Tag Archives: running

how to start running

Building Your Base – How To Start Running (or in my case start again!)

IMG_20140311_110547Dear Runners,

I am ashamed to admit it, I’ve lost my base.

As a runner, this is one of the most painful places to be.

This is that point when you know you should be running longer.

You know you should be running faster.

But at least you’re running.

The problem is though, when you’ve never run before or when you’re not in “run-shape” how to start running the times you would like to is frustrating and sometimes downright painful.

I’ve doggy-eared the page in my journal that says,

“Remember how much you LOVE to run.–Just get out there and do it when you forget.”

So now, despite the days I don’t want to I’m getting out there and running.

I started last week with 13 min out, 13 min back.

Day 2 I repeated and I’ve been building each day since.

Two extra minute per day, one rest day a week, and one recovery run where I drop back down to 13 out 13 back for the day I really don’t feel like going for a run.  

This will be the cycle until I’ve reached 30 out 30 back.–Then I’ll begin building speed back in.

I’m on day 5 (16 out and 16 back) and already I’m remembering why I like to run.

  • I love how it clears my head.
  • I love incorporating the breath control I’ve learned from yoga to my running.
  • I love the way it feels when I’ve found my stride and feel like I’m running fast!
  • I love feeling like I’ve worked for my breakfast.
  • I love the feeling of extension as my foot strikes the ground and propels me forward.
  • I love getting lost in my music.
  • I love exploring my neighborhood and seeing the small nuances each day brings.  (Right now that means marveling in the beauty that is Table Mountain and seeing how the clouds form around it differently every day!)

Day 3 I spent the first 18 min cursing how hard running was, and the last 10 enjoying it.–I hadn’t found my stride until min 19.

We only curse a run when we’re fighting our bodies.

If running is that painful, you’re probably going too fast. 

Slow it down.

Find your breath.

Once you’re breathing is under control, listen to your muscles.

Feel your legs propelling you forward.

There is power in thinking about the muscles are working. SR9009 side effects don’t minimize its potency, especially if you want to have lean muscles.

You’ll build stronger neural signals and begin to activate the smaller complimentary muscles that not only make you faster and stronger, but also help protect your joints and keep you from getting hurt.

If you’re building up like I am, don’t worry about paces or distances.

Run for time.  Let you body tell you what feels good.

I promise, put in enough QUALITY min and you’ll start running faster!

fitness lessons

Fitness Lessons You Can Learn from a Traveling Bikram Yoga Instructor/Personal Trainer

I’ve officially been in the road now for over a week now.  So far my quest to maintain a healthy fit lifestyle is working out pretty well.

I’ve gone on some awesome runs.

I’ve run around the Marina with views of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.

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I’ve run along rolling hills of vineyards in Napa.

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I ran the famous Dipsea trail among giant Redwoods in Muir woods.

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I’ve also made time to practice at some awesome Bikram Yoga studios.

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I sweated along side the colorful Frankenstein cartons at the funky door studio on Polk Street in San Francisco

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I sweat out my “pour” decisions in my college town studio in Davis.

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I received some excellent, disciplined instruction on a beautiful cork floor in Napa.

 

 

From the sweat and steps I’ve also learned a few fitness lessons and those are what I want to share with you today.

 

Fitness Lessons Learned:

Lesson #1: The more you workout the more you can enjoy your travels.

As most of my clients always report, with travel comes the temptation to eat out frequently, try local foods and treats, (which unfortunately never seem to be on the diet plan!) and to drink an abundance of alcohol.

Now if I was on vacation, I would gladly rationalize that I deserve a break from my normally fit and healthy life, however, since travel has now become a lifestyle I have to make sure I earn the luxury of gluttony.

The same goes for anyone else who travels a lot for work or pleasure. If you keep yourself disciplined to get your exercise in first thing, you buy yourself budge room to enjoy a treat our two in the evening. Make sure to consume supplements such as lgd 4033 daily cause even if you manage to skip food after your exercise the supplements protein and other minerals will still help develop your body while also providing your energy to perform other tasks.

daily Lesson #2: Drink water.

