Posts filed under 'Fitness'
Guest poster Michelle Koen of our sister site Healthy Helpings TV offers these tips on dining room fitness!
All that holiday food is tempting, so go on, enjoy it, but remember, if you’re going to keep up your healthy lifestyle you have to exercise too.
Getting to the gym can be tricky with all your holiday commitments and I can only imagine what being knee deep in snow does to you motivation!
When I don’t have time to go to the gym or get on my bike, I make my own circuit workout. Today I was being a bit creative and came up with a full body workout that I can do at my dining room table!
The table and chair workout:
Perform these exercises in quick succession to make a circuit.
You’ll need:
2 sturdy chairs
1 sturdy table
Warm-up for a few minutes before performing this workout. Either jog on the spot, jump rope or climb stairs if you have them.
Step ups onto a chair.
Make sure your chair isn’t going to move. Carpeted floors work best but placing the back of the chair against a wall helps on wooden floors. Alternate legs until you have done 10-15 steps on each leg.
Chair Tricep Dips (to combat turkey wings): Stand with your back to the chair, as if your were going to sit down but about 1.5ft further way. With your palms facing behind you place your hands on the front of the seat. Lower your body, keeping your back straight until your elbows are pointing backwards and bent at 90º. Pushing using your hands (not your feet) raise your body to a straight armed position and repeat up to 15 times or until failure.
Chair Glute-crunches: Lie on the floor facing the seat of the chair with your knees bent, so that your feet are slightly under the chair. Straighten on leg and place it on the chair. Push through the heel of the foot which is on the floor and squeeze your buttocks, raising your hips off the ground. Slowly lower your body and repeat 10-15 times for each leg. You can add an adominal crunch or crunch twist at the end of the movement for added ab work.
Table chinups: Lie underneath the table with your head and shoulders protruding, so that your shoulderblades line up with the end of the table, legs straight. Grip the tabletop, palms facing up. Squeeze your shoulder-blades together and pull your chest towards the underside of the table until your chin is touching the edge of the table. Keep your body in a plank. Slowly lower your body to the starting position and repeat. If this is too hard bring your feet in and bend your knees slightly, keep your body straight.
Bulgarian split squats: Stand in front of a chair (as if about to sit). Take on large step forward and place the toe of your rear foot on the chair. Keeping your body upright and chest high lower your body towards the floor until your front leg is bent at 90º. Make sure your front knee does not pass your toe and that you are not twisting your body. Squeeze your buttocks and push through your heel to help raise your body to a starting position. Repeat 10–15 times for each leg.
Chair shoulder press: Place 2 chairs, seats facing each other, 2-3ft apart. Place your body in between them with your palms on the edges of the seats, fingers pointing towards your body gripping the edge of the seat. Extend your legs infront of you either fully or slightly bent for an easier version. Slowly lower your body towards the floor until your arms are bent at 90 degrees. Keep your shoulders back and body tall and upright. Push through your palms to raise your body slowly to a starting position. Repeat 10–12 times.
Sit down, stand up… and up: Start by sitting in a chair with good posture. Try to stand up without using your hands, squeezing the abs and buttocks to help raise your body. Push through the heels. Once you are standing, transfer the weight to the front of your feet and raise up onto the balls of your feet, hold for 10 seconds and slowly lower to flat feet and then to hovering just above the seat, hold for 10 seconds and repeat 10–15 times.
To increase the calories burnt during the workout include an active recovery of jogging or skipping on the spot for a minute between each exercise. The circuit should take about 7 minutes to complete, perform it up to 5 times. To increase the intensity of these exercises do them wearing a backpack with something heavy in it, sacks of flour and sugar are ideal.
Don’t forget the other most important exercise these holidays: The put down and push away: Put down your fork and push away the plate when you’re full.
December 18th, 2007
My Crew over at the Health Hacks Podcast have an episode with a theme inspired by Dr. Who villains the Daleks.
