
• 315 entries in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language will turn out to be misspelled.

You can’t go at 99.9% and expect to get the best results – go hard and then go home! It's almost Friday... how will you finish your week: 99% or 100%?

Deck of Cards Workout

Welcome to the deck of cards workout!  Everyone has a deck of cards laying around, and this is a great workout to do on vacation!  You will open the deck of cards and shuffle it.  

 

 Each card has an exercise associated with it.  The order  of exercises will be random.  Try not to rest.  Flip from card to card as quickly as possible.  Print out this post so that you have a quick reference for each card and exercise.

All ACES that come up, you will do 10 Burpees (a squat thrust with a jump at the end).

 Jokers are equal 100 crunches.

 Each JACK will be 20 jumping jacks.

 Each KING OR QUEEN, do 20 scooping squats.

 Numbered cards work like this:

 BLACK cards are push ups (the number on card is equal to the number of reps that you will complete) ex. 8 of clubs is 8 push ups

 RED cards are stationary lunges on each leg (the number on card is equal to the number of reps that you will complete) ex. 5 of hearts is 5 lunges on each leg

 

Enjoy!

 

24 Hours Abs Marathon

  “I just want to tone up right around my mid-section.” 

  I could retire if I had a nickel for every time I have heard this statement.  It is normally followed by this question, “Which machine or what exercise can I do to lose this flab in my belly?”  My answer is never what they want to hear – You could do abdominal exercises for 24 hours and your mid-section will not get smaller.  You cannot change fat into muscle, period.  They are two separate types of tissue.  If a trainer tells you that you can turn your fat into muscle – run fast and far from that “professional.”  You have bone structure and muscles attach to those bones.  Then, as you store unused calories in your body as fat cells, these fat cells form on top of muscle tissue – under the deepest layer of skin.

            In order to lose weight, or flab, around your mid-section you have to do two things very consistently and without lapse – cardio and eat right. 

 

 Cardio will shed pounds and thus decrease the “flab” at your mid-section.  Eating right (see clean eating blog), will insure that you do not continue to deposit more fat or stored calories in that area.  Notice I said that you have to do these things consistently and lapse.  You cannot eat right and exercise for a couple of days and expect results.  The process is not that fast.  A lifestyle change is required.  Cardio exercise that gets your heart rate up for at least 30-60 minutes every day and eating right every day.  I am not a proponent of cheat meals – they are a slippery slope.  Having a cheat meal is like sticking a pin in a water balloon and then trying to stop the water from escaping – there is no going back.

            The great news is that once you have lost weight in your abdominal area, crunches and other abdominal exercises will give your mid-section a nice toned, defined look.  But, you can have six – pack abs and never see them if you do not ad cardio and eating clean to your regimen.  Check out other blog posts for routines that will help you burn calories, boost metabolism and eat clean!