My favorite type of water bottle is my hydro flask. It will keep water cold for days even in a hot Bikram Torture Chamber!

My favorite type of water bottle is my hydro flask. It will keep water cold for days even in a hot Bikram Torture Chamber!

Making sure you stay hydrated is very important to maintaining fit lifestyle on the road.

Travel in general makes you dehydrated.  The first step to making sure you stay ahead on the hydration curve is to bring an empty water bottle through security and then fill it up before you get on the plane, it would be great if you could also bring h2 tablets along with it.

Most people mistake thirst for hunger making it very likely to binge eat at meals if you aren’t drinking enough water.  Before ordering food or an alcoholic drink order a glass of water and down it every time before you eat.  A glass or two of water will make you feel full sooner.

Finally make sure your alcohol:water ratio stays in favor of water. (See above where I mention being a sweaty out “pour” decisions on my mat in Davis. Aka lying in the fetal position counting down postures until class is over.)

Not only does being dehydrated make your workout less effective, but it also makes it harder to stick to lesson number one: get your exercise in!  If you are hung over there is a much larger chance you will skip your workout the next day.

Lesson #3 When in doubt eat at a Mexican restaurant.

20130828_113146When eating out, it can become very hard to stick to your diet ratios. The good news is you can find a Mexican restaurant almost anywhere you go.

Obviously there are plenty of restaurants where you can eat lean, but every menu is different.  Mexican restaurants are nice because every single one should have a burrito on the menu.  As long as you unwrap the burrito and eat around the tortilla you should be able to find a good meal full of protein, veggies, and beans.   (Just be careful of the tortilla chips before the meal!)

Lesson #4: Carry Deodorant

The bad news about squeezing workouts into your travel is often times you really do have to squeeze it in.  Make sure you that bring some deodorant to avoid the post workout sweat that tends to come no matter how cold of a shower you take!

Lesson #5:  Don’t Underestimate the Calorie Burning Potential of Walking

Product DetailsThe final lesson I would like to touch on is the caloric burn potential of just walking.  If you are in a foreign city, the chances are you probably don’t have a car.  Rather than spending money on a taxi see if you can walk somewhere.  Not only will you see more traveling by foot, but you will also burn calories without even trying.  Every mile traveled by foot is an extra beer you can enjoy at dinner or a cookie you can eat guilt free.

A heavy day of walking around a city can burn just as many calories if not more than a short morning workout and if you do both then you have even more room to give into culinary temptation.  If you are going to be traveling a lot, I highly suggest investing in a fitbit.

Today rather than driving to yoga, I walked the 2.4 miles.  It only took me 35 min each way, my fitbit showed me I accumulated 13,000 steps, and bought myself an extra 400 calorie deficit.  (That’s 3 beers!)

The point of these lessons is it isn’t too hard to maintain a fit and healthy lifestyle on the go.  If you stick to a workout plan and are conscious about balancing out your physical activity with what you put in your mouth being healthy doesn’t have to be a sacrifice.

What are your favorite activities to do on the go?

What are your go to meal options when you travel?

summer for your health benefit

8 Ways to Get Outside and Use Summer for Your Health Benefit

summer for your health benefitSummer has arrived.  Here in Tennessee, the heat is in full swing and I’ve noticed all my friends around the country have begun posting pictures of their adventures in the sun.

Hop on the summer train and join in the fun with these 8 ways  to get outside and use summer for your health benefit!

1.  Walk:  

The weather is gorgeous, why sit in your car.  Where can you walk to that you normally drive to?

Can you walk to ___________?  

Fill in the blank, maybe it’s work, the grocery store, around the block after dinner, during your lunch break.

Maybe it’s all the above!  Whatever works for you, incorporate more walking into your day.  In fact, even make it a competition!   Get a Fitbit!  Compete with your family and friends.  Be my friend.  Having a Fitbit is like playing a video game that improves your health and the only way to win is to get outside and get walking!