Episode 18 is all about helping you stick with the resolutions you might have made at the start of January:
- Reinhard Engels continues to explain the relationship between the everyday systems “Chain of Self-Command” and “Personal Punchcards” which were introduced last week. Hint: it involves evil robots!
- Occupational Therapist Eve The O.T. takes a break from her multi-part report on office ergonomics to help you bolster your willpower and patch up any lapses now that you’re ten days into your New Year’s resolutions.
January 15th, 2007
Earlier this week, I posted about online fitness tools/portals, and somehow, I forgot to mention one site I’ve been looking at for some time now: HyperStrike.
According to the website, Hypersrtike offers:
Workout plan customized to fit your needs
* Personalized 90-Session Workout Plan to Fit Your Goals
* Personal Fitness Calendar to Record Your Progress
* Add, Delete, Move Workouts to Fit Your Schedule
Variety & Flexibility in Your Workouts
* Workouts Draw from a Large Database of 3D Exercise Animations
* Take Your Workout on the Go Via Progio
* Swap Exercises to Fit Your Equipment Needs
Exercise Instructions to Help You with Proper Technique
* Written Step-By-Step and Animated Exercise Instructions
* Subscription to HyperStrike Motivator Monthly Newsletter
* Access to Articles on Fitness & Nutrition
Hyperstrike is a pay service, but they have a free introductory period offered on their web site.
I likes the animated exercise videos and found them useful. Check it out!
October 26th, 2006
I’ve been spending some time looking at online health community and tool sites, and here are three interesting ones to share:
Traineo Weight Loss Community
A community-based portal to encourage weight loss.
From the splash page:
* Stay accountable, reach your goals!
Been to the gym today? Record this in a couple of clicks and see how many calories you burned. traineo will report your totals to your motivators at the end of each week.
* Keep your diet on track
Have you stuck to your diet today? traineo will give you a daily ‘training diet rating’ to easily gauge how good you’ve been.
* Visualize your progress
See how your workouts and diet compare over time with intuitive graphs and see if you’re on target to reach your goals.
*
Keep in touch with your ‘motivators’
Exchange messages with your ‘traineo motivators’ straight from your online account.
* Meet others in the traineo community
Share weight loss tips, give your fellow members encouragement or talk about anything else!
* Get your personal traineo.com page!
You’ll have your very own traineo.com domain where you can leave comments on your progress or comment on other pages with ease!
Collabofit Online Fitness
Virtual teams compete against each other by maintaing an exercise regimen.
Currently invitation only. Sorry! On the upside, they even have a Shovelglove team!
From the site:
Regular memberships are FREE and include these features:
* Join up to 3 teams
* Create your own team
* Enter workout activity stats:
o Walking
o Running
o Swimming
o Cycling
o Situps
o Pushups
o and more…
* Easily track your weight and stats over time
The Daily Plate
A free, online food diary system with food count lookups available.
From the site:
A diet coach, nutritionist, and food plan at your fingertips, just a click away.
Food Journal Food Journal
Keep track of what you eat
Calorie Calculator Calorie Calculator
Determine your daily goal
Fitness Log Fitness Log
Calculate and log the calories you burn each day
Technorati Tags: traineo, collabofit, Daily Plate, online fitness, fitness community, weight loss, weight management
October 23rd, 2006
For my fellow USians (and others if you feel it applies to you):
Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer extrordinaire has a new job- he designs for Target.
In that capacity, he seems to be trying to curry favor with his new demographic- Middle America (or possibly James Lileks who seems to spend 12 hours a day in the Bullseye Boutique).
Last week Mizrahi appeared on the NPR game show (Yes! They exist!) “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me”. Pointing to popular actor Vince Vaughn, Mizrahi stated that “Fat is the new black.”
Hrmph.
If you thought it was sad living in a country where everyone is on a diet, imagine one where everyone has simply given up.
Do not go gentle into that good night, people.