2. Run:

After you try that walking thing, start running.

You don’t have to go far, just go around the block.

Maybe the next time try running a mile.

You don’t have to go far, but give it a try.  It in’t so bad.  Try doing it first thing in the morning!  Getting your heart rate up can wake you up better than drinking a cup of coffee.

Many people talk about running one day.  Make this summer the time that you start.  The hardest part is putting your shoes on and stepping outside!

3.  Yardwork:

IMG_20130610_121513The number one excuse I get as a personal trainer is not having enough time to exercise.

During the summer you can kill 2 birds with one stone.  Household chores like washing the car and mowing the lawn burn calories!  Spend an afternoon in the yard and you can burn over 500 calories while getting a tan at the same time!

Raking: 225 calories/ 30 min

Mowing the Lawn: 173 calories/ 30 min

Washing the Car: 150 calories/ 30 min

Weeding:  115 calories/ 30 min (add some squats into this one and the calorie burn goes up!)

4. Work

summer for your health benefit
Take your work outside!

Answer emails with your mobile.

Write that presentation on your laptop.

Head to a local park, find a quiet spot in the shade.  Get some work done outside.  Get some fresh air.

It’s good for your brain.  It will help you think clearer and more efficiently.

5. Swimming

Swimming is great exercise!

Find a pool and start doing laps!

If you’ve never really learned how to swim, take a swimming lesson!

Swimming is a great way to burn some killer calories, without pounding your joints.

Find an outdoor pool and you can burn fat, tone your muscles, and get a great tan all at once!

6. Yoga

summer for your health benefitIf you live in most areas of the country, being outside is like stepping into a hot yoga studio.

Take advantage of one of your local parks.

Set up your Yoga Mat.

Play around with the yoga postures you know.

If you do Bikram you know what you need to do.

If you practice vinyasa or power yoga, play around with whatever feels good to your body.

Every yoga teacher says, “you are your own best teacher.”  Give this a try.  Your body will steer you into the postures you need to do.

If you aren’t familar with yoga just sit down and focus on breathing deeply.

Listen to the world around you.  Listen to your breath.  Feel your lungs expanding and contracting

Even 15-30 min clearing your mind can make the rest of your day better!

7. Read

Find a book that will help you improve your fitness.

Then read it this summer.

In fact take it outside, lay in the sun for 15 min once a day and work your way through your book.

There are all kinds of books on fitness.

If you never tried yoga pick up Women’s Health Big Book of Yoga.  It has some great step by step tips to develop a beginning yoga practice and understanding.

Get motivated for your run with I run, Therefore I am–NUTS!

Learn more about the food you put in your mouth with the Smarter Science of Slim.

Get motivated to deepen your yoga practice with Hell Bent  Benjamin Lorr’s personal account through Jedi Fight Club and Bikram Yoga Teacher Training.

Take some time each sunny day to learn how to keep yourself healthier year round!

Reading about fitness makes your more motivated to make fit decisions and be active!

8. Go to a Farmer’s Market

Venture outside of your normal grocery store and visit your city’s local farmer market.

You can’t get produce any more fresh than what’s found at Farmer’s Markets.

You will see produce you don’t normally see.

Pick a veggie you’ve never eaten before and experiment with a new recipe.

Just like it’s important to vary your physical activity, mixing up the food you eat keeps your body burning fuel more efficiently.  Different veggies pack different nutrient loads.  If you always stick to the same ones, you may be missing out on some important vitamins and minerals!

Being healthy starts with spending more time outside.  Take advantage of the sun and warm weather.  Try to get outside and use the summer for your health benefit in one way or another each day!

 

runner's road kill

Runner’s Road Kill! How This Mindset Can Improve Your Running

runner's road kill

Road Kill Tallys Proudly displayed in a team relay

Road kill: n.  a runner left in your dust.

Traditionally Runner’s Road Kill counts are only kept when running 200 mile team relay races.  While you are running your leg of the race you tally in your head the number of runners you pass.

Once you have sufficiently fueled (with a sandwich and Coors Light of course, micro-brew if it’s your last leg!) you proudly get to add a tally to your teams total…Let’s be honest, if your like me it’s the very first thing you do when you get back to your car!

As you can tell, I’m a little competitive.

With spring coming out, I already see my running times improving and I will tell you my trick.  I don’t just keep road kill tallies on Relay Runs.  I keep a tally on all my runs.

In the winter when there are less runners on the road, it is easy for me to settle into a slower pace.  There are no runners to race.  With the arrival of spring and the sun comes the competition of more runners on my routes.

runner's road kill

Imagine how many Road Kill you could get in a race!

Focusing on passing someone ahead of you is much easier than pushing to maintain a speed.  When you aim to pass someone ahead of you, you keep your gaze forward.  You have better posture and a more efficient runner stride.

If your new to running don’t fret.  There are plenty of road kill for you too out there.  I see it completely acceptable to count walkers.  You are moving faster than they are.  If someone was walking in a Ragnar relay I would most certainly count them as Road Kill!

Once you move a comfortable distance ahead, there is no shame in slowly down…just remember road kill have a way of coming back to haunt you.   People don’t like to be passed 😉

yoga for athletes

Yoga for Athletes: Don’t be the Dumb Jock

Yoga for athletes

Remember the dumb jock Kevin in Daria? He may not have been so dumb if he did yoga!

We have all heard the term dumb jock.

A dumb jock is a meat head, muscle head, fine tuned athletic machine but not necessarily someone you think uses their brain.

This is actually the furthest from the truth.  Athletes actually use their brain for every movement they perform.  Every physical task requires a complex system of neural pathways to make that action happen.  Think about what it takes to get to this page:

Just to get to this post,

  • Your brain had to signal to your right arm to move the mouse.
  • Then you must create the precise pressure against the mouse to scroll to the address bar.
  • To type the URL your brain had to send separate signals to each finger for every letter you typed.

This is obviously not ground breaking, but think about how simple that task is.  Those are the simplified steps to reaching the end result of reading this post but it still required 3 steps.

Now think about something as complicated as doing a layup, a simple move in basketball.

  • You have to send hundreds of signals to the lower body to coordinate running and jumping while moving towards a target.
  • Another 100+ signals are sent to your hands to dribble the ball, pick it up, use strength in your finger tips to palm the ball, and, finally, precise muscle control to send the ball in the right direction towards the hoop.
  • While both sets of signals occur there are also 100s of signals activating your shoulders to move, bringing your arm over your head so your fingers have a line of trajectory into the basket.

….I could go on and on about the amount of neural conductivity it takes to do one action, but I think you get the point.  Any movement of the body requires an intense amount of brain power.  As we perfect a skill, most of this happens subconsciously.  However, if you can learn to have finer control over these movements you ultimately become a more skilled athlete.

This is where yoga for athletes comes in.  Yoga helps better tune mind-body connection.  In other words, yoga enhances the way you create motion.

With yoga you can train yourself to become more aware of the physical actions you perform.

yoga for athletes

Tony may be a strong football player, but he could be stronger when he learns to lock his knee and transfer his body weight into the ball of his foot!

Think about the pose Dandayamana Janushirasana.

The first step of this pose is learning to “lock your knee.”

Locking your knee doesn’t mean have a straight leg.  It means contracting every single muscle fiber in your standing leg for 60 seconds so that you can stay stable while still controlling and moving other parks of your body.

Even the strongest athletes struggle with this pose when they first start yoga.  They will argue they aren’t flexible enough to do the pose, but what they don’t understand is that they are doing the pose wrong before they ever get started.

The purpose of the pose isn’t to kick your leg out and touch your forehead to you knee.   The purpose is to have the strength to keep every fiber in your quadriceps contracted.  It takes hundreds to thousands of attempts to train your body to do this.  After many attempts of trying, you would be more stable if you could just make the smaller muscles that make up your toes apply pressure to the ground.  That is the first step.  Then you begin to strengthen those muscles because you have become aware of them.