September 19th, 2006
The two main weight loss systems I’ve been discussing while developing over at the Health Hacks Podcast are the Health Hacks Amalgamated Frankendiet and the Park Far From Work exercise system.
Here are some new insights and factoids:
- I counted the steps in the parking garage; 92
- Weight loss as of this morning (since last week); 4 LBS
- Decrease in pants size in 2 weeks; 1
- Another new diet rule; no reading at lunch- just sit and eat, preferably with eyes closed.
Sample menus are under development. This Wednesday, you’ll be able to hear me brainstorming a few on the new podcast, Episode 4.
In the mean time, check out our VERY SPECIAL PODCAMP SPECIAL episode. In addition to some talk on diet and fitness, Eve the O.T. and I discuss ergonomics and injury prevention extensively, with the assistance of people like Guido Stein, Steve Garfield, Beth Kanter, Justin Kownacki, Shava Nerad, and more!
September 18th, 2006
The New York Times has an interesting article entitled Exercise = Weight Loss, Except When It Doesn’t.
As you may guess the article explains why some exercises may yield less weight loss than one might expect.
One point raised is that if a particular exercise is supposed to burn 300 calories over a certain period of time, you must take into account how many calories you would expend simply by existing during that period and subtract that to see your real caloric deficit. This is the figure upon which you should base your weight loss expectation.
It’s a simple truth which I must admit had never occurred to me. How’s ’bout you?
September 15th, 2006
Chris Brogan over at our podcast has taken the idea of Parkour and morphed it into something anyone can do as a way to keep your running/walking/jogging routine fresh and inspiring. He calls it “Parkour Faux” and I give it a whirl with a test subject this week.
The idea for Parkour Faux came after Chris and I were both waxing poetic over how awesome real Parkour looks and how we’d love to do it, if we were younger/fitter/etc. The “Aha moment” came to Chris while cruising Parkour videos on YouTube.
Chris stumbled across some kids pretending to be Traceurs. They were running around a park, climbing over benches and vaulting over garbage cans. His brain screamed, “Hey! That I can do!”
Fast forward a week. Eager to test this out, I grabbed a test subject and headed out to a derelict skateboard park near my home. Half an hour later it was clear… It ain’t real Parkour, but it certainly rocks!
Hear it for yourself in episode 2 of the Health Hacks Podcast.
September 6th, 2006
Are you familiar with a form of Martial Art called Krav Maga?
Developed in Israel, it is designed to help practitioners survive modern urban crime scenarios, such as armed muggings, bar-fights and car jackings.
I recently had an opportunity to watch some Krav Maga students and their teacher, Kevin Tomasi of New Hampshire’s Salem Self Defense Center do some training, and I have to say that it is intense!
The cardio work involved is amazing. These people are learning physical automaticity at a very high level. They need to, of course, as they are trying to learn to fight for their lives against weapons as diverse as guns, knives and broken bottles. They also learn about the “three psychological types” of assailants and how to always be alert to your surroundings.
Tune into next week’s Health Hacks Podcast to hear my interview with Mr. Tomasi.
September 1st, 2006
Have you heard of either Parkour or Free Running yet?
These two related but different disciplines are (cue the oxymoron police) “popular underground sports” originating in france and the U.S. respectively. They involve running at top speed over distance without skirting any obstacles. I’m not talking about on a high-school track with hurdles, but an urban cityscape filled with moving cars and inconveniently placed buildings.
The trend began in France with the Traceurs, or practitioners of Parkour. Eventually the sport forked into standard Parkour, concerned with simplicity of motion in getting from A to B, and Free Running, which places a value on aesthetic interpretation and artistry. Both are breathtaking to watch- and very dangerous.
I’m going to throw out a few links here, but what you really need to do is go to this YouTube search results page and have a look. You’d swear these people were stunt doubles for Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger!
Read more:
Parkour [Wikipedia]
Parkour.com
American Parkour
August 17th, 2006
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