When you become aware of the “smaller fine motor control muscles” you start to realize how much they can help you in your sport.

  • A soccer player will begin to feel the push off to change direction all the way through their little pinky toe, allowing them to cut sharper and faster!
  • The basketball player will no longer just jump  up for a layup, but extend through their big toe fully contracting their calf muscle more than before adding inches to their vertical!
  • The volleyball player will not only know they need to snap their hand on their follow through hitting a volleyball, but begin to feel their brachioradialis, flexor carpi radialis, and flexor carpr ulnaris contract.

Yoga isn’t just about stretching tight muscles athletes use over and over.  Yoga can be a medium to develop finer control over your body, making you a better athlete in your sport.  Yoga will train your mind body connection.

The athlete you strive to be isn’t such a dumb jock after all!

 

running drills to improve running form

Running Drills to Improve Your Running Form

 

running drills to improve running formYou know it is important to have good running form, but often it is developing that good running form that is hard.

The 3 main keys to good running form is:

  1. Mid Foot Strike
  2. Angles:  Dorsiflexed foot and knee to 90 degrees
  3. Forward Tilt

Here are some running drills to improve running form:

free gyms

Local Parks: The Free Gyms

free gymsOne of the biggest excuses to avoid jump starting your fitness and healthy lifestyle is the cost.  I understand, gyms can be expensive!

One way to avoid high prices is to studio hop.  Many privately owned cross fit gyms, yoga studios, and barre method gyms offer specials for new comers.  During the winter you can try each one through the beginners specials.  Who knows you may find something new you love.  Worst case you will work your muscles differently, gaining maximum burn.

As the weather begins to improve though we can even cut those costs by getting out and exploring the local parks in your area.   They are the free gyms!!   When I lived in Seattle I loved Seward Park, Gasworks ParkKerry Park, The Burke-Gilman Running Trail, Marymoor, and the UW Arboretum.

Shelby Park Nashville 02.jpgSince I’ve been in Nashville I’ve done laps and used the random steps and kid playgrounds for strength routines on the Downtown Riverfront, and at Centennial Park, Percy Warner Park, Shelby Park, and Fannie Mae Park.

Many local parks have either a long waterfront trail, or a running loop.  There are plenty of benches, Monkey Bars, bleachers, and bike racks to attach spri bands and do cross fit style workouts with your at home exercise equipment.  CHeck

Check out this youtube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH9I3etWrhftr0O5KMGs3Y8DiDNswFjd1&feature=view_all

or below for inspiration on how to kick your own booty for free in your local parks!

No Equipment Needed:

 

Toe Touch

Leg Drives

Split Jumps

Diamond Pushup

Advances Single Leg Squat

Spri Band Need:

Spri Band Bicep Curl

Pushup Position Lat Pull

 

 

runner's strength workout

Runner’s Strength Workout: Stay Injury Free and Power Up Those Hills with These Moves!

Often runners spend all their time running.–Sound Familiar??

Doing this, leads to overuse injuries as well as that “skinny fat” look none of us want to have.

It is important to do strength training a couple times a week, to keep you running injury free and keep your body looking toned and fit.

I developed this runner’s strength workout to do just that.  The exercises are designed to work your gluteus medius, obliques, and stability muscles to protect against overuse injuries such as runners’ knee, while also working your larger muscles such as your gluteus maximus, biceps, and triceps so you stay toned with a perky booty and can power up those hills!

 

Do each exercise 3x through for the perfect 15 min strength routine to complement your running!

 

properly execute speed training workout

How to Properly Execute Your Speed Training Workout

Check out this video to make sure you know how to properly execute your speed training workout!

[vsw id=”tt9pkI4wg0Q” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

 

Key Tips:

  • Finish your last interval fastest.
  • Workout on breathing.
  • Think about your form